“He was also the person who owned those two rifles you have in your possession and various other weapons, I’m sure. He was a former lieutenant with the United Forces, stationed in Texas, dishonorably discharged.”
“Oh,” I said.
“So, why did you lie about the vehicle, Joshua?” Crenshaw asked, staring directly at me.
I looked at my hands, not sure I could keep this up much longer. “Cipher didn’t want anyone to know that we had it. He was worried someone might try to take it from us.”
“Well, as you can imagine, this complicates things significantly. I have more questions to ask you both, separately this time, so that we can get to the bottom of this. Are you finished eating?”
I looked to Macon, worried the burger I just ate was going to come right back up.
“Yeah, I’m finished. I’ll go first,” Macon said, then balled up his napkin and threw it on the table.
He was stalling, giving me time to get my story straight. But how could I? Crenshaw had already caught me in a lie once, and something told me she wasn’t easily fooled. I didn’t have Cipher here to coach me on what to say. What if I screwed this up too?
“Didyou know that the vehicle’s former owner, Jeremiah Lange, had an arrangement with the leader of Promised Land, the man you knew as Brother Larry?”
Captain Crenshaw and I were sitting across from each other in a room that I assumed was her office. The desk was huge, littered with stacks of paper and a single lamp that flickered every few minutes. Fluctuations in the voltage of the generators, I’d learned from Wylie and Gizmo. They must have a lot of gasoline in reserve to be able to run their generators nonstop. Cipher would want me to ask about that, where they got their gas and how many generators they had going at any given time, but I had more important things to deal with right now.
“What kind of an arrangement?” I asked at last, studying my hands so that I wouldn’t have to meet her hawk-like eyes.
“An illegal one,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, which seemed to be the safest response I could give her.
“We were working on apprehending Lange, in fact, when you and your friends found him deceased from a Rabid attack.”
“Were you going to arrest him?” I asked, trying to keep the waver out of my voice.
“Yes, we were,” she said.
“Then I suppose it’s not so terrible that the Rabids got him?” I ventured to say.
“Did you kill him, Joshua?”
Wow, I hadn’t expected her to come right out with it. I thought there’d at least be a warm-up to the murder accusation.
“No, ma’am,” I said.
“Do you know who killed him?”
I glanced to the corner of the room where a coffee pot stood, half full, the liquid inside of it black as tar. I wondered how old it was. How often did Captain Crenshaw get a craving for a cup of coffee? There had been coffee in Promised Land too. You couldn’t grow coffee beans here in the United States, which meant Brother Larry must have traded for it. Was it the same with the United Forces? Were they making black market trades with scum like Jeremiah?
“Where do you get your coffee?” I asked Captain Crenshaw.
“Guatemala,” she said shortly.
“There was coffee in Promised Land. I only tried it once or twice. Cipher used to have a cup every morning. And then it was hard for him to go without it. He has an addictive personality.”
“Did one of your friends kill Jeremiah Lange, Joshua?”
I only wanted to keep Cipher safe. He did it in self defense to save my life, and honestly, Jeremiah deserved it.
“He kidnapped me,” I blurted out.
“Who kidnapped you?”
“Jeremiah did. Brother Larry traded me for a neonatal incubator and some other stuff too. Weapons, I think. Jeremiah took me from our house in the middle of the night. Gassed us all. He wanted to use me as bait for Rabids, which he did. He also wanted to rape me.” The words came tumbling out before I could stop them.
