Buried Dreams (28 page)

"Yes to both," I said.

The deputy sheriff said, "Then take it easy. Lunch will be along in a while."

"Thanks."

"Nothing to thank me for," he said. "Them's the rules."

He walked away and I looked around at my new home. It seemed to be about eight feet to a side, the room made of concrete and steel. To the left was a plastic-enclosed mattress, with two wool blankets folded at the foot of the bed. A plastic-enclosed pillow was at the other end. A stainless steel toilet was in the corner, next to a stainless steel sink, set into the wall. I went over and saw there was no faucet, just a thick push button. I pushed the button and lukewarm water came out. I did that three times and washed my hands and face. No towel. Just a roll of toilet paper. I dried my hands on my jumpsuit and wiped my face with my upper arm. In the middle of the cell was a drain. I imagined inmates being placed in here, throwing around food, feces, vomit. What a job, to hose down and clean that place up. I lay down on the thick mattress, pulled a blanket up and over my cold feet. And thought a lot. And waited.

And waited.

Lunch came by, but at what time, I did not know. It was brought by a guy wearing an orange jumpsuit as well, and pushing a lunch cart, like the one used by flight attendants. He was tall, with a thin beard and stringy hair, and he wore clear plastic gloves. He slid the plastic tray under an opening at the base of the cell door, and said, "When you're done, slide the tray and all your trash out into the corridor."

"Okay."

He smiled, revealing a number of missing teeth. "Oh, and since you're new, here's a suggestion. Be nice and neat with your trash, or you might not like what gets dumped into your dinner later. Got it?"

"Gotten."

I sat on the bed and ate with the tray balanced on my knees.

Lunch was a sandwich of bologna and American cheese, mustard and butter, on white bread. A carton of milk, a bag of Humpty Dumpty potato chips, and a chocolate chip cookie. The cookie was surprisingly good. I finished everything and washed my hands again, and then put the trash carefully and neatly on the tray, and slid the tray out onto the corridor floor. I heard a murmur of voices and the scrapes of other lunch trays, being placed out in the corridor, but I wasn't sure who my neighbors were, and I didn't think the so far polite deputy sheriffs would like it if I started yelling down the corridor to see if Felix was there.

So back on the bed I went, and continued the wait. Which didn't last long.

The cell door clanged open and the same deputy sheriff was there. "Cole."

"Yes?"

"Some people to see you. Come along."

"Sure," I said.

"Turn around, put your wrists together."

It was the second time I had been handcuffed, and I didn't enjoy it anymore. Back along the corridor I went, and I glanced into the other cells, but no Felix, and no Ray. I was brought into a small conference room, with a nice shiny table and chairs. Three men were waiting for me on the other side of the table. The handcuffs were taken off and I sat down, and introductions were made, and I promptly forgot everyone's name. But there was a detective from the Maine State Police, a detective from the New Hampshire State Police, and a deputy attorney general from York County.

First things first. I was then quickly and efficiently and officially placed under arrest for a breathtaking series of crimes --- just like the state police trooper had earlier predicted --- and my Miranda rights were read to me. A form was slid across the table, asking me to check off and initial each right, so there was no misunderstanding that I did not fully and completely understand my rights. I nodded politely and made the little checkmarks and initialed with a firm "LC" at each proper place in the form.

"Now, Mr. Cole," the deputy attorney general said. 'We're going to ask you if you would like to waive your rights and speak to us about what happened this morning with you, Mr. Tinios, and Mr. Ericson."

"How do I do that?" I asked.

"Do what?" he replied.

"Waive my rights?"

He said, "At the bottom of the form. Just put a check mark next to the box that says you fully and completely understand your rights, and that you're waiving your rights to speak to us without an attorney present."

I looked down and smiled nicely, and then slid the form back across the table.

"Thanks for asking," I said. "But the answer is no."

There were no harsh words, no pounding on the table. The deputy attorney general looked sorrowful, if anything. He said, "We don't know everything at the moment, but we'll find everything out, Mr. Cole. We know that Mr. Ericson is a suspect in his brother's death in New Hampshire. We also know that you and Mr. Tinios were at his house, and that a shot had been fired in the rear yard. You see, the house has been under surveillance for well over a day, before you two gentlemen showed up. And we also know that you and Mr. Tinios were engaged in... well, we'll say a rather brutal method of interrogation, before the police entered the home."

I nodded, said not a word.

The deputy attorney general said, "We've done a quick background check on you, Mr. Cole. Your record's pretty clean. Nothing like Mr. Tinios or Mr. Ericson. You cooperate with us, answer our questions, let us know exactly what was going on, and then I can make some recommendations on your behalf, recommendations that will be very helpful once you go to trial. Believe me, Mr. Cole, this is your window of opportunity, and the window is closing very quickly. Give us answers, work with us, cooperate with us, and it'll be to your benefit. You could be out of here and back home in Tyler Beach within a few hours. What do you say to that?"

I looked at the well-dressed and tough-looking men across from me, and there was that little yearning there, to roll over and cooperate, to be the good citizen. There I was, wrists still sore from the handcuffs, wearing an orange prison jumper and ridiculous paper slippers that kept falling off my feet, sitting in a room with men in suits, and I so wanted right then to do the good thing, so I could be a good guy and get out of this jumpsuit and back into my own clothes.

Instead, I said, "I'm sorry to disappoint you. I'm not going to waive my rights, and I'm not going to answer any of your questions."

The deputy attorney general gave me a crisp nod. "The window is now closed."

Back into the cell I went, and I laid back on the mattress and stared up at the thick green paint on the steel ceiling. The blanket went back onto my feet and I waited, thinking. If Jon had been alive and could see me right now, he'd be shaking his head in dismay. What a foul-up. What an incredible foul-up. To fail was one thing. But to fail in such a spectacular fashion, and to be arrested for what I had been doing, Jon would have ranked this disaster with other great disasters, like World War I and the Bay of Pigs invasion and the invention of loud car stereos. And more than anything else, of course, there was Diane.

Diane.

My very best friend in all of the world, and she had looked at me like I was a stranger with drool running down his chin, holding out a paper cup for a spare quarter. And who could blame her? She had warned me, days ago, that her plate was full, that there was too much at risk with Kara and her upcoming promotion, to clue me in on the investigation or to do anything else to hurt her and her career. That had made sense, perfect sense, and then I had gone out on my own to screw everything up for her. For what would happen once a smart detective from the New Hampshire or Maine State Police realized that one of the three men brought into custody this morning was a very good friend of the lead investigator?

I pulled the blanket up to my chin. Not good. Not to mention how things had been left, just before the police had broken in. Felix and I had been engaged in torture. Nothing could prettify that. As rotten as Ray Ericson was, and perhaps --- despite all of his denials --- he was still connected with his brother's death, did he deserve what Felix and I were doing to him this morning? Hot olive oil upon his skin? Tied and helpless in front of us? Was that the best I could do, the best I could be, to find justice for my dead friend?

Lots of questions. And I didn't want to consider any of the answers. So I lay there, blanket over me, and I only got up when the meal cart rattled by again for dinner. I rolled over and picked up the plastic tray. Dinner was a carton of milk, two lukewarm hot dogs in buns with mustard packets underneath, another bag of Humpty Dumpty potato chips, a salad in a plastic bowl with a plastic spoon, and another chocolate chip cookie. Even though I had been careful in following the meal deliverer's earlier instructions in keeping my trash neat and tidy, I picked up each hot dog from the roll and carefully examined the roll and the bun. Clean, it appeared, of any foreign debris.

I ate with the tray balanced on my knees, feeling out of sorts, for a number of good reasons. One was that when eating alone, I'm used to reading a newspaper or magazine. There's something about a well-written piece of news or commentary that goes well with a good meal. I can't explain. It just does. So eating a poor meal in a cold cell, it would have been nice to have reading material, but the only thing available was the back of the potato chip bag, where I learned that Humpty Dumpty --- always a Maine icon of fine potato chip products --- was now owned by a Canadian company.

Dinner and reading finished, I slid the tray out, washed my hands, and went back to my bunk. After a while I found that nature was calling, and was calling rather frantically. I looked at the cold steel toilet in the corner and saw how open it was to anybody walking by, and I waited and waited, until I couldn't wait anymore. I went over and got out of my jumpsuit and winced at the cold metal against my skin, and I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was someplace else, and the pretending had to go on for a long, long while before I could relax and do what I had to do.

My humiliation continuing, I flushed the toilet, washed my hands, got dressed again, and went back to the hard, unyielding bunk.

Sleep came in bits and pieces during the long night. There were shouts and occasional yells from the other inmates --- I couldn't yet bring myself to say "fellow inmates" ---- and there was the far-off chatter of radio traffic from some of the deputy sheriffs. Somebody at the end of the corridor was snoring so loud that I was certain seismographs from the Blue Hill Observatory in Massachusetts could detect the trembling of the building.

The lights were dimmed but not turned off, which made sleeping even more of a problem, and I tried to take care of that by rolling over and facing the wall, and draping the blanket over my head. But the smell of strong detergent from the blanket prevented that from working too well. As I lay there, I tried to keep my mind off my current problems by remembering great tales I had read in the past, from Solzhenitsyn and Koestler and Kafka, about those brave souls who survived the prison systems of the old Soviet Union and other totalitarian states, and thought about what strength, what values, enabled people to survive in such places, day after day. How many rose above their torture, their abuse, their imprisonment, to become poets, writers, and statesmen? From Mandela to Havel to Walesa, how many had survived and become stronger?

And me?

And what had I done? I had tortured another human, that is what I had done, and that had gotten me here. Nothing famous, nothing glorious, nothing uplifting in that.

I rolled over again, something bugging me, something different.

It was the brief talk Felix and I had taken part in, while in his rental car and before walking up the dirt driveway to the cottage where Ray Ericson had been hiding out. Felix had been saying something, something that was niggling in the back of my mind, and I couldn't quite remember what it had been.

But it was important. Felix had said something important that was now resting in the dark and cluttered basement of my subconscious, and I couldn't get to it. My mind raced and poked and prodded, but what Felix had said still remained out of reach.

I was still trying to think it through again when I managed to fall asleep, and managed even to stay sleeping until the breakfast tray slid into my cell.

Later that morning one of the deputy sheriffs came by and said, "Time for a court appearance. Unless you'd like to spend some more time here."

"No," I said. "A court appearance sounds fine."

So the cell door opened and I was handcuffed again, and then taken down the corridor, through another checkpoint, and into a holding area. There were metal benches against each wall, and other prisoners were there as well, one hand chained to a metal loop against the wall. I was brusquely and efficiently sat down, and I looked around and there were seven of us. One of them was Ray Ericson, who stared quietly ahead, the quiet patience of a man who knew the ins and outs of the system, and who knew he wasn't going to be surprised that day.

The other face I recognized, of course, was Felix, who looked over at me and smiled and gave me a furtive wink, and I suddenly felt twenty pounds lighter from around the shoulders and the base of my neck. He was dressed in the same orange jumpsuit, but somehow he filled out the suit such that it looked good on him. Another trick of the trade, I suppose. I was also happy to see that his hand, the one burned by boiling water, had been professionally bandaged. We sat there for a while and then we were checked and rechecked against a listing, and, one by one, we were unshackled and stood up. And then, one by one, we were reshackled in a long line, and a deputy sheriff called out, "We're going outside to a van. Take your time and listen to directions. No talking. No spitting. Just move along."