Behind me, the girl’s phone rang and she answered it. “Fuuuuuuck,” she drawled, “where the fuck have you been.”
The fact that she was allowed to keep her cell phone in here made me feel insane. The cop was now walking away like he hadn’t even seen me. I pulled the tampon out of my pocket and threw it at him.
“This is illegal,” I said. My voice was nearly gone now.
The cop came back to the cell door. His name tag said Kowalski. He smiled at me coldly. “Not your brand?” he said, holding up the tampon.
“This might fly for punk suburban kids,” I said feebly, though I was in no position to be making demands of any kind, “but it’s not going to work here.”
“It seems to be working okay,” he said.
“I need to make a phone call.”
“No.”
“One phone call.”
“No.”
“She gets to keep her phone with her and I don’t get to make one fucking call after ten hours in here? Eleven?”
“She’s just waiting for a ride,” Kowalski said. “Keep it down.”
The girl, meanwhile, had pushed my raincoat onto the floor and stretched out on my bench.
“Can I use your phone?” I said.
She kept talking like she hadn’t heard me either. “So I said, if she wanted to put her skank ass up in his face, she could just—” She stopped and stared at me. “What?”
“Can I please use your phone?” I said. “Please.”
She blinked at me. “Yeah, I’m still here. Some trainwreck in here is, like, trying to steal my phone. I know.”
I paced from one end of the cell to the other and back, then stared into the throat of the toilet for a while, trying to decide if I was hungry or sick or actually dying. The floor was filthy but I grabbed my raincoat and curled on my side, my face buried in the still-damp lining. I could feel my pulse in my hands. Anything could have happened out there in eleven hours. I didn’t know what to do.
*
Then my father was dragging me out of the house by the sleeve. Catherine started to open her car door, but Frank hip-checked it closed. “Don’t rub it in my face,” he hissed at me. I could almost taste the whiskey on his breath.
Then I was at his funeral, clinging to Andrew’s arm while the spindly heels of my borrowed shoes sank into the muddy area around my father’s grave. The officiant asked for a moment of silence and then, through the cold air, the crackle of radios and a voice rang out, clear and strong.
“Forty-one three oh one…”
My father’s badge number. This was the last radio call, the tribute my mother had selected instead of a three-volley salute, not wanting to hear gunfire. Around me, a ring of faces contorting.
“Forty-one three oh one … Calling number forty-one three oh one …
“This is the last call for radio number forty-one three oh one.
“No response from Detective Frank Weary. The time is sixteen hundred hours, February eighth. After thirty-eight years and four months of police service, radio number forty-one three oh one is ninety-seven on his final assignment. Forty-one three oh one is ten-seven forever. Rest in peace, brother. We’ll take it from here.”
My whole body hurt, like each word was a car accident.
And then it was two days after the funeral and I didn’t have any food but I did have whiskey so I just went with that. Tom called ten times and I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t move. But then he was there, the front door still unlocked from when he had left. He climbed into my bed with me and embraced me from behind. “Can I just stay here with you for now? I don’t know where else to go,” he said, and I nodded that he could.
Crown Royal.
Crown Royal.
I wasn’t sure if I was awake or not. A matronly female cop was unlocking the door for a bald guy in glasses and a rain-spattered trench coat. “Come on, Kira,” he said.
“But I’m so tired,” the brat who took my bench whined.
I sat up. My eyes were watering from the headache. I rubbed a hand over my face, temporarily forgetting about my cheekbone again. The sharp pain helped me focus. I cleared my throat. “Are you a lawyer?” I said.
Trench Coat looked at me warily. “Yes—”
“Because I’ve been in here since two o’clock yesterday afternoon,” I said quickly, “and I haven’t even been booked yet. I haven’t been able to call anyone. Please help me.”
The guy looked at me, then at the cop. Her eyes were wide.
“You haven’t been booked, even?” she said.
I struggled to my feet. “No.”
“Well,” she said. “Well. Let me see what I can find out.”
I’d heard that before. “Can I have my phone back, please?” I said.
“What?”
“She got to keep her phone. Can I at least have mine back?” I said.
“Kira, come on, please,” Trench Coat was saying.
“I just had no idea this was going on back here,” the cop said. “But it you weren’t booked yet, why don’t you have your phone?”
“He put it under the counter, in an envelope,” I said.
She went around the corner while Trench Coat grabbed Kira’s arm and pulled her to her feet.
I heard the cop set my revolver on the counter, muttering, “What the…” But she came back a second later and handed the phone to me and locked the cell door again after Trench Coat and Kira had made their way out. “I’m going to figure out what’s going on, okay?” the cop said.
I sat down on my bench, cradling the phone like it was a precious artifact, which it was. I had six missed calls and a dozen texts but the battery was at four percent and I didn’t waste power looking at them.
Instead I called Tom.
TWENTY-SEVEN
When the cell door opened again, it was after five in the morning and Jake Lassiter was scowling at me from the hallway. He looked rumpled and furious that he’d been woken up to deal with this. “You’re free to go,” he said.
I sat up shakily.
“You can collect the rest of your belongings at the front desk.”
“Has Veronica been found?”
“You can collect the rest of your belongings at the front desk,” he repeated. I assumed that to mean no. If she’d been located safe and sound, a guy like Lassiter would have relished telling me so.
“Is that all you have to say to me?” I said.
“It sure is,” Lassiter said.
I didn’t have the energy to deliver the lecture I’d fantasized about. I just brushed past him and out to the lobby, where Tom was sitting with his eyes closed. He looked like he was asleep, but he jumped up as soon as I walked in. “Hey,” he said, giving me half of a smile. Then his expression hardened. “What happened,” he said, tipping my head up gently with a knuckle under my chin as he studied my cheekbone.
“It’s fine,” I said quickly. His touch sent a sharp spiral of pain from my jaw down to my sternum. “I need to get out of here.”
“Right, of course,” he said.
I pushed outside into the rain and took a series of breaths so deep my lungs hurt, hoping I could breathe out all the tension. But I couldn’t. I didn’t feel any better and I didn’t understand. Or maybe I did, which was worse.
“Are you all right?” Tom said.