John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

Aces was already seated at a table when the officers entered the otherwise empty classroom for their chat. To protect the boy from the prying eyes of his fellow residents, the venetian blinds had been pulled shut.

Johnstone spoke first. “Aces, this is Lieutenant Michaels, and this is Sergeant Hackner, both with the Braddock County PD. They want to ask you a few questions.” Warren and Jed both extended their hands, but Aces didn’t move. Johnstone sat in a chair in the corner.

“Could you excuse us, please, Mr. Johnstone?” Michaels asked. His tone was friendly, but they all knew it really was not a request.

Johnstone sat frozen for a moment, trying to think of a dignified exit line. When none came to him, he stood and exited the room. The look he shot at Jed showed that he held him responsible for this humiliation. Aces seemed to take pleasure in the superintendent’s discomfort. So did Jed.

Michaels took the seat immediately opposite Aces, swinging it around so his chest was leaning against the seat back. The young black man across the table was sullen, impassive, dressed in the orange coveralls worn by all the residents. His face was a mask of practiced indifference, his expression telling them that they were wasting their time. At age fifteen, he was tougher than either one of them would ever be.

“I’m gonna cut to the chase… Aces, is it?” The single, subtle movement of his head could have been mistaken as a nod. “You don’t like me because I’m a cop, and I don’t want you dating my daughters, okay? But we both have a problem. Nathan Bailey ran away from here the other night after killing one of the guards. Your life in here isn’t gonna be the same until we find him and bring him back. The evidence points to an accomplice, and until we find that accomplice, or rule it out as a possibility, you’re gonna spent a lot more of your day locked up. So I want you to answer some questions for me, okay?”

Aces’s eyes shifted to Hackner, and then back again. “Which one o’ you dudes is the good cop, an’ which one’s the bad cop? I want t’ get the cast right before the show starts.”

Warren smiled, but otherwise ignored him. “Nathan had the house next to yours, right?”

Aces remained expressionless, examining his fingernails. “Do you know who might have helped him escape?”

Silence.

“Any idea where he might have gone?”

No response.

“Look, Aces, I know you don’t want to believe this, but I’m only looking out for Nathan’s best interests. If we don’t bring him in, he’s liable to get killed.”

“Why? You gonna kill him?”

“No,” Michaels said after dropping a beat. “That’s Sergeant Hackner’s job. He’s the bad cop.”

Aces acknowledged the riposte with the slightest movement of an eyebrow.

“Fact is, Aces,” Michaels went on, “there’s a whole bunch of people with guns out there looking for that kid. They think he murdered Ricky Harris in cold blood. Sergeant Hackner and I are willing to believe there was more to it than that. If we can find him before the others, there’s just less chance he’ll get hurt.”

“But if I stay quiet,” Aces reasoned, “there’s that much less chance he’ll get caught at all. Seems it was pretty important to him to get outta here. I hope he makes it. If he gets killed, well, what the fuck. ‘Least he was killed tryin’.’”

Michaels studied the boy’s eyes for a long time, but saw nothing. With Aces, the system had won, even as Aces thought he had beaten it. The look in the boy’s eyes was the same one he had seen in the eyes of countless adults in countless interrogation rooms. Aces had trained his entire life to be king of the prison system. He had risen to the top of the juvenile pyramid, where he would remain for another six years. If the model proved correct, he’d last maybe a year on the streets before signing on as a rookie in the big leagues at Richmond. Michaels was about to get up and leave when Hackner spoke up.

“What about Ricky?” Jed asked. “Was he as much of an asshole as I’ve heard?”

Something flashed behind Aces’s eyes as they darted over to Jed. Where there had once been studied indifference—maybe even mild amusement—there now was a raw hatred. Had the setting been different, the transformation would have been frightening. In seconds, the emotion was gone, replaced once again with total neutrality.

“Let’s just say I hope he died slow,” Aces said, an evil smile just bending the corners of his mouth.

“And why’s that?” Jed baited.

Aces didn’t even sniff the hook. “If you heard he was an asshole, then you don’t have to ask.”

“Fair enough.”

They all sat in silence for a long, awkward moment until Michaels broke the tension.

“Thank you for your time, Aces,” Warren said, rising from his chair. “You’ve been very… tolerant. I hope your time goes smoothly.” Jed rose with him and they walked to the door.

“Yo, cops,” Aces said as Warren’s hand touched the knob. They both turned. “Bailey’s a pussy. That fuckwad Harris had it in for him, but I don’t know why. It’s good Bailey got out o’ here. This place was gonna kill ’im.”

Warren nodded respectfully toward the prisoner. “Why, thank you, Aces.”

“I didn’t say nothin’.”

Trendra and Steve Nicholson hadn’t spoken to each other in the last hundred miles. It had been Steve’s idea to drive straight through for their return from Disney World, thinking it better to get the driving—and the attendant whining from the kids—out of the way in one endless marathon, rather than prolonging the agony over several days, the way they usually managed their longer trips. Even after thirteen years of parenthood, he was surprised at just how miserable kids could become during an eighteen-hour drive.

Somewhere in South Carolina, Kendra had reached the end of her rope, and had begun lobbying for a stopover for the night. Steve talked her into going just another hundred miles, and once that was done, another hundred didn’t seem so unreasonable. But as Norfolk disappeared in the rearview mirror and Richmond remained a distant gdal, Kendra reached her breaking point and just stopped talking.

Steve was on a quest now. And even though he knew that the drive home would in all likelihood be the only part of the trip that Kendra would remember five years hence, he had made a commitment to drive straight through, and by God, he was going to do it, even if it killed them all. As morning approached afternoon and the misery of the dark hours faded from memory, Steve sensed that the tension was easing a bit. And now, as they got within a mile of the house, Kendra would start warming up again. He was sure of it. He hoped.

“There it is!” he announced to the family as their house came into sight. “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”

The kids—Jamie and Amy—bolted upright in their seats and cheered as they saw their house.

Steve playfully squeezed Kendra’s knee. “There. Now aren’t you glad we’re not still somewhere in South Carolina with five hundred miles left to go?”

Kendra’s response was a blistering glare. Okay. So he’d pushed too hard. She’d come around.

Steve piloted the Range Rover into the driveway and pressed the visor-mounted garage door opener. Even as the weather seal parted from the concrete floor, he recognized that something was wrong. Curiously, the first thing he noted was the cover shroud on the floor. I didn’t leave that there, he thought. It all crystallized for him an instant later, but it was Kendra who spoke his thoughts.

“Where’s the car?” she gasped.

Harry Thompkins actually watched the digital display on his wrist count up the last sixty seconds to ten o’clock. Just four more hours of agony until his meeting with Lieutenant Michaels, at which time he was certain that the career at which he had worked so hard to excel would come to a disgraceful end. With only 240 minutes left in his professional life, he had all but given up on the Divine assistance that might somehow salvage his job; or at the very least, a tiny shred of his dignity.