Chapter 6: The Man Who Held Me

The interview room had a camera in the corner, a table bolted to the floor, and Hank Rudd.

He had shaved the gray beard to stubble.

Without the beard he looked smaller.

For five years he had been a shape behind a flashlight.

I knew his boots and his breathing and the slap of the tray on the concrete.

I knew the exact sound he made before he said my name.

"Nolan," Hank said.

I went over the table.

I did not decide to do it.

I got one hand in his collar and the other in his face, and I heard the chair go over backward.

Two officers pulled me off him.

Hank sat on the floor with his lip bleeding and said, quite calmly, "Okay. That's fair."

"Mr. Thayer." The detective had me by the shoulders. "If you can't stay in this room, I'll take you out of it."

"I'm fine."

I was breathing like a dog.

"I'm fine. Let him talk."

Someone set the chair upright.

Hank sat down in it again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

At the end of the table sat the family's gray-haired lawyer with his leather folder, taking notes.

"As a courtesy to the victim's family," the detective said, before I could ask.

"Of course," I said.

I did not look at the lawyer again.

"Start," I told Hank. "From the alley."

He told it plainly.

He said a woman had come to him the day after he took me and offered money.

"Cash, in a gym bag. She said she wanted you kept somewhere nobody would look."

"Why?"

"She never said."

"What did she tell you to do to me?"

Hank looked at the table.

"No light," he said. "No clocks. Don't tell him the day or the year. Let him beg, and don't answer."

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