Life After Theft
Page 71

He grabbed the back of my hoodie and pushed me toward the side door, which opened automatically. I didn’t know what to expect—I’d never been in a police station before—but I didn’t actually expect bars. But that’s where I ended up. Me and one guy who looked homeless and another who was totally drunk off his ass. The cop removed my cuffs and I was about to sigh in relief when he simply relocked them in front of me.
“Sit,” Officer Burke said, pointing a meaty finger. What choice did I have? I sat and laid my head down on my fists, my elbows balanced on my knees. The longer I squeezed my eyes shut and drew my face back into my hood, the more I managed to convince myself I wasn’t there at all. I imagined anywhere else in the world I’d rather be.
Sera’s room, for one.
But mostly I imagined Phoenix. Everything in my life had blown to bits since I moved to Santa Monica. I’d avoided too much homesickness the last few months, but sitting in that holding cell, I let it wash over me.
Just as I started to feel tears burn behind my eyelids—for the first time in years—the jail phone rang. My head jerked up, and some irrational part of me hoped I would find myself in my own bedroom with my cordless ringing on my bedside table. But I was still in the drab cell with my reeking cellmates. Officer Burke answered the phone. I tucked my head back into my hood and squeezed my eyes shut again.
“Clayson!”
I straightened so fast I knocked my head against the bars of the cell. Ow. “Yessir,” I answered reflexively.
He glared at me. “Come on.”
Hope leaped inside me. “Are my parents here?”
The cop snorted. “Hardly.” Nothing else.
I clenched my jaw and the cop unlocked the door and held it open just enough to let me slip by. Then the firm hand returned to the back of my sweatshirt. We went through another door and it was like a different world. Desks, cubicles, offices.
My handcuffs felt heavy—like iron chains. We walked into a small room, empty except for a table and a couple of chairs. And one big mirror that was no doubt one of those two-ways you see on TV. Pointing to a metal folding chair, Burke said, “Someone’ll be here soon.”
And before I could actually get to the chair to sit down, he left and closed the door behind me.
Reflexively, I turned toward the sound. As I did, I caught my reflection in the mirror. I couldn’t help but stare. A black hoodie pulled forward to shadow my face, baggy jeans and old Converse, cuffs binding my skinny wrists in front of me. My eyes were wide and scared, my expression tight; I looked more like a terrified twelve-year-old than the famed Red Rose Returner of Whitestone.
I turned away; I couldn’t look at myself. It made me doubt that I was doing the right thing. And that was the one hope I couldn’t let go of.
I sat in the chair and pulled my knees up to my chest, not caring who might be looking. I laid my head down and started counting slowly—a trick I’d learned when I was a kid and something scared me. Most things would be gone by the time I reached one hundred.
I doubted I’d be that lucky this time.
I was up to five hundred fifty-seven when the door handle clicked and a cop walked in.
“Hey, Jeff,” Officer Herrera said.
“Officer Herrera,” I said breathlessly. I don’t know how you can feel like someone punched you in the stomach in a good way, but that’s how I felt.
“Sorry I missed your call,” he said.
I rubbed at my eyes. “When you didn’t answer, I thought it was the end of the world; I almost didn’t bother to leave a voice mail.”
Officer Herrera chuckled. “Sorry for not calling back. I didn’t know just how many strings I could pull for you and I had a lot of research to do before I could tug on any of them.” He looked up at me. “I’ve been watching you, Jeff. I heard about the big drop-off at the homeless center. Someone mentioned weird stickers and I knew it had to be you. That was really generous. You could have sold that stuff for thousands of dollars. More, maybe. There was one bag of jewelry that was all genuine article. And when the school break-in was reported it didn’t take long to link you to that, too.” He shuffled through the files on the table and put the largest one on top. He looked up at me, his eyes suddenly serious. “Does the name Kimberlee Schaffer mean anything to you?”
I sputtered and choked.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” He flipped open the file, seemingly oblivious as I coughed up a lung. “There’s not an officer in the place, except maybe a rookie or two, who doesn’t know her name. We tried to make something stick to her for years.”
I was so shocked I almost couldn’t speak. “You—you caught her?”
“Not red-handed. But we had enough to prosecute. The problem was finding a willing prosecutor.”
“Why?”
“Well, technically, everything we had on her was petty. I wish we’d caught her stealing some of that jewelry you left at the homeless shelter. That would have been something we could work with.”
“I don’t get it.”
Officer Herrera let out a long breath. “For one thing, her father is about the most influential judge in Los Angeles County. For another, his family’s got more money than God and he’s not afraid to throw it around. We couldn’t pick her up for stealing earrings or stuffed animals. Some fancy-pants lawyer would get her off with a judge who was in the Schaffers’ pocket to begin with, and there’d be a big black mark on our station. Build up too many black marks and we’d see our funding get smaller and smaller. Not a nice guy, Judge Schaffer.”