"Officer Hansen?" he asked as the man approached them. The sheriff's deputy was an older man, with silver hair and a hard, rounded beer gut above his Sam Browne belt, but he reached his hand out amiably to Ryan and shook it politely.
"Mr. Atwood? We spoke on the phone," he added, by way of explanation. Ryan nodded.
"Why don't you and your . . . " he trailed off with a significant look in Summer's direction.
"Friend. Sorry. This is my friend, Summer Roberts," Ryan said softly, and Summer was surprised that the man shook her hand as well, with a hard, callused grip.
"Miss," he said, inclining his head towards her. "Why don't you two come back with me, and I'll explain what's going to happen this morning."
Ryan started down the hall behind the officer without hesitation, but Summer hung back.
"Um, maybe I should just, you know, wait here?" she said, as the two stopped front of her and turned back.
She didn't know what to do in this situation. Would Ryan want her to hear whatever it was the cop was going to tell him? Would Cohen go with him, for support or whatever, or would he give him some privacy?
To her great relief, Ryan made the decision an easy one.
"It's okay, Summer. It's not like it's all going to be a big shock, anyway. You can come," he said. It might have been her imagination, but she thought she saw the deputy nod his approval before they resumed their walk down the hall.
The sheriff's squad room turned out to be small and fairly well-kept, with two rows of metal desks, each with one desk chair and one visitor's chair. Deputy Hansen led them about halfway down the first row and Ryan automatically offered her a seat, but before she could reply, the officer had returned with a second chair. She sat as far back from the desk as she could, letting Ryan take the lead.
Deputy Hansen pulled a thick, olive-green folder from the top of a pile on his desk.
"Son, when is the last time you saw your mother?" he asked
Ryan shrugged and looked down at the floor.
"It's, uh, been a little while. Last, um, fall. Last fall. I – we don't – I don't live with her anymore," he said.
The older man nodded and opened the folder in front of him so that Ryan could see it.
"I don't want this to be a shock to you, but your mother's been in some trouble in these parts before," he said, spreading his hands over the open file. From her seat off to the side, Summer could see a blurry black-and-white mugshot clipped to a large pile of carbon-copied papers in various shades of goldenrod, pink and green.
"She and her pimp . . . "
At that, Ryan's head shot up, and Summer could feel the heat of his glare, even without being the subject of it. The deputy held up his hands in apology and started again.
"She and her known associate, A.J. Vasquez, have been around for about six or eight months now. At first, she had a little trouble at the casinos,"
"Counting cards," Ryan muttered under his breath, and the deputy stopped for a moment, assessing the boy in front of him.
"Yeah. Card counting, slugs in the slot machines, small-time stuff, but it got her blackballed most places. After that, it was drugs, possession mostly, then . . . "
Ryan cut him off again.
"Is A.J. dealing again? Is Dawn mixed up with that?"
"So, you know Mr. Vasquez?" the deputy asked, giving Ryan another long look, which he held for a beat until Ryan replied in a dry, tight voice,
"You could say that. He, uh, is the reason I don't live with my mother any more."
He cleared his throat, and Summer saw him rub his right wrist reflexively as he dropped his head again.
"We believe that Vasquez is the dealer, yes, but your mother's got a couple of intent-to-distribute counts this time around."
Ryan shook his head, eyes still on the floor.
"She's not that together. If she had drugs on her, he put them there."
"That's entirely likely, Mr. Atwood, but that's not for me to determine," the deputy answered carefully.
"Is she . . . is she back on . . . " Ryan couldn't quite complete his question, but Hansen seemed to understand.
"She's a junkie, Mr. Atwood, pure and simple."
Ryan sort of shuddered at his pronouncement, and the deputy's face softened as he looked at the crestfallen boy.
"I would think not for too long, though," he added, gesturing to her file again. "It says here that she was a holding down a waitressing job until a few months ago. And her first few collars were for small amounts of cocaine and crystal meth. It's just the past few times that she's been . . . "
"That she's been shooting up," Ryan finished for him, dully.
The deputy grimaced, and reached out as if to pat Ryan's arm sympathetically, but he drew back, wrapping his arms tightly around his torso.
Summer shot the officer an apologetic look and leaned in towards Ryan, but he'd already shut down. She took a risk, reaching out to touch his thigh. She felt the muscles tense beneath her hand, but he didn't flinch away. Close enough.
She took a deep breath and caught Hansen's eye.
"So, Mrs. Atwood's in trouble," she said, and the deputy nodded. "What, um, specific trouble, this time? And what can we do to, like, fix it?" she asked.
She was a child of Newport. All problems had solutions, if you had enough money to buy them. Almost all problems, anyway.
The deputy smiled at her gratefully, and turned in his chair to address her.
"In addition to intent and possession, Ms. Atwood has been charged with solicitation, public nudity, and drunk-and-disorderly, as well as assaulting a police officer," he said in a detached, professional voice. Beside her, she felt Ryan flinch again.
"What happened, exactly?" she asked. She felt terrible, asking these questions, hearing this stuff, but Ryan had come here to help his mother, and she had come here to help Ryan. She didn't know what else to do.
The deputy rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and glanced briefly at the ceiling.
"She was caught in an alley behind the Golden Phoenix Casino with a couple of johns. When the arresting officers tried to, uh, break up the party, Ms. Atwood became rather belligerent, and she chased one of the patrol cops down Lake St. with a piece of two-by-four and her purse. When they tried to subdue and search her, on the public street in front of the casino, she attempted to, uh . . . "
"Drop trou and conceal evidence." Ryan spoke up suddenly, without ever lifting his head.
To her amusement and horror, the officer appeared to be blushing.
"Well, sort of. Obviously, she's tried it before?"
Ryan answered in the same toneless voice.
"Beat cops can't do a cavity search. They'll usually take you to a hospital instead of a jail cell if the evidence is, um, well-concealed."
Summer wasn't sure what she had been thinking, but the mental picture that put into her head was just too much. She wanted to die, and she couldn't imagine how Ryan was feeling. She hadn't been the Vice-Chair of the Social Committee at Harbor for nothing, though. Awkward small talk was her specialty.
"Ooookay. So now that we've all got an idea of what happened, what can we do to, you know, make it go away? Do we need a lawyer? A doctor to testify she's a little off her game right now, what? How do we get her out of here?" she asked.
Well, at least it got Ryan to lift his head. Both he and Hansen were staring at her with blank-faced shock.
"Summer, didn't you just hear what she did?" he asked, astonished. She shrugged.
"Whatevs. It's Reno. That's like, the white trash Las Vegas. I'm sure it's not the first time someone's flashed a little something-something on Main Steet."
The deputy looked like he didn't know whether to be angry or amused by her.
" 'The white-trash Las Vegas.' I'll have to remember to recommend that to our board of supervisors at the next town meeting. I don't know why we haven't used that slogan before."
Ryan's head swiveled back and forth between the two of them.
"She, uh, totally didn't mean that, man," he started, but Hansen held up his hand.
"It's fine, really. It's fine. Not the most diplomatic answer ever, but not essentially untrue. Look, ordinarily these cases don't go very well. But Ms. Atwood is a mother; she's raised a good kid, obviously, whatever her current issues. There might be something we can do."
"Look, just tell me if I can bail her out, and we'll get out of here," Ryan said.
Now, it was Summer's turn to gape.
"Ryan! Aren't you listening? At least let the guy tell you what he can do. And don't you think it's time to call Sandy and get him involved?" she demanded.
Ryan's face reddened as the deputy watched their back-and-forth carefully.
"Sandy?" the deputy asked. "Is that a . . . "
"Friend of the family . . . " Ryan said evenly, then turned to shoot Summer what Seth called the "Glower of Doom."
"Summer, I already know what he's going to tell me," he said, nodding at the deputy.
"No offense, sir," he added, then turned back to Summer with a shrug.
"Look, Dawn's a good candidate for a rehabilitation program, she's got a family and a work history. Except, there won't be a bed anywhere, and by the time her hearing comes up she'll be too strung out to remember, or care. And when they finally do find her a bed, she'll be in too much trouble to be eligible anymore, or too sick, or too poor. It's always the same thing," he finished, fiercely.
Behind his head, she saw the deputy nod wryly.
"You really have been through this before, haven't you?"
Ryan sighed, and ran a hand through his short hair, making it stand up in uneven spikes across his head.
"Yes, sir."
Summer sighed in frustration.
"Isn't there, like, another way? Isn't she totally eligible for a free lawyer? Can't he convince a judge to order her to a rehab place?" she asked.
Ryan and the deputy both shook their heads, almost simultaneously, but Hansen answered.
"She's eligible for a public defender, and they do their best, but a judge can't order a bed that's not there. Now, if she could afford a private place, he'd give her a waiver, but there aren't enough county beds to go around."
"Well, duh. Why didn't you say so? So as long as she has a private rehab place, the judge will let her do that instead of jail?"
Hansen smiled at her sadly.
"Most likely, especially if her counsel can whittle down those intent-to-distribute charges. But those private facilities aren't obligated to take charity cases, Miss."
Summer wanted to scream.
"What if it's not charity? What if someone could pay?" she demanded, but Ryan was hissing at her fiercely under his breath.
"Absolutely not. No. I'm not getting the Cohens involved. This is not their problem, Summer. Do you understand me?"
Summer dismissed his furious whisper with a wave of her hand, and turned back to the deputy.
"So, like, if we can pay, how do we find one of these places? Does the court have some sort of a list? Do we need to track down Mrs. Atwood's lawyer and ask him. What's the deal?"
Ryan was still talking in a low voice behind her, but she was paying him no attention. Sometimes, boys were very stupid and thought – well, not even with their dicks -- but with their pride.
The Cohens would never let Ryan turn down this offer, and she wouldn't either. If she couldn't tell the Cohens, she'd somehow have to become the Cohens. After all, it wasn't like her father was likely to bat an eye at yet another "spa retreat" on the credit card, not with the step-monster's stellar record.
The deputy was explaining the situation to her with open amusement as Ryan wound himself up tighter and tighter behind her, but she didn't care. Sometimes, money could take care of things, and Ryan needed to learn that lesson without feeling like a charity case. There were only so many Manolo size sixes any one girl could own.
There was a deep rumbling somewhere in the bowels of the building, and buzz and a clank announced the opening of a cell door somewhere just beyond their sight line.
The deputy looked up, startled.
"Oh, it's after ten already," he said. "That's the prisoner transport now. They'll all be taken over to the courthouse on High Street. I'll give you directions. Her public defender's liable to be Pat Rafferty; he's the P.D. who usually draws the indigent cases on weekends. Tell him that Jim Hansen asked you to see if you could set up a diversionary sentence. You can explain it all to him, and he'll take you through it," he added.
Sumer nodded, grabbing a pen from the desk to write down all of the information. She noticed, finally, that Ryan had not only gone silent, but was completely still again. She looked over at him, then to where he was staring off above her head.
There was a ragged line of prisoners chained to one another, already wearing bright-orange jumpsuits. They were mostly men, Hispanic and black, but there were a few white guys and two women. One of the women was young, practically the same age as Summer and Ryan, a Latina with long, dark hair pulled into a braid. The other had to be Dawn.
"Mom?" She heard Ryan say softly, then louder, "Ma?"
The woman turned towards the sound, and Summer nearly took a step back, shocked. Ryan rose to his feet, but Hansen put a restraining hand on his arm.
"Not now, son. You're going to have to wait until you get to the courthouse."
"Ry? Is that you, baby? Ryan?"
The older woman was calling his name; it had to be Dawn. Ryan licked his lips as if he were going to answer, but nothing more came out. Another deputy signaled to someone far down one of the hidden hallways, and suddenly, the coffle of prisoners started to move.
"Ryan! Baby, I'm so sorry. Thank you for coming," she called as they were led away.
Summer had only seen Dawn once, at the Vegas Night where she had first called Cohen "Stanley." She barely remembered her, except for her rather spectacular, drunken fall, but she remembered a blowsy woman with Ryan's coloring, only a few years older than Kirsten.
This woman, she would never have picked put in a crowd. For one thing, she looked about sixty years old, with hair bleached white, teased and ratted so that an inch or so of dark roots showed. She was missing her top, front teeth, and her skin was pale and faintly jaundiced. Her thick, cheap make-up had smeared over the course of the night, which gave her face an oddly undefined look, but couldn't conceal the fading bruises at the corner of her mouth and under her left eye.
She was thin, and not in the Newport way. She sagged, worn out, as if someone had come along and sucked out, not just fat, but all of her muscles and connective tissue, leaving behind the shell of a woman, merely her skin and bones. She disappeared through a set of swinging doors, still calling Ryan's name.
Summer hadn't thought that it was possible for Ryan to shut down any further, but she was wrong. In the seconds it took for the door to close behind his mother, Ryan had become someone she had never seen before. She couldn't explain what it was, but in an instant, both Seth's earnest, slightly nerdy, Newport foster brother and the sad, scared boy of a moment before had disappeared.
He hadn't moved a muscle, but somehow, his whole posture had changed. He had retreated completely into himself, become someone whom Summer, under other circumstances, would have crossed the street to avoid. He shook Hansen's hand respectfully, and thanked him for his trouble, but Summer could see that Ryan Atwood had left the building several minutes before.