Lightning turned the night bright blue, lit up the long, flat, plain-looking building that was the county jail.
I hadn’t even known where it was; that’s what a sheltered life I’d led. But I’d mapped it on my phone and found it, behind where the match factory had been, beside the giant domes where the county kept its mountains of rock salt for snowy winter roads. I’d driven by it a hundred times in my life at least. Ignorant, every time.
I sat in my car and tried my best to think clearly. Why had I come? What was I going to do? They wouldn’t just hand Solomon to me. According to the cop shows, if he was charged with a crime, they’d keep him overnight and in the morning he’d go before a judge who would either set bail or keep him in county until his trial came. And even if he wasn’t, Child Protective Services practically had an all-points bulletin out on him—they’d probably hold him until a social worker could inspect him in the morning.
I had come because I couldn’t not come. Because Solomon was in trouble, and I had to help him. Even if I didn’t know how.
The rain got harder. Louder. I didn’t have an umbrella.
I turned off the car, silencing the punk rock singer of Destroy All Monsters! midshriek. I looked around for something that could shield me from the rain, and found a giant sweatshirt across the back seat.
Solomon’s. I could tell by the smell. A man’s smell, but there was more to it than that. He was there, somehow—Little Boy Solomon, a shred of the child he had been. Before his brain broke, before the world began to betray him. I breathed it in. The smell opened up something—a doorway to memory—but I didn’t have time to go through that doorway, not just then.
I opened the car door. Wind made it difficult, drove rain in stinging slaps against me. I stepped out, slammed the door shut again, held the sweatshirt over my head. It didn’t do much good with the wind so strong, pushing the rain so it seemed to come at me sideways. I walked toward the front door to the jail. A single bare bulb was lit, above the entrance.
When I was halfway there, the door opened. And I stopped. Because Mr. Barrett came out the door, with his arm around someone.
Around Solomon.
Mr. Barrett was smiling, saying something to someone back in the jail, but Solomon’s face was twisted up with agony.
I took off my hood. I let the rain punish me.
In nightmares, for the rest of my life, I’ll see that face. So much pain, so much fear. Little Boy Solomon was back. The Solomon with the big muscles and broad shoulders was gone. Forgotten.
Oh god, Solomon, I thought. What has you so afraid?
And the really awful thing? The proof of how being an artist and being a bad person are all bound up together? My first reaction, my gut instinct, the only thought that popped into my head: more than anything, I wanted my camera. What I saw on Solomon’s face, in that instant, it would have been the most perfect photograph I’d ever take. Pure emotion, captured on film. The truth I’d been hunting for.
I thought about calling out to him. Yelling his name. But fear paralyzed me. Fear and a little voice that said, Stay hidden. Don’t let them capture you.
Thunder burst overhead, like God knocking at my door.