The Last Good Day (29 page)

Now that same sense of dread welled up in her again as she approached the sergeant’s desk.

“Hi, I’m here about my husband, Barry Schulman,” she said. “I believe you have him in a cell downstairs.”

The sergeant had a soft chin and a fuzzy little caterpillar of hair connecting his eyebrows, which made him look stern and unforgiving. A purple-haired troll wearing an “I’d Rather Be Golfing” T-shirt sat atop his computer monitor. Four other officers worked in the dispatch room behind him, answering phones and hunting and pecking at keyboards. Lynn noticed two fishing rods in the corner next to the enormous white sector map of Riverside.

“I’d like to post bond for him,” she said, reaching into her bag for her wallet. “I was told I could do that on the phone.”

“It’s all right, Eddie.” Mike Fallon appeared in the doorway of a small office on the right. “I’ll take care of this one.”

There was something official and impervious in his voice that made her think of a bank manager calling in a loan. The sergeant went to answer a ringing phone as Mike took his place at the front desk.

“It’s bad, Lynn,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s bad.”

“What happened?”

She’d already braced herself, knowing from Barry’s message that she would probably have to deal with Mike at some point tonight.

“Your husband was speeding near an area where children play, and when I pulled him over, he tried to get physical with me. We’re giving him an Intoxilyzer right now.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mike. He’d never drink and get behind the wheel.”

“We have a serious DWI problem in our community,” he began sententiously. “And then he tried to put his hands on a police officer, which is a serious offense in this town …”

“Oh, come on, Mikey …”

He gave her a grave admonishing look. Barry must have broken his promise to her and confronted him about what happened in the studio yesterday.

“All right, so what do I owe here?” She opened her wallet, trying to get it over with. “The sergeant I spoke to on the phone said the cash bond would probably be set at about twenty-five hundred dollars. So I hit the ATM and got the ten percent …”

“Not so fast.” Mike raised a meaty slab of a hand. “He’s already in the system.”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“He is already
in the system,
” Mike repeated the words more slowly, as if he was addressing a half-wit. “I already entered his paperwork on the computer.”

“So, what does that mean?”

“What does that
mean?
” He seemed incredulous. “It means there’s nothing anybody can do about it. He’s
in the system.
The bus is going to take him to the county jail in less than twenty minutes.”

“And then he’ll have to spend the night in jail?”

“Hey, court is closed here. Highball Harper’s probably tucked up in bed already with a nice warm bottle.”

She pictured Barry in the county pen, packed in among the gang-bangers, rapists, and street crazies from all over the jurisdiction.

“I can’t let this happen,” she said, trying not to panic. “What can I do to get him out tonight?”

“Nothing.” He glanced over at the one-browed sergeant, who was talking on the phone and gesturing at him with great animation.

“Once somebody is in the system, they have to go
through
the system,” he said with a kind of grinding vindictiveness. “Your husband’s a lawyer. He understands.”

“All right, will you stop saying that!” Her voice cracked. “You don’t have to keep talking about
the system
like it’s something that can’t be controlled!”

Everyone in the room stopped talking and stared, as if she’d just fired a starter’s pistol at the ceiling.

She realized she had no idea who Mike was anymore or what he was capable of. She was still trying to process the idea that Sandi had been having an affair with him. It was like learning that a house you’d visited a hundred times had a torture chamber in the basement. How had the relatively straightforward kids she’d known become such morally baroque, recklessly perverse, and frighteningly untrustworthy adults?

“Look”—she stood on tiptoe and leaned across the desk, trying to maintain her composure—“is this about what happened between you and me?”

“And why would you think that?” He looked down at her, his face a mask of indifference.

“I know you keep wanting something from me that I can’t give you,” she whispered. “But I don’t want you to take it out on my husband.”

He lurched suddenly forward as if he was about to take her face in his hands. “Are you going to start telling me how to do my job too?”

“No.” She felt his breath on her lips. “I just don’t want to have any more problems
with you.
”

She stopped talking and looked over his shoulder, seeing all the men in the room still riveted as if this were in a sports bar and they were watching the last inning of the World Series on TV The sergeant was gesturing madly, trying to get one of them to tap Mike on the shoulder.

“Let me ask you something, Lynn.” Mike leaned farther across the desk, his breath almost in her mouth now. “Did you really never care about me?”

“Excuse me?”

Again, her eyes roamed past him, and she saw the sergeant holding the phone up and saying, “Mike?”

“You heard me.” Fallon ignored him.

She dropped back onto her flat soles, convinced that he’d lost all sense of propriety. “I really don’t think this is the place to discuss this.”

She saw the other cops pretending to go about their duties, trying to look and not look at the same time. Small-town chain-of-command types, men whose respect Mike obviously needed. Now they were like mountaineers seeing the top of Everest melt just a little.

“Mike?” The sergeant held up the phone. “I got the chief on the line.”

“Yeah, what does he want?”

Mike kept staring at Lynn, as if she’d disappear the moment he looked away.

“He says kick him loose.” The sergeant waved the receiver.

“What?”

“He says we should release the guy downstairs. Cash bond is acceptable.”

Mike looked over his shoulder, muscles rising and clenching in his neck. “And how is it that he happens to know about that guy,
Eddie?
” he said fiercely.

“We called him as soon as you brought him in through the bay doors. That’s how the chief wants it from now on. Call him at home whenever there’s an arrest.”

She saw Mike start to seethe behind the desk, leaning heavily on his elbow.

“You wanna talk to him?” asked the sergeant, cradling the phone to his ear.

“No, you can tell him I got the message.”

Mike started breathing heavily through his nose and shuffling through papers on the desk, as if this had all just been some minor inconvenience.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” he said. “You can take the old man off our hands. He doesn’t have to wait around to be arraigned. You’ll get a letter telling him when he has to come to court.”

“Okay, good.” She exhaled in relief as the sergeant hung up the phone and shook his head at his fellow officers. “I just want to get him home. That’s all.”

She quickly started laying down the $250 she’d got from the ATM, eager to get out of this place.

“You can still pick up the car by the side of the road; we didn’t impound it yet.” Mike scooped the bills up preemptively. “By the way, you understand that you are assuming responsibility here, and if he doesn’t show up for his court date, you forfeit the bond and we come looking for him.”

“It’s all right. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”

She looked at him, meaning to share a lighter moment, but instead saw that a certain wounded, dangerous male intransigence was still in his eyes.

“Just keep him out of trouble in the meantime,” he said.

30

THE DOORBELL RANG
a half-hour later, followed by a series of angry insistent raps rising steadily in force and volume until they sounded almost like thunder on the threshold.

“All right, all right.” Mike went to answer it. “Put your nightstick away, will you?”

He opened the door and found Paco and Harold looking somber and resolute, a fly circling the porch light behind them.

“Now you know you done fucked up, don’t you?” Harold moved past him into the foyer. “I don’t have to tell you that, do I? I don’t have to tell you shit.”

“Come on in.” Mike forced a smile as Paco followed and closed the door behind them. “Good to see you too.”

“How long do you think you’d last in any other department after the stunt you pulled tonight?”

Mike didn’t bother making excuses right away. He knew as soon as he put the cherry top on the roof that he was going to have to answer for chasing Schulman. But his foot was already on the gas. He was in full hunt-or-be-hunted mode. The only thing he would’ve got by stopping short was whiplash.

“Let’s talk out back,” he said, leading the two of them down the narrow hall and past the kitchen.

“Hey, handsome,” Marie, making her late-night tea at the stove, called to the chief. “Can I fix you gentlemen a drink?”

“No, thank you, m’dear.” Harold did his courtly bow in the doorway. “We won’t be long.”

“Could you get me a beer?” Mike looked in after him, knowing he was going to need some fortification.

“Why don’t you get it yourself?”

He saw vapor leaking from her teapot and wondered how she’d like having it poured over her head.

He decided to skip the beer and led them through the tiny living room, where Timmy was awake an hour and a half past his bedtime, jabbing at the hamster with a pencil through the bars of its cage.

“Hey, didn’t I tell you to knock that off?” Mike saw the rodent dance away from the sharp end. “You keep torturing that poor animal, he’s gonna turn around and bite you one of these days.”

“Big Tim, what’s the word?” Harold offered him an upraised hand.

“What up, dawg?” Timmy reached up to high-five him.

Great, Mike thought resentfully. They’re happier to see him than they are to see me. Maybe he can stay and I can go, and there’ll be another minority family on the block.

Instead of stopping to introduce Paco to his wife and son, he continued to the screen door and held it open for his visitors.

“After you guys,” he said, thinking it was time to put the storms in.

“Well”—Harold waited for the door to close after them—“you must think you’re a hell of a man.”

“Remind me what we’re talking about here.”

The night itself felt aggravating. Cold enough so you could see your breath and wear a sweater but warm enough for some insects to still be around. The yard seemed particularly small and paltry with three grown men standing in it. There was barely enough room for the deck, the grill, Marie’s wilting annuals, and the rope swings he could never get to hang right because of the slope of the hill.

“You knew he was a lawyer when you pulled him over, right?” Harold’s left eyelid twitched slightly. “You couldn’t slow down for just a second to think about that?”

“The law is the law, far as I’m concerned, Harold. The man was speeding, and then he laid hands on me after I told him to turn off his phone …”

“He’s probably going to sue the town and the department. You know that, right?”

“I got him on resisting and obstruction, Harold.”

“Twelve hours after he came to me about you and his wife? Forget it. I’m dropping the charges.”

“You’re what?” Mike bent a little, as if he’d been cracked across the rib cage with an aluminum baseball bat.

“Tell me again why I didn’t suspend you this morning when I came to talk to you?”

“Three oh five Bank Street.” Mike reminded him of Brenda Carter’s address. “That’s a good place to start.”

“Man, when are you gonna stop cashing that chit in?” Harold grimaced. “Don’t you think that’s getting kind of tired?”

“I don’t know. Are you getting tired of your life?”

They both fell quiet for a few seconds, remembering the aqua-green housing project kitchenette. Could it really be ten years ago? A call about an EDP coming over the radio. The neighbors complaining somebody’s grandma had snapped. Didn’t sound like much. Until they showed up and found a three-hundred-twenty-pound wild woman swinging a butcher knife around and jabbering about Rockefeller impregnating her niece. Harold, who knew her from church, gently tried to talk sense to her. And then that sweet fat old lady came roaring at him like a garbage truck. She caught him with the knife right up under his Kevlar vest, driving it hard into his abdomen just barely short of the vital connections. She was about to bury it deeper when Mike raised the twelve-gauge and blew her brains all over her gas range.

“I told you to back the fuck off.” Harold jabbed a finger at him. “Why wouldn’t you listen?”

Mike put his hands in his pockets. “Same reason I didn’t back off with the shotgun.”

“Ah, that’s bullshit.” Harold swiped the excuse out of the air. “One thing don’t have nothing to do with the other.”

“Yeah, that’s what you think.”

He noticed Paco staring at the side of his face. What did these motherfuckers know anyhow? You pull a trigger. You step on the gas. It’s all the same thing—survival instinct. You can’t take it apart any more than you could unravel strands of DNA.

“Why’d you bring
him
here?” he asked Harold. “You don’t have the balls to talk to me on your own?”

“Paco’s got a few questions for you,” said the chief. “I thought you might be more comfortable answering them away from all the surveillance cameras and microphones we’ve got set up around the station.”

Mike blinked at the mention of all the hardware that had been installed after the Replay Washington shooting to make sure suspects weren’t having their precious rights violated.

“So, what can I do for you,
Paco?
” He glared at the detective.

Paco’s bald head seemed to glow a little in the evening chill, as if he’d been saving energy by not speaking.

“Hey, man,” he said in that mongrel city accent that was truly starting to grate on Mike, “how come you didn’t tell me the state trooper called me this morning about finding Sandi’s car at the motel? I only got the message after he called me back again.”