Chapter Thirteen

The blue and white squad car was still in the parking lot, and Raymond pulled up alongside. The place seemed deserted. Most importantly: no Larissa.

Raymond took a sip from the drinking fountain and joined Susan at the door. Amber lights on spindly poles bathed the sidewalks and grass with an unhealthy sallow glow, forcing colors out of their natural spectrum, making Susan's hair look almost blonde. She stood on the wide rubber mat, in front of an intercom set in the wall. He moved up beside her, reached out and pushed the button. A buzz sounded and the door clicked. When he pushed, it opened.

The lobby felt as cold and quiet as a tomb, with a ceiling fan turning silently above an air conditioning vent at the end of a tube which snaked down from the vaulted, slanted ceiling. Two video cameras watched everything from the rear wall of the lobby. Behind panes of reinforced glass, two cops chatted over coffee. One officer looked up as they entered, and the other swung around in his chair to face them.

It was officer Stope—the one from Raymond's first day at school. Stope's face softened into a smile of recognition. He leaned to the speaking vent.

"Hey … umm …" He snapped his fingers. "Marty, wasn't it?"

"Raymond."

"That's right." Stope got up and opened the metal door, letting them into the inner office. Two rows of video monitors sat on one desk, one stacked on top of the other. A few computer terminals hummed quietly. Stope leaned against the back wall of the office. "Well, what can I do you for, Raymond?"

Raymond started to raise his hand to his hair, then stopped. He vowed right then never to do that again. Hands at his sides, head straight, he looked right at the officer.

"We need your help," he said.

"As a professional," Susan added.

"A professional what?"

Down one hall, through another open door, Raymond could see racks of guns and an open locker of ammunition. He looked at Officer Stope's gun, at his badge. "As a police officer. I might be in some kind of trouble."

Stope chuckled. "With your history so far, not really surprised. What'd you do this time, kill somebody?"

"Maybe," Raymond said.

The other officer put down his coffee, turned and stared at them. Stope looked from Raymond to Susan, then back. "You're serious," he stated.

"Yes."

"Maybe we'd better sit down and talk about it." He dunked his finger in his mug, wiped it off on his handkerchief, and turned to the other officer. "Kimo, you wanna call Takahashi in the kitchen and tell him to bring me some fresh coffee in conference room three? Oh, do you guys want anything? It's damn cold in here."

He led them through a sterile hall and they squeezed into a cubicle with blue soundproofing and four chairs around a tiny table. Two mirrors, set at observation height, made Raymond nervous. He wished he'd looked harder at those video screens.

He told his story, with help from Susan. Officer Stope interrupted from time to time, asking questions. When Raymond got to the part where they stopped at the bus stop, the officer seemed almost proud of him. "You figured you'd just stop and they'd stop behind you, and after they got out you'd split."

"That was the idea. That way, nobody had to actually hit anyone else."

"Good boy."

Raymond smiled.

"So then what happened?"

"Well, they got out and, like, surrounded the car. They started banging on it and swearing at us. I was watching in my rear view mirror to make sure all of them were out of the truck. When the last one got out I took off …"

"And?"

"And ran over one of them on the way out." Raymond shrugged and looked at the floor.

Officer Stope stayed silent for a long moment. He sipped his coffee and swished it through his teeth. He looked at Susan for reaction, but she just sat there, deadpan. Finally, he put his mug down. "Over—not just hit him or bumped him—but actually over him?"

"Felt him with both wheels."

"Whoa."

Susan stood up and tried to look through the mirror, shielding the light with her hands. Raymond warmed his hands on his cocoa.

Stope tapped nervously on the black handcuff case on his belt. "Okay. Things will depend on a few things. You didn't hit the guy on purpose, which is good. I'm supposed to say 'allegedly' but I believe you. It'll also depend on the condition of the kid—if he's dead or what. So, besides the Bloods, were there any other witnesses?"

Susan turned from the mirror. "There was another girl in the car with us."

"Larissa Sakai."

"And she was—what—with you? Whose side was she on?"

Raymond shook his head. "Who knows? She goes out with the driver of the truck."

"Well, we'll have to contact her. Sakai, huh? You don't know her father's name, do you?"

Raymond blurted out her number, and instantly regretted it. He'd memorized it after he'd written it down, that first time. Susan cast him a sideways glance. Stope wrote the number down and left the cubicle, and Susan stared at him, hard. "So I know her number," he said. "So prosecute me." Susan smiled in spite of herself.

In a few minutes, the officer returned with statement forms and pens. "Take these and write down exactly what happened, in your own words. If you cross anything out, put your initials by where you changed it. I'm going to get on the horn and see if I can find out what's going on." He left again, this time pulling the door shut behind him.

Raymond and Susan wrote their statements and sat, holding hands, not talking, until the officer came back in. Raymond kept wondering if they were being watched. Officer Stope read their statements, then reviewed what he'd written on his clipboard before he told them. "A Samoan guy from Kalohe was checked into Wailele Hospital about an hour ago, then Med-evaced to Queens. Emergency case."

"Was he D. O. A.?" Susan asked.

Officer Stope smiled. "No, just I. L. P."

"What?"

He lifted the top paper and read the one under it. "In Little Pieces. Um—shattered leg, broken hipbone, busted ribs, busted collarbone, multiple lacerations and he's got a concussion. I think that's all she said." Stope raised his eyebrows. "You realize this is the second Blood you put in the hospital since you've been here?"

Raymond was surprised that he didn't feel even the least bit vindictive. "He's alive, though?"

"He was a few minutes ago."

He took a breath of relief, ignoring the pain in his chest. "Can we go home, now?"

Stope checked his watch and nodded. "I'll call you out of class tomorrow to tell you what's going down. And Raymond?"

Halfway out of his seat, Raymond looked at the officer. "Yes?"

"Don't run over anyone on your way home."

"Promise." He shook the officer's hand and followed Susan out of the tiny blue room. He led the way out of the station, glad to be out where it was warm, away from the station's stale bureaucratic smell. They drove back to Kalohe, straight to the Harmons' house. Both of them felt they had just exited a time warp. It was as if the past couple of hours hadn't existed in real-life chronology.

PJ and Susan were there on the couch, watching television.

© Copyright 2002 by David S. Baker