39
“So Clay Hansen comes to us.” The shoulder seams of the man’s blue suit jacket strained as he stuck his hand across the table to Clay. “Agent Lopez. I’ll be conducting the interview.”
Clay sat back in his chair and blinked. Surely the man didn’t expect a handshake. After a moment, Agent Lopez settled into his own chair and nodded to the voice recorder that sat between them, winking its red light.
“Obviously, this has to be recorded, but I’m hoping we can keep things on some level of civility.”
Sure, why not.
They hadn’t even handcuffed him, just checked him for weapons and escorted him to this room, white walls on three sides and a broad, dim window on the fourth, beside the door. No way to tell how many people watched him from the other side of that window. All he saw was his own reflection. He breathed in deep, let his body loosen. They’d honor the deal, or they wouldn’t.
“You mentioned you had something to offer us,” Agent Lopez said.
“This resistance movement you’re all panicking about.”
“The Constabulary doesn’t make a habit of panicking.”
Of course not. “I know their leader.”
In the moment before the professional mask settled, Lopez’s eyes flickered. Impressed. Curious. Hungry for this morsel of information. No, not a morsel. Clay was offering him the whole meal, and they each knew the other one knew it. Lopez’s hand made it halfway up from his side before he lowered it again, preventing some giveaway gesture. He cleared his throat.
“You have the leader’s name?”
“I know the leader. Personally.”
Lopez waited, nodded, and sighed when Clay didn’t break the silence. “Please do tell.”
This guy must think Clay was stupid. Well, maybe only stupid people approached the Constabulary for a deal. Numbness crept into his hands. What am I doing? He battled his lips into a firm smile.
“First, I get to see my daughter. Then you release her, permanently, clean record. You stop looking for Violet, clean record for her, too. Then I give you the name, and then you release me.”
“And Natalia?”
Her name speared him straight through. The guy had to see it. Roll with it, bounce back, smile. “She’s not here, in case you missed that. She’s not a Christian. She hasn’t done anything illegal.”
“She fled a crime scene.”
“There wasn’t any crime at the reception. Those agents didn’t have anything on us, they just wanted to talk, and we didn’t feel like talking.”
“We? Did you ask your wife if she wanted to talk to them, or did you intimidate her into coming with you?”
Clay shoved his chair back but stayed seated. He inhaled the clean cotton scent of the air freshener. Come on, get control. See the humor. He’d bet his bike he’d never intimidated a soul in thirty-nine years.
“But if you’re not concerned about Natalia, then I’m not either, for now. About Khloe, though. You won’t be seeing her today. She’s in a group home about half an hour from here.”
“Looks like an impasse to me.”
Agent Lopez stood, leaned over the table. “Except you’re the criminal, Mr. Hansen, and I’m law enforcement.”
On the wall, hung between the door and the mirror-window, a red phone rang twice. Lopez hastened to it, listened for about fifteen seconds, and then hung up.
He turned back and shrugged. “You’ve got a deal. My boss will release you and your daughter.”
“And Violet?”
“How we deal with her will depend on Violet.”
What did that mean?
“But before anything else happens, I need that name.”
“No way.”
“Mr. Hansen.” Lopez sat across from Clay and spread his hands flat on the table. “You’re not getting a reunion or a release or anything else without that name.”
Even Clay’s arms had gone numb now, as if the blood were receding from his limbs and damming up in his torso, weighting him to the chair.
“So.” Lopez folded his arms.
“How do I know you’ll honor the deal?”
“You don’t, but we will.”
In the last week, Clay hadn’t ever controlled a single thing. He’d simply been funneled by fate toward the moment he gave the Constabulary what they wanted and lost his freedom in return.
I tried, Nat.
“All right.” Clay balled his fists in his lap. Never let them see you shake. He shifted in the chair, and it suddenly felt harder. If they could prove Marcus’s role in the resistance, the man wouldn’t go to re-education. He’d be imprisoned for the rest of his life.
“You’re doing the right thing for your family, Mr. Hansen.”
If they kept their word, that was more than Marcus had done for him. More than even God had done.
“All right.”
“The name?”
“Marcus Brenner.”
Lopez’s eyes darted to the window.
The door sprang open. Another agent charged in, lean and no taller than five-foot-nine, probably shorter. His coarse, sandy hair was mussed on top. Lopez shut the door behind him and stood against it. New point man in the interrogation. This must be the boss.
The new guy’s eyes, blue and hard, drilled into Clay. “Did Brenner put you up to this?”
Whoa. What? “Uh, no, of course not.”
The man approached the table but didn’t sit. He leaned toward Clay, pushing into his personal space with the scent of cinnamon gum.
“You just said you know him personally.”
“And it follows that he told me to turn him in?” Clay leaned back in his chair.
Satisfaction flickered in the man’s eyes. He straightened but didn’t step back. “Agent Mayweather. Mr. Hansen, if Marcus Brenner were leading a resistance movement, why would he tell you about it?”
“He trusts me.”
“Why?”
The Constabulary wasn’t supposed to challenge his story. He folded his arms against the chill in the room, or maybe against the chill inside him. Yeah, Marcus, why would you trust me? Look at me now.
Agent Mayweather rounded the table and perched on the edge of it, a foot from Clay. Back off, why don’t you. But Clay wouldn’t retreat again. This guy could touch noses if he wanted to, as long as he believed Clay, as long as he honored the deal.
Apparently, Mayweather wasn’t going to shoot further questions until this one got answered. “I guess because I’m … well, family.”
“No, you’re not.”
Impossible that this guy could know that. Unless … maybe they had a whole file on him, on Natalia and Khloe. They could have researched his whole family tree.
He shrugged anyway. “Suppose we’re cousins?”
“Brenner doesn’t have family, hasn’t since his mother’s death thirteen years ago. And when you lie to me about one thing, I assume you’re lying about everything else, including whether he put you up to this. Not the way to reunite your family, let me tell you.”
They didn’t have a file on Clay. They had one on Marcus. And Agent Mayweather knew that file so well he could spit out biographical details without checking his notes.
“We’re not blood relatives, but the last church you busted—that was his church too. He called us his family. All of us.”
“Really. So he’s the sentimental type.”
“No, just …” How to explain the guy? Clay shrugged. “Loyal, I guess.”
“Loyal enough to divert us with a ploy that he’s the leader?”
“I sincerely don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mayweather studied him another long moment. “Lee Vaughn.”
He shook his head. “Never met him.”
A slow nod, a twitch of the mouth, as if Clay had said something amusing—but Mayweather seemed to believe him. “Well, Mr. Hansen, you’re going to call Brenner and arrange a meeting. Give him a reason you have to see him, today. He can pick the time and place; you just sell the emergency.”
Sure, easy. As long as Marcus picked up the phone. As long as he wasn’t “detoured.”
If only Clay could think of Marcus as a bargaining chip instead of a person. Instead he’d carry this conversation for the rest of his life, a tiny, putrid seed to fester in his gut along with every other rotten day that he couldn’t spit out and leave behind. The drive in the snowstorm while his daughter lay small and sick in the hospital. The pieces of Natalia he’d trampled without knowing it. The salt of his tears as he stood outside his sister’s hospital room, not trusted or worthy or something, not allowed in. “Wait outside, Clayton. I said go. Don’t be here right now.”
He swallowed this new day, and it wasn’t as bitter as he expected. In a way, Marcus had earned this. Clay settled his hands on the chair’s smooth armrests. “When do I call him?”
“We’re ready now.”