Handcuffs were heavier than she'd thought. They weren't like bracelets at all. She rested her hands in her lap and wondered if she'd be out of prison in a year.
One of the hit men, a Detective Yalkowsky, deposited her in an orange fiberglass chair, one of six bolted together into a bench.
A woman officer in a ponytail like Rune's, the desk sergeant, asked him, "What've you got here?"
"Attempted grand larceny. Extortion, attempted assault, fleeing, resisting arrest, criminal trespassing--"
"Hey, I didn't assault anyone! And I was only trespassing to get away from him. I thought he was a hit man."
Yalkowsky ignored her. "She hasn't made a statement, doesn't want a lawyer. She wants to talk to somebody named Healy."
Rune said, "Detective Healy. He's a policeman."
"Why do you want to see him?"
"He's a friend."
The detective said, "Honey, the mayor could be a friend of yours and you'd still be in deep shit. You tried to extort Michael Schmidt. That's big stuff. You're gonna be potato chips for the newspapers."
"Just give him a call, please?"
The detective hesitated, then said, "Put her in a holding cell until we talk to him."
"A holding cell?" The desk sergeant looked Rune over and frowned. "We don't want to do that."
Rune looked at her concerned face. "She's right, you don't want to do that."
Yalkowsky shrugged. "Yeah, I think we do."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rune and Sam Healy made their way along Central Park West, past the knoll where dog-walkers gathered. Poodles and retrievers and Akitas and mutts tangled leashes and pranced on the dusty ground.
Healy was silent.
Rune kept looking up at him.
He turned and walked into the park. They climbed to the top of a huge rock thirty feet high and sat down.
"Sam?"
"Rune, it isn't that they could've prosecuted you--"
"Sam, I--"
"--they couldn't have made the extortion case, and, yeah, they didn't identify themselves as cops. And somebody found a fake FBI ID, but nobody's connected it to you yet. But what they could have done is shot you. Fleeing felon. If they thought you were dangerous they could have shot."
"I'm sorry."
"I do something risky for a living, Rune. But there are procedures and backup and a lot of things we do to make it less dangerous. But you, you get these crazy ideas about killers and blackmail and you dive right in."
They watched a softball game in the meadow for a minute. The heat was bad and the players were lethargic. Puffs of dust rose up from the yellow grass as the ball skipped into the outfield.
"There were some rumors about Schmidt and this teenage boy in Colorado. I thought Shelly found out about it and was blackmailing him to get the part."
"Did the facts lead you to that conclusion? Or did you imagine that's what happened and shoehorn the facts into your idea?"
"I ... I shoehorned."