31.
Jamal
“Oh my God,” Augustus breathed, as the reality of what we’d just seen settled in on us as we sat in the rental car, as though the atmosphere in here had compressed. “There is no way he survived that.”
My mouth was hanging open, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, but I turned on my brother as soon as he said it. “No shit, Sherlock. He’s in about five pieces over there, of course he didn’t survive it. My question is—why didn’t you stop it?”
Augustus just shook his head and raised his hand. “Whatever that thing was they threw? It wasn’t real rock. It didn’t even have any trace earth elements for me to control.”
“Well, it sure as shit looks like a rock,” I said, pointing at the boulder, which lay on the ground a few feet away from a decent-sized piece of Spiegel’s corpse. “And did you notice that they shouted your name just before it hit?”
Augustus’s eyes darted. “I did notice that.”
I punched the dashboard, lightly enough that the airbag didn’t deploy. I wanted to hit it a lot harder. “They just framed us for his murder.”
“How?” Augustus asked. “We step out of the car now, we can prove it wasn’t me that threw that. I’ve been over here this whole time.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, “and I think they know that.” I looked up; there were cameras all over this parking lot. I’d checked them before we parked. “This whole thing was a frame, Augustus. They just smeared you with it.”
“Well, I didn’t kill anybody,” Augustus said. “That stone isn’t something I can control. Lab test would prove it … probably.” And now reality was getting to him, too.
“We need to get out of here,” I said, pointing at the ignition. “We gotta go.”
Augustus just glared at me. “Are you out of your mind? We’re innocent. But if we run, we’re going to look guilty. They will see us drive off after this. If we stay, we answer questions—”
“It doesn’t work like that, and you know it,” I said, mind racing. This was never about proving that Augustus killed Ray Spiegel. Hell, they’d have a difficult time making that stick in court, though it was definitely going to mess up our next week or month or however long. “They just tied us to a murder scene. Look at Custis over there. He’s hanging around even though he was standing next to a guy when he got killed. The murderer is already gone.” I pointed at the roof, then checked the camera angles to be sure. “I guarantee the camera angles are such that there’s no visual evidence that anybody was ever up there. So what we have here is a rock flying through the sky, probably a recording on Custis’s end—and hell, we have one, too—of them identifying you as the murderer just before it struck.” My neck sagged. “Even if you don’t go to jail for more than one night … this is going to play in the press. And it’s going to play badly .”
“But I didn’t do anything,” Augustus said, thumping his steering wheel.
“A reporter just got killed,” I said numbly.
“Let’s not go exaggerating,” Augustus said. “He was more of a blogger.”
“Same difference,” I said. “The press is going to be all over this. Metahuman attacks on their own? By one of Sienna Nealon’s friends? Like I said … this is going to play. Loud.”
“What are we supposed to do, then?” Augustus asked, looking around. “You want us to run? Like criminals? Like cockroaches when the lights come on?” He made a noise of distaste. “To hell with that. I’m staying right here. I’ll answer questions.”
“We can’t do that,” I said, shaking my head.
Augustus turned on me. “You know what this is? This is about you. About what you’ve done in the past. I’ma sit here, because I don’t have a guilty conscience, see? You—you probably need to run. They start looking at you here, they might find some things from the past you don’t want found. Am I right?”
My face burned. It was a clumsy but cutting reference to the fact I’d killed two men who’d helped murder my first girlfriend. The fact that it came from my brother at a moment of high tension …
My phone squealed and I felt an electrical surge as someone forced a message through my speaker without my permission. It was like an electrical slap to the face, and a hiss came out as a radio call from the police was piped into our car. “Murder suspects are believed to be Augustus and Jamal Coleman, African-American males, driving a silver Ford Fusion—”
“That legit?” Augustus asked, wide-eyed, staring at my phone as it made that unearthly call.
I sagged and hit the internet, going to the digital record of the DC Metro police radio dispatch calls. There was a transcript there, a little flawed because it was transcribed by a computer program, but I looked through the log and sure enough— “It’s legit,” I said, putting my head back against the seat rest. “This was a frame. The biggest frame. A Bayeux Tapestry frame—”
“Man, nobody frames a tapestry, you ignorant ass,” Augustus said, but he was looking around, clearly discomfited by this news. He hit the start button on the car and it came to life. “They know our vehicle, man.”
“I caught that in the APB, yeah,” I said, feeling all the life drained out of me.
“Trouble’s coming,” Augustus said, and for the first time, he sounded numb. He sounded like he used to sound as a kid when we’d done something stupid, and knew that momma was gonna whoop us for it.
“We have to go,” I said, my lizard brain reacting in one of the only three ways it could: fight, flight, or freeze. Fighting the cops was crazy and would just lock us into guilt. Freeze meant going to jail. “We have to—”
My phone buzzed as a message was pushed right into it, and I knew it was from Arche:
RUN. RUN NOW.
I stared at for a second, and so did Augustus. His eyes met mine. “That your girl?”
Wordlessly, I nodded.
He flicked the gear switch to drive, looking faintly sick as he did. “We got no choice,” he muttered to himself and yanked the wheel to the side as he turned to get us out of the parking lot, away from this scene of destruction.
The destruction of our damned lives.