It looked like Tala wanted to sit down, to rest a spell after a long day of work at the hospital. Hector obliged by hooking one arm under her shoulder and gently lowering her down. She sat there on her folded up legs in an awkward pose on the floor. One arm propped her upright but strained under the weight and didn’t look like it would hold much longer. As the ringing in my ears subsided, I heard it.

The sounds coming out of her were a quiet plea that I knew would go unanswered. They were so feminine and fragile. And I fought the urge to rush to her side and if nothing else, just hold her in my arms. Instead, I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to watch it. But the sound didn’t go away.

I’d never heard anything like that in my life and I wished to all’s end that I never would again.

NO KIDS

Badger showed up a short time later and surveyed the scene. When he saw the body lying in the hallway, he calmly approached and felt for a pulse on Tala’s neck even though by the way she lay there it was clear she was dead. He used the backs of his fingers, felt nothing, then rose and checked his watch. It felt to me like the moves of someone whose next move was to flee and pretend he was never there — no fingerprints on the skin, no evidence at all to place him at the scene. I expected him to request that Hector and I leave him out of the entire story we told the police. And I didn’t blame him in the least. He had more experience than I did in what lay ahead for us and he was wise to not want to experience it.

“It’s ten-forty,” he announced. “We call 911 first but we call our lawyers immediately afterwards. Let’s make sure we have the numbers handy because this thing will go down faster than you ever thought possible.”

Badger wasn’t running, and I felt sorry for doubting him. He called 911 and told them the minimum amount of facts. It appeared like the operator was trying to pump him for more information but he hung up on them. He then dialed his lawyer and filled him in. I took Badger’s lead and called the only lawyer I knew, my ex-wife Claire. As a commercial real estate attorney she knew nothing about criminal law, but she was all I had. I also held this growing need to be near someone I knew and Claire was the closest person I had in all of Los Angeles.

I got her voicemail.

“Claire, it’s me. I think I am about to be arrested. I am in Chinatown so not sure where I will be held. Can you help?” Before I hung up, I felt the need to add, “Sorry to bother you with this. I’m in trouble.”

Hector didn’t call anyone. Badger and I pleaded with him, but he ignored our requests. I thought of calling Valenti directly but worried that would only complicate matters. Hector could have easily placed the call to the old man himself but he chose not to. I didn’t know his reasons but I respected them.

Badger was right. The “mess” was on us faster than I thought possible. The siren wails grew louder with each passing second and soon were joined by heavy footsteps on the stairwell. Radio squawks joined the cacophony of sounds coming at us. Per Badger’s suggestion, we sat together on the floor with our backs against the wall and our hands clasped over the tops of our heads. At least Badger and I did the last part. Hector joined us on the floor but his arms remained by his sides, his palms face-up in a resigned pose. As the cool-white glare of heavy flashlights danced in the hallways, I caught a brief glimpse of Hector’s face. He looked drained and lost and his cheeks glistened where he had tried to wipe the tears away.

***

I never felt exhaustion like I experienced in the period that followed. I remember snippets of what eventually became a two-day ordeal, but they seem like scenes haphazardly cut together from several different movies.

There was an interrogation room that was as cold as a walk-in refrigerator. I recall pulling my arms in through my sleeves and wrapping them across my chest in an attempt to retain what little heat emanated from my core. I would have done anything for a shred of blanket so I could curl up in the corner of the linoleum floor and go to sleep.

I remember an odd combination of odors — pancakes and radiator steam — so strikingly familiar that a rush of memories from my third grade classroom came back with such clarity that it felt like I was sitting in that second row again under the paper mobiles dangling from the ceiling.

And I remember a uniformed officer of pronounced age who escorted me in and out of rooms with the gentleness of a nursemaid. He had the saddest eyes I had ever seen and forever had this look like he would one day walk out the front door and never come back.

I did a lot of talking over those two days but can’t recall much of anything that I said. They asked the same questions over and over again and even I grew tired of my answers and felt the urge to change it up just for the hell of it. If my responses failed to stop the repeated asking of the same questions then I assumed something was wrong with my answers. For a fleeting moment I even bandied about the notion of telling them that I was the one who held the knife and was ultimately the killer but self-survival kept me from making that mistake. Not that they would have believed me anyway.

With distance from the onslaught of interrogations it became clear that they weren’t interested in me. It was in the questions they asked and in the tone they asked them. They spoke to me like a child, half filling me in, half asking me to fill in the holes for them. All of their questions revolved around the “how” more than anything.

How did Valenti come to hire me to find his granddaughter?

How did I find out there were ransom notes?

How did the first payment happen?

They had Hector, but more importantly, they wanted the puppeteer manipulating the strings. They operated on the assumption that every murder follows a logical path, and this one followed a winding little road back to the old man himself. Tala’s murder, and perhaps even Morgan’s, were part of some conspiracy. Perhaps the murders weren’t pre-planned but they were certainly deliberate. And I was just the rube they used along the way when it helped their cause.

After some time, a suited man appeared in more and more discussions and seemed to be on my side. He was introduced as my lawyer though I didn’t recognize the face and was certain we had never met. But he clearly wanted to help me and for that I was grateful. I came to rely on his presence so much that when he left the room I had this instinct to run after him, lest he leave me behind and never come back. But he always came back.

On his last visit he led me through a maze of hallways and forms and ultimately deposited me into a parking lot where I was greeted by damp night air and the hum of air conditioning units.

Claire was there to give me a ride home. I didn’t know where my car was — impounded in a lot somewhere — and I didn’t have the energy or the sense to find it. We drove through the near-empty streets out of downtown and unwittingly passed the Cornfields park that began this nightmare. Not that I really noticed or cared. I was exhausted and felt detached from everything around me. I could smell the new-car leather and feel the gentle heat of the seat warmers but it didn’t seem like I was actually there in the passenger seat with Claire as the city went by.

We stopped at an all-night donut shop in Highland Park. It was expectedly empty at three in the morning. The lone worker manning the shift no one wanted shot us an annoyed look that we were rudely intruding on the private world she occupied every night and every early morning.