“.. and so I started running,” Nathan finished. He was lying on his stomach now, resting on his elbows and tracing the wood grain of the headboard with his finger.
“So, are you all right?” Denise asked, genuine concern evident in her voice.
“I guess so. My eye hurts some and my ear is sore as hell, but other than that I think I’m okay.”
“Do you have any idea at all why the supervisor would want to kill you?” As unbelievable as the kid’s story was, Denise believed him.
“Yeah, I think he was crazy. He was drunk. He was stoned. Grown-ups always get like that when they drink.”
“Grown-ups like whom?” Denise prodded, sensing a new wrinkle to this extraordinary saga. “Like your father?”
“No.” Nathan’s reply was startlingly emphatic. “My dad was a good man. He’d never drink or hit anyone. He was terrific.”
“What about your mother?”
His voice softened. “I never met my mom. She died when I was just a baby.”
Jesus, there was another avenue to pursue. Denise jotted a note on a legal pad. “So, did anyone in your life beat you?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Nathan replied curtly.
“Why not? It might help if people understood some of what you’ve gone through.”
“Bull. People want to think that everybody lives like those perfect families on TV. If I tell them different, they’ll just think I’m lying. They can yell and scream and hit their kids, and that’s okay, so long as the kid keeps it quiet. But if he hits back, or tries to leave, they call you incorrigible and throw your butt in jail.”
“Is that how you ended up in jail? Did you hit back?”
Nathan thought back to all the fights at Uncle Mark’s house. He pictured the comical lumbering stride Uncle Mark had when he was drunk, and the numbers of books and utensils and appliances that had been flung across the room, only to miss hitting Nathan not by inches but by feet. He nearly laughed at his memory of the stupid, gaping look on the drunk’s face. But then he remembered the leather cowboy belt, and the sound it made when it contacted the bare flesh of his backside, and the traces of humor were gone, snatched out of his soul just as Uncle Mark had snatched all the humor out of his life. Through it all, though, Nathan had known better than to hit back. That would have been his last act in life if he had ever tried it.
Maybe I should tell her everything, Nathan thought. Maybe he should tell her how he once did live a normal life; how his dad had raised him in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, just the two of them. Maybe he should tell millions of people that only three days after Dad’s funeral, Uncle Mark locked him in the crawl space under the living room just for grins, and how he only got out by making such a racket that the asshole saw the neighbors looking out their windows.
Surely the audience would enjoy hearing that his screams for help had earned him his first belt licking. Maybe he should tell all those people listening in their cozy houses and offices and cars how Uncle Mark used to like parties with all his druggie friends, and how some of those friends, men and women alike, used to come into his bedroom and touch him in places where kids weren’t supposed to be touched.
There were so many things that he could tell, but he wouldn’t. There was nothing there that he hadn’t already told judges and lawyers and police officers. And all that confiding had certainly cut him a great big fat break, hadn’t it?
“No,” Nathan answered at length, “I didn’t hit anybody back. I stole a car.”
Denise was flabbergasted. “You’re twelve years old, and you stole a car?”
“Actually, I was eleven when I stole the car:’ There was a trace of pride in his answer.
“And why did you do that?”
“I don’t want to talk about that, either?’
“Why not?”
“Because it’s nobody’s business.”
“But that’s why you got sent to the detention center?” “Yeah, except call it what it is—a jail.”
Was it possible that she was admiring this kid? Denise asked herself. This killer? There was something in the directness of his answers that struck a chord with her. It was within his power to lie about things he didn’t want to discuss, but he chose instead to not answer the question. He was sharp, all right. And he was apparently facing something that had more layers than she had first thought.
“So, what’s the end of the story?” Dehise asked. “Where did you run to? Where are you now?”
Nathan sighed. “I don’t think it would be real smart to tell you that, do you?” Grown-ups just couldn’t help trying to trick you. He gasped as a terrifying thought jumped into his mind. “Oh my God, can they trace this call?” He suddenly sounded panicky.
“No, no,” Denise assured him. “This is a radio station. As long as there’s a First Amendment, no one can trace our calls.” “You sure?”
Denise looked to Enrique, who was no help. “Sure I’m sure,” she guessed with a shrug. At least it sounded like the reasonable answer. She shifted back to the subject at hand. “So, what are you going to do next? You can’t just keep running.”
“Why not?”
Denise started to answer, but stopped. She really didn’t know why not. “Because you’ll get caught.”
“Well, my only other choice is to turn myself in. How is that any different than getting caught?”
“Nathan, I’m just afraid you’ll get hurt.”
“Yeah, me too. That’s why I’m gonna keep running.”
Jesus, this kid was good. “You’re making a fool of me out here, Nathan,” she said good-naturedly.
“No, you’re doing fine,” Nathan comforted. “But you see my side now, don’t you? When I was in Juvey, I did everything I was supposed to do and got the crap beat out of me. I turned the other cheek, just like I was supposed to, and they just beat me up some more. I tell the supervisor, and he tries to kill me. I defend myself, and the people who listen to your show call me a murderer and want to put me in the electric chair. Nobody really…” His voice caught in his throat. He fell silent. The silence lasted a long time.
“Cares?” Denise helped.
Nathan’s lower lip was trembling now, and he hated himself for losing control on national radio. He’d felt so together at the beginning, but suddenly a terrible sadness poured over him, like a bucket of lukewarm water. “Yes,” he whispered.
Denise’s eyes welled up unexpectedly at the sound of the tiny voice. “You’re frightened, aren’t you, honey?”
“I’ve got to go,” he croaked. He hung up.
In the dead air that followed, Denise looked to Enrique for guidance, but he just stared back.
“Well,” Denise said at length, “that was something. Nathan, if you’re still listening, we wish you all the luck in the world, however this turns out. Sounds to me like maybe you’re due for some. I think everybody needs a minute or two to regain their composure. We’ll be right back after these messages.”
Chapter 11
Detrelli was on the line five seconds after the radio conversation ended. He must have had the number programmed into his speed-dial.
“That lying son of a bitch is pandering for public sympathy,” Petrelli railed at Michaels. “The issue of whether or not he was treated well in Juvey has no bearing on this case whatsoever. What matters is that he escaped from a detention facility, and he killed a supervisor to do it! His act’s good enough to take on the road.”
This tantrum, like so many others Petrelli had unleashed against Michaels over the years, was bullshit. Warren knew that Petrelli couldn’t have cared less about an escapee on the street, or about the deaths of a hundred supervisors. The issue here was the fact that J. Daniel had taken to the airwaves with partial information, convicting a minor of a capital crime even before the evidence was collected. In this oh-so-important election year, the county prosecutor suddenly stood a very good chance of looking less like a tough-on-crime law enforcer than a child abuser. Warren knew that these rantings on the phone were just the first act in a long drama of posturings and spin controls that would attempt to explain to the press how he never really said what they had all heard him say just a few hours earlier.