“Good.” His father explained that he wasn’t sure when he’d be home, that Lila was on call, and Jared should stay put. “If this situation doesn’t resolve quickly, it’s going to get weird out there. Lock the doors, keep the phone handy.”
“Yeah, sure, Dad, I’ll be safe, but do you really need to stay any longer?” How to put it was tricky. It seemed somehow in bad taste, to point out the simple math; it was akin to saying aloud that a dying person was dying. “I mean, all the inmates at the prison are women. So . . . they’re just going to fall asleep . . . right?” There was a little crack at the end of the last word that Jared hoped his father hadn’t caught.
Another question—And what about Mom?—formed in his mouth, but Jared didn’t think he could get it out without crying.
“I’m sorry, Jared,” Clint said after a few seconds of dead line. “I can’t leave yet. I’d like to, but the staff is shorthanded. I’ll be home as soon as I can, though. I promise.” Then, perhaps sensing the question that Jared had been thinking, he added, “And so will your mom. I love you. Be safe and stay put. Call me right away if you need me.”
Jared sucked up all the anxiety that seemed to be centered at the back of his throat and managed a goodbye.
He closed his eyes and took deep breaths. No more crying. He needed to get out of his filthy, torn clothes, take a shower. That would make things at least a little better. Jared levered himself to his feet and limped toward the stairs. A rhythmic thumping echoed from outside, followed by a rickety tin clatter.
Through the windowed panel at the top of the front door, he could see across the street. The last occupied house on the street belonged to Mrs. Ransom, a seventy-something woman who ran a baking and sweets business out of her home, benefitting from Dooling’s lack of zoning laws. It was a neat, pale green house, set off by window boxes alive with merry clusters of spring flowers. Mrs. Ransom was sitting in a plastic lawn chair in the driveway, sipping a Coke. A girl of ten or eleven—a granddaughter surely, Jared thought he’d seen her over there before—was bouncing a basketball on the pavement, taking shots at the freestanding basketball hoop at the side of the driveway.
Brown ponytail swinging out of the gap at the back of a dark baseball cap, the girl dribbled around in a circle, cut one way then another, evading invisible defenders, and pulled up for a mid-range jumper. Her feet weren’t quite set and the shot went high. The ball hit the top of the backboard and ricocheted up, the crooked spin carrying it away into the next yard, a weed-and-hay-strewn expanse in front of the first of their development’s unoccupied houses.
She went to retrieve her ball, crunching across the hay. The ball had rolled up near the porch of the empty house, which was all bare wood, windows with the brand stickers still plastered against the glass. The girl stopped and gazed up at the structure. Jared tried to guess what she might be thinking. That it was sad, the house with no family? Or spooky? Or that it would be fun to play in, to dribble around in the bare halls? Shoot pretend lay-ups in the kitchen?
Jared really hoped his father or his mother would come home soon.
3
After listening to Ree Dempster’s story twice—the second time to sniff out the inconsistencies most inmates could not avoid when they were lying—Janice Coates determined the young woman was telling the stone truth, and sent her back to the cellblock. Tired as Janice was from last night’s argument with her Mexican dinner, she was also oddly elated. Here at last was something she could deal with. She had been waiting a long, long time for a reason to give Don Peters his walking papers, and if a crucial detail of Ree’s story proved out, she would finally be able to nail him.
She called in Tig Murphy and told him exactly what she wanted. And when the officer didn’t immediately jump to: “What’s the problem? Grab some rubber gloves. You know where they are.”
He nodded and slouched off to do her little bit of nasty forensic work.
She phoned Clint. “Would you be available in twenty minutes or so, Doc?”
“Sure,” Clint said. “I was about to go home and check on my son, but I was able to raise him.”
“Was he taking a nap? Lucky him, if he was.”
“Very funny. What’s up?”
“What’s up is one good thing in this screwed-up, fucked-over day. If all goes well, I’m going to fire Don Peters’s ass. I don’t expect him to do anything physical, bullies usually only get physical when they smell weakness, but I wouldn’t mind having a man in the room. Better safe than sorry.”
“That’s a party I’d love to attend,” Clint said.
“Thanks, Doc.”
When she told him what Ree had seen Peters do to Jeanette, Clint groaned. “That bastard. Has anyone talked to Jeanette yet? Tell me that no one has.”
“No,” said Coates. “In a way, that’s the beauty of it.” She cleared her throat. “Given the godawful circumstances, we don’t need her.”
She had no more than ended the call when her phone rang again. This time it was Michaela, and Mickey didn’t waste time. For the women of the world on Aurora Day One, there was no time to waste.
4
During her twenty-two months at NewsAmerica, Michaela “Mickey” Morgan had seen plenty of guests grow flustered under the hot studio lights, struggling to answer questions they hadn’t prepared for or trying to justify rash statements they’d made years ago that were preserved on video. There was, for instance, the representative from Oklahoma who had been forced to watch a clip of himself saying, “Most of these unwed mothers have limp leg muscles. That’s why they spread so easy.” When the moderator of NewsAmerica’s Sunday interview show asked him to comment on the clip, the representative blurted, “That was fore I got Jeepers in my harp.” For the remainder of his term he had been referred to by his colleagues (once during a roll-call vote) as Representative Harp.
Such prized “gotcha moments” were common enough, but Michaela never saw an actual freak-out until the late afternoon of Aurora Day One. And it wasn’t the guest who freaked.
She was at the console in the location van, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed thanks to her tech guy’s blow. Relaxing in an air-conditioned roomette at the rear of the van was her next guest, one of the women who’d been tear-gassed in front of the White House. The woman was young and pretty. Michaela thought she’d make a strong impression, partly because she was articulate, mostly because she was still showing the effects of the gas. Michaela had decided to interview her in front of the Peruvian embassy up the street. The building stood in strong sunlight, which would make the young woman’s red, raw-looking eyes stand out.
In fact, if I position her just right, Michaela thought, she’ll look like she’s crying bloody tears. The idea was disgusting; it was also how NewsAmerica did business. Keeping up with FOX News was no job for sissies.