Cemetery Lake (23 page)

to gain control of the car, but it’s impossible. There is another explosion of sound as I come to a stop, and then nothing as the world slowly darkens around me.

Alcohol and burning metal. That’s all I can smell. The windscreen has shattered into thousands of tiny diamonds. The engine has

stalled, the front of the car has folded around the lamppost.

The hood has twisted and bent up into a V, and from beneath it plumes of steam are rising and mixing into the fog. More steam is coming through the air vents into the car. The stereo is going.

The heater is going. There is a high-pitched ringing in my ears.

The lamppost is on an angle. Its fluorescent light has busted

and sparks are slowly raining down on the car. I can taste blood and bourbon. There is a pain in my leg. My chest. There is pain everywhere. I tilt my head back, close my eyes and wait for it all to disappear. It doesn’t.

My neck hurts when I move, but I manage to unclip my

seatbelt. The door is buckled and there is safety glass all over my lap. There are chips of paint on my hands, cracks in the dashboard, and sharp pieces of plastic sticking up. One of my fingernails has lifted up and bent all the way back, a few threads of skin the only things stopping it from touching my knuckle. Before thinking too much about it, I wipe it backwards across my leg so that the strands of skin stretch and break and the nail sticks to my pants and stays there. The door won’t budge, so I try to climb over the passenger seat. It is then the floodgates open and pain wracks my body, one knee jamming into the handbrake, the other into the mostly empty bottle of bourbon that has somehow jumped from the foot-well and onto the seat in the crash. It is all I can do to not cry out as I push open the door and stumble out to the road. My feet skid on stones and glass, and I fall onto my knees.

The world is caught in the grips of an earthquake, but I’m the only one feeling it. I get up and balance myself by holding onto the side of the car. There is a shooting pain rolling up and down my leg-The glow from the traffic lights changes colour as one set goes red and the other green. Glass grates beneath my feet as I move, pieces of it cutting into the soles of my shoes. There is blood on my shirt and pants and more of it flowing down the side of my face. I reach up and pull away fingers covered in blood. Only one of my eyes is focusing.

I look back into the car at the empty bottle of bourbon, and

I understand instantly that its contents have brought me to this. I lean in and grab it, then pitch it into the distance. It disappears into the night. Jesus is looking down at me from above the hovering fog, his eyes open, his mouth in a tight smile. He is looking into me, but he is not admonishing me. He is too busy.

His hands are wrapped around a bottle of McClintoch Spring Water. The bourbon bottle crashes and the sound brings the world into focus. It tones down the ringing in my ears and allows a flood of other sounds to pour in. I look away from the billboard and wipe smoke and blood from my eyes, and I move away from my car to draw in clean air.

The abyss gets deeper.

A woman is screaming. It’s a high-pitched note that threatens to break the windscreens of other cars pulling over. Ahead of me a four-door sedan has spun around in the intersection. The front of it is completely caved in. Clouds of steam surround it so I can’t tell if anybody is inside. The screaming is coming from a woman ^ho has pulled over and has probably thought her entire life that she would take action in a moment like this and is quickly finding

she can’t. She has opened her car door, stood up but hasn’t gone any further. Another car is starting to pull over.

I reach the wreck first. I push my arms into the steam and

touch metal, pushing myself close enough to see inside. There’s a woman in there, slumped over the wheel. She looks young.

Like me, she had no airbag. I try opening the driver’s door, but it’s jammed. The woman’s eyes are open; they are rolled into the back of her head and her jaw is pushed forward, either broken or locked, and there is a steady stream of blood coming from the left side of her mouth. I pat down my pockets and find my cellphone but can only stare at it in my hand.

‘Out of the way, buddy,’ a man says, reaching past me. He tries the driver’s door too, then moves around to the passenger side, and it comes open with a loud screech. He looks over at me. ‘You gonna use that thing?’

I look down at my cellphone. It has survived the crash, but

still I can only stare at it.

I have just become the very thing I hate the most. I have

become Quentin James: full-time drunk and part-time killer.

They want to take me to the police station but my injuries require otherwise. I sit in the back of an ambulance and nobody talks

to me. A paramedic tends to my wounds but he doesn’t really

seem to be putting any energy into it. Like everybody else he’ll be wishing I was the one who was dead.

After a while a policeman takes a statement from me. He

doesn’t know who I am. Doesn’t know my history. I tell him

what happened. He tells me that witness reports indicate I ran a red light. That it had been red for at least two seconds before I hit the intersection. He asks if I’ve been drinking. I tell him I have, because he’s going to test me anyway. He pulls out a breathalyser and makes me say my name into it, as though he’s giving me an

interview and the breathalyser is a microphone. He looks at the numbers, then writes them down. I know what they’re telling

him. I’m way over the limit even though I feel sober. Killing a Woman will do that to you.

At the hospital I’m put up in an emergency ward with dozens

of other people. My bed has a curtain drawn around it. The cut to my leg is stitched up and bandaged and I’m told it will leave a scar. There are other cuts over my body too, other scars. The finger with the missing fingernail is cleaned, wrapped in gauze and bandaged. There is a cut at the top of my forehead which gets stitched. Blood is cleaned off my face. Safety glass is plucked out of my knees. My scraped-up palms with tiny pieces of shingle in them are cleaned.

When the nurse is all done fixing me up, she pushes past the

curtain and Landry pushes his way in. He is expressionless, as if he can’t be bothered being angry with me any more. It’s worse.

‘Of all the people to be drunk and driving,’ he says.

‘I don’t need the lecture.’

‘What were you thinking, Tate?’

‘I don’t know’

“I tried to warn you.’

“I know’

‘Jesus, don’t you have anything else you can say?’

‘I … I don’t know. I wish I did. Jesus, I feel so numb. So

numb.’

‘The girl’s in a coma,’ he says. ‘It’s serious. Four broken ribs, a punctured lung and her jaw was dislocated. You’re lucky she’s not dead.’

I’m lucky.

My heart starts to flutter. ‘I… I thought she was dead.’

She’s lucky.

Luck.

;er.

“I know. Only nobody felt like telling you.’

I’m too angry at myself to direct any of it towards him.

‘She’s going to be okay?’

‘You better pray, Tate. You better fucking pray’

Nobody comes to see how I’m doing over the next hour, and

nobody has made the effort to feed me any painkillers, though

the throbbing in my head and from all the wounds is becoming

unbearable. Nobody cares about that. They all care about the

woman I hurt, and so they should. I want to go and see her. I

want to speak to her family and tell them how sorry I am. I can’t, of course. I’d simply be making myself the punching bag for their anger.

Eventually two officers come to get me. They don’t cuff me.

With a bare minimum of words and gestures they escort me out

to a police car. I sit in the back for the short drive to the station.

They don’t put me in an interrogation room. Instead they escort me to the drunk tank full of other people who’ve made similar

fuck-ups tonight.

I find a small piece of real estate I can call my own, a piece of bench between one guy already passed out and another guy on

his way to passing out. I take my jacket off and ball it up so I can lie down and rest it behind my head. I’ve never been in jail before — not one I couldn’t freely leave at any time — and even this is only a waiting room for the real thing. The smell is overpowering and the moans coming from the other drunks irritating. The floor is covered in piss and the toilet looks about as bad as toilets can possibly get. The cream cinderblock walls spread a chill into the room. I wonder which side of things luck would fall on now.

I stay awake all night. Occasionally our numbers go up, and

in the end we all make it through to the morning. As they lead me from the cell I think about Bridget and Emily and what they would think of me now. I remember having the same thought

yesterday.

I’m led through to the same interrogation room I sat in

yesterday. Everybody looks at me on the way. Yesterday it was

with pity. Today it’s contempt.

‘Driving under the influence. Reckless driving. Jesus, you’re in some real trouble,’ Landry says. He’s wearing the same clothes as last night. They’re all wrinkled up, which means he probably slept in them. He looks even more tired than the last time I saw him.

‘How’s the girl?’

‘Stable.’

‘Is she going to make it?’

‘Maybe you should have been concerned with other people’s

safety before getting behind the wheel drunk.’

‘Is she going to make it?’

“I don’t know. Probably’

‘Probably? Don’t you care?’

‘I care, you son of a bitch.’ Landry bangs his fist down on the table. ‘I’m the only one in this room who does, and what you did last night proves that.’

I look away.

‘What in the hell were you doing?’ he asks.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re doing nothing at that time in the morning? Come on,

Tate. You were at the church again.’

“No, I wasn’t.’

‘In fact you were. I saw you there. Lots of people did See

it was on TV That reporter of yours showed it. She did a great job of it, showing you right outside the church breaking your

protection order.’

“I was getting my car.’

‘You were breaking the law.’

‘Come on, Landry, you could probably see me climbing into

the damn thing. And I left straight away’

‘Then what? You go back a few hours later and decide to

watch Father Julian? What’s the big plan here, Tate? Are you that desperate to kill yourself?’

I wonder if Father Julian heard the crash. I wonder if he looked in his rear-view mirror and decided he had more important things to take care of.

‘What’s going to happen now?’

‘Two things. We’re going to talk to Father Julian. We’re going to ask him if you were there last night, and if he says you were, you know what happens: we’re going to take his word for it.

We’re going to ask him once and let him think about it, and if he says yes we’re not even going to ask him if he’s sure about it. You get my point?’

“I get it.’

‘But first you’re going to be charged with DUI. You’ll be

escorted down to court later this morning. I’m going to do you a favour and let you wait here rather than back down in the cells. But it’s the last favour I’m ever going to do for you.’

He leaves me alone. I rest my head in my arms and manage to get two hours sleep before the same two guys who brought me upstairs take me out to a patrol car and drive me to the courts. The day is wet and cold and grey. I’m kept in the holding cells with a whole bunch of people whose futures are about to be determined by the same people about to determine mine. My headache hurts and so do the wounds. I’m given a court-appointed lawyer and We get to speak for about two minutes before my arraignment.

In court I stand in the dock with my head down and listen to

the charges. I plead guilty. I know how it all works. This is the same thing that happened to Quentin James. The judge sets bail and says that if it can’t be paid they will hold me until sentencing, which is set for six weeks away. I can’t pay the bail. I’m taken back to the cells, the plan being that sometime in the middle of the afternoon I’ll be transferred to prison. Christ I need a drink.

I don’t know how much time passes before one of the court

security officers opens up the holding cell and tells me to follow him.

‘Your bail’s been made.’

‘Made? Who by?’

‘Your lawyer.’

‘I don’t even know my lawyer.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s not the same guy’ he says, shrugging. ‘You got a new lawyer now. Means you might have a chance at a real legal defence.’

A guy in an expensive-looking suit comes to greet me. The

suit is so sharp it’s hard to believe he’d dare sit down for fear of it wrinkling, but it isn’t as sharp as his smile.

‘Theo,’ he says, stepping forward and pumping my hand so

vigorously it’s suspicious. ‘Glad to finally meet you.’

‘Glad?’

‘Well, of course the circumstances are awkward. Not dire, but with your past they shouldn’t be anything we can’t handle.’

‘I’ve already pled guilty’

‘Yes, of course you have, and that was perhaps a mistake,’ he

says. ‘But the sentencing is what’s important. Your history, the reason you were drunk, will go a long way towards having them

reduced.’

He introduces himself as Donovan Green. He stands over my

shoulder as I sign a series of forms before I can go. The officers hand me over my wallet and my watch and my phone. The phone

is flat.

Green walks me outside towards a black BMW in the far corner

of the parking lot between a high concrete wall and a dark blue SUV with tinted windows and mud splashed up the sides. The

day is cool and the breeze makes the exposed grazes on my body sting. I pick up the pace a little to get to his car faster.