There were few things he wanted to do less, but Frank agreed. He took Nadine Hicks’s bulked-up legs and her husband gripped her under her bulked-up armpits. They hoisted her and went out the front door, down the steps, and along the side of the house, carefully carrying the woman between them. The webbing crackled like Christmas paper.
“Just hold on there, Nadine,” Hicks told the white membrane that surrounded his wife’s face. “We’re going to get you set up good in the Adirondack. Get you some sun. I’m sure it filters through.”
“So who’s supposed to be in charge now?” Frank asked. “At the prison?”
“No one,” said Hicks. “Oh, I suppose Van Lampley could make a claim, if she’s still upright. She’s the senior officer.”
“The psychiatrist, Dr. Norcross, claims he’s the acting warden,” Frank said.
“Nonsense.”
They settled Mrs. Hicks in a bright yellow Adirondack chair on the stone patio. There was, of course, no sun. Not today. Just the same light rain. Instead of soaking in, the precipitation beaded on the surface of the cocoon, the way it would on the fabric of a waterproof tent. Hicks began to half-rock, half-drag over a stand-up umbrella. The umbrella’s base screeched across the stone. “Have to be careful, can’t apply sunblock with that stuff on her, and she burns very easily.”
“Norcross? The psychiatrist?”
Hicks chuckled. “Norcross is just a contractor. He doesn’t have any authority. He wasn’t appointed by anybody.”
This didn’t surprise Frank. He’d suspected that Norcross’s line of bullshit was just that—a line. It did piss him off, though. Lives were at stake. Plenty of them, but it was okay to think mostly of Nana, because she stood for all the rest. There was no selfishness in what he was doing when you looked at it that way; seen in that light, it was altruistic! Meanwhile, he needed to stay cool.
“What kind of a man is he? This shrink?”
Hicks got the umbrella situated and opened it over his wife. “There.” He took a few deep breaths. Sweat and rain had darkened his collar. “He’s smart, I’ll give him that. Too smart, actually. No business working in a prison. And think of this: he is awarded a full-time salary, almost the equal of my own, and yet we cannot afford an exterminator. This is politics as we know it in the twenty-first century, Officer Geary.”
“What do you mean when you say he has no business working in a prison?”
“Why didn’t he go into private practice? I’ve seen his records. He’s published. Got the right degrees. I’ve always figured there was something off about him, wanting to hang around with reprobates and drug addicts, but I couldn’t say what. If it’s a sex thing, he’s been extremely cautious. That’s your first idea when you think of a man who likes to work with female criminals. But I don’t think that’s it.”
“How would you deal with him? Is he reasonable?”
“Sure, he’s reasonable. A very reasonable man who also happens to be a politically correct softie. And that’s exactly why I hate to, as you put it, deal with him. We’re not a rehab facility, you know. Prison’s a storage center for people who won’t play by the rules and suck at cheating. A garbage can, when you come right down to it, and we’re paid to sit on the lid. Coates gets her jollies sparring with him, they’re pally, but he exhausts me. He’ll reason you right out of your shoes.” From his pocket Hicks withdrew a crumpled handkerchief. He used it to dab away some water beads from his wife’s shroud. “Big on eye contact. Makes you think he thinks you’re nuts.”
Frank thanked Lawrence Hicks for his help and went back around to the front where he’d parked. What was Norcross thinking? What reason would he have to keep them from seeing the woman? Why wouldn’t he trust them? The facts only seemed to support one conclusion, and it was an ugly one: for some reason, the doctor was working on the woman’s behalf.
Hicks came jogging after him. “Mr. Geary! Officer!”
“What is it?”
The assistant warden’s expression was tight. “Listen, that woman—” He rubbed his hands together. The light rain stained the shoulders of his wrinkled suit jacket. “If you do talk to her, to Eve Black, I don’t want you to give her the impression that I care about getting my phone back, all right? She can keep it. I’ll use my wife’s if I need to make any calls.”
8
When Jared hurried out to the rear of the demo house where he and Mary were currently living (if you can call this living, he thought), Mary was leaning against the stake fence with her head in her arms. Fine white threads were spinning out of her hair.
He sprinted to her, almost tripping over the neat-as-pie doghouse (a match for the demo, right down to the miniature blue window frames), grabbed her, shook her, then pinched both earlobes, as she’d told him to do if she started to drift away. She said she’d read on the Internet that it was the quickest way to wake someone up when they were dozing off. Of course there were all sorts of stay-awake remedies on the Internet now, as many as there had once been go-to-sleep strategies.
It worked. Her eyes came back into focus. The strands of white webbing detached themselves from her and lazed upward, disappearing as they went.
“Whoa,” she said, touching her ears and trying on a smile. “Thought I was getting my ears pierced again. There’s a big purple blotch floating over your face, Jere.”
“You were probably looking into the sun.” He took her arm. “Come on. We have to hurry.”
“Why?”
Jared didn’t answer. If his dad was paranoid, then it was catching. In the living room, with its perfectly matching but somehow sterile items of furniture—even the pictures on the wall matched—he paused to look out the window at the sheriff’s department cruiser parked six or seven houses down the street. As he watched, two officers emerged from one of the houses. His mom had invited all her deputies and their wives to dinner at one time or another over the years, and Jared knew most of them. Those two were Rangle and Barrows. Given that all the houses except for this one were empty of furniture, the cops would probably just give them a lick and a promise. They’d be here in no time.
“Jared, stop pulling!”
They had stashed Platinum, Molly, Mrs. Ransom, and Lila in the master bedroom. Mary had wanted to leave them on the ground floor, said it wasn’t as if they were going to care about the décor, or anything. Jared had insisted, thank God, but even the second floor wasn’t enough. Because the demo house was furnished, Rangle and Barrows might decide to really search it.
He got Mary up the stairs, she muttering complaints the whole way. From the bedroom he grabbed the basket containing Platinum’s swathed little body and rushed to pull down the ringbolt in the hallway ceiling. The ladder to the attic descended with a bang. It would have clocked Mary on the head if he hadn’t pulled her out of the way. Jared climbed up, shoved the baby’s basket up over the edge onto the attic floor, and slid back down. Ignoring her questions, he ran to the end of the hall and looked out. The cruiser was creeping along the curb. Only four houses away now. No, three.