“I don’t think he did.”
The detective tilted his head. “He shot the windows of the lighting booth out. He must have known you were in there.”
Numb and stunned, Erik went on shaking his head. “He liked me.”
“In what way?”
“As a friend.”
“When he came over to your house the night before he attempted suicide, what did he want?”
“To talk.”
“To Will or to you?”
“He was out in the backyard, staring up at the window. We all woke up and I said I’d go down.”
“Why you?”
“He liked me.” He showed Khoury the penny, told him what it meant. Told what happened, as much as he could remember. “He trusted me. I know he did.”
The detective again took him through what happened in the theater. “You came out of the booth?”
“Yes.”
“That was an insane thing to do, Erik. You could’ve been killed.”
Erik’s face burned and he looked at the cop through narrowed eyes. “She’s my life,” he said. “She was shot down and bleeding to death on the stage. What was I supposed to do?”
Khoury put a gentling hand on Erik’s arm. “I said it was an insane thing. It was also a courageously beautiful thing. If it were my wife or daughter, I would have gone out too.”
“You’re a cop. It’s your job to go out,” Erik muttered, staring between his knees to the floor.
“True. Which makes your insane act all the more beautiful. Still, I won’t want to be around when your mother gets her hands on you.”
She doesn’t know where I am, Erik thought. “Jesus, she’s gonna kill me,” he whispered absently.
The interview went on a while longer. The detective repeated a lot of the questions, twisting them into different angles. Erik’s answers, though not articulate, stayed consistent. Finally Khoury thanked him and gave him his card in case he remembered anything else.
“You might see me at the hospital later,” Khoury said. “But give me a ring even if you don’t. I know your girlfriend will be all right. But will you call and let me know?”
Erik nodded, and shook the proffered hand.
His tea had gone cold. The same woman brought him another cup. Apologetically she said she had tried his mother’s number three times but no one was answering. Erik tried twice himself.
“My brother should be home,” he said. His jaw felt like it weighed ten pounds. “But he’s deaf, he wouldn’t pick up. I’d need to call on a TDD.”
“Do we have a TDD?” the woman said to one of her colleagues.
“What’s a TDD?”
“The thing for hearing impaired people. You type over the phone line—“
“Wait,” Erik said, holding his head. “She’s in Florida.”
He was an idiot. Christine was down in Key West with her boyfriend, Fred. Erik fretted another five minutes over how to reach her, before thinking to check his wallet where, sure enough, he had written Fred’s number. Of course. He always wrote down everything.
He was exhausted then. After being questioned, the additional mental effort to produce this phone number was nearly too much.
The women dialed and spoke to Fred first, paving the way. Then Erik took the phone and Christine got on. It was surreal. Through the receiver she was crying and saying things, and his mouth was moving and he was saying things. Moments went by but they didn’t pile up into memory. They fell like wheat before the plow of a recurring image—James firing and Will rearing up, throwing Daisy off his back. It cut a swathe through his mind and he looped through a dull confusion to arrive at the present again, wondering what had happened.
“I love you,” his mother said. “I love you, Erik. I’m coming there. I’ll get a flight and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”