By Al Bruno III
March 31st: It was a bright and pleasant morning. Sara and I were putting the finishing touches on our trip with the a distinctly post-coitus burst of energy. We were both packing up. Sara was filling a cooler with ice, sandwiches, and Jolt Cola. I would learn later that, knowing I'd object, Mrs. Vincenzo had slipped her an envelope containing an amount of cash normally reserved for bribing local politicians.
I loaded our single suitcase with our combined clothes and made sure my satchel was equipped as usual: a police-surplus flashlight, a collapsible shovel, a first-aid kit, baby wipes, notebooks and pens, a bottle of water, a bottle of holy water, Ziplock baggies, an EMF meter, a thermal scanner, and a package of Beef Whips salted snack meat. I might not need any of those things, but at least they made the satchel heavy enough to hit someone with.
With my Ford Escort loaded up we were ready to go. I made a call to check in with Cousin Roy but the call went right to the voicemail he hadn't set up. I tried not to let that worry me.
But when the unmarked police cruiser parked in front of us then I got worried.
I asked, “Did we get travel insurance on those reservations?”
"Brian... what's going on?" Sara asked back.
I watched the man climb out of the driver's seat. He had a youthful face despite being middle-aged. Not because he'd taken care of himself, but because I doubted he'd ever smiled enough to earn a wrinkle. He wore the sort of suit and tie that could only be bought with the salary of an honest man. He had a thin build that was surprisingly effective at wrestling bloggers to the ground.
“Sara,” I said. “Meet Detective Alvin Bradshaw.”
“Oh?” she said. Then it clicked. “Ohhhh.”
“Brian Lyle Foster,” he said with his usual contempt. Then he turned to Sara, his expression softening. “Miss Bishop.”
“Sorry we can't stay and chat.” I reached up to close the trunk. “We've got a busy day ahead of us.”
He stopped me.
“Do you know a man named Roy Foster Junior?”
I tried not to groan. I really tried. But damn it, how could my cousin screw up simple surveillance?
Or maybe the screw-up was asking him to do it in the first place. Feel free to discuss that in the comments section.
Sara spoke up. “Are we being detained?”
“Not you, ma'am,” Detective Bradshaw said. “But I'd think twice about the company you keep.”
“That’s not a very nice way to talk about my boyfriend.”
Boyfriend. Despite I was staring down an armed servant of the state that hated my guts I still felt warm and fuzzy for a moment. I tried to close the trunk again.
He stopped me, then opened the cooler and started rooting around in it. “Hey!” I shouted, “Fourth amendment.”
“Hey,” he deadpanned and held up a ziplock bag with an egg salad sandwich, “Probable cause.”
“What? That sandwich’s only crime is being delicous.”
“The bag Foster. drug paraphernalia.”
Sara said, "We're not on drugs!"
Then Bradshaw said, “Do you know your boyfriend’s cousin was just arrested in Delaware for cocaine possesion.”
“And?” I said trying to keep the panic I was feeling from reaching my vocal cords.
"Of course we know," Sara said, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out the thick envelope Mrs. Vincenzo had given her. "We're heading there to post his bail."
And faster than you could say asset forfeiture his eyes lit up…
I loaded our single suitcase with our combined clothes and made sure my satchel was equipped as usual: a police-surplus flashlight, a collapsible shovel, a first-aid kit, baby wipes, notebooks and pens, a bottle of water, a bottle of holy water, Ziplock baggies, an EMF meter, a thermal scanner, and a package of Beef Whips salted snack meat. I might not need any of those things, but at least they made the satchel heavy enough to hit someone with.
With my Ford Escort loaded up we were ready to go. I made a call to check in with Cousin Roy but the call went right to the voicemail he hadn't set up. I tried not to let that worry me.
But when the unmarked police cruiser parked in front of us then I got worried.
I asked, “Did we get travel insurance on those reservations?”
"Brian... what's going on?" Sara asked back.
I watched the man climb out of the driver's seat. He had a youthful face despite being middle-aged. Not because he'd taken care of himself, but because I doubted he'd ever smiled enough to earn a wrinkle. He wore the sort of suit and tie that could only be bought with the salary of an honest man. He had a thin build that was surprisingly effective at wrestling bloggers to the ground.
“Sara,” I said. “Meet Detective Alvin Bradshaw.”
“Oh?” she said. Then it clicked. “Ohhhh.”
“Brian Lyle Foster,” he said with his usual contempt. Then he turned to Sara, his expression softening. “Miss Bishop.”
“Sorry we can't stay and chat.” I reached up to close the trunk. “We've got a busy day ahead of us.”
He stopped me.
“Do you know a man named Roy Foster Junior?”
I tried not to groan. I really tried. But damn it, how could my cousin screw up simple surveillance?
Or maybe the screw-up was asking him to do it in the first place. Feel free to discuss that in the comments section.
Sara spoke up. “Are we being detained?”
“Not you, ma'am,” Detective Bradshaw said. “But I'd think twice about the company you keep.”
“That’s not a very nice way to talk about my boyfriend.”
Boyfriend. Despite I was staring down an armed servant of the state that hated my guts I still felt warm and fuzzy for a moment. I tried to close the trunk again.
He stopped me, then opened the cooler and started rooting around in it. “Hey!” I shouted, “Fourth amendment.”
“Hey,” he deadpanned and held up a ziplock bag with an egg salad sandwich, “Probable cause.”
“What? That sandwich’s only crime is being delicous.”
“The bag Foster. drug paraphernalia.”
Sara said, "We're not on drugs!"
Then Bradshaw said, “Do you know your boyfriend’s cousin was just arrested in Delaware for cocaine possesion.”
“And?” I said trying to keep the panic I was feeling from reaching my vocal cords.
"Of course we know," Sara said, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out the thick envelope Mrs. Vincenzo had given her. "We're heading there to post his bail."
And faster than you could say asset forfeiture his eyes lit up…
###
The Interrogation Of Sara Bishop
...Sara Bishop here. Brian asked me to tell this part because, while he was sitting in a holding cell somewhere, I was in an interview room with Detective Alvin Bradshaw.
He'd brought in a female officer to make me feel more comfortable. Officer Kelton arrived in full uniform, her duty belt clinking softly every time she shifted her weight. I'm grateful for the effort, but she was not the kind of person meant to make anyone comfortable. Short-haired and hard-faced, she reminded me of the overnight orderlies on the psych ward. The ones who'd decided you were going to be a problem patient before you'd even opened your mouth.
Detective Bradshaw offered me a Pepsi. I asked if he had Coke. He said no, so I asked for a Dr Pepper instead. He left to get it, and I sat there trying not to make eye contact with Officer Kelton.
Then she spoke.
They were the only words we ever exchanged.
"You know Roy Foster, huh?"
"...Yeah."
And that was it.
When he came back with the can of Dr Pepper, I opened it and drank greedily. I know all the police shows say never to do that—that they'll use the can to put your DNA into a database—but I'm pretty sure I'm already in a dozen databases. We all are.
Besides, being nervous makes me thirsty.
My grandmother and I used to drink Dr Pepper together when I stayed with her over Christmas break. Whenever I taste it now, it tastes like melancholy.
"Your father told me a lot about you," Detective Bradshaw began.
I glanced at the one-way mirror behind him. Was Dad on the other side of it?
"What did he say?" I asked.
"He's worried about you," Detective Bradshaw said simply. "He says you're a troubled girl."
"I'm twenty-one, for God's sake."
He raised a hand. "Sorry. You're right."
"And maybe I am troubled," I said. "Is that a crime?"
"No."
He smiled. It was a small smile, but it was there.
"It's human."
Officer Kelton snorted.
The smile vanished. Detective Bradshaw turned toward her and gave her a look that was honestly a little frightening. He held it until she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
I found myself wondering how many times Brian had been on the receiving end of that particular look.
"Did I ever tell you how I met Brian Foster?"
"He said he interfered in one of your investigations. There was a blog post about it, but you made him take it down."
"Our legal team made him take it down," Detective Bradshaw corrected. "He crossed the line between lunatic ramblings and slander."
I took another sip of my Dr Pepper.
"If you say so."
There was a long pause. The kind where you can almost hear someone arguing with themselves. Then he started to speak again.
"It was maybe three, three and a half years ago. Remember when all those people ended up sick or dead in downtown Albany?"
I remembered all right. It was the talk of my senior year of high school. That's a little embarrassing to think about, really.
"Everyone was freaking out. They thought it was some kind of biohazard, chemical attack, or pandemic. We had the FBI, Homeland Security, and the CDC crawling all over everything. And who got stuck dealing with them? Me."
"My dad says the only reward for hard work is more work," I said.
That brought his little smile back. Briefly.
He continued. "One day your 'boyfriend' showed up at my desk, and he already had a history. I think he told you what happened to his mother?"
"He explained," I said.
I wondered if he could tell I was lying. I had the strange feeling Officer Kelton could, but she stayed quiet.
Bradshaw continued. "Like I said, word was already out on him. But of course I had to listen to what he had to say. If I didn't, and it got back to the suits in D.C...."
"What did he think was going on?"
Detective Bradshaw shifted in his seat.
"He told me these deaths weren't the work of terrorists, or some isolated nutjob, or just a damn flu bug with ambition. He said it had something to do with the new exhibit at the Albany Museum of Art and History."
Honestly, I could picture Brian desperately trying to explain all of that to this man. I'm sure you can too.
The thing that gets me—the thing that makes me love Brian—is that he had to know no one was going to believe him.
But he still walked into that police station anyway.
I glanced over at Officer Kelton. Her stony expression had just the faintest hint of smugness to it. I realized then that she'd heard this story before... and that maybe Detective Bradshaw didn't enjoy telling it.
"The museum had just opened a new exhibit," he said. "A loan from the Uffizi Galleries. Some pottery they'd dug up over in Italy. Pre-Roman, I think. Ugly-ass cookie-jar-looking things with carved human heads for lids. Funeral urns or something. One of them was different, though. The lid wasn't another head. It was a smooth stone half-sphere, but when you lifted it over, there was a human face carved into the inside, staring up at you."
He shook his head.
"Then Foster tells me it contains the remains of something called a Candle Baron, which, according to him, was some kind of evil spirit from another world."
This is so Brian, I thought.
"Then he tells me we have to destroy the container to stop this evil spirit. Even if I'd believed him, that thing was a priceless artifact worth more than my pension."
He gave a little shrug.
"So, yes, it gave me a great deal of pleasure to throw him out of my office. I wasn't all that surprised when the museum alarm went off a couple of nights later. You do this job long enough, you develop a feel for which lunatics are just going to keep talking... and which ones are going to act out.”
Act out.
It struck me as an odd choice of words. Like he was talking about a toddler throwing a tantrum instead of a grown man trying to save the world.
"So I got to the museum shortly after the patrol officers. They were both lying on the sidewalk. One was dead. The other was puking his guts out. The front doors of the place were wide open."
“I didn't bother looking around. I went straight to the special exhibit.” He grimaced, "Sure enough, Brian Foster was there, but he wasn't alone. He was fighting with some homeless broad I'd seen hanging around a few of the crime scenes. We'd interviewed her as a witness, but she barely said a word. Just sat there playing with one of her cigarette lighters. She had dozens of them."
Officer Kelton shifted in her chair. There was an air of anticipation about her, like someone waiting for a joke to reach the punchline. A particularly mean joke.
"So there she was, chasing Brian Foster around one of the glass cases where they keep the mummies. She's got this huge knife in her hand, and she'd already cut him up pretty good. I don't know where she got the damn thing. She sure didn't have it when we brought her in for questioning."
I thought about earlier that morning, when Brian and I had been together. I'd traced my fingers over all his scars. He had more than a dozen of them now.
Which one was this?
"I also notice Foster's wearing one of those flu-germ mask things. I order them both onto the floor, but all that does is make the crazy lady even crazier. She forgets all about Foster and comes right at me, swinging that knife and screaming complete nonsense."
He looked down at the table.
"So I shot her. Almost point-blank."
He paused and shook his head ever so slightly.
"Thirteen years on the force, and that was the first time I ever shot somebody."
He looked back up.
"But you don't get to think about that in the moment. I yelled at Foster to get down again..."
He frowned.
"...and then he pointed behind me and screamed, 'Behind you!'"
Officer Kelton was really leaning forward now, Detective Bradshaw didn’t notice but I did. I wish he had.
Instead he continued, “I thought I saw something. I was spooked, my nerves, the adrenalin, the whole thing but I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I didn't think. It was just training. I spun around and fired. And hit one of the damn ugly-ass cookie jars. Of course it was the one with the inside-out face for a lid.”
And there it was. No wonder he hated Brian.
“Stuff comes running out of it, at first I think it’s wine, then I think it’s blood but it wasn’t either. The CDC techs said it was wine mixed with some other substance they couldn’t identify.” He shook his head, “Of course I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about being demoted and never getting my detective's stripes back. I was thinking about who the hell was going to pay for this.”
I didn't look at Officer Kelton. I kept my eyes on the man telling me the story.
Empathy. My mother always said it was one of my greatest character flaws. I couldn't help feeling for him. Not because of Brian, but because of unintended consequences. There are always unintended consequences.
"So what happened?"
He opened his mouth, then seemed to remember where he was.
"That's not important."
He leaned back in his chair.
"What's important is that Brian Foster thinks he's some kind of hero fighting monsters from beyond the grave. That's what makes him dangerous."
He started counting them off on his fingers.
"Ask him about Osric Langhorne. Ask him about Johnny Disco. Ask him what happened in Washington Park."
His voice hardened.
"Ask him why an escaped fugitive awaiting arraignment was found dead in the woods the very same night he was searching the Internet for help finding her."
He looked me square in the eye.
"Ask him. Don't read the version filtered through his sick brain."
I wanted to tell him then. I wanted to tell him what I'd seen with my own eyes. About the things that shouldn't exist. About the things I'd started worrying might exist inside me.
But Officer Kelton was still in the room. Every time I looked at her, something inside me stiffened. If I'm being honest, it was the part of me where the other Sara sometimes whispered.
And if I said any of that out loud, what would Detective Bradshaw hear? The truth? Or just another troubled girl with a sick brain?
If Dad was standing behind that mirror, I already knew what he'd hear.
So instead I defaulted to the one thing my older brother Richard had always told me to say to the police.
"Am I being detained?"
He'd always said to ask that—and then keep my mouth shut.
"No, you are not being detained," Detective Bradshaw said. He sounded almost disappointed. "Foster's getting a cavity search, so we had some time to kill. I thought we should talk. There are people who care about your well-being."
"Thank you for that," I said. And I meant it. "But this isn't what you think it is. It isn't even close."
And that was when the door to the interview room opened. A woman entered, escorted by an officer. She was smartly dressed, with a soft, round face, a sturdy build, and the kind of swagger that suggested she wasn't intimidated by anyone. She looked like the sort of woman who could stare down someone like Officer Kelton, and I found myself hoping she would. "Sara Bishop? Lucy Harker, Harker & Huld Legal Group. Brian Foster asked us to represent you."
This wasn't what I'd expected at all. Brian always talked about having Harker & Huld on speed dial, but I'd assumed any law firm with a personalized rap jingle had to be at least a little sleazy.
“Good afternoon, Lucy.” Detective Bradshaw said. Then he whispered in Kelton’s ear dismissing her.
“Ms. Harker please, Detective Bradshaw.” There was an iciness in the way she addressed him that made me suspect either years of courtroom battles or one spectacularly bad first date, "Sara, it's time to go. Brian's waiting in my car."
I stood up and said, “Thank you Detective Bradshaw.”
That surprised him. It surprised Ms. Harker, too.
Ms. Harker said, “I assume she is going to get her money back?”
"I'll make sure it's waiting for you at the front desk."
He reached into his jacket and handed me his card.
"If there are any problems, call me."
I hesitated.
"You're not safe," he said again.
It was Ms. Harker who acted. She gently pushed his hand away.
"Enough of that, please."
Then she hustled me out of the police station, asking what I'd told them the entire way and scolding me for being such a Chatty Kathy.
By the time we reached her car, Brian was already sitting in the back seat.
"What happened?" he asked the moment I climbed in.
I didn't answer right away.
I was too busy watching my mother burst out of the police station, waving her arms as she tried to get our attention.
Ms. Harker glanced in the rearview mirror, put the car in gear, and drove away.
We headed back toward the pawn shop, where our cooler full of melted ice and soggy egg salad sandwiches was still waiting for us.
He'd brought in a female officer to make me feel more comfortable. Officer Kelton arrived in full uniform, her duty belt clinking softly every time she shifted her weight. I'm grateful for the effort, but she was not the kind of person meant to make anyone comfortable. Short-haired and hard-faced, she reminded me of the overnight orderlies on the psych ward. The ones who'd decided you were going to be a problem patient before you'd even opened your mouth.
Detective Bradshaw offered me a Pepsi. I asked if he had Coke. He said no, so I asked for a Dr Pepper instead. He left to get it, and I sat there trying not to make eye contact with Officer Kelton.
Then she spoke.
They were the only words we ever exchanged.
"You know Roy Foster, huh?"
"...Yeah."
And that was it.
When he came back with the can of Dr Pepper, I opened it and drank greedily. I know all the police shows say never to do that—that they'll use the can to put your DNA into a database—but I'm pretty sure I'm already in a dozen databases. We all are.
Besides, being nervous makes me thirsty.
My grandmother and I used to drink Dr Pepper together when I stayed with her over Christmas break. Whenever I taste it now, it tastes like melancholy.
"Your father told me a lot about you," Detective Bradshaw began.
I glanced at the one-way mirror behind him. Was Dad on the other side of it?
"What did he say?" I asked.
"He's worried about you," Detective Bradshaw said simply. "He says you're a troubled girl."
"I'm twenty-one, for God's sake."
He raised a hand. "Sorry. You're right."
"And maybe I am troubled," I said. "Is that a crime?"
"No."
He smiled. It was a small smile, but it was there.
"It's human."
Officer Kelton snorted.
The smile vanished. Detective Bradshaw turned toward her and gave her a look that was honestly a little frightening. He held it until she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
I found myself wondering how many times Brian had been on the receiving end of that particular look.
"Did I ever tell you how I met Brian Foster?"
"He said he interfered in one of your investigations. There was a blog post about it, but you made him take it down."
"Our legal team made him take it down," Detective Bradshaw corrected. "He crossed the line between lunatic ramblings and slander."
I took another sip of my Dr Pepper.
"If you say so."
There was a long pause. The kind where you can almost hear someone arguing with themselves. Then he started to speak again.
"It was maybe three, three and a half years ago. Remember when all those people ended up sick or dead in downtown Albany?"
I remembered all right. It was the talk of my senior year of high school. That's a little embarrassing to think about, really.
"Everyone was freaking out. They thought it was some kind of biohazard, chemical attack, or pandemic. We had the FBI, Homeland Security, and the CDC crawling all over everything. And who got stuck dealing with them? Me."
"My dad says the only reward for hard work is more work," I said.
That brought his little smile back. Briefly.
He continued. "One day your 'boyfriend' showed up at my desk, and he already had a history. I think he told you what happened to his mother?"
"He explained," I said.
I wondered if he could tell I was lying. I had the strange feeling Officer Kelton could, but she stayed quiet.
Bradshaw continued. "Like I said, word was already out on him. But of course I had to listen to what he had to say. If I didn't, and it got back to the suits in D.C...."
"What did he think was going on?"
Detective Bradshaw shifted in his seat.
"He told me these deaths weren't the work of terrorists, or some isolated nutjob, or just a damn flu bug with ambition. He said it had something to do with the new exhibit at the Albany Museum of Art and History."
Honestly, I could picture Brian desperately trying to explain all of that to this man. I'm sure you can too.
The thing that gets me—the thing that makes me love Brian—is that he had to know no one was going to believe him.
But he still walked into that police station anyway.
I glanced over at Officer Kelton. Her stony expression had just the faintest hint of smugness to it. I realized then that she'd heard this story before... and that maybe Detective Bradshaw didn't enjoy telling it.
"The museum had just opened a new exhibit," he said. "A loan from the Uffizi Galleries. Some pottery they'd dug up over in Italy. Pre-Roman, I think. Ugly-ass cookie-jar-looking things with carved human heads for lids. Funeral urns or something. One of them was different, though. The lid wasn't another head. It was a smooth stone half-sphere, but when you lifted it over, there was a human face carved into the inside, staring up at you."
He shook his head.
"Then Foster tells me it contains the remains of something called a Candle Baron, which, according to him, was some kind of evil spirit from another world."
This is so Brian, I thought.
"Then he tells me we have to destroy the container to stop this evil spirit. Even if I'd believed him, that thing was a priceless artifact worth more than my pension."
He gave a little shrug.
"So, yes, it gave me a great deal of pleasure to throw him out of my office. I wasn't all that surprised when the museum alarm went off a couple of nights later. You do this job long enough, you develop a feel for which lunatics are just going to keep talking... and which ones are going to act out.”
Act out.
It struck me as an odd choice of words. Like he was talking about a toddler throwing a tantrum instead of a grown man trying to save the world.
"So I got to the museum shortly after the patrol officers. They were both lying on the sidewalk. One was dead. The other was puking his guts out. The front doors of the place were wide open."
“I didn't bother looking around. I went straight to the special exhibit.” He grimaced, "Sure enough, Brian Foster was there, but he wasn't alone. He was fighting with some homeless broad I'd seen hanging around a few of the crime scenes. We'd interviewed her as a witness, but she barely said a word. Just sat there playing with one of her cigarette lighters. She had dozens of them."
Officer Kelton shifted in her chair. There was an air of anticipation about her, like someone waiting for a joke to reach the punchline. A particularly mean joke.
"So there she was, chasing Brian Foster around one of the glass cases where they keep the mummies. She's got this huge knife in her hand, and she'd already cut him up pretty good. I don't know where she got the damn thing. She sure didn't have it when we brought her in for questioning."
I thought about earlier that morning, when Brian and I had been together. I'd traced my fingers over all his scars. He had more than a dozen of them now.
Which one was this?
"I also notice Foster's wearing one of those flu-germ mask things. I order them both onto the floor, but all that does is make the crazy lady even crazier. She forgets all about Foster and comes right at me, swinging that knife and screaming complete nonsense."
He looked down at the table.
"So I shot her. Almost point-blank."
He paused and shook his head ever so slightly.
"Thirteen years on the force, and that was the first time I ever shot somebody."
He looked back up.
"But you don't get to think about that in the moment. I yelled at Foster to get down again..."
He frowned.
"...and then he pointed behind me and screamed, 'Behind you!'"
Officer Kelton was really leaning forward now, Detective Bradshaw didn’t notice but I did. I wish he had.
Instead he continued, “I thought I saw something. I was spooked, my nerves, the adrenalin, the whole thing but I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I didn't think. It was just training. I spun around and fired. And hit one of the damn ugly-ass cookie jars. Of course it was the one with the inside-out face for a lid.”
And there it was. No wonder he hated Brian.
“Stuff comes running out of it, at first I think it’s wine, then I think it’s blood but it wasn’t either. The CDC techs said it was wine mixed with some other substance they couldn’t identify.” He shook his head, “Of course I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about being demoted and never getting my detective's stripes back. I was thinking about who the hell was going to pay for this.”
I didn't look at Officer Kelton. I kept my eyes on the man telling me the story.
Empathy. My mother always said it was one of my greatest character flaws. I couldn't help feeling for him. Not because of Brian, but because of unintended consequences. There are always unintended consequences.
"So what happened?"
He opened his mouth, then seemed to remember where he was.
"That's not important."
He leaned back in his chair.
"What's important is that Brian Foster thinks he's some kind of hero fighting monsters from beyond the grave. That's what makes him dangerous."
He started counting them off on his fingers.
"Ask him about Osric Langhorne. Ask him about Johnny Disco. Ask him what happened in Washington Park."
His voice hardened.
"Ask him why an escaped fugitive awaiting arraignment was found dead in the woods the very same night he was searching the Internet for help finding her."
He looked me square in the eye.
"Ask him. Don't read the version filtered through his sick brain."
I wanted to tell him then. I wanted to tell him what I'd seen with my own eyes. About the things that shouldn't exist. About the things I'd started worrying might exist inside me.
But Officer Kelton was still in the room. Every time I looked at her, something inside me stiffened. If I'm being honest, it was the part of me where the other Sara sometimes whispered.
And if I said any of that out loud, what would Detective Bradshaw hear? The truth? Or just another troubled girl with a sick brain?
If Dad was standing behind that mirror, I already knew what he'd hear.
So instead I defaulted to the one thing my older brother Richard had always told me to say to the police.
"Am I being detained?"
He'd always said to ask that—and then keep my mouth shut.
"No, you are not being detained," Detective Bradshaw said. He sounded almost disappointed. "Foster's getting a cavity search, so we had some time to kill. I thought we should talk. There are people who care about your well-being."
"Thank you for that," I said. And I meant it. "But this isn't what you think it is. It isn't even close."
And that was when the door to the interview room opened. A woman entered, escorted by an officer. She was smartly dressed, with a soft, round face, a sturdy build, and the kind of swagger that suggested she wasn't intimidated by anyone. She looked like the sort of woman who could stare down someone like Officer Kelton, and I found myself hoping she would. "Sara Bishop? Lucy Harker, Harker & Huld Legal Group. Brian Foster asked us to represent you."
This wasn't what I'd expected at all. Brian always talked about having Harker & Huld on speed dial, but I'd assumed any law firm with a personalized rap jingle had to be at least a little sleazy.
“Good afternoon, Lucy.” Detective Bradshaw said. Then he whispered in Kelton’s ear dismissing her.
“Ms. Harker please, Detective Bradshaw.” There was an iciness in the way she addressed him that made me suspect either years of courtroom battles or one spectacularly bad first date, "Sara, it's time to go. Brian's waiting in my car."
I stood up and said, “Thank you Detective Bradshaw.”
That surprised him. It surprised Ms. Harker, too.
Ms. Harker said, “I assume she is going to get her money back?”
"I'll make sure it's waiting for you at the front desk."
He reached into his jacket and handed me his card.
"If there are any problems, call me."
I hesitated.
"You're not safe," he said again.
It was Ms. Harker who acted. She gently pushed his hand away.
"Enough of that, please."
Then she hustled me out of the police station, asking what I'd told them the entire way and scolding me for being such a Chatty Kathy.
By the time we reached her car, Brian was already sitting in the back seat.
"What happened?" he asked the moment I climbed in.
I didn't answer right away.
I was too busy watching my mother burst out of the police station, waving her arms as she tried to get our attention.
Ms. Harker glanced in the rearview mirror, put the car in gear, and drove away.
We headed back toward the pawn shop, where our cooler full of melted ice and soggy egg salad sandwiches was still waiting for us.
###
…and I'm back. We didn't get on the road until sunset, so we aren't going to reach Bridgeville, Delaware, until after midnight. My amended plan is, God willing, to bail Cousin Roy out of jail, slap him a few times, then start our caper.
I've been driving for about two hours now, so it's around 9:20 p.m., and we're roughly thirty percent of the way there.
While I drove, Sara wrote up what happened with Bradshaw and read it back to me.
Lord, does that man frost my bunions. Using every cop trick in the book to convince Sara I'm some kind of Don Quixote with a blast radius.
Now she's got it in her head—just like Atwater—that Detective Bradshaw is simply misunderstood.
But to quote Cousin Roy: "Fuck the police."
Although, judging by what Officer Kelton said, he just might. Roy always did have a thing for women built like linebackers.
Oh, and just so you know, there totally was something behind him. The fact that the man can't aim for shit probably saved dozens of lives. Admittedly, one of them was mine.
Oh and something else - those were Etruscan artifacts. Etruscan! You would think Mr. Super Detective could read the signage in a museum.
Oh and also, did you notice he reads my blog. Reads every post I bet. Hey, Bradshaw, you in the comments section? You know how I know you read my blog. BECAUSE I CAN HEAR YOUR LIPS MOVING ALL THE WAY AT MY HOUSE!
Ever wonder how I can post all this crazy stuff to the public and never get arrested? Because to lock me up, the powers that be would first have to admit that—as Sara put it—the Darkness was never empty. There'd be interviews, depositions, and poorly spelled police reports to contend with. Better to let the lie go on. Better to let Brian Foster stumble around fighting killer clowns that open a task force to chase down the grease-painted goons.
Bradshaw you say Sara’s not safe?
Well you are part of the reason why.
Brian Foster out. I’ll check in with you all when we get to the First State.
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