After two miles I announce that I have to pee. Mayhew ignores me. A mile later I tell him I’m going to puke and beg him, with an artfully choked voice, to slow down and open the door. He doesn’t even bother to sigh.
After that I focus on scooting close enough to the door to yank on the handle, wondering how bad this is going to hurt, until he says, tiredly, “The child locks are on, Opal.”
I let go of the handle. “Look, I just want to know if Jasper, if he was—” I press my forehead against the window, hard. “Do you know if they got any kids out of the motel?”
For a minute I think he’s going to revert back to ignoring me, but eventually he grunts, “No.”
I catch my own eyes in the rearview mirror, red-rimmed and wild, and look quickly away. The last few miles pass in silence. Bad thoughts keep trying to bubble up—like the last thing I said to him was go to hell—but I don’t let them make it to the surface.
The Muhlenberg County Detention Center is a low sprawl of concrete jammed between a U-Pull-It junkyard and a Waffle House that doubles as a Greyhound stop. I feel like it ought to be dim and bleak inside, but it’s all white tile and bright canister lights. It looks several decades newer than the high school.
There’s a woman with bleached highlights sitting at a kiosk. The constable sets a plastic baggie on the counter and she takes it without looking away from her desktop.
“Is that my phone?”
Neither of them look at me. My phone buzzes against the counter.
“Excuse me, that’s mine—give it to me—”
Constable Mayhew tips his dumbass hat to the receptionist and hauls me away by the elbow. My tennis shoes squeal across the floor. “Who’s calling? Can you see the name? Please!”
Mayhew pulls harder and I go limp, dangling by one elbow while he swears through his mustache. “Just tell me who it is, I’m begging you. There’s a fire and I don’t know if my brother made it out.”
The receptionist looks away from her computer long enough to observe my ash-streaked clothes, my scorched eyes. She glances down at my phone with the expression of a saint performing a reluctant miracle. “Somebody named Heath Cliff? Like the candy bar?”
I sag, shoulders shrieking, heart shattering. “Can you check my missed calls? Please, I just need to know—”
“Come on, Opal, time to go.” Mayhew hooks two hands under my armpits.
The receptionist is scrolling, acrylic nails tapping on my screen. “Just Heath, again and again.” She clucks her tongue. “He’s got it bad,hon.”
“Can you check my texts? You know how kids hate to call—”
The receptionist is flicking over to my texts and Mayhew is giving himself a hernia trying to lift me when the glass doors bang open.
It’s Bev. Reeking of smoke, glaring through smeared ash like an avenging angel with a buzz cut. Charlotte trails anxiously behind her, offering a pained smile to the receptionist.
Bev stops halfway across the hall and crosses her arms. She rakes her gaze across us with scathing deliberation, and if I had room to feel another ounce of emotion, I would be terrified. That motel was her life and livelihood, her home,gone because I decided to punch the wrong person in the teeth. I wonder if Constable Mayhew can get me behind bars before she murders me in cold blood.
Bev asks, slowly, “Would somebody like to explain to me just what the hell is going on here?”
The constable drops me and puffs out the concavity of his chest. “Ma’am, I’m going to ask you to leave the premises. I’m investigating a crime.”
“Well whoop-de-do, Constable. I’m investigating why you handcuffed one of my guests rather than handing her over to the EMTs.”
I meet Charlotte’s eyes behind Bev’s back and manage a single, strangled word. “Jasper?”
Charlotte says, “They got the fire out, and they haven’t found any—anybody. I don’t think he was there.”
I miss the next few sentences because I’m busy heaving my guts out on the floor. When it’s over I feel hollow and brittle, like plastic that’s spent too long in the sun. The receptionist lobs a roll of blue paper towels at me and I ignore it, trying to remember the trick of breathing.
By the time I peel my skull off the tile Bev is jabbing her finger in the constable’s face. “Don’t talk to me like that, you goddamn mall-cop cowboy—”
“Now look here, Bev, I am elected by the people of this great state—”
“You drive your mom’s Pontiac, Joe! They don’t even let you use the lights anymore!” She’s inches away from him now, voice dropping to a strangled threat. “We thought she was dead until somebody told us you dragged her down here.”