CHAPTER 6
1
It was a hot afternoon, one that felt more like summer than spring, and all across Dooling telephones were beginning to ring, as some of those who had been keeping up with the news called friends and relatives who had not. Others held back, sure the whole thing would turn out to be a tempest in a teapot, like Y2K, or an outright hoax, like the Internet rumor that Johnny Depp was dead. As a result, many women who preferred music to TV put their infants and toddlers down for their afternoon naps, as always, and once their fussing had ceased, they lay down themselves.
To sleep, and dream of other worlds than their own.
Their female children joined them in these dreams.
Their male children did not. The dream was not for them.
When those hungry little boys awakened an hour or two later to find their mothers still slumbering, their loving faces enveloped in a sticky white substance, they would scream and claw, and tear through the cocoons—and that would rouse the sleeping women.
Ms. Leanne Barrows of 17 Eldridge Street, for example: wife of Deputy Reed Barrows. It was her habit to lie down for a nap with her two-year-old son Gary around eleven each day. That’s just what she must have done on the Thursday of Aurora.
A few minutes after two o’clock, Mr. Alfred Freeman, the Barrowses’ neighbor at 19 Eldridge Street, a retired widower, was spraying his curbside hostas with deer repellant. The door of 17 Eldridge banged open and Mr. Freeman observed Ms. Barrows as she staggered from her front door, carrying young Gary under her arm, like a piece of siding. The boy, wearing only a diaper, was screaming and waving his arms. An opaque white mask covered most of his mother’s face, except for a flap of material hanging loose from one corner of her mouth to her chin. It can be presumed that it was this rip that awakened the boy’s mother and gained her far-from-pleasant attention.
Mr. Freeman did not know what to say as Ms. Barrows made a beeline for him, as he stood thirty feet away just on the other side of the property line. For most of that morning he had been gardening; he had not seen or heard the news. His neighbor’s face—or absence of it—shocked him to silence. For some reason, at her approach, he removed his Panama hat and pressed it against his chest, as if the National Anthem were about to be played.
Leanne Barrows dropped her bawling child into the plants at Alfred Freeman’s feet, then swung around and returned across the lawn the way she had come, swaying drunkenly. White bits, like shreds of tissue paper, trailed from her fingertips. She reentered her home and closed the door behind her.
This phenomenon proved to be one of the most curious and most analyzed enigmas of Aurora—the so-called “Mother’s Instinct” or “Foster Reflex.” While reports of violent interactions between sleepers and other adults ultimately numbered in the millions, and unreported interactions millions more, few if any occurrences of aggression between a sleeper and her pre-adolescent child were ever confirmed. Sleepers handed over their male infants and toddlers to the closest person they could find, or simply put them out of doors. They then returned to their places of slumber.
“Leanne?” Freeman called.
Gary rolled around on the ground, weeping and kicking the leaves with his fat pink feet. “Mama! Mama!”
Alfred Freeman looked at the boy, then at the hosta he had sprayed, and asked himself, do I bring him back?
He was not a fan of children; he’d had two, and the feeling was mutual. He certainly had no use for Gary Barrows, an ugly little terrorist whose social graces seemed to extend no farther than waving around toy rifles and yelling about Star Wars.
Leanne’s face, screened in that white crap, made it seem that she wasn’t really human at all. Freeman decided he would hang onto the kid until Leanne’s deputy husband could be contacted to take charge.
This was a life-saving choice. Those who challenged the “Mother’s Instinct” regretted it. Whatever disposed Aurora mothers to peacefully cede their young male offspring, it was not receptive to questions. Tens of thousands learned this to their detriment, and then learned no more.
“Sorry, Gary,” Freeman said. “I think you might be stuck with old Uncle Alf for a little bit.” He lifted the inconsolable child up by his armpits and brought him inside. “Would it be too much to ask you to behave?”
2
Clint stayed with Evie through most of the intake process. Lila did not. He wanted her with him, wanted to keep emphasizing that she couldn’t go to sleep, even though he’d started in on her as soon as she’d stepped out of her car in the prison parking lot. He’d told her half a dozen times already, and Clint knew his concern was testing her patience. He also wanted to ask her where she’d been the previous night, but that would have to wait. Considering developments both here and in the wider world, he wasn’t sure it even mattered. Yet he kept coming back to it, like a dog licking a sore paw.
Assistant Warden Lawrence “Lore” Hicks arrived shortly after Evie was escorted into lockdown. Warden Coates left Hicks to handle the new intake’s paperwork while she worked the phone, seeking guidance from the Bureau of Corrections and putting in calls to everybody on the off-duty roster.
As it happened, there wasn’t much to handle. Evie sat with her hands chained to the interview room table, still dressed (for the moment) in the County Browns Lila and Linny Mars had given her. Though her face was battered from repeated collisions with the mesh guard in Lila’s cruiser, her eyes and mood were incongruously merry. To questions about her current address, relatives, and medical history, she gave back only silence. When asked for her last name, she said, “I’ve been thinking about that. Let’s say Black. Black will do. Nothing against Doe, a deer, a female deer, but Black seems a better one for black times. Call me Evie Black.”
“So it’s not your real name?” Fresh from the dentist, Hicks spoke from a mouth that was still mushy from Novocain.
“You couldn’t even pronounce my real name. Names.”
“Give it to me anyway,” Hicks invited.
Evie only looked at him with those merry eyes.
“How old are you?” tried Hicks.
Here, the woman’s cheerful expression drooped into what appeared to Clint to be a look of sorrow. “No age have I,” she said—but then gave the assistant warden a wink, as if to apologize for something so orotund.
Clint spoke up. There would be time for a full interview later, and in spite of everything that was going on, he could hardly wait. “Evie, do you understand why you are here?”
“To know God, to love God, and to serve God,” Evie replied. Then she raised her cuffed hands as far as the chain would allow, made a show of crossing herself, and laughed. She would say no more.
Clint went to his office where Lila had said she’d wait for him.
He found her talking into her shoulder mic. She replaced it and nodded at Clint. “I’ve got to go. Thanks for taking her.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
“Don’t want to stick with your patient?” Lila was already headed down the hall to the inner main door and lifting her face so Officer Millie Olson’s monitors could see she was a citizen—Joan Law, in fact—and not an inmate.
Clint said, “The strip search and delousing is ladies only. Once she’s dressed, I’ll rejoin.”
But you know all this, he thought. Are you too tired to remember, or do you just not want to talk to me?
The door buzzed, and they went into the airlock-sized room between the prison and the foyer, a space so small it always gave Clint a mild case of claustrophobia. Another buzz, and they re-entered the land of free men and women, Lila leading.
Clint caught up with her before she could go outside. “This Aurora—”
“Tell me again that I have to stay awake, and I may scream.” She was trying to look good-humored about it, but Clint knew when she was struggling to keep her temper. It was impossible to miss the lines of strain around her mouth and the bags under her eyes. She had picked a spectacularly luckless time to work the night shift. If luck had anything to do with it.
He followed her to the car, where Reed Barrows was leaning with his arms folded across his chest.
“You’re not just my wife, Lila. When it comes to law enforcement in Dooling County, you’re the big kahuna.” He held out a hand with a piece of folded paper. “Take this, and get it filled before you do anything else.”
Lila unfolded the piece of paper. It was a prescription. “What’s Provigil?”
He put an arm over her shoulder and held her close, wanting to be certain Reed didn’t overhear their conversation. “It’s for sleep apnea.”
“I don’t have that.”
“No, but it’ll keep you awake. I’m not screwing around, Lila. I need you awake, and this town needs you awake.”
She stiffened under his arm. “Okay.”
“Do it fast, before there’s a run.”
“Yes, sir.” His orders, well meant as they might have been, clearly irritated her. “Just figure out my lunatic. If you can.” She managed a smile. “I can always hit the evidence locker. We’ve got mountains of little white pills.”
This hadn’t occurred to him. “That’s something to keep in mind.”
She pulled away. “I was kidding, Clint.”
“I’m not telling you to tamper with anything. I’m just telling you to . . .” He held up his palms. “. . . keep it in mind. We don’t know where this is going.”
She looked at him doubtfully, and opened the passenger door of the cruiser. “If you talk to Jared before I do, tell him I’ll try to get home for dinner, but the chances are slim approaching none.”
She got in the car, and before she rolled up the window to take full advantage of the air conditioning, he almost popped the question, in spite of Reed Barrows’s presence and in spite of the sudden, impossible crisis that the news insisted was possible. It was a question he supposed men had been asking for thousands of years: Where were you last night? But instead he said, and momentarily felt clever, “Hey, hon, remember Mountain Rest? It might still be blocked up. Don’t try the shortcut.” Lila didn’t flinch, just said, uh-huh, okay, flapped a hand goodbye, and swung the cruiser toward the double gate between the prison and the highway. Clint, not so clever after all, could only watch her drive away.
He got back inside just in time to see Evie “You Couldn’t Even Pronounce My Real Name” Black get a photo snapped for her inmate ID. Don Peters then filled her arms with bedding.
“You look like a stoner to me, darling. Don’t puke on the sheets.”
Hicks gave him a sharp look but kept his Novocain-numbed mouth shut. Clint, who’d had enough of Officer Peters to last a lifetime, did not. “Cut the shit.”
Peters swiveled his head. “You don’t tell me—”
“I can write up an incident report, if you want,” Clint said. “Inappropriate response. Unprovoked. Your choice.”
Peters glared at him, but only asked, “Since you’re in charge of this one, what’s her assignment?”
“A-10.”
“Come on, inmate,” Peters said. “You’re getting a soft cell. Lucky you.”
Clint watched them go, Evie with her arms full of bedding, Peters close behind. He watched to see if Peters would touch her, but of course he didn’t. He knew Clint had an eye on him.
3
Lila had surely been this tired before, but she couldn’t remember when. What she could remember—from Health class in high school, for God’s sweet sake—were the adverse consequences of long-term wakefulness: slowed reflexes, impaired judgment, loss of vigilance, irritability. Not to mention short-term memory problems, such as being able to recall facts from Sophomore Health but not what the fuck you were supposed to do next, today, this minute.
She pulled into the parking lot of the Olympia Diner (MY OH MY, TRY OUR EGG PIE, read the easel sign by the door), turned off her engine, got out, and took long slow deep breaths, filling her lungs and bloodstream with fresh oxygen. It helped a little. She leaned in her window, grabbed her dash mic, then thought better of it—this was not a call she wanted going out over the air. She replaced the mic and pulled her phone from its pocket on her utility belt. She punched one of the dozen or so numbers she kept on speed dial.
“Linny, how are you doing?”
“Okay. Got seven hours or so last night, which is a little more than usual. So, all good. I’m worried about you, though.”
“I’m fine, don’t worry about—” She was interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn. It made what she was saying a bit ludicrous, but she persevered. “I’m fine, too.”
“Seriously? How long have you been awake?”
“I don’t know, maybe eighteen, nineteen hours.” To reduce Linny’s concern she added, “I cooped some last night, don’t worry.” Lies kept falling out of her mouth. There was a fairy tale that warned about this, about how one lie led to other lies, and you eventually turned into a parakeet or something, but Lila’s worn-out brain couldn’t come up with it. “Never mind me right now. What’s the deal with Tiffany what’s-her-face, from the trailer? Did the EMTs transport her to the hospital?”
“Yes. Good thing they got her there fairly early.” Linny lowered her voice. “St. Theresa’s is a madhouse.”
“Where are Roger and Terry now?”
Linny’s response to this question was embarrassed. “Well . . . They waited for the Assistant DA for awhile, but he never showed, and they wanted to check on their wives—”
“So they left the crime scene?” Lila was furious for a moment, but her anger had dissipated by the time her disbelief was expressed. Probably the reason the ADA hadn’t shown was the same reason that Roger and Terry had left—to check on his wife. It wasn’t just St. Theresa’s that was a madhouse. It was everywhere.
“I know, Lila, I know, but Roger’s got that baby girl, you know—” If it’s his, Lila thought. Jessica Elway liked to bed-hop, that was the word around town. “—and Terry was panicking, too, and neither of them could get an answer when they called home. I told them you’d be pissed.”
“All right, get them back. I want them to go to all three drugstores in town and tell the pharmacists . . .”
Pinocchio. That was the fairy tale about lying, and he didn’t turn into a parakeet, his nose grew until it was as long as Wonder Woman’s dildo.
“Lila? Are you still there?”
Pull it together, woman.
“Tell the pharmacists to use discretion on all the speedy stuff they’ve got. Adderall, Dexedrine . . . and I know there’s at least one prescription methamphetamine, although I can’t remember the name.”
“Prescription meth? Shut up!”
“Yes. The pharmacists will know. Tell them to use discretion. Prescriptions are going to be pouring in. The fewest number of pills they can give people until we understand what in the hell is going on here. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“One other thing, Linny, and this is just between us. Look in Evidence. See what we’ve got in there for speed-up stuff, and that includes the coke and Black Beauties from the Griner brothers bust.”
“Jeepers, are you sure? There’s almost half a pound of Bolivian marching powder! Lowell and Maynard, they’re due to go on trial. Don’t want to mess that up, we’ve been after them like forever!”
“I’m not sure at all, but Clint put the idea in my head and now I can’t get it out. Just inventory the stuff, okay? No one’s going to start rolling up dollar bills and snorting.” Not this afternoon, anyway.
“Okay.” Linny sounded awed.
“Who’s out at that trailer where the meth lab exploded?”
“Just a minute, let me check Gertrude.” Linny called her office computer Gertrude for reasons Lila did not care to understand. “Forensics and the FD units have departed. I’m surprised they left the scene so soon.”
Lila wasn’t. Those guys probably had wives and daughters, too.
“Um . . . looks like a couple of AAH dudes might still be around, putting out the last of the hot spots. Can’t say for sure which ones, all I’ve got is a note saying they rolled out of Maylock at eleven thirty-three. Willy Burke’s probably one of them, though. You know Willy, he never misses.”
AAH, an acronym that came out sounding like a sigh, was the Tri-Counties’ Adopt-A-Highway crew, mostly retirees with pickup trucks. They were also the closest thing the Tri-Counties had to a volunteer fire department, and often came in handy during brushfire season.
“Okay, thanks.”
“Are you going out there?” Linny sounded faintly disapproving, and Lila wasn’t too tired to catch the subtext: With all this other stuff going on?
“Linny, if I had a magic wake-up wand, believe me, I’d use it.”
“Okay, Sheriff.” Subtext: Don’t bite my head off.
“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve got to do what I can do. Presumably someone—a bunch of someones—is working on this sleeping sickness thing at the Disease Control Center in Atlanta. Here in Dooling, I’ve got a double murder, and I need to work on that.”
Why am I explaining all this to my dispatcher? Because I’m tired, that’s why. And because it’s a distraction from the way my husband was looking at me back at the prison. And because it’s a distraction from the possibility—fact, really, Lila, not a possibility, but a fact, and that fact’s name is Sheila—that the husband you’re so concerned about isn’t anybody you really knew anyway.
Aurora, they were calling it. If I fall asleep, Lila thought, will that be the end? Will I die? Could be, as Clint might say. Could fucking be.
The good-natured back-and-forth they had always had, the ease of their collaborations on projects and meals and parenting responsibilities, the comfortable pleasure they’d taken from each other’s bodies—these repeated experiences, the marrow of their daily life together, had turned crumbly.
She pictured her husband smiling and it made her stomach sick. It was the same smile that Jared had, and it was Sheila’s smile, too.
Lila remembered how Clint had quit his private practice without a word of discussion. All the work they’d done planning his office, the care that they had put into choosing not just the location but also the town, ultimately selecting Dooling because it was the biggest population center in the area that didn’t have a psychiatrist with a general practice. But Clint’s second patient had annoyed him, so he had decided, on the spot, that he needed to make a change. And Lila had just gone along. The wasted effort had bothered her, the resultant lowering of their financial prospects had meant a lot of recalculating, and all things being equal she would much rather have lived closer to a city than in the rural Tri-Counties, but she had wanted Clint to be happy. She had just gone along. Lila hadn’t wanted a pool. She had gone along. One day Clint had decided that they were switching to bottled water and filled up half of the refrigerator with the stuff. She had gone along. Here was a prescription for Provigil that he had decided she needed to take. She would probably go along. Maybe sleep was her natural state. Maybe that was why she could accept Aurora, because for her, it was not much of a change. Could be. Who the hell knew?
Had Evie been there last night? Was that possible? Watching the AAU game in the Coughlin High gym as the tall blond girl went in for lay-up after lay-up, cutting through Fayette’s defense like a sharp blade? That would explain the triple-double thing, wouldn’t it?
Kiss your man before you go to sleep.
Yes, this is probably how you started to lose your mind.
“Linny, I have to go.”
She ended the call without waiting for a reply and re-holstered her phone.
Then she remembered Jared, and pulled the phone back out. Only what to tell him, and why bother? He had the Internet on his phone; they all did. By now Jere probably knew more about what was going on than she herself. Her son—at least she had a son, not a daughter. That was something to be thankful for today. Mr. and Mrs. Pak must be going crazy. She texted Jere to come straight home from school, and that she loved him, and left it at that.
Lila turned her face up to the sky and took more deep breaths. After almost a decade and a half of cleaning up the results of bad behavior, much of it drug-related, Lila Norcross was confident enough in her status and position to know that, although she would do her job to the best of her ability, she had very little personal stake in obtaining justice for a couple of dead meth chefs who, one way or another, had probably been destined to electrocute themselves on the great Bug Light of Life. And she was politically savvy enough to know that nobody was going to be yelling for a quick solve, not with this panic-inducing Aurora thing going on. But the trailer out by Adams Lumberyard was where Evie Doe had made her Dooling County debut, and Lila did have a personal stake in Freaky Evie. She hadn’t dropped out of thin air. Had she left a car out there? Possibly one with an owner’s registration in the glove compartment? The trailer was less than five miles away; no reason not to have a look-see. Only something else needed doing first.
She went into the Olympia. The place was nearly deserted, both waitresses sitting at a corner booth, gossiping. One of them saw Lila and started to get up, but Lila waved her back. Gus Vereen, the owner, was planted on a stool by the cash register, reading a Dean Koontz paperback. Behind him was a small TV with the sound muted. Across the bottom of the screen ran a crawl reading AURORA CRISIS DEEPENS.
“I read that one,” Lila said, tapping his book. “The dog communicates using Scrabble tiles.”
“Now you gone and spalled it fur me,” Gus said. His accent was as thick as red-eye gravy.
“Sorry. You’ll like it, anyway. Good story. Now that we’ve got the literary criticism out of the way, coffee to go. Black. Make it an XL.”
He went to the Bunn and filled a large go-cup. It was black, all right: probably stronger than Charles Atlas and as bitter as Lila’s late Irish granny. Fine with her. Gus slipped a cardboard heat-sleeve to the halfway point, snapped on a plastic cap, and handed it to her. But when she reached for her wallet, he shook his head.
“No charge, Shurf.”
“Yes, charge.” It was an unbreakable rule, one summarized by the plaque on her desk reading NO FAT COPS STEALING APPLES. Because once you started taking stuff on the arm, it never stopped . . . and there was always a quid pro quo.
She laid a five on the counter. Gus pushed it back.
“It ain’t the badge, Shurf. Free coffee fur all the womenfolk today.” He glanced at his waitresses. “Ain’t that so?”
“Yes,” one of them said, and approached Lila. She reached into the pocket of her skirt. “And dump this in your coffee, Sheriff Norcross. It won’t help the taste any, but it’ll jump-start you.”
It was a packet of Goody’s Headache Powder. Although Lila had never used it, she knew Goody’s was a Tri-Counties staple, right up there with Rebel Yell and cheese-covered hash browns. When you tore open the envelope and poured out the contents, what you had looked pretty much like the Baggies of coke they’d found in the Griner brothers’ back shed, wrapped in plastic and stored in an old tractor tire—which was why they, and plenty of other dealers, used Goody’s to cut their product. It was cheaper than Pedia-Lax.
“Thirty-two milligrams of caffeine,” the other waitress said. “I had two already today. I ain’t going to sleep until the bright boys solve this Aurora shit. No way.”
4
One of the great benefits of being Dooling County’s one and only animal control officer—maybe the only benefit—was having no boss lording it over him. Technically, Frank Geary answered to the mayor and the town council, but they almost never came to his little corner around the rear side of the nondescript building that also housed the historical society, the recreation department, and the assessor’s office, which was fine with him.
He got the dogs walked and quieted down (there was nothing like a handful of Dr. Tim’s Doggy Chicken Chips for that), made sure they were watered, and checked that Maisie Wettermore, the high school volunteer, was due in at six to feed them and take them out again. Yes, she was on the board. Frank left her a note concerning various medications, then locked up and left. It did not occur to him until later that Maisie might have more important things on her mind than a few homeless animals.
It was his daughter he was thinking about. Again. He’d scared her that morning. He didn’t like to admit it, even to himself, but he had.
Nana. Something about her had started to nag him. Not the Aurora, exactly, but something related to the Aurora. What was it?
I’ll return El’s call, he thought. I’ll do it just as soon as I get home.
Only what he did first when he got to the little four-room house he was renting on Ellis Street was to check the fridge. Not much going on in there: two yogurt cups, a moldy salad, a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce, and a case of Miner’s Daughter Oatmeal Stout, a high-calorie tipple which he assumed must be healthy—it had oatmeal in it, didn’t it? As he grabbed one, his phone went. He looked at Elaine’s picture on the little screen and had a moment of clarity he could have done without: he feared the Wrath of Elaine (a little) and his daughter feared the Wrath of Daddy (only a little . . . he hoped). Were these things any basis for a family relationship?
I’m the good guy here, he reminded himself, and took the call. “Hey, El! Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, but something came up. Pretty sad. I had to put Judge Silver’s cat down, and then—”
Elaine wasn’t about to be put off by the subject of Judge Silver’s cat; she wanted to get right into it with him. And as usual, she had her volume turned up to ten right from the jump. “You scared the crap out of Nana! Thank you very much for that!”
“Calm down, okay? All I did was tell her to draw her pictures inside. Because of the green Mercedes.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Frank.”
“Remember when she first got the paper route, and she said she had to swerve onto the Nedelhafts’ lawn because some guy driving a big green car with a star on the front went up onto the sidewalk? You told me to let it go, and I did. I let it go.”
The words were spilling out faster and faster, soon he’d be spitting them if he didn’t get control of himself. What Elaine didn’t understand was that sometimes he had to shout to be heard. With her, at least.
“The car that took out Judge Silver’s cat was also a big green car with a star on the front. A Mercedes. I was pretty sure I knew who it belonged to when Nana had her close call—”
“Frank, she said it swerved onto the sidewalk half a block down!”
“Maybe so, or maybe it was closer and she didn’t want to scare us. Didn’t want us to take away her paper route right after she got it. Just listen, okay? I let it go. I’d seen that Mercedes around the neighborhood many times, but I let it go.” How many times had he said that? And why did it remind him of that song from Frozen, the one Nana had gone around singing until he’d been quite sure it would drive him mad? He was clutching the can of stout so hard he’d dented it, and if he didn’t stop, he’d pop it wide open. “But not this time. Not after he ran over Cocoa.”
“Who’s—”
“Cocoa! Cocoa, Judge Silver’s cat! That could have been my kid, Elaine! Our kid! Long story short, that Mercedes belongs to Garth Flickinger, right up the hill.”
“The doctor?” Elaine sounded engaged. At last.
“That’s him. And when I talked to him, guess what? He was high, Elaine. I’m almost positive. He could barely form sentences.”
“Instead of reporting him to the police, you went to his house? Like you went to Nana’s school that time and shouted at her teacher when all the kids—including your daughter—could hear you ranting like a crazy person?”
Go ahead, drag it up, Frank thought, clenching the can harder. You always do. That, or the famous wall punch, or the time I told your father he was full of shit. Drag it up, drag it out, Elaine Nutting Geary’s Greatest Hits. When I’m in my coffin you’ll be telling somebody about the time I hollered at Nana’s second grade teacher after she made fun of Nana’s science project and made my daughter cry in her room. And when that one gets tired, you can reminisce about the time I yelled at Mrs. Fenton for spraying her weed killer where my daughter had to breathe it in while she was riding her trike. Fine. Make me the bad guy if that’s what gets you through the day. But right now I will keep my voice calm and level. Because I can’t afford to let you push my buttons this time, Elaine. Somebody has to watch out for our daughter, and it’s pretty clear you’re not up to the job.
“It was my duty as a father.” Did that sound pompous? Frank didn’t care. “I have no interest in seeing him arrested on a misdemeanor charge of feline hit-and-run, but I do have an interest in making sure he doesn’t run down Nana. If scaring him a little accomplished that—”
“Tell me you didn’t go all Charles Bronson.”
“No, I was very reasonable with him.” That was at least close to true. It was the car he hadn’t been reasonable with. But he was sure a hot-shit doc like Flickinger had mucho insurance.
“Frank,” she said.
“What?”
“I hardly know where to start. Maybe with the question you didn’t ask when you saw Nana drawing in the driveway.”
“What? What question?”
“ ‘Why are you home from school, honey?’ That question.”
Not in school. Maybe that was what had been nagging at him.
“It was so sunny this morning, I just—seemed like summer, you know? I forgot it was May.”
“You have got your head so far the wrong way around, Frank. You’re so concerned about your daughter’s safety, and yet you can’t even remember that it’s the school year. Think about that. Haven’t you noticed the homework she does at your house? You know, those notebooks she writes in, and the textbooks she reads? With God and His only son Jesus as my witness—”
He was willing to take a lot—and he was willing to admit he maybe deserved some—but Frank drew the line with the Jesus-as-my-witness shit. God’s only son wasn’t the one who had gotten that raccoon out from under the Episcopalian church all those years ago and nailed the board over the hole, and He didn’t put clothes on Nana’s back or food in her stomach. Not to mention Elaine’s. Frank did those things and there had been no magic to it.
“Cut to the chase, Elaine.”
“You don’t know what’s going on with anyone but yourself. It’s all about what’s pissing Frank off today. It’s all about who doesn’t understand that only Frank knows how to do things right. Because those are your default positions.”
I can take it. I can take it I can take it I can take it but oh God Elaine what a high-riding bitch you can be when you set your mind to it.
“Was she sick?”
“Oh, now you’re all Red Alert.”
“Was she? Is she? Because she looked all right.”
“She’s fine. I kept her home because she got her period. Her first period.”
Frank was thunderstruck.
“She was upset and a little scared, even though I’d explained all about what was going to happen last year. And ashamed, too, because she got some blood on the sheets. For a first period, it was pretty heavy.”
“She can’t be . . .” For a moment the word stuck in his throat. He had to cough it out like a bite of food that had gone down wrong. “She can’t be menstruating! She’s twelve, for Christ’s sake!”
“Did you think she was going to stay your little princess in fairy wings and sparkly boots forever?”
“No, but . . . twelve?”
“I started when I was eleven. And that’s not the point, Frank. Here’s the point. Your daughter was crampy and confused and low-spirited. She was drawing in the driveway because that’s a thing that always cheers her up, and here comes her daddy, all riled up, bellowing—”
“I was not bellowing!” That was when the can of Miner’s Daughter finally gave way. Foam ran down his fisted hand and pattered to the floor.
“—bellowing and yanking her shirt, her favorite shirt—”
He was appalled to feel the prickle of tears. He had cried several times since the separation, but never while actually talking to Elaine. Deep down he was afraid she would seize any weakness he showed, turn it into a crowbar, pry him wide open, and eat his heart. His tender heart.
“I was scared for her. Don’t you understand that? Flickinger is a drunk or a doper or both, he’s got a big car, and he killed Judge Silver’s cat. I was afraid for her. I had to take action. I had to.”
“You behave like you’re the only person who ever feared for a child, but you’re not. I fear for her, and you’re the main thing that makes me afraid.”
He was silent. What she’d just said was almost too monstrous to comprehend.
“Keep this up and we’ll be back in court, re-evaluating your weekends and visiting privileges.”
Privileges, Frank thought. Privileges! He felt like howling. This was what he got for telling her how he actually felt.
“How is she now?”
“Okay, I guess. Ate most of her lunch, then said she was going to take a nap.”
Frank actually rocked back on his heels, and dropped the dented can of suds to the floor. That was what had been nagging him, not the question of what Nana was doing home from school. He knew what her response to being upset was: she slept it off. And he had upset her.
“Elaine . . . haven’t you been watching TV?”
“What?” Not understanding this sudden U-turn in the conversation. “I caught up on a couple of Daily Show episodes on TiVo—”
“The news, El, the news! It’s on all the channels!”
“What are you talking about? Have you gone cr—”
“Get her up!” Frank roared. “If she’s not asleep yet, get her up! Do it now!”
“You’re not making sen—”
Only he was making perfect sense. He wished he wasn’t.
“Don’t ask questions, just do it! Right now!”
Frank killed the call and ran for the door.
5
Jared was set up undercover when Eric, Curt, and Kent came tromping through the woods from the direction of the high school, making plenty of noise, laughing and bantering.
“It’s gotta be a hoax.” That was Kent, he thought, and there was less enthusiasm in his voice than earlier, when Jared had overheard him in the locker room.
Word had gotten around about Aurora. Girls had been crying in the hallways. A few guys, too. Jared had observed one of the math teachers, the burly one with the beard who wore the cowboy snap shirts and coached the debate team, telling a couple of weeping sophomores that they needed to compose themselves, and that everything was going to be okay. Mrs. Leighton who taught civics stalked up and stuck her finger into his shirt, right between two of the fancy snaps. “Easy for you to say!” she had yelled. “You don’t know anything about this! It’s not happening to men!”
It was weird. It was more than weird. It gave Jared the staticky feeling that accompanied a major storm, the sickly purple clouds piling up and flashing with inner lightning. The world didn’t seem weird then; the world didn’t seem like the world at all, but like another place that you had been flipped into.
It was a relief to have something else to focus on. At least for a little while. He was on a solo mission. Call it Operation Expose These Pricks.
His father had told him that shock therapy—ECT was what they called it these days—was actually an effective treatment for some mentally ill people, that it could produce a palliative effect in the brain. If Mary asked Jared what he thought he was accomplishing by doing this, he would tell her it was like ECT. Once the whole school got a look and a listen at Eric and his stooges trashing poor Old Essie’s place and cracking wise about her boobs—which was, Jared was certain, exactly what they would do—it might “shock” them into being better people. Moreover, it might “shock” some other people into being a little more careful about who they went on dates with.
Meanwhile, the trolls had almost arrived at Ground Zero.
“If it’s a hoax, it’s the supreme hoax of all time. It’s on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere. Ladies are going to sleep and pulling some caterpillar shit. And you’re the one who said you saw it on the old bag.” This one was definitely Curt McLeod, swinging dick that he was.
Eric was the first to appear on the screen of Jared’s phone, hopping over a tumble of loose stones at the edge of Old Essie’s area. “Essie? Baby? Honey? You around? Kent wants to crawl inside your cocoon and warm you up.”
The spot that Jared had selected for his stakeout was a thicket of fern about thirty feet from the lean-to. It appeared dense from the outside, but was mostly bare earth in the middle. There were a few bits of orange-white fur on the ground where some animal had camped. Probably a fox. Jared had stretched out, iPhone at arms’ length. The camera was pointed through a gap in the leaves and centered on Old Essie lying in the opening of her lean-to. Just as Kent had said, there was a growth on her face—and if it had been like cobwebs earlier, it was solid now, a white mask, exactly like the ones that everyone had now seen on their phones, on news and social media sites.
That was the one part that made him uncomfortable: the homeless woman sprawled out there, defenseless, sick with the Aurora stuff. If Jared gave Lila his ECT explanation, he wondered what she would say about him just videoing it instead of putting a stop to it. That was where the structure of his logic began to creak. His mother had taught him to stand up for himself and for others, especially girls.
Eric squatted at the opening of the lean-to beside Old Essie’s white-wrapped face. He had a stick in his hand. “Kent?”
“What?” Kent had stopped a few steps away. He was scratching the neck of his tee-shirt and looking anxious.
Eric touched the stick against Essie’s mask then drew away. Strands of the whitish material trailed from the stick. “Kent!”
“I said what?” The other boy’s voice had lifted to a higher pitch. Almost a squeak.
Eric shook his head at his friend, as if he were surprised, surprised and disappointed. “This is a hell of a load you blew on her face.”
The roar of laughter that came from Curt made Jared twitch and the bush rattled a little around him. No one was paying attention, though.
“Fuck you, Eric!” Kent stormed over to Essie’s mannequin torso and kicked it tumbling into the deadfall.
This display of pique didn’t divert Eric. “But did you have to leave it to dry? That’s low-class, just leaving your splat on the face of a fine old babe like this.”
Curt strolled over beside Eric to take a closer look. He cocked his head this way and that, licking his lips in a thoughtless way as he appraised Essie, considering her as if he were deciding between a box of Junior Mints and a packet of Sour Patch Kids at a checkout counter.
A sick tremble found its way to Jared’s stomach. If they did something to hurt her, he was going to have to try to stop them. Except that there was no way he could stop them, because there were three of them and only one of him, and this wasn’t about doing what was right or social media ECT, or making people think, this was about Mary and about proving to her that he was better than Eric and really, given the circumstances, was that true? If he were so much better than these guys, he wouldn’t be in this fix. He’d already have done something to make them quit.
“I’d give you fifty bucks to bone her,” said Curt. He turned to Kent. “Either of you. Cash on the line.”
“Whatever,” said Kent. In his sulk he had followed the mannequin torso to where he had kicked it and now he was stomping on it, cracking up the chest cavity with little pop-pop-pops of shattering plastic.
“Not for a million.” Eric, still perched in a squat by the mouth of the lean-to, pointed the stick at his friend. “But, for a hundred, I’ll poke a hole right here—” He lowered the stick to tap Essie’s right ear. “—and I’ll piss into it.”
Jared could see Essie’s chest rise and fall.
“Seriously? A hundred?” It was clear that Curt was tempted, but a hundred dollars was a significant amount of bread.
“Nah. I’m just teasing.” Eric winked at his buddy. “I wouldn’t make you pay for that. I’ll do it for free.” He leaned over Essie, probing with the tip of the stick to dig through the webbing to her ear.
Jared needed to do something; he couldn’t just watch and record and let them do this to her. So why aren’t you moving? he asked himself, even as his iPhone, squeezed tight in his damp hand, popped up—whoops!—and landed with a crunch in the brush.
6
Even with the pedal to metal, the little animal control pickup would do no more than fifty. Not because of a governor on the engine; the pickup was just old, and on its second trip around the clock. Frank had petitioned the town council for a new one on several occasions, and the answer had always been the same: “We’ll take it under advisement.”
Driving hunched over the wheel, Frank imagined pounding several of those smalltown politicians to a pulp. And what would he say when they begged him to stop? “I’ll take it under advisement.”
He saw women everywhere. None of them were alone. They were clustered in groups of three and four, talking together, embracing, some of them crying. None of them looked at Frank Geary, even when he blew through stop signs and red lights. This is the way Flickinger must drive when he’s stoned, he thought. Watch out, Geary, or you’ll run over someone’s cat. Or someone’s kid.
But Nana! Nana!
His phone went. He pushed ANSWER without looking. It was Elaine, and she was sobbing.
“She’s asleep and won’t wake up and there’s goo all over her face! White goo like cobwebs!”
He passed three women hugging it out on a street corner. They looked like guests on some therapy show. “Is she breathing?”
“Yes . . . yes, I can see the stuff moving . . . fluttering out and then kind of sucking in . . . oh, Frank, I think it’s in her mouth and on her tongue! I’m going to get my nail scissors and cut it off!”
An image filled his mind, one so brilliant and ghastly-real that for a moment the street ahead of him was blotted out: Kinswoman Susannah Brightleaf, battening on her husband’s nose.
“No, El, don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Watching The Daily Show instead of the news when the biggest thing in history was happening, how stupid could you get? But that was the former Elaine Nutting of Clarksburg, West Virginia. That was Elaine right down to the ground. High on judgmental pronouncements, low on information. “Because it wakes them up, and when they wake up, they’re crazy. No, not crazy. More like rabid.”
“You’re not telling me . . . Nana would never . . .”
If she’s even Nana anymore, Frank thought. Kinsman Brightleaf sure didn’t get the sweet and docile woman he was no doubt used to.
“Elaine . . . honey . . . turn on the television and you’ll see it for yourself.”
“What are we going to do?”
Now you ask me, he thought. Now that your back is to the wall, it’s Oh Frank, what are we going to do? He felt a sour, dismaying satisfaction.
His street. Finally. Thank God. The house was ahead. This was going to be all right. He would make it all right.
“We’re going to take her to the hospital,” he said. “By now they probably know what’s going on.”
They’d better. They’d just better. Because this was Nana. His little girl.