“B-8,” Lomeli said, and pressed a button to unlock the door.
I went down the hallway, with Gorecki still following behind me. Light from the cell windows fell in sharp lines across the concrete floors, and a faint smell of bleach hung in the air. Hearing our footsteps, A.J. sat up on his cot. I noticed the surprise in his eyes when he saw me, without a uniform but with a detective’s badge tucked into my belt. His gaze traveled to Gorecki, as if to blame him for this new turn of events, and then he lay back on the cot and stared at the ceiling. “Hello, A.J.,” I said. “Is it all right if I call you A.J.?”
He didn’t reply. Down the hall, a door closed in a clatter of metal.
“Do you need anything? A sandwich or some coffee?” He was still ignoring me, and I realized that Gorecki’s presence wasn’t helping. “We have that buffet upstairs today, don’t we? Can you go get him a plate?”
“I’m not his fucking maid. They’ll bring him something tonight.”
I didn’t need to ask if Gorecki knew the guy—everything about his bad attitude suggested it. He stood next to me with his hands on his hips, waiting to see what I was going to do next. The summer sun had darkened his skin, but there were gray hollows under his eyes. “That’s a long time from now,” I said. “I’m sure he could use a snack.”
“You’re wasting your time,” A.J. said. “I’m not talking.”
“Well, we’re not talking,” I said. “We’re just saying hello.”
“You can say hello to my lawyer. When I get my call.”
Gorecki turned to me. See? his eyes said. An asshole, like I told you. But that only made me more curious about the story I was starting to piece together.
“Go get A.J. something to eat,” I said, my tone making it clear that this was an order. I waited until after he’d walked off, then turned back to the cell. “All right, it’s just the two of us now. Maybe we can straighten this whole thing out quickly, get you back home to your family. You’re living with them, right?”
A.J. sucked on his teeth. It could’ve meant What’s it to you, lady? or Yeah, I live with them, and it fucking sucks or something else altogether.
“Listen,” I said. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. These things happen. My uncle is a Baptist preacher—straightest guy you’ve ever met. One time at Christmas, my aunt forgot to get glaze for the ham and he decided to make a quick run to the store, even though he’d had a drink while he was waiting for dinner. Ended up with a DUI. It happens. And a suspended license, that’s just rough, man. You have to get from place to place and you can never find a ride. It’s just bad luck. I get it.”
A grunt. “You don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get? Your license was suspended, right? Like I said, that’s tough. Especially for nine months. Now you have to ask people for rides or borrow your mom’s car just to get around.”
“You’re wasting your time,” he said, and shifted to his side, facing the wall. He was a tall guy, like his father, and his feet dangled over the cot. “Anyway, I’m not talking to a nigger.”
He’d said the word under his breath, but I heard it all the same. Down the hallway, the metal door clattered as it closed behind Gorecki. I was alone. And I was nine years old again. Or eleven. Or fourteen. It didn’t matter, it hurt the same every time. The only thing different was who said it, and what I did. Ran away from the playground in tears. Reported it to the teacher. Got into a fistfight on the stairwell and ended up with three stitches on my eyebrow. And always, always, trying to remove the sting of the insult, but feeling like it was too late, it had already poisoned me. My thoughts flitted to my son; that morning, he’d ridden his bicycle to school with Brandon, and waved me off when I said to be careful when he crossed Yucca Trail. “Don’t worry, Mom!” But I worried about him all the time. That was what being a mom was all about.
With both hands, I grabbed the metal bars of the cell. “What did you just say to me?”
Silence. He was waiting for me to leave.
“Hey. I’m talking to you.”
When he sensed that I was still standing at the cell door, he shifted on his cot again and sat up to face me. He spoke slowly and clearly, enunciating each word. “I said—I’m not talking to a fucking nigger. Did you hear me this time?”
My hands tightened on the bars. I thought about what Nora Guerraoui had told me, and what I had said in return: that what happened to her in high school many years ago wasn’t relevant to the hit-and-run case. But I’d been wrong. The present could never be untethered from the past, you couldn’t understand one without the other. “I heard,” I said, and turned around and left. At the front office, I asked Lomeli to give me a little time, because I needed to look into something.
Twenty minutes later, when I pulled up to the house on Sunnyslope Drive, I found Helen Baker outside, pulling up the red flag on her mailbox. She was a tall woman, with thin lips untouched by makeup and graying hair that she wore in a high ponytail, like a gym teacher. With her hand, she shielded her eyes from the sun as she watched me step out of the cruiser and walk up to her. Her dogs, a pair of collies, stood at her feet, panting heavily in the heat. “Afternoon, Mrs. Baker,” I said. I put out my hand, and right away the two collies came to smell it. “Such handsome dogs. What are their names?”
“This one here is Loyal,” she said, almost reluctantly. Her tremors seemed worse than the other time I had seen her, when I’d come to interview her husband about the hit-and-run. “And that one is Royal.”
“My son’s been asking me for a dog, but I wasn’t sure what breed would be best.”
“Well, you can’t go wrong with collies.”
“So you recommend them?” I rubbed Royal’s chin—or was it Loyal?—and it stretched its neck with obvious pleasure. The other dog let out a plaintive yelp. “Trouble is, my son is really set on having a chocolate lab. You know how boys are. They get an idea in their heads, and it’s impossible to get it out.”
“What’s this about?” she asked.
I looked beyond her at the house, baking in the afternoon heat. The garage door was open, and the spaces inside were empty. “Does your son have a car, Mrs. Baker?”
“Not right now,” she said after a moment of hesitation. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering, you know. I didn’t see any bus stops on the way over here. If A.J. doesn’t have a car, how does he get around? Does he borrow yours?”
She put her hand on the mailbox, as if to steady herself. One of her dogs nuzzled up to her, asking to be petted, but she ignored it. She was watching me, trying to decide what she should say next.
“Maybe he borrowed your husband’s car, too. Back in April.”
“It was just an accident,” she pleaded. “That’s all it was.”
We were both mothers, she seemed to be saying, didn’t I understand how natural it was to want to protect a son? I scratched the scar on my eyebrow with a thumbnail, an old habit I fell back into from time to time. In my head, I’d arranged the pieces of this case one way, but I saw clearly now that they fit together in a different way. Of course, it was natural for Mrs. Baker to want to protect her son. But who would protect others from him?
Anderson