Kindred (25 page)

He breathes heavily. He looks at me, a look of suspicion that’s holding back the floodgates of hope. It makes my heart catch. He swipes at his nose, and then, just as he’s about to
say something, there’s pounding on the door. We both jump and turn in surprise. A deep voice shouts: “POLICE!! POLICE! OPEN UP!” We gape at each other and stand up, but apparently not fast enough. Police break down the door. Three of them rush in, shouting: “POLICE! HANDS UP IN THE AIR! HANDS UP IN THE AIR! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND! DOWN ON THE FUCKING GROUND! GET DOWN!!!”

I’m frozen in utter shock, and Jason lurches, as if to run away. Weapons drawn and pointed, the police come charging at us. They shove us to the floor. I sprawl facedown on the grimy carpet. I feel a knee between my shoulder blades and a rough voice asking me something. With my face mashed flat, I’m not sure what he’s asking for, but suddenly one of my arms is bent behind my back and cold metal cinches my wrist. Just as I think of moving my other arm, it’s yanked behind me and fastened in the handcuffs too. Hard, impersonal hands touch me everywhere, and seconds later I hear the same rough voice say, “Girl’s clear.”

“Guy’s clear too,” a different voice says.

With my head cocked, I see Jason pulled up, his arms behind his back in cuffs. Then it’s my turn to be dragged up, like fish yanked from water.

A policeman wearing rubber gloves emerges from the back of the duplex, carrying two semiautomatic rifles. I stand in the bustling room, dumbfounded by how quickly everything is unraveling. Thinking is like swimming through mud. Stupid with shock, I cannot figure out how my success has been snatched away.

“Look what I found under the bed,” the policeman crows.

Another man, in plain clothes, has already picked up the notebook and is flipping through it.

“It’s all here,” he says as he scans the pages. “Sick bastard.”

Someone asks me my name, and numbly I give it. He writes it down, and asks for my telephone number and address. With a growing sense of indignation, I realize one of them has opened my wallet and is flipping through my credit cards, studying my driver’s license.

Jason is already being led away, and I can hear the plainclothes guy reading him his rights. Then someone is standing in front of me.

“You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney.…” I stop paying attention. I don’t need an attorney. I need a miracle.

There are several men in the living room, taking photographs, searching the apartment. The adrenaline rush that propelled them through the door has dissipated. It’s business as usual now, and I can’t stand it.

My mind suddenly explodes into real time. The meaning of everything that just happened, of everything that will happen, of my failure, is sharply in focus.

“He changed his mind!” I shout at them. “He wasn’t going to do it.”

The men glance at me for a second, then continue what they were doing.

“He wasn’t going to do it.” My voice cracks.

“Let’s go for a little ride,” says the one who cuffed me as he grabs an elbow, leading me out.

My eyes fill with tears that quickly spill over. I try to think of something to say, something to get through to them. But Jason’s already gone, and these men don’t want to hear what I have to say. Less than five minutes ago, Jason was on the cusp of saving himself. Now no one can save him. Who called the police? Why are they here?

I can’t swipe at the tears or my running nose, so tears and snot course down my face unchecked as I’m escorted to one of the police cars that are piled onto the grass in front of the apartment complex. The many blue and red lights flash and strobe, painting the buildings in garish colors. Several neighbors have opened their doors to see the action. Feeling utterly small and defeated, I duck into the sedan, falling to my side on the vinyl seat since I can’t catch myself. As the cruiser pulls away, I notice that the door to Jason’s apartment is wide open. I can see the police still there, going through drawers, poking into every little thing. I don’t know if they broke the door so badly it won’t close or if no one bothered to shut it after walking Jason to the police car.

It’s not long before I’m sitting in an interrogation room, facing an image of myself in what must be a two-way mirror. I’ve seen enough television to know that everything I say is recorded and everything I do is being watched. I figure that Jason must be in another room. I hope that he’s not hurt; I know he can’t be okay.

A friendly-looking cop comes in, sipping coffee from a
Styrofoam cup. The smell fills the room and reminds me of the newspaper’s break room. When he takes off my handcuffs, I expect that he’ll tell me I can go, but instead he walks around the table, pulls up a seat, then opens a folder and glances through it.

He looks like someone’s dad, like a Little League coach. But as he begins talking, calmly and politely, his questions send a shiver of fear down my spine. What was I doing at Jason’s? How do I know him? How was I planning to help him? Why did I want to hurt the students at Warfield?

The line of questioning tells me that as far as the police are concerned, I am as much involved as Jason.

“I work at the paper; Jason’s my assistant,” I say. “I found the notebook in my office desk, and I thought if I talked to him, I could change his mind.”

The cop has a polite look of disbelief, like I just told him about a great deal on a used car. “Oh, so Jason told you he changed his mind, that he’d given up on the whole idea?”

“If you guys hadn’t barged in when you did,” I say, growing angry, “then he would have. He was about to say that he wasn’t going to do it, I know he was. He just didn’t have the time before you all destroyed the door and knocked us to the ground. He wasn’t going to do it.”

I swipe at my eyes and the cop nudges a box of Kleenex toward me. I nod my thanks and grab one, blowing my nose.

“So you know each other from school?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “I told you, he works at the newspaper with me.” I ignore the insult that he thinks I’m still in high school.
And then I realize that by now he should know that I’m not a student at Warfield. I don’t understand his obtuseness.

“And you worked on the notebook together, like a comic strip? Is that it? Just for fun, right?”

Again I correct him. The questions continue for over two hours. He misremembers or misunderstands what I say, asking the same questions over and over: What did I know of Jason’s plans, of his background? Did I know he hated school? Who did we buy the guns from?

“I didn’t know he had guns.”

My denial brings out the first flash of temper from the cop.

“You’re a liar,” he spits. Something nasty flashes in his eyes, and I sit back in my chair, suddenly afraid.

The door to the room opens and another cop pops his head in.

“Frank Hale from the paper is here. Says she works for him.”

The cop, reverting to that friendly-looking expression that I’ve grown to distrust, rises and says he’ll be right back.

I wait alone in the room for about fifteen minutes, which is plenty of time to kick myself and hate myself for this new failure. I have time to wonder if I’ll spend the night in jail. Time to worry that maybe I do need an attorney. But before I can request my one phone call, a different cop comes in and tells me I’m free to go.

Disoriented by the sudden release, I step out of the room into a busy hallway. Turning back, I see I was right: the mirror is two-way, and with a shiver I wonder who was standing
there, watching and listening as I explained myself over and over again.

I follow the cop or administrator or whoever he is, expecting that at any minute someone will call out to stop me. Walking down the hall, I feel like a criminal, and I’m not really sure why. The man punches a code that unlocks a set of doors and suddenly we’re back in the main station room, where Frank is waiting, looking completely out of place in his pale linen suit. I have never been so happy to see his Humpty Dumpty little shape. I run over and hug him.

“You’ve had a rough night, poor thing,” he says, patting my back awkwardly.

“Thank you for coming,” I say.

“Anything for my star reporter.” I don’t like the glee in his voice.

There are some bureaucratic steps we have to go through, and then I’m released. I don’t know what Jason’s been saying, but he isn’t coming with us.

I walk with Frank to his boat of a Cadillac, parked crookedly, taking up two spots.

“They searched your place,” he says. “That’s what took so long. I’ve been here for a while, but the folks at the station wanted to wait and hear if they found anything. Luckily for you, your place is clean as a whistle.”

“I hope Mo didn’t cause a fuss when they showed up at the door,” I say.

“Mo?”

“My brother’s staying with me.”

“There wasn’t anyone in the apartment. They actually
thought they’d find some of Jason’s stuff there, figured he’d hole up with you after the fact, assuming he didn’t shoot himself in the head like a lot of these maniacs do. But there was nothing there but your stuff. Like I said, luckily for you.”

I’m numb. Mo’s gone? All his stuff? Maybe I’m not surprised; it just hurts to have it shoved in my face.

As he pulls away, bumping over a sidewalk median, Frank doesn’t stop talking. “I can’t believe that little snake. After all Warfield has done for him, to plan a thing like that. But thanks to you, we’ve got us a beaut of a scoop. I expect a piece from you on this by tomorrow. We’re gonna scoop the
Tennessean,
” he crows, almost running into a fire hydrant in his excitement.

We arrive at my apartment building in one piece, and I open the car door. The dome light comes on, reflecting brightly off Frank’s shiny forehead.

“Thanks for vouching for me and getting me out of there, Frank,” I say. “I’ve had a long day. I’ll see you at the paper tomorrow.”

“Bright and early,” he says. “This story will make your career!”

He pulls away, swerving into the opposite lane before righting himself and sailing on. I stand outside for a moment, breathing in the damp night air.

There’s a low cloud cover reflecting the city lights, so even though it’s nighttime, the sky is a pale, evil-looking orange. There are no stars out, no visible moon. The air is still and thick, and occasional flashes of heat lightning flicker from miles away.

My heart flutters, beating quickly but inefficiently. I know better than to rail against God; it’s not His fault. But the injustice of what happened burns. I was so close to helping Jason, so close to fulfilling what I was tasked with.

And Mo. I close my eyes in despair.

What about Mo?

O
NCE
I’
M BACK IN THE APARTMENT
, I take a minute to gather my thoughts; then I call Mo’s cell phone.

“I was beginning to worry,” he says in lieu of a greeting. “I thought maybe those stupid pigs arrested you too.”

“They did,” I say, sitting down on the couch and closing my eyes.

“Bet they felt like idiots once they realized who you were.”

I ignore that, although I would say the mood at the station was one of exhilaration, the kind that comes after a job well done.

“Mo, how could you do it? How could you bring in the police? You’d promised you’d help me.”
How could you toss this boy, who considered you a friend, to the wolves?

“Miriam,” he says, his voice rising. “It was the only thing to do. You didn’t think you could just talk him out of it, did
you? He would have told you what you wanted to hear and then gone and done what he wanted to do.”

Miserably, I shake my head. “That’s not true,” I say. “I was getting through to him. And besides, we agreed we’d convince him not to do anything. He’s in jail now, do you not understand that?”

He laughs hollowly. “Miriam, he’s not stupid. He knew exactly the right response to give you. I promise you he’d have brought the guns to school tomorrow. You’re naïve if you think anything else. Look at it this way: If I’m right and he wasn’t stopped and then he killed some students, you fail, and God smites you. If you’re right, you still saved the students, Jason isn’t a murderer and God doesn’t have any reason to hurt you. Besides,” he says in a singsong voice that pisses me off, “won’t the Almighty know whether or not Jason had a change of heart?”

“I was supposed to save him. Now his life is ruined.”

“Look, who did most of the talking, you or him?” he challenges. “I bet you a hundred bucks you talked and talked and he nodded and pretended to agree. What else did you think he would do?” I ignore the accuracy of that.

“You helped him get those guns, didn’t you?” I accuse, refusing to let him worm away from his part in this. “Then you leaked it to the police. He didn’t stand a chance, you made sure of that. You better expect a knock on your door once the police realize it’s
your
handwriting.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he says smugly. “Jason’s not going to rat on me. The boy worships me. As he should.”

Mo has always been a little arrogant and callous, but I
don’t know who this manipulative, heartless person is. “Mo, what is wrong with you?”

“Miriam,” he says slowly, as if speaking to a drunk or a young child. “You wanted to stop a school shooting. That’s what I said I’d help you with, and that’s what I did.” I fight the persuasion in his too sincere voice. He doesn’t dispute helping Jason procure the weapons. “The only way to know for sure that he wouldn’t go through with it was to put him away. I wasn’t planning the party alone. Jason was a willing and happy conspirator, except he would have actually pulled the trigger, the crazy fuck, and I wouldn’t.”

When I don’t respond, I can practically hear Mo shrug. “You’ve had a long day,” he says. “You should go to bed. After a good night’s sleep, you’ll see I’m right. You told me yourself even your tattooed boyfriend agreed that getting the police involved was the only way.”

I sniff.