CASEY
I have to hand it to Billy. He’s done a good job working out my surrender. He arranges for us to have a police escort as we head for the department to turn myself in. As six police cars encircle us with their sirens blaring and their lights flashing, I feel a little sick.
I watch the sides of the road, looking for someone with a grenade launcher, and scan the windows for gun barrels. Keegan could ram his car into us and explode a bomb. He could simply have a dirty cop in one of the cars guarding us, or a guard at the jail who would let him get to me.
Even if I’m safe from Keegan, I’m scared. The whole time I’ve been running, I’ve told myself it was because I didn’t want to be murdered if Keegan caught me, but now that it’s just jail that I face, I’m still scared.
“You okay, Casey?” Barbero asks as he follows the police cars toward the department.
“I guess.”
“You look pale,” Marge says, glancing back. “Did you eat this morning?”
“No. My stomach wasn’t very steady.”
“You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I’ll be okay,” I say.
We round the corner a block from the police department. I see all the vans and the news media from more than the local outlets. It’s press from all over the place. How did they get here so fast?
The police cars escort us around back and pull into a driveway that leads to the jail. It’s blocked off so the press can’t get there.
“Where are they taking us?” I ask.
“Into the sally port. When you get out, the doors will be closed. They won’t be able to film you.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Listen, Casey,” Billy says. “I don’t want you to talk to them unless I’m with you. Understood? The minute you talk without me, it’s like waiving your right to have an attorney present. If you say you won’t talk without one, they can’t question you further unless you start it back up yourself. Clear?”
“Yes, but I don’t have anything to hide. I want to tell them what I know.”
“And you can. But I want to direct this conversation and make sure you don’t get yourself in more hot water. Until you get a criminal attorney, I’m going to look out for you.”
“So you think I could still be charged with murder?”
“Not if we can help it. For now, let’s get you booked, and you just be quiet until I tell you that you can talk. We’ve got to stay in control of this.”
In spite of his assurances, when we reach the garage under the building, some of the cameramen run to get as close as they can. A scratched yellow garage door slides open. Barbero pulls his car in behind the police cars that are still flashing their lights. It goes dark as the door closes behind us. Barbero unlocks his wheelchair and turns around, and his side doors come open. He rolls onto the hydraulic lift that lowers him to the ground. I get out of my seat and step down too.
Immediately the officers in the car in front of us are out of theirs. As they approach me, I hold out my wrists for them to cuff. But they don’t.
They walk me inside. Things get rougher as they put me through the paces of booking, as if I’m as much a criminal as a gang thug with two dozen murders under his belt. I send up a quiet, tearful plea to God to help me not to care about this. It won’t hurt me to be humbled. I think about Jesus when he was in the custody of the authorities, being paraded before the religious leaders. But it was worse for him. He was beaten and spat at until he didn’t even look like himself. Compared to that, this is nothing.
They lead me to the camera, and I stare straight ahead, knowing this will be the picture that defines me for the next years of my life if I have to stay. They fingerprint me, roughly rolling my fingers across the ink pad. Instead of putting me in a holding cell, they take me to an interview room with a lock on the door.
They park me there at a table with Billy by my side and leave me there alone with him. A few minutes later four detectives come in. They look like they’ve been up all night.
They introduce themselves, then two step out, and I know the others are watching through the window. The other two slide their chairs up to the table.
They ask me what I’d like to drink, and I tell them a Diet Coke. Within a few seconds someone has brought me one.
I can do this, I tell myself. They don’t seem hostile. It may be they’re inclined to believe me after all that has happened. But I’m talking about their friend here, their coworker, and some of them could be among Keegan’s men. I wonder how Chief Gates has filtered them out to make sure they’re not in on Keegan’s crimes.
I look around for the camera that is inevitably there, and I see it across the room from me up in a corner, filming everything we do. That actually might be my safety net.