Say it Louder (24 page)

I should have told them.
They see the lack of surprise on my face, it feels like betrayal.

Jayce is finally allowed to stand up, and thanks to Ravi’s diplomatic efforts, his cuffs are removed. But he stares daggers at the cop who floored him—and at me.

I feel the cold metal of the cuff hit my wrist before the lead officer speaks, loud enough for anyone in throwing distance to hear.

“David Campbell, you’re under arrest for vehicular manslaughter. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney…”

It’s like some giant hand of God comes down and turns off the volume of everything, all the shouts from my bandmates, the rebukes from the other officers, the beady black eyes of the cameras that follow me as the police lead me off the stage in handcuffs.

Down the stairs. Up the aisle. Out of the auditorium into one of four waiting squad cars.

The ultimate walk of shame.

***

“Sign here and here.” A sour-faced woman with frizzy hair points to boxes on a booking form that details my personal effects. She rolls my fingertips across her ink pad to print me, then hands me a baby wipe to clean the ink off.

“Stand there.” Her voice is weary, like she’s bored of booking Pittsburgh’s crooks every night.

A blinding flash captures my face front and profile, and I’m sure I look even more like a serial killer with my unwashed greasy hair, stubble, and dark circles under my eyes.

But I’m not.
I’m not a bad guy.
It was one night nearly four years ago. One stupid, freezing, drunk, fucked-up night, and now everything I’ve worked for is coming crashing down around me.

I’m going to pay. Kristina is making sure of it.

Eric told me that the contract I signed with Kristina wouldn’t prevent her from talking to the police, but I didn’t imagine she’d do that since she was in the car too.

Although Kristina’s blocked from saying anything about me or my band to the media, ever—or else she loses her massive payout—there’s no way to prevent her from reporting a crime.

Because it was a crime. What we did that night, what I can’t even fucking remember, is the worst thing a person can do.

I killed a man.

And I’ve spent the last four years pretending that I didn’t.

***

“You gonna eat that?”

I eye the bearded guy with a lazy eye who’s sidled up next to me. I’m in a wide-open cell with a couple of benches, a stainless toilet in the corner, and five other guys. I offer my dinner tray to the guy. “Have at it.”

He grabs for my food and then shuffles off to a far bench where he hunches over and shovels it in, like he hasn’t eaten in days.

Maybe he hasn’t.

There’s a clock at the end of the pale green cinderblock hall, its ticking maddeningly loud despite the utter lack of silence. The clank of metal trays, grumbling from men in my cell and people unseen down the corridor and beyond our walls, is a din of discontent.

I grind my jaw in frustration, watching the hands tick around the face of the clock.

Six o’clock. Dinner with my band.

Seven o’clock. The opening acts go on.

Eight thirty. Tattoo Thief takes the stage.

Without me.

It’s such fucking irony that I fight like hell to earn a place back on that stage, only to be knocked back by my stupid twenty-one-year-old self and arrested for the worst thing I’ve ever done.

The secret that Kristina kept for me. Held over my head. And is now using against me.

If I could go back in time and take it all back, I’d do it in a heartbeat. A bar, a party that morphs into a fight, a drive home to our apartment across town on a freezing February night that shouldn’t have taken more than fifteen minutes.

Black ice, Kristina said the next morning. I was in such a blacked-out state that I don’t remember it at all.

Not really your fault, she said, but we shouldn’t report it. I was so hung over I would have agreed to anything.

We can take it to a body shop that works under the table and no one will ever know, she said.

It will be like it never happened, she said.

The deep, bloody dent in my car’s bumper said otherwise.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I should be going to Willa’s right now to pick her up for the opening. I should be dressed in a good suit, rather than this day-old sweaty T-shirt. I should be coming off the high of a great hometown concert.

I think of all the shoulds. But this is reality.

I’m guilty. And the ugly truth is I should be here.

My second nearly sleepless night pounds at my temples, my eyelids drooping but unwilling to give me rest. I don’t know the others in here. I don’t know what they might do to me if I let down my guard, or if they knew who I am.

So I sit on a bench, the wall at my back, trying to look strong but not aggressive. Demanding with body language that I be left alone.

Hours tick by and my doubts devour me.

Shouldn’t my bandmates and Ravi have been on the phone nonstop since I was arrested? Shouldn’t I have heard from them by now? Shouldn’t they have sent me a lawyer?

Don’t they understand how awful this is? How much I need their help?

When Gavin’s muse overdosed, I immediately went to do damage control. But I don’t know if he believes I deserve the same from him now.

I can’t beat the rising sense of panic that I’ve blindsided the band with this and they’re going to hate me for it. That might make them a lot less eager to get me out of here.

At one point I try shouting to the guard about a phone call, but he just shrugs and walks away.

I wasted my one call on Gavin’s cell phone. I should have known better—by the time they gave me my phone call, Gavin had probably ditched his phone in the green room to go onstage.

But with who? I doubt they could find a drummer on such short notice, though Ravi probably has dozens of favors he could call in.

Or maybe they’d do the concert unplugged?

After nearly twenty-four hours in the cell, my mind swims with questions that spawn more questions, until the noise in my head drowns out the chatter around me.

I should have called Willa.

I should have left a message and begged her forgiveness. Told her everything. Told her that no matter how many times I’d promised to be with her at this opening, I was going to let her down.

Just like I let the band down.

God.

Failure is a leech, sucking my will away. And as low as I ever thought I’d go after finding Kristina banging Chief, this is so, so much lower.

“David Campbell?” A guard’s sharp voice snaps my head up. I’m starting to hate the sound of my full name.

I stand and approach the bars. “Yeah?”

“Your lawyer’s here. Follow me.”

***

“Were you at Jake’s Bullpen the night of February nineteenth, two thousand twelve?”

“Don’t answer that,” says my lawyer, Something Greer. I didn’t catch his first name, but I doubt it matters.

The gray-haired cop rolls his eyes my lawyer. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got credit card receipts that shows he was.” He looks back at me. “And at the time, you were driving a white Ford Explorer.”

Greer starts to object, but the cop stops him again. “He had that car registered to him for five years in Pennsylvania.”

“If you’ve got all the answers, we’re done here.” Greer moves to stand.

“Not so fast. See, we’ve got this fat bar tab in Oakland, and you were living in Beltzhoover. I don’t see you walking four miles home, and if you drank even a fraction of that tab, you’d be blowing a blood alcohol level way over the limit.”

“He could have been buying for his friends,” Greer says, sinking back into his chair.

“Or not.” The cop eyes me. “I wonder why you’d put all the drinks on a credit card, and then pay cash for a cab?”

I look up at him in surprise, and his narrowed eyes catch the truth in my mine.

“Because you didn’t, did you? You didn’t pay for a cab because you
drove
home. You drove to the bar, consumed well over the limit, got back in your Explorer, and then drove yourself and your girlfriend home. And at Twenty-First and Carey, you hit something. Maybe you didn’t know what, but that doesn’t matter. Maybe you thought you hit a dog and just kept driving. Or maybe you realized you hit a man.”

“That’s a story strung together with a lot of supposition,” Greer says. “A bar tab and a home address don’t add up to a conviction in any court of law.”

The cop squints again at him, this time almost laughing at Greer’s naiveté. “Course not. That’s all circumstantial. What we really need is a witness.”

My attorney stands again. “As I said, we’re done.”

The cop clicks his tongue,
tsk-tsking
Greer’s move for the exit. “We’ve got one.” He shuffles a few more papers inside his file and I strain to read them upside-down, but it’s not happening. “Seems like your girlfriend feels like coming clean about that night.”

“Ex,” I grit out, and Greer gives me a pinch-mouthed look demanding silence.

The cop’s brow lifts. “Then maybe she’s decided to do the right thing because you’ve done her wrong? I don’t care. The point is, there’s no statute of limitations for vehicular homicide.”

I close my eyes and force in a shaky breath. It had to catch me sometime. Secrets and lies can’t be buried to fade away. They fester and come back as something darker and more dangerous than when you buried them in the first place.

What I thought was my lowest, getting kicked out of the recording studio, or finding my girlfriend cheating on me, now feels like sunshine and rainbows compared to the cold truth of where I am now.

In jail. And very possibly facing the end of my rock star life.

Willa was right. I never knew rock bottom until now.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Four hours and a shitload of hurry-up-and-wait later, they bail me out. I get a lecture about not leaving the state or making any major financial transactions. Gavin posts my bail and Greer drives me to Tyler’s house.

I should have gone into hiding. Camera crews are trampling Tyler’s mom’s lawn, their vans’ antennae extended skyward to make their report.

I hustle toward the front door, but not before I catch snippets of shouted questions. “How can you live with yourself?” “How was jail?” and “Are you a murderer?”

When Greer shuts the door against all that noise, I take one look at all the stricken faces of my bandmates—Jayce, Tyler, Gavin, Ravi—and I collapse to my knees right there in the entry hall on the hard tile floor.

I didn’t shed a tear in jail, just gritted my teeth and bore through it. But now I feel my eyes welling, my chest squeezing closed so it’s a struggle just to draw air into my lungs.

I cover my face with my hands, so ashamed of what I’ve done, and the fact that my bandmates had to hear it from a fucking attorney instead of from me.

“I’m sorry,” I wheeze, struggling for my last shred of composure.
 

Strong arms pull me up off the floor and propel me to the couch. But before I sit, I pull out my phone and hand it to Tyler. “I have to call Willa. It’s dead. Could you plug it in?”

Not only has this one night from four years ago come back to ruin me, but I’ve also ruined the best thing in my present life. I promised Willa I’d be there for her, over and over, and I failed.

“What are we going to do next?” A woman’s timid voice lifts my head.
The babysitter.
She’s seated across the living room, wrapped in yet another stupid cardigan, looking like a
 
character on a nineteen-fifties rerun.

“We, nothing,” I throw back at her. Two sleepless nights and a day in jail have pushed me to the brittle edge and I’m starting to crack.

“You’re staying here until your hearing,” Gavin says. “We all will for a couple of days at least. I told you that when Kristina decided to rain shit down on the band we’d be ready for her. We’re a united front.”

I look to him, kind of stunned, feeling some weird kind of payback now that our roles are reversed. When his muse died of an overdose and he went AWOL—fleeing all the way to Africa and Australia—I was the one keeping the band together, managing us around difficult questions from the media and our record label.