Box eight-fifty was on the first row about eye level. The box next to it had an orange sticker pasted to it, the words too faded to read.
“Have a good one,” one of the ladies behind the desk called as a customer brushed past John on her way out. He stepped back quickly to get out of the woman’s way, mumbling an apology as rain dripped from his hair. When he looked back up, he saw someone heading toward the boxes.
John held his breath, clutching the envelope in his hand as a skinny black woman talking on her cell phone jabbed her key into the lock of box eight-fifty. She was laughing into the phone, saying something derogatory about a family member, when she jerked the key back out, saying, “Shit, girl, I just put my key in the wrong box.”
She pushed the key into the lock below eight-fifty, cradling the cell phone with her shoulder as she kept on talking.
“Sir?” the woman behind John said.
The line had moved, but John hadn’t. He smiled, saying, “Sorry. Forgot my wallet,” and stepped out of line.
What a stupid waste of time. There was no way he could sit on this box all day, and the odds of whoever had taken his name just showing up when John happened to be there were ridiculously low. He’d have better luck buying a lottery ticket.
He pushed open the door, tossing the blank envelope into the trash. The sky had opened up again, sending down a cold deluge. John shivered. A hundred dollars. A good winter coat would be at least a hundred dollars. Where would he get that kind of money? How long would it take to save up for a freaking coat?
He hunched his shoulders as he stood at the bus stop, cursing himself and the rain. He would have to start looking for a new job. Maybe something inside, something that had regular hours and didn’t depend on the weather. Something where they didn’t mind if you had a record, and if that record said you were the kind of man who should be put down like a rabid dog to protect the rest of the world from the evil inside of you.
John’s job choices were limited to the dangerous ones. Half the guys in prison were there because they’d knocked over a convenience store or a mom-and-pop diner. Most of the guys on death row had gotten their start robbing the local Quickie Mart, ending their criminal careers by putting a bullet in some low-wage worker’s head for the sixty bucks in the cash drawer. Before Ms. Lam had hooked him up at the Gorilla, John had almost been desperate enough to try the convenience stores. He knew now that he couldn’t keep working at the car wash, not through the winter. He needed a way to find money, and fast.
The bus was late, the driver irritated when he finally pulled up. John’s mood matched everybody else’s as he sloshed up the stairs and walked to the back, his thirty-dollar sneakers practically disintegrated from the rain. He fell into the empty seat at the back of the bus, half-wishing the lightning zig-zagging out of the sky would come through the window and hit him right in the head. He’d end up brain-damaged, a drooling vegetable taking up space in a hospital somewhere. He was beginning to see why so many guys ended up back in prison. He was thirty-five years old. He had never driven a car, never really dated, never really lived. What the hell was the point, John thought, staring glumly out the window as some guy struggled to close an umbrella and get into his car at the same time.
John stood up as the bus pulled away, looking out the window, keeping his eyes on the man. How many years had passed? His brain wouldn’t let him do the math, but he knew it was him. John was slack-jawed as he watched the man give up on the umbrella and toss it into the parking lot before slamming his car door shut.
Yes. It was him. It was definitely him.
Just as a million raindrops fell from the sky, there existed a million chances that John would go to the post office on the right day at the right time.
A million to one, but he had done it.
He had found the other John Shelley.
CHAPTER TWELVE
John couldn’t remember being arrested—not because he was in shock at the time but because he had been semiconscious. Woody had come by that morning to check on him and hooked him up with some Valium. John had taken enough to tranquilize a horse.
Apparently, the cops had come to his house with an arrest warrant. His father had led them up to John’s room and they had found him passed out on his bed. John remembered coming to, his face on fire where his father had slapped him. The cops dragged him out of the house, handcuffs biting into the skin on his wrists. He passed out again on the lawn.
He woke up in the hospital, the familiar taste of charcoal in his mouth. Only, this time, when he tried to move his hand to wipe his face, something clattered against the bed rail. He looked down at his wrist, his eyes blurry, and saw that he was cuffed to the bed.
A cop was sitting by the door reading a newspaper. He scowled at John. “You awake?”
“Yeah.” John fell back asleep.
His mother was in the room when he next came around. God, she looked horrible. He wondered how long he had been asleep because Emily looked like twenty years had passed since he had climbed up the stairs to his room, turned Heart down low on the stereo and taken a handful of the little white pills his cousin had given him.
“Baby,” she said, rubbing his forearm. “Are you okay?”
His tongue was lolled back in his mouth. His chest hurt like he had been slammed in the sternum with a sledgehammer. How had he managed to breathe all this time?
“You’re going to be okay,” she said. “It’s all a mistake.”
It wasn’t though—at least as far as the police were concerned. The district attorney came in an hour or so later, Paul Finney standing behind the man, glaring at John like he was ready to jump onto the bed and throttle him right then and there. The cop must have picked up on this, too, because he was staying close to Mr. Finney, making sure nothing got out of hand.
The DA made the introductions. “I’m Lyle Anders. This is Chief Harold Waller.” The cop by Mr. Finney was holding a sheet of paper. He cleared his throat, looking down at it like he was reading from a script.
John looked at his mother. She said, “It’s all right, baby.”
“Jonathan Winston Shelley,” Waller began. “I’m arresting you for the rape and murder of Mary Alice Finney.”
John’s ears did that thing where he felt like he was underwater. Waller’s lips were moving, he was definitely saying something, but John couldn’t understand him.
Lyle Anders finally reached over and snapped his fingers in front of John’s face. “You understand what’s happening, son?”
“No,” John said. “I didn’t—”
“Don’t say anything,” his mother shushed, putting her fingers to his lips. Emily Shelley, PTA sponsor, den mother, baker of brownies and master of Halloween disguises, straightened her back and addressed the three men in the room. “If that’s all?”
They loomed over his small mother, Paul Finney especially. He was a big man to begin with, but his rage made him larger.
Anders said, “He needs to make a statement.”
“No,” she said, this woman who was his mother. “Actually, he doesn’t.”
“It’d be in his best interest.”
“My son has been through a horrible ordeal,” Emily answered. “He needs rest.”