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“He’ll need an attorney.”
“An attorney,” she repeated in a weak voice. Where would she get the money for an attorney?
He checked his watch. “If his attorney can get here this afternoon, he’ll probably have a bail hearing today.”
“Bail hearing,” she murmured.
“And since this is his first offense, he’ll probably be released on bail.”
Feeling like the most stupid person alive, she said, “How does that work exactly—bail? I…I don’t remember from…I don’t remember.” From when her father had been arrested.
His expression softened, as if he realized that she wasn’t nearly as street-smart as she tried to appear. “For a felony with no endangerment, the standard bail is five thousand. If you pay cash, you’ll get it back after the case is settled.”
She choked back a laugh. Where would she get five thousand dollars? If only their parents had left them a stash of ill-gotten gains to make up for the fact that they had abandoned their own children.
He coughed lightly. “If you don’t have cash, you’ll want to call a bail bondsman. That will cost you ten percent of the bail, which you won’t get back.”
Five hundred—she could probably scrape together that much, but it would be another expense that she didn’t need right now.
He opened a desk drawer, revealing more clutter, and rooted around, coming up with a curled business card. “If you need to, call this guy.”
She took the card of Brumbee’s Bail Bonds (“Call us anytime!”), a flush warming her cheeks. Had the detective guessed how deeply in debt they were, or had he already performed a credit check and confirmed it? At least her parents had left the house in her name. Although she suspected it was to shelter the property in case her parents’ assets were seized during the criminal case, it was the one thing that had given her a financial toehold after they had disappeared, and the means to secure custody of Wesley. “I’ve heard of people putting up the deed to their house for bail.”
“A property bond?” He splayed his big hands. “Yeah, people do that all the time. And then they get a lien placed on their home if the person doesn’t show up in court.” His lips flattened. “I wouldn’t advise it.”
She frowned. “Wesley would never skip bail.”
The detective didn’t say anything, but in the air hung the question Like your father wouldn’t skip bail?
Carlotta lowered her gaze, burning with shame. She refused to cry. When Detective Terry’s hand touched her arm, she could only stare at the blunt-tipped fingers, wishing it was the hand of someone she could rely on for the long haul rather than fleeting sympathy. They were, after all, on opposite sides of this issue. She inhaled to compose herself, then pulled her arm away and lifted her gaze to his. “After posting bail, then what?”
The detective looked contrite, then picked up his coffee cup with his errant hand. “Within a couple of days he’ll have to appear in court to be arraigned.”
“Arraigned,” she said, nodding stupidly.
“That’s where the charges against him will be read, and he’ll enter a plea. If his attorney and the district attorney reach an agreement on the charges and the sentence, he can plead out.” He hesitated, then added, “If not, his case will go to trial.”
“Trial,” she said like a sick parrot. She closed her eyes, thinking how sordid it all sounded—and how disturbingly familiar. It was all coming back to her, hearing the same terminology peppering her parents’ conversations after the grand jury had indicted her father, her mother weeping drunkenly, her father professing his innocence—unconvincingly. And now it was starting all over again.
When she opened her eyes, Detective Terry was studying her intently. Upon closer inspection, his bloodshot eyes were hazel, almost golden, unusually pale with his dark coloring. And…dangerous. Unbidden, the thought darted through her mind that any woman foolish enough to hook up with this man was destined for disappointment.
Suddenly he leaned toward her. “Look, I didn’t know about the connection between your brother and your father when I made the arrest this morning. Your brother will have to pay for his crime, but…well, off the record, I should warn you—the D.A., Kelvin Lucas, is the same man who had your father indicted.”
A slow drip of panic entered her bloodstream, as cool as menthol. “Are you saying that the D.A. might be harder on my brother because he didn’t get to prosecute my father?”
The detective’s gaze was unflinching. “Ms. Wren, in this city, and especially in the D.A.’s office, your father’s name is like a bad smell. All I’m saying is that you and your brother should prepare yourselves for the worst.”
3
Wesley Wren whistled under his breath, a nameless tune that his father had always whistled when Wesley was a boy. He didn’t remember too many moments with his workaholic father, whose angular face was hazy in his mind, but he remembered that when Dad was in a good mood, he whistled. And, despite sitting in the corner of a musty jail cell and the fact that Hubert, one of the dozen other guys in holding, had forced him to trade his new brown suede Puma tennis shoes for Hubert’s worn-out no-name sneakers, Wesley was in a pretty good mood. It had taken him only a few weeks to find a way into the Atlanta courthouse records, and that wasn’t bad for a hobby hacker.
His buddy Chance had given him the idea by asking if Wesley could expunge a couple of DUI arrests from Chance’s record. He was willing to pay Wesley five hundred bucks per delete stroke.
Oh, sure, the extra cash had come in handy, but cleaning up Chance’s traffic violations hadn’t been the primary incentive. For months now he’d been covertly accumulating details about his father’s indictment and subsequent disappearance—covertly because Carlotta would murder him if she ever caught wind of it. He’d made copies of every public document he could find online and in crammed file cabinets around Atlanta, but the information was incomplete and dated. When he’d tapped into the courthouse records two days ago, he’d found a wealth of information on his father’s last court appearance, and on sightings of his parents over the past ten years—Michigan, Kentucky, California, Texas. The thought of his polished, executive father wearing a ten-gallon hat made him smile, but he was sure that Randolph Wren could carry it off. His father was smart, savvy, and knew how to blend in to his environment—how else had he been able to elude the authorities for over a decade?
His chest swelled with pride when he thought of his father donning a disguise and slipping out of town under the nose of some cop out to make a career for himself by capturing Randolph Wren, The Bird. When Wesley was in grade school, he’d entertained his friends with daring stories that he’d imagined to be true. Having a notorious father had given him status in school. He was no longer the bespectacled runt who blew the curve in math class. He was the son of The Bird. He had told his classmates how he’d helped his father escape the feds by coming up with a fantastic math equation regarding engine speed and the timing of traffic lights, and how he continued to help his father from afar via secret code. As soon as his father had gathered enough evidence to prove that he had been set up, he would return to Atlanta and clear his name. They would be a family again, vindicated, and stronger for their trials.
It was true…sort of. He hadn’t helped his father escape, of course, but he would have if his father had only asked. And there was no secret code within the abbreviated messages on the postcards they had received sporadically over the years—at least not one that he’d been able to crack. He’d spent hours poring over those postcards, eight of them in all, studying them under a magnifying glass, infrared light, black light, and had even managed to have a couple of them X-rayed on an eighth-grade field trip to a vet clinic. In hindsight, he realized there were no secret messages between the lines of “We’re fine and we love you” or “You’re always in our hearts,” yet he remained hopeful that his father would someday contact him