Page 95 of The Five Year Lie

“You said it, not me.”

Her skepticism only drives home the fact that I don’t really know a damn thing about law enforcement. Or, as my father used to put it,You don’t know a damn thing about anything.He lived topoint out my ignorance about the world. Bruising my self-esteem was his favorite sport.

The studio is the only place I feel truly competent.

“You’re not going to give this up, are you?”

I look down at the bottle I’m making. “The shape is coming together.”

She cackles. “I meant the thing with Drew. You’re going to keep picking it until it bleeds.”

“Probably.” I’ve already dug into the rest of the warrants that Drew initially downloaded. Other judges’ names appeared with far less frequency than Kerry’s. And they were all googleable, too.

“Look, there are really only three reasons that people screw up their lives,” Larri says. Then she ticks them off on her fingers. “Money, drugs or sex. It’s always one of those three things.”

“Not always,” I grumble. “What about burning curiosity and deep-seated neediness? Those are my issues.”

“Nah,” Larri clucks. “You haven’t actually screwed up your life yet. You’re just making yourself a little bit obsessed. Besides, I like this new version of you—the one who shares things, and admits that she’s just as messy as the rest of us.”

I trot back to the glory hole without dignifying that with a response.

“Don’t give up, Ariel. You won’t feel satisfied until you get some answers. And that bottle is going to break if you thin those walls any further.”

“Just doing things the hard way. Like I always do.”

She laughs, but I’m dead serious.

Drew’s obsession is now my obsession. I want to know what he found.

And I want to know if lying to me turned out to be worth it for him.

Three hours later I’m walking to the grocery store, sweaty and tired, but in a good way. I always feel better after some time in the studio. The furnace just burns the frustration right out of me.

It didn’t help me find Arnold Kerry, though. It’s like he doesn’t exist.

Wait...

I stop walking so suddenly that a jogger curses and has to swerve around me.

“Sorry!” I’m already pulling out my phone and hitting Zain’s number, though.

“Good afternoon, this is Zain,” he says when he answers.

The formality is confusing. “Wait—are you in the office? On a Saturday?”

“Yes, and how can I help you?”

Hmm. “I just had a big idea about the elusive judge Arnold Kerry. What if you were a dirty cop, and you wanted to put warrants through the system whenever you felt like it, what do you need?”

Zain doesn’t answer me at all for a moment. But the background noise changes, and I hear a door click closed. “A judge. You need a really friendly judge.”

“Right. So what if you just created one? Wouldn’t that be handy?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Hear me out. What if we can’t find him becausehe didn’t exist? If the dirty copinventeda judge, he could get access to any video he wanted.”

“Whoa,” he says, sounding a little breathless. “You think Judge Kerry didn’texist? But what good is that? The warrants wouldn’t stand up in court. What would be the goal?”