Then Harris motioned him into the front seat. They were nearly to the main road when he pulled the truck over.
“You’ll have to ride in the back,” he said. “I didn’t want her to see you like that but the staties might be waiting when we get to the station so I’ll need to cuff you, too.”
Poe let himself be handcuffed and put in the passenger area of the truck, behind the partition. Somehow it calmed him down.
“You know how serious this is, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Did that English boy have anything to do with what happened? I went over there this morning and his father told me he took off two days ago and they haven’t seen him since.”
“Nah,” said Poe.
Harris shook his head. “This DA is gonna eat you up. Knows what you’ll say before the words come out of your mouth.”
“I ain’t dumb.”
“Actually” said Harris. “You are dumb. You need to remember that before this gets any worse, if that’s even possible.”
“Whatever you say.”
“You should have come to me. None of this would be happening.”
He could see that Harris was angry. Then he was angry at Harris.
“I see you looking at me,” said Harris, “but if this witness gets you out of the lineup, and it sounds like he will, you’re up shit’s creek. Twenty- five years if you’re lucky but like I said this DA is hot for a capital case to get his career moving and he’s betting you might be his ticket. I’m not saying he’ll get it, it’ll be a hard sell to a jury but he’ll push for it. Just so you know, this is a very smart man who’s going to be working his ass off to get you into the death chamber.” He paused a minute. “You,” he said again. “Not someone else, but you. Billy Poe.”
“What’s the witness saying?”
“That the little guy, who I presume is Isaac English, saw a fight brewing and took off. That you stuck around and started a fight and smashed the witness in the head and when he woke up you’d smashed his friend Otto Carson in the head, too, only a lot harder. His friend who is now dead.”
“What about the third one, who was holding the knife to me?”
“There wasn’t any talk about a knife. And if there’s a third one, he’s probably in Kansas by now because there’s not many people dumb enough to get mixed up in this.”
“His name was Jesus. Like I said, he put a knife to my neck.”
“Well that ain’t what the witness saw.”
“Well what the witness is saying isn’t what happened but I guess it’s settled then.”
“For your mother’s sake you need to talk to me, because that’s the only way we’re going to have a chance.”
Poe was quiet and he thought all you’d be telling him is the truth but then he reminded himself that it would not be the truth.
They went along the river road, the glare coming off the water made it too much to look at, greenness everywhere there was so much growing, there was a person out trawling, a small boat, a retired person in his years of ease.
Harris continued: “You know I got her a job in Philadelphia. Senior executive assistant at the State’s Attorney’s Office. Which is kind of ironic, given your situation, but either way she would have gotten thirty-four thousand a year, pension, I got the job lined up for her but you were doing good playing ball and she wasn’t ready to separate you from your father. I tried to use logic on her, point out you could play ball anywhere and as for your father he’s made about two child support payments in his life. That was six years ago, when you were a freshman. She’d said she’d leave when you went to college but then you were still living at home, sponging off her, couldn’t even keep your hours as a stockboy”
“The owner laid everyone off,” Poe said. He was numb to Harris. They were coming into town. He didn’t want to be getting a lecture now, he wanted Harris to tell him what to say to the state police.
“Your mother is a good woman,” said Harris. “You got no idea how many chances you’ve gotten because of her.”
“My mother is married.”
“Please,” said Harris. “Your father’s diddled half the girls in town. Miracle you don’t have twenty brothers and sisters.”
“You’re a real piece of shit, you know that?”
They pulled into the police station parking lot but Harris didn’t move to get out. He said, “Billy, do you remember all those times you and your football buddies got arrested for public consumption?”
Poe snorted. “I never got busted for that,” he said.
“Huh. I wonder. What about the time one of my guys pulled you over doing seventy in a thirty, too drunk to even remember to throw your empties out the window? Or even, let me see if I remember this correctly—you hit a young man in the head with a baseball bat, after he’d already gone down and was no longer a threat to you or anyone else, but still you got off with probation.”
Poe didn’t say anything.
“Thought you were just that lucky, huh?”
“I don’t need to hear this right now.”
“You aren’t lucky. You’re spoiled and you’re stupid and I’ve been bending over backwards the last seven or eight years to keep you in one piece.”
“You’re just trying to make yourself feel better.”
“You got too much of your father in you. And that is a goddamn shame for all of us, especially your mother.”
“You’re lucky I’m back here,” said Poe. “You’re lucky there’s a fuckin wall right now.”
“Save that shit for the lockup,” Harris told him. “I’ll pretty much guarantee you’ll need it.”
Harris got out of the truck and opened Poe’s door and led him into the building. The fat cop, Ho, was sitting at the same desk, as if he hadn’t moved in the last twenty- four hours.
“The staties here?”
“No,” Ho said. “Their chief dickhead called and they want us to drive him to Uniontown.”
“Get his picture and prints,” said Harris, motioning to Poe.
Harris disappeared and the other cop led Poe into a small white room with a waist- high shelf. Poe expected the short Chinese cop to be rough but he wasn’t.
“Make your hands loose and let me roll your fingers. If you smear them I’ll just have to do it again.”
“I ain’t smearing them.”
Harris stuck his head in.
“Before you get this asshole’s picture send him to the bathroom to shave and get cleaned up. The other asshole’s gonna plaster it all over the newspapers, guaranteed.”
Harris looked at Poe: “From here on out if anyone tries to ask you anything, you say
“Lawyer.”
The deputy stood outside the bathroom while Poe shaved and then they took four sets of mugshots until Harris was satisfied with the picture. There’s the schoolboy look, he said. Then they got back into Harris’s truck and headed to Uniontown, the county seat. At least this time Harris didn’t make him wear handcuffs. They didn’t talk; he guessed Harris was doing him a favor now, taking the long way because he wouldn’t see any of it again. The valley got a little flatter as they got south of Brownsville, when they got to the ferry in Fredericktown the river was nearly clear instead of brown, it was strange seeing the Mon that color. Usually the ferry driver made you wait until there was a full boat, six cars, but they just drove Harris across, there was only one other car on the boat and the ferry driver looked Poe over, ignorant fucking hick he was just staring at him, he looked about seventeen or so Poe wanted to get out and beat his skull in but he noticed the people in the other car staring at him too, it was a father and some little kid, Poe could tell that the kid was probably getting a lecture from his old man about what happens
