twenty-One
The police, while wonderful about giving me a ride to the police station, were not interested in giving me a ride to the emergency room. We stood over Caroline’s new black two-door car.
“Nice,” I said. “What is it?”
“It’s a BMW 428i with a 2.0-liter engine.”
“Pretty.”
“You have no idea what I just said, do you?”
“The B stands for Bavarian.”
“Very good. Do not get blood on it.”
We climbed into the car. Caroline fiddled with a button. The roof lifted up and folded itself away. Pale April sun shone down upon us. It felt good to see the sky. I wondered how much sky one saw in prison.
Caroline worked the clutch, and we started off.
“You got a manual transmission?”
“Don’t you start,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
Caroline shifted into a valley-girl cadence. “Look at you! You lost a leg and you still drive a standard. You’re so inspirational.”
“That seems nice.”
“I don’t want to be inspirational. I want to drive a clutch. It gives me something to do in bad traffic.”
And that ended that conversation. Pretty much ended all of them as Caroline navigated her way through the city traffic in silence.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked.
“You literally threatened someone’s life in writing?”
“Not literally.”
“Yes. Yes. Literally. Writing something down is the definition of literally.”
“He said that I must have sexually assaulted Carol before I killed her.”
A beat of silence.
“You didn’t kill her.”
“Of course I didn’t kill her.”
“Why would he say that?”
“It’s the Internet. He wanted to get a rise out of me.”
“He succeeded in that.”
“Succeeded?”
“You threatened to cut off his head.”
I watched the city sidewalks slip by. The sun went behind a skyscraper and April’s chill settled into my bones. “He started it.”
“And cutting off his head was simply the next step.”
“Don’t you start.”
“I’m just pointing out the simple logic of the prosecutor’s case.”
“He got a rise out of somebody else too. There must be dozens of people he’s pissed off.”
Caroline turned onto Storrow Drive. The Charles River, now free of winter’s ice, glittered blue in the springtime sunshine.
“Doesn’t matter. He’s dead now,” Caroline said.
“Yes, he is.”
“You don’t sound sorry.”
I remembered what Peter had said about Carol, and said nothing.
“Are you sorry?”
“I’m processing.”
“So you’re not sorry. I can see that. The jury will see it too.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Lee sees it now.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Just stating the case.”
Caroline upshifted and downshifted her way through the Mass General parking garage. Then we sat around while the emergency room handled gunshot wounds, heart attacks, stabbings, and other more-serious-than-a-slap injuries. Though she sat with me, Caroline mostly worked her phone.
“What’s really going on?” I asked. “You’re mad at me for some whole other reason.”
“I’m not mad at you. I’m worried about you.”
“What? Because of one meeting?”
“It’s not going to be one meeting, Tucker. It’s going to be a big thing. Lee’s going to arrest you.”
“Not if I arrest him first.”
Caroline didn’t even crack a smile.
“Come on. That was a little funny,” I said.
“Here comes the doctor,” said Caroline rising and shrugging on her coat. “I’ll call you later.”
Three hours later, after various people prodded the cut, poured searing antiseptics into it, commented on its raggedness, and declared the need for a plastic surgeon, I left Mass General with eight tiny stitches holding my cheek together. They told me to expect a scar.
Sometime during the prodding, poking, sticking, and stitching sessions, Bobby Miller had sent me a text: Call me.
I called him.
He said, “Get your ass over here so that maybe we can keep you out of jail.”