Muriel Gray - Furnace

She blinked at him.

‘Yes.’

He waited a few moments until the film of tears that was forming over her eyes was re-absorbed under his professionally dispassionate glare. ‘Then may we proceed?’

She looked across at the screen of the scanning machine, still showing the result of its last client, a tiny crescent blob adrift in a black universe.

Elizabeth stood up and slipped off her coat.

They tested him for alcohol, taking his blood and breath, gave him scrappy bits of food and a warm can of soda as they wrote down the fragments of his fevered statement. Then, with the comic solemnity of a man who believes himself to be of great importance, a thickset policeman led him into a small brick-lined cell. He waited until Josh sat down on the narrow bed by the wall, then nodded to him as though his prisoner had performed some act of kindness.

‘Shouldn’t be overlong till the test results get back. This don’t mean nothin’, bein’ in here for now. Just procedure.’

Josh looked up at him and returned the nod. The policeman closed the door gently and locked it.

The sleep that immediately overwhelmed Josh was so deep he had no recollection of even lying down on the hard mattress. His next sentient moment after the locking of the door was the unlocking of it, and that, he discovered with a bleary glance at his watch, was at least five hours later. A different policeman was regarding him coolly, waiting for him to come round.

‘It’s this way,’ he said, as though answering a question.

Josh stood up unsteadily and followed him out of the cell, along a corridor and into the room where the sheriff and his colleague had interviewed him hours before. He entered, sat down on one of the unsteady wooden chairs arranged around the metal table, and waited with his hands folded in front of him. The deputy pulled out a chair opposite Josh, sat down and cleared his throat.

Outside the closed door, phones were ringing in the distant office and men were talking in low voices. Not the voices of conspiracy or suppressed anger, but rather the voices of visitors to a desperately sick hospital patient. The deputy scratched at an armpit.

‘Got some more stuff to ask you if that’s amenable to yourself.’

Josh blinked and sat back, marginally opening his palms in acquiescence.

‘While you been sleepin’ we got most of the information we need ’bout what went on back there.’

Josh sat up. ‘The woman? You found her?’

The man looked back at Josh with a mixture of embarrassment and impatience. ‘I’m goin’ to stick to what we know here right now. You with me?’

Josh said nothing, and his silence was taken as permission to continue.

‘You ain’t been drinkin’ or poppin’ pills, an’ the marks from your tyres out on the road, along with them witnesses that saw it, say you weren’t speedin’ unduly neither. But I guess you know you’re in violation with your log book.’

Josh’s mouth twitched.

‘I told you where I pulled over, and for how long. I was going to fill it in when I stopped here.’

‘Trucker with all them years behind a wheel knows that’s against the law.’

‘Sure. I know it.’

The man’s demeanour was changing. Beneath his officious politeness, Josh could read a glint of malice.

‘Log books ain’t there for your recreation, mister. We got to know where and when you stop. In case you been doin’ somethin’ you shouldn’t.’

The policeman waited a beat, as if hoping for some display of emotion from his interviewee, then continued. ‘Like drivin’ illegal hours without sleepin’.’

Josh stared back at him, his closed mouth failing to conceal a jaw that was clenching, making the tiny muscles beneath his ears protrude.

‘You have a good sleep in the cell?’

‘Sure. Thanks.’

‘Mighty tired, huh?’

‘Yeah. Been working hard lately.’

The deputy sighed, long and deeply, as though growing weary of this. ‘Your stopover. It checked out. Highway patrol saw your truck there three times in the time you said you parked.’

Josh stared at him, watching him closely as he continued to see if there were a trap being set.

‘Guess it was lucky you pulled over in a tourist bay instead of a truck stop, huh, Mr Spiller? Attracted attention.’

‘Never thought about it.’

The deputy leaned forward, his voice menacingly conspiratorial. ‘Yeah, it’s real lucky. ’Cos if we thought that you’d been drivin’ for more than the legal ten hours when you killed that little baby, I guess I don’t know what the sheriff might do.’

Josh stared back, trying to look unmoved. The deputy hissed, ‘You’re gonna get a fine that’ll make that shaven head of yours curl the goddamn hair it got left. You’re goin’ to think about how poor you are every time you open your log book.’

‘It was a mistake.’

The deputy looked back at him with naked contempt. ‘Sheriff needs a final statement.’

He got up and left the room. Clearly, the impromptu interview had been nothing more than a device to work out his anger at an obvious injustice. If things had been different, Josh wondered how many teeth he might be missing right now, how many broken ribs he might be nursing after having ‘fallen’ in his cell. There was no doubt. They had been trying their damnedest as he slept to nail him with something, and they had failed.

Josh screwed shut his eyes and clenched his teeth. Ten hours? Try thirty-six. The lie was more intolerable for being a lie that could never be uncovered. Only Josh Spiller knew he hadn’t slept. Did it really matter? He hadn’t killed the baby. That woman, that nightmare of a creature, had killed it. How would a night’s sleep have altered that?

Unless …

The tiny seed of doubt that he might have fallen asleep for a split second, for that crucial life-changing, life-ending second, wormed its way back into his mind. He slammed it down. No. He knew what he’d seen. A woman, a mad evil woman, had deliberately murdered a child.

He composed himself and forced himself to concentrate on waiting. For what, he was unsure, but the process of sitting still and expectantly was surprisingly calming. It was out of his hands. Someone, some unseen witness, would have told the police about the woman in the suit and they would be out there looking for her, if indeed they hadn’t already got her locked up. If they could trace Jezebel’s whereabouts to the parking lot last night, surely they would already have her behind bars. Maybe she was in the next cell. He would just wait and see.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The door opened and the square sheriff entered with two deputies, each carrying a cup of coffee. The sheriff carried two, one of which he put down in front of Josh.

‘Coffee. Take cream?’

Josh nodded his head dumbly and cupped his hands around the warm styrofoam as the man serviced his coffee with some mini-cream cartons from his pocket.

The sheriff sat down on the chair opposite and the two other men leaned against the wall, but their presence was casual rather than threatening.

‘I introduced myself earlier, Mr Spiller, but I guess you were pretty spaced out by the whole thing so let me do it again. I’m Sheriff John Pace.’

Josh looked at him expectantly, hoping by the tone of his voice that he brought not a further reprimand, but some news.

John Pace, however, looked back as though the reminder of his name was all that mattered here. When he realized that the man was going to say no more, Josh spoke:

‘Did you get her?’

Pace looked down at his cup and then glanced quickly out the corner of his eye at one of the deputies. The look, unlike that of his deputy before him, was one of disappointment, of someone letting him down. He sighed before he replied.