The Truth Collector (10 page)

Next to him, the officers held Paul and finally managed to slip a pair of handcuffs on him. Some of them were marked with fingernail scratches running down their faces. They stared at one another, sitting on Paul in a heap of limbs and confusion.

“Damn,” Broyles said. He held his face with one hand and used the other to jerk Malcolm to his feet. “Lock 'em up. Can I count on you to at least do that?”

“Yes, sir,” said one of the men. Malcolm and Paul were surrounded and pushed out of the room. Their eyes met as they marched through a tight corridor into what would inevitably be an even tighter jail cell.

“You idiot,” Malcolm said, just in time for one of his captors to grab his wrists and squeeze. “I hope you're happy.”

Paul didn't reply. He looked down the corridor and pressed forward, face blank. They rounded a corner and the corridor turned into a little row of jail cells. One of the guards peeled off, unlocked a door, and led Paul into the first one.

That was the last Malcolm saw of him that night.

They took his fingerprints and stripped him and sprayed him down with water. Once he was in a prison jumpsuit they led him into the cell at the end of the corridor. Then they locked the door behind him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She wouldn't let him sleep. He told her to get lost, but she kept telling him she was already lost.

“Pay my price,” Charlotte said. “You know it's your only chance to get out of here. They're going to hang you if you don't.”

Malcolm laughed at that. “They don't hang people anymore.”

“Firing squad?”

“No. But that would almost be better. Lethal injections are supposed to be more humane.”

“There's nothing humane about this place.”

“No,” Malcolm said. “There isn't.” The fact that he was talking to a wisp of air should have bothered him more than it did. But it was comfortable – almost natural. Or maybe he was just desperate to take his mind off the fingerprints. The investigators would identify them soon enough. Then it was game over. Lock up the degenerates and throw away the key.

Hang 'em. Hang 'em high.

Malcolm shivered in his prison garb. A wetness had crept into his cell, mildewed, and made itself a part of the walls surrounding him. An arm wrapped around his shoulders and started to rub them. It was warm – not blood and flesh warm, exactly – but the type of warmth from an ember that refused to go out.

“Have you ever been to one of these places?” said Charlotte.

Malcolm bit his lip. “A few of them actually. Nothing serious. Just some stupid fights and arguments. Lots of drinking involved. What can I say? I have a way of making people uncomfortable.”

“You don't make me uncomfortable.”

“But you're already dead. Once they transfer us to county I'm going to make a lot more people uncomfortable. Big, strong men with nothing to lose. Hey. Maybe I won't even make it to the lethal injection part.”

A hand grabbed his face, twisting it to the other side of the bed. There was an arm connected to that hand and a body connected to it. Charlotte sat on the bed next to him with one leg thrown over the other in a timeless pinup girl pose.

“Don't,” Malcolm said. “Someone's going to see you.”

She grabbed his face tighter. “I'll just be a minute.”

Malcolm looked into her eyes and the prison walls fell away around him. His shitty cot and the iron door keeping him trapped inside collapsed under the weight of those eyes. They were brown and huge and full of sadness no mortal life could comprehend. Sadness stretched out by time until it spilled over her eyelids and onto her face, her lips, her smile.

Charlotte turned those eyes on him. “Pay my price,” she said.

“What if it doesn't work?”

“What if you're stuck in here the rest of your life for a crime you didn't commit? Don't you want to at least try?”

Malcolm looked at the beautiful woman sitting next to him and nodded. “Yeah, sure. But what if Paul doesn't? I got him into this mess. I didn't mean for that to happen but things just… seem to fall apart when I'm around.”

Charlotte rubbed his cheek and smiled. “That's not true. You just don't see the bigger picture.”

Malcolm stood up and glanced at his cell door. “We don't have much time. Can you go to him? Tell him what I said?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “I'll find him and let him know. I'll be right back.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

She smiled at him again and disappeared. Malcolm blinked but there was only air. The warm touch that had told him everything would work out was gone. He sat in his cell and waited. Time was slippery without a window to guide him. He lay on the stiff bed staring at the ceiling. Sleep called to him. It had been a long time since he'd had any. He closed his eyes, but bloody fingerprints swam in circles around his head.
His
fingerprints. Charlotte came back some time later. Malcolm felt her slide in next to him on his bed. Then she grabbed his hand.

“Well?” Malcolm said.

“He's scared. More scared than he's ever been in his life. He doesn't want to go to jail for a crime he didn't commit, but he doesn't trust you. With good reason I might add. He thinks you're just going along with it to get out of here. Then you're going to stab him in the back.”

“I won't…”

“I know you won't,” Charlotte said. “I don't want to interfere with people's lives, but if you agree to this and try not to pay...”

Malcolm nodded. “I know, I know. You won't stop until I end up in the madhouse.”

She squeezed his hand again. “God, I could use a cigarette.”

“I'm fresh out of those. And speaking of God… what can you tell me? Does he exist?”

Charlotte smiled. “Maybe later. Let's get you two out of here first. So will you pay my price?”

“Yeah. Let's do it.”

She held out a hand and the smile dropped off her face. “You're a good man, Malcolm. Even though you don't see it. Don't make me regret this.”

He took her hand and shook it.

“Say the words,” she said. “Say you'll pay my price.”

* * * *

Sheriff Robbie came to visit some time later. He told Malcolm to call him that – now that they were going to be spending a
lot
of quality time together. He said the fingerprints came back. Perfect matches for he and Paul both. They were still looking for Fielder as a potential accomplice, but hadn't been able to find him. If they knew where he was, now was the time to give him up.

Sheriff Robbie also said it was time to think about getting a lawyer. They'd be arraigned and formally charged. Bail would probably be denied. Then the people of Tattersall would know the names and faces of the men responsible for turning their charming town upside down.

They'd want their heads.

Malcolm listened to all of this without saying a word. Once the sheriff left, a pair of officers led him over to a telephone bank. Paul was there too with one of the phones pressed against his ear. The sheriff had undoubtedly given him the same spiel. Malcolm waited for Paul to finish, picked up the phone, and pressed a series of random buttons. The phone crackled and popped in his ear, but none of that mattered. He spoke to the dial tone for a few seconds and hung up.

Then the officers guided them to a small holding cell. Sheriff Robbie led the pack and called their decision to be tried together “ballsy.” But what did you expect from a pair of big-city psychopaths? He motioned for his officer to shut the door behind them and stood watch on the other side of a glass window. There was pride in the way he looked at them. He watched them like an owner of two racehorses whose time had finally come. They were his Big Chance, his golden ticket to a stature within this town he could only dream of.

Malcolm and Paul waited in the holding cell without a word. They sat in the artificial lights and watched the door while their hearts pounded.

A woman arrived a few minutes later. She shook the sheriff's hand and looked at them through the glass. Her hair was done up in a stern bun, and she wore a stern charcoal suit to match. It squeezed her body tightly – it didn't fit just right – and Malcolm saw the officers' eyes drift when she passed them and strolled into the room. Sheriff Robbie pressed his hands to the glass, leaning against it to watch the big show.

She shook their hands, put her briefcase on the table, and sat.

“I'm Jillian Hurst,” she said. “I understand you're in some type of trouble.”

Malcolm and Paul nodded.

The woman leaned forward and opened her briefcase. “Did it work?”

“I don't know,” Paul said. “I think so.”

“Most of the cops left,” Malcolm said. “It's just the sheriff and that fat one with the mustache.”

'Jillian' nodded her head. She pointed at blank pieces of paper inside the briefcase, pulled out a pen, and began to doodle with it. “Keep talking,” she said. “It doesn't matter what you say. Just keep your lips moving.”

They talked for a long while. Malcolm and Paul called each other assholes, each blaming the other for getting them into this mess. And Charlotte assured them that now there was no going back.

Every so often Malcolm's eyes rose to meet the sheriff's. He never took his eyes off them. He'd taken off his hat so he could press his forehead closer against the glass. He looked at them, cheek swollen from the paperweight Charlotte had smashed into it, with a big smile on his face. It was a sneaky smile – almost like he was getting away with something.

“Are you ready?” Charlotte said.

Paul sighed. “I think so. Malcolm?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Charlotte nodded. She got up and walked over to the door and banged on it with a perfect, frazzled defense attorney frustration. The fat officer looked right past her, but the sheriff shoved him aside and opened the door with a smile.

“How can I help you, counselor?”

“My clients need some water. I can't believe how long you've held them here without even giving them a drop to drink. Deplorable. Absolutely deplorable. Imagine if the paper found out.”

“Relax.” Sheriff
Robbie put his hand on her shoulder and looked her up and down. “Feisty, huh? Jenkins, go get these men and the beautiful lady some water.”

Jenkins shrugged and disappeared into the corridor.

Sheriff Robbie went to close the holding cell door, but Charlotte put a hand in the door frame to stop him. “One more thing, sheriff. If you'd be so kind.”

He nodded, grinning like a fourteen-year-old boy seized in a fantasy where the attractive teacher was finally paying attention to him. “Sure. What is it?”

She leaned forward and held out a finger to beckon him closer. When he pulled his head in the doorway she pressed close to him, whispering. The sheriff's cheeks reddened. He looked over her shoulder at Malcolm and Paul – no longer quite so interested in their fates as his own.

Malcolm and Paul were arguing.

They hurled insults at one another across the table. Their hands were curled into fists, resting next to Charlotte's briefcase and ready to uncoil. Voices raised. Tempers flared. And then Malcolm and Paul climbed out of their chairs, pushing each other and shouting.

“That's enough,” Robbie said. His eyes snapped back to the woman in front of him. “Sorry about that.”

But his words only drove Malcolm and Paul on. Metal chairs skidded across the holding cell floor. Paul put Malcolm into a headlock and Charlotte's briefcase flew to the ground in the scuffle.

“Damn it,” Robbie said. “Hold on just a minute.” He pressed a button outside of the holding cell to summon more officers before unhooking the baton from his hip belt. He menaced it and charged into the room with a sick grin on his face. Traffic stops were never this fun. “That's enough,” he yelled, pulling back the baton to deliver a blow to Malcolm's ribcage.

The baton crashed into bone and flesh with a satisfying
oomph
, but still they scuffled. They ignored him and fought around overturned chairs and papers and the table. Robbie hit them again. He screamed and hit them until his baton was nothing more than a blur. Malcolm and Paul cried out, locked in their desperate battle. They gave it a good show – something the sheriff could believe in – until the holding cell slammed shut behind them.

Then they stopped arguing and smiled. Welts covered their bodies, opened up cuts they'd collected from the night before. But all the welts in the world were worth that disoriented look on Broyles's face. He stood in front of him dangling his baton with a sheepish smile.

He glanced over his shoulder, but the beautiful brunette in the business suit was gone. “Okay,” he said, never taking the grin off his face. “You fellas playing some kind of game here?”

Malcolm and Paul looked at each other and rubbed their welts in silence. Broyles stood above them within arm's reach. He looked at them, winced, and reached for his gun. “No more screwing around. Hands on your—”

But their hands went elsewhere. They caught his ankles and wrists, wrapping around them and tugging him to the ground. The men had argued like two friends picking at an ancient feud. Now they supported each other with that same level of intimacy.

First they stripped the sheriff's gun. The baton and handcuffs were next. He thrashed around like a psychiatric ward resident refusing to take his medicine. It was dramatic – almost for show – but no way to escape the inevitable.

The handcuffs clicked around Robbie's wrists a few seconds later, after Malcolm and Paul righted one of the overturned chairs and forced him into it. Then Robbie was trapped, bound to a chair in a holding cell full of alleged murderers.
His
holding cell. He thrashed and swore until the cuffs made his wrists bleed.

“Easy,” Malcolm said. “We aren't going to hurt you.”

Robbie spat onto the table and nearly took off a chunk of his tongue with his teeth. “Murderers.”

“No,” said Paul. “Believe it or not we aren't. There's been a huge misunderstanding. Something we need to go clear up.”

Robbie spat on the table again, saliva streaked with chewing tobacco.

“Lovely,” said Malcolm. “On that note we better be going.”

“I'll find you. I'll find you and kill you myself if I have to.” Robbie looked back as Malcolm and Paul made their way to the door. Someone stood outside the viewing window. A big, lumbering man with a mustache that swallowed his upper lip and a pitcher of water in his hands.