UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED
"What are you doing?" The breath wouldn't come to her chest. "Where are we going?"
"Shut up."
Kavi saw images her own body. She saw blood, sticky and shining and wet, oozing from her side. She saw Gwyn and Grace standing beside a ragged hole in the ground, their black clothes, their tear-streaked faces.
"You don't have to do this." Kavi spoke through little sobs. "You can take me back to my cell."
"Really: shut up."
A soft light glowed at the end of the hall. The end. Kavi's chest wrenched tight. Her legs quivered, making every step a struggle. She never could watch the end of that movie, the innocent man walking upright to his electric chair. Her empathy proved too powerful, sucked the breath from her lungs, stilled the blood in her veins.
Now, her own feet walking the road to all ends, Kavi couldn't. She stopped at the door.
"You don't…"
"Will you just shut up already?" The guard jabbed the small of Kavi's back. She tumbled forward in through the doorway.
"You too, huh?"
Kavi looked up. Through the wobble of tears, she saw Arthur and Harris sitting at a wooden table.
"What?"
With a quick flick of the guard's hand, Kavi's cuffs fell away. The guard tucked the cuffs into a pouch on her belt and walked from the room, head shaking.
"I told you to shut up."
The door slammed behind them, segregating the Irregulars from the rest of the world. This new cell felt different though, warmer. Kavi's eyes adjusted slowly. Light swam in lazy, diffuse currents through the small room, streaming from a lone, high window. Arthur and Harris sat before her, lounging almost, wooden chairs and a wooden table. Green-painted metal shelves lined the walls.
Books. The shelves bowed with books and books and books.
Harris motioned to the room. "Welcome to the library. Again."
Arthur pulled out the third seat at their table.
"The library?" Kavi sat. "What the hell? The guard pulled me from my cell, drew her gun…"
"I thought the same," Arthur said. "Although I must admit, given the baroque flourish of our story thus far, three gunshots in a desolate hallway seems almost antithetically illiterate."
"We didn't get yanked from GP to kvetch, I gaurun-freaking-tee," Harris said. "I bet we're being gassed. Do you smell gas? I smell gas."
"Gas from your arse," Arthur snorted.
"Shut your mouths, all three of you." A shape emerged from behind a far bookcase, arms crossed and leaning.
Kavi squinted against the low light, eyes unable to focus. "Who's that?" Her spine straightened, hands instinctively protecting her heart.
"Relax, I didn't pay off three guards, get you pulled from your cells and smuggled to the prison library just to shoot you," The shape approached, step by step, slow and steady. "Even if I have every reason in the world to shoot, Harris Kagan."
Even under threat of death, Harris couldn't restrain the smile. "Alex."
Detective Dalkowski stepped into the shaft of light, hand firm to her sidearm. "We don't have much time. No flirting."
"Wait." An uneasy pit lurched in Kavi's stomach. "You…you bribed guards?"
"No one can know I'm here."
Arthur sat spine-straight. "Why?"
Alex glowered at the Irregulars. "Did you do it?"
"I told you in interrogation," Kavi said, "I… We would never hurt anyone."
"None of you have been exactly truthful."
"I'm sorry," Harris said. "I should have told you about going to Miss Leslie's, Alex—"
"Sergeant Detective or Miss Dalkowski, Kagan," Alex said.
"Okay," Harris nodded. "I deserve that. But I was afraid you'd tip off Hardcastle. I still thought—"
"You thought wrong."
"Listen, just please let me explain, Al—Miss Dalkowski," Harris stumbled for words. "I…I was wrong about Hardcastle, about a lot of things. But please believe me, please. We're being framed."
"What about you, pretty boy?" Alex nodded to Arthur. "One chance: spill the beans. Your nonexistent alibi, your lying to Harris. Because of the three of you, you look the guiltiest, Kite."
"I'm gay."
Alex stuttered backwards. "You're… uh…? I don't know how to respond to that."
"My alibi, my stealing away without excuse, I was trying to protect my privacy, my safety…"
"The man who attacked Barbara Ann," Kavi said, "Bernard…he was using Arthur, faked a relationship."
"I was stupid," Arthur said, "gave him a key to my apartment. He had access to my gun. The stuff with the reporter was just luck. I had nothing to lose and she seemed all too willing to disentangle herself from this shit."
"Pet a mother-loving kitten." Alex shook her head. "This is one wacky game show."
"You do think we're innocent?" Harris' eyes grew wide with hope.
Alex let out a long, slow breath. "Your shoelaces," she pointed to Harris' slipper-shod feet.
Kavi looked to Harris' feet. "He's wearing slippers."
"Harris Kagan never ties his shoes," Alex said.
Harris nodded. "Unsafe at any speed."
"I re-checked the surveillance video," Alex said, "the person who robbed the jeweler, in the orangutan costume, their shoes were tied. I'd like to think I know you well enough, Kagan, that if you were to rob a jewelers, you'd keep your shoes untied. Now Hardcastle, the other guys on the force, untied shoes aren't going to change their minds."
"Where does that put us?" Arthur said.
"It means I have a promise to keep," Alex walked to the closest bookcase. Amid the dust-and-cobweb books sat two black binders and a green-spined brick of a book. "From the start, I said I wanted to be your friend, that all I want is the truth."
"My Sherlock Holmes," Harris beamed. Despite himself, despite Arthur and Kavi sitting beside him, a swell filled his chest, brought a quiver of tears to his eyes. "You believe me. You know we're innocent."
Alex nodded. "My gut says you're innocent. And you're going to help me prove it to the rest of this stupid city."
"What are the binders?" Kavi said.
"My stories," Arthur said. "The first crime came from your writings, Kavi. The second from Harris'. The story about the haunted house. the ghost hanging in the parlor. Our criminal wouldn't work this hard only to leave their series of crimes unfinished."
"Any prison stories in here?" Alex said.
"Pssht," Harris rolled his eyes. "Only all of them."
"Oh piss off, you," Arthur feigned slapping Harris. "Prison Noir is a respected genre. Better than your parade of ghost stories or the fluffy mysteries everyone else is writing."
"Knock it off," Alex gave both a quick slap to the head.
"Ow!" Harris rubbed the sting from his forehead
"Just because I believe you doesn't mean I like you right now." Alex turned to Kavi. "How fast do you read?"
"Fast enough."
"Good. I've got copies, too, but I can't just sit around my office all day reading short stories. I'll be in touch the best I can, but…" Alex leaned over the table. "Listen, I've already been here too long. If you find out anything, if you feel like you're in any sort of danger, get yourselves thrown in solitary. It won't be fun, but at least no one can get to you there."
"Solitary?" Harris said. "What? I don't… How do we even get thrown in solitary confinement?"
"You're writers. Use your imaginations."
Chapter Thirty
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