Nine

NEW YORK STATE POLICE HEADQUARTERS

THE INTERROGATION ROOM was cold and dank. The walls were plain, dull green, with old paint chipping off just about everywhere. Everything smelled of spilled coffee, cigarette smoke, and sweat.

Tobey was sitting in a squeaky metal chair, an old wooden desk in front of him. It seemed like he’d been inside the damp, smelly room for days. He couldn’t really tell. Time as he knew it had lost all meaning for him.

His entire world had changed the moment Little Pete died. It was like he was walking and talking and existing by some kind of weird remote control. Whenever he closed his eyes all he could see was Pete burning to death in the crashed hypercar. The flames, the smoke, the noise, the river water rushing by. Tobey knew nothing would ever be the same.

But the real blow came later on that awful day. That’s when the police charged him with killing Little Pete.

Two state police detectives were sitting across the table from him now. They’d been questioning him for hours, days—again, Tobey really didn’t know. He was just numb, inside and out.

“Okay, let’s go through this one more time, Mr. Marshall,” one of the detectives started again. “The report still shows this fatality was caused by a two-car accident.”

The second detective piped up.

“Tell us again where you claim this mysterious third vehicle was,” he said.

Tobey began speaking again—but it sounded like someone else’s voice. He’d told them the exact same story more than a dozen times already.

“My car was about two lengths out in front,” he said wearily, pointing to a diagram of the accident scene sitting on the old wooden table. “Pete was there. Dino Brewster was right behind him. Dino hit Pete’s back bumper hard and at an angle—and Pete lost control of his car. That’s how it happened. Dino caused the crash.”

The detectives shook their heads. “But Dino has two solid witnesses,” one said. “And they both say they were with him all day and the whole night. So there’s no way he could have been there to cause that crash.”

But again the detectives’ words were barely registering with Tobey. Try as he might, he couldn’t think clearly about anything else—except the fact that Little Pete was gone.

The cops were relentless, though. They took his lack of feeling as a sign of weakness—and a symptom that he was lying about what had really happened on the bridge.

“The owner of Brewster Motors reported two Koenigseggs were stolen last week,” the other detective said harshly. “That’s two cars, not three. His report also says those two cars were stolen seven minutes before police arrived at the scene of the crash.”

Tobey momentarily snapped out of his stupor.

“The owner of Brewster Motors is Dino’s uncle,” he told the cops. “He’s lying. They’re all lying. Dino did it. Dino was there.”

“You’re the only one who places Dino at the scene,” the detective replied. “You got any other ‘facts’ you’d like to share?”

“There were three cars,” Tobey insisted wearily. “Dino was there . . .”

The detectives exchanged glances. People lied to them every day; they were used to it, and in their own way, numb to it. They simply weren’t buying Tobey’s story.

“Then where’s the third car?” one of them asked. “Wouldn’t it be wrecked, too?”

At that point, Tobey went back into his disembodied state.

“This isn’t happening,” he said to himself over and over. “This just isn’t happening . . .”

* * *

The trial was a nightmare.

Tobey vowed early on just to tell the story straight, as it happened, blow by blow. And that’s what he did, over and over, during endless hours of cross-examination.

But he was up against the powerful Brewster family, and they proved to be a formidable foe. No matter how many times he told the truth, the prosecutors put on rebuttal witnesses, all of whom were either in the Brewster family’s employ or were friends of theirs. These people lied under oath that Dino was nowhere near the scene of the accident, and that only two Koenigseggs could have been “stolen” that night because only two Koenigseggs were in the mansion’s garage in the first place.

The third hypercar, the one Dino had been driving, had vanished. Tobey’s lawyer tried to find documentation on its sale, its purchase price, and when it arrived in the United States, but failed on all three accounts. The only evidence available was on the purchase of two Koenigseggs by Dino’s wealthy uncle. There was plenty of documentation for them: routing slips, delivery confirmations, shipping manifests.

Aided by all this, and the implication that the Brewsters were an upstanding family while Tobey was just a hard-edged grease monkey, the prosecutors were able to make the case that there were only two Koenigseggs in the garage that afternoon, that there were only two racing on that road, and that Little Pete’s car had been forced off the road, which led to his death. And the only one around who could have done it was Tobey.

* * *

The charge was vehicular manslaughter plus auto theft.

At one point, Tobey’s attorney negotiated a deal where if Tobey pled guilty, he would get the charges reduced, and thus get a lighter sentence. But Tobey refused. He was innocent, and there was no way he was going to plead guilty to killing his best friend when he didn’t do it.

The crew from the garage showed up at the trial every day. Before every court session Tobey scanned the gallery and always found Benny, Joe Peck, and Finn sitting there in their bad suits and ill-fitting ties, giving him the thumbs-up and offering signs of encouragement. But even their moral support couldn’t change the inevitable.

In all it only took three weeks. Tobey was found guilty on both counts and sentenced to two to five years in state prison.

It was devastating to hear the verdict read aloud. But it only got worse after that. Tobey had spent so much money on the trial that he couldn’t afford any kind of appeal. He’d sold his family’s house, some family heirlooms, even his Gran Torino. But it was all for nothing.

The day he walked into prison, he was broke, he was a convicted felon, and his father’s business had been shut down.

The destruction of his life as he knew it was complete.

He’d lost everything.