The Pact (16 page)

The policeman hauled him up by his handcuffs and unceremoniously dragged him toward the station. He was carted in a back door he'd never noticed. The officer locked his gun in a box and radioed on an intercom, then a connecting door buzzed open. Chris found himself at the booking desk, where a sleepy-eyed sergeant sat. He was allowed to sit while they asked him questions about his name and age and address that he answered as politely as possible, just in case he got brownie points for good behavior.

Then the policeman who'd taken him in stood him against a wall and had him hold a card up, just like in TV movies, with a number on it and the date. He turned right and left while a camera flashed.

On command, Chris emptied his pockets and held out his hands for fingerprinting-twenty-one separate prints; a set for the local police, the state police, and the FBI. Then the officer cleaned his hands with a diaper wipe, took his shoes, his coat, his belt, and called on the intercom to have cell three opened. “Sheriff's on his way,” he told Chris.

“The sheriff?” Chris asked, shuddering all over again. “How come?”

“You can't stay here overnight,” the policeman explained. “He'll transport you to the Grafton County jail.”

“Jail?” Chris whispered. He was going to jail? Just like that?

He stopped walking, effectively halting the cop who was beside him. “I can't go anywhere,” he said.

“My lawyer's coming here.”

The policeman laughed. “Really,” he said, and tugged him forward again. The holding cell was six feet by five feet, in the basement of the police station. Chris had actually seen it before, when he was in Cub Scouts and they'd taken a field trip to the Bainbridge public safety building. It had a stainless steel sink and toilet combination, and a bunk. Its door was made of actual bars, and there was a video camera trained on the inside. The policeman checked beneath the mattress-for bugs? weapons?-then unlocked the handcuffs and ducked Chris inside.

“You hungry?” he asked. “Thirsty?”

Shocked that the policeman would care about his creature comforts, Chris blinked up at him. He was not hungry, but sick to his stomach from everything else. He shook his head, trying to block out the sound of the cell clanking shut. He waited for the policeman to move down the hall, then stood up and urinated. He wanted to tell the policeman who had booked him, and the one who'd led him to this cell, that he had not murdered Emily Gold. But his father had told him to keep quiet, and the warning cut through even the thick swath of fear that blanketed Chris.

He thought about the birthday cake his mother had made; the candles burning down to the frosting, the untouched half that was still on his plate, with its strawberry filling as bright as a line of blood. He ran his fingers along the pitted cinderblock, and he waited.

To JORDAN McAfee, there was nothing better than sliding one's way down the terrain of a woman. He rustled beneath the covers of his own bed, his lips and his hands measuring their way, as if he were going to map this information. “Oh, yes,” she murmured, fisting her hands in his thick, black hair. “Oh, God.”

Her voice was getting loud. Uncomfortably loud. He smoothed his hand over her belly. “Quiet,” he murmured against her thigh. “Remember?”

“How,” she said, “... could I... ever. . . forget!”

She grabbed his head and held it against her at the same moment he reared back to clap a hand over her mouth. Thinking it was a game, she bit him.

“Shit,” he said, rolling off her. He slanted a glance at the woman, lush and cross. Jordan shook his head, not even aroused anymore. He was usually better at judging these things. He rubbed his sore palm, thinking that he'd never go out with a friend of his paralegal's again, and that if he did, he sure as hell wouldn't drink enough at dinner to invite her home. “Look,” he said, trying to smile amiably.

“I told you why-”

The woman-Sandra, that was it-rolled on top of him, fusing her mouth to his. She pulled back and traced her lower lip with her finger. “I like a guy who tastes like me,” she said. Jordan felt his erection swell again. Maybe he wouldn't end the evening just yet. The telephone rang, and Sandra batted it off the nightstand. As Jordan cursed and went to grab for the receiver, she wrapped her hand around his wrist. “Leave it,” she whispered.

“I can't,” Jordan said, rolling away from her to fumble along the floor. “McAfee,” he said into the phone. He listened quietly, coming alert instantly, his body performing by rote to pull a pen and pad from the night-stand and write down what the caller had said. “Don't worry,” he said calmly. “We'll take care of this. Yes. I'll meet you there.”

He hung up the phone and came to his feet with leonine grace, smoothly stepping into the trousers that had been discarded near the bathroom door. “I'm sorry to do this,” Jordan said, zipping the fly,

“but I've got to go.”

Sandra's mouth dropped open. “Just like that?”

Jordan shrugged. “It's a job, but someone's got to do it,” he said. He glanced at the reclining woman in his bed. “You, uh, don't have to wait for me,” he added.

“What if I want to?” Sandra asked.

Jordan turned his back on her. “It could be a long time,” he said. He stuffed his hands into his pockets, offering her a last look. “I'll call you,” he said.

“You won't,” Sandra cheerfully disagreed. Swinging her naked body off the bed, she disappeared into the bathroom and locked the door.

Jordan shook his head and walked quietly into the kitchen. He fumbled around, looking for something to write on. Suddenly, the room flooded with light, and Jordan found himself staring at his thirteen-year-old son. “What are you doing up?”

Thomas shrugged. “Listening to things I shouldn't be,” he said.

Jordan scowled at him. “You ought to be fast asleep. It's a school night.”

“It's only eight-thirty,” Thomas protested. Jordan's brows shot up. Was it really? How much had he had to drink at dinner? “So,” Thomas said, grinning. “Did you come up for air?” Jordan smirked. “I liked it better when you were little.”

“Back then I used to pee on the bathroom wall if I wasn't careful. I think this age is a hell of a lot better.”

Jordan wasn't so sure. He'd been raising his son alone since Thomas was four, when Deborah had decided that motherhood and marriage to a career-driven lawyer did not suit her. She had walked into his office with their son, divorce papers, and a one-way ticket to Naples. The last Jordan had heard, she was living with a painter twice her age on the Left Bank in Paris. Thomas watched his father swill straight from the carafe of day-old, cold coffee. “That's gross,” he said. “Although maybe not quite as gross as bringing home a-”

“Enough,” Jordan said. “I shouldn't have. Okay? You're right, and I'm wrong.” Thomas smiled radiantly. “Yeah? Can we get this historic moment on video?” Jordan set the carafe back in the Mr. Coffee machine and tightened the noose of his tie. “That was a client on the phone. I've got to go.” He whirled into his jacket, still draped over an chair, and turned back to his son. “Don't call the beeper number if you need me. Apparently it's on the blitz. Ring the office; I'll check my voice mail.”

“I won't need you,” Thomas said. He gestured toward his father's bedroom. “Maybe I should go say hi.”

“Maybe you should get your butt back into your own room,” Jordan said, smiling at Thomas, and then he whisked out the door with the feel of his son's admiration lightly riding on his shoulders. Gus LEANED INTO the rear of the car, buttoning Kate's jacket up to the throat. “You're warm enough?” she asked.

Kate nodded, still too shocked by the thought of her brother being dragged off by the police to function fully. She would wait in the car while Gus and James and the lawyer sorted out this messnot the best solution, but the only available one. At twelve, Kate was too young to be left alone at night, and who was Gus supposed to call? Her parents lived in Florida, James's would have had heart failure even hearing about this scandal. Me-lanie-the only close friend Gus would have felt comfortable phoning as a last-minute baby-sitter-thought that Chris had killed her child. But as much as Gus wished she could have spared her daughter all this, there was a niggling voice in her head that urged her to have Kate as close as possible. You have one child left, it said. Keep her in sight.

Gus reached across the foot of space between them and smoothed Kate's hair. “We'll be back in a little while,” she said. “Lock the doors when I leave.”

“I know,” Kate said.

“And be good.”

like Chris wasn't. The thought leapt between Gus and Kate, a hideous, traitorous current, and they broke apart before either of them could say it aloud, or admit that they'd even thought it. Gus and James Harte hovered in the small cone of light produced by the outside lamp at the police station, as if crossing the threshold without a legal knight in tow was unthinkable and surely risky. Jordan raised a hand in greeting as he crossed the street, reminded of that old adage about people who live together for a long time coming to look like each other. The Hartes' features were not so similar, but the singular, burning purpose in their eyes twinned them in an instant.

“James,” Jordan said, shaking the doctor's hand. “Gus.” He glanced toward the door of the station.

“Have you been inside?”

“No,” Gus said. “We were waiting for you.” Jordan thought about hustling them into the lobby, but then decided against it. The conversation they were going to have was better done in privacy, and as a former prosecutor he knew that the walls of cop shops had ears. He pulled his coat a little closer and asked the Hartes to tell them what had happened.

Gus recounted the arrest during dinner. Through the recitation, James stood off to one side, as if he'd come to admire the architecture rather than protect his son. Jordan listened to Gus, but watched her husband thoughtfully. “So,” Gus finished, rubbing her hands together for warmth. “You can talk to someone and get him out, right?”

“Actually, I can't. Chris has to be held overnight until his arraignment, which will most likely be in the morning at the Grafton County Courthouse.”

“He has to stay in a cell here overnight?”

“Well, no,” Jordan said. “The Bainbridge police aren't equipped to keep him in their holding cell. He'll be moved to the Grafton County jail.”

James turned away. “What can we do?” Gus whispered.

“Very little,” Jordan admitted. “I'm going to go in and speak to Chris now. I'll be there first thing in the morning when he's called in for the arraignment.”

“And what happens there?”

“Basically, the attorney general will enter the charge against Chris. We'll enter a plea of not guilty. I'll try to get him released on bail, but that may be difficult, given the fact that he's up against a very serious charge.”

“You're saying,” Gus replied, her voice shaking with rage, “that my son, who did nothing wrong, has to sit overnight in jail, probably even longer than that, and there's nothing you can do to stop this from happening?”

“Your son may have done nothing wrong,” Jordan said gently, “but the police didn't buy his story about the suicide pact.”

James cleared his throat, breaking his silence. “Do youl” he asked. Jordan looked at Chris's parents-his mother on the verge of puddling to the sidewalk; his father distinctly embarrassed and uncomfortable-and decided to tell them the truth. “It sounds .. . convenient,” he said.

As Jordan had expected, James looked away and Gus flew off into a rage. “Well,” she huffed. “If your heart's not in it, we'll just find someone else.”

“It's not my job to believe your son,” Jordan said. “It's my job to get him off.” He looked directly into Gus's eyes. “I can do that,” he said softly.

She stared at him for a long moment, long enough for Jordan to feel like she was picking through his mind, sifting the wheat from the chaff. “I want to see Chris now,” she said.

“You can't. Only during shift changes-that's several hours away. I'll tell him whatever you want.” Jordan held the door of the station open for her, the perfume of her indignation following in her wake. He was about to move inside himself when James Harte stopped him. “Can I ask you some-thing?” Jordan nodded. “In confidence?” Jordan nodded again, a bit more slowly.

“The thing is,” James said carefully, “it was my gun.” He took a deep breath. “I'm not saying what did or didn't happen. I'm just saying that the police know the Colt came out of my gun cabinet.” Jordan's brows drew together. “So,” James said, “does that make me an accessory?”

“To murder?” Jordan asked. He shook his head. “You didn't deliberately put that gun there with the intention that Chris use it to shoot someone.”

James exhaled slowly. “I'm not saying Chris did use it to shoot someone,” he clarified.

“Yes,” Jordan said. “I know.” And he followed the man into the Bain-bridge police station. When he heard footsteps, Chris came to his feet and pressed his face to the small plastic window of the cell. “Lawyer's here,” the policeman said, and suddenly Jordan McAfee was standing on the other side of the bars.

He sat down on a chair the officer brought and took a legal pad out of his briefcase. “Have you said anything?” Jordan asked abruptly.

“About what?” Chris answered.

“Anything to the cops, to the desk sergeant. Anything at all.”

Chris shook his head. “Just that you were coming,” he said.

Jordan visibly relaxed. “All right. That's good,” he said. He followed Chris's glance toward the video camera trained on the cell. “They won't tape this,” he said. “They won't listen to the monitor. That's basic prisoner rights.”

“Prisoner,” Chris repeated. He tried to sound like he didn't care, like he wasn't whining, but his voice was trembling. “Can I go home yet?”

“No. First off, you don't say anything to anybody. In a little while, the sheriff's going to come take you to the Grafton County jail. You'll be brought in and booked there. Do what they tell you to; it's only a few hours. By the time you get up in the morning I'll be there, and we'll go over to the courthouse for your arraignment.”

“I don't want to go to jail,” Chris said, paling.