Wise Men

Chapter 17

 The first prison cell they sent me to was at the city precinct. They kept everyone in those cells, and those who couldn't fit they held in the interrogation rooms. I didn't know where Vi was, but through all of the confusion, the police didn't seem to know where anyone was. I tried not to pass out from the pain, but as black rimmed the edges of my vision I could only remember parts of that night. Perhaps it was because I was constantly in and out, but it was the longest night of my life.

The next thing I knew, that very morning, men came to escort me out. They were the uniforms of the state guard and called me by my name. The next place I landed was a military hospital where three guards were posted by the door, an IV strapped to my arm, and heavy plaster around my ankle. No one spoke to me. The white walls stared at me, the smell of death and bleach had my head reeling, and by my second day I got a migraine. I shut my eyes and hoped for death, missing of all things, the medicine Revelin would shove down my throat. And each time I thought of that my stomach clenched seeing Revelin's blood steaming on the hot asphalt. I needed to know where Vi was now, and if she and her child were alright.

By the third day in the hospital, a team of suited men forced their way into my hospital room, saying things like “appellate courts” and “Miranda rights.” They asked me several questions that I don't remember. By then the pain was so great my memory blacked out for hours on end. My words were strange and often slurred. Yet, they managed to get two policemen to slap cuffs around my wrists and haul my ass down to court. The team of lawyers managed to get my bail set at a million dollars—a great increase from the nonexistent bail the prosecution wanted.

Someone paid my bail, and that someone was the lovely Vivienne, haggard and sleep deprived from her own stay in Hell. Dark circles ringed her eyes, but that diamond ring still glittered on her finger. We walked out of the precinct in silence, me on crutches and she dragging heavy feet along with her. The sun bit at my eyes and forced them closed; I almost fell on Vi if she had not held me up until we reached a rental car.

“I'm pregnant,” she told me upon entering the luxury vehicle. The rich upholstery embraced me as I collapsed into the passenger seat.

“Yeah,” I croaked, unable to come up with a more intelligible response.

She began to drive and pulled onto a road I didn't recognize. She fiddled with the ring on her finger as she drove. “I contacted Revelin's estate after they arrested us. After I told them that I have the only heir to the Lesage family estate... once I could prove it at least, they gave me those lawyers. They let me pay our bail out of his fortune. I guess they didn't want the mother of their future employer rotting in jail.” Her voice was soft and meek. Little left of the Vi I once knew, the spark that she held in her eyes, had gone. I was talking to a shadow, it seemed.

She only spoke after several minutes of silence.

“He didn't deserve to die, Chris.”

I fought to hold back tears as a knot formed in my throat. I hadn't cried in the days I was imprisoned in near solitude, but at the sound of her faltering voice I wanted to weep. “I know, Vi, I know.”

She wiped away several tears from her cheek. “If only the bastard had come with me...” She slammed on the wheel of the car so hard that it swerved slightly on the road and the honk sounded. I had to coax her into pulling to the side of the road.

Vi wept, her face buried in her arms, folded over the steering wheel as I stroked her shoulders. I could only look back at all of the people who had died. None of them had deserved it, not one of them. We had accomplished something, I knew we had. But it was hard to forget that after all of that, there was nothing left of us, no soul, no voice, to see it.