But he pushed me inside and pulled the metal door closed. “I’ll be back in a bit,” he said, and then he smiled.
He walked around the corner and went out of sight. I exhaled violently. What, exactly, did a bit mean? I sat down on the bench but stood right back up again, too wired to be still. I paced the length of the cell, maybe fifteen feet from end to end. The wall opposite the windows offered a metal toilet and a tiny matching sink. I went to it and bent over the sink, peering at my blurry reflection in the shiny surface. It was hard to see much, but I could tell that my cheekbone was bruised already, bleeding from a vertical laceration directly below my eye. I didn’t need to see my reflection to tell that, though. I grabbed a wad of tissues, the cheap kind that disintegrate if you so much as look at them, ran water on it, and used it to gently wipe my face. The paper came away tinged with pink and dotted with dried blood and dirt and rust. I repeated the process until the tissue came away clean. I dropped the bloody tissues into the toilet. Then I sat back down and waited for the bit to end.
It didn’t.
TWENTY-SIX
I had never been arrested before, but I had been around enough criminal cases to know that this was not how it was supposed to work. There was supposed to be a process to it: intake questions, fingerprints, mug shots, a pay phone for collect calls.
Eventually I stood up and went to the barred gate of the cell and tried from different angles to see anything around the corner. From the far end, I could see the desk and the envelope that contained my possessions. I could see a clock on the wall, the kind that looked like it belonged in a high school. I squinted at it until the time came into some semblance of focus: two p.m. From the other end of the cell, I could see a security camera mounted near the ceiling just outside the gate.
I paced for a while longer, then sat on the bench again, then got up and squinted at the clock.
Two thirty p.m.
I took off my raincoat, which had gotten wet on the inside when Derrow had unzipped it in the woods. Removing it felt like giving in, accepting that I was not just going to be able to pay the fine and then be on my way. I turned the coat inside out and draped it over one end of the bench to dry out. Then I took my shirt off and attempted to wring water out of it over the sink, aware of the security camera at my back.
Three fifteen.
I put the still-damp shirt back on and stretched out on the bench on my back. The ceiling of the cell was disgusting, dotted with wads of gum and dead insects. I contemplated who was directly responsible for my current predicament. Maybe Chief Lassiter had me followed. Maybe Kenny had seen me through the woods. Either way, I felt pretty certain that I was stumbling in the right direction now.
Or was, before I was sidelined here.
Four o’clock.
I tried to distill my theory down into an elevator pitch that I could deliver to the next human being I saw. Kenny Brayfield had been killing women in Belmont for sixteen years. Two of the women had been written off as runaways, until they turned up dead. It was thus wildly negligent for the police to pretend that another missing girl had left of her own accord, especially when Kenny had been hanging around the street where Veronica lived. Especially when he was at the Varsity Lounge at the exact moment she would have been walking by.
I wasn’t sure where Garrett and Elaine Cook fit into my elevator pitch.
I wasn’t sure how long an elevator pitch was supposed to be.
I needed a pen.
Four thirty.
I invented a game: try to guess when exactly five minutes had passed.
It was virtually silent in the cell. Every so often, I heard the faint crackle of a radio dispatch or a murmured conversation from somewhere else in the building, but no one so much as came down the hallway. I realized I could hear the ticking of the clock if I sat very still.
Some game.
At five o’clock, I went to the gate and cleared my throat and shouted, “Hey.”
Nothing.
“HEY.”
Nothing.
I took off one of my boots and banged it against the bars as hard as I could, still shouting.
Finally, I heard footsteps in the corridor, and a second later, Officer Pasquale appeared in front of me. “You’re making quite the racket,” he said helpfully. His eyes drifted from my cheekbone to my chest. “Cold in here, huh?” he said.
“Is there any news about Veronica?” I said, ignoring him.
“Nope,” he said. “Is that what you’re making all this noise for?”
“When can I get out of here?”
“Not my call.”
“Listen,” I said. “I’ve been in here for three hours and I haven’t been booked yet and I haven’t gotten to make a phone call or anything. Can you tell me when that is going to happen?”
“Let me go see what’s going on,” Pasquale said. “I’ll be right back.”
He wasn’t.
I wadded up my raincoat and tried using it as a pillow, but the thin nylon provided little cushion. My headache was coming back, but this time it was different, deep and grinding. I was hungry—I hadn’t eaten today. I went to the sink and attempted to drink out of it, but it was too shallow to get my mouth under the stream of water. I managed a few sips from my open palm.
Six o’clock.
I took my boot off again and banged it on the bars and yelled for Pasquale. This time it was Meeks who came down the hallway.
“Shit,” he said when he saw me. “What happened?”
“I’ve been here for four hours and I haven’t been booked or gotten to make any phone calls, is what happened,” I announced. “Is there any news about Veronica?”
Meeks’s eyes narrowed slightly when I said four hours. “I tried to—” he started, but then he seemed to realize this wasn’t the time for an I-told-you-so. “There’s an Amber Alert out now. Everyone’s looking.”
“Twenty hours after she was last seen,” I said, “that’s fantastic. What I told you earlier, about Kenny Brayfield—”
“What did you do? Who brought you in?” he said.
This seemed familiar. I sighed. “Derrow. Look, I promise not to do it again or whatever if you let me out of here.” I had no intention of keeping that promise, but my options were limited and I had zero leverage.
“Okay, let me go see what’s going on. I know you’re trying to help.”
He turned to walk away.
“Wait,” I said. He looked back at me. “Can I have a pen?”
He shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Wait,” I said again when he turned back around. “Can I have something to eat? Or at least something to drink?”
He looked at me. “What were you brought in for?”
“Criminal trespass,” I said. “Yes, a fourth-degree misdemeanor.”
“And you’ve been back here since two?”
I nodded.
He did seem slightly concerned about this. “Let me go see what I can find out,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He wasn’t. My headache was getting worse. I tried lying on the bench with my legs up the wall. I tried putting my raincoat over my eyes to shield from the aggressive fluorescent light.
I wondered where Mallory and Colleen had been killed and how long it took.