Part Eight: The Officers
Two officers came to Saint Catherine’s at eight forty-seven that evening, according to the clock above the family waiting room door. A detective came forty minutes later. I gave three separate accounts over the course of about ninety minutes — each time covering the same material, each time with the slightly different focus of whoever was asking — and at the end of it, a detective named Ruiz told me that officers had been dispatched to my parents’ address.
Mark arrived at eleven twenty-three. He came through the waiting room door still in his conference clothes, rolling carry-on behind him, and I stood up and he held me without saying anything for a moment and I let him.
“How is he?”
“Stable. Sleeping. The rib didn’t puncture the lung. They’re watching it.”
“And you?”
I thought about this again.
“Better,” I said. “Now you’re here.”
He sat beside me and I told him the rest. His face, while I told him, went through a series of expressions that I recognized as the controlled version of something much larger — the way he handled things that made him furious, by becoming very still and very specific.
“Your mother took your phone,” he said.
“Yes.”
“While Leo was—”
“Yes.”
He was very still for a moment.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
