A Night at the Asylum (4 page)

Brad stared down at Roy’s yellow notepad like
he cared what was written there. I glanced at Roy uncertainly and
he avoided my eyes, apparently preoccupied with his own anxiety.
Brad looked up at me, and his mouth curved into a slow smile.

It was the coldest smile I had ever seen. It
was like a snake.

Shifting in the chair, I crossed and
uncrossed my legs. Brad’s attention settled on my face. His skin
looked too tight against his bones. “Sara Featherstone. How’s it
going?” He grinned, saying my name in the typical condescending
vernacular of our local lawmen. “What were you doing out so late
tonight, Sara?”

I attempted to speak, but my esophagus felt
coated with sludge. It was a struggle to push my voice past it. “I
was walking home…from the gas station.”

“At one o’clock in the morning?”

“Yeah. Is there something…illegal about
that?”

Roy coughed loudly from across the room…a
warning.
Calm
.

Brad leaned in close. His long arms overtook
the table, his face only inches from mine. To outsiders, this guy
was confident, intense. To me he was a sack of bones wearing too
much self-tanner…and still utterly terrifying. “I’ve got a dash cam
video of you holding a knife over an incapacitated victim.” He
stared at me, reptilian lips pressed into a thin, straight line.
“You’re in a lot of trouble, young lady,” he growled.

The horror in my heart was staggering. I’d
walked straight from one nightmare into another. There was a real
danger I could blurt something offensive and be expeditiously
thrown in jail, and Roy seemed to sense this. He stepped forward.
“Sara’s already gone over everything with me,” he offered.

Brad shut him down. “I can read.”

Roy and I exchanged looks. I chewed my bottom
lip.

“How long have you known the victim, Sara?”
Brad asked.

The victim?!
My brain exclaimed.
Choking back those words, I instead answered cautiously, “Do you
mean
Emmett?
” Screw his politics. I wanted him to know I’d
recognized his son’s face. “Since…maybe first grade?”

“And had you spoken with him just prior to
the incident that took place in the road?”

“I’ve never really spoken to him.” It was a
strange question, or at least strangely worded. What was he
really
asking? “I saw him at the gas station…but I didn’t
talk to him.”

“And then?”

“Nothing. Big M—er, Mike Cliff, the clerk,
tried to kick him out.”

“Why would he do that?”

I paused. That niggling part of my brain –
the part that remembered how trashed Emmett had been – seemed to be
wrestling with throwing him under the bus to save myself. Perfect.
Just what I needed, a case of Stockholm syndrome. “I assumed it was
because he’d been drinking,” I answered carefully, deciding to
stick to what was readily apparent.

“Did you follow the victim?” Brad asked.

“Why the hell would I do that?” Another
warning glare from Roy burned into my forehead. I wanted to control
myself, but being falsely accused happens to be one of my tipping
points to boiling, impetuous rage.

“Maybe you wanted to get revenge for
something? Maybe rob him? Only
you
know the motive, Sara.
That’s what I’m trying to understand.” Brad’s tone was
infuriatingly apathetic.

“Rob him? Why would…no!
He
approached
me
with the knife. Then he passed out in the street and
dropped it and I picked it up.” So much for not throwing Emmett
under that bus, but dammit, it was him or me. Roy’s admonishing
glance told me to simmer down, but my rant carried on. “You keep
calling him the victim, by the way,” I spat bitterly. Okay, this
was just erupting into full-on mouth diarrhea. This wasn’t just
throwing Emmett under the bus. This was driving it over the top of
him. “Your
son
came after
me
. The knife belonged to
him, and I was just defending myself.”

“From someone who was passed out in the
middle of the road?” Brad pounced. “You just said you’d seen him
earlier and that you believed he was drunk!”

“I did!” My voice was a whine. “But…” It was
pointless. We were both doomed. That sound of the strike I’d heard,
flesh upon flesh…that was Emmett’s fate and jail was mine. I
had
thought Emmett was drunk, but wasn’t so sure of that
anymore. His words in the back of the police car might get us both
in more trouble – I would keep those to myself.

“Okay.” Brad smirked a little, crossing his
arms in front of his chest. “I think I get it. You want to stick to
your story. You want to press charges against the victim. That’s
fine. We’ll have to book you and hold you, let you see the judge.
The evidence doesn’t lie, Sara. It’ll take some time to push it
through, several days maybe, depending on how backed up they are.
But uh…I’ll get the paperwork started, if that’s what you want to
do.”

Panic rose like bile in the back of my
throat. I imagined myself in a cell for weeks until the overworked
(and most likely bribed) judicial system wriggled me into their
schedule. And then it hit me: this whole thing – every backwoods,
small-town, good ol’ boy bit of it – was about deterring me from
pressing charges against Emmett. Had I even been planning to? I
didn’t know anymore. “What I want to do…” his words echoed from my
lips slowly. Was he even giving me a choice?

He had me right where he wanted me.

Roy pushed away from the wall and came toward
us. “Maybe I could talk to Sara alone for a minute, Commissioner
Sutter,” he stammered, his fat fingers clasping each other like
sausages. “I’ve known her since she was a little girl…she’s a good
kid.” He nodded at me reassuringly.

Brad stood abruptly, his trench coat barely
moving against his tall, slim body. He snapped his fingers. “That’s
right, I knew I recognized your name. Your father owns the café on
Ninth.” Casually he wagged his finger, as if our conversation had
suddenly turned inconsequential, friendly. “The coffee there…best
in town.”

“Okay,” I replied evenly.

He became somber for a moment. “I remember
the night your brother died.”

Immediately I bristled, my hands balling into
fists at my side. Really? He was going to speak Tommy’s name?
Nausea swept over me, made me tremble in the tiny chair.

“I was the first one on the scene. It was
gruesome.
” Brad shook his head with sympathy so fake he
could have had it implanted during his last face lift. His dark,
piercing eyes met mine. “He really should have been wearing a
helmet.”

My mouth opened, but my voice was silent.
He’d actually rendered me speechless.

“You think about what you’re going to do,
Sara,” Brad said as he opened the door, still holding my gaze.
“What a shame it would be for your parents to get another call in
the middle of the night.”

His words were like a burn on my brain, and
the sludge in my throat returned, choking me. Roy stealthily held
me in my chair, restraining me as Brad walked out, his dark coat
swirling behind him. When he was gone, I pushed Roy away and put my
head in my hands, tears stinging the corners of my eyes. My lips
tasted like I’d bitten through to blood.

“Sara, I’m sorry,” Roy sighed.

“Don’t…just…leave me alone.” Brad had totally
played me. I was angry at myself that I’d let the prick make me
cry. My stomach wanted to empty its contents on the cheap,
scratched table.

Roy sighed. He lowered his voice, leaning
toward me. “Don’t take it personally, kid. Brad’s an asshole.” He
eyed me apologetically and his thick, warm hand patted mine. “I
know this has been awful for you. But I think there’s something you
should know.”

“What?” Slowly my eyes opened, pain from the
buzzing lights overhead piercing through my skull.

“Brad told me Emmett has had some…issues,
okay? Kid’s got a drug problem. It happens.”

He gave me insulin
. Emmett’s words
rang in my memory even as I fought back angry tears.

Roy paused a minute, then continued, watching
me. “He wasn’t in his right mind tonight when he met up with you.
He’s like you, he’s a good kid. A mess like this is just gonna make
it harder on him to get the help he needs.”

I wiped my nose with the back of my hand.
“What are you trying to say? What is it you want from me?” This
situation had officially gotten old. My need to leave this
oppressive room was overwhelming.

Roy folded his fingers together patiently.
“What I’m saying is…maybe I could get Brad to just drop the
charges. On both sides. You could go home, Emmett could get
stitched up…just chalk the whole thing up to what it was…a big
misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding?” I whimpered. “So you’re
asking me to just forget it?” My encounter with Emmett merited
brain bleach, for sure, but I’d never shrug off what Brad had
done.

“What choice do you have? Do you really want
to spend the next couple of weeks in a cell here?”

“Are you two really good-cop/bad-copping
me?”

Roy looked stricken. It was either because
I’d really offended him or because I was right.

My pulse was vibrating at my temples. I
didn’t care if it was all an elaborate ruse to keep Emmett out of
trouble, didn’t even care if it meant Brad won. I didn’t give a
damn about anything anymore except being in my own bed. With a sigh
I told Roy as much, and to my relief, he nodded in agreement. “Let
me see what we can do,” he said.

As soon as he left I stalked across the room
and opened the door. My tears hardened into anger once again.
Screw it,
I thought, thoroughly done with waiting around.
This dog and pony show was over
now
.

I took one look at the jail yawning at the
end of the hall, dark and empty, and cursed under my breath. Who
was I kidding? This place scared the crap out of me.

Still, I could not go back in that little
room. Pulling the door closed behind me, I collapsed against the
wall in the wood-paneled hallway. The blood that pulsed in my brain
became a barrage of overbearing drums. I closed my eyes to try to
quiet the incessant pounding.

That’s when I sensed someone watching me, a
darkly appreciative, cold gaze. Feeling mildly unnerved, I
straightened, looking around. The door had opened in the room the
argument had exploded from earlier, and there was a man slowly
walking toward me. At first glance he looked like Emmett, but this
person was too tall, his swagger too obnoxious.

It was none other than Ead Sutter, Brad’s
eldest son.

My back stiffened, purely on instinct. He
was
watching me, with beady blue eyes that roved unabashedly
down my entire body and back up with a smirk. He was only slightly
taller than me, his close-cropped reddish blond hair giving him the
appearance, upon first glance, of being clean-cut and civilized.
But his features were sharp and rat-like, a perpetual sneer. They
repelled me as much as Emmett’s inexplicably drew me in.

The words Brad had shouted behind the closed
door replayed in my head. “At least be a man and finish the job.”
The connotation in that sentence was frightening, and my mind
wandered. Which of his delinquent sons had he been admonishing? The
purplish bruise across Ead’s cheek seemed to confirm the sound of
the strike.

Even with that humiliation, Ead was leering
at me, walking too close.
If you so much as breathe on me, I
will scream rape,
I glared. The woody scent of his cheap
cologne filled the hallway. He was wearing cowboy boots, the tinny
sound of the metal tips scraping the floor, and his empty gun
holster rattled as he moved. I almost laughed. Everyone in town
knew the story of how he’d nearly shot the governor’s foot off
during a visit and had his firearm taken away indefinitely. That
had all been a little too public for Daddy to sweep under the rug.
Six months later, Ead’s gun holster was still empty. What an
idiot.

Don’t talk to me,
I repeated in my
head.
Don’t talk to me
. Of course he stopped right in front
of me with a chuckle, obviously waiting for me to look up. I
resisted only until realizing he wouldn’t go away unless his vile
presence was acknowledged.

“Tommy Featherstone’s little sister,” his
thin, drawling voice sneered. “You’re looking…uptight as always.”
He stuck his arm against the wall in an inappropriate lean toward
me. Everything he said dripped blatantly with sexual narcissism.
“What were you and my little brother doing out in the middle of the
street together?”

I gritted my teeth, determined not to speak.
I’d never said a word to him and hoped I’d never have to, which was
quite the lofty ideal for someone whose mouth frequently went
renegade. The truth is, if I was creeped out by Brad, I was
terrified
of Ead. If I could have chosen one dude not to
ever meet in a dark alley, it would have been him.

Quickly as he’d approached me, he walked away
guffawing to himself, disappearing into another microscopic office.
I let out my breath, surprised the confrontation was over so
easily. It wasn’t a coincidence; Roy was headed toward me.

“It’s all over, Sara,” he announced. “You can
go home.”

I’d never been more relieved in my life, but
was hardly surprised. I shoved Ead out of my mind and my thoughts
wandered back to Emmett. “So what’s going to happen to him?” I
asked for the second time.

“Emmett? He’ll be fine.”

“Is he going to the hospital?”

“Sara,” Roy said with a frown. “Do yourself a
favor and forget about all of this. His father will take care of
him now.”

That’s what I was afraid of. “So you’ll get
him to the hospital?” I repeated.

Roy took my jacket out of my arms and wrapped
it affectionately around my shoulders. I shrugged off the simple
gesture of apology. Roy had betrayed me, and I wasn’t feeling very
forgiving.