CHAPTER 24

IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST VISIT TO THE REDEEMER’S LAW PROJECT, YOU ARE COMING INTO THE STORY ALREADY IN PROGRESS. YOUR EXPERIENCE HERE WILL BE FAR LESS CONFUSING IF YOU USE THE CHAPTER INDEX ON THE RIGHT TO GO BACK TO THE INTRODUCTION. OR AT LEAST TO THE PROLOGUE.

-- DAN

CHAPTER 24

Matt walked into the old Sears Building—officially known as City Hall East—that afternoon, asked a few questions, and was directed to Detective Adam Kraitz. The policeman waved Matt to a battered gray metal desk. “Have a seat while I get the right papers.”

Matt took the nicked and scarred wooden chair in front of the desk and sat, glancing around him. His chest and side hurt unmercifully, and deep breaths hurt even worse. He let his eyes unfocus.

Z, Y, X, W ...

Soon his breathing eased.

Kraitz was a stocky, barrel-chested man in his thirties, slightly below average height, with very closely cropped red hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, and brown eyes that could punch holes through concrete. His demeanor was cordial enough, but he made Matt uneasy.

“So you’re here to give your statement about the mugging in Hammerfield Park last night, right?”

Matt nodded. “Yeah.”

“And it took you till now to come in? Talk to us?” Kraitz glanced at his watch. “Fifteen hours later?”

Matt sat with wide eyes for a few seconds, taken off-guard by the question, and finally decided to act really, really stupid.

“Well, uh...I had to get my car, y’know?” He spoke slowly, and let his eyes glaze over. That part wasn’t hard. “I didn’t wanna leave it out there, y’know?”

Kraitz stared at him, didn’t speak. Matt said, “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was so important, I woulda come in already. Anyway, it was freaky out there.”

The detective’s pen hovered over a statement form. “Freaky? How?”

“Well, I chased the guy, y’know, and he got away from me, so I went back to where the girl was. And I got a good look at her, with all that stuff, all the blood and stuff. And I was thinking, Christ, what if the guy’d turned around? Y’know? What if he’d’a cut me up like that?”

Matt knew the girl hadn’t been “cut up.”

Detective Kraitz sat unmoving for some time. Matt began to think the man would spring across the desk and cuff him.

“Okay,” Kraitz finally said. “So what did this guy look like? Did you get a good look at him? At his face? Your girlfriend didn’t. She was asking about you, by the way.”

An unexpected jolt throbbed through his side from where the pistol round had hit him, and Matt struggled not to gasp.

“Yeah, I got a good look at him.”

Matt had tried to decide, the whole way to the police station, whether or not to be truthful in describing the young man who’d called himself Simon. He’d finally settled on a partial truth, since he couldn’t do much good from inside a padded room.

“He’s a young guy, I’d say maybe twenty or twenty-one, pale skin and dark hair. Sort of a prettyboy. He had on black clothes, I couldn’t tell exactly what. Jeans, maybe.”

“That’s a pretty detailed description of somebody running away from you in the dark.”

“He stopped for a minute, at a bridge, then he jumped on a truck, and that’s the last I saw of him. But I did see him okay when he stopped. He turned around and looked at me.”

“He looked at you? He say anything?”

“Nope. Not a word.”

Kraitz handed Matt a sheet of paper with departmental letterhead on it.

At the top were the words, “VICTIM/WITNESS STATEMENT.”

“Just write everything down there,” Kraitz said. “Exactly as you told me. And fill out the stuff at the top.”

Surprised, Matt looked at the piece of paper uncertainly. He’d expected to come in, say what he had to say, and leave. Now he had to spend more time there, and—his eyes widened—one of the blanks was, “Highest level of education completed.”

Completely aside from his agitation at last night’s events and his anxiety about being in the police station, he felt a little pang of shame.

Matt was in his late twenties, and officially had nothing more than an eleventh-grade education. He wasn’t destitute, he had no health problems. There was no real reason he couldn’t have gone back and at least gotten his GED. He just hadn’t. Normally he didn’t think about it much, since his life was progressing, after a fashion. But now, with it staring him in the face, he couldn’t help but feel like sort of a loser.

His face held carefully neutral, he checked the box beside “High school,” and felt a little slimy. Then, as Detective Kraitz had directed him, he wrote down his version of what had happened in the park.

It took about fifteen minutes. As Matt stood to leave he felt Kraitz’s eyes on his back, drilling two little brown holes, and he still felt them until he got outside.

On the way to the car he thought, Well, that could have been worse, I guess, all things considered.

# # #

Matt hadn’t noticed Zach Feygen, sitting mostly hidden behind a partition, watching him during the interview. A few moments after Matt left, Feygen stood and wandered over to Kraitz, who glanced up at him and leaned back in his chair.

“Zach,” Kraitz said, friendly. “What’s up? How’s your woman? Still lookin’ good?”

“Better than ever,” Feygen replied. “Hey, who was that guy you were just talking to?”

# # #

Dark dreams played out on the screen behind Simon Grove’s closed eyelids, filled with heavy, crushing weight, and...something else. A scent...? What was that?

He tried to stay asleep, but Ruby wouldn’t leave him alone. Her whining grated on him, filled his head. He tried to reach out a hand to her, to pet her, maybe scratch behind her ears or thump her on the ribs. But he couldn’t reach her, and when he tried harder his fingers started to feel strange.

A beautiful Alaskan huskey, Ruby belonged to Paul Burney, Simon’s next-door neighbor. He and Paul were...what? Sixteen? No. Paul was sixteen, Simon was older by about a year, maybe a year and a half. Both his and Paul’s houses had huge, perfect lawns, and a thin line of trees separated them. Paul and Ruby ran around their yard almost every day, played catch with Frisbees or wrestled on the ground. So Simon walked over one day and asked if he could play too.

He’d never had a dog.

Ruby was so good, so sweet. Such a smart dog. Simon saw the intelligence in her eyes; she really looked back at him when he looked at her.

Eventually Paul began to let Simon take Ruby on walks by himself, if Paul had other places to be. Simon was happy to do it.

She was fun just to pet, with her thick fur and fuzzy ears and beautiful blue eyes. Whenever Simon stroked her neck Ruby pointed her nose straight up in the air, offered her throat for scratching, where the fur was dense and deep.

Ruby was such a good dog. She never barked for no reason, was always warm and friendly. Simon missed her. He began to cry, softly, as he reached out for her, tried to stroke her head, scratch her ears. But his fingers weren’t right, and Ruby’s whining wouldn’t stop...

...and he realized he was the one whining.

Simon tried to open his eyes, but could only pry the lids apart the tiniest bit. He lay on a bed, indoors somewhere, in a place with white walls. He thought he saw two people nearby. They were talking.

Two people, a man and a woman, he could tell by the sounds of their voices, but he couldn’t make out what they said. Only one word really got through: “nicely,” maybe with one or two words attached to it. “Coming along nicely”? “Progressing nicely”? He couldn’t quite understand it. He tried to move, and that caused him to feel his shoulder, which blacked him out again.

“Nicely.”


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