AUDRA PACED TO one end of the cell, turned, paced to the other. Turned again. And again. An hour had passed, maybe more, and her throat burned raw from screaming. She had shouted and yelled until her lungs ached, until her eyes watered.
There were no more tears, but fear and anger still chased through her mind, each threatening to take over, to shred the last of her sanity. It was all she could do to keep them in check, and exhaustion made her want to curl up on one of the bunks and disappear into herself. But somehow she kept upright, kept pacing.
When Whiteside had said those two words, she had stood still and silent for a few moments before asking, ‘What do you mean?’
Whiteside had said nothing, had simply turned away, back toward the door of the custody suite, through it, and locked it behind him. Her screams had reverberated between the walls until she could scream no more. Now all she had was forward motion, one foot in front of the other. That or go crazy in here. So she kept moving.
The rattle of keys froze her in place, her back to the door. She heard it open, heard the sheriff’s heavy footsteps on the concrete, then the door closing again.
‘You done hollering?’ he asked.
Audra turned, watched him approach the bars. ‘What did you mean?’ she asked, her voice a hoarse croak.
‘Mean about what?’ he asked, his face blank. Bored, even.
‘What you said about my children. Where are they?’
He leaned his forearm against the bars, stared back at her. ‘You and me are going to have a talk.’
She slapped the bars with her palm, hot pain in her bones. ‘Where are my children?’
‘But first, you need to calm down.’
‘Fuck you. Where are my children?’
‘If you calm down, then we can discuss that.’
She tried to shout, but her voice cracked. ‘Where are my children?’
Whiteside pushed himself away from the bars, said, ‘All right, have it your way. We can talk about it another time.’
He turned and headed back to the door.
Audra grabbed the bars and said, ‘No, please, come back.’
He looked over his shoulder. ‘You ready to be calm?’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding hard. ‘I’m calm.’
‘All right.’ He took the keys from his belt as he came back to the cell, pointed to the bunk at the far end. ‘Sit down over there for me.’
She hesitated, and he said, ‘Go on, sit down, or we can talk another time.’
Audra went to the bunk and did as she was told. As he slipped the key into the lock, he told her to sit on her hands, and she obeyed. He pulled the sliding door back, stepped inside, and closed it again. He leaned his shoulder against the bars and stowed the keys away.
‘You calm?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Okay. Now, I’m going to lay this out for you as best I can, and I want you to stay right there and take it easy. You think you can do that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. Now, I’m going to talk with you about your children, and you aren’t going to like it. But even so, I want you to keep calm. Will you try real hard to keep calm?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, her voice a whisper she could barely hear herself.
Whiteside examined his fingernails for a few moments, a crease in his brow. Then he took a deep breath and looked her in the eye.
‘See, as far as I can remember, there were no children in your car.’
Audra shook her head. ‘What are you talking about? Sean and Louise, they were in the car when you pulled me over. The deputy, whatever her name was, she came, she took them away.’
‘That is not my recollection,’ Whiteside said. ‘What I remember is I pulled you over, you were alone. I radioed Deputy Collins to come assist me in searching you, and I asked her to get hold of Emmet to come tow your car. We waited, he came, I brought you here and booked you in. No children.’
‘Why are you saying this? You know it’s not true. They were there. You saw them. You talked to them. For Christ’s sake, please, just tell—’
Whiteside pushed away from the bars, put his hands on his hips. ‘Thing is, what you’re saying presents me with a problem.’
‘Please, just—’
‘Quiet, now.’ He held a hand up. ‘I’m talking here. You’re telling me you had children in that car when you left New York. Now you’re here in Silver Water, and no children. Assuming you did set off with those kids, I have to ask you: Where are they?’
‘Your deputy, she—’
‘Mrs Kinney, what did you do with your children?’
Audra heard a distant noise like a stampede or a hurricane or a thousand screaming animals. Cold to the very center of her soul, like she’d fallen into an icy lake. She stared back at him, the sound of her own heartbeat building inside her, drowning out everything, even the distant wild clamor.
Whiteside said something. She didn’t know what. She couldn’t hear him.
Then the distance between them disappeared in a blur and she was on him, her fists smashing into his face, and he was falling, and she was on his chest, her nails scraping at his skin, and then her hands were fists again, and she brought them down and down again as his head turned first one way then the other, her blows glancing off his cheeks.
She didn’t know how long she straddled him, striking him again and again, but she didn’t stop until she felt his meaty hand at the center of her chest, between her breasts, and she knew she could do this man no harm, not really, he was too strong. Then he pushed, and she flew backward, weightless for a moment before crashing to the floor, jarring her elbows, the back of her head cracking on the concrete.
Through the black dots in her vision, Audra saw Whiteside rise over her, then drop down, his big fists, a telescopic baton in one. She brought her hands and knees up by instinct, and he whipped the baton across her shins. The pain cut through everything, bright and fierce, and she would have screamed if she’d had the voice for it. Then those big hands gripped her shoulders, flipped her over like she was nothing, and he planted his knee in the small of her back.
Audra tried to draw a breath so she could plead, beg for mercy, but she could barely gasp. Whiteside grabbed her left wrist, pulled it back, twisting her shoulder in its socket. He forced the wrist up her back, and she felt certain he would tear her arm clean off, before she felt the metal circle the wrist. Holding her left hand in place, he took her right wrist and did the same, the pain so great her consciousness wavered.
When both wrists were bound, he held them there, and leaned down so she felt his breath against her ear.
‘Your children are gone,’ he whispered. ‘If you can accept that, you might survive this. If you can’t? Well …’
And then his weight lifted from her, the cell door opening and closing, the jangle of keys.
Alone on the floor, Audra wept.
8
DANNY LEE TOOK the stairs two at a time, three flights up. He paused at the top, let his heartrate settle. Then he walked along the corridor, counting off the doors in the dim light, until he reached 406. The number the boy’s parents had given him.
A good boy, Mrs Woo had said. But he’d changed lately. Stopped talking, become sullen and quiet. His respect for them gone.
Danny knew the story. He’d heard it plenty of times before.
The door rattled along with the bass notes from inside, hip-hop music rumbling within. Must drive the neighbors crazy, he thought. Not that the neighbors would complain.
He made a fist, hammered the door, and waited. No answer. He hammered the door again. Still no answer. Once more with his fist, and a couple of kicks to get the point across.
Now the door opened a few inches, revealing the face of a young man Danny vaguely recognized. One of Harry Chin’s boys.
‘What the fuck?’ the young man said. ‘You want to lose your hand, just knock one more time, motherf—’