Staying Fit
Illustration by Steve Vance
13
Out of Control
My words hung in the air for what seemed a full minute.
Strickland hid his surprise behind those steely eyes. He nodded: I’d traded him enough information for him to make the phone call.
Behind me, I could sense Timms and his buddies glancing at each other, and, of course, Alan was going nuts.
“Murder! You’ve committed murder? You’re a murderer? You murdered somebody?”
I let him go on conjugating the verb murder without betraying anything in my expression. Strickland motioned for the sergeant to continue processing my admission, and a few minutes later I was led down a row of completely empty cells and shoved into the one farthest from the door. I looked around and shivered. Not again.
“My God, Ruddy, would you please tell me what’s going on?” Alan pleaded.
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“What’s going on,” I muttered pleasantly, “is that I have just been arrested for the killing of Alan Lottner of East Jordan.”
“What was that about your parole officer? What did you mean that you were in jail for murder?”
“Prison,” I corrected. “This is jail. I was in prison.
Believe me, big difference.”
“But why? What happened?”
I took in a big, unsteady breath. “Alan, I’m sorry, but that is one thing I will never, never talk to you about. All right? I don’t ever talk about it. To anyone.”
“But—”
“No, Alan. Let it go,” I interrupted.
There was a long silence. “With a record, though,” he said finally, “this could be big trouble. I could tell by the way the sheriff was looking at you.”
“Could be big trouble? Do you not see the steel bars in front of me?”
Yet I wasn’t worried about Strickland—he’d do his duty. Timms, though, was another matter—it was his spiritual ancestors who used to hang people from trees without a trial. I’d met his kind in the joint, men with weak minds and strong bodies who didn’t so much control the prisoners as participate in the mayhem. I didn’t ever want to be in a position where Timms had me to himself to play with.
Which is precisely what happened within the hour.
When the door opened at the end of the corridor I stood and peered down to see who it was, already so bored with incarceration I was willing to endure any sort of interruption just to have something to do. I caught sight of Timms and instantly realized he was up to something— he had a sneaky look on his jug-shaped face, like a little boy breaking a rule. Someone came in behind him, smaller, standing in Timms’s shadow.
“Oh no,” Alan moaned softly.
It was a woman. The proprietary way that Timms steered her down to my cell suggested that this was his woman— the deputy was showing off his big murder arrest to his honey.
“What are you up to, Timms?” I asked in a low voice.
When she stepped closer, I literally gasped in shock.
Katie Lottner.
She was even prettier than I remembered. I was drawn to her eyes, which were large and blue as they stared at me. She had the sort of long brown bangs that had to be continually pushed away from those eyes, and she did this now, an automatic motion I found charming.
“Careful, babe,” Timms warned. “Don’t get too close.”
Alan was quietly moaning, almost keening—I guess a father would always recognize his own daughter, even after eight years. I ruefully reflected on my resolve not to tell him I had already met her—I felt like that one was going to backfire on me pretty soon.
“You? You’re the one?” Katie asked in a quiet, flat voice. Ignoring Timms’s restraining hand on her shoulder, she curled her fingers around the steel bars and leaned her face in close. “You killed my father?”
I was trying to figure out how best to answer this when she spat at me, mostly missing her target. I jumped back, startled.
“Oh no, Kathy,” Alan groaned.
“You ... you son of a bitch,” she choked.
“Now Katie, move back there. Come on,” Timms soothed, pulling at her.
The door at the end of the hall banged open and we all turned. Sheriff Strickland stood on the threshold, backlit so we couldn’t see his face. “What’s going on here?” he demanded in a voice that sounded like he was speaking through a megaphone. He and two other men marched down the hallway. His eyes darted to me first—secure the prisoner, always—and then rested for a moment on Timms, then on Katie. “Miss Lottner, what are you doing here?” he asked finally, his voice carrying a touch of sadness.
“I made him bring me,” Katie explained at once, moving a half step in front of Timms as if to physically protect him.
“Oh, Miss Lottner. Katie.” Strickland pursed his lips. “You shouldn’t be here, now, you know better.”
She crossed her arms defiantly. Strickland shifted his gaze to the deputy.
“Timms.”
The man visibly swallowed, and I almost felt sorry for him. He was taller than his boss and probably eighty pounds heavier, but the image that came to mind was of a small dog being whipped by its master.
“You know good and well that you are in violation of procedure. Bringing a civilian down here is not only expressly prohibited, but runs contrary to every single bit of common sense I ever thought you had. Do you have anything to say for yourself, mister?” Timms numbly shook his head.
“You are on unpaid leave for the next seventy-two hours. Please escort Miss Lottner upstairs. Advise the duty sergeant that you are departing this shift immediately. Understood?”
Timms gave a trembling nod. Katie, biting her lip, made as if to say something, but Strickland held up his hand. “Excuse me, Miss Lottner. Deputy Timms, I have just one more thing to say to you. I’ve told you more than once that that badge of yours doesn’t mean you get to break the rules, it means that you, more than anyone else, have to follow them. I’ve never in all my years in law enforcement seen anyone do anything as lame-brained as this. I’ve half a mind to ask the board to remove you from your position. I can’t have a man in my department who won’t toe the same line as everybody else. We understand each other?”
When Timms coughed up a reply, it sounded like it had been dragged across cement. “Yes, sir.”
“All right. Step to it, son. Katie, please leave with Deputy Timms; this is a restricted area.” Strickland pointed down the hallway. I found myself intrigued by his selective use of her first name, depending on the circumstance.
The two deputies dared a glance at each other as Timms and Katie fled the lockup. You had to admire the sheriff—his public chewing out had been a deliberate act of atonement, giving me something back for the humiliation I’d suffered. Our eyes met and I nodded.
Strickland motioned one of the deputies forward. He slid the key card through the slot, punched some numbers, and the cell door clicked open. “So.” Strickland eyed me up and down. “Why didn’t you tell us you were in Jackson State Prison when the murder was committed?”
I had planned my answer to that question for the past hour. “You didn’t tell me when the murder was committed.”
If the light had been better I might have seen a glint of amusement come and go in his eye. “Ah. Well, come upstairs, Ruddy, and we will process you out of custody. And maybe while that’s going on you’ll tell me just how it is that you knew Alan Lottner’s body was buried out there in the woods, since, as it turns out, you couldn’t have put it there.”
“Sheriff,” I sighed, “you’ll never believe me.”
I had read too much permission into the friendly banter, because his expression hardened. “You will tell me just how it is you knew the body was buried out there in the woods,” he repeated.
Oh, great.
As we turned the corner, Katie Lottner jumped up out of her chair, where she’d been fidgeting, apparently planning an appeal of Deputy Timms’s suspension. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of me strolling unshackled next to the sheriff.
“What .... he ....”
“Please, Katie, you go on, this is official business,” he urged her gently, blocking her view of me with his body in case she wanted to spit some more. She didn’t move. Strickland sized up the situation and reached a decision. “Now, I don’t know what Dwight told you, but this man here couldn’t have done anything to your father. He’s not the one, Katie. We’re not even sure what happened.”
“Couldn’t have done anything?”
“He was in prison when your father disappeared,
Katie. He just finished off his parole not long ago.” “Prison for murder,” she protested.
“Yes, well, vehicular homicide.” Strickland glared at me but I didn’t yield: As far as I was concerned, I killed somebody and that was murder. “But he’s served his time, Katie, and we have no right to keep him here.”
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