'Right,' Fine said. 'I watch television. I know you're just talking crap.'
'Crap?' Nick said. 'You mean that bloody stuff you're gonna find in your underwear every morning?'
Fine had the gall to look smug. 'I don't think I'm going to jail.'
Nick asked, 'What makes you think that?'
'I've got a bargaining chip,' Fine said, smiling.
'What bargaining chip,' Jeffrey shot back, trying not to sound eager. If Fine thought he had power here he would never tell them what he knew.
'Let's just wait for my lawyer to get here,' Fine said, holding out his hands to be cuffed. 'I don't have anything to say without my lawyer.'
'Think about that in general lockup,' Jeffrey said, pulling out his handcuffs.
'Goodness me,' Nick breathed. 'General lockup.'
'What's that?' Fine asked, something close to panic in his voice.
Jeffrey tightened the cuffs on Fine's wrists. 'Just jail.'
'Funny thing about jail, though,' Nick began. 'Lots of fellas in there had someone just like you in their lives when they were growing up.'
Fine turned around. 'What does that mean?'
Jeffrey smiled, turning Fine toward the door. 'Means while you're waiting for your fancy lawyer to drive here all the way from Atlanta, you'll have plenty of time to explain to your fellow inmates how it's all about love.'
'Wait a minute.' Fine stood where he was, even as Jeffrey tried to push him. 'I'll have my own cell,' he said as if he was certain this would happen.
'No you won't, you sick fuck,' Jeffrey said, pushing him so hard that Nick had to catch him before he fell.
'It's the law,' Fine insisted. 'You can't put me in with other inmates.'
'I can do whatever I want,' Jeffrey told him.
'Wait a minute,' Fine repeated, his voice shrill and panicked. 'You can't do that.'
'Why not?' Jeffrey asked, grabbing the preacher by the collar and forcing him out of the room.
'No,' Fine said, reaching for the door but missing. His fingernails trailed across the wood as he grabbed for anything to hold on to.
'You got something to tell me, Dave?' Jeffrey asked, pushing him down the hall.
'Help me,' Fine said, reaching for a patrolman who happened to be coming out of the bathroom. The cop looked at Fine, then Jeffrey, then walked on as if he hadn't seen anything.
'Move,' Jeffrey said, still holding him up by his collar.
'Somebody help me!' Fine screamed, bending his knees until he was on the floor. Jeffrey still dragged him down the hallway by his shirt collar.
'Help!' Fine screamed.
'Help you like you helped Jenny?' Nick asked, walking beside him. 'Help you like you're helping Lacey?'
'I don't know where she is!' Fine screamed, putting his hands on the floor to give more resistance.
Jeffrey saw Maria stick her head around the corner. She looked at Fine, then turned back around.
'Help me!' Fine cried, his voice hoarse from the effort. 'Oh, Lord, please help me.'
Jeffrey's hand was cramping. He let go, and Fine dropped to the floor, sobbing. 'Oh, Lord, please deliver me from these men,' he prayed.
Nick bent down in front of him. 'The Lord helps those who help themselves,' he suggested.
'But you can keep on praying, Dave,' Jeffrey told him. 'You can pray the papers don't print how you died from having your asshole ripped open.'
Nick put his hand on Fine's shoulder. 'Hate to have your wife and kids read about that, Dave. It's a bad way to have to go.'
Fine looked up, tears streaming down his face. 'Okay,' he said. 'Okay, okay.'
'Okay what?' Jeffrey asked.
'Okay,' he repeated. 'I might know where she is.'
Jeffrey drove while Nick sat in the back seat alongside Fine. Behind them, an unmarked car with four GBI officers drove at a safe distance.
'You better not be fucking with us, Dave,' Jeffrey said, making a right turn to circle the block for the third time.
'I told you I'm not sure what the address is,' Fine insisted. 'Dottie only took me here once.'
'What'd she take you here for?' Nick asked.
'Nothing,' he mumbled, looking out the window.
Jeffrey looked at him in the rearview mirror. 'This better not be just you postponing the inevitable.'
'I'm not, okay?' Fine snapped. 'I told you this was where she did some business.'
'What kind of business?' Jeffrey asked.
Fine looked like he wasn't going to answer, but for some reason he did. Jeffrey liked to think it was guilt that made Fine tell them things, but he had been a cop long enough to know it was plain and simple stupidity.
Fine said, 'This guy, he keeps kids here sometimes.'
'You sure it's just him alone there?' Jeffrey asked.
'Yes,' Fine insisted. 'It's mostly used as a safe house.'
'Safe for who?' Nick asked.
'Who do you think?' Fine snapped. 'He keeps pictures mostly, but a couple of times I saw some kids and a couple of cameras.'
'And out of the goodness of your heart you reported him to the police,' Nick suggested.
Fine stared out the window, probably feeling sorry for himself. They had spent an hour driving to Macon, then another two hours driving around different subdivisions looking for this house that Dave Fine said he would recognize only by sight. Jeffrey looked in the rearview mirror, wondering how much longer they had before somebody called the Macon cops about two suspicious-looking cars in the neighborhood.
They were on tricky ground here. Technically, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had jurisdiction over the state, but as a courtesy, they should have notified the Macon Police Department that they were conducting surveillance on their turf. As Jeffrey and Nick weren't even sure Dave Fine had ever been here, let alone whether or not Lacey Patterson was being held in Macon, there wasn't much they could tell the Macon Police Department. They couldn't get a warrant without a street address, but Nick was counting on im-minent jeopardy to cut through that red tape. They could always say later that they saw something
