GEORGE WAS GASPING FOR AIR, as if he’d run a four-minute mile. He leaned against the wall, hands shaking. This had to be done, and he knew God would forgive him. It was right there in Isaiah 43:25: I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sisn no more.
But there was a difference between the righteous anger that had accompanied him on his long drive and the actual feeling of the pistol recoiling in his hand when he shot. And even though he knew it was ridiculous, the recoil seemed harder when his bullet struck flesh versus when it only struck plaster.
When he looked down, his jeans were spattered with blood.
Well, he wasn’t the one who’d spilled it first.
There was no way anyone could claim that he didn’t have a moral high ground. He couldn’t undo what had been done to Lil. But he could have retribution. He could teach them the lesson he had not been able to teach her: life is something only God should give and take.
George looked down again at the pistol in his hand.
He had forgotten what it was like to watch someone die. In Bosnia, that rapist who struck his head on the curb had grabbed at George’s arm and stared into his eyes as if there were a cord stretched between them, and as long as he didn’t blink, he would be able to stay in this world.
It had been the same when he opened fire at the clinic and struck the receptionist—he had seen her eyes the moment they went dark, like a candle at the end of its wick. The second woman he shot, well, that was an accident. He hadn’t even noticed her when he walked inside. He had only looked at the front desk and what was beyond it. But when she started yelling, he had to shut her up. He had to. His body had just taken over.
George told himself this was no different from being a soldier. In war, killing wasn’t murder, it was a mission. Today he fought for the army of God. Angels weren’t always messengers. They could destroy a city with a twitch of the hand. Sometimes violence was necessary to remind the fallen of God’s power. If people didn’t lose His grace every now and then, they wouldn’t realize how lucky they were when they had it.
Still, George wondered if the angels who had flattened Sodom and Gomorrah, or the one who had killed Sennacherib’s army, had trouble sleeping at night. He wondered if they saw the faces of the dead everywhere.
When he’d shot the woman in the waiting room, she had stepped forward like a sacrifice.
I am doing this for you, he thought, catching his daughter’s name between his teeth as he wrenched himself forward.
I am doing this for you.
—
WHEN BETH WAS LITTLE, she would throw couch pillows on the floor and pretend the world was lava, and she had to jump from island to island. Now that she was older, the world was still a boiling soup of injustice, and Beth was just trying to get through it as best she could.
She had never felt so alone in her life, but that was her own fault.
She thought about how, when she wrapped it in the towel, it had a soft, slight weight. It was the first time she had ever thought of it as something real, instead of abstract.
When Beth closed her eyes she could still see the blue translucence of its skin. The road map of circulation. The shadows of its organs. Her pulse began to race, and a moment later Jayla, the nurse, came into the room. She pushed a button on a monitor.
“Is my father back?” Beth asked.
Jayla shook her head. When Beth had first come in, Jayla had held her hand, stroked her brow. There seemed to be something between them now, and Beth bit her lower lip. Even when she wasn’t trying, she seemed to screw things up.
Just then two policemen filled the doorframe.
“Nathan?” Jayla swayed toward one of the cops, a question caught between them.
He shook his head the tiniest bit, and then turned. “You’re Beth?”
She drew her knees to her chest, afraid to look at him.
“You’re being charged with homicide, for the killing of an unborn child.”
Beth had already felt the bottom drop out of her world. It was a shock to realize that had been a false landing, that she had further to fall. She tried to put together the pieces, but they didn’t fit. She was in a hospital. She had lost so much blood. She had almost died. The only people who even knew she had been pregnant were medical personnel.
She turned to Jayla, shocked. “You called the police,” she said.
“What was I supposed to do?” she exploded. “You claimed you weren’t pregnant, but you had so much hCG in your blood that couldn’t be true unless you’d just delivered … so there was a chance a newborn was out there somewhere.”
“What about patient confidentiality?” Beth said.
“HIPAA doesn’t matter if a life is in danger,” Jayla answered. Her eyes suddenly swam with tears.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Nathan said. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”
The second policeman stepped forward and handcuffed Beth’s right arm to the rail of the hospital bed.
—
HELP.
Daddy, help.
Wren must have written fifty times to her father, but he wasn’t answering.
She knew he would save her. He always did. There was the birthday party at the bowling alley when her hand was about to be crushed between two balls, and he pretty much leaped over a table, a metal divider, and a bachelorette party to stick his own hand in the gap. There was the month she was certain there was an alien living in her bedroom closet, when he diligently slept on the floor beside her bed. There was the banana bike race she had competed in at age eight, when her brakes failed and she was careening down a hill into a street with traffic. Somehow her father had caught up and plucked her off the seat with one arm a hot second before it became a pretzel.
Dad reflexes, he called it.
She just thought it was love.
Help, Wren wrote again.
—
ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES after his impromptu birthday party, Hugh was called to Chief Monroe’s office for actual business. He leaned back, already knowing where this conversation was going. “I’ve got to leave for lunch in fifteen minutes,” the chief said. “With Harry Van Geld.”
Hugh raised his brows, playing dumb. “The selectman?”
“Yeah. I understand his kid was picked up last night? What can you tell me?”
“Well,” Hugh said. “He’s an asshole, for one.”
“That’s not going to help me explain to his father why he was written up.”
“DUI,” Hugh said. “But he refused to blow.”
“How come he was stopped?”
“He took the corner too fast and hit the curb. It was two A.M. Kept saying his dad was going to have my job. I didn’t even know who the hell he was, at first, until I put two and two together.”
The chief steepled his hands on the desk. “So we could amend the charge to reckless operation, if we don’t have enough for a DUI?”
Hugh grimaced. “If you want to go that route.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He was drunk, Chief.” Hugh shrugged. “He reeked of alcohol. And he’s got a reputation.”
He felt his phone buzz in his pocket, and silenced it with the push of a button.
“What about video?”
Hugh shook his head. “It’s been down in the cruiser for a week. Still trying to get it fixed.”
“So no breath test, no video, and we know that Van Geld is a dickhead who’s going to be pissed if we charge his kid with a DUI.” He frowned at Hugh. “What.”
“What what?”
“What’s the look for? You’re acting like I just said I’m going to drown your puppy. If the kid had blown a 3.0, that would be one thing. But he didn’t, and you don’t have a BAC. He might have been drunk. He definitely was reckless. Consider it erring on the side of caution. We don’t need heat from the select board. It’s not worth it. Do me a solid here, Hugh. Amend it before the arraignment.”
“Because he didn’t kill anyone last night?” Hugh asked. “How about tomorrow?”
His phone vibrated again.
Chief Monroe stood up and grabbed his sports jacket. “Consider yourself lucky that you don’t have to have lunch with his father.”