Lila did sleep, but woke shortly after five, with the coming day just a sour line of light on the eastern horizon. She got up and used the chamber pot. (Running water had come to Dooling, but it had not yet reached the house on St. George. “A week or two, perhaps,” Magda assured them.) Lila considered going back to bed, but knew she would only toss and turn and think about how Tiffany—ashy gray at the end—had lost consciousness for the final time with her newborn baby still in her arms. Andrew Jones, whose only legacy would be a stapled-together booklet of handwritten pages.
She dressed, and left the house. She had no particular destination in mind, but wasn’t entirely surprised when she saw the shattered hulk of the Municipal Building ahead of her; she had spent most of her adult life working there. It was a kind of magnetic north, even though there was nothing there now, really, to see. A fire of some sort had done the damage—started by a lightning strike, maybe, or faulty wiring. The side of the building that had contained Lila’s office was blackened rubble, while years of weather had swept through the broken walls and windows and done its work on the other half, making the drywall soft for mold, blowing in debris that had gathered in layers across the floors.
So it surprised Lila to see someone sitting on the granite steps. The steps were about all the old building had going for it anymore.
As she drew closer, the figure stood and approached her.
“Lila?” Although full of uncertainty and thick with recently shed tears, the voice was familiar. “Lila, is it you?”
New women appeared only rarely now, and if this was to be the last, there could be no better. Lila ran to her, embraced her, kissed her on both cheeks. “Linny! Oh God, it’s so good to see you!”
Linny Mars hugged her back with panicky force, then held her away so she could look at Lila’s face. Making sure. Lila understood perfectly and remained still. But Linny was smiling, and the tears on her cheeks were good ones. It felt to Lila as if some divine scale had been balanced—Tiffany’s departure on one side, Linny’s arrival on the other.
“How long have you been sitting there?” Lila asked at last.
“I don’t know,” said Linny. “An hour, maybe two. I saw the moon go down. I . . . I didn’t know where else to go. I was in the office, looking at my laptop, and then . . . how did I get here? Where is here?”
“It’s complicated,” Lila replied, and as she led Linny back to the steps, it occurred to her that this was a thing women said often, men almost never. “In a sense, you’re still in the office, only in one of the cocoons. Or at least, that’s what we think.”
“Are we dead? Ghosts? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. This is a real place.” Lila hadn’t been completely sure of this at first, but now she was. Familiarity might or might not breed contempt, but it certainly bred belief.
“How long have you been here?”
“At least eight months. Maybe more. Time moves faster on this side of—well, whatever it is that we’re on. I’d guess that over there—where you’ve come from—it’s not even been a full week since Aurora started, right?”
“Five days. I think.” Linny sat back down.
Lila felt like a woman who has been long abroad, and was eager for news of home. “Tell me what’s happening in Dooling.”
Linny squinted at Lila and then gestured at the street. “But this is Dooling, isn’t it? Only it looks kind of cracked up.”
“We’re working on that,” Lila said. “Tell me what was going on when you left. Have you heard from Clint? Do you know anything about Jared?” That was unlikely, but she had to ask.
“I can’t tell you much,” Linny said, “because the last two days all I could think about was staying awake. I kept taking those drugs in the evidence room, the ones from the Griner brothers bust, but by the end they were hardly working at all. And there was weird stuff. People coming and going. Yelling. Somebody new in charge. I think his name was Dave.”
“Dave who?” It was all Lila could do to keep from shaking her dispatcher.
Linny frowned down at her hands, concentrating, trying to remember.
“Not Dave,” she said at last. “Frank. A big guy. He was wearing a uniform, not a cop’s uniform, but then he changed it for a cop’s uniform. Frank Gearhart, maybe?”
“Do you mean Frank Geary? The animal control officer?”
“Yes,” Linny said. “Geary, that’s right. Boy, he’s intense. A man on a mission.”
Lila didn’t know what to make of the Geary news. She remembered interviewing him for the job that had gone to Dan Treat. Geary had been impressive in person—quick, confident—but his record as an animal control officer had troubled her. He’d been way too free with citations, and received too many complaints.
“What about Terry? He’s the senior officer, he should have taken my place.”
“Drunk,” Linny said. “A couple of the other deputies were laughing about it.”
“What do you—”
Linny raised her hand to stop her. “But then right before I fell asleep, some men came in and said Terry wanted the guns from the armament room because of a woman up at the prison. The one who talked to me was that public defender guy, the one you say reminds you of Will Gardner on The Good Wife.”
“Barry Holden?” Lila didn’t get it. The woman up at the prison was undoubtedly Evie Black, and Barry had helped Lila get Evie in a cell at Correctional, but why would he—
“Yes, him. And some others were with him. One was a woman. Warden Coates’s daughter, I think.”
“That can’t be,” Lila said. “She works in DC.”
“Well, maybe it was someone else. By then it was like I was in a deep fog. But I remember Don Peters, because of how he tried to feel me up on New Year’s Eve last year at the Squeaky Wheel.”
“Peters from the prison? He was with Barry?”
“No, Peters came after. He was furious when he found out some of the guns were gone. ‘They got all of the good ones,’ he said, I remember that, and there was a kid with him and that kid said . . . he said . . .” Linny looked at Lila with enormous eyes. “He said, ‘What if they’re taking them to Norcross, up at the prison? How will we get the bitch out then?’?”
In her mind Lila pictured a tug-of-war rope, with Evie Black as the knot in the middle that would mean victory for one side or the other.
“What else do you remember? Think, Linny, this is important!” Although what could she, Lila, do about it, even if it was?
“Nothing,” Linny said. “After Peters and the young guy went running out, I fell asleep. And woke up here.” She looked around doubtfully, still not sure that there was a here. “Lila?”
“Mmm?”
“Is there anything to eat? I guess I really must not be dead, because I’m starving.”
“Sure,” Lila said, helping the other woman to her feet. “Scrambled eggs and toast, how does that sound?”