Randy’s Jetta bucked and gurgled as they headed into downtown Warner, but Craig thought that was just fine. He was on his way to the police station. Emma wasn’t going to stop him. She could take all her promises to him and roll them up into a nice shiny ball and shove it up her cute ass, but Craig was through.
“Shit, Craig,” Randy said. “The traffic sure does suck. We won’t get there for probably another five minutes.”
“That’s okay,” he said, crossing his arms. “Just get me there.”
The thing was, Randy was right. The road was jammed with school buses coming in and parents joining a line to pick up their sons and daughters, not to mention the steady line of students who could depart at final period leaving. They came to the main entrance to the school, where a cop was directing traffic.
Randy said, “Hey, there’s a cop over there. Why don’t you talk to him?”
“Nope,” Craig said. “I’m gonna talk to the detective handling the case. Somebody important. That cop, what’s he going to do? He’s going to tell me to stop bothering him and go to the police station. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Okay,” Randy said, and then traffic started moving and they took a right onto Main Street.
Craig jumped when his phone started ringing. He grabbed it and looked at the screen. JESSICA, it said.
Jessica was stuck behind two patrons, gray-hairs both, who were driving their dull-looking GM sedans and who were taking their sweet goddamn time in leaving the library’s parking lot. She slammed a hand on the steering wheel, grabbed her iPhone. It slipped out of her fingers and fell to the floor.
“Shit!”
Jessica bent down, fingers on the floor, until she got the phone and picked it up. The lead car was out of the parking lot. She slid through the touch screen, found the number for Craig, and gave it a push. She brought it up to her ear. It was ringing. Ringing. Ringing.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she murmured. “Answer it, boy. Answer it!”
Jessica wasn’t sure what she was going to say, but she knew that she had to say something. Ask Craig what was going on. Ask him what was sending him to the police station. What did he intend to say when he got there? Couldn’t he just wait to talk to his stepmom? Couldn’t they all work together as a family to get Ted out of jail?
The phone stopped ringing and Craig’s voice answered.
Randy glanced over. “Who’s calling?”
“My stepmom.”
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Randy said, “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
Ring.
Randy said, “Boy, you got some balls on you, Craig.” He laughed. “My mom, if she doesn’t get a pickup in the first three seconds, I get interrogated when I get home about why I didn’t answer, where I was, and didn’t I know I was disrespecting her.”
Craig just watched the phone screen. There was a little tone as the call went to voicemail.
“No,” he said. “I’m not going to answer it.”
Randy laughed. “Boy, your mom is gonna be pissed!”
Craig looked out as the homes and buildings of Warner passed by. “Randy, she’s not my mom.”
Jessica heard Craig’s voice and said, “Craig! It’s me! What are you—” And she stopped. It was a waste. His voice had just been Craig’s voicemail prompt, that’s all.
“Craig!” she said. “Please listen. Don’t go to the police, please. Talk to me! Tell me what’s going on! We can work this out as a family. We can get your father out. Just don’t go to the police right yet!”
A horn honked behind her. She looked up. The other GM sedan was gone. Now it was just her.
She drove out, briefly braked, and made a quick turn to the right. More horns honked as she cut it pretty damn close.
No matter.
She was moving fast.
To the police station. To get there before Craig.
Up ahead Craig made out the brick building that held both the police station and the fire department, and Randy said, “So, mind letting me know what you’re going to tell the police?”
“That they got it wrong, that he didn’t kill Sam Warner.”
“Uh-huh. You know who did it?”
Craig kept quiet, his chest cold, filled with a feeling—a resolve, maybe?—that he was finally doing the right thing.
Randy said, “Okay, whatever. The guy was an asshole, so I’m not going to miss him. Still, if every guy who was an asshole in school got his head blown off by a shotgun, there wouldn’t be many students around when prom season comes, you know what I mean?”
Craig said, “Right there. Don’t bother going into the parking lot. You can drop me off in the front.”
Jessica cursed again and again as she seemed to hit every red light. Was God punishing her? Finally, after all these years, had the hand of God come down to screw around with the traffic lights to prevent her from getting to the police station in time, to stop Craig from ruining it all?
Finally! The last light turned green and she tailgated the pickup truck in front of her, and there, there was the police station, and a Volkswagen Jetta pulling away from the sidewalk, and—
There! Craig was walking up the paved walkway to the front of the police station.
She pulled to the right of the pickup truck, forcing him into the middle of the narrow two-lane street. More horns were honking, but she didn’t mind, she didn’t care. All she cared about was Emma, Emma, Emma.
Jessica pulled the Sentra in front of a fire hydrant, jumped out, left the door open, and ran over to the grass in front of the station.
“Craig!” she yelled. “Craig!”
Her stepson hesitated, looked to the left and to the right.
“Craig!”
He finally turned around and looked right at her.
She waved. “Craig, please, wait!”
Jessica waited, heart racing so fast, like an outboard motor revving higher and higher. She waited. Craig, oh Craig. Emma, oh Emma.
She waved again.
Craig waved back. And then took three more steps, right into the police station.
It was the first time Craig had ever been inside the Warner police station. It took a few moments to get his bearings. To his right were two glass display cases, showing off trophies and black-and-white photos of Warner cops from years and years ago. In front was a wooden door with a sign saying VISITORS NEED TO SIGN IN and a smaller sign saying ALL CONVERSATIONS BEYOND THIS POINT MAY BE RECORDED. Over the door was a small CCTV camera, looking down at him and the scuffed tile.
“May” in this room sure was “will,” he thought. There was a bulletin board with town notices and lost-and-found flyers and, to the left, a rectangular glass window with an opening below it.
He went over, bumping into one of the two light-orange plastic chairs set nearby, and he stood looking in. There were two desks, one empty, and an older woman with eyeglasses dangling from around her neck was furiously typing away on a computer keyboard.
Craig waited. He didn’t feel good. His mom—his real mom—had always said as they drove by the brick building, “You be a good boy, Craig, or the police will take you and put you in there for a long, long time.”
He thought, I’m trying to be good, Mom. Honest I am.
He brought up his right hand and tapped on the glass.
Jessica ran after Craig but gave up halfway across the small, well-tended lawn. Now what? She could burst into the lobby and try to convince him not to speak to Detective Rafferty, but what if he started yelling nonsense? The lobby and everyplace else was bugged, she remembered that.
And then? If Craig wouldn’t listen, if she tried to pull him away, the door would open up, Detective Rafferty would come out, and—
No.
Jessica turned around, walked briskly back to her illegally parked Sentra.
No.
She got in her car, started it up, heard her phone chiming. Jessica took it out, saw rhonda appear, and let it go to voicemail. Her dear friend. Wanting to help, eager to do what she could. Bless her.
Then she checked the time. School would be letting out soon. Emma didn’t have any practice or meets today. She would go straight home. And between now and then, Jessica would come up with something. She had to.
Jessica eased her Sentra into traffic and started driving home.
The woman behind the glass looked up, startled.
Craig tried to smile, look relaxed, not in trouble.
The woman lifted a finger, as if to say, C’mon, kid, give me another minute or two, and then she went back to her typing.
Craig noticed his legs were shaking.
All the way home, different thoughts and options raced through Jessica’s head. Call Detective Rafferty and plead her case that Craig was upset and would start talking nonsense. Call Detective Rafferty and tell him that she had new information on the case and would pass it along if he ignored what Craig was trying to tell him.
Or . . . find a public phone between here and home, make a quick anonymous call to the police station, tell them that the person who killed Sam Warner was someone with a grudge, someone who despised the young man, someone . . .
Someone like Percy Prescott.
It felt like a gift box inside of her mind had just opened up.
Sure. Percy. Already arrested by the police, known to hate Sam Warner, loudly telling people at the bank how much Sam and his wrestling buddies had mistreated him.
Craig waited and waited. A police officer came in, the woman typing glanced up and pressed a buzzer system to open the door, and now he was alone again in the lobby.
With each passing moment, doubts started to grow. Was he doing the right thing? What would Emma and Jessica do? And most of all, would the police believe him? Would they?
Screw this, he thought, and he picked up his knapsack, turned, and—
“Yes?” The woman was standing behind the glass, speaking through a little round metal grille. “How can I help you?”
Craig just stared at her.
“Well?”
He said, “I was hoping—”
“You’ll have to speak up louder, I’m sorry,” she snapped at him.
He stepped closer to the glass. Smudged fingerprints were on the lower part of the glass.
“Uh, I’d like to speak to the detective who’s handling the, uh, Sam Warner investigation.”
Her eyes narrowed and she looked suspicious. “And who are you?”
“Craig Donovan,” he said. “My dad, uh, is Ted Donovan, and I’d like to speak to the detective handling the case.” He paused. “Please.”
She said, “All right. That’d be Detective Rafferty. Take a seat. I’ll see if he’s free.”
Craig’s face was burning, and he sat down in the orange chair, lowered his head. Dad, he thought, I’m doing this for you.
Jessica pulled into the small driveway in front of her house.
Public phones? Damn it, there were none!
She remembered as a kid that every gas station, drugstore, 7-Eleven had a public pay phone outside, and of course she hadn’t been paying attention these past years as they were all taken down. Now? She could buy a burner phone, but by the time she got that powered up, programmed, and paid for . . . no, she didn’t have time.
Jessica got out of the Sentra, all her senses seeming to burn and tingle. What to do?
First things first: protect Emma. She should be home from school in about fifteen minutes, and Jessica would sit her down, have a frank talk with her, and then . . . well, leave. Pack a couple of bags, get out of Warner, see what she could find out from afar, either through watching the news at some motel room somewhere or by visiting another town’s public library and using its open computers.
She unlocked the door, pushed her shoulder against it—shove, shove, shove—and the door squeaked open, and she looked down at the hardwood floor.
No mail. Odd.
She closed the door behind her, dropped her coat and purse on the chair nearby, walked into the dining room, and stopped.
Her husband was sitting at the dining room table, the day’s mail at his elbow.
“Hello, Jessica,” he said.