“Paul, it’s Alan.”
“Alan! How is he?”
“Fuck you, Paul.”
“Just hold on. I’m in a meeting. Can I call you back?”
“No!”
There was the sound of shuffling. Muffled voices. A door closed, then Paul Murphy’s rough voice. “You wouldn’t have even bothered If I had said anything.”
“I don’t want to play your fucking games.”
“Believe me. It’s not a game.”
“March 15, 2160. If that’s not a goddamn game, then I don’t know what is.”
“Jesus, Alan. Decenter yourself, maybe.”
“Decenter myself? You sonuvabith! I got the records. Saint Luke Community Healthcare, 9 PM, March 15, 2160. You think this is fucking therapy? Are you trying to fucking help me?”
“No, Alan. It’s not a game. It’s not therapy.”
“Then what, Paul?”
“It’s a coincidence. It’s just a damn coincidence. Please tell me there’s still room for that in your philosophy.”
“I don’t have a fucking philosophy.”
There was a long silence.
“I’m not doing it, Paul. You get someone else. You get fucking Becky to do it. I can’t—”
“Then you tell that to him, Alan. You look that boy in the eyes and tell him.”
The call ended.
Alan looked at the phone in his hand and thought of crushing it, of hurling it onto the parking lot asphalt. He would have done it too, had his last phone not met a similar demise less than a month ago.
----------------------------------------
The holding cells were down a hallway at the back of the station. It was one large room partitioned into eight cells with cement walls on three sides and bars on the front. This must have been an older part of the building because they had to step down into the cell room.
The pungent aroma of body odor instinctively brought Alan’s hand to his nose.
“Sorry about that,” said Gwen. “They don’t bathe.”
In the first cell, five heaps of dirty clothes were arranged against the wall. No, not heaps—there was a hand, a leg, a foot.
“Since when did you start arresting Gretas?” Alan asked.
“Since about eight-thirty this morning when Comstock went off the deep end. He tried to get them in jumpsuits, but it didn’t work out so well.”
Each cell had a bench extending from the back wall, similar to D-Pad but without the padding. In the corner was a stainless-steel toilet.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Against the walls outside the cells, concrete benches had been poured ages ago so guards and the curious could sit and watch the prisoners like animals in a zoo. There was no clock in sight nor a window. Anyone locked back here for more than a few hours would quickly lose their sense of time.
The boy was in the last cell facing the Gretas across the room. He was slumped in the corner on his bunk, a knee hanging over the edge, too short for his foot to touch the floor.
“Francis?” said Gwen. “Dr. Smith is here.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t let you in. Comstock is still processing your paperwork.” She looked up at the security camera that was centered on them.
Alan grabbed the cold, solid bars. “Give us a minute,” he said.
“You have ten. The best I can do right now.” She gave him a faint smile, then returned to the front.
“Francis?”
The boy stared at him from the back of the little cell, but he could have been a thousand miles away.
“I’m sorry,” said Alan. “It shouldn’t have happened like that.”
Francis barely shrugged. His hair spilled over half his face, hiding his bruise like the broken wing of a sad, black bird.
“You see?” Francis said.
Alan had to strain to hear.
“I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“Do you believe me?”
He chose his words as if he were defusing a bomb. “Francis, when they assigned me to… evaluate you…” The boy’s gaze was penetrating. He felt his heart thudding. “When they asked me to help you, they didn’t tell me some things.”
“I don’t need you,” said Francis loud enough that his words bounced off the walls.
“I’m not the best person to help you.”
“Because you don’t believe me.”
“I believe that you believe. But it’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“Your birthday… it’s—”
“I know my fucking birthday. The ides of March,” said Francis. “It’s unlucky. I’m unlucky. I know.”
“No. God, no. It’s me…” said Alan. He was fucking this up.
“Just go away. I’m fine.” The boy crossed the cement floor of his cell on bare feet. His small frame. His bruised and swollen face. The too-large orange jumpsuit drooping off a slender shoulder. He stood before him, arms crossed defiantly.
At that moment, Alan should have turned and walked out, gone directly to the liquor store and maxed out his card on the strongest gut-rot he could find. Instead, he heard himself say, “Come here.”
He slipped his arms through the bars and held them out.
For a moment, Francis didn’t move. He looked at Alan, then at the Gretas across the way, then up to the camera that was no longer looking at them.
“I’m sorry, Alan,” he whispered.
“It’s okay,” said Alan.
He leaned into Alan’s arms. His frame trembled. He was feverish. His small hand between the steel bars on Alan’s shoulder.
He cried.
He would have been the same age. The same age to the hour, to the very minute.
Would that other boy have placed a grubby hand on his shoulder and cried against his chest?
Who was he kidding? His career wasn’t going anywhere. He had six months at best until Paul Murphy was totally retired. It was Murphy who kept him in the clinic.
The professional wall crumbled, leaving his life in a heap of rubble at his feet.
Becky would be furious. She’d say he wasn’t fit. She had blocked him from every juvenile case since… since that night. And she would do the same when she learned of Francis.
Fuck her.
The memory came so hard, so brutal, he couldn’t push it down. He needed the vodka. There was a new bottle in the back of his car.
It was a cold night, God, so cold. There was the crust of frozen snow, glowing like a pearl. He’d been writing the book and was almost finished. Zoey should have been in bed with—
Next the fire. He burned the book before he called 911. Burned it in his hands. He would need a skin graft.
Alan shook his head. No. No memories. Only the alone feeling. Focus on that…
They say it’s because the drugs change the way you think, and if they miss a jump… there’s no telling what they’re capable of. Three percent. That was the number who could detox. Only three percent. If Alan could do it, why couldn’t Zoey?
Damn you, Murphy. You knew.
I’ll protect you, boy. I’ll protect you from the shadows. I know all about them, how they move beneath the stars on winter nights when the breath is steam. They come to freeze you forever and make you afraid to do anything until you die.
“Dr. Smith? Alan. Alan!” Gwen was shaking him. “You should go now. I gave you an extra twenty. Comstock will be back.”
The lights flickered. That smell of unwashed bodies and sweaty clothes. Alan extracted himself from the cold bars. Francis was on his bunk, a knee up, one leg over, a little foot with a scar dangled above the floor. In somber silence, he watched Alan leave.