She takes a bite, and the sheer rapture on her face makes my eyes well.
“Were there Saskatoon berries in Rockton this year?” she asks. “I remember Tina’s jam. On Brian’s bread. That was heaven.”
“Tina made jam,” I say as I hand her the water pouch. “And Brian is still baking bread. You’ll get all you want tomorrow.”
“So Tina and Brian are still there,” she says. “What about—” She stops herself. “I’m sorry. You need to sleep.”
“Nah, Casey never sleeps,” Anders says. “You want to know who’s still in Rockton? Let’s see, there’s…”
*
Anders doesn’t list everyone. There are nearly two hundred people. A few months ago, I couldn’t have imagined a town that small. Now it feels huge, as I struggle to remember names. This is community policing, where every resident expects you to know their name. More importantly, I need to know them all because policing in Rockton isn’t like law enforcement anywhere else in the world.
Rockton is supposed to be a place of refuge for those in need, those whose very lives depend on escaping the world—escaping an abuser, escaping false charges, escaping an impossible situation or a stupidly naive mistake. The town is financed by also admitting white-collar criminals who’ve amassed a fortune and are willing to pay very well to lie low until they’re forgotten. Then there are those like me and Anders, on the run for something we did, something that does deserve retribution, but the council has decided our crimes aren’t the types we’re liable to re-commit and they are otherwise in need of our skills.
So that’s Rockton. Or that’s what it’s supposed to be. There’s a deeper ugly truth, the one that means they really need people like me and Anders. Modern Rockton, established as a haven by idealists in the sixties, is now run by investors who aren’t content to take a cut of profit from white-collar crime. They accept massive admission fees from actual criminals, giving Dalton false stories, which leaves him trying to uncover the real criminals to protect the real victims.
These criminals are exactly what Anders and I discuss once Nicole is asleep. She’s snoring softly, telling us she’s definitely out, and we slip into the next cavern, our voices lowered as we talk. We discuss the possibility that Nicole’s captor isn’t a settler or a hostile but a monster much closer to home.
Before she fell asleep, I’d asked her, as carefully as I could, if she could tell us anything about her captor. She said that the whole time she’d been in there, he’d covered his face. She knew only he was undeniably male. As for how she knew that … I know the answer. But I wasn’t making her say it.
“I want to say it’s not possible he’s from Rockton, but—” Will runs a hand over his hair. “Shit.”
“It wouldn’t be easy. Presumably he’s coming up at least once a week, likely twice, with food and water. It’d be a long hike in bad weather, but if he left Rockton in the early evening and got back in time for his work shift in the morning, no one would be the wiser. It’s not as if residents can’t sneak past the patrols.”
Rockton isn’t a walled city. They’ve tried that—it only makes people rebel. Residents aren’t prisoners. The rules against wandering into the forest are for their own good, and most people know enough to stay put.
“I’ll need a list of everyone who has been in Rockton since before Nicole disappeared,” I said. “I’ll cross-reference it against those who’ve been caught out at night, but really, we’re going to be looking at every able-bodied male.” Which encompasses most of the population. Less than twenty-five percent is female, and you don’t get into Rockton if you aren’t “able-bodied”—we just don’t have the resources.
“Anyone on Eric’s list who might be good for it?” Anders asks.
I wish it was a list. It’s a book filled with details he’s gathered on every resident he knows or suspects is in Rockton under false pretenses. Most of it is suspicion, but in Rockton, it’s guilty until proven innocent. It has to be.
We discuss a few possibilities. I don’t tell Anders what Dalton suspects them of. Anders knows we have criminals in Rockton. Hell, technically, he’s one of them. I’m one of them too, but I’m not in the book because Dalton alredy knew my crime when I arrived. I’ve convinced Dalton that Anders needs to know what we’re dealing with, but he’s never seen the book and doesn’t want to.
What I tell Anders is names only, and he gives me his thoughts on each. Two of them arrived after Nicole disappeared. We discuss the others.
“Personally, I like Mathias for it,” Anders says, leaning against the cave wall as we sit, side by side, blanket drawn over our legs.
“Mathias isn’t on my list.”
“He should be.”
“He isn’t even on Eric’s list.”
“He should be. Crazy butcher Frenchman should be on every list.”
“I like Mathias.”
“You like weird. Look at the company you keep.”
I bop my head against his shoulder. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”