And Clint. What did Clint want? She knew she shouldn’t care, given the circumstances, but she did. He was a true mystery to her. A familiar image came: her husband, sitting at the kitchen counter, staring out at the elms in the backyard, running his thumb over his knuckles, vaguely grimacing. Long ago she’d stopped asking him if he was all right. Just thinking, he always said, just thinking. But about what? And about whom? These were obvious questions, weren’t they?
Lila couldn’t believe how tired she felt, how weak, as if she had dribbled out of her uniform and all over her shoes in the twenty or so paces between the cruiser and the steps. It suddenly seemed as though everything was open to question, and if Clint wasn’t Clint, then who was she? Who was anybody?
She needed to focus. Two men were dead and the woman who had probably killed them was in the back of Lila’s cruiser, higher than a kite. Lila could be tired and weak, but not now.
Oscar Silver and Barry Holden were standing in the main office. “Gentlemen,” she said.
“Sheriff,” they said, almost in unison.
Judge Silver was older than God and shaky on his pins, but suffered from no shortage in the brains department. Barry Holden eked out a living for himself and his tribe of female dependents (one wife, four daughters) writing wills and contracts, and negotiating insurance settlements (mostly with that notorious dragon Drew T. Barry of Drew T. Barry Indemnity). Holden was also one of the half a dozen Tri-County lawyers who served as public defenders on a rotating basis. He was a good guy, and it didn’t take long for Lila to explain what she wanted. He was agreeable, but needed a retainer. He said a dollar would do.
“Linny, do you have a dollar?” Lila asked her dispatcher. “It might look funny if I hired representation for a woman I’ve arrested on two counts of capital murder.”
Linny handed Barry a dollar. He put it in his pocket, turned to Judge Silver, and spoke in his best courtroom voice. “Having been retained by Linnette Mars on behalf of the prisoner Sheriff Norcross has just taken into custody, I request and petition that . . . what’s her name, Lila?”
“Evie, no last yet. Call her Evie Doe.”
“That Evie Doe be remanded to the custody of Dr. Clinton Norcross for psychiatric examination, said examination to take place at Dooling Correctional Facility for Women.”
“So ordered,” Judge Silver said smartly.
“Um, what about the district attorney?” Linny asked from her desk. “Doesn’t Janker get a say?”
“Janker agrees in absentia,” Judge Silver replied. “Having saved his incompetent bacon in my courtroom on more than one occasion, I can say that with complete confidence. I order Evie Doe to be transported to Dooling Correctional immediately, and held there for a period of . . . how about forty-eight hours, Lila?”
“Make it ninety-six,” Barry Holden said, apparently feeling that he ought to do something for his client.
“I’m okay with ninety-six, Judge,” Lila said. “I just want to get her someplace where she won’t hurt herself anymore while I get some answers.”
Linny spoke up. In Lila’s opinion, she was becoming a bit of a pain. “Will Clint and Warden Coates be okay with a guest camper?”
“I’ll handle that,” Lila said, and thought again about her new prisoner. Evie Doe, the mystery killer who knew Lila’s name, and who babbled about triple-doubles. Obviously a coincidence, but an unwelcome and badly timed one. “Let’s get her in here long enough to roll some fingerprints. Also, Linny and I need to take her into one of the holding cells and put her into some County Browns. The shirt she’s got on has to be marked as evidence, and it’s all she’s wearing. I can’t very well take her up to the prison buck-ass naked, can I?”
“No, as her lawyer, I couldn’t approve of that at all,” Barry said.
3
“So, Jeanette—what’s going on?”
Jeanette considered Clint’s opening gambit. “Hmm, let’s see. Ree said she had a dream last night about eating cake with Michelle Obama.”
The two of them, prison psychiatrist and patient-inmate, were making slow circuits of the exercise yard. It was deserted at this time of the morning, when most of the inmates were busy at their various jobs (carpentry, furniture manufacture, maintenance, laundry, cleaning), or attending GED classes in what was known in Dooling Correctional as Dumb School, or simply lying in their cells and stacking time.
Pinned to the top of Jeanette’s beige smock top was a Yard Pass, signed by Clint himself. Which made him responsible for her. That was okay. She was one of his favorite patient-inmates (one of his pets, Warden Janice Coates would have said, annoyingly), and the least troublesome. In his opinion, Jeanette belonged on the outside—not in another institution, but outside altogether, walking free. It wasn’t an opinion he would have offered to Jeanette, because what good would that do her? This was Appalachia. In Appalachia, you didn’t get a free pass on murder, it didn’t matter if it was second degree. His belief in Jeanette’s lack of culpability in the death of Damian Sorley was the sort of thing that he wouldn’t express to anyone except his wife and maybe not even to her. Lately Lila seemed a little off. A little preoccupied. This morning, for instance, although that was probably because she needed some sleep. And there was that thing Vanessa Lampley had said about an overturned pet food truck on Mountain Rest Road last year. How likely was it that there had been two identical, bizarre accidents months apart?
“Hey, Dr. N., are you there? I said that Ree—”
“Had a dream about eating with Michelle Obama, got it.”
“That’s what she said at first. But she just made that up. She actually had a dream about a teacher telling her she was in the wrong classroom. Total anxiety dream, wouldn’t you say?”
“Could be.” It was one of about a dozen default positions he kept ready for answering patient questions.
“Hey, Doc, you think Tom Brady might come here? Give a speech, sign some autographs?”
“Could be.”
“You know, he could sign some of those little toy footballs.”
“Sure.”
Jeanette stopped. “What did I just say?”
Clint thought about it, then laughed. “Busted.”
“Where are you this morning, Doc? You’re doing that thing you do. Pardon me for, like, barging in on your personal space, but is everything okay at home?”
With a nasty internal start, Clint realized he was no longer sure that was true, and Jeanette’s unexpected question—her insight—was unsettling. Lila had lied to him. There hadn’t been a crash on the Mountain Rest Road, not last night. He was suddenly sure of that.
“Everything’s fine at home. What’s the thing I do?”
She made a frowny face and held up her fist and ran her thumb back and forth over her knuckles. “When you do that, I know you’re out there picking daisies or something. It’s almost like you’re remembering a fight you were in.”
“Ah,” said Clint. That was too close for comfort. “Old habit. Let’s talk about you, Jeanette.”
“My favorite subject.” It sounded good, but Clint knew better. If he let Jeanette lead the conversation, they would spend this entire hour in the sun talking about Ree Dempster, Michelle Obama, Tom Brady, and whomever else she could free associate. When it came to free association, Jeanette was a champ.