Chapter 13: Contact With the Victim

Cal heard the name and the room went white at the edges.

Lena had sat in that car.

Lena had said something out of the window, and Preston had driven.

Three years of counting days on a cell wall, and the woman he counted them for had been in the passenger seat the whole time.

"Say something," Kira whispered.

"I can't."

He picked his boots up off the floor.

His hands would not work the laces, so he left them open and walked to the door.

"Cal, please. Don't go out like this."

"You've had three years to say it."

"I know."

"I need ten minutes where nobody tells me anything."

She did not follow him.

He heard her cane stop at the top of the stairs.

The cold in the lot hit his bare arms and he welcomed it.

His old boss was by the shop door with two coffees, and one look at Cal's face made him set both on the hood of a truck.

"Son."

"Not now."

"Where are you going?"

"To see my mother."

He walked the whole way to County General, nineteen blocks, with his boots untied.

Joan was in a chair by the window of the cardiac ward, with a blanket over her knees and a tube taped to the back of her hand.

She looked at him once and put down her crossword.

"You've got a face like a flat tire," she said. "Sit."

He sat on the edge of the bed.

He had meant to tell her nothing.

Instead it came out in pieces: the dock, the room above the garage, Larch Street, a blue wool coat.

"Kira was the pedestrian, Mom. She's the one I went in for."

Joan did not blink.

"And Lena was in the car. She told Preston to drive."

His mother said nothing for a long moment.

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