CHAPTER 8
1
Memories of freshman track came back to Jared as he fled through the trees. Coach Dreifort had said Jared was a “comer.”
“I got plans for you, Norcross, and they involve winning a whole mess of shiny medals,” Coach Dreifort had said. At the end of that season Jared finished fifth out of fifteen in his group at regionals in the 8,000 meter—outstanding for a frosh—but then he’d ruined Coach D.’s plans, quitting to take a job on the Yearbook Committee.
Jared had relished those late race moments when he found a fresh lung and regained the pace and felt a sense of ecstasy, loving his own strength. The reason he’d quit was that Mary was on the Yearbook Committee. She had been elected sophomore sales and distribution chairwoman, and needed a vice-chair. Jared’s dedication to track was summarily abandoned. Sign me up, he told Mary.
“Okay, but there’s two things,” she explained. “Number one, if I die, which I might because I ate one of those mystery meat hot pockets at the cafeteria today, then you have to take over as chair and fulfill my duties and make sure there’s a full page tribute to my memory in the yearbook senior year. And you have to make sure that the photo of me isn’t something stupid that my mother picked.”
“Got it,” Jared had said, and thought, I really love you. He knew he was too young. He knew she was too young. How could he not, though? Mary was so beautiful, and she was so on the ball, but she made it seem completely natural, no stress, no strain. “What’s the second thing?”
“The second thing—” She grabbed his head with both hands and shook it back and forth and up and down. “—is that I am the Boss!”
As far as Jared was concerned, that was also no problem.
Now his sneaker came down on a flat rock sitting high and loose, and that, as it happened, was a problem, actually a pretty big one, because he felt a wobble and a sharp sting in his right knee. Jared gasped and drove forward with his left foot, concentrating on his breathing like they taught you in track, keeping his elbows working.
Eric was thundering behind him. “We just want to talk to you!”
“Don’t be a fucking pussy!” That was Curt.
Down into a gully, and Jared felt his hurt knee slide around and thought he heard a little ping somewhere under the thudding of his pulse and the crackle of dry leaves under his sneaker heels. Malloy Street, the one behind the high school, was up ahead, a yellow car flickering past in the gaps between the trees. His right leg buckled at the bottom of the gully, and the pain was unprecedented, hand-on-a-red-burner pain only on the inside, and he grabbed a thorny branch to yank himself staggering up the opposite bank.
The air was momentarily disturbed behind him, as if a hand had swiped right past his scalp, and he heard Eric swearing and the tumult of bodies tangling. They’d lost it while sliding down the gully behind him. The road was twenty feet on; he could hear the burr of a car engine. He was going to make it!
Jared lurched, closing the gap to the road, feeling a burst of that old track euphoria, the air in his lungs suddenly carrying him, thrusting him forward and holding off the agony of his distorted knee.
The hand on his shoulder spun him off-balance at the edge of the road. He caught onto a birch tree to keep from falling.
“Give me that phone, Norcross.” Kent’s face shone bright red, the acne field on his forehead purple. His eyes were wet. “We were kidding around, that’s all.”
“No,” said Jared. He couldn’t even remember picking his phone up again, but there it was in his hand. His knee felt enormous.
“Yes,” Kent said. “Give it.” The other two had gathered themselves and were running to catch up, only a few feet off.
“You were going to pee in an old lady’s ear!” cried Jared.
“Not me!” Kent blinked away sudden tears. “I couldn’t, anyway! I got a shy bladder!”
You weren’t going to try to stop them, though, Jared might have replied, but instead felt his arm cock and his fist shoot out to connect with Kent’s dimpled chin. The impact produced a satisfying clack of teeth slamming together.
As Kent tumbled down into the weeds, Jared shoved his phone in his pocket and got moving again. Three agonizing hops and he was at the yellow centerline, waving down a speeding tan compact with a Virginia plate. He didn’t register that the driver was turned around in her seat—and Jared certainly didn’t see what was happening in the rear of the car, where a bellowing old woman with tattered webbing hanging from her face was repeatedly gouging the edge of an ice scraper into the chest and throat of her husband who had cut said webbing from her face—but he did note the compact’s erratic progress, as it jerked right-left-right-left, almost out of control.
Jared tried to twist away, wishing himself small, and was just congratulating himself on his evasion technique when the compact hit him and sent him flying.
2
“Hey! Get your hands off my Booth!” Ree had gotten Officer Lampley’s attention by knocking on the front window of the Booth, a major no-no. “What do you want, Ree?”
“The warden, Officer,” said Ree, elaborately and unnecessarily mouthing the words, which Vanessa Lampley could hear perfectly fine via the vents situated under the panes of bulletproof glass. “I need to see the warden about something wrong. Her and no one else. I’m sorry, Officer. That’s the only way. How it’s got to be.”
Van Lampley had worked hard to cultivate her reputation as a firm but fair officer. For seventeen years she’d patrolled the cellblocks of Dooling Correctional, and she’d been stabbed once, punched several times, kicked even more times, choked, had drippy shit flung at her, and been invited to go and fuck herself in any number of ways and with a variety of objects, many of them unrealistically large or dangerously sharp. Did Van sometimes draw on these memories during her arm-wrestling matches? She did indeed, although sparingly, usually only during significant league bouts. (Vanessa Lampley competed in the Ohio Valley Slammers League, Women’s A Division.) The memory of the time that a deranged crack addict dropped a chunk of brick from the second level of B Wing down onto Vanessa’s skull (resulting in a skull contusion and a concussion) had, in fact, helped her take it “over-the-top” in both of her championship victories. Anger was excellent fuel if you refined it correctly.
In spite of these regrettable experiences, she was forever conscious of the responsibility that went with her authority. She understood that no one wanted to be in prison. Some people, however, needed to be. It was unpleasant, both for them and for her. If a respectful attitude was not maintained, it would be more unpleasant—for them, and for her.
And although Ree was all right—poor kid had a big scar on her forehead that told you she hadn’t had the easiest ride through life—it was disrespectful to make unreasonable requests. The warden wasn’t available for on the spot one-on-ones, especially with a medical emergency happening.
Van had serious worries of her own concerning what she’d read on the Internet about Aurora on her last break, and the directive from above that everyone needed to stay for a second shift. Now McDavid, looking on the monitor like she belonged not in a cell but in a sarcophagus, had been put under quarantine. Van’s husband, Tommy, when she called him at their house, insisted he would be fine on his own for as long as she needed to stay, but she didn’t believe it for a second. Tommy, on disability for his hips, couldn’t make a grilled cheese sandwich for himself; he’d be eating pickles out of a jar until she got home. If Van wasn’t allowed to lose her head about any of that, then neither was Ree Dempster or any other inmate.
“No, Ree, you need to lower your sights. You can tell me, or you tell no one. If it’s important enough, I’ll take it to the warden. And why’d you touch my Booth? Dammit. You know you can’t do that. I should put you on Bad Report for that.”
“Officer . . .” Ree, on the other side of the window, put her hands together in supplication. “Please. I’m not lying. Something wrong happened and it’s too wrong to let go, and you’re a lady, so please understand that.” Ree wrung her clasped hands in the air. “You’re a lady. Okay?”
Van Lampley studied the inmate, who was on the raised concrete apron in front of the Booth and praying to her like they had anything in common besides their double X chromosomes. “Ree, you’re right up against the line here. I’m not kidding.”
“And I’m not lyin for prizes! Please believe me. It’s about Peters, and it’s serious. Warden needs to know.”
Peters.
Van rubbed her immense right bicep, as was her habit when a matter called for consideration. The bicep was inked with a gravestone for YOUR PRIDE. Under the words on the stone was a picture of a flexed arm. It was a symbol of all the opponents she’d bent back: knuckles on the table, thank you for playing. A lot of men wouldn’t arm-wrestle her. They didn’t want to risk the embarrassment. They made excuses, shoulder tendinitis, bad elbow, etc. “Lying for prizes” was a funny way to put it, but somehow apt. Don Peters was the lying-for-prizes type.
“If I hadn’t jacked my arm pitching high school ball, I hope you understand that I’d break you down right quick, Lampley,” the little asswipe had explained to her once when a group of them were having beers at the Squeaky Wheel.
“I don’t doubt it, Donnie,” she’d replied.
Ree’s big secret was probably bunk. And yet . . . Don Peters. There had been loads of complaints about him, the kind that maybe you did have to be a woman to truly relate to.
Van raised the cup of coffee that she’d forgotten she had. It was cold. Okay, she supposed she could walk Ree Dempster down to see the warden. Not because Vanessa Lampley was going soft, but because she needed a fresh cup. After all, as of now her shift was open-ended.
“All right, inmate. This once. I’m probably wrong to do it, but I will. I just hope you’ve thought this through.”
“I have, Officer, I have. I’ve thought and thought and thought.”
Lampley buzzed Tig Murphy to come down and spell her in the Booth. Said she needed to take ten.
3
Outside the soft cell, Peters was leaning against the wall and scrolling through his phone. His mouth curled into a perplexed frown.
“I hate to bother you, Don—” Clint chinned toward the cell door. “—but I need to talk to this one.”
“Oh, it’s no bother, Doc.” Peters clicked his phone off and summoned a pal-ole-pal-o’mine grin that they both knew was as real as the Tiffany lamps that got sold at the bi-weekly flea market in Maylock.
A couple of other things that they both knew to be true: 1) it was a violation of policy for an officer to be screwing around with his phone while on deck in the middle of the day; and 2) Clint had been trying to get Peters transferred or outright fired for months. Four different inmates had personally complained of sexual harassment to the doctor, but only in his office, under the seal of confidentiality. None of them were willing to go on record. They were afraid of payback. Most of these women had experienced a lot of payback, some inside the walls, even more outside them.
“So McDavid’s got this stuff, too, huh? From the news? Any reason I need to be personally concerned here? Everything I’m seeing says it’s ladies only, but you’re the doc.”
As he’d predicted to Coates, a half-dozen attempts to get through to the CDC had failed—nothing but a busy signal. “I don’t have any more particulars than you, Don, but yes, so far, to the best of my knowledge, there’s no indication that any man has contracted the virus—or whatever it is. I need to talk to the inmate.”
“Right, right,” Peters said.
The officer unlocked the upper and lower bolts, then buttoned his mic. “Officer Peters, letting the doc into A-10, over.” He swung the cell door wide.
Before stepping out of Clint’s way, Peters pointed at the inmate seated on the foam bunk against the back wall. “I’m going to be right here, so it would be unwise to try anything on the doc, all right? That clear? I don’t want to use force on you, but I will. We clear?”
Evie didn’t look at him. Her attention was fixed on her hair; she was dragging her fingers through it, picking at the tangles. “I understand. Thank you for being such a gentleman. Your mother must be very proud of you, Officer Peters.”
Peters hung in the doorway, trying to decide if he was being dicked with. Of course his mother was proud of him. Her son served on the frontlines of the war on crime.
Clint tapped him on the shoulder before he could figure it out. “Thanks, Don. I’ll take it from here.”
4
“Ms. Black? Evie? I’m Dr. Norcross, the psychiatric officer at this facility. Are you feeling calm enough to have a talk? It’s important that I get a sense of where your head is at, how you’re feeling, whether you understand what’s going on, what’s happening, if you have any questions or concerns.”
“Sure. Let’s chat. Roll the old conversational ball.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I feel pretty good. I don’t like the way this place smells, though. There’s a certain chemical aroma. I’m a fresh air person. A Nature Girl, you could say. I like a breeze. I like the sun. Earth under my feet. Cue the soaring violins.”
“I understand. Prison can feel very close. You understand that you’re in a prison, right? This is the Correctional Facility for Women in the town of Dooling. You haven’t been charged with any crime, let alone convicted, you’re just here for your own safety. Do you follow all that?”
“I do.” She lowered her chin to her chest and dropped her voice to a whisper. “But that guy, Officer Peters. You know about him, don’t you?”
“Know what about him?”
“He takes things that don’t belong to him.”
“What makes you say that? What sort of things?”
“I’m just rolling the conversational ball. I thought you wanted to do that, Dr. Norcross. Hey, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but aren’t you supposed to sit behind me, where I can’t see you?”
“No. That’s psychoanalysis. Let’s get back to—”
“The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is ‘What does a woman want?’ ”
“Freud, yes. He pioneered psychoanalysis. You’ve read about him?”
“I think most women, if you asked them, if they were truly honest, what they would say is, they want a nap. And possibly earrings that go with everything, which is impossible, of course. Anyhow, big sales today, Doc. Fire sales. In fact, I know of a trailer, it’s a little banged up—there’s a little hole in one wall, have to patch that—but I bet you could have the place for free. Now that’s a deal.”
“Are you hearing voices, Evie?”
“Not exactly. More like—signals.”
“What do the signals sound like?”
“Like humming.”
“Like a tune?”
“Like moths. You need special ears to hear it.”
“And I don’t have the right ears to hear the moths humming?”
“No, I’m afraid you don’t.”
“Do you remember hurting yourself in the police car? You hit your face against the safety grill. Why did you do that?”
“Yes, I remember. I did it because I wanted to go to prison. This prison.”
“That’s interesting. Why?”
“To see you.”
“That’s flattering.”
“But it gets you nowhere, you know. Flattery, I mean.”
“The sheriff said you knew her name. Was that because you’ve been arrested before? Try and remember. Because it would really help if we could find out a little more about your background. If there’s an arrest record, that could lead us to a relative, a friend. You could use an advocate, don’t you think, Evie?”
“The sheriff is your wife.”
“How did you know that?”
“Did you kiss her goodbye?”
“Beg your pardon?”
The woman who called herself Eve Black leaned forward, looking at him earnestly. “Kiss: an osculation requiring—hard to believe, I know—a hundred and forty-seven different muscles. Goodbye: a word of parting. Do you need any further elucidation?”
Clint was thrown. She was really, really disturbed, going in and out of coherence, as if her brain were in the neurological equivalent of an ophthalmologist’s chair, seeing the world through a series of flicking lenses. “No need of elucidation. If I answer your question, will you tell me something?”
“Deal.”
“Yes. I kissed her goodbye.”
“Oh, that’s sweet. You’re getting old, you know, not quite The Man anymore, I get that. Probably having some doubts now and then. ‘Do I still have it? Am I still a powerful ape?’ But you haven’t lost your desire for your wife. Lovely. And there are pills. ‘Ask your doctor if it’s right for you.’ I sympathize. Really. I can relate! If you think getting old is tough for men, let me tell you, it’s no picnic for women. Once your tits fall, you become pretty much invisible to fifty percent of the population.”
“My turn. How do you know my wife? How do you know me?”
“Those are the wrong questions. But I’m going to answer the right one for you. ‘Where was Lila last night?’ That’s the right question. And the answer is: not on Mountain Rest Road. Not in Dooling. She found out about you, Clint. And now she’s getting sleepy. Alas.”
“Found out about what? I have nothing to hide.”
“I think you believe that, which shows how well you’ve hidden it. Ask Lila.”
Clint rose. The cell was hot and he was sticky with sweat. This exchange had gone nothing at all like any introductory talk with an inmate in his entire career. She was schizophrenic—had to be, and some of them were very good at picking up cues and clues—but she was unnervingly quick in a way that was unlike any schizophrenic he had ever met.
And how could she know about Mountain Rest Road?
“You wouldn’t have happened to be on Mountain Rest Road last night, would you, Evie?”
“Could be.” She winked at him. “Could be.”
“Thank you, Evie. We’ll talk again soon, I’m sure.”
“Of course we will, and I look forward to it.” Through their conversation her focus on him had been unfaltering—again, nothing like any unmedicated schizophrenic he’d ever dealt with—but she now returned to pulling haphazardly at her hair. She drew down, grunting at a knot that came loose with an audible tearing sound. “Oh, Dr. Norcross—”
“Yes?”
“Your son’s been injured. I’m sorry.”