Strange Weather: Four Short Novels

5:15 P.M.

Lanternglass watched the press conference on TV with Dorothy.

Dorothy was on her knees in front of the television, about a foot from the screen, where she liked it best. Eight-year-old black girl with a long neck and mile-long legs, wearing a hot-pink cap with rabbit ears. She was going through a hat phase, had a drawerful of them. Getting her out of the house in the morning was a daily anguish; it could take her upward of twenty minutes to find the perfect hat for the day.

“I’m missing Kim Possible,” Dorothy said, referring to her favorite Disney Channel series.

The local news had just cut to an unnamed conference room, with the promise that the St. Possenti police were about to address the shooting at the Miracle Falls Mall and perhaps identify the heroic security guard who had stopped the killer before the rampage could go wide.

“Mama’s got to see this for work,” Lanternglass said from the kitchen table, where she was on her laptop banging out two thousand words on the Ocala fire. It wasn’t hard to get in the right mind-set. She could smell the smoke right there in her living room, even with the blaze miles away. She wondered if the wind was shifting.

“I want a job where I get to watch TV and ride around in helicopters.”

“Next time you see Mr. Chen, you can ask if he’s hiring. This household could use another source of income.” There wasn’t going to be any bread coming from Dorothy’s father. He’d been out of the picture almost since Dorothy was born, wasn’t going to let a baby fuck up his music career. Last Lanternglass had heard, he was up in New York, in Queens, had two daughters by another woman, and his music career consisted of drumming on white plastic tubs in Times Square for dollars in the hat.

Cameras flashed. There was a rustling, like the wind stirring in leafy trees, the sound of an unseen audience murmuring and settling. Chief Jay Rickles and the slim Cuban D.A. took seats behind a folding table arrayed with microphones. They were followed by a third man in a baggy hoodie that said SEAWORLD and showed a jumping killer whale. This third man was in his forties, guy with a graying mustache and a military haircut. He had the thick neck of a marine or a boxer and big, bony hands, and he regarded the cameras with oddly colorless, indifferent eyes.

Chief Jay Rickles waited for everyone to quiet down and then waited some more, because he enjoyed a long, dramatic silence. Dorothy hopped a little closer to the TV.

“That’s too close, Button,” Lanternglass said.

“I like to get right up next to the screen so I can see if anyone is lying.”

“Your hat is blocking my view.”

Dorothy crept back an imperceptible centimeter.

“Hello and good evening,” Rickles began. “I’m Chief Jay Rickles, and I’m going to open with a brief statement, summarizing the events of this morning at the Miracle Falls Mall. At approximately ten-thirty A.M., a shooting occurred in Devotion Diamonds, on the second floor. We have now positively identified the shooter as Rebecca Kolbert, twenty, of St. Possenti, who was a salesgirl at the store. We believe that Ms. Kolbert entered the store, where she shot Roger Lewis, forty-seven, the manager of the Devotion Diamonds retail chain, Yasmin Haswar, a customer, and Yasmin’s infant son, Ibrahim. At that point Ms. Kolbert was confronted by Randall Kellaway, the head of security at the mall, an officer with Falcon Security, and a former military policeman in the U.S. Army.” At this, Rickles leaned forward and aimed an admiring glance down the length of the table toward the big man in the hoodie. “Mr. Kellaway instructed Ms. Kolbert to put down her firearm. Instead she raised her gun to fire, and at that point he shot her. Believing he had killed her, he hurried to Mrs. Haswar to offer medical aid. Another man, Robert Lutz, entered the store to try to offer his assistance, and he was shot by Ms. Kolbert. At that point Mr. Kellaway disarmed the shooter. Shortly afterward SWAT and emergency personnel swarmed the scene. Ms. Kolbert was pronounced dead at eleven-sixteen A.M.” His hands were folded together in front of him. Rickles had the serene look of a man admiring a sunset while he sat on his porch with a can of beer. “Some of you are already aware that my daughter and her two children were in the mall at the time of the incident. There is no reason to believe they were ever in physical danger. There is also no reason to believe they weren’t. Ms. Kolbert was indiscriminate in claiming innocent life, and we cannot be certain what her final intentions might have been. Certainly she was intent on killing to her last breath. I don’t like to think about what might have happened if Mr. Kellaway had not responded with such swift and decisive action. Have no doubt: This was an unspeakable tragedy. In the space of a few minutes, we lost a beloved local employer, an innocent bystander who’d entered the store in an act of fearless compassion, a mother, and her infant. Her infant. A beautiful baby boy who was a part of St. Possenti’s patriotic Muslim community. We’ll be unpacking our anguish for days and weeks and months to come. But today we found out what happens when a bad guy with a gun meets a good guy with a gun. Today our grief is counterbalanced by our gratitude, our pain abides alongside our pride.” He paused, leaned forward, looked at the assistant D.A. “Mr. Lopez? Would you care to add anything at this time?”

“Why would anyone shoot a baby?” Dorothy asked. “Did that really happen?”

Lanternglass said, “That really happened, Button.”

“I think that’s stupid.”

“Me, too.”

On the TV, Lopez leaned forward and said, “The Flagler County district attorney’s office has committed our entire resources, including two full-time investigators, to determine the motive behind today’s heinous and tragic acts and to learn whether Ms. Kolbert acted alone or had the support of any confederates.” He spoke for another half a minute, reciting boilerplate: if anyone had any further information, blah, blah, no charges filed at this time, blah, blah, state-of-the-art forensics, yada, yada. Then he was done, and Rickles leaned forward again.

“Rand? Would you like to make a statement?” he asked, peering down the length of the table at the big man in the SeaWorld hoodie.

A fresh round of camera flashes strafed the room.

Kellaway sat with his hands in his lap and his head lowered, looking both haunted and a little hunted. He thought for a moment, then shifted forward in his chair and leaned toward the microphone.

“If my son is watching, I just want him to know Daddy’s okay,” Kellaway said.

The assembled crowd responded with a soft cooing sound that made Lanternglass think of pigeons.

“He’s not that good a guy,” Dorothy announced.

“He stopped a crazy person with a gun.”

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