James Patterson: Now You See Her

I was wrong.

The officer cuffed me and put me into the back seat of the cruiser. I was surprised at how clean it was. It smelled new. The rubber floor mats were as immaculate as the ones in Alex’s car, the seat was deep, plush almost. Except for the kind of black plastic mesh separating the front from the back, you wouldn’t think it was a cop car. Despite the fact that my father was a cop, I’d never been in one before.

My right leg started shaking like a newly caught fish. Was I having a stroke? I wondered, staring at my jitterbugging thigh. I hoped so. Because anything was better than facing this.

I snorted back a wet, spasming sob.

Anything.

I glanced at the back of the cop’s head as he lowered himself into the police cruiser’s front seat. Like everything else about him, his head was neat, ordered, squared off. You could probably have balanced a level on his broad boxer’s shoulders. He had good posture, bearing, my mother would have said.

Had he been in the military? my haywire brain wanted to know. I read his backward name tag in the rearview mirror. Fournier.

Officer Fournier put his head down as he typed my driver’s license information into his boxy front-seat computer terminal. Then his cropped head suddenly leveled again.

“This right?” he said without turning around. “Your twenty-first birthday was just a few days ago? You down here for spring break?”

I noticed for the first time that there was a slight Northeast-city inflection to his voice. Boston, New York, Philly maybe. Then I had another, less distracted thought. What color prison jumpsuit would they give me?

“Yes,” I said, choking back another sob. “I’m a senior at UF.”

I suddenly wanted to be back there so much I almost moaned. If only I could click my heels and be back to Frisbee and meal cards and the note-scribbled onionskin pages of my Norton Anthology of English Literature.

There’d be no more school, no more softball, no more nothing at all. I’d loved books my entire life, and ever since high school I’d dreamed of becoming an editor at a New York City publishing house. I’d vaporized my future, too, I thought. Annihilated it like a mosquito into a bug zapper.

I was now one of those people that you read about in your pajamas, a name you shook your head over in the local newspaper’s police-beat section as you turned back to your coffee and thought about what to wear to work.

My life as I knew it had become a thing of the past.

“WHO DO YOU want me to talk to first? Your mom or your dad?” Officer Fournier said, making eye contact for the first time in the rearview.

He really was easy to look at. Not pretty and dark like Alex. His was a paler, more angular, badass white man sort of handsome. His eyes were a strikingly light, almost silver blue.

“They’re both dead,” I said.

Officer Fournier let out a sigh. “You don’t want to lie to me, Jeanine,” he said sternly. “I think you understand your situation here. You really don’t want to make this even worse for yourself.”

“It’s true,” I said, sounding calm and sober suddenly. “My dad was a Maryland state trooper. He was killed in a line-of-duty roadblock car crash in 1982. I have his prayer card in my wallet. My mom died last year.”

Officer Fournier went into my wallet. He turned all the way around a moment later, suddenly much less imposing, with my dad’s prayer card in his hand.

“How’d your mom die?” he said.

“She committed suicide,” I said. I realized it was the first time I’d ever said it out loud.

“Wow. That’s rough,” Officer Fournier said, sounding almost sympathetic as he absorbed that. “Any brothers or sisters?”

I shook my head.

“Whose Camaro?”

“My boyfriend’s. He’s back at our hotel,” I said.

I sat there for a second.

“Having sex with my best friend,” I added quietly.

Officer Fournier shook his head as he looked back at the biker.

“Wow,” the blue-eyed cop said. “You’re all partying, and he cheats on you, so you took his car. I see.”

“The man had a dog. It ran out in front of the car,” I said quietly. “I was trying to swerve out of the way of the dog, and I went into a skid. I guess I was going too fast so I started to spin, and then the man was just… there.”

I lost it again. I folded like a lawn chair as I started crying.

After about a minute, I wiped my wet face on my thigh. When I sat up, Officer Fournier was staring at me in the rearview mirror with a look I couldn’t quite read in his pale eyes.

We held eye contact for a long, startling electric beat. I guess it was a strange time to feel attraction toward someone, but there it was. I couldn’t look away. He cut away first, tapping my dad’s prayer card to his chin.

“What if?” he said after a moment.

I had my own what-ifs going through my head right at that moment. Like, what if I hadn’t had Jell-O shots for lunch? What if I hadn’t taken Alex’s car? What if I’d never been born?

That’s when the officer suddenly opened his door and got out. Then there was a snap and a click and the door beside me opened, too.

“I’m making a judgment call here,” he said as he undid my cuffs. “Get back in your car and get out of here. Go back to school, Jeanine. This never happened.”

I STOOD UP in the street beside the police car, rubbing my wrists, trying to absorb exactly what was happening. My head was spinning faster than the Camaro had, faster than the blinding carnival lights on top of the cop car.

I looked forward past Alex’s Camaro at the open road. Beside the empty beach, the dark water was as still as glass.

“I don’t understand, Officer Fournier,” I said.

“That’s funny. I’m having a little trouble understanding what I’m doing myself,” he said, putting the cuffs back on his belt and passing a hand through his cropped black hair. “And you can drop the ‘Officer’ there. My name’s Peter. Saint Peter, in your case, since I just saved your life. Now get back in your car and get out of here before somebody comes or I change my mind.”

“But how can I just go?”

“There aren’t any witnesses, and I haven’t called it in yet, is how,” he said.

“But I’m responsible.”

“Listen to me,” Peter said. “The state of Florida is waging a war on drunk driving, with extremely strict sentencing guidelines for vehicular manslaughter. Once I make you blow into the Breathalyzer, you’re looking at jail time. It’s a ridiculously stupid, politically motivated law. But the jury won’t see that, and neither will the judge. You can’t survive jail, Jeanine. You won’t make it.”

“But that poor man is dead. I can’t just walk away.”

“Let me tell you a little about that poor man,” Peter said. “His name is Ramón Peña. He was a hard-core meth and heroin addict who just got out of jail. We collared the repeat offender a couple of years ago, climbing out of an old lady’s window. He raped and robbed an eighty-three-year-old woman. Broke her jaw.”

Peter nodded at my surprise.

“When Ramón couldn’t find a drunk to roll, he’d bum money from tourists on Duval Street with his dog. That’s basically his obituary. Besides, it wasn’t even your fault. He was probably so high that he dove out in front of your car thinking it was a swimming pool. Ramón’s hurt enough people in his life. Don’t let his death take you out, too. You’re a decent person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now take your boyfriend’s keys and get out of here.”

“But…,” I said.

“I’m not asking you,” Peter said, putting the keys in my hand. “I’m telling you. Now go.”