25. Chapter 25
Monty and l have been sitting in silence for a while. I sit right next to him on the bench. Probably too close. I don’t know why I didn’t give him more space, but our shoulders and legs are practically touching.
With the awkward silence, you would think there was an ocean separating us.
“You mad?” I finally ask, not looking at Monty.
“Nope.”
“You sure? You’re awfully quiet.”
“Not mad. Just not really sure what to say to mark this occasion.”
“That’s fair,” I concede.
We sit a little longer, our breaths filling the silence.
“I feel like maybe this is my fault,” I begin again, still not looking at Monty.
“It’s not your fault,” is his answer.
“Well, I’m kinda getting this vibe from you like you’re mad, and while you are completely justified to feel that way, I think maybe we could talk about it.”
Seconds pass, and he sighs again. “I’m not mad, Lyzbeth.”
“I mean, it really isn’t my fault. I didn’t provoke those officers. They came to the office and harassed me, and they came to my apartment and broke in. That’s not my fault!”
“Lyzbeth,” I hear Monty’s voice in my ear, and I know he’s looking at me now. So I turn my head to look back at him. “None of this is your fault.”
“So why are you so quiet?”
Monty looks away again before he speaks, and his words are softer. “Catherine and I spent time apart. Before you met me. We had some differences that we weren’t sure we could get past, and I rented a small room out of a house out on the lakefront while we sorted things out.”
I stare at the side of his head, in utter shock and disbelief, as he continues.
“I had an opportunity to do some travel photography. Some magazine that promoted excursions and adventures. Anyway, I wanted to do it. But the kids were still in school. Peggy was just finishing middle school and I believe Jake was going to be a junior. Catherine said she wasn’t going to uproot them from their high school lives, their friends and clubs and teammates and all that. So I would have had to go by myself and try to just make it back and forth a lot.
“I was in. I wanted to do it so badly, but Catherine said it would be too much for her to take care of everything by herself.”
Monty unfolds his arms and rests his palms on the bench on either side of his legs, gripping the seat as he shifts forward.
“I was so angry with her. I felt like she was being so selfish, asking me to pass up this opportunity to travel the world, photographing amazing sights and places. And she thought I was the selfish one, putting my family on the back burner.”
“What did you do?” I speak for the first time in a while.
He lets out a sigh. “I ended up not going. I couldn’t do it without her blessing. I mean, she didn’t give me an ultimatum, but I got the feeling if I took off without her consent it wouldn’t have been wise. But then I was angry. Shit, I was pissed.”
Monty looks up toward the ceiling as he confesses this next part. “I think I downright hated her, at the time.”
I am at a loss. “Well, obviously you worked things out” I prompt.
“Yeah. Yeah, we did. But it was a tough year and a half.”
“A year and a half?”
“Oh, yeah. We were separated for a while.”
“So,” I shift in my seat so I’m now situated the same way he is, hands gripping the bench at my sides. “How did you find your way back to each other?”
Monty huffs next to me. “Well, life sucked without her. I guess I decided I could be pissed on principle, and hold onto that anger. Or say, fuck it, I don’t want to be angry anymore. I don’t want to be alone anymore. And I certainly didn’t want to travel the world if my family couldn’t be with me. So, I got over it.”
A few beats pass.
“You never say ‘fuck.’”
“I was trying to drive home my point.”
“No, that was good. It was good use of a curse word.”
A few more beats of silence.
“You’re saying I should let Knox off the hook?” I ask.
“No,” he answers quickly. “Not at all. That is a very different situation, you have different history, you are different people. You are 100 percent justified in your feelings and your actions. I get it—as much as I can—I get it. I’m just saying …” He drifts off in thought for a minute. “I’m just saying that I hate to see you hurting, kiddo.”
I smile at the floor. “Thanks.”
We hear footsteps outside and look up, both hopeful they will stop outside the door, but they keep moving.
“Were you hoping she would come to you?” I look at Monty again. “Were you at all angry that you had to go to Catherine, and she didn’t come to you?”
Monty pinches his brows together, like he’s really considering the question, then answers easily. “No. She was ready to break, too. We were meant to be together, and we knew it. It’s just, somebody had to bend.”
We both swing our feet along the floor, making scuff sounds. Then I bump my shoulder into his. “You’re my best friend, Monty.”
“No, I’m not,” he replies, with a shoulder nudge in return. “Dee is.”
“Ha!” I let out a laugh. “You’re right. But you’re definitely up there. Definitely next in line.”
“I know,” Monty says as he lifts an arm and—after brushing crud off his palms—drapes it around my shoulder, pulling me in for an awkward hug.
“Although, I honestly don’t know how you tolerate her sometimes,” he adds. “Dee is certifiably crazy.”
“Oh, for sure,” I concede.
“And incredibly vulgar.”
“Definitely. Did I tell you about the ear of corn?”
“No!” Monty throws his other hand up in the air. “And I don’t want to know.”
We hear footsteps approach again and this time the door swings open.
“Alright, I think we’ve got some things sorted out,” Chief Scott says, arms braced on the doorframe, shirt sleeves rolled up, tie loosened around his neck. “Come with me.”
Monty and I are led to a new room, which, much like the one we were in before, is bare. Just a metal table with folding chairs surrounded by cream-colored walls.
Henderson is already seated at the table, his big, bulky forearms resting on the tabletop, fingers interlocked, head bowed down lower than his mammoth shoulder blades. It shoots up when he hears the door open and his eyes find mine, and a look of apology passes over them.
Arms crossed over my chest I make my way over to a chair as far away from him as I can get and slam my ass down, effectively pouting. Monty is a little more graceful, pulling out a chair beside me and lowering himself into it like an adult.
Henderson looks at me again. “Lyz—”
I throw a hand up, indicating for him to shut the hell up. My face is turned away from him. I can’t even look in his direction. “I thought you were better than that,” I say through gritted teeth.
“He is,” I hear Scott’s voice as he enters the room. He kicks the door shut behind him and takes a seat next to Henderson. “Clark has been looking into the King case, as have you,” Scott says to me. “I stuck Henderson on the case, too, just to keep an eye on Clark.”
“Clark’s a douchebag,” I say without reservation, and Monty elbows me.
“Clark’s a giant douchebag,” the chief replies instantly, to our surprise. “But he’s got a lot of years with the department, his uncle is a former chief, and I can’t do much but just work around him at the moment. And he’s not a bad officer. However, he is being disciplined for the stunt at the ROC Record offices. That shit should have never gone so far.”
“And what about breaking into my apartment?” I ask.
“That wasn’t us,” Henderson finally speaks up.
I shoot my eyes to his. His hands are still folded on the table. “What do you mean that wasn’t you?”
He shrugs. “We’ve been at the station all morning, reviewing video surveillance.”
I look at the chief, who nods in confirmation. I slink back in my chair and look at Monty, who looks just as puzzled. “Well, then who the hell broke into my apartment?”
Scott shuffles and opens a folder I hadn’t realized he brought in with him. He pulls out a photo and slides it over to me on the table. It looks like a screenshot from a security camera. I recognize an illuminated sign in the background from a bodega just a few buildings down the street from my apartment. Walking down the street are two men. One with his hands in his pockets, hood pulled up over his head, but he’s looking over his shoulder and the camera got a perfect shot of his face.
Leaning in, I identify the man as one of the paramedics I spoke with regarding the King case. “Sanders?” I ask, looking up between Henderson and the chief.
“His rig was parked around the block from your place, even though he was supposed to be covering a different zone,” says Scott. “But it was only there for about twenty minutes.”
“Which is long enough to make it to your apartment, do whatever the hell he did there, and make it back into service before anyone really noticed,” adds Henderson.
“Well,” I look back at the photo, at the other man. He has short spiky black hair and a lip ring. “Why the hell would they break into my apartment? Why would they break into it and not take anything?”
Henderson and Scott look at each other, and the chief adjusts his posture in his seat before running a hand down his tired face. “Lyzbeth, I need you to back off, alright?”
“Huh?”
“Just, stop sniffing around the King case. It’s more complicated than you think and you’re going to get yourself into trouble.”
I lean back in my chair, leaving my hands on the table. I spread out my fingers, looking down at them while my mind churns. I slowly press down each fingertip, starting with my left pinkie, going through each finger until I get to my right pinkie. “He did have drugs on him, didn’t he?” I ask, not looking up. “Jerome King. He had drugs on him, but someone lifted them.”
Monty shifts beside me, and the chief sighs. “Again, it’s complicated,” he says.
“Does Mrs. King know?” I look up at Scott. He nods. “Yes. She came in two days ago, but the case is still ongoing, so the lawsuit hasn’t been closed yet. We need people to think nothing has changed.”
“But something has …” I interrupt.
The chief rubs his temples while Henderson leans forward. “Lyzbeth, your story was correct. The Kings are dropping the lawsuit against the city, and therefore any implications against the paper are also dropped. Now, we just need you to drop it so we can get to the root of the problem.”
“Which is …” I prompt.
“Which is none of your goddamn business,” Scott grits out, and I don’t miss the look Henderson gives him, and the slight shake of head from the chief.
“Oh, bullshit,” I lean forward. “No. Noooo way. What the hell is going on here?”
Both men in front of me are silent.
A light goes on in my head. “You have an internal problem, don’t you?”
Scott groans and runs another hand down his face. He gives a humorless laugh and looks up toward the ceiling. “I command a 200-plus force and it’s a rogue reporter that’ll be the death of me,” he says to no one in particular.
“This isn’t the first time, is it?” I press further. “This isn’t the first time you’ve found no drugs at a scene where, clearly, they were involved.”
Monty stirs again next to me. I almost forgot he was here.
Scott and Henderson just look at me as I think things through, then give voice to my thoughts. “Sanders … They have all been his calls, haven’t they? Does he sell it? Use it?” I look back and forth between the two men in front of me, then at Monty beside me, who just shrugs like he’s absolutely lost.
Scott blows out a breath of air, then concedes. “Both, we think. We’ve been onto him for several months.”
I try to think back to any incidents that may have involved Sanders but there’s too much going on in my brain to cage anything in. The officers must see my brain working, and they exchange a look. Finally, Scott gives in.
“There was an accident last spring,” he’s staring right at me as he says this.
“Okayyyy …” I reply.
“A man was driving. He passed a breathalyzer, but his female passenger looked high as a kite. However, there was no cause to perform a drug test on her since she wasn’t driving,” Scott pauses a moment.
I look between him and Henderson, who looks down at his hands.
“But the EMTs got there before law enforcement,” Scott continues, and I look back into his hard-as-steel eyes. “Sanders was one of the first responders.”
I think this over for a second, all the time Scott staring straight at me, and Henderson looking down at his hands. Monty bristles beside me, and I feel his hand on my back as he says, “Lyzbeth, maybe we should just drop it.”
Goosebumps rise on my arms and my stomach starts to swirl as I get a feeling that something isn’t right, but I can’t quite get my brain to settle on it. “You said EMTs were called. Was someone hurt?” I ask, trying to recall some of the fatal accidents we’ve had in the paper last year.
“Yes,” Scott responds, not breaking eye contact with me. “A young woman was hit while crossing the street. She was paralyzed.”
The world tilts on its axis. All the oxygen is sucked out of the room. The edges of my vision go black. I can feel wisps of my hair hit my face as I shake my head back and forth, even though I’m not consciously making the movement.
I see Chief Scott’s mouth moving, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. Henderson looks at me pitifully. I still feel Monty’s hand on my back.
Knox didn’t have drugs on him. I know it. I try to recall the night of the accident. His eyes were bloodshot from crying, so I wouldn’t have been able to tell from them if he had been using. I wouldn’t have been able to detect any odd behavior because the whole incident was so jarring and shocking that, of course, he would have been acting differently. But he hadn’t used in so long. If there were drugs involved, they weren’t his. They couldn’t have been.
They had to be Jenny’s. I remember the night of her phone call years ago, while Knox and I were still broken up. I push that aside.
Then I remember him refusing pain meds at the hospital. Why would he do that? It shouldn’t have been a threat to him after all this time. Unless it hadn’t been that much time …
I know Knox. At least, I knew him. The guilt of the crash had almost swallowed him alive, and if he were actually under the influence, if he paralyzed someone because he was high, he would never forgive himself. And I know what Knox’s self-abuse looks like. It is self-sabotage. It’s ruining everything good in your life because you didn’t deserve it. Like your marriage.
My body lurches with a dry heave as I crash back to the here and now.
“Just take a deep breath,” Scott says as he reaches a hand across the table to rest on top of mine. Henderson is crouched at my side. I don’t remember seeing him move, but he’s got a hand on my back, below Monty’s. I squirm out from under their touch and stand up and push away from the table, shaking my hands out at my sides.
“They weren’t Knox’s drugs,” I say. “They weren’t. No way.”
I look up to see Monty’s head tilted, an empathetic look on his face. Then I look to the chief when he starts to speak. “We don’t know whose they were, and, quite frankly, it doesn’t matter. That’s not what we’re after. We’re looking at Sanders. His involvement. And we’ve noticed a pattern since that night.”
I’m still shaking my head. I rest my hands on my hips as I take labored breaths. Henderson clears his throat.
“We weren’t going to go this route …” he starts, looking over to Scott, who nods. “But, since you’re in the know now, we want to take a look at your notes from the King case. Specifically, when you talked to Celia Stewart.”
I shoot my eyes up to him, my brain still trying to catch up. Monty pipes up from beside me, having stood up. “It’s not customary for us to share our notes,” he tells the men.
“Look,” Scott starts in. “We’re just trying to figure it out.”
“But you don’t know,” I finally find my voice again. “You don’t know that Sanders has been lifting drugs, it’s just a possibility, right?” When neither officer answers, it confirms my thought.
They don’t know, but Celia Stewart’s comments will confirm their suspicions—and possibly incriminate Knox.
And why the hell I care anymore is beyond me. But my defenses automatically go up. “You’ll have to subpoena them,” I say to Scott. “My notes. If you want them, you have to subpoena them.”
I start toward the door, and Monty follows. Scott and Henderson don’t.