“Hey,” I said.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Just hanging out,” I said.
“No, really, what are you doing here?”
I eyed him skeptically. “I guess the search of my car turned up something. Something that wasn’t there before it got towed off.”
Quinn looked wounded. “Come on, man, we don’t do stuff like that.” This from a guy whose partner, if that kid at the gas station where I’d bought Tylenol was to be believed, had shot spray paint down his throat. Quinn knew how things were done around here.
“Whatever you say,” I replied.
Quinn rubbed his forehead, like there was something that had just occurred to him. “Look, sorry if I came off a bit abrupt the other night. I didn’t know your wife — Donna, is it? — and Kate are friends.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Does she know you’re down here?”
“Kate?” I asked. “Or Donna?”
“Donna.”
“No, she doesn’t. Far as I know.”
Quinn nodded. “I could tell Kate, and Kate could give her a heads-up, if you want.”
That seemed like a good idea, especially if no one was going to give me an opportunity to call my lawyer.
“Yeah, I’d appreciate that,” I said. There was something about the way he said his partner’s name that struck me. “You been partnered long with Ramsey?”
Marvin Quinn nodded. “A year or so.” He looked at me sideways. “I guess Donna’s told you.”
“Told me?”
“I mean, if she and Kate talk, Donna probably knows, and has told you. But we’d just as soon this didn’t get around.”
My mind tried to put the pieces together at silicon speed. “Oh yeah, sure. About you and Kate.”
“The chief doesn’t like it when partners are seeing each other, and in a small department like this, with only a couple of women, it’s not really an issue. But he wouldn’t be happy if he knew Kate and I were, you know.”
“Sure,” I said. We heard the door open.
“Anyway, hang in there,” Quinn said, and continued on. Seconds later, Haines was looking in at me.
“I want to call my lawyer,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” Haines said. “My partner’s not really big on that. This is kind of, I mean, it’s kind of irregular, but do you want me to call him for you?”
I hardly knew what to make of that. Haines could see that I was taken aback.
“We’re not all bad,” Ricky Haines said.
I weighed his offer. “No,” I said. “But thanks.” First of all, I didn’t want to be in any Griffon cop’s debt. And second, I didn’t want to think about what Brindle might do to his partner if he found out Haines had done me a favor.
“Okay,” Haines said. “Look, I’m supposed to cuff you, but I don’t figure you’re going to try to make a break for it.”
“Where you taking me?”
“You’ll see.”
He opened the cell door, led me down the hall, up a flight of stairs, down another hall, and finally into a room with four other men. All white, all about my weight and height, but the similarities more or less ended there. One had gray hair, one had black. One man’s face was long with a pointed chin, another’s round with puffy cheeks. One fellow was a bit twitchy, like he was going through some kind of withdrawal. Two of them I was pretty sure I recognized as Griffon cops, although instead of wearing uniforms they were done up like they were about to go undercover as soup kitchen regulars.
You didn’t need a degree in criminology to figure out what was up. We were the cast of an upcoming lineup. Any minute now we’d be led into an adjoining room, stood against a lined backdrop that would help any audience members gauge our height, then told to step forward and turn left and right, like we were all auditioning for, instead of A Chorus Line, a remake of The Public Enemy.
No one said a word. Then a door at the end of the room was opened, and Haines told us to walk out onto the platform. I was second in line.
The five of us stood there under bright lights, unable to see what was out in front of us, although I knew it was a wall with a piece of one-way glass installed.
A voice I didn’t recognize came over a speaker and said: “Everyone turn and face left.”
We did, although the twitchy guy got it wrong and turned right. When we were all asked to face right, he went left.
“Number three, please take a step forward.” That was the guy to my right, one of the two I believed to be cops. He stepped ahead, then turned left and right as requested, then fell back into line.
“Number four, same.”
That was me. I did as I was told. Took a step forward, turned to the left again, turned to the right, then stepped back into line.
“Did we ask you to step back, number four?”
I stepped ahead again. This was pretty outrageous, putting me in a lineup before I’d even been allowed to call for legal representation. Surprise, surprise.
“All right, step back.”
I did as I was told. We stood there another minute or two before the door opened and we were told to get our asses off the stage, although not exactly in those words.
The four other men were permitted to continue beyond the door, but Brindle was there to stop me from following them.
“Guess what,” he said. “You got the part.”
He steered me down another hall and into an interrogation room. Four pale green walls, a table and three chairs. Two on one side, a single chair on the other. He put me in the single and pulled out one of the others across from me.
“I got a few questions for ya,” Brindle said.
“I’ve got nothing to say. Not until I have representation. You haven’t even told me why I’m here.”
“You don’t know why you’re here? You really don’t?”
“I really don’t. But I can guess. You found something in my car. Something that wasn’t there when you towed it.”
He frowned. “Why don’t you come with me. Maybe I can help bring it all back to you.”
I thought of that old James Thurber cartoon, where the prosecution produces a kangaroo and says to the witness, “Perhaps this will refresh your memory!” I doubted Brindle was going to show me any creatures from the Australian outback.
He took me out of the room and down another hall. I knew, from the many times I’d been in this building — trips that had never included visits to a holding cell or the lineup room — that we were heading toward the main entrance.
We passed through two more doors and came out behind the reception counter. On the far side of the room were a man and a woman, with, I presumed, their son. He was eighteen years old, slightly built, about five three with a short, bristly haircut, wearing jeans and a sport jacket, white shirt and tie. Looked very respectable.
I knew his age, but that wasn’t all I knew about him. I knew he used to go to my son’s school last year, but over the summer had moved to Lockport. I knew his name was Russell Tapscott, and that he had his own Audi convertible. Blue, with black interior.
I knew that it hadn’t been forty-eight hours since I’d last seen him.
Russell was sitting in one of the chairs, next to his mother. His father was pacing back and forth in front of them.
Russell saw me first.
“That’s him!” he shouted, standing and pointing. “That’s the fucker who tried to throw me over the falls.”
Okay. Now I knew why I was here. It had nothing to do with the car at all.
Thirty-six
There was a time, not that far in the past, although it felt like a lifetime ago, when I’d been standing in the Griffon police department reception area with my own son. Scott had been fourteen, and he’d been picked up for being under the influence — of what, it was not immediately clear — in a public place.