“Cut the crap, kid. Grand theft auto.” The detective sighed wearily. It was one o’clock in the morning on Monday, and he looked wilted and worn thin, a man just doing his job, but the detective would be going home to his own bed, and Finn would be going back to a cell. Finn reined in his frustration and tried to focus on the task at hand.
“Okay. One by one. Whose car did I steal?” he asked. “I can’t exactly defend myself if I don’t know what I supposedly did.”
“You didn’t return a rental car—but that’s not the big one. We’re awaiting a warrant for the attempted murder of Malcolm Johnson and the theft of his car.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Finn shook his head in denial, staring at the detective who was looking back at him like he was ready to be done with the interview.
“You don’t know Malcolm Johnson—called Bear Johnson by everyone close to him? Bonnie Rae Shelby’s bodyguard? You didn’t drive his car across several states and abandon it when you thought you were going to be apprehended?”
“Bear?” Finn felt the earth shift, and the room grew dim for a moment, like his brain had checked out, needing a break from the Twilight Zone.
“Oh, you do know him?” the detective asked with feigned interest.
“Is he okay?” The unreturned messages and the unanswered texts suddenly made sense. And he and Bonnie had been too wrapped up in each other to worry. They’d been too intent on just moving forward, on making it.
“You said attempted murder. Is he all right?” Finn demanded again. Bonnie would be finding out the same way he was. And she would be devastated.
“He’s going to recover. That’s all I can tell you.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t have any surveillance footage but we think we have a pretty good idea. You see, some ex-con arranged a meeting with Mr. Johnson at a gas station just outside of St. Louis. Maybe Mr. Johnson thought he was coming to get the girl, maybe it was something else. Instead, the ex-con proceeded to shoot Mr. Johnson, who was at the pump filling up his tank with his iPod blaring. He didn’t hear the guy coming up behind him. He was shot in the back and left for dead while the suspect drove away in his car. But you know that.”
Finn was shaking his head emphatically. “No! Bear wasn’t driving his car. He was driving my rental car. We switched in St. Louis, at my dad’s house. He was going to turn it back in in Nashville. I called the rental place and told them it would be returned by four o’clock on Thursday.”
“Well, it never was because you took Mr. Johnson’s Charger and left your rental sitting at the pump.”
“Bear was driving that rental car. Bonnie and I were already headed in the opposite direction. Bear knew we had his car. How stupid would I have to be to leave my rental car sitting there after I tried to kill someone!”
The detective raised his eyebrows and looked down at the pages he held in his hand.
“How about we start at the beginning–when you left Massachusetts. Okay? You give me a timeline of where you were, when. I want specifics. When you’re done, I’ll look at your timeline, I’ll see if there’s corroborating evidence to substantiate your story, and we will go from there.” He pushed the pad of paper and pen closer to Finn and stood.
“We’re waiting for the warrants to come in. Then we will book you. You’ll see a judge sometime tomorrow or the next day for your arraignment hearing and after that you’ll be extradited to St. Louis—but I’ll be back when you’re finished with your statement.” He turned to go.
“When will I know what’s happening to my wife?”
Detective Kelly halted and turned. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets and tipped his head.
“Your wife. Yeah. I bet that’ll last long. She’s still in interview, far as I know. She has a temper, that one. And a big mouth too. Another spoiled celebrity . . . we seem to book a new one every month. But it’s looking like she’s going to be released.”
Finn felt faint with relief and laid his head down on the notepad, smelling the clean, papery smell, and wishing he could fill the pages with numbers instead of words—numbers that would continue to grow and expand, unending, breaking down the walls that held him, creating a force field around him. The thought gave him an idea. He lifted his head and looked at the empty page, contemplating the numbers that documented his journey from a bridge in Boston to a cell in Los Angeles.
“I’m sure she’ll come see you as soon as she can,” the detective added, interrupting Finn’s train of thought. Then the detective started to laugh. “Or not.”
WHEN THE WARRANT came down from the Missouri DA, the lead agency in the case, Finn was officially booked into the LA County Jail.
Fingerprints, mug shots, medical checks, strip search.
He’d been through them before. Many times. In prison it’s a common occurrence. Yet, as they took his clothes and put them in a sack, and then told him to stand up naked and stretch his arms and legs out, it wasn’t any easier to endure. As they told him to stick out his tongue, bend back his ears, tilt his head, wiggle his fingers and toes, lift his arms and legs he cringed and bore down on the indignation that rose in his throat. All he could think about was Bonnie. The thought of her being put through the humiliating process made him angry and desperate, and when he was instructed to bend and spread he couldn’t do it.
He didn’t respond the way he should have. He got agitated, he didn’t cooperate, he shoved the officer conducting the search, and he was immediately pushed to the floor and left without his clothes for an hour before they conducted the search again, a little more forcefully than before. This time he contained himself, and he was given a jumpsuit and rubber shoes and left in the holding cell once more.
FINN HAD SPENT the rest of the night and the entire day bouncing between holding and the various booking procedures necessary to process a new inmate. The rest of the day he’d spent waiting for this interview with the detective who had instructed him to write his statement. His arraignment hearing had been moved to first thing Tuesday morning, which meant more waiting. He hadn’t had any word about Bonnie. If she was out, he wouldn’t be able to see her until after the hearing anyway, but when Detective Kelly walked into the interview room, a thick file in his hands, and dropped into the seat across from Finn, Finn welcomed the first words out of his mouth.
“Your wife’s been released, and you’re still on the hook for a bunch of shit. How do you like them apples?”
Finn felt a sinking in his chest that belied his deliberately blank expression. Bonnie had been released. He would focus on that and ignore the rest of what the detective had to say. He looked down at his hand, at the five dots that made up the man in the cage. The sixth dot, the one Bonnie had added to represent herself, was fading. Another day or two, and it would be gone.
“And really, Mr. Clyde. Are you trying to be a wise ass?”
Finn brought his attention back to the detective who was eyeing him with exasperation.
Finn maintained his neutral expression and waited for the detective to clarify exactly what he meant by “wise ass.” He’d spent hours writing his full statement the night before, and he’d taken it very seriously. After all, his life sorta depended on it.
“This statement is twenty, hand-written pages long.” Detective Kelly scowled.
“It’s a detailed account,” Finn replied, but his mouth twitched a little.
“Yeah. Detailed. Did you enjoy making up license plate numbers and exit numbers?”
“Did you check the license plate numbers and exit numbers?” Finn asked.
“Now, why in the hell would I do that?”
“Because they validate my timeline.”
“I see. And did you take note of all these things as you drove?” the detective asked, his lips pursed doubtfully.
“Depends on what you mean by taking notes. I didn’t write them down, if that’s what you mean. Even if I had, I didn’t have them when I
wrote my statement, did I? The guy who kept staring at my ass during the strip search will verify that.”
Anger flickered over the detective’s face at Finn’s insolence.
“So you’re telling me that you just remembered all these numbers?
“I’m good with numbers.”
The memory of the last time he’d said that very same line echoed in his head. He’d told Cavaro as much before he’d been beaten up and tattooed with playing cards. He hoped the result here would be different. The detective turned pages again.
“You pulled over on February 28th to assist a motorist with the West Virginia license plate 5BI-662.” Detective Kelly raised his eyes from the page and shook his head like it was highly doubtful.
“That’s right.”
“You wanna explain to me how you remember that little detail?”
“It’s a game I play. I convert letters to their corresponding alphabetical number. So 5BI would be 529. 529 is a perfect square. So is 662. So the license plate had two perfect squares.” Finn shrugged. “That’s how I remembered it.”
“So why didn’t you just remember the 529 662 part? How could you remember which numbers were changed from letters? How did you remember 5BI?”
It wasn’t a bad question, and Finn could have told him then that he had a photographic memory—which he did when it came to anything numerically related, but instead he pointed to the page.
“The guy driving the maroon van was named Bill Isakson—BI. And Bonnie was the one looking for license plates from different states. She had a song for every state. She’d been looking for West Virginia.”
“Okay. Fine. Two perfect squares and a guy named Bill Isakson.”
“It wasn’t his car. It was his daughter’s car. But it shouldn’t take too much digging to verify now that you have the license plate to work with.”
“And you two just made a habit of helping stranded motorists and hitchhikers around every turn? A couple of do-gooders?”
“I wouldn’t have helped any of them. Bonnie’s the do-gooder,” Finn answered.
“Oh, I see. And you just wanted to do Bonnie?” the detective asked.
Finn felt his anger whiz and ricochet around in his head, like he’d released an untied balloon. He took several deep breaths, letting the anger expend itself. Then he looked at the smirking detective and waited. He knew all cops weren’t dicks. But this one was trying to ruffle him. He knew the game. When he didn’t comment, the detective moved on.
“I actually called this Shayna Harris you refer to. She hasn’t returned my call. You say she gave you her number in case you were ever in need of anything. And you memorized it. Kind of creepy, Mr. Clyde. Let me guess, another perfect square?”
“No. Her phone number is prime.”
“Prime?”
“A prime number. You know. Only divisible by itself and one?”
“And her phone number is a prime?”
“Yes. 3,541,541 is a prime number.”
The detective read the number from the sheet. “704-354-1541. How did you remember the area code?”
“It’s three digits. It wasn’t especially hard to remember.” The microwave clock at Shayna’s house had said 7:04 when he’d walked through the kitchen to retrieve the boots she’d given him and found her thank you note with her number inside propped against the laces. He’d left Cincinnati in pursuit of Bonnie and his orange Blazer that evening at 7:04 pm, according to the clock in his rental car.
704 had been the number for the day. He usually discovered there was one—a number that kept reappearing everywhere he looked. It had carried over into the next day too, and the next. He’d spent seventy dollars and four cents filling up Bear’s car and buying two sub sandwiches and several bottles of water at the convenience store in Pacific. William’s initials, G.O.D, were also 704—G is the seventh letter of the alphabet, D is the fourth. And finally, 704 was their room number at the Bordeaux Hotel, which he’d considered a good omen.
“I checked. 704 is a North Carolina area code.” The detective threw this irrelevant piece of information out like he was really onto something.
“Okay.”
“But you say Shayna Harris lives in Portsmouth, Ohio.”
“She does. You’ll have to ask Shayna about her phone number, but her husband’s parents live in North Carolina.”
The detective harrumphed and turned back to the beginning.
“The old man who pulled your car out of the ditch in Ohio . . .”
“His license was CAD 159,” Finn said, not waiting for the detective to finish the question. “Change the letters to numbers and you have 3.14159—the first six digits of pi.”
“The deputy who saw you running in Freedom and asked for your name?”
“His badge number was 112—three consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci Sequence. The clock on his dash said 11:23—four consecutive numbers in the sequence.”
One by one, they went through the numbers on Finn’s statement, exit numbers and mile markers and license plates and road signs—numbers that Finn hadn’t consciously tried to remember, but numbers that might save him. Again. The detective grew more and more astonished and less and less skeptical as they talked, until all at once, he stood from the table and walked out of the room without a word, Finn’s twenty page statement in his hands. A few minutes later, Finn was escorted back to his cell where he waited once more, trying not to contemplate the number of times he’d thought about Bonnie and the infinite ways that he missed her.
BONNIE WASN’T AT his arraignment hearing. But her gran was. Raena Shelby was fine-boned like Bonnie, with the same high cheek bones and square jaw—that square Shelby chin Bonnie had mournfully told him about when she’d cried about her resemblance to Hank.
When he saw her, Finn had known immediately who she was, even though her hair was a store-bought red, her eyes a pale blue, and her skin several shades lighter than Bonnie’s. Bonnie had those dark eyes and that golden skin that made her look perpetually warm and sun-kissed. This woman wasn’t sun-kissed. She was unsmiling and stern, and kept glancing over at Finn like he was filth and they were on an episode of Law and Order.
She sat in the back with a man Finn assumed was her lawyer, and they whispered back and forth. He wanted to catch her eye and spit, letting her know exactly what he thought of her, but instead, he kept his face blank and his stare hard and continually twisted his wedding ring until she was the one who looked away and didn’t look back.
It was a small victory and provided little comfort. The fact remained that Bonnie wasn’t there. And he wasn’t the only one who took note of her absence. The room was thick with reporters, although cameras were not allowed in. The media frenzy hadn’t lost any of its fervor.
The arraignment hearing wasn’t much more than a swift procedural stamp. Finn waited for his turn longer than he stood before the judge. No defense was offered during arraignment. It was all business. Charges were read, Finn pled not guilty, and an attorney was appointed to him. He would not be talking to the police from there on out, and his new, albeit temporary until he was extradited, attorney promised to meet with him later in the day. He would be brought to Missouri within the week unless he waived extradition. He wouldn’t be waiving it. What was the point?
“YOU HAVE A visitor.”
Finn wasn’t surprised. He’d been expecting his new lawyer. But he wasn’t led to an interview room. He was led down a long line of stools, sparsely populated by inmates who faced a glass partition and talked to their visitors through phones on the other side. His heart leaped in his throat, and he tamped down the urge to surge forward, expecting Bonnie to be waiting across the glass. Instead, her grandmother sat there, her elegant hand wrapped around the receiver of the phone, her mouth set in a thin line, waiting for him to pick up the receiver on his side and speak with her.
He considered refusing to see her. But his curiosity won out, and he slid onto the stool and grasped the phone in his manacled hands, holding it to
his ear as he waited for her to speak. He didn’t ask for Bonnie, he didn’t ask her what she wanted. He just waited.
She considered him briefly and then said, “Aren’t you wondering why you’re still being charged, while Bonnie has been released?”
He didn’t respond.
“I mean, if you two were together . . . wouldn’t she be guilty too?”
Finn wasn’t sure what the purpose of this visit was, but Raena Shelby—Gran—obviously was. Gran didn’t fit her at all. Gran sounded like a woman with gray permed hair and little bifocals.
“Police believe you drew Bear in with promises to turn Bonnie over to him. And maybe you really did plan to exchange Bonnie for the cash. But Bonnie had pulled a fast one on you and escaped in your Blazer. Which is why you had to rent the car, which is why, when Bear showed up without the money, you shot him.”
“What money?” Finn broke his silence, incredulous.
“The $500,000 you demanded.”
Finn just stared, dumfounded once more.
“I withdrew the money two days before you shot Bear.” Raena Shelby was studying him as she spoke, as if gauging the effectiveness of her story.
“Why are you here?” Finn asked, his head spinning, his heart in his throat. He’d never asked for a damn dime.
She ignored him, continuing on like an attorney in cross examination.
“The reason you’re being charged, and Bonnie isn’t, is because the police have a very clear picture of what really happened. It’s not hard to figure out.” She paused, waiting to make sure he was hanging on her words. Her blue eyes were icy, and her hand tightened on the phone.
“You found Bonnie wandering around Boston. Suicidal and lost. And instead of taking her to a hospital or calling the police, you took her across the country.”
For the first time, Finn felt a twinge of guilt.
“You recognized her. You saw dollar signs. And you took her.” Raena Shelby’s eyes narrowed, and she sneered disdainfully. “There’s evidence that she tried to get away from you. She took your Blazer to escape, which is why you had to rent a car. And all of this was right around the time Bear was shot.”