“Why?”
Even with the world going to hell in a handbasket, Lila would not put that out over the air—but they were going to break into the evidence locker and have a nice little drug party—uppers only.
“Just be there.”
“I don’t think Roger will come.”
“He will, even if I have to handcuff him.”
She backed away from the drop she’d almost gone over and headed into town. She was using her lightbar, but still paused at every intersection. Because with everything that was happening, jackpot lights might not be enough. By the time she reached Richland Lane, where Roger and Jessica Elway lived, that damned little earworm was going through her head again: In Derby Town, in Derby Town, when your daddy’s got an itch . . .
A Datsun trundled slowly across her path, ignoring both her flashing lights and the four-way stop at the intersection. On an ordinary day, she would have been on the careless son of a bitch like white on rice. If she hadn’t been fighting sleep, she might even have noticed the bumper sticker on the back deck—WHAT’S SO FUNNY ABOUT PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING—and identified it as belonging to Mrs. Ransom, who lived just up the street and a little way down from where all those unoccupied houses were. Had she been wide awake, she surely would have recognized the driver as her son and the passenger beside him as Mary Pak, the girl he was so crazy about.
But it wasn’t an ordinary day, and she was far from wide awake, so she continued onward to the Elway house on Richland Lane, where she found herself in the next act of that day’s continuing nightmare.
2
Jared Norcross had an earworm of his own, but it had nothing to do with Derby Town, where the streets were made of glass. It was coincidence, serendipity, predestination, fate. Pick one or pick none, it was probably all the same to the universe. Coincidence, serendipity, predestination, fa—
“You blew that stop sign,” Mary said, temporarily breaking the spell. “And I saw a cop.”
“Don’t tell me that,” Jared said. He was upright behind the wheel, sweating, his speeding heart sending bolts of pain directly to his hurt knee. He could still flex the knee, which made him believe he hadn’t actually torn anything, just sprained it, but it was badly swollen and aching. The idea of getting bagged by a cop when he had no legal right to drive, at least not without a licensed driver beside him, was a nasty one. His mother had told him time and again that the worst thing for her, as sheriff, would be if he got picked up for anything illegal—anything, even so much as walking out of Fenton’s Newsstand with a candy bar he’d forgotten to pay for. “And believe me,” Lila’d said, “if it’s the worst thing for me, I’ll make it the worst thing for you.”
Mrs. Ransom’s granddaughter, Molly, was perched on her knees in the backseat, looking out the rear window. “No problem,” she reported. “Five-oh went right across.”
Jared relaxed a little, but he still couldn’t believe he was doing this. Less than half an hour ago he had been at home, waiting for the next word from one of his parents. Then he called Mary. Who started shouting at him before he could get three words beyond hello.
“Where are you? I’ve been trying to get you for years!”
“You have?” This might not be too bad. A girl didn’t shout like that unless she cared, did she? “My cell phone’s broken.”
“Well, get over here! I need help!”
“What do you need? What’s wrong?”
“You know what’s wrong! Everything, if you’re a girl!” She caught her breath and brought it down a notch. “I need a ride to Shopwell. If my dad were here I’d ask him, but he’s in Boston for work, and he’s trying to get home, but that doesn’t do us any good right now.”
Shopwell was the town’s big supermarket, but it was on the far side of town. He had adopted his most reasonable, adult voice. “Dooling Grocery is a lot closer to where you are, Mary. I know it doesn’t have the best selection—”
“Will you listen?”
He fell silent, scared by the controlled hysteria in her voice.
“It has to be Shopwell because there’s this woman who works there in the produce section. A lot of the kids know about her. She sells . . . study aids.”
“Are you talking about speed?”
Silence.
“Mary, that stuff is illegal.”
“I don’t care! My mom’s okay for now, but my little sister’s only twelve, her bedtime’s at nine, and she’s usually a zombie even before then.”
And there’s you, Jared had thought.
“Plus there’s me. I don’t want to go to sleep. I don’t want to go into a cocoon. I’m scared to fucking death.”
“I get that,” Jared said.
“Oh no you don’t. You’re a guy. No guy can understand.” She drew in a deep, wet breath. “Never mind. I don’t know why I waited to hear from you. I’ll call Eric.”
“Don’t do that,” Jared said, panicked. “I’ll come and get you.”
“You will? Really?” Oh God, the gratitude. It had weakened his knees.
“Yes.”
“Your parents won’t mind?”
“No,” Jared said, which wasn’t precisely untrue. How could they mind if he never told them? They probably would have minded a lot, of course—even putting aside, you know, the world crisis—because Jared didn’t have a driver’s license. He would have had it if he hadn’t bumped a trashcan while trying to parallel park during his first test. Up to then, everything had been going fine.
Had Jared given Mary the impression that he had actually passed the test? Well, only insofar as that Jared had told her he had. Dammit! The lie had seemed harmless at the time. It seemed so dorky to have failed the test. He was scheduled to take it again next month, and since he didn’t have his own car anyway, she’d never know. That had been his logic. Somehow Jared didn’t think driver’s license exams were going to be a priority in Dooling County for awhile. Or anywhere.
“How long will it take you to get here?”
“Fifteen minutes. Twenty at the most. Just wait for me.”
It was only after he hung up that he realized how far ahead of himself he’d gotten. Not only did he have no driver’s license, he had no car. His father had taken the Prius to the prison, and his mom’s Toyota was parked behind the sheriff’s station. In terms of vehicles, the Norcross cupboard was bare. Either he had to borrow some wheels, or he had to call Mary back and tell her to let Eric drive her, after all. The former alternative seemed unlikely, but after all that had gone on this afternoon, the latter was unthinkable.
That was when the doorbell had rung.
Coincidence, serendipity, predestination, fate.
3
Mrs. Ransom had been hunched over a hospital cane and wearing a cruel-looking metal brace on her right leg. Seeing her thus made Jared, even in his current predicament, feel that he had been taking his own sprained knee far too seriously.