The detective didn't know what to do with this kid who wouldn't talk to him. He hadn't demanded a lawyer, but insisted he talk to his guardian. It was maddening. He just sat there and stared at the table – wouldn't even look at the detective. Finally, he gave up. "If you aren't going to give a statement, we're putting you on the next transfer to county jail. You've got half an hour."

The kid nodded, so he knew he heard, but he still didn't look up and still didn't say anything.

When Sandy and Kirsten arrived at the police station, they found Seth sitting on the steps, looking very dejected. He stood up when he saw his parents, heading straight to Kirsten for a hug. Sandy hadn't seen Seth voluntarily latch onto his mother in a very long time. Sandy watched him engulf Kirsten in the embrace, and was reminded that he wasn't a little boy anymore.

"What happened?" Kirsten said.

"I don't know." Seth's voice was high-pitched, but Sandy could see the worry leaving his face now that he wasn't alone. "I went to the bathroom and the next thing I knew, Ryan was being driven away in a cop car."

"You didn't see what happened?"

Seth shook his head. "Just the guy in the alley. I think he was dead."

Kirsten looked at Sandy in alarm.

"I'd better get inside and see if I can sort this out." Sandy put a reassuring hand on Seth's shoulder and kissed Kirsten's cheek and headed up the stairs.

Inside, the station was busy. The desk sergeant was doing paper work as Sandy walked over to him. "I'm here to see Ryan Atwood. I believe you have him in custody."

"He's not allowed visitors."

Sandy pulled out his card. "I'm his lawyer."

"Oh. Okay, Mr…" The sergeant paused to read the card. "…Cohen. Your client is in interrogation room three. Up these stairs, turn left, second door on the right."

"What's the charged?"

The sergeant flipped through some papers. "Manslaughter. Killed another guy in a bar fight."

Manslaughter? Sandy's stomach flipped when the gravity of the situation hit him. He had been hoping Seth had been reading the situation wrong and blowing it out of proportion. Not that Ryan being in custody wasn't serious, but manslaughter was much more severe than the assault or drunken disorderly he had expected to find when he got here.

He went up the stairs, following the sergeant's directions to the interrogation room. He paused to take a deep breath before he opened the door, trying to collect himself before facing Ryan. He had defended plenty of manslaughter cases in his career, but he'd never expected to be dealing with someone in his family. For Ryan's sake, he needed to try to push his fear for Ryan aside and think of him as a client. At the moment, Ryan would need him in lawyer mode; parental mode could be saved for when he got Ryan home. He opened the door and found Ryan sitting with his head down on the table. He didn't look up when he heard the door open.

"Ryan?"

At the sound of Sandy's voice, he picked his head up. Sandy's heart skipped a beat. He looked so forlorn, and scared.

Sandy tried to force a smile. "Hey, kid. What happened?"

Ryan shook his head. "I don't know."

As he sat opposite him, Sandy noticed his neck. "What happened to your neck?"

Ryan's hand went to his throat. "What's wrong with my neck?"

Sandy stood up and pulled Ryan over to the two-way mirror. "The bruises go all around your neck, Ryan. Where'd you get them?"

Ryan was staring at them. "It must have been when Jake was choking me."

"Who's Jake?"

"The guy that died." His voice was practically a whisper, as if he didn't want to actually say the words out loud.

"Did you know him?"

Ryan shook his head.

"What happened after he choked you?"

"I kicked him away."

"And then?"

"And then the police came."

Sandy waited to see if he would say anything else, but he seemed to be done talking for now. He seemed better with the fine details than the overall picture. "Have the police taken pictures of your neck?"

"You mean my mug shot?"

Sandy sighed. "No, not your mug shot. Like evidence."

Ryan shook his head.

"OK, I'm going to find the detective and see why all the evidence wasn't taken. Then we'll talk to him and try to tell him everything that happened. All right?"

Ryan nodded.

"All right. Sit tight, and I'll be back in a few minutes."

Sandy left the room, ready to give the detective a piece of his mind. Ryan had been choked hard enough to leave nasty bruises, and he was the one being charged with manslaughter?

Ryan looked up when the door opened again, expecting Sandy to return with the detective. Instead, it was Officer Fontaine. "Stand up and put your hands behind your back," he said.

Ryan did as he was told. As the officer was putting on the handcuffs, Ryan said, "But I was supposed to be waiting for the detective to come back."

Officer Fontaine knew that Atwood's lawyer had shown up, but his name was still on the midnight transfer sheet, and no one had specifically told him otherwise, so he played dumb. "Detective told me that you were to be transferred if you hadn't made a statement. Have you made a statement?"

"No, but…"

The officer wrenched Ryan's arms a little tighter. "No. So you're being transferred to County."

Sandy was surprised to find Ryan gone when he got back to the room with the detective. The detective called Officer Fontaine over. "Where's Atwood?"

"I transferred him to County, like you said."

"His lawyer's here. He wasn't supposed to be transferred."

"Oh. No one told me."

Sandy was livid. "Get him back then."

"We can't, now that he's in transit." The detective seemed genuinely sorry. "County has jurisdiction over him now."

Sandy ran his hand through his hair. "Can I see him over there?"

Detective shook his head. "Not until morning. They don't allow visits at night."

"So what about the evidence that was missed?"

The detective wasn't going to apologize for that. "I barely saw the kid's face when I talked to him. There's no way I could see his neck. We'll just have to document it tomorrow at the arraignment."

"What about him?" Sandy indicated Officer Fontaine. "Shouldn't he have noticed?"

Fontaine agreed with the detective. "He kept his head down a lot. I couldn't see his neck either."

Sandy pulled out Ryan's file they had given him, and opened it to the mug shot. They all looked at it, and the bruises weren't visible yet. "See," Fontaine said. "The bruises hadn't shown up yet. I couldn't have seen them."

"Look, Mr Cohen," the detective said, "I'm sorry he got transferred prematurely, but you'll have plenty of time to talk to him tomorrow before his arraignment. It's not that big of a deal."

"Easy for you to say. I'll expect a copy of the ME's report on the other guy as soon as you get it. And believe me, if it's delayed in any way, shape, or form, you'll be the one explaining to the judge how the police were withholding evidence and denying me access to my client." Sandy stormed away to see if Kirsten and Seth had gone home yet.

Ryan was in the back of the police van, hands cuffed behind his back. He was giving up hope that this was some sort of terrible nightmare; it was actually happening. Again. He didn't know why he thought that once Sandy showed up, things would be okay. It was a foolish thought and he should have known better. For the past two years, he had been fooling himself that he could rise above the Atwood luck.

He leaned his head back against the side of the van. He wondered if Sandy knew where he was. He thought Sandy would have told him if he had known Ryan was going to be transferred. It seemed like all night he was being snatched from the Cohens without them knowing, and Ryan didn't like the feeling of being all alone when no one knew where he was.

He opened his eyes slightly, to study the other inmates in the van with him, hopefully without them noticing. Tough Guy from earlier was there; a middle-aged guy who Ryan heard mention something about DUI; and a couple of young guys who Ryan would lay money on that they were there for drugs. Except young meant early twenties, which mean older than him. He realized he had been wrong earlier. Prison wasn't going to be like juvie at all. At juvie, everyone was his age and he could blend in. Here, he was going to be young, and stick out. There was nothing he hated more than sticking out.

The van bumped to a stop and he realized he must have drifted off briefly. He was achy, and sore, and tired. They weren't pleasant thoughts, but they were thoughts of the present. And they were better than thoughts of what was going to happen in the immediate future. He tried to continue to focus on right now, because if he thought too much about what was going to happen soon, he'd probably be sick. Achy neck, sore ribs, tired legs. He wished he didn't know what was coming. He was terrified the first time, but he'd give anything right now to be terrified of the unknown, rather than dreading the inevitable.

Sandy found Kirsten and Seth sitting together in the station lobby. He had thought they were going to go home, but Kirsten explained they didn't want to go without at least knowing what had happened. Sandy wished he could tell them. He explained how Ryan had been transferred to jail before he could get any real information out of him.

"Did he really kill that guy?" Seth was looking to his father to reassure him, to tell him that of course Ryan didn't do it. But Sandy couldn't. Sandy didn't know.

"They were fighting and he died. That's as much as I know right now." Sandy looked at his weary family, and wished they were all, all four of them, home in Newport in their respective beds, safe and sound. But they were in Long Beach, with a long drive ahead of them before three of them were home safe. The fourth wasn't getting a warm, comforting bed that night and that was enough for Sandy to know he wouldn't get a good night's sleep either.

As much as he didn't want Kirsten driving home alone, Sandy's priority was figuring out what happened that night, so he suggested Seth ride with him and tell him what he could about Ryan's night. The sooner he could piece it together, the sooner he could figure out how to save him.

Ryan walked into the initial Intake Room with the other detainees. He looked at the molded plastic chairs attached to the wall, the wooden desk at the front of the room, the line on the floor, even the man at the desk – they were all the same, everywhere. Different colors maybe, different sizes, doors in different spots, but it didn't matter. It was the end of being Ryan Atwood and the beginning of being a number. It sucked, he hated it, and he didn't want to be here. He wasn't supposed to be here.

When his name was called, he stood on the line and answered the rapid-fire questions that the guard asked as if he wasn't even listening for the answers. He probably wasn't. Ryan didn't hear half of what he was asked, but it didn't matter. This was just a formality – the first step in taking away his identity.

The guard who escorted him to the next stage of the process could rival Seth for babbling. He seemed to be trying to make Ryan feel better, trying to reassure him that the next few hours wouldn't really be that bad. Ryan just wanted him to shut up. It was the middle of the night and Ryan wanted to be in bed. His bed, preferably, but at this point, any bed would do. He was just tired. Too tired to listen to some guy go on about how it wasn't going to be that bad. Had this guy ever been through here? Did he know what it felt like? No.Just shut up, Ryan wanted to scream at him. But he couldn't. Because Ryan knew even the nicest of guards could turn in a second, and then this experience would go from terrible to horrible. So Ryan just tried to tune him out the best he could and hoped he'd shut up eventually.

When they reached the shower area, Ryan felt his heartbeat quicken and he concentrated on controlling his breathing. He removed his clothing and put it in the bag. He kept his eyes closed and tried not to think about what he was doing, as he raised his arms over his head, bent his ears forward, spread his fingers. He concentrated on keeping his breathing steady as he manipulated his genitals. He imagined he was at the doctor's office as he bent over and coughed. Except the doctor never made him pull his buttocks apart, and as he stood up he knew he was damn near close to losing it.

And then the water came on, and he couldn't imagine he was home having a shower, because the water in his shower was always hot, and this water wasn't hot. It wasn't even warm. He was generous to call it tepid and he started shivering as the guard told him to hurry up and soap up and rinse off. He had barely got the soap out of his eyes when the water turned off. His first instinct was to reach for a big, fluffy towel, but there would be no big, fluffy towels for him. It wasn't even time for any sort of towel; it was time for the delousing spray. Then the guard handed him a thin, small towel and ushered Ryan into a room to get dressed.

As Ryan pulled on the underwear, he shuddered to think of who had worn it before him. The elastic was decent so they wouldn't fall down, and he hated the fact that he knew that was important. He pulled on the undershirt, then slipped the jumpsuit on. It was a long-sleeved jumpsuit, which Ryan preferred. He liked being able to pull his hands up inside the sleeves when it was cold, and he always could because the person in charge of handing out jumpsuits never guessed the right size for him. He pulled on the socks (no holes, good) and the shoes that were too big. He must have looked bigger than he was.

Once he was dressed, the guard took him to the Medical Assessment room. The guard stayed in the room as the nurse first took his temperature and then his blood pressure. She asked him to remove his jumpsuit to his waist, and then took the stethoscope and pressed it against his chest through his undershirt. The pressure caused him to noticeably wince and take a quick breath in defense.

"Are you hurt?" The nurse walked over to the desk where his intake chart lay.

Ryan was tired and wanted to get this over with. "Just from the fight earlier."

"There's nothing here about injuries." She flipped to the second page of the chart. "Take off your shirt; let me see."

Ryan sighed as he pulled his shirt over his head. He noticed the nurse frown when she saw the bruises. "Why wasn't this documented?"

Ryan shrugged. "They probably didn't know about them." When the nurse raised her eyebrows at him, he said, "They never asked."

She looked at the guard. "Didn't you notice these earlier?"

"We saw them, but we're looking for permanent marks, identifiable marks. Bruises fade."

When the nurse started palpitating the bruises on his chest, it was all Ryan could do not to cry out. "I'm worried about your ribs. I think we should tape them."

"No. They're just bruised. I'm fine." He hated having his ribs taped, and he didn't want to deal with the hassle. He just wanted to get out of there and lie down.

"I'm noting on your chart that you refused the taping."

"Fine." Ryan didn't care.

"Do you have any other injuries we should know about?" She pulled out her penlight and shone it in his eyes.

"No. I'm just sore." Ryan was feeling petulant, and he was sure he was sounding petulant, but he was tired of questions, and processing, and people. He wanted out.

The nurse seemed satisfied, because she told him to put his clothes back on and started writing on his chart.

The guard led him out of the room, where he picked up his sheets, a blanket, and a pillow. He carried them through a series of corridors and locked doors, until they arrived at Ryan's cell. His new home. He was too tired to bother with the sheets. Once the guard locked the door behind him, Ryan lay down on the mattress, put his head on the pillow, and pulled the blanket over head.

TBC