The Girl in the Game by John Manchester

Author:John Manchester [MANCHESTER, john]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

He was sitting in his studio sketching ruins, swimming deep in the flow, when his blissful state was interrupted by banging on the door downstairs. Fuck. He slapped his pen down on his worktable and clanked downstairs.

Halfway down, he thought Mike and slowed down.

It was Mike and two uniformed cops.

Mike said, “Let me see your hands.”

Ray hesitated then put them forth. As one of the cops snapped handcuffs on him, Mike said, “You are under arrest,” and recited what must be the Miranda warning. He didn’t say what the charge was. Ray wanted to ask, but his lawyer wife’s voice screamed in his head, Don’t say a word. He didn’t always listen to Liz, but now he did.

In the long hour and a half ride down to the police station, he kept telling himself, I didn’t do anything, until his mental tongue was sore.

At the station, Mike took off the cuffs, and an old cop fingerprinted him then said, “You can make one phone call.”

Before they lock me up. Liz or Bodine? She was in Texas, and it was mid-afternoon there. Probably up to her ears battling patent trolls and wouldn’t answer her phone. This one call business might have made sense back before answering machines, when phones had dials. People didn’t answer their phone anymore. It wasn’t fair. But then none of this was.

He called Bodine. His friend answered on the first ring.

“I called you, left a couple of messages.”

“I was working and had my phone off… Mike just arrested me.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. I had an alert on for when he added to his notes, and the latest said the DNA results had come back.”

“Ah. So that’s why he did it. They won’t tell me a thing.”

“What do you need?”

“You to call Liz in Texas and keep trying. Ask if she’ll come up and bail me out.”

Mike led Ray into an interrogation room. Aside from the fact that there were no windows, it was just a room. No shackles, no instruments of torture. It smelled of sweat with a note of something nastier.

Mike asked questions and Ray was silent, answering in his head, My wife’s an attorney and she’s going to come up and kick your country ass. I didn’t kidnap any women, never have, never will…

Mike finally sighed and gave up for the moment. He nodded at one of the uniformed cops who led Ray to a cell and pushed him inside. The fucker had fat round steel bars. The cop swung the door shut with a hellacious metallic clang that echoed in Ray’s head for hours. The place smelled of puke. He lay down on the mattressless metal bed and dozed on and off until morning.

***

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