Matters of Faith by Kristy Kiernan Page B

they would be tough, but would make sure things were okay with the people they arrested: the druggies would get to rehab, the abused would get safe, the children would get homes.
    But Ira always sided with the cops, while Marshall sometimes felt sorry for the bad guys. He often hoped they would get away when they ran. He hated it when the cops pulled up a turned-over kiddie pool to find the suspect curled under it or when the fleeing perp—a word he and Ira used with glee—tripped and went down painfully hard, cowering under a K-9.
    â€œThey shouldn’t run,” Ira would say solemnly. “They never get away, and it just makes it worse.”
    Marshall would agree, but secretly he felt their desperation, felt the leap of adrenaline in his chest and the irresistible need for escape, the urge to struggle. He always thought that if he were ever in trouble, cops-chasing-him trouble, he would run as if his life depended on it.
    But he hadn’t known they were coming for him.
    He opened the door before the squad cars came to a full stop, he said hello, as if welcoming them to his home. He confirmed his identity. He stood next to Ada as she did the same. And then when they told him he was being arrested for aggravated child abuse he’d felt none of the adrenaline he’d expected.
    He couldn’t have run then if prodded with a nightstick. He was too stunned. And as one officer read him his rights and another officer informed Ada that she was being arrested too, he simply stared at them. And he simply stared at first while Ada, with her damaged knees, struggled with the female officer, and then the front hall turned into a real scene from COPS when he began struggling, too, when he began screaming at them to leave her alone, to take their hands off of her. But he was dragged away, out the door, across the porch, and down the steps, eventually wrestled to his knees in the sand, brittle shells cutting into his legs.
    They put him in the back of a squad car, putting a hand on his head just like he’d seen them do a thousand times before on television. It was all the same visually, his hands bound behind him so he had to find some way to keep from sitting on them, or against them, the dirty back windows, the split in the seat, the black grille separating the front and back.
    But on television you can’t smell anything, or feel anything, and the odor of urine was an assault on his senses, the feel of the ripped seat against the back of his calf was too real for it to be a dream, and when he banged his forehead against the grille in frustration, it hurt more than he would have imagined.
    The cops dragged Ada down the steps and across the yard. He couldn’t help but admire the fact that she was still struggling, still making it difficult to restrain her, all hundred and two pounds of her against three cops.
    They should have run. That was all he could think now. Last night, they should have just gone. Anywhere.
    When they started the car and took off, they didn’t turn the sirens or lights on, but they drove fast, faster than he’d ever driven down their road, stirring up such a cloud of dust and sand that when he twisted around to look out the back window, the car Ada was in was completely obscured.
    He’d never been to jail, never even had a speeding ticket, though he’d received a parking ticket when he’d stayed at the beach without feeding the meter. He’d paid it without ever telling his parents. He was shaking with fear when they took him from the car, took his things, got him fingerprinted and photographed, shuffled him through doors and doors and doors, and finally got him in a large holding cell with about twenty other men, where he wasn’t answered when he asked about his proverbial phone call.
    Some of the men laughed, two men said something to him in Spanish, but he merely looked at them helplessly and they turned away from him in disgust. A thin, balding man