The courtroom is smaller than what you see on television and is set up like a church—vaulted ceiling, rows of long wooden pews, and a raised platform at the front. The judge is a white-haired black guy who looks like he might have had a long career as a drill instructor. With my luck, he’s friends with Parvati’s dad. There are only a few other people here, and I don’t recognize any of them. My lawyer and I take a seat at a wooden table in front of the pews. Across from us, at another wooden table, sit a man and a woman I’ve never seen before. They’re both wearing the same eyeglass frames and sharp expressions.
“The prosecution,” my lawyer whispers. The next fifteen minutes are a blur of incomprehensible legal jargon. I do my best not to piss off the judge, standing when my lawyer stands and sitting when she sits. The only words that stick out to me are my lawyer’s name when she introduces herself for the court reporter—it’s Kathleen—and the word “murder” tossed around repeatedly by the prosecution and always quickly slapped with an objection by my lawyer. Later, as things seem to be coming to an end, I hear five more words that I understand: “flight risk” and “bail is denied.”
Kathleen leaps from her seat, but puts a hand on my shoulder when I go to do the same. “Your Honor, may I approach?”
The judge nods.
“Stay,” she tells me.
She and the prosecutors approach the bench. A heated conversation takes place, complete with head tossing and hand waving by the prosecution. I’m not close enough to hear any of it.
She returns to our table a few minutes later wearing a cocky grin.
“What happened?” I ask in a low voice.
“Bail happened,” she says.
“Bail set at two hundred thousand dollars.” The judge sounds bored, like he’s ready to move on to a more interesting case.
“Two hundred grand?” I hiss. “That’s your big coup? My parents could sell everything they owned and not come up with that money.”
She starts to answer, but then the judge clears his throat and then bangs his gavel twice.
And just like that, I’m officially a criminal.
I don’t get much time to think about it, though, because instead of going back to my cell, I get to go back to the interrogation room.
It’s another fun session with my two favorite FBI agents. McGhee is wearing the same unreadable expression as always. Gonzalez’s smirk can only be described as triumphant. I don’t know if it’s because McGhee is actually letting him do something besides fetch water or because he’s daydreaming about my trial.
“Nice hair,” Gonzalez says.
“Where’s Parvati?” I’ve asked this question to anyone who would listen since Gonzalez hauled me up off the Vegas pavement and packed me into the backseat of McGhee’s unmarked sedan. The FBI opted to take me straight back to Vista Palisades, since my alleged crimes were committed in California and I was a “person of interest” in Preston’s disappearance. I have no idea what happened to Parvati. All I know is that they didn’t let her ride back to Vista Palisades with me.
“We’re the ones asking the questions, Max,” Gonzalez informs me. He’s actually being nicer now that I’ve been arrested. I swear his smile couldn’t get any bigger, not even if my lawyer hopped up on the table and started doing a striptease.
“I’ll answer whatever you want if you tell me what happened to Parvati.”
“He doesn’t mean that,” Kathleen interjects. “He’s speaking under psychological duress.”
I turn to her. “No, really. I don’t have anything to hide. I just want to know if my girlfriend is okay.”
“Thought she was your ex-girlfriend,” Gonzalez says. “Just one more lie?”
“Her parents forbade us from seeing each other, so we pretended to be broken up. You didn’t arrest her, did you?”
“You answer our questions and we’ll tell you what happened to Ms. Amos,” Gonzalez says.
I glance at McGhee. “Do you promise?”
McGhee nods. “We’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Kathleen clears her throat. “Max, I can’t help you if you make these kinds of deals with them. You do know that anything you say to them can be used—”
“Yeah, yeah. Court of law. I got it.”
Kathleen sighs deeply and makes notes on her yellow legal pad.
“Tell me about the time you assaulted an eleven-year-old,” Gonzalez says. “How old were you again? Sixteen?”
“Fuck you,” I say. My lawyer puts a hand on my shoulder, but I shake her off. “That kid was picking on—”
Gonzalez doesn’t let me finish. “Pretty violent tendencies. Was Ms. Amos part of it? Or did she just come pick you up after you set the fire?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” I say. “She was with me the whole time I was in Vegas. She’ll tell you I didn’t burn anyone’s house down.”
“You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t find either of you to be the most credible of witnesses,” Gonzalez says. “Why don’t you tell us about Liars, Inc.?”
Kathleen raises an eyebrow but then quickly says, “You don’t have to answer that.”
My first instinct is to tell Gonzalez to go fuck himself again, but suddenly it feels like every decision I’ve made in my whole life is coming back to haunt me all at once. Maybe I should go against my gut and tell him the truth. “It was just a stupid thing we were doing at school to make money,” I say. “Forging permission slips. Covering for kids so they could get away from their parents. That kind of thing.”
McGhee nods. “Kids like Preston.”
Kathleen sighs deeply and makes some notes on her pad. “Let’s not talk about that anymore until after you and I have met in private,” she says. I can almost hear her writing my case off as hopeless.
Gonzalez clears his throat. “I figure it like this. You find out your best pal has been hooking up with your girlfriend. You attack him on top of Ravens’ Cliff, but he gets away. He knows you’re crazy, so he decides to skip town for a few days until you cool off. Only instead of cooling off you make a plan to find him and finish the job.”
“Genius,” I say sarcastically. “Too bad my best pal wasn’t hooking up with my girlfriend.” I hold my face rigid, unblinking. “Just because they went to homecoming together doesn’t mean anything. Your lame revenge theory doesn’t work because Parvati and Preston were never more than friends.”