There’s a tsunami of hatred this morning, and even with two of us culling through it and reporting it back to the various abuse agencies, it takes a long, long time. Most of it’s fairly regular stuff—death threats. One finally makes her stop and roll her chair away from her laptop, hands coming away as if she’s touched something dead. She looks at me wordlessly, and I see something flame out inside her. A little bit of hope. A little bit of faith that the world could still be kind, even to us.
“They’re just words,” I tell her. “From small men who are brave on the other side of a keyboard and an Internet handle. But I know how you feel.”
“It’s awful,” she says in a voice that sounds more like a little girl than the adult she’s trying to be. She clears her throat and tries again. “These people are vile.”
“Yes,” I say in agreement, putting my hand on her shoulder. “They’ll never care whether or not you were hurt by what they said, or even if you read it; it was all about writing it for them. It’s natural to feel afraid and violated by all this. I feel that way all the time.”
“But?” My daughter knows there’s a but.
“But you have the power,” I tell her. “You can turn off this computer and walk away anytime. They’re pixels on a screen. They’re assholes who might be halfway around the world, or on the other side of the country, and even if they’re not, the odds are astronomically on your side that they’ll never do anything that doesn’t involve shouting at a computer screen. Okay?”
That seems to steady her. “Okay,” she says. “And . . . if they beat the odds?”
“Then that’s why you have me, and I have this.” I touch the shoulder holster. “I don’t like guns. I’m not a crusader. I wish guns were harder to get, and I could rely on a cattle prod and a baseball bat. But that’s not the world we live in, baby. So if you want to start learning to shoot, we’ll do that. And if you don’t, that’s good, too. I’d rather you didn’t, believe me, because your chances of getting shot are a hell of a lot better if you’re armed. I do this as much to draw fire away from you as I do to return it. Understand?”
She does, I can see that. For the first time, she sees the weapon I’m carrying as much as a danger as a shield. Good. It’s the hardest lesson for someone who’s been taught guns are the answer . . . that they’re only the answer to a pure, simple, direct set of problems: killing someone.
I never want her to have to do it. I don’t want to have to do it.
I get her laptop back online, and we’re both silently working when Connor appears in the doorway, yawning, still in his pajama pants. He has a wide, blackening bruise on his shoulder, but other than that, he seems fine. He blinks at us and tries to finger-comb his hair straighter. “You’re both up,” he says. “Why isn’t there breakfast?”
“Shut up,” Lanny says, but it’s a reflex. “Such a boy. Learn to make pancakes, not like it’s rocket science.”
He yawns and gives me a mournful look. “Mom.” I see he wants to be treated, today, like a child, to be coddled and pampered and made to feel safe. It’s the opposite of Lanny, who wants to face things head-on. And that’s fine, too. He’s younger, and it’s his choice. And hers, too.
I take a break from the torrential acid bath of hate and go whip up pancakes from a mix, add fresh pecans that I need to use up anyway, and we’re in the middle of what feels like a startlingly normal breakfast when there’s a decisive sort of knock on our disfigured front door.
I get up. Lanny has already put her fork down and half risen out of her chair, but I motion her down. Connor stops chewing and stares at me, and my mind is racing with the possibilities. Today, of all days, we face a whole new set of risks. It could be the mailman. It could be a guy with a shotgun ready to blow my face off the second he sees it. It could be someone’s left me a mutilated pet on the doorstep. There’s no way to tell without looking, and I get my tablet and try to boot it up, then remember that it’s dead. Battery’s drained. Damn technology.
“It’s okay,” I tell them, though there’s no way I can possibly know that. I go to the door and check the peephole, carefully, and see a tired-looking African American woman standing there. She looks familiar, but I have trouble placing her for a few seconds because the last time I saw her, it was a fleeting glimpse and she was wearing a police uniform.
It’s the cop who was with Graham last night, who handled the drunks while he talked to us.
I disarm and unlock, and she freezes a second as her eyes fix on the shoulder holster. “Yes?” I ask, neither inviting nor rejecting. Her dark-brown eyes move up to fix on mine, and she very carefully shows me she has nothing in her hands.
“My name’s Claremont,” she says.
“Officer Claremont. I remember you from last night.”
“Yeah,” she says. “My father lives on the other side of the lake. He says he met you and your daughter when you were out on a run.”
The old man, Ezekiel Claremont. Easy. I hesitate, then extend my hand, and we shake. She has a firm, dry, businesslike grip. Up close, in casual clothes, she has an elegant style to her, something not only in the drape of her clothes but in the cut of her hair, her perfectly shaped fingernails. Not what I would have expected from the Norton PD. “Can I come in?” she asks. “I want to help.”
Just like that. She keeps her gaze steady, and there’s something quiet and strong about the way she says it.
But I step outside and close the door behind me. “Sorry,” I tell her, “but I don’t know you. I don’t even know your first name.”
If she’s taken aback by my lack of warmth and courtesy, she doesn’t show it; she narrows her eyes just a bit, just for a second, and then smiles over it to say, “Kezia. Kez, for short.”
“Nice to meet you,” I tell her, which is empty politeness. I’m wondering why the hell she’s really here.
“My father wanted me to come check on you,” she says. “He heard about the trouble you were in. Not much a fan of the Norton PD, my pa.”
“Must make things awkward over Sunday dinners.”
“You have no idea.”
I gesture to the porch chairs, and she settles into the one that I realize, with a sharp, glancing sort of pain, Sam Cade has always taken. It hits me with an unwelcome weight that I miss the son of a bitch. No, I don’t. I miss someone who never existed in the first place, the same way my Mel never existed. The real Sam Cade is a stalker and a liar, at the very least.
“Pretty over on this side,” she says, scanning the view to the lake. I’m sure she’s also thinking, just as everyone else has, of how good a view I would have had of a body being dumped right out there. “His side’s a little more blocked by the trees. Cheaper, though. I keep trying to get him to move down the hill so he doesn’t have to climb that trail, but—”
“I’d love to make small talk, but my pancakes are getting cold,” I tell her. “What is it you want to know?”
She shakes her head just a little, gaze still fixed on the lake. “You know, you don’t make it easy to help you out. In the position you’re in, you might want to put a rein on that attitude. You’re going to need some friends.”
“This attitude keeps me alive. Thanks for stopping by.”
I start to get up again. She puts out a perfectly manicured hand to stop me and finally turns her gaze to lock on mine. “I think I might be able to help you find out who’s doing this to you,” she says. “Because we both know it’s somebody close. Somebody local. And somebody who’s got a reason.”
“Sam Cade has a reason.”
“I helped confirm his alibi, both times the girls went missing,” she says. “He is absolutely not the guy. They’ve already let him go.”
“Let him go?” I look at the paint slopped on my garage, the words sprayed on the brick in a red fury of anger. “Great. I guess that explains this.”
“I don’t think—”
“Look, Kez, thanks for trying, but you are not helping me at all if your point is to convince me Sam Cade isn’t a bad guy. He stalked me.”