MARIE SAT ON my lap, still clad in the deputy’s uniform shirt, which smelled of cologne mixed with body odor, a strong manly stink incongruent with her soft vulnerability. They’d put us back in the same room we’d sat in minutes before with Noble. She nuzzled my neck, her tears cool and wet.
Outside the door, in the hall, paramedics continued to work on Noble, my brother. “How bad is he?” I whispered in her ear.
“He could be okay, really. I’ve seen them like that before where the wounds only need to be sutured, where the knife missed everything vital. There is a chance the knife missed everything.”
“And you’ve also seen them where the knife didn’t.”
She nodded. “What are we going to do? What if they fingerprint you?” She wanted to change the subject.
She already knew the answer to that one. If fingerprinted, I’d be arrested for kidnapping, a crime I had technically committed, legally wrong, but morally correct, a private morality and a costly luxury.
“Their case is circumstantial at best. I can beat it, no problem.”
“Don’t you blow smoke up my dress, Mr. Bruno Johnson,” she whispered. “You don’t even know what kind of case they have against you.”
“Well, let’s just hope they don’t fingerprint me, then. How’s that? And you’re not wearing a dress, you’re wearing slacks.”
She pushed on me with the flat of her hand. “You know what I meant.”
We waited.
“You know,” she said, “on our tenth anniversary we’ll be sitting together on our veranda in our swing chair and laugh about all of this.”
“Hey, what happened to the other nine years in between? What, we won’t think it’s funny until it ages for ten years? Or that’s when you think I’ll get out?”
The door opened, a female deputy outside. “Ma’am,” the deputy said, “please come with me.”
Marie kissed my forehead and gave me a hug. “See you in a little while, babe.”
“I love you,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to lie, to say I’d see her in a little while, because I didn’t know for sure if I would.
But I did know. I’d worked the jail, and investigations, long enough to know. They would find me out, no question. I’d slipped up and made a mistake, a fatal one. Nobody’s fault but my own. I only hoped the mistake didn’t pull my beautiful wife into it.
I’d walked into the lion’s den, fat, dumb, and happy, the way Robby used to say, and now had to sit still while the lions ate me.
Thirty minutes later, time enough to do a background check on the phony name I’d given them, time enough to let me fester and wind up my paranoia—the door opened again and in walked a lone detective in denim pants, a blue chambray shirt, and a blue blazer. When he sat in the chair Noble had occupied, his blazer opened. He wore an empty pancake holster on his right hip. No guns of any kind came into the jail.
He offered his hand. “How you doin’? I’m Deputy John Harris.”
I shook his hand and said, “Jason Minor,” the name on my forged driver’s license, the name I’d used to enter the country, the one the detective now had clipped to his Posse Box in the form of my driver’s license.
“How’s my friend? Is he going to be okay? How bad is he hurt?”
He leaned back in the chair and looked at me for a long couple of minutes, trying to make me squirm. I knew the routine, had used it myself in the past. I didn’t want it to work on my paranoia, but it did. His gaze burrowed right down into the bottom of my spine and made me want to shudder.
“We know—” he pointed to me, then to himself “—you and me, we know that this façade you’re trying to feed us is a bunch of bullshit, right?”
I gave him my best confused expression. “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. How come you’re holding us? I don’t think this is right. You don’t have the right to hold us, do you? I mean, we didn’t do anything wrong. I want to see my wife.” I tried to say all the things a victim would say, an act more difficult than I thought after living a predator’s life for the last twenty-seven years.
“You’re going to play dumb, is that it? I don’t think that game would be in your best interest, not when we have your wife on ice, ready to book for any number of offenses.”
“What’re you talking about? We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Come on, man, cut the crap. I’m not some rookie detective you can run a game on. You slipped up out there. I interviewed everyone involved before I got to you.”
Smart. Always have as much intel as possible before you interrogate. This guy knew his way around the games criminals played. He was right; I wouldn’t be able to bluff this guy.
I said nothing.
He leaned in close. “You referred to our illustrious, rat-bastard inmate, who calls himself Noble Johnson, as your brother. Noble Johnson only has one brother, and you and I both know his name, don’t we?”
Now he’d gone and played it too smug. I needed to shake him up a little if I wanted to have any chance at all. “What …” I stammered. “What’re you talking about? Oh … oh you mean out there in the hall. You’re right, I did. I did call him my brother. But we’re all brothers in the eyes of our Lord.”
He sat back. His mouth dropped open for just a second before he caught himself and regained his composure. I had him. I needed to press the advantage. “Sure, sure, I’m sure you’ve heard us black folk, heard us call each other bro, or brother, or brother-man. That’s all I meant. Is that what all this confusion’s about? I’m sorry, really I am. It’s all a mistake.”
His eyes narrowed and a smile slowly spread across his arrogant mug. “All right, Mr. Jason Minor, then I guess I’ll just have to let you go.”
I didn’t fall for it. His smugness served only to make me shrink deeper in my chair. He had me before he said another word, and knew I couldn’t do anything about it.
“I give you my word,” he said, “as a deputy sheriff, that I’ll let you go if you do one thing for me? Just one. And if you do, I promise you that you can walk right out that door.”
I said nothing and didn’t move.
“Show me your right bicep.”
Ah, shit.
He had me cold.
Way back when, I’d been a young and dumb fool. While on the Violent Crimes Team, I fell for the camaraderie, the competitive spirit, and once I’d made my bones on the team, I, too, like all the other members, tattooed BMF—Brutal Mother Fucker—on my body. Just like the ignorant, misguided gangsters that I chased down, bludgeoned, ran over, or shot if they didn’t want to give up.
He stood and, making a show of it, came around the table, his eyes boring into mine. His hands, in my peripheral vision, moved to my shirt.
He pulled the sleeve up.