A Night at the Asylum (3 page)

Except…the dark figure wasn’t walking in the
direction of the bar, but toward me.
He
was distinctly male,
his rambling movements slow and ominous. His clothes blended into
the black street behind him. I knew almost everyone in this town
and certainly there was something familiar about his gait, but the
streetlights were too dim and his outline too ambiguous to make a
positive determination.

Immediately on guard, I glanced again at the
porch light of my house, shining like a beacon burning bright. The
keys were in my pocket, ready to use as a weapon, but I couldn’t
turn my back on this person coming toward me. I couldn’t find the
courage to run. In fact, I was transfixed, caught in a nightmare
decidedly less real than the one I’d just had about Tommy. Every
nerve in my body told me to
move, dammit, move,
but my legs
refused to oblige.

Still, my fear was not quite realized until
the thin strip of metal in his hands caught a glint off the
streetlight overhead. My heart hammered in my chest and I managed
to back away blindly, smacking into the planter behind me. There
was a splat as the giant soda cup exploded on the sidewalk
below.

Just across the street from me now, he heard
the noise and seemed to notice me for the first time. The metal
object in his hand moved menacingly. I swore under my breath when I
realized it was a long, slender kitchen knife.

Time was moving at half pace. A million
thoughts were coursing through my veins, but somehow the violence
of those thoughts did not set my body in motion. Some robot part of
my mind began to take inventory, filing facts that might serve me
later. He was taller than me, but barely, with broad shoulders. He
was wearing a hood that blotted out his face. He stumbled a bit; he
was mumbling to himself. And I, perpetual idiot that I was, could
only stand there as he approached to a point of a few feet in front
of me. He was definitely leaving the sidewalk, definitely headed
right for me. It was then that I recognized the peculiarity of his
walk as being that of intoxication. I didn’t know whether to be
more scared or relieved.

This guy was drunk off his ass.

Yes, I knew this person. The way he moved
gave it away first, now that I could see him more clearly, now that
he would soon be close enough to touch. He was guarded, his arms
drawn close to his chest, almost as if he was holding the knife to
fend me off rather than threaten me. Unkempt, rust-colored hair
stuck out from beneath his dark hood. He reached for me. I called
his name.

Just as he was stepping onto the sidewalk, he
stumbled over a pothole in the road and went down like a tugboat in
an undertow. He didn’t even try to catch himself. His chin hit the
pavement, splitting open like a second smile. The knife he was
carrying skittered away from him and landed at my feet.
Instinctively I picked it up. He made an odd gurgling sound and
then he was quiet, apparently passed out.

I stood in the middle of the sidewalk like a
moron, waiting for my legs to work again, watching everything
happen with astonishment and detachment. My sneakers crunched on
loose gravel as I crept closer still. My breathing was shallow,
heart galloping insanely. Where was the sense to run now that I
could? I crouched down, my mind screaming at me incredulously.
Ahead of all the other things I should have been thinking, I only
wanted to see his face. I only wanted to be sure it was him. His
chin was bleeding freely now, painting gory polka dots on the
pavement. I pulled back his hood and he moved, groaning in pain. I
recoiled automatically, sticking the knife out in front of me.

Irony always has a way of making me its
bitch. This night was not going to be an exception. Poised over a
bleeding, unconscious man, holding a knife, was exactly how I was
standing when the headlights of the police car washed over me.

****

Two O’Clock

The room where I was held was white, square,
generic.

I’d never seen this part of the police
station before. Apparently this was where they brought all the
hardened criminals that had earned the privilege of a shakedown,
which explained why it looked mostly untouched. My eyes burned from
the unsympathetic fluorescents overhead and I steadied my trembling
hands around my complimentary can of soda. In spite of all the
caffeine I’d consumed over the last two hours, my eyelids were
fighting the good fight. Cold, stark fear was helping, but even it
would run its course eventually.

What a perfect microcosm of my stupid life
this mess was turning out to be. I felt ill thinking about my
parents. Were they really getting another call from the police in
the middle of the night? That’s the thing about legal age: it’s but
a useless technicality in a town where news spreads like wildfire
and you have no one else to post bail.

I didn’t know how much time had passed or how
long I would be here, consigned to this chair. What I did know was
that it had been Emmett Sutter, son of the police commissioner, who
had gone from drunken Gas N’ Go terrorist to my own personal
knife-wielding maniac. He might have slashed my throat, carved his
initials into me, whatever – and here
I
was being treated
like the criminal. It could only happen in this hole of a town.

But had Emmett really just broke psychotic
with me in his crazy crosshairs? The odds were considerable. There
were three Sutter boys, and thanks to their father’s community
status, the eldest two’s penchant for petty thievery and panty
abduction was continually met with the mildest of consequences. Ead
was the oldest, around my brother’s age. He was the poster boy for
why girls pack pepper spray and, delightfully, in his fifth year on
the police force himself. Eli, the middle child, had been shipped
off to military school long ago for his infractions. Emmett was the
youngest, known for keeping his head down and his mouth shut, until
now. It was always the quiet ones, wasn’t it? At least that’s what
they would have said if he had gutted me in the street.

Emmett’s face now floated in my mind, causing
that tight cinch of dread in my stomach. Maybe it was what happened
after we were picked up that kept nudging at me. A lone policeman
was the unfortunate soul that had rolled up on us, and he’d pulled
his weapon. Being an almost-victim of random violence is shocking,
but nothing like having a cop from a notoriously backward police
force point a gun in your face. I explained myself. To my disbelief
he put Emmett and I in the back of the cruiser together,
unrestrained. The officer was young, a new guy who had just moved
to town, and he didn’t know us. He didn’t radio for an ambulance
and he kept asking a barely conscious Emmett what he was “on”. He
called in to dispatch to let them know Emmett had been “found” and
I knew my assumption at the Gas N’ Go about the trail of cops had
been right. I was in the back of a squad car with my would-be
murderer, but it was hard to be afraid when Emmett opened his eyes
then and looked straight at me. Instead I felt a deep, misplaced
concern for what would happen to him. He was trashed; I’d never
seen him like this. “Insulin,” he whispered, shadows crossing his
face as we headed into the middle of town and the safety of
brighter streetlights. “He gave me…insulin.”

I had no idea what he meant by that. Still, I
tried helpfully to advise our new policeman friend to get Emmett to
the hospital – just to be safe. The officer did not appreciate my
suggestion; clearly, his orders came from higher up. When we got to
the station he left us alone in the car. Emmett was motionless, and
I seriously considered that he might be dead. Then slowly he moved
his head in my direction and, his green eyes narrowed in confusion,
looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Sara?” he rasped,
and I felt a chill go through me. Emmett had probably never said
two words to me before this, and yet he spoke my name so intimately
and with such familiarity that I felt an uncomfortable tug in the
middle of my chest. “Is that you?” he asked.

“Yes?” I was so shaken, it became a question.
“Are – are you…” It seemed ridiculous, but there was only one thing
to ask. “Are you okay?”

His head dropped against the back of the seat
again, as if his neck wasn’t sturdy enough to hold it up. His eyes
fluttered closed. Then he whispered, “I did it. I’m so sorry, Sara.
It was me.”

That awkward moment when a guy tries to
kill you but apologizes
…I just stared at him. Any thoughts I
might have had were cut off by the car door opening. Roy Conroy, a
friend of my father, took me inside. The other cop – the new guy –
hauled Emmett off to God-knows-where. I was led to this broom
closet and told to stay put. And as the minutes passed and there
was more time to mull over what had happened, the whole situation
just seemed so very, very bizarre. I couldn’t sit still in my
chair.

Claustrophobia gripped me, inciting a need to
rebel. The stuffiness of the tiny room was suffocating. I went to
the door, opening it a few inches. To the right was the front desk,
but it was dark. To the left were the jail cells, small and empty.
Cool air circulated in the hallway and I leaned against the
doorframe, inhaling.

Low sounds of an argument filtered through a
closed door down the hall. The words were muffled, but pressing my
ear to the opening, I could just make them out. “Do you know how
tired I get of having to rectify the stupid shit you do?” There was
the sound of a strike, flesh upon flesh, and I gasped. “If you’re
going to attempt something so moronic, at least be a man and finish
the job.” There were heavy footsteps, and then the knob jiggled. I
landed back in the chair just as a figure swished quickly past the
doorway.
What was all that about?
I gripped the soda can in
my hands again, trying to concentrate on the minutes creeping
by.

The wait wasn’t long. Roy, the officer who
had escorted me here, soon bustled his large frame back into the
room. He was sweating. The nervousness in his expression managed to
kick my own panic into overdrive.

“Sara, I didn’t call your parents yet,” he
huffed, causing me to exhale in noisy relief.

“Thank you, Roy,” I said earnestly. “Thank
you.”

“Sure.” He sat down, pulling out a pen and
notepad. “How’s your dad doing? Last time I saw him was at the
auction in St. Joe...” He kept looking from me to the door and back
again, gasoline on the fire of my paranoia.

My fundamental need to curtail bullshit took
hold, forcing me to interject. “He’s great. What the hell is going
on, Roy?”

Roy knew me. He was privy to my impatient
ways. “Listen, Sara…I’m doing all I can for you on my end. I know
you didn’t do this, but the truth is…it doesn’t look good.”

Nothing else processed past those words,
because my mind was imploding, right there in that little room.
“What do you mean, like,
charges?
Yeah, it looked bad, and I
thought maybe I was in trouble, but I never really thought I’d
actually
be
in trouble –” My babbling, mostly out of pure
disbelief, was reaching definite dog-whistle frequency.

“Sara,” Roy interrupted. “Settle down. We
need to handle this calmly.” He was using lots of hand gestures;
flailing, really. “You can have a lawyer–”

“
Lawyer?
Are you serious? No!” My
voice dropped into a weird whisper-shout. “I told you I don’t want
my parents knowing about this! Work with me here, Roy!”

It was unbelievable what my life had become.
If only I was a normal, responsible adult, with no one to report my
malfeasance to and no one to blame but myself.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Roy
promised. “Okay?”

In spite of the idiocy of this whole
situation, I was assuaged by the surety in his voice. For the most
part, I trusted Roy. He and my dad had played varsity football
together, for God’s sake. Roy had gotten me out of trouble a few
times before, done things for me, like selling my Girl Scout
cookies to the entire police force or dropping me off at home in
his own car when I’d been out partying too late. It was hard to
believe he’d allow me to languish in one of those cells.

So I talked, trying to remember as much as
possible. He scribbled down everything. At the end there was that
tug in my chest again when I spoke Emmett’s name. “What’s going to
happen to him? I think…I think someone might have given him
something,” I said cautiously.

“I’m sure he’ll sleep it off,” was Roy’s
allusive answer, and then the door opened and that wonderfully
breathable air from the hallway came swirling in. On the heels of
the breeze was a tall, trench-coated man with dark, slicked-back
hair and piercing eyes. Immediately I recognized Brad Sutter,
police commissioner and Emmett’s father.

Well, that explained why Roy had his panties
in a bunch.

I’d only seen him in person a few times, but
my reaction to Brad tonight was the same as always: the guy creeped
me out. He had the self-important air of a politician, the handsome
but cold face of a man who unfailingly got whatever he wanted.
There was more to my disgust for him than I would ever say out
loud. In high school his sons would stalk the hallway with black
eyes and bruised arms. I’d seen his wife in the grocery store a few
years before she died of cancer, wearing sunglasses in the cereal
aisle, trying hard to conceal her own shiner. At the very least
this man was intimidating; at most he was a real piece of shit. But
his charismatic façade and merciless attitude had earned him the
highest police position in our town, and his arrival probably meant
two things: that he didn’t trust Roy to cook the proverbial books
for Emmett and that I didn’t have a prayer. It dawned on me then
that it was Brad’s voice I’d heard during the argument down the
hall. It seemed he couldn’t go a day without planting his fist in
someone’s face. Roy immediately gave up the chair across from me
for Brad, much to my dismay. While I was getting grilled Roy was
going to stand in the corner like a coward. I swore under my
breath.