That was why Johnny Lee had come home to Dooling, where he had been born. Now, in his ideally located apartment—right around the corner from the liquor store—he was in the process of drinking himself to death. Each month, a check from UES arrived via Federal Express. A woman Terry knew at the bank told him that the notation on the stub was always the same: FEES. Whatever his FEES amounted to wasn’t a fortune, as the crummy apartment proved, but Kronsky managed on it. The whole story was familiar to Terry because hardly a month passed that the police weren’t called out to the man’s apartment by a neighbor who had heard breaking glass—a rock or a brick thrown through one of Kronsky’s windows, undoubtedly by union spooks. Johnny Lee never called himself. He had let it be known that he was not overly concerned—J. L. Kronsky didn’t give Shit One about the union.
One afternoon not long before the Aurora outbreak, when Terry had been partnered with Lila in Unit One, the conversation had turned to Kronsky. She said, “Eventually some disaffected miner—probably a relative of one of the guys Kronsky got killed—is going to blow his head off, and the miserable son of a bitch will probably be glad to go.”
8
“There’s a situation at the prison,” Terry said.
“There’s a situation everywhere, Mister Man.” Kronsky had a beaten face, pouched and haggard, and dark eyes.
“Forget everywhere,” Frank said. “We’re here.”
“I don’t give a tin shit where you are,” Johnny Lee said, and polished off the pint.
“We might need to blow something up,” Terry said.
Barry Holden and his station-robbing friends had taken a lot of firepower, but had missed the Griner brothers’ bump of C4. “You know how to work with plastic, don’t you?”
“Could be I do,” Kronsky said. “What’s in it for me, Mister Man?”
Terry calculated. “I tell you what. Pudge Marone from the Squeak is with us, and I think he’ll let you run an endless tab for the rest of your life.” Which Terry guessed wouldn’t be long.
“Hm,” Johnny Lee said.
“And of course, it’s also a chance to do your town a great service.”
“Dooling can go fuck itself,” Johnny Lee Kronsky said, “but still—why not? Just why the fuck not?”
That gave them twenty.
9
Dooling Correctional did not have guard towers. It had a flat tarpaper roof, piped with vents, ducts, and exhaust stems. There wasn’t much in the way of cover beyond a half-foot of brick edging. After assessing this roof, Willy Burke told Clint he liked the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree perspective of the entire perimeter, but he liked his balls even more. “Nothing up here that could stop a bullet, see. How about that shed there?” The old man pointed down below.
Although labeled EQUIPMENT SHED on the prison blueprints, it was your basic catch-all, containing the riding lawnmower that inmates (trustworthy ones) used to groom the softball field, plus gardening tools, sports equipment, and stacks of moldering newspapers and magazines bound with twine. Most importantly, it was built of cement blocks.
They had a closer look. Clint dragged a chair out behind the shed and Willy had a seat there beneath the overhang of the shed’s roof.
From this position, a man would be sheltered from the view of anyone at the fence, but would still be visible at either end of a firing line that stretched between the shed and the prison. If they’re just on one side, I should be all right,” said Willy. “I’ll see em from the corner of my eye and take cover.”
“Both sides at the same time?” Clint asked.
“If they do that, I’ll be for it.”
“You need help. Backup.”
“When you say that, Doc, it makes me wish I’d done more churchin in the days of my youth.”
The old fellow regarded him amiably. Upon arriving at the prison, the only explanation that he had required of Clint was a further assurance that the stand they were making was what Lila would have wanted. Clint had readily given it to Willy, although at this stage he was no longer sure what Lila would have wanted. It seemed like Lila had been gone for years.
Clint tried to reflect the same amiability—a bit of lighthearted savoir faire in the face of the enemy—but what remained of his sense of humor seemed to have fallen out of the back of Barry Holden’s RV along with Gerda Holden and Garth Flickinger. “You were in Vietnam, weren’t you, Willy?”
Willy held up his left hand. The meat of his palm was gouged with scar tissue. “As it happens, a few bits of me are still there.”
“How did it feel?” Clint asked. “When you were there? You must have lost friends.”
“Oh, yes,” Willy said. “I lost friends. As to how I felt, mostly just scared. Confused. All the time. Is that how you feel right now?”
“It is,” Clint admitted. “I never trained for this.”
They stood there in the milky afternoon light. Clint wondered if Willy sensed what Clint was really feeling—some fear and confusion, that was true, but also excitement. A certain euphoria infused the preparations, the prospect of pouring the frustration and dismay and loss and impossibility of everything into action. Clint could observe it happening to himself, a rush of aggressive adrenalin that was as old as apes.
He told himself he shouldn’t be thinking that way, and maybe not, but it felt good. It was as if some guy who looked exactly like him, driving a coupe with the top down, had pulled up beside the old Clint at a stoplight, nodded once in recognition, then, at the flip of the green, his doppelganger had planted the accelerator, and the old Clint was watching him roar off. The new Clint had to hurry, because he was on a mission, and being on a mission was good.
While they were making their way to the rear of the prison, Willy told him about the moths and the fairy footprints he’d seen near Truman Mayweather’s trailer. Millions of moths, it seemed, coating the branches of trees, rolling above the canopy of the woods in swarms. “Was it from her?” Like everyone else, Willy had heard the rumors. “That woman you got?”
“Yes,” Clint said. “And that’s not even the half of it.”
Willy said he didn’t doubt it.
They dragged out a second chair and issued an auto to Billy Wettermore. It had been converted (legally or not Clint didn’t know, nor did he care) to full auto. That put a man on each end of the shed. It wasn’t perfect, just the best they could do.
10
Behind the front desk at the sheriff’s station, the body of Linny Mars lay cocooned on the floor with her laptop beside her and still broadcasting that Vine of the falling London Eye. It appeared to Terry that she had slid out of her chair when she finally drifted off to sleep. She was in a heap, partly blocking the hallway that led to the official areas of the facility.
Kronsky stepped over her and walked down the hallway, in search of the evidence locker. Terry didn’t like that. He called after him, “Hey, you notice the fucking person here? On the floor?”
“It’s okay, Terry,” Frank said. “We’ll take care of her.”
They carried Linny to a holding cell and lowered her gently to the mattress. She hadn’t been out for long. The webs were thin across her eyes and mouth. Her lips were twisted up in an expression of delirious happiness—who knew why, maybe just because her struggle to stay awake was over.
Terry had another drink. He lowered the flask and the wall of the cell rushed at him and he stuck out his hand to stop it. After a moment he was able to push up straight again.
“I’m worried about you,” Frank said. “You’re—overmedicating.”