“Oh,” I said. “Right.” He stood up, and I reached for him. My fingers brushed against one of his knees, where the bone protruded knobbily; it made me feel sort of tender toward him, as if I knew him, maybe because I could imagine him as a teenager, all that stark bony flesh. “Hey, do you have another joint?” I asked, wanting to keep him with me a second or two longer.
He stared at me. I thought about Leslie finding his messages with Elaine, all that money gone to some other woman. I thought about Paul and the girl at his house, that girl who’d looked like me, my replacement. For a second they almost looked the same to me, Dave and Paul; I could have wanted to kill him too, if I’d loved him more. If I’d loved him as much as Leslie did. “I don’t do it that often,” he said finally, moving toward the door.
My hand stayed in the air where his knee had been, hovering uncertainly, so that it looked like I was saying, over and over again, Hello, or maybe So-so. “Could you put me in touch, then?”
“With my dealer?” His hand closed over the doorknob. “I guess so.”
“What’s his number?”
“Hers,” he said, fumbling in his pocket for his phone. “Um…” He read me the number, then added, “Elaine. Tell her you’re my sister-in-law, it’ll be fine.”
“Elaine,” I repeated, my fingers pausing against my own phone screen, which lit me sickly from below.
“Don’t tell Leslie, okay?” he added, opening the door.
“Right,” I said, tapping Elaine Campbell’s name into my phone. “I won’t tell Leslie.”
He went inside, pressing his fingertips against the glass door to keep it from slamming. I stayed seated on the porch, staring at the way the streetlight picked out the small downy hairs on my thighs.
43
Mary
The inside of the Bernalillo County jail was so ordinary—a little tan lobby with linoleum floors and plastic plants. I don’t know what I expected. Bars over everything, maybe, or a big hefty guard at the door. The only guard was the clerk sitting at a desk protected by Plexiglas, chewing on the nubby end of a pen cap.
Nancy had walked in ahead of me and she went up to the clerk. “I’m here to see one of the prisoners, Francis Clery.” She slid her badge into the well beneath the glass.
The clerk studied it briefly, then glanced up at me. “Who’s that?”
“This is Robin Voigt. She’s going to sit in.”
I held my breath. He pursed his lips. “Okay,” he said at last. “ID.”
I fumbled in my purse.
After the clerk was done taking my information, Nancy and I went to sit in the plastic chairs lining the far wall. They were textured to feel like sand, and my hands started sweating as soon as I gripped the edges. I let go, trying to relax. My body drifted toward Nancy—close, too close—and I whispered, “How long until we can go in?”
Nancy was straight-backed. “Depends on whether he’s in the middle of a structured block of time. Could be five minutes, could be an hour. He can refuse to talk if he wants. Then they’ll come out and tell us to go.”
I didn’t know what I’d do if that happened. I ran my tongue over my teeth, thinking.
There was no television in the lobby, no reading material—which was the only thing that distinguished it from a dentist’s office. I stared at the peach-colored metal door. It had a little window cut into the top, crisscrossed by thin metal bars. Almost the only thing.
It was nearly an hour before an officer came to the door and nodded at us. I had been watching Nancy play Words With Friends on her phone. She was a terrible speller, which she tried to hide from me by tilting the screen away, but I could tell. I watched her laboriously assemble D-A-C-K-E-R-Y and frown when the game kicked it back to her.
“Officer Courtenay,” the other officer said as we passed. She nodded and we went in.
Past the door lay a short industrial hallway lined with more peach-colored metal doors. At the end of the hallway was a plate-glass door left ajar. Nancy and I followed the officer into this new room. It was small and cramped, with walls made of cinder block and tables shoved cafeteria-style along the perimeter of the room. Someone had painted a decorative stripe on the walls in a dark, burnt orange, which gave me the feeling of passing through chambers in a conch shell, where the peachy accents of the outer rooms gave way to a deeper shade nearer to the heart.
The focus of the room was a long squat set of windows, each outfitted with telephones and bolted-down wooden stools. Sitting in the second window was Frank Clery.
He was white, blue-eyed, with a long face and weak chin that undercut the effect of his well-muscled torso. He wore glasses, plastic Buddy Holly frames that he’d propped up on his fleshy, lined forehead. His tongue crept out to wet his lips as he caught sight of us—he was one of those men who had permanently red, shiny lips.
“Here you are,” the officer who had led us in said. “You have until one-thirty.”
“Thank you,” Nancy said. She crossed the room quickly and cast herself down onto the wooden stool. The windows weren’t designed for two-on-one conversations; I sat awkwardly off to the side, leaning into her space in order to see.
Clery eyed Nancy, then me. I couldn’t read on his face what he thought of us.
Nancy picked up the phone and motioned for him to pick up his end. He lifted the receiver with two fingers.
“Mr. Clery,” Nancy said. “I’m Officer Courtenay. This is Robin. We’d like to ask you a couple of questions about your relationship with a woman named Leslie Flores. We’re investigating her possible criminal conduct.”
Clery looked from Nancy to me. His odd oblong face remained flat, although his watery eyes gave him a persecuted air, like a man caught in a permanent windstorm. “Not talking,” he said, after some time had passed.
“Do you remember anyone by that name?” Nancy pressed.
He set the telephone gingerly back in its cradle, then met Nancy’s eyes through the glass. Not talking.
“Did she ever try to pawn anything at your store?” Nancy continued, speaking loudly and enunciating. The glass was thick, but not soundproof. We both saw him take in her question. “Did she ever hire you to perform any services?”
Clery turned in his seat toward the officer lurking on his side of the glass. His mouth moved, but he was facing away and I only caught the timbre of his speech. A question—Can I go yet, probably.
“Nancy, let me try,” I said, reaching for her hand under the stool, out of Clery’s sightline. “Please,” I said. “I have to. For Leslie. It’ll be different if he knows she’s my sister.”