rest for a few minutes before getting up and walking through to the back yard. I grab a rag and a roll of duct tape from the garden shed, wrap the rag around a small rock, put the tape across the window to muffle the sound, then smash the glass.
While the shower warms up I find a bottle of bourbon and sit down in the living room. I wonder what Quentin James would have done had I let him walk home. Would he have taken a drink?
I figure he’d have needed one. Would he have kept on drinking until one day he killed again? I carry the bottle into the kitchen and pour its contents down the sink. I scour the house for more bottles. There are plenty of them, a few with just enough in them to make me feel warm if I allowed it. I tip them all down the sink, and then I drop every single empty in a recycling bin and sit them outside. They overflow and I have to stand the rest on the ground.
I strip out of my clothes and throw them into the washing machine. The shower is still going, steam flooding into the hallway. I walk around the house, picking up other clothes I’ve worn over the last few months and I stuff as much as I can into the machine. I set it going. I head into the bathroom, and am about to step into the shower when knocking comes from the front door. I wrap a towel around myself and go out into the hallway.
A red and blue light is arcing through the windows and
lighting the walls. There are two possibilities. One I can live with. It means one of my neighbours made a call because they heard somebody breaking in. The second one means Emma, the sixteen-year-old girl I hurt last night, has died. Maybe I poured away all that bourbon too soon.
I’m nervous as I head up to the door. It’s Landry.
‘You’re going to have to come with us, Tate,’ he says, ruling out possibility number one.
‘Just tell me. Just get it over with.’
‘It’s about Father Julian.’
‘What? Look, this is bullshit. I haven’t been near him all day’
‘You’re coming with us.’
“I don’t understand.’
‘Jesus, Tate, it’s simple. Don’t stand there and pretend you don’t know.’
‘Don’t know what?’
He sighs, and slowly shakes his head. ‘Come on, do you really want to play this game?’
‘Humour me.’
‘We went to speak to Father Julian this afternoon. We were going to ask him if you were there last night. And I’m sure he would have said yes.’
‘Would have?’
‘See that’s the problem. He’s dead. Somebody murdered him last night. And right now my money is on that somebody being you.’
Chapter thirty-five
I try to figure out what he’s saying. I don’t even know when last night was. Technically it’s just been; it’s after midnight now.
But he doesn’t mean today. He means yesterday. Technically. He’s talking about twenty-four hours ago. A lot has happened since then. It feels like two days have passed since I followed Father Julian from the church, but it’s only been one. Hell, it’s probably only a few minutes either side of that.
‘What?’
‘You’re going to need to come with us, Tate.’
I look down at my towel. I look at my dirty feet and the lines of blood on my chest.
‘I didn’t have anything to do with it.’
Landry looks me up and down. ‘No?’
‘No.’
‘You’re saying even though he had a protection order against you, even though you were picked up at the church the morning of the day he died breaking that order, and even though you were caught on film there yesterday evening, and you crashed your car, drunk, a few minutes from the church around the same time Father Julian died, that you had nothing to do with it?’
I don’t bother answering. It’s hard to defend yourself when you’re wearing only a towel. But I figure Landry or one of his buddies must have been dropping by the house on and off all day since I was signed out of the courthouse in the afternoon. That means Julian wasn’t found till around then at the earliest. Any earlier and I’d never have been released.
‘Put on some clothes, Tate. You’re coming with us.’
“I’m calling my lawyer.’ I think of Donovan Green but can’t really imagine him being happy to take my call.
‘Get him to meet you at the station.’
I have nothing to put on except a pair of shorts and a T-shirt that have been building up dust in the corner of the bedroom.
Everything else is in the washing machine. I throw on a jacket and my running sneakers.
I’m put in the back of the car and driven away, and this time I’m handcuffed. Landry stays behind with some others to go through my house. At the station I’m reacquainted with the interrogation room. They lock me in, and the call I get to make to my lawyer isn’t brought up again, but that’s okay. I haven’t been having a good day with lawyers. I rest my head on my arms and close my eyes, knowing I’m going to be waiting here a while.
Landry comes in an hour later, and he has Schroder with him.