Truth Be Told

5

Well, shit on my shoes and make me dance.

Keera stormed out of here awhile ago after giving me one wicked tongue lashing for lying to her, you, that old prosecutor, and the rest of the world. She kept fanning my face with that damn NGS report of yours popping up out of nowhere after the fact, getting all high and mighty in her lawyer way how it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt I’m the one Mr. Barebones squawked about like a scrub jay there in court even though nobody’s got my eyeprint or voiceprint or earmark on file and my fingerprints and body scan don’t match. Then she laced into me how I gotta knock off that Viv bullshit and tell the truth for a change, pull the stupid TP plugs out of my nose, clear the frog out of my throat once and for all, and record this testimony for real.

She said that report pissed you off so bad it was all she could do to talk you out of hanging me on the spot yourself—along with the poor guy tasked with giving me that worthless lie detector brain scan I passed the day I got here. Wasn’t his fault, you know.

Anyhow, sorry about putting everybody through the wringer like that, but I figured my choices were few and far between.

I know that’s a tough sell with you sitting pretty like you are and me admitting to lying like a rug up till now, but if you could get so much as a glimpse through my eyes of what I had to do to survive the Meltdown, you’d have a whole different . . .

6

Truth be told, I had no idea my scam was gonna last anywhere near this long. Can’t blame Keera for getting her bowels in an uproar over swallowing my lies hook, line, and sinker and standing up for me this morning like the dedicated PD she is.

Hell, maybe she just played her part too, you never know. Whichever way it was, she sure did a fine job with what I fed her, reaming those two lying potlickers’ asses testifying against me and objecting every time that old prosecutor even hinted about me not being Viv.

Little good it did me in the long run though—burning our gear, scuttling Viewfinder, and giving Yo-Yo away to cover my tracks. All that rigmarole for nothing since a couple FBI agents with too damn much time on their hands snooped out my trail upriver and down till they found one of my caches I couldn’t get to and matched my DNA and whatnot.

And so much for all the blood and sweat I put into acting like some innocent thing conned by a fugitive with a bounty on her head. Least I didn’t go through with chopping off my braid again like I thought about doing more than once.

But hindsight’s twenty-twenty like everybody knows, so I still say pretending to be somebody else was worth a shot what with all the confusion over who’s who and records and such. Not like I had a boatload of options after one of my river customers dropped a dime on me to those douchebag bounty hunters in the haven while I was finding a good home for Yo-Yo with a huddle of sorrowful kids in need of more protection than a dog could ever give ’em.

Well, my luck took one nasty nosedive on me back then and again now ’cause a day or two more and I might’ve made it out of this shitpit. Can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to walking scot-free and wearing something other than this fumigated jumpsuit that’s so old you can’t hardly tell it started off as khaki and you know it’s only being held together by the heartache of the ones wearing it before you—especially those sporting a noose on it like a collar for their last breath on this earth.

Course you’re the only one to say whether or not you would’ve taken the bait at the end of the day if that damn evidence hadn’t showed up.

Anyhow, after all that time being Viv, I’m gonna kinda miss her. I mean, I made up a fake husband, kids, brothers and sisters, a dead uncle, plus a whole slew of other bullshit, including how she went mostly deaf in her left ear from an infection as a baby instead of a 9-mil going off right up against it nearly four years ago.

The real Viv was a bit older than me when she worked at the diner a few months to get away from that peckerhead husband of hers till he went through rehab for the umpteenth time and they both went back to some dairy farm along the Coquille, I think.

Let me tell you, keeping all those lies straight was a royal pain in the ass. But that was a drop in the bucket compared to acting like some Goody Two-shoes minding her Ps and Qs and talking to Chaplain Eddy about salvation and forgiveness and all.

Sure hope I get the chance to sit down with that good man so I can make amends even though it can’t be the first time anybody’s ever tried bamboozling him here in this hellhole.

I gotta admit it does feel good now that my tongue’s loosening back up to its regular way of talking, if you know what I mean.

Which reminds me, go ahead and pardon my French even if you don’t pardon me. Get the clerk or whoever to cut out all my cussing after I’m done with this thing if you got a mind to ’cause it’s just something I do, no disrespect. Keeping it clean was the toughest part about being Viv, especially there in court with that old scrub jay ripping into me like there was no tomorrow and me having to stay tight-lipped all the while.

But don’t you worry about me dropping f-bombs ’cause I quit cold turkey more than nineteen years ago after me and Jordy . . .