CHAPTER 5
1
Tig Murphy was the officer that Clint told first—the truth about Evie, and about what she’d said: that everything seemed to depend on whether or not Clint could keep her alive, but she would plead her case no more than Jesus had when hauled in front of Pontius Pilate. Clint finished by saying, “I lied because I couldn’t bring myself to tell the truth. The truth is so big it stuck in my throat.”
“Uh-huh. You know I used to teach high school history, Doc?” Tig was, in fact, looking at him in a way that reminded Clint intensely of high school. It was a gaze that doubted your hall pass. It was a gaze that wanted to see if your pupils were dilated.
“Yes, I know that,” Clint said. He’d pulled the officer into the laundry room where they could talk in private.
“I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. Busting chops in a women’s prison wasn’t exactly a step up for me. But, you know, I’ve seen how you care about these gals. And I know that even though a lot of them have done bad stuff, most aren’t bad through and through. So, I want to help . . .” The officer grimaced and rubbed a hand through the receding hair at his temples. You could see the teacher he’d been, picture him pacing around, going on about the vast difference between the legend of the Hatfields and the McCoys and the historical facts of the feud, dragging his fingers harder and harder through his hair the more excited and enthusiastic he got about the subject.
“So help,” Clint said. If not one of the officers agreed to stay he would try to keep the prison locked down without them, and he would fail. Terry Coombs and the new guy had the remains of the police force. They could gather other men if necessary. Clint had seen the way Frank Geary had eyed the fences and the gates, looking for weak spots.
“You really believe this? You think she’s—magic?” Tig said the word magic the way Jared said the word seriously—as in, “You seriously want to see my homework?”
“I believe she’s got some command of this thing that’s happening, and more importantly, I believe that men outside this prison believe that.”
“You believe she’s magic.” Tig gave him the suspicious teacher look again: Kid, just how stoned are you?
“Actually, I do,” Clint said, and raised a hand to stop Tig from speaking, at least for the moment. “But even if I’m wrong, we need to hold this prison. It’s our obligation. We have to protect every one of our prisoners. I do not trust Terry Coombs in his cups, or Frank Geary, or anyone else, to just talk to Eve Black. You’ve heard her. Whether she’s just delusional or not, she’s a genius at pissing people off. She will go on doing that until someone loses his shit and kills her. Someone or all of them. Burning at the stake isn’t entirely out of the question.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Actually, I do. Blowtorch Brigades tell you anything?”
Tig leaned against one of the industrial washers. “All right.”
Clint could have hugged him. “Thank you.”
“Well, it’s my stupid job, y’know, but okay, you’re welcome. How long do you think we need to hold out?”
“Not long. A few days, at most. That’s what she says, anyway.” He realized that he was talking about Eve Black like an ancient Greek talking about an angry deity. It was outrageous, and yet it felt as true as anything.
2
“Wait-wait-wait,” Rand Quigley said after Clint had gone through everything a second time. “She’s going to end the world if we let the cops have her?”
That was almost exactly what Clint believed, but he preferred to finesse it a bit. “We just can’t let the local cops carry her off, Rand. That’s the bottom line.”
Rand’s pale brown eyes blinked behind the thick lenses of his square-framed glasses, and his black unibrow sat on the crosspiece like a burly caterpillar. “What about the CDC? I thought you were talking to the CDC?”
Tig handled this one head-on. “The CDC was bullshit. The doc made it up so we’d stay.”
This is where Rand puts one foot in front of the other, Clint thought, and the whole thing ends. But Rand only glanced at Clint and then back to Tig. “Never got through to them?”
“No,” Clint said.
“Never at all?”
“Well, I got an answering machine a couple of times.”
“Fuck,” Rand said. “That blows.”
“You said it, buddy,” Tig said. “Can we still count on you? If someone wants to start something?”
“Yeah,” Rand said, sounding offended. “Of course. They run the town, we run the prison. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Wettermore was next. The whole scenario amused him in a sour but genuine way.
“It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Warrior Girl the Meth-Head Slayer was magic. I wouldn’t be surprised if bunnies wearing pocket watches started hopping through the joint. What you’re telling me is no nuttier than the Aurora. It doesn’t change anything for me. I’m here for the duration.”
It was Scott Hughes, at nineteen the youngest of the bunch, who handed over his keys, his gun, his Taser, and the rest of his gear. If the CDC wasn’t coming to take Eve Black, he wasn’t staying. He wasn’t anybody’s white knight; he was just an ordinary Christian who’d been baptized at the Lutheran church right there in Dooling and hardly missed a Sunday. “I like all you guys. You’re not like Peters or some of the other dinks at this place. And I don’t care that Billy’s gay or that Rand’s half-retarded. Those guys’re okay.”
Clint and Tig had followed him past intake to the front door of the prison and out into the yard to try and change his mind.
“And Tig, you’ve always been cool. You seem fine, too, Dr. Norcross. But I’m not dying here.”
“Who said anything about dying?” Clint asked.
The teenager arrived at his pickup, which stood on enormous bigfoot tires. “Get real. Who do you know in this town who doesn’t have a gun? Who do you know in this town who doesn’t have two or three?”
It was true. Even in exurban Appalachia (and exurban might have been pushing it; they had a Foot Locker and a Shopwell in Dooling, but the nearest movie theater was in Eagle), just about everyone had a gun.
“And, I mean, I been to the sheriff’s station, Dr. Norcross. They got a rack of M4s. Other stuff, too. The vigilantes show up after raiding the armory, no offense, but you and Tig can take those Mossbergs we got in the gun locker and shove em up your asses.”
Tig was standing at Clint’s shoulder. “So you’re just going to split?”
“Yeah,” Hughes said. “I’m just going to split. Someone needs to open the gate for me.”
“Shit, Tig,” Clint said, which was the signal.
Tig sighed, apologized to Scott Hughes—“I feel terrible about this, man”—and zapped his colleague with his Taser.
This was a matter that they’d discussed. There were serious problems with letting Scott Hughes leave. They couldn’t allow someone telling the town folks what a short roster they had, or outlining the limitations of the prison’s armaments. Because Scott was right, the prison’s armory was not impressive: a dozen Mossberg 590 shotguns, birdshot to load them, and each officer’s personal sidearm, a .45-caliber pistol.
The two men stood over their colleague, writhing on the parking lot pavement. Clint was queasily reminded of the Burtells’ backyard, the Friday Night Fights, his foster sibling Jason, lying bare-chested on the patio cement at Clint’s filthy sneakers. Under Jason’s eye there had been a red quarter-shaped mark from Clint’s fist. Snot had leaked out of Jason’s nose, and from the ground, he had mumbled, “It’s okay, Clint.” The grownups all cheered and laughed from their lawn chairs, toasting with their cans of Falstaff. That time, Clint had won the milkshake. What had he won this time?
“Well, damn, now we done it,” said Tig. Three days ago, when they’d had to deal with Peters, Tig had looked like a man in the throes of an allergic reaction, about to pitch up a bellyful of spunky shellfish. Now he just looked like he had a touch of acid. He lowered himself to his knees, rolled Scott over, and zip-tied his wrists behind his back.
“How about we put him in B Wing, Doc?”
“Okay, I guess.” Clint hadn’t even considered where to put Scott, which did not exactly increase his confidence in his ability to deal with the developing situation. He squatted to grab Hughes’s armpits and help Tig hoist him to his feet so they could bring him inside.
“Gentlemen,” came a voice from just beyond the gate. It was a woman’s voice, full of grit, and exhaustion . . . and delight. “Can you hold that pose? I want to get a good picture.”
3
The two men looked up, their expressions the very essence of guilt; they could have been Mafia button men about to bury a body. Michaela was even more delighted when she checked her first photo. The camera she carried in her purse was only a bottom-of-the-line Nikon, but the image was sharp. Perfect.
“Ahoy, ye scruffy pirates!” Garth Flickinger cried. “What are ye about, pray tell?” He had insisted on stopping at the nearby scenic lookout to sample the Purple Lightning, and he was feeling chipper. Mickey also seemed to have caught her second wind. Or maybe by now it was her fourth or fifth.
“Oh, shit, Doc,” said Tig. “We are surely fucked.”
Clint didn’t reply. He stood, holding Scott Hughes and gaping at the newcomers standing in front of a battered Mercedes. It was as if a weird reverse landslide were going on inside his head, one where things came together instead of falling apart. Maybe this was how true inspiration came to a great scientist or philosopher. He hoped so. Clint dropped Scott and the disoriented officer gave a moan of dissatisfaction.
“One more!” Michaela called. She snapped. “And one more! Good! Great! Now exactly what are you boys doing?”
“God’s blood, it’s mutiny!” Garth cried, doing what might have been an imitation of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. “They’ve rendered the first mate unconscious, and soon will make him walk the plank! Arrr!”
“Shut up,” said Michaela. She grasped the gate—not electrified, fortunately for her—and shook it. “Does this have anything to do with the woman?”
“We are so fucked.” Tig said this as if he were impressed.
“Open the gate,” Clint said.
“What—?”
“Do it.”
Tig started toward the entry booth, pausing once to look doubtfully back over his shoulder at Clint, who nodded and motioned him on. Clint walked to the gate, ignoring the steady click of the young woman’s camera. Her eyes were red, which was to be expected after four days and three nights of wakefulness, but her companion’s were just as red. Clint suspected they might have been partaking of illegal stimulants. In the throes of his sudden inspiration, that was the least of his concerns.
“You’re Janice’s daughter,” he said. “The reporter.”
“That’s right, Michaela Coates. Michaela Morgan, to the great viewing public. And I believe you’re Dr. Clinton Norcross.”
“We’ve met?” Clint didn’t remember that.
“I interviewed you for the high school newspaper. Would have been eight or nine years ago.”
“Did you like me?” he asked. Christ, he was old; and getting older by the minute.
Michaela tipped a hand. “I thought it was a little weird that you liked working in a prison so much. In a prison with my mom. But never mind that, what about the woman? Is her name Eve Black? Does she really sleep and then wake up? Because that’s what I’m hearing.”
“Eve Black is the name she goes by,” Clint said, “and yes, she does indeed sleep and wake normally. Although not much else about her seems normal in the least.” He felt giddy, like a man walking a tightrope blindfolded. “Would you like to interview her?”
“Are you kidding?” For the moment, Michaela appeared not the slightest bit sleepy. She looked feverish with excitement.
The outer and inner gates began to trundle open. Garth hooked Michaela’s arm with his own and stepped into the dead space between them, but Clint held up his hand. “There are conditions.”
“Name them,” Michaela said briskly. “Although, given the pictures I have in my camera, you might not want to be too greedy.”
Clint asked, “Did you see any sheriff’s cruisers nearby?”
Garth and Michaela shook their heads.
No cruisers yet. No one watching the access road leading in from West Lavin. That was a trick Geary had missed, at least so far, and Clint wasn’t terribly surprised. With Terry Coombs seeking refuge in a flask, his Number Two, Mr. Animal Control Guy, had to be playing catch-up. But Clint didn’t think he’d miss it for long. There might be someone on the way already. In fact, and on second thought, he would have to assume that was the case, which meant going for pizza and eating with Jared was out. Geary might not care about anyone entering the prison, but he surely wouldn’t want anyone leaving. The problematic head-doctor, for one. Evie Black, possibly smuggled out in the back of a prison van, for another.
“Your conditions?” Michaela asked.
“It has to be quick,” Clint said. “And if you hear what I think you’re going to hear, and see what I think you’re going to see, you have to help me.”
“Help with what?” asked Tig, rejoining them.
“Reinforcements,” Clint said. “Weapons.” He paused. “And my son. I want my son.”
4
There was no pie at the Olympia. The woman who made the pies was sleeping in a cocoon in the break room. Gus Vereen, taking the deputies’ orders, said he was shorthanded all around. “Found some ice cream cake down at the bottom of the freezer, but I can’t vouch for it. Been there since Hector was a pup.”
“I’ll try it,” said Don, although it was a piss-poor substitute—a diner without pie was a disgrace—but with Frank Geary on the other side of the table, he was on his best behavior.
Also present at the rear table of the diner were deputies Barrows, Rangle, Eric Blass, plus an old legal beagle named Silver. They’d just finished eating a lousy lunch. Don had the Haluski Special and it had arrived swimming in a pool of yellow grease. He’d eaten it anyway, partly out of spite, and Magic 8 Ball said that a case of the dribbling shits was in his future. The others had eaten sandwiches and burgers; none of them had finished more than half. They had also passed on dessert, which was probably smart of them. Frank had spent half an hour giving them all the rundown on what he knew about the situation at the prison.
“You think Norcross is boning her?” Don blurted at this point.
Frank turned a low-lidded gaze on him. “That’s unlikely and irrelevant.”
Don received the message and hadn’t said another word until Gus Vereen came around to see if they needed anything else.
Once Gus left, Judge Silver spoke up. “What do you see as our options, Frank? What’s Terry’s take on this?” His Honor’s skin tone was worryingly gray. His speech was wet, as if he were talking around a knot of chewing tobacco.
“Our options are limited. We could wait Norcross out, but who knows how long that could mean. Prison’s probably got quite a stock of food.”
“He’s right,” Don said. “There’s no prime rib or nothing, but they got enough dry goods to last to the end of days.”
“The longer we wait,” Frank went on, “the more talk gets around. Lot of guys around here might start thinking about taking things into their own hands.” He waited for someone to say, Isn’t that what you’re doing? But no one did.
“If we don’t wait?” the judge asked.
“Norcross has got a son, and of course you know his wife.”
“Good cop,” the judge said. “Careful, thorough. The lady goes by the book.”
Eric, busted twice by Sheriff Norcross for speeding, made a sour face.
“And we wish we had her,” Geary said. Don didn’t believe that for a second. From the first, when Geary had jammed his hand under Don’s armpit, treated him like a puppet, he’d seen that he wasn’t the kind of fellow who accepted second position. “But she’s in the wind, and so is the son. If they were around, I’d say we should try and get them to see if they couldn’t convince Norcross to break loose from whatever thing he has going with the Black woman.”
Judge Silver clucked his tongue and stared into his coffee cup. He hadn’t touched it. His tie had bright yellow lemons on it and the contrast with his skin underlined the sickly look of the man. A moth fluttered around his head. The judge waved it away and it flew off to alight on one of the light-globes that hung from the diner’s ceiling.
“So . . .” Judge Silver said.
“Yeah,” Don said. “So what do we do?”
Frank Geary shook his head and swept a few crumbs from the table, catching them in his palm. “We put together a responsible group. Fifteen, twenty reliable men. We tool up. There should be enough body armor to go around at the station. God knows what else. We haven’t exactly had time to take inventory.”
“Do you really think—” Reed Barrows began doubtfully, but Frank overrode him.
“There’s half a dozen assault rifles, anyway. They should go to the guys who can handle them. Everyone else carries either Winchesters or their sidearms or both. Don here gives us the layout of the prison, any particulars that might help. Then, we make a show of force, and give Norcross one more chance to send her out. I think he will.”
The judge asked the obvious. “If he doesn’t?”
“I don’t think he could stop us.”
“This seems rather extreme, even under the extraordinary circumstances,” the judge said. “What about Terry?”
“Terry is . . .” Frank brushed his crumbs onto the diner floor.
“He’s drunk, Judge,” Reed Barrows said.
Which kept Frank from having to say it. What he said (pulling a glum face) was, “He’s doing the best he can.”
“Drunk is drunk,” Reed said. Vern Rangle opined that this was a true statement.
“Then . . .” The judge touched Frank’s big shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “Guess it’s you, Frank.”
Gus Vereen came over with Don’s slice of ice cream cake. The diner owner’s expression was dubious. The slice was bearded in frost. “You sure, Don?”
“What the fuck,” Don said. If the pie ladies of the world were gone, and he still wanted sweet stuff, he was going to have to eat more adventurously.
“Uh, Frank?” Vern Rangle said.
“What?” It sounded more like What now?
“I was just thinking maybe we ought to have a cruiser watching the prison. In case, you know, the doc decides to take her out and hide her somewhere.”
Frank stared at him, then slapped the side of his own head—a good hard whack that made them all jump. “Jesus. You’re right. I should have done that right away.”
“I’ll go,” Don said, forgetting the ice cream cake. He got up fast, his thighs striking the underside of the table and making the cups and plates rattle. His eyes were bright. “Me and Eric. Anyone tries to get in or out, we’ll stop them.”
Frank didn’t much care for Don, and Blass was just a kid, but maybe it would be okay. Hell, it was just a precaution. He didn’t really think Norcross would try to take the woman out. To him, she probably seemed safer where she was, behind the prison walls.
“Okay,” he said. “But if anyone does come out, just stop them. No drawn guns, you hear? No OK Corral stuff. If they refuse to stop, just follow them. And radio me ASAP.”
“Not Terry?” the judge asked.
“No. Me. Park at the foot of the prison access road, where it meets West Lavin. Got it?”
“Got it!” Don snapped. He was on the case. “Come on, partner. Let’s go.”
As they left, the judge mumbled, “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.”
“What, Judge?” Vern Rangle asked.
Silver shook his head. He looked weary. “Never mind. Gentlemen, I must say that on the whole, I don’t care much for the way this is going. I wonder . . .”
“What, Oscar?” Frank asked. “What do you wonder?”
But the judge didn’t reply.
5
“How’d you know?” It was Angel. “About the baby?”
The question drew Evie away from the Olympia Diner where, from the eyes of the moth perched on the light-globe, she’d been observing the men making their plans. And just to add to the fun, something else was going on, much closer. Clint had visitors. Soon she would have visitors, as well.
Evie sat up and inhaled Dooling Correctional. The stench of industrial cleaning products went horribly deep; she expected to die soon, and felt sad about that, but she had died before. It was never nice, but it had never been the end . . . although this time might be different.
On the bright side, she told herself, I won’t have to smell this place anymore, this mixture of Lysol and despair.
She’d thought Troy stank: the corpse piles, the fires, the fish guts thoughtfully left out for the gods—gee fucking thanks, guys, just what we want—and the stupid Achaeans stomping around on the beach, refusing to wash, letting the blood cook to black in the sun and rust the joints of their armor. That was nothing compared to the inescapable reek of the modern world. She had been young and too easily impressed then, in the days before Lysol and bleach.
Meanwhile, Angel had asked a perfectly fair question, and she sounded almost sane. For the time being, at least.
“I know about your baby because I read minds. Not always. Most of the time. I’m better at reading men’s minds—they are simpler—but I’m pretty good with women, too.”
“Then you know . . . I dint want to.”
“Yes, I know that. And I was too hard on you. Before. I’m sorry. There was a lot going on.”
Angel ignored the apology. She was focused on reciting something she’d clearly memorized, a little comfort she’d created to provide light when the dark was at its deepest and there was no one awake with whom to speak and take her mind off herself and the things she had done. “I had to. Every man I killed did hurt me, or woulda hurt me if I give him a chance. I dint want to put that baby girl down, but I couldn’t let that be her life.”
The sigh that Evie produced in response was thick with real tears. Angel was telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth of an existence in a time and a place where things had just not worked out. Of course, chances were slim that they would have worked out for Angel, anyway; the woman was bad and mad. Even so, she was right: they had hurt her, and they probably would’ve hurt that baby girl, given time. Those men and all the men like them. The earth hated them, but it loved the fertilizer of their murderous bodies.
“Why you cryin, Evie?”
“Because I feel it all, and it’s painful. Now hush. If I may once more quote Henry IV, the game is afoot. I have things to do.”
“What things?”
As if in answer, the door at the far end of A Wing clashed open and footfalls approached. It was Dr. Norcross, Officers Murphy and Quigley, and two strangers.
“Where’s they passes?” Angel shouted. “Those two don’t have no passes to be back here!”
“Hush, I said,” Evie told her. “Or I’ll make you hush. We were having a moment, Angel, don’t spoil it.”
Clint stopped in front of Evie’s cell. The woman pushed up beside him. There were purple pouches beneath her eyes, but the eyes themselves were bright and aware.
Evie said, “Hello, Michaela Coates, also known as Michaela Morgan. I’m Eve Black.” She put her hand through the bars. Tig and Rand moved forward instinctively, but Clint extended his arms to hold them in place.
Michaela clasped the offered hand with no hesitation. “You’ve seen me on the news, I take it.”
Evie smiled warmly. “I’m afraid I’m not big on the news. Too depressing.”
“Then how do you know—”
“Shall I call you Mickey, as your friend Dr. Flickinger does?”
Garth jumped.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to see your mother,” Evie went on. “She was a good warden.”
“Like fuck,” Angel muttered, and when Evie cleared her throat forbiddingly: “Okay, I’m hushin, I’m hushin.”
“How do you know—” Michaela began.
“That your mother was Warden Coates? That you took the name Morgan because some silly cockhound of a journalism professor told you that television audiences tend to remember alliterative names? Oh, Mickey, you never should have slept with him, but I think you know that now. At least the miscarriage saved you having to make a difficult choice.” Evie clucked and shook her head, making her dark hair fly.
Except for her red-rimmed eyes, Michaela was dead pale. When Garth put an arm around her shoulders, she clutched at his hand like a drowning woman clutching at a life preserver.
“How do you know that?” Michaela whispered. “Who are you?”
“I am woman, hear me roar,” Evie said, and once more laughed: a merry sound, like shaken bells. She turned her attention to Garth. “As for you, Dr. Flickinger, a word of friendly advice. You need to get off the dope, and very soon. You’ve had one warning from your cardiologist already. There won’t be another. Keep on smoking those crystals, and your cataclysmic heart attack will come in . . .” She closed her eyes like a carnival psychic, then popped them open. “In about eight months. Nine, maybe. Most likely while watching porn with your pants around your ankles and a squeeze-bottle of Lubriderm near at hand. Still shy of your fifty-third birthday.”
“Worse ways,” Garth said, but his voice was faint.
“Of course, that’s if you’re lucky. If you hang around Michaela and Clint here, and try to defend poor defenseless me and the rest of the women here, you’re likely to die a lot sooner.”
“You have the most symmetrical face I have ever seen.” Garth paused and cleared his throat. “Can you stop saying scary things now?”
Apparently Evie couldn’t. “It’s a shame that your daughter is hydrocephalic and must live her life in an institution, but that is no excuse for the damage you are inflicting on a formerly fine body and mind.”
The officers were goggling at her. Clint had hoped for something that would prove Evie’s otherworldliness, but this was beyond his wildest expectations. As if he had spoken this aloud, Evie looked at him . . . and winked.
“How do you know about Cathy?” Garth asked. “How can you?”
Looking at Michaela, Evie said, “I have agents among the creatures of the world. They tell me everything. They help me. It’s like in Cinderella, but different. For one thing, I like them better as rats than as coachmen.”
“Evie . . . Ms. Black . . . are you responsible for the sleeping women? And if so, is it possible you can wake them up again?”
“Clint, are you sure this is smart?” Rand asked. “Letting this lady have a jailhouse interview? I don’t think Warden Coates would—”
Jeanette Sorley chose this moment to stumble down the hall, holding up her brown top so it made a makeshift pouch. “Who wants peas?” she cried. “Who wants fresh peas?”
Evie, meanwhile, seemed to have lost the thread. Her hands were gripping the prison bars hard enough to turn her knuckles white.
“Evie?” asked Clint. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. And while I appreciate your need for haste, Clint, I’m multi-tasking this afternoon. You need to wait while I take care of something.” Then, to herself rather than the half a dozen people outside her cell: “I’m sorry to do this, but he wouldn’t have had long, anyway.” A pause. “And he misses his cat.”
6
Judge Silver had shuffled most of the way to the Olympia’s parking lot before Frank caught up with him. Gems of drizzle shone on the slumped shoulders of the old fellow’s topcoat.
Silver turned at his approach—nothing wrong with his ears, it seemed—and gave him a sweet smile. “I want to thank you again for Cocoa,” he said.
“That’s all right,” he said. “Just doing my job.”
“Yes, but you did it with real compassion. That made it easier for me.”
“I’m glad. Judge, it seemed to me that you had an idea in there. Would you like to share it with me?”
Judge Silver considered. “May I speak frankly?”
The other man smiled. “Since my name is Frank, I’d expect nothing less.”
Silver did not smile back. “All right. You’re a fine man, and I’m glad you’ve stepped up to the plate since Deputy Coombs is . . . shall we say hors de combat . . . and it’s clear none of the other officers want the responsibility, but you have no background in law enforcement, and this is a delicate situation. Extremely delicate. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Frank said. “On all points.”
“I’m worried about a blow-up. A posse that gets out of control and turns into a mob. I’ve seen that happen, back during one of the uglier coal strikes in the seventies, and it was not a pretty thing. Buildings were burned, there was a dynamite explosion, men were killed.”
“You have an alternative?”
“I might. I—get away, dammit!” The judge waved one arthritic hand at the moth fluttering around his head. It flew away and landed on a car aerial, slowly flexing its wings in the fine drizzle. “Those things are everywhere lately.”
“Uh-huh. Now what were you saying?”
“There’s a man named Harry Rhinegold in Coughlin. Ex-FBI, retired there two years ago. Fine man, fine record, several Bureau commendations—I’ve seen them on the wall in his study. I’m thinking I might talk to him, and see if he’ll sign on.”
“As what? A deputy?”
“As an advisor,” the judge said, and took a breath that rattled in his throat. “And, possibly, as a negotiator.”
“A hostage negotiator, you mean.”
“Yes.”
Frank’s first impulse, childish but strong, was to tell the judge no way, he was in charge. Except, technically speaking, he wasn’t. Terry Coombs was, and it was always possible Terry would show up, hungover but sober, and want to take the reins. Also, could he, Frank, stop the judge, short of physical restraint? He could not. Although Silver was too much of a gentleman to say it (unless he absolutely had to, of course), he was an officer of the court, and as such far outranked a self-appointed lawman whose specialties were catching stray dogs and doing ads for Adopt-A-Pet on the Public Access channel. There was one more consideration, and it was the most important of all: hostage negotiation was actually not a bad idea. Dooling Correctional was like a fortified castle. Did it matter who pried the woman out, as long as the job got done? As long as she could be questioned? Coerced, if necessary, should they conclude that she actually might be able to stop the Aurora?
Meanwhile, the judge was looking at him, shaggy eyebrows raised.
“Do it,” Frank said. “I’ll tell Terry. If this Rhinegold agrees, we can have a skull session either here or at the station tonight.”
“So you won’t . . .” The judge cleared his throat. “You won’t take any immediate steps?”
“For this afternoon and tonight, I’ll just keep a car posted near the prison.” Frank paused. “Beyond that, I can’t promise, and even that depends on Norcross not trying anything funny.”
“I hardly think—”
“But I do.” Frank gravely tapped a finger against the hollow of his temple, as if to indicate thought processes hard at work. “Position I’m in right now, I have to. He thinks he’s smart, and guys like that can be a problem. To others, and to themselves. Looking at it that way, your trip to Coughlin is a mission of mercy. So drive carefully, Judge.”
“At my age, I always do,” Judge Silver said. His entry into the Land Rover was slow and painful to watch. Frank was on the verge of going to help him when Silver finally made it behind the wheel and slammed the door. The engine roared to life, Silver gunning it thoughtlessly, and then the lights came on, cutting cones through the drizzle.
Ex-FBI, and in Coughlin, Frank marveled. Wonders never ceased. Maybe he could call the Bureau and get an emergency federal order enjoining Norcross to let the woman go. Unlikely, with the government in an uproar, but not out of the question. If Norcross defied them then, no one could blame them for forcing the issue.
He went back inside to give the remaining deputies their orders. He’d already decided to send Barrows and Rangle to relieve Peters and that Blass kid. He and Pete Ordway could start making a list of guys, responsible ones, who might form a posse, should a posse be needed. No need to go back to the station, where Terry might show up; they could do it right here at the diner.
7
Judge Oscar Silver rarely drove anymore, and when he did, he no longer exceeded forty miles an hour, no matter how many cars stacked up behind him. If they began to honk and tailgate, he found a place to pull over and let them go by, then resumed his stately pace. He was aware that both his reflexes and his vision had declined. In addition, he had suffered three heart attacks, and knew that the bypass operation performed on his failing pump at St. Theresa’s two years ago would only hold the final infarction at bay for so long. He was at peace with that, but he had no wish to die behind the wheel, where a final swerve might take one or more innocent people with him. At only forty (less, within the city limits), he thought he would have a fair chance to apply braking and shift into park before the lights went out for good.
Today was different, however. Once he was beyond Ball’s Ferry and on the Old Coughlin Road, he increased his speed until the needle hovered at sixty-five, territory it hadn’t explored in five years or more. He had reached Rhinegold on his cell, and Rhinegold was willing to talk (although the judge, a crafty old soul, hadn’t wanted to discuss the subject of their confab on the phone—probably a needless precaution, but discretion had ever been his byword), and that was good news. The bad news: Silver suddenly found that he did not trust Frank Geary, who talked so easily about gathering a bunch of men and storming the prison. He had sounded reasonable enough back at the Olympia, but the situation was utterly unreasonable. The judge didn’t care for how practical Frank made such a move sound, when it ought to be an absolute last resort.
The windshield wipers clicked back and forth, clearing the thin rain. He turned on the radio and tuned in the all-news station in Wheeling. “Most city services have been shut down until further notice,” the announcer said, “and I want to repeat that the nine o’clock curfew will be strictly enforced.”
“Good luck with that,” the judge murmured.
“Now, recapping our top story. So-called Blowtorch Brigades, goaded by Internet-fueled fake news that respiration exhaled through the growths—or cocoons—surrounding the sleeping women is spreading the Aurora plague, have been reported in Charleston, Atlanta, Savannah, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, and Tampa.” The announcer paused, and when he resumed, his flat twang had become more pronounced. Folksier. “Neighbors, I’m proud to say none of these ignorant mobs have been operating here in Wheeling. We all have womenfolks we love like mad, and killing them in their sleep, no matter how unnatural that sleep may be, would be a terrible thing to do.”
He pronounced terrible as turrible.
Judge Silver’s Land Rover was nearing the outer limits of Dooling’s neighbor, Maylock. Rhinegold’s house in Coughlin was on the other side, a drive of another twenty minutes or so.
“The National Guard has been called out in all the cities where those Brigades have been at work, and they have orders to shoot to kill if those superstitious fools won’t cease and desist. I say amen to that. The CDC has repeated that there is no truth whatsoever to—”
The windshield was fogging up. Judge Silver leaned to his right, never taking his eyes from the road, and flipped on the defroster. The fan whooshed. On its wind, clouds of small brown moths spewed from the vents, filling the cabin and circling the judge’s head. They lit in his hair and battered his cheeks. Worst of all, they spun before his eyes, and something one of his old aunts had told him long ago, when he was just an impressionable boy, recurred to him with the brilliance of a proven fact, like up is up and down is down.
“Don’t ever rub your eyes after touching a moth, Oscar,” she had said. “The dust from their wings will get in there and you’ll go blind.”
“Get away!” Judge Silver yelled. He took his hands off the wheel and beat at his face. Moths continued to pour from the vents—hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. The Land Rover’s cabin became a swirling brown mist. “Get away, get away, get aw—”
A huge weight settled on the left side of his chest. Pain hammered down his left arm like electricity. He opened his mouth to cry out and moths flew in, crawling on his tongue and tickling the lining of his cheeks. With his last struggling breath he pulled them down his throat, where they clogged his windpipe. The Land Rover veered left; an approaching truck veered right just in time to avoid it, ending up in the ditch, canted but not quite toppling. There was no ditch to avoid on the other side of the road—just the guardrails separating the Dorr’s Hollow Bridge from the open air and the stream beneath. Silver’s vehicle snapped the guardrails and pitched over. The Land Rover went end-for-end into the water below. Judge Silver, by then already dead, was ejected through the windshield and into Dorr’s Hollow Stream, a tributary of Ball Creek. One of his loafers came off and floated downstream, shipping water and then sinking.
The moths exited the overturned vehicle, now bubbling its way down into the water, and flew back toward Dooling in a flock.
8
“I hated to do that,” Eve said—speaking not to her guests, Clint felt, but to herself. She wiped a single tear from the corner of her left eye. “The more time I spend here, the more human I become. I had forgotten that.”
“What are you talking about, Evie?” Clint asked. “What did you hate to do?”
“Judge Silver was trying to bring in outside help,” she said. “It might not have made any difference, but I couldn’t take the chance.”
“Did you kill him?” Angel asked, sounding interested. “Use your special powers an all?”
“I had to. From this point forward, what happens in Dooling has to stay in Dooling.”
“But . . .” Michaela rubbed a hand down her face. “What’s happening in Dooling is happening everywhere. It’s going to happen to me.”
“Not for awhile,” Evie said. “And you won’t need any more stimulants, either.” She extended a loose fist through the prison bars, extended a finger, and beckoned. “Come to me.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Rand said, as Garth overlapped him, saying, “Don’t be stupid, Mickey.” He grabbed her forearm.
“What do you think, Clint?” Evie asked, smiling.
Knowing he was giving in—not just to this, but to everything—Clint said, “Let her go.”
Garth released his grip. As if hypnotized, Michaela took two steps forward. Evie put her face against the bars, her eyes on Michaela’s. Her lips parted.
“Lesbo stuff!” Angel crowed. “Turn on the cameras, freaks, the muff-divin comes next!”
Michaela took no notice. She pressed her mouth to Evie’s. They kissed with the hard bars of the soft cell between them, and Clint heard a sigh as Eve Black breathed into Michaela’s mouth and lungs. At the same time he felt the hairs stand up on his arms and neck. His vision blurred with tears. Somewhere Jeanette was screaming, and Angel was cackling.
At last Evie broke the kiss and stepped back. “Sweet mouth,” she said. “Sweet girl. How do you feel now?”
“I’m awake,” Michaela said. Her eyes were round, her recently kissed lips trembling. “I’m really awake!”
There was no question that she was. The purple pouches beneath her eyes had disappeared, but that was the least of it; her skin had tightened on her bones and her formerly pallid cheeks had taken on a rosy glow. She turned to Garth, who was staring at her with slack-jawed amazement.
“I’m really, really awake!”
“Holy shit,” Garth said. “I think you are.”
Clint darted his spread fingers at Michaela’s face. She snapped her head away. “Your reflexes are back,” he said. “You couldn’t have done that five minutes ago.”
“How long can I stay this way?” Michaela clasped her shoulders, hugging herself. “It’s wonderful!”
“A few days,” Evie repeated. “After that, the weariness will return, and with interest. You’ll fall asleep no matter how much you struggle against it, and grow a cocoon like all the rest. Unless, that is . . .”
“Unless you get what you want,” Clint said.
“What I want is immaterial now,” Evie said. “I thought you understood that. It’s what the men of this town do with me that matters. And what the women on the other side of the Tree decide.”
“What—” Garth began, but then Jeanette hit him like a left tackle intent on sacking the quarterback, driving him into the bars. She shouldered him aside and grasped the bars, staring at Evie. “Do me! Evie, do me! I don’t want to fight it no more, I don’t want to see the bud man anymore, so do me!”
Evie took her hands and looked at her sadly. “I can’t, Jeanette. You should stop fighting it and go to sleep like all the others. They could use someone as brave and strong as you are over there. They call it Our Place. It can be your place, too.”
“Please,” Jeanette whispered, but Evie let go of her hands. Jeanette staggered away, squashing spilled peas underfoot and crying soundlessly.
“I don’t know,” Angel said thoughtfully. “Maybe I won’t kill you, Evie. I’m thinking maybe . . . I just don’t know. You’re spiritual. Plus, even crazier than me. Which is goin some.”
Evie addressed Clint and the others again: “Armed men will be coming. They want me because they think I may have caused Aurora, and if I caused it, I can put a stop to it. That’s not exactly true—it’s more complicated than that—just because I turned something on by myself doesn’t mean I can turn it off by myself—but do you think angry, frightened men would believe that?”
“Not in a million years,” Garth Flickinger said. Standing behind him, Billy Wettermore grunted agreement.
Evie said, “They’ll kill anyone who gets in their way, and when I’m not able to awaken their sleeping beauties with a wave of my Fairy Godmother magic wand, they’ll kill me. Then they’ll set fire to the prison and every woman in it, just for spite.”
Jeanette had wandered into the delousing area to resume her conversation with the bud man, but Angel was paying close attention. Clint could almost hear her mood lift, like a generator first thumping to life and then whirring into gear. “They ain’t gonna kill me. Not without a fight.”
For the first time Evie looked piqued. Clint thought that whatever she’d done to awaken Mickey Coates might have drained her battery. “Angel, they’ll wash over you like a wave over a child’s sand castle.”
“Maybe, but I’ll take a few with me.” Angel did a couple of rusty kung fu moves that made Clint feel an emotion he had never before associated with Angel Fitzroy: pity.
“Did you bring us here?” Michaela asked. Her eyes were bright, fascinated. “Did you draw us here? Garth and me?”
“No,” Evie said. “You don’t understand how powerless I am—little more than one of the drug-man’s rabbits hung on a line, waiting to be skinned or set free.” She turned her gaze fully on Clint. “Do you have a plan? I think you do.”
“Nothing so grand,” Clint said, “but I might be able to buy some time. We’ve got a fortified position here, but we could use a few more men—”
“What we could use,” Tig interrupted, “is a platoon of marines.”
Clint shook his head. “Unless Terry Coombs and that guy Geary can get outside help, I think we can hold the prison with a dozen men, maybe as few as ten. Right now we number just four. Five, if we can get Scott Hughes onboard, but I don’t hold out much hope of that.”
Clint went on, speaking mostly to Mickey and the doc she’d brought with her. He didn’t like the idea of sending Flickinger on a life-or-death mission—nothing about how he looked or smelled disagreed with Evie’s pronouncement that he was a big-time doper—but Flickinger and Janice Coates’s daughter were all he had to work with. “The real problem is weaponry, and the big question is who lays hands on it first. I know from my wife that they’ve got quite the armory at the sheriff’s station. Since 9/11 and all the domestic terrorism threats afterward, most towns Dooling’s size do. For handguns they’ve got Glock 17s and, I think Lila said, Sig . . . something or others.”
“Sig Sauer,” Billy Wettermore said. “Good weapon.”
“They’ve got M4 semi-autos with those big clips,” Clint went on, “and a couple of Remington Model 700s. Also, I believe Lila said they have a forty-millimeter grenade launcher.”
“Guns.” Evie spoke to no one in particular. “The perfect solution to any problem. The more you have, the more perfectly they solve the problem.”
“Are you shitting me?” Michaela cried. “A grenade launcher?”
“Yes, but not for explosives. They use it with teargas.”
“Don’t forget the bulletproof vests.” Rand sounded glum. “Except at super-close range, those things will stop a Mossberg slug. And the Mossies are the heaviest armament we’ve got.”
“This sounds like a punting situation,” Tig remarked.
Billy Wettermore said, “I sure don’t want to kill anybody if I don’t have to. Those are our friends, for God’s sake.”
“Well, good luck,” Evie said. She went to her bunk and powered up Assistant Warden Hicks’s phone. “I’m going to play a few games of Boom Town, then take a nap.” She smiled at Michaela. “I won’t be taking any further questions from the press. You’re a wonderful kisser, Mickey Coates, but you’ve worn me out.”
“Just watch that she don’t decide to sic her rats on you,” Angel said to the group at large. “They do whatever she wants. It’s how she got Hicksie’s cell phone.”
“Rats,” Garth said. “This keeps getting better.”
“I need you folks to come with me,” Clint said. “We need to talk, but it has to be quick. They’ll have this place locked down soon enough.”
Billy Wettermore pointed to Jeanette, now seated cross-legged in the shower alcove of the delousing station and talking earnestly with someone only she could see. “What about Sorley?”
“She’ll be fine,” Clint said. “Come on. Go to sleep, Jeanette. Let yourself rest.”
Without looking at him, Jeanette said a single word. “No.”
9
To Clint, the warden’s office had an archaeological appearance, as if it had been abandoned for years instead of less than a week. Janice Coates lay on the couch, wrapped in her cerements of white. Michaela went to her and knelt down. She stroked the cocoon with one hand. It gave off crackling sounds. Garth started to approach her, but Clint took his arm. “Give her a minute, Dr. Flickinger.”
It was actually more like three before Michaela got to her feet. “What can we do?” she asked.
“Can you be persistent and persuasive?” Clint asked.
She fixed him with eyes that were no longer bloodshot. “I came to NewsAmerica as an unpaid intern at twenty-three. By twenty-six, I was a full-time correspondent and they were talking about giving me my own evening show.” She saw Billy giving a look to Tig and Rand, and smiled at them. “You know what they say around here, don’t you? It ain’t bragging if it’s the truth.” She returned her attention to Clint. “Those are my references. Are they good enough?”
“I hope so,” Clint said. “Listen.”
He talked for the next five minutes. There were questions, but not many. They were in a bad corner, and all of them knew it.