“I’ve got my reasons,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. By the way,” he added suddenly, the shadow of a smile on his lips as he looked over his shoulder on the way to the door, “you’re a little too young to be quoting Say Anything.”
BRIGGS’S LAWYER COUSIN TURNED out to be a tall, reed-thin man named Clarence Stuart who wore a brown three-piece suit and blew his nose delicately and continuously into a white handkerchief. As Stuart sat across from me the next morning in a separate room for lawyers and their clients and had me repeat my story to him, I caught him peeking into his handkerchief before he folded it and put it back into his jacket pocket. He carefully went over what would happen at the arraignment later that morning and how I was to arrange bail, assuming that the judge would allow bail in this case. “Which he will,” Stuart said, punctuating this by removing his handkerchief and blowing his nose again. He saw me glance at the handkerchief. “Allergies,” he said, tucking it away again. He suggested that if I needed help arranging bail, I should tell him whom to call; then he folded his hands on top of the table and looked placidly at me. I gritted my teeth and gave him my parents’ names and phone numbers, which he jotted down on a notepad.
The hearing itself was anticlimactic. I was escorted upstairs from the jail to a courtroom, where Stuart was waiting for me. Lester Briggs sat in the back of the court and nodded as I passed him. The judge sat in black robes at a dais, presiding over a series of arraignments. I was third in line. Stuart and another lawyer, who must have been an assistant district attorney, discussed my case in clipped legalese as if negotiating a car sale. The ADA spoke about my possession of marijuana and Oxycontin with a clear intent to sell, and Stuart calmly described my lack of criminal record and the “tenuous” nature of the evidence against me. I stood there with the odd, disembodied feeling you have when people are talking about you as if you are not standing right in front of them. I said nothing until prompted to enter a plea, and my “not guilty” seemed to fall flat in the air. The ADA and Stuart haggled over bail, which the judge set at twenty thousand dollars before he perfunctorily rapped his gavel and the bailiff announced the next case in line. The entire hearing took three minutes and was both boring and oddly reassuring.
Within an hour, I was walking out of jail with Briggs and Stuart, my bail having been secured by my father. That was a conversation I was not looking forward to, but for now it felt good to draw breath outside of a jail cell and feel the sunshine, even if the air was chilly and snow still covered the ground. Stuart shook my hand on the courthouse steps, saying he would be in touch, and hurried back inside. I turned to Briggs. “That’s it?” I said.
“That’s it until your court date next month,” he said.
I hesitated to bring the next point up but had little choice. “I don’t know where to go,” I said. “I mean, all my stuff is at Blackburne. My clothes, my car—”
“Your car’s in a parking lot in town,” Briggs said. “And your stuff. Sam Hodges and Grayden Smith drove it out here.” When I stared at him, he added, “Officially the school doesn’t want you back on campus. But I think Sam and Grayden don’t feel too good about it.”
As I struggled to take this in, someone called my name. We both turned, looking back up the steps. Sheriff Townsend bore down on us, a flat expression on his face.
“Shit,” Briggs muttered.
Townsend stopped two steps above us. Ignoring Briggs, he said to me, “You got lucky, Mr. Glass.”
I looked up at him, trying not to be intimidated by his bulk and his sheriff’s star. “I was set up, Sheriff. I’ve lost my job, and I’m being charged with drug dealing. I’d hardly call that lucky.”
Townsend spread his hands as if revealing a banquet of riches. “You’re out, though. Got representation, bail, et cetera. I’d call that lucky for someone selling drugs to children.”
Anger rose in me like a quick tide. “I didn’t sell—”
“Shut up, Matthias,” Briggs said.
“I know what you did,” Townsend said. “Ren Middleton told me all about it.”
I laughed bitterly. “I’m sure he did. He tell you he’s covering up Terence Jarrar’s death, too?”
“Matthias,” Briggs said. “Let’s go.”
Townsend gave a hard smile. “I’d be careful about making wild accusations,” he said softly. “And I’d be careful who you’re friends with.” He nodded toward Briggs while his gaze remained focused on me. “Corrupt ex-cops don’t usually do the Good Samaritan bit for nothing.”
I looked at Briggs. His face turned gray and then flushed brick red. I thought he was either going to have an aneurysm or take a swing at Townsend. Instead, he took me by the elbow. “Let’s go,” he repeated more forcibly, and we walked down the steps, leaving Townsend behind, watching us walk away.
WE GOT MY CAR out of a parking lot downtown, after making sure my meager belongings were in the trunk—I felt both disturbed and grateful that Sam and Gray had packed my things into boxes for me—and I followed Briggs in his truck to the Fir Tree to get lunch. The diner seemed an appropriate place to regroup. I realized I was starving, so I ordered a hamburger and fries while Briggs got a Cobb salad, which he picked at with his fork as if grudgingly searching for something in it worth eating.
“So what was that about?” I asked him finally. “With the sheriff?”
Briggs sat back, an ugly look on his face as if he were revolted by his lunch. “He wanted to piss me off, that’s all,” he said.
I took a bite of hamburger, chewed, and swallowed. “Come on,” I said. “He didn’t just make some random comment. So what did you do?”