Terry couldn’t fathom why Lila’s husband, who had always seemed down-to-earth, was being such a pain in the ass. “There’s no one else right now, Clint. Judge Wainer and Judge Lewis are both asleep. Just our luck to’ve had a couple of female judges on the county circuit.”
“All right, so go ahead and call Charleston and find out who they’ve appointed as interim,” Clint said. As if they’d come to a happy compromise, as if he’d given even a single damn inch. “But why bother? Eve Black is now asleep like all the rest.”
Hearing that put a lead ball in Terry’s stomach. He should have known better than to believe a bunch of loose talk. Might as well try to question his own wife, a mummy in the basement dark, sprawled atop the dingy quilt on their old couch.
“She went down yesterday afternoon,” Norcross continued. “We’ve only got a few inmates that are still awake.”
“Then why won’t he let us see her?” Frank asked. He had been standing silently throughout the exchange.
It was a good question. Terry jabbed the call button and asked it.
“Look, here’s what we’ll do,” said Clint. “I’ll send you a picture on your cell phone. But I can’t let anyone in. That’s lockdown protocol. I’ve got the warden’s book open right here in front of me. I’ll read you what it says. ‘State authorities must enjoin the facility and may remove the Lockdown Order at their discretion.’ State authorities.”
“But—”
“Don’t but me, Terry, I didn’t write it. Those are the regulations. Since Hicks walked off on Friday morning, I’m the only administrative officer this prison’s got, and protocol is all I have to go on.”
“But—” He was starting to sound like a two-cycle engine: but-but-but-but.
“I had to put us on lockdown. I had no choice. You’ve seen the same news I’ve seen. There’re people going around torching women in their cocoons. I think you’ll agree that my population would be a prime target for that breed of vigilante.”
“Oh, come on.” Frank made a hissing noise and shook his head. They hadn’t been able to find a uniform shirt large enough to button across his chest, so Frank wore it open to his undershirt. “Sounds like a bunch of bureaucratic gobblydegook to me. You’re the acting sheriff, Terry. That’s gotta trump a doctor, especially a shrink.”
Terry held up a hand to Frank. “I get all that, Clint. I understand your concern. But you know me, all right? I’ve worked with Lila for more than a decade. Since before she was sheriff. You’ve eaten dinner at my house and I’ve eaten dinner at yours. I’m not going to do anything to any of those women, so give me a break.”
“I’m trying—”
“You would not believe some of the garbage I’ve had to shovel up around town over the weekend. Some lady left her stove on and burned down half of Greely Street. A hundred acres of woods south of town are torched. I got a dead high school athlete who tried to rape a sleeper. I got a guy with his head smashed in by a blender. I mean, this is stupid. Let’s put aside the rulebook. I’m acting sheriff. We’re friends. Let me see she’s sleeping like the others, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
The security kiosk on the opposite side of the fence, where an officer ought to have been stationed, was empty. Beyond it, across the parking lot and on the opposite side of the second fence, the prison hunched its gray shoulders. There was no movement to be seen through the bulletproof glass of the front doors, no prisoners taking laps on the track or working in the garden plot. Terry thought of amusement parks in the late fall, the ramshackle appearance they took on when the rides stopped spinning and there were no kids walking around eating ice cream and laughing. Diana, his daughter, was grown now, but he’d taken her on countless amusement park trips when she was younger. Those had been fine times.
Christ, he could use a nip. Good thing Frank kept his cool flask handy.
“Check your phone, Terry,” came Clint’s voice through the intercom speaker.
The train whistle that was Terry’s ringtone went off. He took his cell phone from his pocket and looked at the photograph that Clint had messaged him.
A woman in a red top lay on a cell cot. There was an ID number above her breast pocket. Beside the ID number an ID card had been placed. On the card was a photograph of a woman with long black hair, tan skin, and a wide, white smile. The name of the woman was listed as “Eve Black” and her ID number matched the number on the uniform shirt. A cocoon had blotted out her face.
Terry handed the phone to Frank so he could see the picture. “What do you think? Do we call it good?”
It occurred to Terry, that he—the acting sheriff—was fishing for a direction from his new deputy, when it was supposed to be the other way around.
Frank studied the picture and said, “This doesn’t prove jack shit. Norcross could put one on any sleeping woman and add Black’s ID.” Frank returned the phone to Terry. “It doesn’t make any sense, refusing to let us in. You’re the law, Terry, and he’s a goddam prison psychiatrist. He is smoother than slippery elm, I’ll give him that, but it smells. I think it’s a stall game.”
Frank was right, of course; the picture didn’t prove anything. Why not allow them in to at least see the woman in the flesh, sleeping or not? The world was on the verge of losing half its population. What did some warden’s rulebook matter?
“Why stall, though?”
“I don’t know.” Frank took out the flat flask and offered it. Terry thanked him, took a glorious swig of the whiskey, and offered the flask back. Frank shook his head. “Keep it handy.”
Terry pocketed the flask and thumbed the intercom. “I got to see her, Clint. Let me in, let me see, and we can all get on with our day. People are talking about her. I need to put the talk to rest. If I don’t, we might have a problem I can’t control.”
4
From his seat in the Booth, Clint observed the two men on the main monitor’s feed. The door to the Booth was open, as it never would have been under normal conditions, and Officer Tig Murphy was leaning in. Officers Quigley and Wettermore were just outside, also listening. Scott Hughes, the only other officer they had left, was taking a nap in an empty cell. A couple of hours after she’d shot Ree Dempster, Van Lampley had clocked out—Clint hadn’t had the heart to ask her to stay. (“Good luck, Doc,” she’d said, sticking her head in the door of his office, out of uniform and in her street clothes, eyes bloodshot from tiredness. Clint had wished her the same. She hadn’t thanked him.) If she wasn’t asleep by now, he doubted she would have been of much use, anyway.