Trial and Terror by Adam L. Penenberg

Author:Adam L. Penenberg [Penenberg, Adam L.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Wayzgoose Press
Published: 2012-07-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Her alarm went off at 3:20, but Summer was already up, sipping peppermint tea to settle her jangly stomach.

She tuned into cable-access Channel 67, a local station with a hodgepodge of programs covered by the First Amendment. The original intention had been to foster community programs; instead, viewers were confronted with 24 hours of political diatribes, endless loops advertising escort services and phone sex, psychic babble, anarchist manifestos, and political extremism.

Summer endured the one-minute program break, and then the screen shifted into grainy video. She could see Jimi Cruz on the floor, his back propped against a dirty stone wall. He was tying his arm with a hose, one end stuck in his mouth. He was all attention as he held a lighter under a tablespoon. When powder bubbled into liquid, Cruz sucked it up with a syringe.

“It’s good stuff?” Cruz asked.

“The best.” Marsalis’s voice, off camera. “And more where that came from.”

Cruz smiled dreamily. He found a vein, and Summer watched the needle disappear into his arm, watched the plunger push the narc into him.

“Why did you come back to Haze County?” Marsalis asked. “Why didn’t you stay in Las Vegas?”

Cruz’s breathing was relaxed. He talked softly. “I didn’t know anybody in Vegas, didn’t know the scene there.”

“That is not the reason, is it?”

“C’mon, man.”

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

“I just met you. How do you know this?”

“Tell me the truth, Jimi, or I’m taking my heroin.”

“Wait!” Cruz’s eyes were sugar-glazed. “OK, OK. There was this lawyer, really cool. Beautiful girl. I was curious. I wondered, like, what’s her deal? How could someone so pretty, so together, be so sad, you know? I just want to take care of her. Like by helping her, I’d be turning my own life around. Kick this habit, get a life. Stupid, huh?”

“Pointless,” Marsalis said.

Cruz wretched, grasped his sternum with his hands. “That’s a weird kick.”

“It’s the poison,” Marsalis said. “You’ll feel differently in a moment.”

Cruz rolled onto his side. “Where’d you pick up that little bit of slang? I thought me and my friends were the only ones calling it that.”

The camera panned closer. Pebbles of sweat swept over Cruz’s face.

“By coming back, you have jeopardized the very person you wanted to save,” Marsalis said. “If the D.A. finds out, they will hold her responsible. This I cannot allow.”

Cruz was almost unconscious. “You’re not running me out of town, man.”

“What is the last thing you wish to say, Jimi?”

“Huh?” More a groan than a question.

“You’re going to die now,” Marsalis said. “Tell me the very last thought you’ll ever have.”

Cruz was able to whisper one last word before his head flopped against the floor and his eyes rolled heavenward: “Summer.”

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