“I would do anything for my wife and girls,” Barry said. “Anything.”
Clint allowed himself a long exhalation of relief. “Buddy, I was hoping you’d say that.”
3
Barry Holden did indeed have a shotgun. It wasn’t new, having been handed down through three generations of Holdens, but he had cleaned it and oiled it, and it looked lethal enough. He listened to Garth and Michaela with it laid across his thighs. Beside him, on an end table decorated with one of Clara Holden’s lace doilies, was an open box of fat red shells.
Talking turn and turn about, Michaela and Garth told the lawyer what Clint had told them: how Eve Black’s arrival roughly coincided with Aurora’s first reported victims; how she had killed two men with her bare hands; how she had allowed herself to be taken into custody without a struggle, saying it was what she wanted; how she had banged her face repeatedly into the protective mesh of Lila’s cruiser; how the bruises had healed with magical speed.
“Besides fixing me up, she knew things about me she couldn’t possibly have known,” Michaela said, “and they say she can control the rats. I know that’s hard to believe, but—”
Garth interrupted. “Another prisoner, Fitzroy, told us she used rats to get the assistant warden’s cell phone. And she does have a cell phone. I saw it.”
“There’s more,” Michaela said. “She claims to have killed Judge Silver. She claimed . . .”
She paused, reluctant to say it, but Clint had told them to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Remember that he may be grieving, Clint had said, but he’s still a lawyer, and a damned good one. He can smell a lie at forty yards, even upwind.
“She claimed she did it using moths. Because Silver was trying to bring in someone from out of town, and that’s not allowed.”
Michaela knew that a week ago, this was where Barry Holden would have decided they were either sharing a pernicious delusion or trying on the world’s worst and most stoned prank, and invited them to leave his house. But it wasn’t a week ago. Instead of telling them to get out, Barry handed his grandfather’s shotgun to Michaela. “Hold this.”
There was a laptop on the coffee table. Barry sat on the couch (also liberally decorated with his wife’s needlework) and began tapping away. After a moment, he looked up. “Bridger County police are reporting an accident on the Old Coughlin Road. One fatality. No name, but the vehicle was a Land Rover. Judge Silver drives a Land Rover.”
He regarded Michaela Coates. What they were telling him, essentially, was that the fate of every woman on planet Earth depended on what happened here in Dooling over the next few days. It was mad, but Warden Coates’s daughter, sitting there in Clara’s favorite bentwood rocker and looking at him earnestly, was the best argument that it was true. Possibly an irrefutable argument. A news report on CNN that morning had said that less than ten percent of the world’s women were estimated to still be awake on Aurora Day Five. Barry didn’t know about that, but he would have been willing to bet Grampa Holden’s shotgun that none of them looked like Michaela.
“She just . . . what? Kissed you? Like when the prince kissed Princess Aurora in the cartoon?”
“Yes,” said Michaela. “Like that. And she breathed down my throat. I think that’s what really did it—her breath.”
Barry switched his attention to Garth. “You saw this?”
“Yes. It was amazing. Mickey here looked like a vampire after a fresh transfusion.” And when he caught Michaela’s frowning stare: “Sorry, darling, maybe not the best metaphor.”
“That was actually a simile,” she said coldly.
Barry was still trying to get his mind around it. “And she says they’ll come for her? The cops? The townies? And that Frank Geary’s in charge?”
“Yes.” Michaela had left out everything Evie had said about the sleeping women having to make their own decision; even if true, that part was out of their hands.
“I know Geary,” Barry said. “I never defended him, but he’s been in District Court a couple of times. I remember a case where a woman complained that he threatened her for not keeping her Rottweiler on a leash. He has what you’d call anger issues.”
“Tell me about it,” Garth murmured.
Barry looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Never mind,” Garth said. “Not important.”
Barry took back his shotgun. “Okay, I’m in. For one thing, I’ve got nothing else to do, with Clara and the girls gone. For another . . . I want to see this mystery woman with my own eyes. What does Clint want from me?”
“He said you have a Winnebago,” Michaela said. “To go camping in with your wife and girls.”
Barry smiled. “Not a Winnebago, a Fiesta. Sucks a ton of gas, but it sleeps six. The girls squabble almost non-stop, but we had some good times in that old thing.” His eyes abruptly filled with tears. “Some very, very good times.”
4
Barry Holden’s Fleetwood Fiesta was parked in a small lot behind the old-fashioned granite block of a building where he kept his office. The RV was a monstrous zebra-striped thing. Barry sat behind the wheel while Michaela climbed into the passenger seat. They waited for Garth to reconnoiter the cop-shop. The Holden family’s heirloom shotgun lay on the floor between them.
“Does this have any chance at all, do you think?” Barry asked.
“I don’t know,” Michaela replied. “I hope so, but I really don’t know.”
“Well, it’s nuts, no doubt about that,” Barry said, “but it beats sitting home and thinking bad thoughts.”
“You have to see Evie Black to really understand. Speak to her. You have to . . .” She searched for the right word. “You have to experience her. She—”
Michaela’s cell phone rang. It was Garth.
“There’s a geezer with a beard sitting under an umbrella on one of the benches out front, but otherwise the coast is clear. No cruisers in the side lot, just a few personal vehicles. If we’re going to do this, I think we’d better hurry up. That RV is not what I’d call unobtrusive.”
“Coming now,” Michaela said. She ended the call.
The alley between Barry’s building and the one next to it was narrow—there couldn’t have been more than five inches of clearance for the lumbering Fleetwood on either side—but Barry threaded its length with the ease of long experience. He stopped at the mouth of the alley, but Main Street was deserted. It’s almost as if the men are gone, too, Michaela thought as Barry made a wide right turn and drove the two blocks to the Municipal Building.
He parked the Fleetwood in front, taking three spaces marked OFFICIAL BUSINESS ONLY, OTHERS WILL BE TOWED. They got out and Garth joined them. The man with the beard got up and ambled over, holding the umbrella over his head. The stem of a pipe poked up from the bib of his Oshkosh overalls. He held out his hand to Barry and said, “Hello there, Counselor.”