Page 47 of Everyone Here Is Lying
They sit. The attorney looks grim, resolved.
“Well?” Bledsoe says.
“My client denies any involvement with the missing girl. She did not get in his car that day. He is innocent.”
“Is that right, Ryan?” Bledsoe says tiredly.
Gully can see his fatigue, and it hits her then, how tired she is too. They’ve been running on adrenaline, and now she realizes how empty her tank is.
Ryan says tearfully, “I had nothing to do with her. Whoever said she got in my car is lying.”
“But the witness is a fine, upstanding citizen,” Bledsoe can’t resist saying to Ryan, “and you’re a known drug offender.”
“That’s enough,” the attorney says, a knee-jerk reaction.
“Oh, right, you were his attorney on that, weren’t you?” Bledsoe shoots back. Then he turns back to the boy. “You’ve got agood lawyer, Ryan—good for you. But we’re going to hold you for now.”
Bledsoe pushes back his chair noisily and stands, while the attorney rests his hand on the boy’s back in a gesture of comfort. Gully knows Ryan’s never been in jail before. She’s looked into his file. He was a minor when he was arrested for possession, and he was released to his parents. But now he’s an adult, and he’s suspected of kidnapping and possibly murder.
Gully hears the attorney speaking quietly to Ryan. “It’s okay. You’ll be held overnight here. They can’t hold you for too long before bringing you in front of a judge and charging you. But if they don’t find any physical evidence, they’ll never be able to convict.”
Gully wonders if the attorney believes Ryan is innocent. She can’t tell.
•••
Marion Cooke livesalone in a bungalow with two bedrooms on the main floor and a guest suite in the basement with its own bathroom. It’s small, but nicely redone. She’s never had children, so the house is quiet, clean, and uncluttered. The guest room in the basement is generally empty. She does, occasionally, have her sister come stay.
Marion spends a long time downtown before she drives home, still feeling on edge.
She places her handbag on the kitchen counter and unlocks the door from the kitchen to the basement. She flicks the switch on the wall to light up the stairs and the area around the bottom. She listens for a second, cocking her head. Silence. The television isn’t on. That’s unusual.
She heads down the steps. The basement is divided into two separate areas, a bedroom with a small bathroom at the front of the house, and a larger main room behind it, where the windows—barred long ago to prevent break-ins—don’t let in a lot of light. Her guest is in the bedroom, where there is no window at all.
Marion knocks on the door to the bedroom and calls, “Avery?”
Thirty-three
Ryan stands up, his legs trembling beneath him. None of this feels real. He’s afraid to look his attorney in the eye in case he doesn’t believe him. Ryan knows he didn’t pick Avery up in his car. He’s innocent. But what really frightens him is that the truth doesn’t seem to matter. He knows that innocent people get convicted all the time of crimes they didn’t commit. For a moment he can’t move, even though his lawyer is urging him forward.
He stumbles, putting one foot ahead of the other. His parents are waiting outside this room, down the hall. Will he see them before they take him away? In handcuffs? He wants to see them, he wants his mother to hug him and tell him that everything’s going to be okay, that he’ll be home soon, that she’ll make everything better. He wants his dad to fight for him. But he doesn’t want them to see him like this. He’s afraid he’ll blubber like a baby.
His parents are there in the waiting area when they bring himout. His mother looks like she’s been sitting at the bedside of someone who is dying. His father is clearly frightened. Ryan wonders if they actually think he took Avery Wooler and killed her. How could they believe that of him? He made some stupid choices. He wishes he’d never done the drugs, that they’d never lost faith in him. He made one mistake, and now the whole world is prepared to believe the worst of him.
They let his mother and father hug him. His mother won’t let go. She causes a bit of a scene, and he’s grateful, because it takes attention away from him and his unstoppable tears. He meets his father’s eyes one last time as he’s taken away.
An officer brings him downstairs, and as the door closes behind him and they descend he can still hear his mother’s wails. In the basement are the cells. At the moment, they’re empty. Stanhope doesn’t have a lot of crime.
“The drunks will come in later,” says the officer directing him from behind, “especially on Friday night.” He pushes him into a cell, releases him from the handcuffs. Checks for a belt and removes the shoelaces from his sneakers. He locks him in and walks away, the sound of his steps on the concrete fading. Ryan looks at the cell as if he’s looking into the future. He lies down on one of the beds curled into the fetal position and stares at the wall, too stunned to keep crying. Waiting for morning, and what will happen to him next.
•••
Avery had heardthe front door open upstairs and then footsteps crossing the house to the kitchen, then coming down the stairs to the basement. She listened carefully, fully alert; it sounded like only one set of footsteps, and she relaxed.
“Avery?” Marion says, on the other side of the bedroom door, pushing it open.
“Where have you been?” Avery demands, sitting up straighter on the bed. Avery had heard the police officers come to the door, hours ago. She couldn’t hear much of what they said, but she knows that Marion spoke to them and then they left. Marion had gone out afterward and had been gone a long time.
“I had to do some shopping,” Marion says. “I needed to get a few things.”
