Page 128 of Thief of Night
If they charged her, no one was going to believe she hadn’t done it.
Across the cell, sitting close to the open metal toilet, a woman in a heavy coat whispered to herself. A young girl with a shiny ponytail and a UMass sweatshirt was sitting on a cot and crying.
Another woman, middle-aged, with a swollen eye and short pajamas, whispered to Charlie, “It’s always so fucking cold in here.”
Charlie pulled her sweater over her head and offered it to the woman. “Take it.” That left her only with a t-shirt, but it hardly mattered. Where she was going, they were going to give her a whole new orange wardrobe.
The woman put on another layer gratefully. “I’m Molly,” she said. “That was nice of you. This your first time?”
“Yeah.” As a criminal, Charlie had been a huge success. But she’d wound up here anyway.
“Don’t let it eat at you,” the woman said. “Just think about who you’re going to call. Make it someone that really likes you. Someone with money.”
Charlie stayed in the cell through the night as people came and went. A few of the women got bailed out. More were brought in. From what she couldhear, most had been picked up on drug charges, solicitation, or being intoxicated in public. One woman came in bleeding from a fight.
After a while, Charlie found herself nodding off, but never for long. She couldn’t rest well on the cold benches, her thoughts turning over and over. Was there a way out of this? A bargain that she could make? Some reason for the detectives to be less interested in her being in a courtroom?
Eventually one of the officers returned and called her name. “Charlotte Hall, step out.”
She staggered up, stiff and sore, hoping the system would throw her back, like the too-small fish that she was, confident in their ability to get her next time. Handcuffed again, she was led back to the interrogation room. Detective Vitolo was already there. The cop who’d brought Charlie in attached her cuffs to the table.
“You know I didn’t kill anyone,” she said.
“I don’t know that,” said Detective Vitolo. “Like we said before, I have enough here to charge you. It would be easier if you confessed to killing the drifter. The DA’s office will give you a deal. But if you maintain your innocence, they’re going to seek the maximum sentence.”
“I didn’t do it.”
Detective Vitolo shrugged. “You can stay with that if you want, but you’re telling me that not only are you not responsible, but you don’t know who is? Even though you were the only person in the building at the time of death? How likely is that? And don’t give me your Blight story again. It’s like saying a ghost killed him.”
There wasn’t anything Charlie could say to that, so she didn’t.
“And you don’t know the location of Mark Lord either?” Vitolo prompted.
Charlie gritted her teeth. “I told you that I got away from him. After that, I don’t know where he went. How would I? I was running for my life.”
“And what was your relationship with him?” Detective Vitolo asked.
Oh, that was bad and Charlie’s hesitation was worse. “That’s got to be in your computer. He was convicted of attempting to murder me.”
“And yet, you’re still alive,” Vitolo said.
“You’re not the only person frustrated about that,” Charlie said, exhausted. She thought about telling the detective she had information about Mark and the church massacre. Surely that would buy her something, but the way they were talking, Vitolo would find a way to implicate her.
“What if I told you that Mark Lord was dead?” Vitolo asked.
They found his body,Charlie thought. “Well, then I would say that being in a police station was a pretty good alibi.”
“We’re waiting on the time and cause of death,” Vitolo told her. “I think we better get you fingerprinted.”
They did that, then took her glamour shots and charged her for criminal trespass. That would be enough to keep her locked up until the prosecutor decided how to proceed with the other charges. Eventually, they brought her to a different cell. This one had a television on and two women inside—one sitting on the bench and the other with her head pillowed on the first woman’s lap. Charlie stretched out on the opposite bench and closed her eyes, letting the sound of the game show flow over her.
She woke to Red’s voice. Still half in dreams, she thought she was waking up in their old rental house before she felt the hardness of the bench and smelled the sourness of the air. When it all came rushing back, she sprang up, believing he’d come for her.
But no, she was alone in the cell. Red’s voice was coming from the television on the wall. He stood on the courthouse steps in a gray suit with a gunmetal gray tie, a cashmere coat over top. His pale eyes were steady on the camera lens.
“I am grateful to the city of Springfield,” he said, “for restoring my freedom and reputation. With my inheritance, I am planning on setting up a foundation to make sure that the people who helped me in my time of greatest need will get help in theirs.”
Beneath him, the chyron read:Remy Carver, thought to be dead, inherits half the Salt fortune.
