فصل 23 - بخش 01

23

The main room of the Flint City PD was large, but the four men waiting for Terry Maitland seemed to fill it – two State Police and two correctional officers from the county jail, widebodies one and all. Even though he remained stunned by what had happened to him (what was still happening), Terry could not help being a bit amused. The county jail was only four blocks away. A great deal of beef had been assembled to take him a little more than half a mile.

‘Hands out,’ one of the correctional officers said.

Terry put them out and watched as a new pair of handcuffs was snapped onto his wrists. He looked for Howie, suddenly as anxious as he had been at five, when his mother let go of his hand on his first day of kindergarten. Howie was seated on the corner of a vacant desk, talking on his cell phone, but when he saw Terry’s look, he ended the call and hurried over.

‘Do not touch the prisoner, sir,’ said the officer who had cuffed Terry.

Gold ignored him. He put an arm around Terry’s shoulders and murmured, ‘It’s going to be all right.’ Then – to Gold’s surprise as much as his client’s – he kissed Terry on the cheek.

Terry took that kiss with him as the four men escorted him down the front steps to where a county van waited behind a State Police cruiser with its jackpot lights pulsing. And the words. Them especially, as the cameras flashed and the TV lights came on and the questions flew at him like bullets: Have you been charged, did you do it, are you innocent, have you confessed, what can you say to Frank Peterson’s parents.

It’s going to be all right, Gold had said, and that was what Terry hung onto.

But of course it wasn’t.