It’s not a dark room like you see in the movies. There’s no giant mirror across the wall with people hidden, watching from behind it. There’s a window that looks out into the alley behind the police station and lets the afternoon sun stencile itself into an even square in the floor. There’s a simple wooden table with mismatched four-legged chairs on either of its wide sides. Cruise waits seated on the side that faces the door, his hands cupped together and waiting on the tabletop.
He has some pretty terrible coffee a little waxed paper cup to his left. He sipped it to be polite at first, but now he lets it cool out of sight. One leg still aches a little, but otherwise the sores of four nights ago have vanished.
Twelve minutes after he got there, Sherif Wayne comes into the room where Cruise waits.
“Mr. Whalin. How are you feeling?” He slides a tan file folder onto the table and takes the seat across from Cruise.
“Alright. Better. Thank you, sir.”
“You sure scared my Deputy. When she found you next to the road like that…”
“I’m sorry sir.” Cruise pulls his hands from the table and into his lap.
“Look, son. Whatever you were up to that night, you can tell me. Drugs. Drinking. Whatever. We just want to know so we can close this case and move on to more—serious matter.”
Cruise stares at his palms, fingers interlocked, for a moment.
“I got the case report right here. The report from Deputy Abrahams, medical reports, photos from the scene. Everything all ready to be filed away and forgotten about. I just need to fill out one last box,” Wayne flips open the folder, “‘Cause.’ I just need to know why you were found sleeping beside the road. Maybe you pulled over drunk. Hell, maybe you were just tired and couldn’t make it home, for all I know you—“
“I wasn’t tired.”
Wayne looks up from the file at Cruise’s bent head.
“And I was’t drunk. Or high. Or anything like that.”
Wayne flicks the front file flap closed and leans back in his chair, “I’ve seen some pretty crazy things up here as the Sherif. A lot of people think ‘it’s a small town, nothing interesting really happens in small towns.’ Not for a Sherif anyways. But, I’ve seen some real crazies up here. There was the lady who tried to keep a cougar as a pet. A guy got so drunk he decided to go swimming in January, made a popsicle out of himself. A couple decided to tear down their house and build themselves a mud hut. Hit the gas line. These crazies, they keep me from doing the job I’m supposed to do. From helping all the normal, good people in our town.”
Wayne flips the folder back open, pulls an ink pen from his breast pocket and clicks it into action, “now, you’re not a crazy, are you Mr. Whalin.”
Cruise feels a burning in his eyes and blinks into his hands. Outside the window a trash truck moves down the alley, stopping at the dumpster out back.
“Five days ago if someone asked me that, I’d have answered right away. And I’d’ve been sure. But now,” Cruise smiles and blinks, “now Sherif, I really don’t know.”
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