فصل 06 - بخش 02

6

Until midnight, the county jail sounded like a zoo at feeding time – drunks singing, drunks crying, drunks standing at the bars of their cells and holding shouted conversations. There was even what sounded like a fistfight, although since all the cells were singles, Terry didn’t see how that could be, unless there were two guys punching at each other through the bars. Somewhere, at the far end of the corridor, a guy was bellowing the first phrase of John 3:16 over and over at the top of his lungs: ‘For God so loved the world! For God so loved the world! For God so loved THE WHOLE FUCKIN WORLD!’ The stench was piss, shit, disinfectant, and whatever sauce-soaked pasta had been served for supper.

My first time in jail, Terry marveled. After forty years of life, I have landed in stir, the calaboose, the joint, the old stone hotel. Think of that.

He wanted to feel anger, righteous anger, and he supposed that feeling might arise with daylight, when the world came back into focus, but now, at three o’clock on Sunday morning, as the shouts and singing subsided to snores, farts, and the occasional groan, all he felt was shame. As if he really had done something. Except he would have felt nothing of the kind if he had really done what he was accused of doing. If he had been sick and evil enough to commit such an obscene act upon a child, he would have felt nothing but the desperate cunning of an animal in a trap, willing to say anything or do anything in order to get out. Or was that true? How did he know what a man like that would think or feel? It was like trying to guess what might be in the mind of an alien from space.

He had no doubt that Howie Gold would get him out of this; even now, in the darkest ditch of the night, with his mind still trying to get a grip on the way his whole life had changed in a matter of minutes, he didn’t doubt it. But he also knew that not all of the shit would wash off. He would be released with an apology – if not tomorrow, then at the arraignment, if not at the arraignment, then at the next step, which would probably be a grand jury hearing in Cap City – but he knew what he would see in the eyes of his students the next time he stepped in front of a class, and his career as a youth sports coach was probably finished. The various governing bodies would find some excuse if he wouldn’t do what they’d see as the honorable thing and step down himself. Because he was never going to be completely innocent again, not in the eyes of his neighbors on the West Side, or in those of Flint City as a whole. He would always be the man who was arrested for the murder of Frank Peterson. He would always be the man of whom people would say, No smoke without fire.

If it was just him, he thought he could deal with it. What did he tell his boys when they whined that a call was unfair? Suck it up and get back in there. Play the game. But it wasn’t just him who would have to suck this up, not just him who would have to play the game. Marcy would be branded. The whispers and sidelong looks at work and at the grocery store. The friends who would no longer call. Jamie Mattingly might be an exception, but he had his doubts even about her.

Then there were the girls. Sarah and Gracie would be subjected to the sort of vicious gossip and wholesale shunning of which only kids their age were capable. He guessed Marcy would have sense enough to keep them close until this was sorted out, if only to keep them away from the reporters who would otherwise hound them, but even in the fall, even after he was cleared, they would be marked. See that girl over there? Her father was arrested for killing a kid and shoving a stick up his ass.

Lying on his bunk. Staring up into the dark. Smelling the jailhouse stench. Thinking, We’ll have to move. Maybe to Tulsa, maybe to Cap City, maybe down to Texas. Somebody will give me a job, even if they won’t allow me within a country mile of boys’ baseball, football, or basketball practice. My references are good, and they’ll be afraid of a discrimination suit if they say no.

Only the arrest – and the reason for the arrest – would follow them like this jailhouse stink. Especially the girls. Facebook alone would be enough to hunt them down and single them out. These are the girls whose father got away with murder.

He had to stop thinking this way and get some sleep, and he had to stop feeling ashamed of himself because someone else – Ralph Anderson, to be specific – had made a horrible mistake. These things always looked worse in the small hours, that was what he had to remember. And given his current position, in a cell and wearing a baggy brown uniform with DOC on the back of the shirt, it was inevitable that his fears would grow as big as the floats in a holiday parade. Things would look better in the morning. He was sure of it.

Yes.

But still, the shame.

Terry covered his eyes.