Say it Louder Page 17

  Twenty thousand people is intense.

  I request that security let in few local press early to snap shots before the show. I explain to Ravi that this gives us a social media bump to sell any last-minute tickets, even resales, so we can be sure of a full crowd.

  He takes it in stride, these little details I throw his way, even though I’m not the manager anymore.

  We run through our playlist and I find myself checking my texts at every break, desperate for another little connection with Willa.

  Her answers are short and often long in coming. She took a lot of time off at Righteous Ink to get her paintings done, so she rescheduled several clients to today.

  Me: Are you nervous about tomorrow?

  Willa: Of course. When I walked through the gallery, it totally hit me. How big this is. How real.

  Me: I can’t wait to see you walk in there tomorrow. See how the buyers react to your work.

  Willa: Could you walk me in there blindfolded? And with ear plugs? I don’t want to overhear someone trashing my piece.

  Me: Please. They won’t.

  Willa: But if they do?

  Me: Hey now. Give the phone back to nothing-scares-me Willa.

  Willa: Busted.

  Me: Listen to me: I’m sure of you. And I’ll be there with you, every step. Even if I have to carry you through the night.

  Willa: You might.

  Me: Grrr. I mean it—get rid of that attitude. What are you doing right now?

  Willa: Re-pinking my hair. I finished my last client about an hour ago.

  She sends me a snap of a goofy face, her hair coated in magenta goop. I send her a picture back of the amphitheater, mostly empty except a handful of sound and lighting techs and a few press.

  As I look at the space, still five hours until we go on, I imagine how it will feel filled to the brim.

  It’s like no feeling in the world, this ability to capture the attention of thousands, and with one stroke on a drum, launch them into the next song that most of them know by heart.

  A movement from the back right corner of the amphitheater catches my eye and I watch the progress of a half-dozen security guards in a bunch, first talking animatedly to each other, then pointing at the stage.

  I take a slug of water and inspect my playlist. When I look up, they’re moving rapidly down the aisle to stage right. When they get closer, the uniforms come into focus.

  There are security guards, gray polo shirts with SECURITY printed in white block letters front and back, belts bearing heavy Maglites and walkie-talkies.

  And then there are police officers. The real deal, Pittsburgh’s finest, two with checker-trimmed hats.

  The squirming in my gut from nerves transforms into a nest of snakes when I realize their eyes are trained on me.

  “David Campbell?” The lead officer’s deep voice is more command than question. Gavin whips his head around and moves toward me, prompting another officer to square his shoulders toward Gavin, as if bracing for a confrontation.

  “Yes?” I want to force my voice low to match his register, but it comes out more like a rasp.

  “We’d like you to come with us now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I stand on shaky knees but Gavin intervenes. “What’s this about?”

  “We’d like to talk to him. Now,” the officer says.

  Gavin shakes his head and smiles, turning on a magnetic charm that removes panties faster than you can say Tattoo Thief. “Now’s not an ideal time, since we’re getting ready for a show. How’s tomorrow for you?”

  Gavin’s charm is lost on the lead officer and I glance around to the rest of the band. Tyler looks worried, Jayce dumped his guitar and is striding toward our little group, and I guess Ravi’s somewhere backstage.

  And just past the stage in the media pit, cameras are clicking. Shit.

  “We’d like you to come with us,” the officer repeats, and his hand on my shoulder feels like cuffs.

  “Stop.” Jayce says. His voice is strong enough that the lead officer actually stops, but he doesn’t let go of my shoulder and his body shifts into a more aggressive stance.

  “What’s this about?” Gavin asks.

  I hang my head, the memory of the freezing night in February slamming into my chest, knocking my breath away. She told someone. Kristina’s getting her twisted revenge.

  “He can’t go with you right now.” Jayce folds his thick arms across his chest and physically blocks their path to the stairs.

  While I appreciate him sticking up for me, it’s only making the scene worse. The cop’s grip on my shoulder tightens and another cop thumbs open a snap on his belt, the pocket where cuffs are kept.

  I look at Jayce, my eyes pleading for him to back down.

  “Sir, I’m going to ask you to step aside,” the officer says.

  “No.”

  Jayce’s cold statement is like tossing a grenade in this huddle of people. Two cops move lightning-fast to flank me, while another grabs something—a taser? Pepper spray?—from his duty belt and aims it at Jayce.

  The ampitheater’s security guards just get in the way, taking cues from the cops while Jayce, Gavin, and Tyler are shouting and demanding answers.

  But no amount of posturing is going to get me out of this. I stand there, wordless, pinned between two cops and duck my head away from four reporters in the media pit who are snapping pictures as fast as possible.

  From the corner of my eye, I see Ravi run out from the stage wing, stopping in his tracks as he assesses the scene.

  “Can’t this wait until after our show?” Tyler asks the lead officer in his best peacemaker voice. “He’s our drummer. We need him.”

  And damn if it doesn’t feel good to hear Tyler say that, even though I’m about to colossally let them down.

  “Let him go.” Ravi’s voice carries across the stage, and for a moment I think he’ll magic up a way to get me out of this.

  Then I realize Ravi’s command isn’t for the police. It’s for my band. He’s telling them to back down and let the police take me.

  “No!” Jayce and Gavin say in unison. Jayce shifts his and dives toward me, grabbing for my shoulder. He’s spun back and an officer takes out his knees.

  He lands with a thud and a curse at my feet, his face red with rage as a thick boot rolls him and cops wrestle him into cuffs.

  Holy. Shit.

  Jayce keeps up a wicked string of curses and demands until Ravi gives him another little kick in the hip to shut the fuck up.

  Ravi’s apology on behalf of Jayce and the rest of the band is poetry laced with groveling. He completely ignores me while the cops consider what to do with one writhing, cussing guitarist.

  At least Gavin and Tyler have the presence of mind to stand there, contrite. But their eyes are huge with questions and all I can do is press my lips together and give them a tiny shake of my head.

  I should have told them. They see the lack of surprise on my face, it feels like betrayal.

  Jayce is finally allowed to stand up, and thanks to Ravi’s diplomatic efforts, his cuffs are removed. But he stares daggers at the cop who floored him—and at me.

  I feel the cold metal of the cuff hit my wrist before the lead officer speaks, loud enough for anyone in throwing distance to hear.

  “David Campbell, you’re under arrest for vehicular manslaughter. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney…”

  It’s like some giant hand of God comes down and turns off the volume of everything, all the shouts from my bandmates, the rebukes from the other officers, the beady black eyes of the cameras that follow me as the police lead me off the stage in handcuffs.

  Down the stairs. Up the aisle. Out of the auditorium into one of four waiting squad cars.

  The ultimate walk of shame.

  ***

  “Sign here and here.” A sour-faced woman with frizzy hair points to boxes on a bo
oking form that details my personal effects. She rolls my fingertips across her ink pad to print me, then hands me a baby wipe to clean the ink off.

  “Stand there.” Her voice is weary, like she’s bored of booking Pittsburgh’s crooks every night.

  A blinding flash captures my face front and profile, and I’m sure I look even more like a serial killer with my unwashed greasy hair, stubble, and dark circles under my eyes.

  But I’m not. I’m not a bad guy. It was one night nearly four years ago. One stupid, freezing, drunk, fucked-up night, and now everything I’ve worked for is coming crashing down around me.

  I’m going to pay. Kristina is making sure of it.

  Eric told me that the contract I signed with Kristina wouldn’t prevent her from talking to the police, but I didn’t imagine she’d do that since she was in the car too.

  Although Kristina’s blocked from saying anything about me or my band to the media, ever—or else she loses her massive payout—there’s no way to prevent her from reporting a crime.

  Because it was a crime. What we did that night, what I can’t even fucking remember, is the worst thing a person can do.

  I killed a man.

  And I’ve spent the last four years pretending that I didn’t.

  ***

  “You gonna eat that?”

  I eye the bearded guy with a lazy eye who’s sidled up next to me. I’m in a wide-open cell with a couple of benches, a stainless toilet in the corner, and five other guys. I offer my dinner tray to the guy. “Have at it.”

  He grabs for my food and then shuffles off to a far bench where he hunches over and shovels it in, like he hasn’t eaten in days.

  Maybe he hasn’t.

  There’s a clock at the end of the pale green cinderblock hall, its ticking maddeningly loud despite the utter lack of silence. The clank of metal trays, grumbling from men in my cell and people unseen down the corridor and beyond our walls, is a din of discontent.

  I grind my jaw in frustration, watching the hands tick around the face of the clock.

  Six o’clock. Dinner with my band.

  Seven o’clock. The opening acts go on.

  Eight thirty. Tattoo Thief takes the stage.

  Without me.

  It’s such fucking irony that I fight like hell to earn a place back on that stage, only to be knocked back by my stupid twenty-one-year-old self and arrested for the worst thing I’ve ever done.

  The secret that Kristina kept for me. Held over my head. And is now using against me.

  If I could go back in time and take it all back, I’d do it in a heartbeat. A bar, a party that morphs into a fight, a drive home to our apartment across town on a freezing February night that shouldn’t have taken more than fifteen minutes.

  Black ice, Kristina said the next morning. I was in such a blacked-out state that I don’t remember it at all.

  Not really your fault, she said, but we shouldn’t report it. I was so hung over I would have agreed to anything.

  We can take it to a body shop that works under the table and no one will ever know, she said.

  It will be like it never happened, she said.

  The deep, bloody dent in my car’s bumper said otherwise.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I should be going to Willa’s right now to pick her up for the opening. I should be dressed in a good suit, rather than this day-old sweaty T-shirt. I should be coming off the high of a great hometown concert.

  I think of all the shoulds. But this is reality.

  I’m guilty. And the ugly truth is I should be here.

  My second nearly sleepless night pounds at my temples, my eyelids drooping but unwilling to give me rest. I don’t know the others in here. I don’t know what they might do to me if I let down my guard, or if they knew who I am.

  So I sit on a bench, the wall at my back, trying to look strong but not aggressive. Demanding with body language that I be left alone.

  Hours tick by and my doubts devour me.

  Shouldn’t my bandmates and Ravi have been on the phone nonstop since I was arrested? Shouldn’t I have heard from them by now? Shouldn’t they have sent me a lawyer?

  Don’t they understand how awful this is? How much I need their help?

  When Gavin’s muse overdosed, I immediately went to do damage control. But I don’t know if he believes I deserve the same from him now.

  I can’t beat the rising sense of panic that I’ve blindsided the band with this and they’re going to hate me for it. That might make them a lot less eager to get me out of here.

  At one point I try shouting to the guard about a phone call, but he just shrugs and walks away.

  I wasted my one call on Gavin’s cell phone. I should have known better—by the time they gave me my phone call, Gavin had probably ditched his phone in the green room to go onstage.

  But with who? I doubt they could find a drummer on such short notice, though Ravi probably has dozens of favors he could call in.

  Or maybe they’d do the concert unplugged?

  After nearly twenty-four hours in the cell, my mind swims with questions that spawn more questions, until the noise in my head drowns out the chatter around me.

  I should have called Willa.

  I should have left a message and begged her forgiveness. Told her everything. Told her that no matter how many times I’d promised to be with her at this opening, I was going to let her down.

  Just like I let the band down.

  God.

  Failure is a leech, sucking my will away. And as low as I ever thought I’d go after finding Kristina banging Chief, this is so, so much lower.

  “David Campbell?” A guard’s sharp voice snaps my head up. I’m starting to hate the sound of my full name.

  I stand and approach the bars. “Yeah?”

  “Your lawyer’s here. Follow me.”

  ***

  “Were you at Jake’s Bullpen the night of February nineteenth, two thousand twelve?”

  “Don’t answer that,” says my lawyer, Something Greer. I didn’t catch his first name, but I doubt it matters.

  The gray-haired cop rolls his eyes my lawyer. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got credit card receipts that shows he was.” He looks back at me. “And at the time, you were driving a white Ford Explorer.”

  Greer starts to object, but the cop stops him again. “He had that car registered to him for five years in Pennsylvania.”

  “If you’ve got all the answers, we’re done here.” Greer moves to stand.

  “Not so fast. See, we’ve got this fat bar tab in Oakland, and you were living in Beltzhoover. I don’t see you walking four miles home, and if you drank even a fraction of that tab, you’d be blowing a blood alcohol level way over the limit.”

  “He could have been buying for his friends,” Greer says, sinking back into his chair.

  “Or not.” The cop eyes me. “I wonder why you’d put all the drinks on a credit card, and then pay cash for a cab?”

  I look up at him in surprise, and his narrowed eyes catch the truth in my mine.

  “Because you didn’t, did you? You didn’t pay for a cab because you drove home. You drove to the bar, consumed well over the limit, got back in your Explorer, and then drove yourself and your girlfriend home. And at Twenty-First and Carey, you hit something. Maybe you didn’t know what, but that doesn’t matter. Maybe you thought you hit a dog and just kept driving. Or maybe you realized you hit a man.”

  “That’s a story strung together with a lot of supposition,” Greer says. “A bar tab and a home address don’t add up to a conviction in any court of law.”

  The cop squints again at him, this time almost laughing at Greer’s naiveté. “Course not. That’s all circumstantial. What we really need is a witness.”

  My attorney stands again. “As I said, we’re done.”

  The cop clicks his tongue, tsk-tsking Greer’s move for the exit. “We’ve got one.” He shuffles a few more papers inside his file and I strain to read them
upside-down, but it’s not happening. “Seems like your girlfriend feels like coming clean about that night.”

  “Ex,” I grit out, and Greer gives me a pinch-mouthed look demanding silence.

  The cop’s brow lifts. “Then maybe she’s decided to do the right thing because you’ve done her wrong? I don’t care. The point is, there’s no statute of limitations for vehicular homicide.”

  I close my eyes and force in a shaky breath. It had to catch me sometime. Secrets and lies can’t be buried to fade away. They fester and come back as something darker and more dangerous than when you buried them in the first place.

  What I thought was my lowest, getting kicked out of the recording studio, or finding my girlfriend cheating on me, now feels like sunshine and rainbows compared to the cold truth of where I am now.

  In jail. And very possibly facing the end of my rock star life.

  Willa was right. I never knew rock bottom until now.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Four hours and a shitload of hurry-up-and-wait later, they bail me out. I get a lecture about not leaving the state or making any major financial transactions. Gavin posts my bail and Greer drives me to Tyler’s house.

  I should have gone into hiding. Camera crews are trampling Tyler’s mom’s lawn, their vans’ antennae extended skyward to make their report.

  I hustle toward the front door, but not before I catch snippets of shouted questions. “How can you live with yourself?” “How was jail?” and “Are you a murderer?”

  When Greer shuts the door against all that noise, I take one look at all the stricken faces of my bandmates—Jayce, Tyler, Gavin, Ravi—and I collapse to my knees right there in the entry hall on the hard tile floor.

  I didn’t shed a tear in jail, just gritted my teeth and bore through it. But now I feel my eyes welling, my chest squeezing closed so it’s a struggle just to draw air into my lungs.