“Ow! What’re you doing?” I said.
“Shut up! On your feet, West!”
Even as he was shouting in my ear, he was dragging me up off my knees, onto my feet. It was hard to maneuver with my hands cuffed behind me.
One of the deputies was murmuring into the microphone clipped to his shoulder.
“All clear. We got him!”
Through the window, I could see more deputies coming into view, coming out from where they’d been hiding behind trees and against the wall of the house. They were all wearing bulletproof vests. A couple of them were carrying assault rifles. Who’d they think I was? Osama bin Laden?
Everything was happening fast—so fast I couldn’t think, couldn’t figure out what was going on. The deputies were shoving me toward the door, shouting at me.
“Move! Come on! Move it! Go!”
They shoved me to the front door of the house. One of the deputies outside opened it. The others half shoved and half carried me through, outside into the evening.
There were deputies on every side of me. My eyes went from one to another, looking for someone who would explain, some friendly face.
“What’re you doing?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
“Shut up,” someone answered.
Then I heard someone growl angrily, “You lousy punk . . .”
And suddenly a man was in front of me. Not a deputy. A broad-shouldered man about my height wearing a suit and tie. He had a square head like a cement block. He had little eyes and they were black with anger. He grabbed the front of my shirt, taking a handful of flesh with it.
“If I find out you laid one hand on my wife or my kid, you little punk, not even the cops’ll be able to protect you.” He was so close, I could feel his spit on my face as he talked. “I’ll find you wherever you are, I’ll . . . !”
“Harmon!” I heard a woman shout. She sounded as if she was crying. I tried to turn to her. It was hard with this guy grabbing me. But I caught a glimpse of some red hair off to my right. It was Mrs. Simmons.
The guy grabbing me shouted again. “You hear what I’m telling you, punk?”
“I didn’t—” I started to say.
But before I could finish, a deputy took hold of the guy and pulled him off me. He had to work at it. The guy didn’t want to let go. The deputy had to wrap one arm around his neck and use the other hand to pry the guy’s fingers out of the fabric of my shirt. Finally, the guy released me and the deputy dragged him away.
I stumbled backward, but another deputy held me up.
And now, before I could think, yet another man was approaching me. This was a great big guy. He seemed almost to be bursting out of his khaki uniform. He towered over me. He had a huge belly that came on before him like a prow goes before a ship.
It was the sheriff himself. His badge said so. He was older—I figured about sixty or so—with sparse gray hair swept back over the dome of his egg-shaped head. He had a large, wrinkled face that looked like it smiled a lot. But it wasn’t smiling now.
“Easy does it, Harmon,” he said calmly. He was looking down at me, but he was talking to the other guy, the guy who’d grabbed me. “Your girls are fine. The boy didn’t hurt them any.”
“I didn’t!” I said.
Wild-eyed, I looked to my right. The guy—Harmon—was standing there next to Mrs. Simmons. He had his arm wrapped protectively around her. She in turn had her arm around the little girl, Angeline, and was leaning her face against Harmon’s jacket and crying. I guessed Harmon was her husband, the assistant district attorney. He was glaring at me with those small, furious black eyes. Sneering at me with his lips working as if he still had a lot he wanted to say.
I looked up at the sheriff. “What’s going on?” I said. “I didn’t do anything. What’s going on?”
The sheriff had a calm, quiet voice. He sounded like a man who didn’t get upset much. “I think you know what’s going on, son, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t, I swear.”
“You are Charlie West, right?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“Charlie West from Spring Hill.”
“That’s right.”
He sort of cocked his head to one side as if to say: That settles it then.
“Well, Charlie,” he said slowly. “I’m Sheriff James. And you’re done, that’s all. You’re going back to prison where you belong.”
“Prison?” I said. My voice cracked as I said it. A million thoughts were racing through my mind. Was that where I’d escaped from? Had I been in prison when I woke up this morning? No! They don’t strap you down to chairs and torture you in prison—not in an American prison, anyway. These people around me weren’t the same people who had chased me through the forest earlier. These were deputies. This was the law, the good guys. They were supposed to be on my side. “Why should I go to prison?” I asked him.
Sheriff James gave a little laugh. “That’s where we generally send folks who’ve been convicted of murder.”
My mouth opened and closed silently. I could only barely force out a whisper: “Murder. What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re a killer,” said the big man with a heavy nod. “You were tried in a court of law and convicted by a jury of the murder of Alex Hauser.”
PART TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rose
Morning came, and the cell door opened. I was sitting on the edge of the cot with my head in my hands. I looked up and a deputy was standing over me, a giant of a man with a face like granite.
“Come on, West,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I stood up wearily, slowly, aching and stiff in every muscle. My wounds had been treated when I was brought into jail, but I still hurt all over. I stepped out of the cell. The deputy put my hands behind my back and handcuffed me again. Then he took hold of my elbow and led me down the hallway.
It had been a long, long night. The police had taken my clothes away and made me dress in an orange jumpsuit with County Jail stamped on the back of it. I’d tried and tried to tell them I was innocent. I’d made my voice hoarse trying to tell them. But no one would listen. They’d dragged me to the cell and threw me in and walked away.
The cell was hardly bigger than a closet. There was just a narrow cot bolted to the wall, a steel toilet in one corner and a steel sink. Instead of bars, the door was a big piece of Plexiglas with airholes in it. There was a security camera hanging up in the hall outside, looking right in at me. It took pictures of me every second. Even when I went to the bathroom, the camera watched me. It was humiliating. It made me feel as if I weren’t a human being, as if I were a rat in a cage being observed for a laboratory experiment or something.
I hardly slept at all. Whenever I did sleep, nightmares swarmed through my brain. In the nightmares, there were faces, grinning, leaning in on me. There were voices whispering:
. . . Homelander One.
We’ll never get another shot at Yarrow.
. . . two more days . . .
. . . can send Orton . . .
. . . knows the bridge as well as West.
But when I woke up the voices were gone. They trailed away like wisps of smoke, and I could barely remember them or what they’d said. Whatever was left of the nightmares was crowded out of my mind by the nightmare reality around me: this cell, this cot, this jail.
You were tried in a court of law and convicted by a jury of the murder of Alex Hauser.
I still couldn’t comprehend it, couldn’t take it in. A year of my life had vanished. Alex was dead. They thought I had killed him. I’d been convicted of killing him. It wasn’t just the bad guys—the Homelanders—who were after me. It was the good guys too. The police. Everyone.
By the time morning broke, I was exhausted. As the deputy led me down the hall, I was too tired to ask questions, too tired to do anything but go wherever he took me. We went down the hall in silence. Neither of us said a word.
He brought me into a large, m
essy room. There were several gunmetal-gray desks arrayed around. A lot of papers tacked to the wall. There were men sitting at the desks, men in suits and ties. They stopped talking as I entered, wearing my orange jumpsuit. They watched curiously as the deputy led me past them. He took me to a far corner of the room and through another door.
We came into a smaller room, almost as small as my cell. There was nothing in here but a heavy wooden table and three plastic chairs. There was grimy white soundproofing on the walls. A fluorescent light hung from the ceiling. Now and then, it snapped and flickered. In a corner of the ceiling there was a security camera, just like the one outside my cell. A red light burned on top of it as it took its pictures.
The deputy helped me sit down in the chair behind the heavy table. He uncuffed my hands so I could bring them out from behind my back, but then he handcuffed my right hand to a rail set into one side of the table. That way, I couldn’t break free and run for it.
Then the deputy walked out of the room and left me there.
I sat in silence, handcuffed to the table. I felt empty and hollow and alone. Ten minutes went by. It felt like an hour. Then the door opened, and a man came in.
He was a black guy. Not big, shorter than me, but he was trim, and you could see he was in good shape. He was wearing a sort of colorless suit with a bright blue shirt and a tie that looked like the TV picture when the satellite goes on the fritz. He had a round face with a high forehead and short hair, flat features and a thin mustache. He had very steady eyes. You could see he was smart just looking in his eyes. He was smart and cool and nothing fooled him.
He had a big black binder in one hand. It was filled with papers. I could see some numbers on the back of it and my name: West, Charlie.
He dropped the black binder on the table in front of me. It made a loud whap when it fell.
“Well, well, well,” he said. His voice was like his eyes, smart and cool and not very friendly. “Charlie West. We meet again at last.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I’d never seen him before.
“I’m sorry,” I said. My voice came out so soft and hoarse, I had to clear my throat and start again: “I’m sorry. I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are.”
The man gave a short laugh. He looked around as if someone else were standing there, as if he wanted to share the joke.
“You don’t know me, huh,” he said.
“I . . . I don’t remember.”
“Oh, come on. It hasn’t been that long, Charlie.” He waited a few seconds as if it would all come back to me. I didn’t say anything. What could I say? A moment passed and the fluorescent above us snapped and flickered. There was a little dance of shadows then a pale, sickly light. After a while, the man took a deep breath as if he was fighting down his anger. “Well, let me introduce myself,” he said. “I’m Detective Rose.” He waited again as if that would refresh my memory. It didn’t. “I’m the man who arrested you for the Hauser killing.”
I shook my head wearily. I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. It hardly seemed worth saying again, but I had to say it. “I didn’t kill Alex!” I thumped my fist on the table as the words came out.
Detective Rose gave a little smile, a cold smile with no feeling in it. He pulled out one of the other chairs. Propped his foot up on it. He looked down at me. “Yes, you did, Charlie. Witnesses said you did. Murder weapon with your prints and DNA said you did. Blood on your clothes said you did. Jury said you did.” He made a little gesture with his hand. “So you did.”
It was all so insane, so horribly, frustratingly insane, that I actually laughed. It was a miserable laugh, but a laugh all the same. “I don’t remember any of that,” I said. “I don’t remember you. I don’t remember a jury. I didn’t even know Alex was dead till the sheriff told me. The last time I saw him, we were talking. In my car by the park. Then I went home. I went to bed and I woke up in this room . . .”
“Strapped to a chair, yeah. You told the deputies last night.”
“I don’t remember anything else. I don’t remember a whole year. A whole year of my life is gone!”
“Well, that’s very convenient, isn’t it?” He took his foot off the chair, turned the chair around and straddled it. That brought him down to my level so I was looking straight into those smart, cool eyes. “You murder your friend. You break out of prison. You outrun me for more than three months, and it’s all . . .” He waved his hand dreamily. “Gone. Like a dream.”
“It is. There’s nothing there.” I stared at him, shaking my head. “But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make sense. I would never murder anyone. And Alex . . . he was my friend. I keep telling you.”
The fluorescent light crackled and flickered. The cold smile played at the detective’s lips again. “Yeah, you keep telling me,” he said. “You told me when we first brought you in. He was your friend. Except he threatened you, didn’t he? You were going out with his girl and he didn’t like it, and him and a couple of his boys threatened to bounce you around for it.”
“Oh yeah, but that was . . .”
“And then you took a drive together and you fought with him.”
“We didn’t fight, exactly, we . . .”
“Witnesses saw it, Charlie. They heard you yelling.”
I looked away from that cool stare. I remembered that much. I remembered Alex and I yelling at each other and the lady with the dog turning at the sound of our loud, angry voices.
“Then you followed him into the park,” said Detective Rose. “And you stabbed him to death.”
“No!” I shook my right fist so that my handcuff rattled against the rail. The words came tearing out of my mouth in a shout. “I didn’t.”
“How do you know? I thought you couldn’t remember anything.”
“I remember that!”
“Oh, that’s convenient. You just forgot everything else, everything but your innocence.”
“I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. I’m not a killer!”
The fluorescent light went out for half a second, and when it came back on the detective’s face had changed. The cool smile was gone and an angry sneer had taken its place beneath the thin mustache.
“You want to know something funny, Charlie?” he said. “I been a cop a long time. Worked the big city before I came to Spring Hill. I’ve arrested a lot of people, a lot of bad people, some really bad. But I never had any feelings about them one way or the other. They did what they did, I did what I did, we all knew the rules of the game. But you, Charlie . . .” He stood up, pushing the chair away from him so it scraped against the floor. “With you it was different.” He sneered down at me. His mouth worked as if he wanted to spit out a bad taste. “I don’t like you, Charlie. And I’ll tell you why. It’s not ’cause you lied to me. All you murdering punks lie, that’s nothing. But you lied to me and I believed you. That’s what it is. You looked me in the eye with that all-American face of yours, and I believed you were just who you said you were, just who everybody said you were. The decent kid. The kid who gets it. The kid who works hard and does right. The kid who walks like a man—like a man oughta walk, anyway. I believed you were that kid, Charlie. You fooled me. And I don’t know, but somehow I can’t forgive you for that. And I’ll never let it happen again.”
“Look at me,” I said to him. I pleaded with him. I lifted my hands so the handcuff on my right wrist pulled tight. “Please, Detective Rose, look at me. I’m scarred, bruised, beaten up. There are burns on me . . . look!” I tried to twist my handcuffed arm to show him. “Right there. Burns. Something happened to me. You can see that! I was captured. There were people . . . in the woods. A whole compound. They called themselves Homelanders. They hurt me. They tried to kill me. Why would I make it up?”
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You’ve been making things up since the first time I talked to you. Everything you say is made up. Far as I can tell, your whole life is a lie.”
“If you could just . . . call my parents. Real
ly—they’ll tell you . . .”
With a loud snap, the fluorescent light flashed off and on. In that split second of darkness, Detective Rose leapt forward so that the next time I saw him, he was right up against the table, looming over me. At the same moment, he slapped his hand angrily down on the table.
“Your parents aren’t gonna help you,” he said through his teeth. “You were tried as an adult, convicted as an adult. You got twenty-five years to life for murder, and they’re sure to tack on more ’cause you ran away.”
“I didn’t do anything!” I cried up at him. “I don’t remember anything! I don’t know what’s happening! Please! Please!”
Despair flooded up through me. The fluorescent light flickered and snapped. The handcuffs rattled as I leaned my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands.
“Please,” I said again. “Somebody’s gotta believe me.”
But when I looked up, Detective Rose had moved away from me to the door. He was still sneering. Shaking his head as if he was disgusted by what a low creature I was.
“It’s going to be a pleasure to take you back to prison, Charlie,” he said. “And I plan to make personally certain that you don’t get out again until you’re an old, old man.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Voice in the Crowd
The granite-faced deputy came and took me back to my cell. He brought me a breakfast of hash and coffee. I was hungry enough to eat it. It lay on my stomach like lead.
When I was done, I sat on the edge of the cot. I stared down at the cell’s stone floor.
It’s a funny thing when despair gets to you. It doesn’t even feel like despair. You don’t think to yourself: Oh, I have no hope. Oh, I give up. Oh, there’s nothing I can do. That’s just everyday complaining. That’s just feeling sorry for yourself.
Real despair is different. It creeps up on you in disguise. It comes as a kind of sleepiness, a kind of heavy sadness that weighs you down. It makes you lazy. It makes you just want to go along, drift with the current of events, drift and drift as if you were lying on a raft floating down a river on a sweet summer day. Whatever happens, you don’t fight it. You just go where events take you and then sit and wait for the next event to take you on.
The Last Thing I Remember Page 13
