Fighting Chance(32)

Petrak pushed food around his plate. “I went out past the guard and looked around. There was a hallway with some people in it and I went down there for a while. Not very far. I really didn’t go very far.”

“You were in the room with Father Tibor before I got there,” Aunt Sophie said. “I heard that woman screaming and I went looking for you and then the police stopped me, and it turned out you were in the room. How did you get in the room?”

“I heard the screaming, too. I was in the hall and somebody started screaming, it was around a corner in another hall, and everybody started running for there, so I went.”

“Did it occur to you at all that it might not be a good idea to go running right for there? That if somebody was screaming, it couldn’t mean anything good?”

“Maybe somebody was hurt,” Petrak said. “Maybe they needed help.”

“I’d like to believe that was your motivation, but I don’t. You do understand that that place almost certainly had security cameras, and that you’ve got to be on them? In the wrong place at the wrong time. And you didn’t find Mr. Donahue.”

“I did find Mr. Donahue,” Petrak said. “He was in the room with the screaming woman and, you know—”

“The dead body,” Aunt Sophie said.

“There were a lot of other people there,” Petrak said. “And there were a lot of people in the hallway in no time. They just came pouring in from everywhere. Except this one guy who went out a side door. I told the police about him. I thought he could be the murderer.”

“A guy who went out the side door.”

“I think he went out the door. He went around the corner to one of the back hallways. He was very strange.”

“Very strange,” Aunt Sophie said.

“I have to go to school now,” Petrak said. “I don’t think you have to worry about me. I don’t think the police are going to think I killed that woman. Why would I kill that woman?”

“Because she was going to send your only brother to jail?”

“Tcha,” Petrak said. “Mr. Donahue said we were going to find a way to stop that. She wasn’t going to send Stefan to jail. And she can’t do it now anyway, and maybe we’ll get a better judge.”

“Petrak.”

“I don’t care,” Petrak said. “And I did see a man, a man in a suit, and he was going away. So if the police talk to me, that’s what I’m going to say. And don’t say they’ll think I’m lying. I’m not lying.”

“You lied about Stefan being here legally,” Aunt Sophie said.

Petrak got up. He had to get out. He had to go to class.

“I’ll go see Mr. Donahue when I’m finished at school,” he said.

Then he bolted upright, grabbed his backpack from the kitchen counter, and bolted out the door.

2

Russ Donahue hadn’t slept all night. He hadn’t even pretended to sleep. He lay down in bed just for a little while, feeling Donna wide awake and trying not to be restless beside him. Then he got up and went into the living room to pace.

The living room of his house took up most of the second floor, leaving the ground floor to the foyer, the kitchen, and the dining room. From the big living room window, Russ could look down on Cavanaugh Street in the dark, and count the houses and apartments of the people he knew.

He’d moved onto the street when he’d married Donna and adopted her son, Tommy. He could remember almost everything that had happened in the years since. He and Donna had their own son now. He was very happy with that, even though he knew Donna would have preferred a daughter. There should be plenty of time for daughters. Donna was young. He was young. In the ordinary course of things, even the bills would clear up, go down, get better.

He couldn’t get his mind off the fact that this was not the ordinary course of things. If the worst happened, if the very worst happened, if Tibor were convicted of murder and sent away to prison, or sent to the electric chair—

Russ didn’t know how to calculate things like that. He would say them to himself the way he did with all his clients who were in serious trouble, but instead of thinking through the options, his mind just came to a stop. He kept seeing Tibor on the floor of that room with the gavel raised over his head. The blood was everywhere. The blood was on Tibor and on himself and on the furniture and on the books in the bookshelves.

And Tibor’s eyes were staring right at him, absolutely flat, absolutely expressionless, absolutely dead.

Donna came out after a while and sat down in one of the big armchairs. She was good about things like this. She didn’t nag. She didn’t prod. She did worry, though, and Russ could feel it.