I nod.
“He then went to sleep, woke sometime around sunrise, conveniently”—that word again—“left the murder weapon in the toilet, before walking another five miles to the highway, where he hitched a ride on a bread truck bound for Canada.”
“Bread truck was just an example. It could have been any kind of truck. Or not a truck at all. Maybe just a regular car. Maybe somewhere other than Canada.”
Ryan says, “Noted.”
Quinn continues: “Then, instead of alerting state and local police of this dangerous fugitive’s possible whereabouts, you decided to take a three-and-a-half-hour drive—making good time due to light traffic, and only stopping once for McDonald’s and a bathroom break—directly to this precinct to present Detective Ryan and myself with the murder weapon, allowing the fugitive ample time to cross the Canadian border.”
“Yes, exactly,” I say.
“Okay then,” says Quinn.
“When you say it, it sounds . . .”
“Ridiculous?”
“What about the gun?” I say.
“What about the gun?”
“It’s right there.”
We all look. Ryan scratches his bearded butt chin. Quinn pokes his teeth with the tip of a mechanical pencil. I try to say something, but find myself dry-mouthed. Rachel tags in.
“Can’t you, like, do ballistics or whatever?”
“Sure,” says Quinn. “And we will. It takes time.”
I scan the room for the map board on which newspaper cutouts are connected to mug shots via dry-erase marker. If this were basic cable, then I’d be the suspect, the unsuspecting mark in a vast conspiracy, torn between my distrust of the cops and my fear of retribution from a vaguely ethnic underworld gang. My name would be circled in red, the constant at which all points connect. In real life, the white guy is presumed innocent. Why pursue him when there’s an easier mark with a court-appointed lawyer, like Donnell?
Besides, these detectives aren’t the savants we know from TV. Quinn resembles a cornstalk with his amber waves of flattop and the willowy body that sways beneath the ceiling fan’s artificial wind. He stares at my sister’s T-shirt. She turned it inside out before we came inside, but the silkscreened letters can still be seen, backward, through the thin poly-blend.
“Spock cuf?” Quinn says. “What’s that, like, a Star Trek thing?”
“Sure,” says Rachel.
He gives her a Vulcan salute. Rachel offers a peace sign in return.
“The gun,” I manage.
“Look,” Quinn says. “Even if the bullets match, and even if this alleged guy’s prints are on the weapon, how do we know you didn’t put them there yourself to help your pal Donnell?”
“You’re saying I . . .”
“I’m not saying anything. Just that we’ll look into it. But right now we’ve got a guy going to trial, and we have a motive, and multiple witnesses, and an extremely damning piece of evidence. Of course, we’ll continue to investigate if anything comes up, but right now we’re happy with the story we’ve got.”
I look to Ryan for help, but the other detective has sat down to rest, fingers pressed against his temples like he’s listening hard or not at all. Rachel smacks her gum and blows an oversized bubble. Quinn holds up his pencil, but Rachel pops the bubble on her own.
“I feel faint,” I say, and grab the doorknob, of all things, to steady myself. The knob turns and the bolt unlatches, and I’m dragged halfway into the hall. I pull myself back in and search for the right thing to say, a password that might unlock these detectives’ vaulted hearts.
“Everybody grieves differently,” says Quinn. I didn’t take him for a pop psychologist, but perhaps my own response is so prescribed that the detective’s on autopilot, repeating platitudes from a department-issued handbook on grief. “We don’t always get the kind of closure we want. I understand this impulse to keep searching, to find a story that better suits our needs.”
“This isn’t a story,” I say.
“Whatever you want to call it.”
“Broder, he took a real gun—that gun—and shot . . .”
“Ricky,” Rachel says.
“That’s possible,” says Ryan.
“Donnell’s in jail right now. In a cell, a real cell, actual jail. And his daughter—god, Jackie, I don’t . . . Don’t you care?”
“Of course we do,” says Ryan. “Like I said, we’ll look into it.”
I let myself slide down to the floor.
“I want to see him,” I say. “Donnell. I want to see him.”
My closest point of comparison, smell-wise, to this prison, is the Port Authority bus depot basement. But even that cesspool of slop is less nauseating than what permeates this place, an institutional haze comprised of foot fungus, vending-machine ham sandwiches, and human feces that comes up through the grates in a continuous wave.
“I guess you get used to it,” I say, and look around. Visitors pinch noses while the visited inmates remain calmly anosmic. I want to present a strong front for Donnell, to look right for the part that I’m here to perform, that of gung-ho redeemer on a mission for justice, undaunted by odors that stand in his way. The avocado tint Rachel’s cheeks have taken on does not recommend her for the sidekick role.
“Used to what?” says Donnell.
I mime sniffing the air, choking on fumes.
“Oh that. A sewer backed up this morning. I don’t think it’s usually this bad.”
The room looks like a cafeteria, but there are bars on the windows and a lineman-esque guardbot blocks the exit. The primary activity appears to be eating, and the prefix I’d use to mark its style is: speed-. Burgers vanish into faces, leaving drippings on tables and grease-spotted paper bags. Chicken bones pile up like Jenga tiles. Fingers are licked. No one is impeded by the smell.
The inmates are young, baby-faced twentysomethings, maybe even some teens. Their visitors are uniformly female, some with infants or toddlers in tow. Most could be mistaken for students, which would make Donnell their teacher. Except that, today, his air of erudition has been swapped for fatigue. His Afro has lost volume. His lips are dry and chapped. He hasn’t mentioned Carrie Bradshaw even once.
I offer my ChapStick and Donnell accepts. The guardbot beeps
