Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (63 page)

“
So how’d you knock him down?” Chaz says.

“
Aikido,” I say.

“
Gesundheit.” He laughs at his own joke.

I give him a chuckle. He’s being pretty nice. “It’s a martial art that focuses on avoidance of conflict.”

“
Hah.” He shakes his head. “Stick with karate.”

“
Well,” I say, “he didn’t land a punch.”

His eyes flick up to the mirror. “I guess. You bein’ small and all.”

“
Yeah. Lots of foxes, rabbits, weasels take it.”

“
Uh-huh. What’s your beef with Mickey?”

I stare out the window. The small town of Lake Handerson rolls by. The ambulance, ahead of us, peels off to the right. Watching it go down the street, I see the charming white hospital complex it’s headed for. I don’t think it’s the same one Dev took me to, last time, but I can’t really tell. I was pretty out of it, coming and going. “Well,” I say. “I’m...”

I catch his glance back in the mirror out of my peripheral vision, and turn to meet it. Stories of cops beating up faggots in remote midwestern towns rise to my mind. I’m curiously at ease. “I’m dating his son,” I say.

Chaz pauses for a moment, then just says, “Huh.”

“
He doesn’t like that much.”

The stag shakes his head slowly. “Don’t figure he would.”

I can’t help asking. “What about you?”

He makes a turn. The police station is down this block. “Ain’t my family,” he says. “You didn’t come here to pick a fight, did you?”

“
No, sir.”

“
Even with that martial arts stuff?”

“
No, sir. It’s to help me get out of things someone else starts.”

He looks back, pulling the car to a stop. “Mickey start somethin’?”

I think back. “Well, he pushed me. But I grabbed his shirt when he turned away. Then he took a swing at me.”

“
Rip your sleeve off?”

I rub the bare fur of my arm. “Started to. I ripped the rest of it off.”

He gets out and opens my door. “That part of your ah-key-doe?”

I step out onto cold pavement and breathe in the clean air. “No. I used it to stop the bleeding from his head.”

His smile freezes, then fades. His hand on my shoulder is firm but gentle. “Nice work,” he says. “C’mon, let’s do your paperwork.”

We go into the small, clean police station, where he chats with the ferret at the desk, whose name is Paulie and who types up all the info efficiently into a computer form as I recount what happened. He takes my driver’s license and copies out the info from it while Chaz hands me a scent-swab. “Just hold it under the base of your tail for a count of five,” he says. “You can go in the restroom if you want.”

I shake my head. “Not unless you need me to.” I slip the little swab under my tail where it hangs out over my pants. After five seconds, I drop the swab in the plastic bag Chaz is holding. He sniffs it and then sniffs me, and seals it up. “Roll up your other sleeve, please.”

He photographs the red-brown-white demarcation on my arms, and then the pattern of whiskers on my muzzle. By then, the ferret is done. He prints out a form for me to sign and Chaz says, “Okay, now we have to write up another set. Unless you don’t want to press charges against Mickey.”

“
What?” I blink, pen still in my paw. The feeling of being powerless in the grip of due process abates. I sit up straighter, arching my tail. It’s nice to feel that the law is working fairly in both directions. “No, of course not.”

“
Just checking.” Chaz’s half-smile tells me I gave the right answer. “We don’t really have to hold you here overnight. I got your address. Where you stayin’?”

“
Motel 7 on the freeway.” I point in the direction I think it is.

“
I know the one. Need a ride back?”

“
My car’s at the café.” I take a breath. “Thanks. Listen, is there any way to make sure nobody calls Dev until Sunday night?”

He frowns. “Can’t stop the family callin’ him if they wanna.”

I chew my lip. “I’ll call to tell him I’m okay, but I don’t want him rushing up here. He can’t afford to miss this game. Can’t even afford to be distracted for it. He needs all his focus.”

Chaz scratches at the base of his antlers. “They win this one, they can sniff playoffs, huh?”

I nod. “Thought you’d all be Dragons fans up here.”

He points to the Dragons’ season schedule on the wall. “Ain’t much to cheer about this year, though. Might as well root for a local boy. Tell ya what. I’ll call Duscha. If she ain’t called him yet, I’ll ask her not to.”

“
Ivan, too.”

“
Mmm.” He looks at me and shakes his head. “Y’sound like my ma.” I start to bristle, realize he doesn’t mean anything by it, and force a half-grin, perking my ears to listen. “Ah, I usedta play football too. Not good like Miski, but I did okay. My ma was always goin’ on at me about focusin’ on the game. Never could do it worth a damn. Pretty doe in the bleachers and I’d get hit in the head with the ball.” He points to his rack. “Caught it in my antlers once.”

“
I didn’t know you could do that.”

“
Oh, sure,” he says. “Just makes it harder to hold onta when you go down.”

A door at the back of the front room bursts open. A large wolverine—large meaning he’s about my height and twice as wide—stomps up to the front desk. He’s got on the same uniform as Chaz, only more elaborate, and his hat sports a big shiny badge. His glare goes from Chaz to me. “Hartley!” he yells. “This the guy beat up Mickey?”

Chaz’s eyes widen. “How did you...”

“
Barb was downtown. Stopped to look, gave me a call. Paperwork done?”

“
Yes, sir, but...”

“
Good. Toss him in the drunk tank for the night. There’s only Johnny in there.”

“
Sir, I really don’t reckon...” But the wolverine, whom I presume is the chief, is scanning the incident report, which I’ve left on the desk. I get a whiff of the strong plug of tobacco he’s chewing as he reads it.

“
City boys comin’ up here terrorizin’ our local heroes. Set bail at a grand.”

“
Bail? Sir, he hasn’t been formally charged, and—”

“
What? Why not?”

“
Mickey’s still out. He can’t bring charges.”

The wolverine chews his plug of tobacco. “But he was fightin’. So we can detain him ’til Mickey wakes up.”

“
Sir, I don’t think he’s a risk—” Chaz is trying hard to keep his calm.

The wolverine’s small, dark eyes stare at me. “He’s a fox. Course he’s a risk. You fell for his line, dintcha? Prob’ly told ya how sorry he was. Said Mickey started it.”

“
Actually, sir—”

The wolverine stabs a finger into my chest. “That ain’t the way we do things here in Lake Handerson, boy. You got me? Maybe a night in the tank’ll cool ya down.”

“
Sir—”

Only then does the chief turn to Chaz. “You got a problem with this, Hartley? Maybe you wanna go back to graveyard shift?”

“
It’s okay,” I say quickly. “I’ll stay in the cell.”

“
You don’t get to tell me you’ll stay in the cell, boy,” the chief says. “I tell you you gonna stay in the cell.” He pauses. “You gonna stay in the cell. Chaz, book ’im and take his personals.”

Chaz’s eyes say he’s sorry, but all he says out loud is, “Come with me, please?”

The wolverine gives me a shove as I walk past him. I hear him hawk up something to spit, and time the swinging of my tail to pull it quickly to one side. Something brushes it and splashes wetly on the floor. For a moment, I imagine him telling me to come back and lick it up, but apparently we’re not in a prison-themed B-movie, because he lets Chaz take me to the booking room without further interference.

The rest of the station is much less clean, and smaller to boot. I hand over my personal effects to Chaz in a small room with a desk, a chair, and the smell of antiseptic cleanser. “You want to make a phone call?” he says. “If you want to make two, you can.”

I nod. “Can I see my phone?” I flip through the address book until I find the number I want, and then dial it, praying he’ll pick up.

He does. For a moment, I’m not sure how to say it, and then I think, hell with it, just get it out there. “Hi, Father,” I say. “I’m in jail.”

He takes it remarkably well. “Do you need me to come down right away?”

“
I think they wanna keep me here overnight.”

“
Overnight? Did you kill someone?”

“
Um.” I tell him what happened, in brief.

There’s silence. I can hear the clicking of his claws on his desk. “I didn’t mean—” I begin.

“
Is this something new with kids? Should I be worried that your football player is going to show up at the office here and throw me into a toolbox?”

“
You don’t have toolboxes. You work in an office.”

“
File cabinet, then. Sweet Fox, Wiley, what did you think you would accomplish?”

I sigh. “I just wanted to let you know where I am. I can’t tell Dev, because he’ll fly up here and miss the game.”

“
I’m glad I’m your second choice, at least.”

“
Third, actually, but I’m not sure I can call my boss anymore since technically I don’t have one as of Monday.”

“
You quit?”

Of course he’d go there first. “I’ll tell you the rest of the story sometime.” Chaz is looking curiously at me. I don’t really want to badmouth Dev’s dad in front of him.

“
So you quit, or you got fired, or something, and then you decided to blow off steam by driving up to your boyfriend’s hometown and picking a fight with his father.”

“
Gee,” I say, “when you say it like that, it sounds so soap-opera.”

“
You
are
in jail.”

“
Oh, thanks, I’d almost forgotten. How embarrassing would that be, getting up to go out for Starbucks and running right into the bars.” Now Chaz just looks puzzled, like, you wasted your phone call on this? I mouth,
I know
, to him.

“
You hate Starbucks, don’t you?”

“
Yeah. Thank goodness for the bars, then, huh?”

He sighs. “Lake Handerson, you said.”

“
You don’t need to come up here. I just wanted you to know—”

“
Don’t be an idiot, Wiley. You called because you wanted me to come, so I’ll come.”

“
I just called you because...” I trail off. I have a vision of Father walking into the police station, and to my surprise, my chest warms and my fur sleeks down, my tail relaxing to swing easily around the leg of the chair. “All right. If you insist.”

“
Can it wait ’til I’m done work? This report has to go out today.”

“
Sure. I’m good here. I think they have to feed me now.”

I’m about to give the phone back to Chaz when a thought occurs to me. “One more?” He nods, and I flip open the phone. “This’ll be quick.”

Quicker than I thought; I get his voicemail. “Hi, Hal,” I say. “Hey, so I kind of broke my promise about doing something illegal. You don’t happen to know any way to get a guy out of jail, do you? I won’t have my phone, but I’m up in Lake Handerson, and, well, I guess there’s probably not a lot you can do. I think my father’s coming up. I’ll give you a call tomorrow. It’ll be a hell of a story.”

Probably shouldn’t have called him, but I was feeling a little desperate. Besides, if he could have helped, it would’ve been nice to be out of jail already when Father gets here. Or to be able to call him back later. I already feel guilty dragging him out of work, not to mention I don’t want to owe him anything.

Chaz shows me to cell number two, a small cement-block fixer-upper with all the amenities: an open toilet in the corner that reeks, and a flat wooden bench a foot away that smells only marginally better. The bench stretches a good eight feet, from the bars at the door to the graffiti carved into the back wall. Sitting on it, I could stretch out a leg and almost touch the other side of the cell. “This is the drunk tank?”

He shrugs, jerking a thumb to his left. “That one is. But I figgered, we got empty cells, why not give ya some privacy? Not that Johnny’s likely to wake up ’fore dawn.”

“
Y’know, a place like this would go for a grand a month in Port City.” I lift my nose to get a scent of Johnny’s species next door, but all I can smell is urine, too powerfully mustelid to narrow down to a species, and alcohol. “I appreciate privacy. How about a bed?” I say. “Asking too much?”

He points to the bench. “I got a couple blankets I can toss in. What’cha want to eat?”

I ponder. “How about coq au vin with a side of truffled mashed potatoes and a glass of Champagne Mandois Premier Cru?”

“
That’d be the Burger King International Chicken Sandwich with fries and a Sprite, then.”

“
Diet Sprite,” I say.

He gives me a baleful look. I tug on my torn sleeve. “Come on,” I say. “I ripped off my sleeve.”

“
I’ll see what I can do. Diet Sprite,” he grumbles, and walks out.

I watch him go, then sit back on the bench and curl my tail around my hips. With nothing else to occupy me, my mind races back to the fight. I should’ve just walked away. What the hell is Dev going to say when he finds out? I’m not really worried he’ll break up with me. I am worried I might’ve just ruined things forever between him and his family.