Miles started shuffling the papers back together. “Yeah… I’m fine. I’ve just been working… I’m sorry… I lost track of time.” She recognized the file and her brow arched up. “What’s going on?” she asked. Seeing Sarah made him realize how exhausted he felt. His neck and back were stiff, and he felt as if he were coated in a thin layer of dust. He closed the file and set it aside, his mind still on the contents. He rubbed his face with both hands, then looked at her over his fingers.
“Otis Timson was arrested today,” he said.
“Otis? What for?”
Before she’d finished her question, she suddenly realized the answer, and she inhaled sharply.
“Oh… Miles,” she said, moving toward him instinctively. Miles, aching everywhere, stood up and she slipped her arms around him. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she whispered, holding him tight.
As he embraced her, everything he’d felt during the day came rushing back. The mixture of disbelief, anger, frustration, rage, fear, and exhaustion magnified the renewed feelings of loss, and for the first time that day, Miles gave in to them all. Standing in the room with Sarah’s arms around him, Miles broke down, the tears coming as though he’d never cried before.
***
Madge was waiting for Charlie when he got back to the station. Normally off at five, she stayed for an extra hour and a half waiting for him. She was standing in the parking lot, her arms crossed, hugging her long wool jacket against her. Charlie stepped out of the car and brushed the crumbs from his pants. He’d grabbed a burger and fries on the way home, washing it all down with a cup of coffee.
“Madge? What are you still doing here?”
“Waiting for you,” she answered. “I saw you pull up and I wanted to talk to you out of earshot.”
Charlie reached into the car and grabbed his hat. In the chill, he needed one.
He didn’t have enough hair anymore to keep his head warm.
“So what’s up?”
Before she answered, a deputy pushed through the door and Madge looked over her shoulder. Buying time, she said simply, “Brenda called.” “Is she okay?” Charlie asked, playing along.
“Fine, as far as I can tell. She wants you to give her a call, though.” The deputy nodded at Charlie as he strode past. Once he was near his car, Madge moved a little closer.
“I think there’s a problem,” Madge said quietly.
“With what?”
She motioned over her shoulder. “Thurman Jones is waiting for you inside. So is Harvey Wellman.”
Charlie looked at her, knowing there was more.
“They both want to talk to you,” she said.
“And?”
Again she looked around, making sure they were alone. “They’re here together, Charlie. They want to talk to you together.”
Charlie simply stared at her, trying to anticipate what she was going to say, knowing he wouldn’t like it. Prosecutors and defense attorneys got together only under the most dire circumstances.
“It’s about Miles,” she said. “I think he might have done something out there.
Something that he shouldn’t have.”
***
Thurman Jones was fifty-three, of average height and weight, with wavy brown hair that always looked windblown. He wore navy suits, dark knit ties, and black running shoes while in court, which gave him a sort of country bumpkin appearance. When in court, he spoke slowly and clearly and never lost his cool, and that combination, along with his appearance, played extremely well to a jury. Why he represented the likes of Otis Timson and his family was beyond Charlie, but he did and he had for years.
Harvey Wellman, on the other hand, dressed in tailored suits and Cole-Haan shoes and always looked as if he were heading off to a wedding. At thirty, he had begun to go gray at the temples; now, at forty, his hair was nearly silver, giving him a distinguished appearance. In another life, he could have been a news anchor. Or maybe a funeral director.
Neither one of them looked happy as they waited outside Charlie’s office.
“You two wanted to see me?” Charlie asked.
They both stood.
“It’s important, Charlie,” Harvey answered.
Charlie led them into the office and closed the door. He motioned to a couple of seats, but neither of them accepted. Charlie moved behind his desk, putting a little space between him and the visitors.
“So what can I do for you?”
“We’ve got a problem, Charlie,” Harvey said simply. “It concerns the arrest this morning. I tried to talk to you earlier, but you were already out.” “Sorry about that. I had to take care of some business out of town. What’s this problem you’re referring to?”
Harvey Wellman met Charlie’s gaze directly. “It seems that Miles Ryan went a little too far.”
“Oh?”
“We’ve got witnesses. A lot of witnesses. And they’re all saying the same thing.”
Charlie said nothing, and Harvey cleared his throat before going on. Thurman Jones stood off to the side, his expression blank. Charlie knew he was taking in every word.
“He put his gun to Otis Timson’s head.”
***
Later, in the living room, Miles was nursing a beer and absently peeling the label as he told Sarah everything that had happened. Like his own feelings, the story came out jumbled at times. He jumped from one point in the story to another, then backtracked, repeating himself more than once. Sarah never interrupted, never looked away, and though there were moments in which he was unclear, she didn’t press him to clarify for the simple reason that she wasn’t sure he could.
Unlike with Charlie, however, Miles went further.
“You know, for the past two years, I’ve wondered what would happen when I came face-to-face with the guy who did it. And when I found out it was Otis… I don’t know…” He paused. “I wanted to pull the trigger. I wanted to kill him.”
Sarah shifted, not knowing what to say. It was understandable, at least on some level, but… a little frightening, too.
“But you didn’t,” she finally said.
Miles didn’t notice the tentativeness of her answer. His mind was back there, with Otis.
“So now what happens?” she asked.
His hand went to the back of his neck and he squeezed. Despite how emotionally caught up he was in this, the logical side of him knew they’d need more than they had now. “There’s got to be an investigation-witnesses to interview, places to check out. It’s a lot of work, and it’s harder now that time has passed. I’m gonna be busy for I don’t know how long. Lot of late nights, lot of weekends. It’s back to where it was a couple of years ago.”
“Didn’t Charlie say he was going to handle this?”
“Yeah, but not like I would.”
“Are you allowed to do that?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
It wasn’t the time or place to discuss his role, and she let it go. “Are you hungry?” she asked instead. “I can throw something together in the kitchen for us. Or we can order a pizza?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“You want to go for a walk?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“You up for a movie? I grabbed a video on my way over.”
“Yeah… sure.”
“Don’t you want to know what it is?”
“It doesn’t really matter. Whatever you picked up is fine.” She rose from the couch and found the movie. A comedy, it succeeded in making Sarah laugh a couple of times, and she glanced over at Miles to see his reaction. There wasn’t one. After an hour, Miles excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he didn’t come back in a few minutes, Sarah went to make sure he was okay.
She found him in the bedroom, the manila folder open beside him.
“I just have to check something,” he said. “It’ll only take a minute.”
“Okay,” she answered.
He didn’t come back.
Long before it was over, Sarah stopped the movie and ejected it, then found her jacket. She peeked in on him once more-not knowing that Jonah had done the same thing-then slipped quietly from the house. Miles didn’t realize she’d left until Jonah
***
Charlie was in the office until almost midnight. Like Miles, he was looking over the case file and wondering what he was going to do.
It had taken quite a bit of cajoling to cool Harvey down, especially after he threw in the incident in Miles’s car as well. Not surprisingly, Thurman Jones remained fairly quiet throughout it all. Charlie guessed that he thought it would be better if Harvey did the talking for him. He did, however, flash the tiniest of smiles when Harvey said that he was seriously considering bringing Miles up on charges.
That was when Charlie told them why Otis had been arrested in the first place. Seemed that Miles hadn’t bothered to tell Otis what the charge was. They were going to have a serious heart-to-heart the following day-if Charlie didn’t wring his neck first.
But in the presence of Harvey and Thurman, Charlie acted as if he’d known all along.
“No reason to start flinging accusations when I wasn’t sure they were even warranted.”
As expected, both Harvey and Thurman had problems with that. They had further problems with Sims’s story, until Charlie told them he’d met with Earl Getlin. “And he confirmed the whole thing” was how he phrased it. He wasn’t about to tell Thurman about his doubts, nor was he willing to share them with Harvey just yet. As soon as he’d finished, Harvey gave him a look that meant they should meet later to talk in private. Charlie, knowing he needed more time to digest things, pretended not to notice.
They did spend a great deal of time talking about Miles after Charlie finished. Charlie had no doubts that Miles had done exactly what was described, and though he was…upset, to put it mildly, he’d known Miles long enough to know that it wasn’t out of character in a situation like this. But Charlie hid his anger, even as he kept his defense of Miles to a minimum.
In the end, Harvey recommended that Miles be placed on suspension for the time being, while they sorted everything out.
Thurman Jones asked that Otis either be released or charged right away, without further delays.
Charlie told them that Miles was already gone for the day, but that he would make a decision on both counts first thing in the morning. Somehow, he hoped things would be clearer by then.
But they wouldn’t be, as he discovered when he finally headed home. Before he left the office, he got in touch with Harris at his house, asking how it went.
Turned out he hadn’t been able to find Sims all day.
“How hard did you look?” Charlie snapped.
“I looked everywhere,” Harris answered groggily. “His house, his mom’s place, his hangouts. I went to every bar and liquor store in the county. He’s gone.”
***
Brenda, wearing a bathrobe over her pajamas, was waiting up for him when he got home. He recounted most of what had happened, and she asked what would happen if Otis was actually brought to trial.
“It’ll be the typical defense,” Charlie responded wearily. “Jones will argue that Otis wasn’t even there that night and find others who will verify it. Then he’ll argue that even if Otis was there, he didn’t say what’s attributed to him. And even if he did say it, he’ll say it was taken out of context.”
“Will that work?”
Charlie sipped his coffee, knowing he still had more work to do. “No one can ever predict what a jury will do. You know that.”
Brenda put her hand on Charlie’s arm. “But what do you think?” she asked.
“Honestly.”
“Honestly?”
She nodded, thinking he looked a dozen years older than when he’d left for work that morning.
“Unless we find something else, Otis is gonna walk.”
“Even if he did it?”
“Yeah,” he said, no energy in his voice, “even if he did it.”
“Would Miles accept that?”
Charlie closed his eyes. “No. Not a chance.”
“What would he do?”
He finished the cup of coffee and reached for the file. “I have no idea.”
Chapter 25
I began stalking them regularly, carefully, so that no one would know what I was up to.
I would wait for Jonah at school, I would visit Missy’s grave, I went to their house at night. My lies were convincing; no one suspected a thing. I knew it was wrong, but it didn’t seem as if I could control my actions anymore. As with any compulsion, I couldn’t stop. When I did these things, I wondered about my state of mind. Was I a masochist, who wanted to relieve the agony I’d inflicted? Or was I a sadist, someone who secretly enjoyed their torment and wanted to witness it firsthand? Was I both? I didn’t know. All I knew was that I didn’t seem to have a choice.
I could not escape the image I’d seen the first night, when Miles walked past his son without speaking to him, as if oblivious to his presence. After all that had happened, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Yes, I knew that Missy had been taken from their lives… but didn’t people grow closer after a traumatic event? Didn’t they look to each other for support? Especially family? This was what I had wanted to believe. This was how I had made it through the first six weeks. It became my mantra. They would survive. They would heal. They would turn to each other and become even closer. It was the singsong chant of a tortured fool, but it had become real in my mind.
But that night, they had not been doing okay. Not that night. I am not naive enough now, nor was I naive enough then, to believe that a single snapshot of a family at home reveals the truth. I told myself after that night that I was mistaken in what I saw, or even if I was correct, that it didn’t mean anything. Nothing can be read into isolated instances. By the time I got to my car, I almost believed it.