“I am woman, hear me roar,” Evie said, and once more laughed: a merry sound, like shaken bells. She turned her attention to Garth. “As for you, Dr. Flickinger, a word of friendly advice. You need to get off the dope, and very soon. You’ve had one warning from your cardiologist already. There won’t be another. Keep on smoking those crystals, and your cataclysmic heart attack will come in . . .” She closed her eyes like a carnival psychic, then popped them open. “In about eight months. Nine, maybe. Most likely while watching porn with your pants around your ankles and a squeeze-bottle of Lubriderm near at hand. Still shy of your fifty-third birthday.”
“Worse ways,” Garth said, but his voice was faint.
“Of course, that’s if you’re lucky. If you hang around Michaela and Clint here, and try to defend poor defenseless me and the rest of the women here, you’re likely to die a lot sooner.”
“You have the most symmetrical face I have ever seen.” Garth paused and cleared his throat. “Can you stop saying scary things now?”
Apparently Evie couldn’t. “It’s a shame that your daughter is hydrocephalic and must live her life in an institution, but that is no excuse for the damage you are inflicting on a formerly fine body and mind.”
The officers were goggling at her. Clint had hoped for something that would prove Evie’s otherworldliness, but this was beyond his wildest expectations. As if he had spoken this aloud, Evie looked at him . . . and winked.
“How do you know about Cathy?” Garth asked. “How can you?”
Looking at Michaela, Evie said, “I have agents among the creatures of the world. They tell me everything. They help me. It’s like in Cinderella, but different. For one thing, I like them better as rats than as coachmen.”
“Evie . . . Ms. Black . . . are you responsible for the sleeping women? And if so, is it possible you can wake them up again?”
“Clint, are you sure this is smart?” Rand asked. “Letting this lady have a jailhouse interview? I don’t think Warden Coates would—”
Jeanette Sorley chose this moment to stumble down the hall, holding up her brown top so it made a makeshift pouch. “Who wants peas?” she cried. “Who wants fresh peas?”
Evie, meanwhile, seemed to have lost the thread. Her hands were gripping the prison bars hard enough to turn her knuckles white.
“Evie?” asked Clint. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. And while I appreciate your need for haste, Clint, I’m multi-tasking this afternoon. You need to wait while I take care of something.” Then, to herself rather than the half a dozen people outside her cell: “I’m sorry to do this, but he wouldn’t have had long, anyway.” A pause. “And he misses his cat.”
6
Judge Silver had shuffled most of the way to the Olympia’s parking lot before Frank caught up with him. Gems of drizzle shone on the slumped shoulders of the old fellow’s topcoat.
Silver turned at his approach—nothing wrong with his ears, it seemed—and gave him a sweet smile. “I want to thank you again for Cocoa,” he said.
“That’s all right,” he said. “Just doing my job.”
“Yes, but you did it with real compassion. That made it easier for me.”
“I’m glad. Judge, it seemed to me that you had an idea in there. Would you like to share it with me?”
Judge Silver considered. “May I speak frankly?”
The other man smiled. “Since my name is Frank, I’d expect nothing less.”
Silver did not smile back. “All right. You’re a fine man, and I’m glad you’ve stepped up to the plate since Deputy Coombs is . . . shall we say hors de combat . . . and it’s clear none of the other officers want the responsibility, but you have no background in law enforcement, and this is a delicate situation. Extremely delicate. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” Frank said. “On all points.”
“I’m worried about a blow-up. A posse that gets out of control and turns into a mob. I’ve seen that happen, back during one of the uglier coal strikes in the seventies, and it was not a pretty thing. Buildings were burned, there was a dynamite explosion, men were killed.”
“You have an alternative?”
“I might. I—get away, dammit!” The judge waved one arthritic hand at the moth fluttering around his head. It flew away and landed on a car aerial, slowly flexing its wings in the fine drizzle. “Those things are everywhere lately.”
“Uh-huh. Now what were you saying?”
“There’s a man named Harry Rhinegold in Coughlin. Ex-FBI, retired there two years ago. Fine man, fine record, several Bureau commendations—I’ve seen them on the wall in his study. I’m thinking I might talk to him, and see if he’ll sign on.”
“As what? A deputy?”
“As an advisor,” the judge said, and took a breath that rattled in his throat. “And, possibly, as a negotiator.”
“A hostage negotiator, you mean.”
“Yes.”
Frank’s first impulse, childish but strong, was to tell the judge no way, he was in charge. Except, technically speaking, he wasn’t. Terry Coombs was, and it was always possible Terry would show up, hungover but sober, and want to take the reins. Also, could he, Frank, stop the judge, short of physical restraint? He could not. Although Silver was too much of a gentleman to say it (unless he absolutely had to, of course), he was an officer of the court, and as such far outranked a self-appointed lawman whose specialties were catching stray dogs and doing ads for Adopt-A-Pet on the Public Access channel. There was one more consideration, and it was the most important of all: hostage negotiation was actually not a bad idea. Dooling Correctional was like a fortified castle. Did it matter who pried the woman out, as long as the job got done? As long as she could be questioned? Coerced, if necessary, should they conclude that she actually might be able to stop the Aurora?
Meanwhile, the judge was looking at him, shaggy eyebrows raised.
“Do it,” Frank said. “I’ll tell Terry. If this Rhinegold agrees, we can have a skull session either here or at the station tonight.”
“So you won’t . . .” The judge cleared his throat. “You won’t take any immediate steps?”
“For this afternoon and tonight, I’ll just keep a car posted near the prison.” Frank paused. “Beyond that, I can’t promise, and even that depends on Norcross not trying anything funny.”
“I hardly think—”
“But I do.” Frank gravely tapped a finger against the hollow of his temple, as if to indicate thought processes hard at work. “Position I’m in right now, I have to. He thinks he’s smart, and guys like that can be a problem. To others, and to themselves. Looking at it that way, your trip to Coughlin is a mission of mercy. So drive carefully, Judge.”
“At my age, I always do,” Judge Silver said. His entry into the Land Rover was slow and painful to watch. Frank was on the verge of going to help him when Silver finally made it behind the wheel and slammed the door. The engine roared to life, Silver gunning it thoughtlessly, and then the lights came on, cutting cones through the drizzle.
Ex-FBI, and in Coughlin, Frank marveled. Wonders never ceased. Maybe he could call the Bureau and get an emergency federal order enjoining Norcross to let the woman go. Unlikely, with the government in an uproar, but not out of the question. If Norcross defied them then, no one could blame them for forcing the issue.
He went back inside to give the remaining deputies their orders. He’d already decided to send Barrows and Rangle to relieve Peters and that Blass kid. He and Pete Ordway could start making a list of guys, responsible ones, who might form a posse, should a posse be needed. No need to go back to the station, where Terry might show up; they could do it right here at the diner.