“The marshal. May I speak to him? Maybe if I do that—if I talk to him, if I explain—we can work something out. I know, I should have thought of that before I swallowed a bottle of pills, but I panicked. I didn’t see any other option.”
“What’s he want you for?” Dalton’s voice comes from behind me, and I turn to see him awake, straightening in his chair.
“Tell us about this federal offense you committed,” Dalton says.
Dalton knows Paul’s official story. He doesn’t say that, though—he wants to hear it from Paul.
“It was a really stupid mistake,” Paul says. “And it’s a long story.”
“From the beginning,” Dalton says.
Paul nods. “It began on my lunch hour. I worked in Manhattan. Sales. Boring as hell, but it paid the bills. I was thirty-four. Divorced for a year. No kids. I was just kind of plodding along in life. Waiting for things to get better but not doing anything to make them better. I was coming back from lunch, alone, with my headphones on, when this girl falls right in front of me. I look up and see a guy coming at her. A scrawny kid, looked like he just crawled from an alley. I used to play quarterback in high school, kept it up with a few hours in the gym each week. So I fend him off. Turns out I was so lost in my music that I walked straight into the middle of a protest. It was Manhattan. Honestly, you learn to ignore them. Anyway, she was a protester, and that’s why this neo-Nazi creep went after her. I stayed to make sure she got help. The next day, she called to thank me and asked me out for coffee. I said yes. Hell, yes.”
He pauses and looks up at me. “Did I mention it’s a long story?”
“Keep going,” Dalton says.
“So, fast-forward a year. We’ve been dating, and I’m crazy about her. Sure, Cindy’s too young for me—twenty-four—but I’m still smarting from my divorce, and this is the ego boost I need. She’s cute and smart and sweet, and I’m smitten. She’s also into social activism. Really into it. So I’m right in there with her. It’s like when I met my wife, and she was a dog trainer, and all of a sudden, I was the biggest dog lover ever. And it wasn’t as if Cindy and I had different political views in general. So I was right in there with her, protesting so much shit I had to set reminders for myself. Tuesday is animal rights, Saturday is pro-choice, and make sure I grab the right sign for each, ’cause screwing that up is really embarrassing.”
He offers a weak smile. “I was an activist poseur. Stupid as hell, but it made her happy, and when Cindy was happy, I was happy.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
“Déjà vu all over again, to quote…” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t even remember who said that. Sorry, I’m trying to play this cool, so maybe we can all forget I tried to kill myself tonight. That’s just not…” He looks at me. “Does anyone else know about the overdose?”
“Will and my sister assisted us. Anyone else only knows it was a medical emergency.”
“Could we not tell people? It’s just … It’s not the image…” He shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m supposed to be defending myself against attempted murder, not worrying what people will think of me.”
“Paul?” Dalton says.
“Sorry, boss. So, déjà vu. A year later. Another protest. Another attack on Cindy. We’re in there, shouting and whatever, and it’s chaos. I look over to see her go flying, just like that first day. I go off on the guy who did it, even more than I did the first time, because now this is my girlfriend he’s attacking. I beat him until Cindy’s friends pull me off. That’s when I discover she wasn’t attacked by another neo-Nazi asshole. It was a federal cop, who pushed her by accident. He got hit, and he stumbled into her. That’s it. He had the jacket on, the one that said he was a cop, and I never noticed it. I just saw Cindy go flying. I beat the shit out of a federal officer. The moment I realized what I did, I made the next-biggest possible mistake. I bolted.”
“You fled the scene,” I say.
“Oh, yeah. Ran like the devil himself was on my heels. I walked five miles to our hotel room—we were in DC for the protest—and when I arrived, there were cops waiting. They grabbed Cindy and her friends, and someone gave me up. I saw the cops, and I got out of there. The group helped me. I don’t know if that was the right move. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. But it’s not like they were experts. I should have gotten a lawyer. Instead I panicked and ran. Someone connected to Cindy’s group knew about Rockton, as a place for political asylum, and they figured I qualified. That’s how I ended up here.”
“And the officer?” I ask.
His brow furrows.
“Did you kill the guy?” Dalton says.
Paul’s eyes widen. “No. I broke a couple of ribs and fractured his orbital socket or something like that. He made a full recovery and was back to work in a month.” He hurries on. “Which doesn’t diminish what I did. Jostling Cindy was unintentional. He was a federal officer doing his job keeping the peace, and I put him in the hospital. I know now I should have stayed and muddled through. Running made it worse. I became a federal fugitive.”
He pushes up straighter in bed. “I didn’t face the music three years ago, so I’m doing it now. Just let me talk to this marshal. I probably can’t convince him to let me stay—not after all this—but I want him to know exactly what happened before he takes me. I want him to know I’m not some maniac who attacked a federal agent.”
I glance at Dalton. He shakes his head.
“He’s dead,” I say. “The marshal … has succumbed to his injuries.”
“What?”
I repeat it. It takes at least a minute for the news to penetrate. When it does, Paul hovers there, like he’s waiting for more.
Then, slowly, he slumps onto the bed. When he speaks again, his voice is barely above a whisper. “I should be glad, shouldn’t I? Not that he’s dead, of course. He was just like that agent I beat up. A guy doing his job. But as shitty as that is, and as guilty as I’ll feel, it means I’m safe. Except…”
He swallows, and he looks up at me. “I was kind of glad. Happy I’d been caught. Part of me always wanted to be. Right from the start. When I went back to the hotel and saw those cops, I wanted to turn myself in. I kept hoping someone would talk me into it, hoping Cindy would tell me she loved me and she’d see me through this and once it was over, we’d be together.”