“Why did you leave me?” she asks him.
“I never left you. I stopped sleeping with you. There’s a difference.”
“So why did you stop sleeping with me?”
“Because I knew you had to leave eventually. And I didn’t want there to be any part of me that didn’t want that to happen.”
“Did that work for you?”
“Not in the least,” he says.
She waits a moment, watching people sleep, then asks: “Will they send help?”
“That depends. Who’s ‘they’?”
“Anyone.”
Now he tells the truth. “I don’t think so, no.”
Her face, usually so stoic, falls. He can see it, even in the dark. She says simply, to no one, “But Isaac.”
“I know.”
“He doesn’t deserve this. Maybe I do, maybe we do, but he doesn’t.”
“I know,” says Cooper again. He has nothing else to say. He could try to reassure her—he can promise to keep them safe—but at this point, what’s the worth of that promise?
All he can do is do it.
Fran does her best to smile again because she knows that’s what she’s expected to do in this moment but she fails, even at that, and she can feel herself bodily falling. She feels like the whole abyss of her life, all those empty, erased years, are opening now to swallow her whole. And there’s a comfort in that welcoming darkness. She doesn’t even mind it so much. If it was just her, she’d just let go, and fall.
Just don’t take my son, she thinks.
So they sit side by side, and he takes her hand in his, and she finishes her crying in silence, and they watch the room together, as people sleep the final hours before the coming day.
FRIDAY
38.
COOPER WAKES WITH A START. He must have dozed off. The windows in the chapel are blindingly bright. He’s still holding Fran’s hand. She’s still sleeping. Isaac is standing over them both, awake. Watching and saying nothing. Cooper drops Fran’s hand, embarrassed. Then he stands, and is about to push past Isaac, but he stops. He stops and hugs the boy. Isaac stands stiff as Cooper pulls him in. Then Cooper lets him go, turns, and shakes Fran awake.
In the room, a few people are already up, milling around, looking out the murky windows. Spiro Mitchum’s in the corner having a hushed but angry argument with Greta over a jar of instant coffee. He says to Greta: “Look, it’s not my fault. I didn’t know there wasn’t a kettle.”
Cooper walks over, and Greta turns to him, angrily, pointing a bejeweled, bent finger at Spiro: “This dipshit—” Cooper holds up a hand to calm her. “This is only day one, Greta. Let’s not turn on each other yet.”
The goombah, Hannibal Cagney, stands at the window, watching the street. He waves to get Cooper’s attention, then motions him over. “Something’s happening outside. Thought you’d want to know.”
Cooper peers out the window. The bulletproof Plexiglas leaves the street cloudy and distorted, but he can see that someone in a black suit, must be Rigo, is standing in the middle of the street. Someone else, also in a suit—looks like Santayana—is sitting behind him, in the street, in a folding lawn chair. There’s an empty chair next to her.
They must have slept out there all night, Cooper thinks.
Rigo’s holding something in his hands, waving something. He yells out, “Rise and shine!”
Whatever’s in his hand looks to Cooper like a tablet or a book. Cooper squints. Or a file folder. That’s what it is, Cooper sees now. A manila folder, held open in Rigo’s hand, like he’s a street-corner preacher balancing a Bible. Rigo is shouting something else, too, but it’s hard to understand inside the fortified chapel, behind the thick bulletproof window.
Cooper strains to make it out.
“Cooper! Cock-a-doodle-doo!” is what Rigo’s shouting, over and over again.
Cooper turns back to Dawes and Fran, and to the room. “I’m going outside. To see what this is. Lock this door behind me.”
“You can’t—” says Fran.
“They don’t care about me,” says Cooper. “And they know that whatever they do to me, you’re not going to open this door. Right?”
Fran doesn’t speak, so Dawes, from her seat, still swaddled in that bloodstained puffy jacket, says, “Yes. That’s right.”
“Good.” Then Cooper turns, unlocks the door, opens it, and steps out into the sunshine.
“Sheriff Cooper!” Rigo shouts, as Cooper slips out from behind the red door. “Good morning.”
“Morning, Rigo. How are your balls feeling today?”
“Ask your mother,” says Rigo. Then he points to the folder in his hand. “I’ve just been reading up on some of your citizens. Quite a motley crew of pervs and killers you’ve got living here. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
Cooper squints and sees that two more agents, Burly and Gains, are standing guard behind Santayana’s lawn chair. Between them, as though the agents are her chaperones, stands Bette Burr. Beyond them, at the edges of the street, a few of the other surviving residents are gathering to watch. People who must have been holed up in their houses all night. They look shell-shocked and terrified. There’s maybe twelve, maybe fifteen of them, by Cooper’s quick count. With the eleven inside, that means it’s likely that about half the town is dead.
Rigo motions toward the crowd. “I asked my agents to round up everyone this morning for a demonstration. I assured them that the danger had passed and they’ll be fine and we’ll be leaving soon, just as soon as we get what we came for.”
“Rigo, go home.” Cooper understands he’s performing for the whole town now, those both inside and outside the chapel. “Tell your boss that you failed. Move on to whatever comes next. These people can’t help you, and they don’t want you here.”
“To the contrary,” Rigo says, hoisting the folder in his open hand. “I think they’ll find this really enlightening.” He glances down at the file. “Errol Colfax,” he reads loudly. “Remember him? Who wants to know a little bit about his background? Born Kostya Slivko. Nickname: ‘Costco.’” Rigo flashes a showman’s look to the crowd, as if to say, Curious! then keeps reading: “Sixty-four murders and suspected murders.” Rigo makes a face like he’s impressed. He looks around, playing to the crowd, his face an exaggerated mask of mock surprise, shielded by his surfer’s sunglasses and topped with those white-blond spikes. “I guess it’s true that you never do know your neighbors, huh?” He looks back down at the folder. “So what happened to old Kostya, I wonder?”
The street is silent. Cooper wonders how much of this the people inside the chapel can hear.