He crosses Market Street into Pleasantville, passing the truck stop where she said yet a fourth girl narrowly escaped abduction, a man looking a hell of a lot like Hollis trying to snatch her into his van. The image lingers in his mind as he drives into the heart of the neighborhood, rolling up to an eye-catching scene.
They’re everywhere on foot, men and women in white T-shirts, each with Alicia Nowell’s name printed crudely in Magic Marker across the back. They’re carrying clipboards, notepads, knocking on doors, chatting up their neighbors. If Jay didn’t know the grim reason for this show of force from the community, he might think this was the most aggressive get-out-the-vote campaign in Pleasantville’s history. The parking lot of the community center has been made over as headquarters. There are card tables and folding chairs set up on the graveled asphalt, and a large number of familiar faces drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups. Jay recognizes Jelly Lopez standing with his wife and two other families from Berndale Street. He gives a friendly wave to his client. Either Jelly doesn’t see him, or he’s rolled up the welcome mat on his lawyer.
Jay continues on.
He parks a block over and then walks back to the community center on foot, the sun making every effort to push its way through the gauzy clouds overhead and making him squint. Against the white T-shirts, the hazy sunlight makes a strange halo effect, creating an army of angels for Alicia.
Sandy Wolcott is wearing one.
Axel Hathorne’s competition has slipped a T-shirt over her button-down blouse just in time for her on-camera interview with a TV news crew. It’s only Fox 26, but still, Jay thinks, look who got herself some free airtime. And a crowd. The missing girl’s parents are standing within arm’s reach of the candidate. Wolcott, in fact, puts her arm around Maxine Robicheaux as she offers words of support for the search effort. All of it caught on camera, pixels lining up in her favor ahead of tonight’s debate. Maxine’s husband, Mitchell, seems about fifteen years her senior. He’s unshaven and awkward looking in a too-tight white T-shirt. He must be at least six feet four inches, with hands the size of small grapefruits. He towers over Wolcott and Maxine, gazing off toward Guinevere and the fateful corner, and the untamed brush beyond. There are pockets of white behind the bare branches of the trees, where volunteer searchers are combing the woods. Next to Maxine is Pastor Keith Morehead. The pastor has crossed political lines to offer the family his support. Behind him, the players on the youth basketball team he coaches are dressed in white T-shirts too.
“I’m not concerned about tonight’s debate,” Wolcott says to the reporter. “The second I heard about the search, I put down everything and got out here as fast as I could. I can’t imagine being anywhere else actually, not when one of our own is in trouble,” she says, claiming Alicia as family. She gives Maxine a gentle squeeze.
“Are you suggesting canceling tonight’s debate?”
“Not at all,” Wolcott says. “I think Houston needs to hear from its candidates for mayor. It’s just that some of us are more prepared to answer the city’s tough questions than others. I don’t have any notecards to study. So I’m here to help.” She offers a warm smile, pinched with an appropriate amount of concern. Jay’s never met her and has no reason to believe she’s being anything but sincere. But the moment feels strained, a tin note of opportunism ringing in Jay’s ears, a flash of elation caught behind the tortoiseshell glasses she started wearing when she announced her intention to run, when talk of her pale green eyes and the height of her stiletto heels starting getting too much play in the press. With Reese Parker’s coaching, she’s crafted a more somber on-screen persona.
Johnetta Paul, who must have heard the whir of a video camera from a block over, comes speed-walking down the sidewalk in front of the rec center in heels, a white search T-shirt belted over black slacks, a pink blouse underneath. She presses in on Wolcott’s left side, squeezing into the frame, practically reaching for the reporter’s microphone to make her own statement of consolation to the family, to stress her commitment to finding the girl alive.
Wolcott has a number of staffers out here with her, including a middle-aged woman with acid-blond hair processed to within an inch of its life. Standing back a few feet, she’s watching her candidate like a proud mom witnessing her kid’s first time onstage. She’s drinking a Big Gulp and talking on a mobile phone and smoking all at the same time, her blue eyes disappearing into the peach folds of her fleshy skin. “That is Reese Parker.”
Lonnie has sidled up beside Jay, her face pink and dewy from the sun.
“Wolcott’s campaign manager?”
“Consultant. And professional shit stirrer.”
She reaches into the pocket of her denim shirt, pulling out her Parliaments. “Fifty bucks says Parker called Fox herself.”
“How long have you been out here?”
“Long enough,” she says, lighting a smoke. “Come on, let’s walk.”
They move away from the crowd, walking alongside the fence that rings the basketball courts. There’s a wide grass field behind it, where local kids play league sports, football in the fall and soccer in the spring. Jay can see the back of the elementary school from here. “Have you seen this?” Lonnie says. She pinches her cigarette between her lips and from the same shirt pocket pulls a folded-up sheet of paper. It’s the flyer, the same one Jim Wainwright showed Jay yesterday morning, the anonymous complaints about the Buffalo Bayou Development Project screaming in capital letters across the top. Lonnie blows a stream of smoke into the air and taps the top corner of the flyer. “I’ve heard from three different people that she was passing these out.”
“Alicia Nowell?”
Lonnie nods. “Tuesday wasn’t her first time in Pleasantville.”