Free Lowboy by John Wray Page A

disgusted. Not anything Will had said or done, not his grandfather’s senile vindictiveness, not even her own bad judgment or stupidity. It was a great thing to be listened to with such businesslike calm, to be listened to and allowed to tell things simply. It’s his job to make me feel this way, she reminded herself, but the knowledge was a tiny thing compared to her relief. He’s good at his work, she thought. So much the better.
    “Ali Lateef,” she heard herself murmur.
    His head jerked up at once. “What did you say?”
    “Ali Lateef,” she repeated, talking quickly to cover her embarrassment. “That’s a beautiful name. Is it Moroccan?”
    His face lost its abstracted look immediately and he laid both hands down flat against the desk, as if to brace himself for something. “Thank you, Miss Heller,” he said after a pause. “My given name was actually Rufus White.”
    I’ve offended him, she thought. How did I manage to offend him?
    “You were right to change it,” she said cautiously. “Ali is more dignified than Rufus.”
    He held up a hand—a conductor signaling for quiet in a crowded theater—and stared down at the file in front of him. There was an impatience to his movements now that she could not explain. She held her breath and waited for his next question. She expected it to be unpleasant and it was.
    “There’s something you haven’t told me yet, Miss Heller. Something you’re keeping from me. Would you like to tell me now?”
    She forced herself to look him in the eye. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
    “Are your son’s episodes always violent?”
    The breath she let out barely made a noise. I’ll tell him soon, she said to herself. Soon but not yet. When she answered him her voice was clear and steady.
    “Will’s ‘episodes,’ as you call them, are never violent, Detective. Not in the way that you mean.”
    “I don’t agree. Just now you described your son as threatening to do you harm.” He smiled at her regretfully. “I’m committed to recovering him for you, Miss Heller. Shouldn’t that be reason enough to trust me?”
    She was being manipulated now, led in circles like a child, but she managed to keep her outward manner civil. “It’s a question of accuracy, Detective, not of trust. Will’s said all sorts of things—terrible things, I admit—but he’s never actually done me harm.” She hesitated. “Or done anyone else harm, in any significant way—”
    “In any significant way?” Lateef said, cutting her short. All at once he reminded her of Will’s doctors. “We seem to have different definitions of that word.”
    She found herself staring sullenly at the floor, the way Will himself did whenever he felt cornered. “I know he’s cut himself from time to time, in small ways, and jumped—or fallen, possibly—from a second-story—”
    “You know exactly what I’m referring to, Miss Heller.” His voice was even harsher than she’d expected. “It wasn’t about violence to himself that I was speaking.” He brushed the cards aside—as though they’d never been of the slightest consequence, as though they’d been a ruse to coax the story out of her, nothing more—and produced an enormous yellow folder from a drawer of his desk. The sight made her weak. He’s been saving it, she thought. Keeping it in reserve. She knew exactly what the folder held. She watched him as if through a half-open door, as if from the hallway outside, suddenly as obsolete as all the others. The story she’d told was an appendix to that folder, possibly even less. The folder itself was the only thing he needed.
    Lateef put a finger to his temple—every gesture he made was a performance put on for her benefit, she saw that clearly now—and made a show of leafing casually through the file. It was ridiculously thick, overdone and amateurish, a hurriedly assembled prop. Who’d have thought Will was so important to them, she thought. Then another idea struck her,