Characters in Sleeping Beauties

And when she finally went to sleep, she didn’t want it to be among strangers. “Hold the fort, Al,” she said. “You bet,” the tech guy said. “Hey, that was priceless, wasn’t it? Live TV at its best.” “Priceless,” she agreed, and went out to the sidewalk.

… CHAPTER 6 1 Alexander Peter Bayer, the first baby to be born on the other side of the Tree, son of a former Dooling inmate named Linda Bayer, breathed air for the first time a week after Lila and Tiffany returned from the wreck below Lion Head. It was another …

A few minutes after two o’clock, Mr. Alfred Freeman, the Barrowses’ neighbor at 19 Eldridge Street, a retired widower, was spraying his curbside hostas with deer repellant.

… break from the untenable reality of his daughter, Alice, at that second propped at her play table in their apartment, wrapped up in white fibers, when she ought to have just been getting up for another day of second grade. And it was a break from the thought of his …

Jared asked. “Two hours ago,” Lila said. “Parks is only staying awake herself because of her best friend, Amber somebody. Who’s also a single mother. They practically grow on trees around here, don’t they? Everywhere, I guess. Never mind. Let me finish this stupid little story, shall I?

Below it, Tiffany had lettered: ANDREW JONES BOOK FOR A GOOD LIFE. “She knew it was a boy,” Lila said. “I don’t know how she knew, but she did.” “Magda told her. Some old wives’ tale about carrying high.”

… the doors sprang open, and Dick Bartlett and Andy Emerson, two EMTs that Terry had worked with before, got out fast, already gloving up. One carried a backboard, the other toted the portable hospital they called First In Bag. Terry grunted. “Only the Assistant Duck’s Ass, huh? Two dead and …

… of quarters.) This morning she was sitting beside Angel Fitzroy, watching the morning report on WTRF, Channel 7 out of Wheeling. The news was the usual stew: a drive-by shooting, a transformer fire, a woman arrested for assaulting another woman at the Monster Truck Jam, the state legislature having an …

… in the driveway when she became aware of Anton Dubcek staring at her. Shirtless, pecs gleaming, pants riding (barely) the spars of his hipbones, the pool guy appeared to be auditioning for the position of May pin-up boy on a Chippendales calendar. He was at the curb by his van, …

It showed the late Archibald Coates, grinning in surgical scrubs, holding his infant daughter in the crook of his arm. Dead of a coronary at the impossibly unfair age of thirty, Archie had been gone now almost as long as he had lived.

Oscar Silver and Barry Holden were standing in the main office. “Gentlemen,” she said. “Sheriff,” they said, almost in unison. Judge Silver was older than God and shaky on his pins, but suffered from no shortage in the brains department.

… some brain left; and two town board members, Bert Miller and Steve Pickering, both of whom, like Drew T. Barry, knew their way around a deer stand. That was nineteen, and once they were informed that the woman inside the prison might have information related to the sleeping sickness, maybe …

… She had been holding hands with ugly little Billy Beeson from down the block. She missed her little boyfriend, who probably would have enjoyed taking her behind a bush so they could play doctor. It was even easy to imagine Nana and the scabrous Billy at sixteen, making out in …

We almost didn’t get in, because Billy Mears wrote some nasty ink on his arm. Mrs. Colby made him stay on the bus with the driver, the one who had the stutter.”

“Won’t take long,” she said. “Billy Wettermore and Scott Hughes just came in, which is good news, but still, to call this a skeleton crew would be an insult to skeletons. We’ve got just seven warm bodies, counting Hicks. You’ll make eight.” Clint ignored this broad hint.

She told her secretary, Blanche McIntyre, to buzz their PAs again at their homes. After that, Blanche was to call Lawrence Hicks, the vice-warden, and inform him that his recovery time from wisdom tooth surgery was being curtailed; he was required on the premises immediately.

I told Bonnie not to go to sleep no matter how much she wanted to, because we might have an immune person in the prison, and that might mean there’s a cure!

Candy Meshaum was one of four women who had lately vanished, counting Essie. Lila had interviewed a number of other women who lived in the neighboring pods. Candy had been seen happily rocking in her chair, knitting, and ten minutes afterward, she was nowhere.

Some just missed home. Carol Leighton, the civics teacher at the high school, said she wanted to eat a Kit Kat that wasn’t stale and sit on her couch and watch a movie on Netflix and pet her cat.

“Thank you, Mr. Carson Struthers, from RFD 2.” That was Pudge Marone, bartender and owner of the Squeak, hollering out from behind his bar. “Our own local celebrity, folks: ‘Country Strong’ Struthers. Watch out for the right hook. Carson’s my ex-brother-in-law.”

If Cary Benson wanted to spend time with her that badly, he’d said, then Cary could buy her an ice cream sundae at the Dairy Treet right here in town.

Beep, beep, beep. Garth had a daughter, Cathy. She was eight, hydrocephalic, lived in a facility, a very nice one, near the coast of North Carolina, close enough to catch salt on the breeze. He paid for it all, which he could do.

Nell’s cellie and off-again on-again lover, Celia Frode, not quite halfway through her one-to-two years (Class D possession, second offense), had been watching from her place at their unit’s single steel desk. She said, “Thank goodness. I can’t take any more of this madness.

Jodi West and Claire Ryckman were the regular day PAs. Like Clint they were nine-to-fivers. “They never showed. So we got no one on medical. Coates is pissed. Says she’s going to—” “You didn’t see anything on Mountain?” Hadn’t Lila said that it was Mountain Rest Road?

… on an end table decorated with one of Clara Holden’s lace doilies, was an open box of fat red shells. Talking turn and turn about, Michaela and Garth told the lawyer what Clint had told them: how Eve Black’s arrival roughly coincided with Aurora’s first reported victims; how she had …

“According to her roommate—Claudia Stephenson, the one the other ladies call—” “Claudia the Dynamite Body-a,” Clint said. “Very proud of those implants. Did Claudia start something?” Nothing against Claudia, but Clint hoped that was the case. Doctors were human, they had their favorites, and Kitty McDavid was one of his.

She had surfed into Cleopatra’s sarcophagus atop a flume of desert sand and caressed the glorious queen’s dead face with beetle legs. A playwright, a clever Englishman, had written an amusing, if not entirely accurate, speech about Eve once.

The pool had been Dr. Clinton Norcross’s tenth anniversary present to his wife, Lila. The sight of Anton often made Clint question the wisdom of this gift. This morning was one of those times. Anton was shirtless, and for two good reasons.

Coach Dreifort had said Jared was a “comer.” “I got plans for you, Norcross, and they involve winning a whole mess of shiny medals,” Coach Dreifort had said.

His cat, Cocoa, had been struck by a car. A familiar homeless woman, bundled in so many layers of garments that you couldn’t see her feet, crossed in front of his truck, pushing her shopping cart. She was talking to herself with a bright, amused expression.

The skinny one was Curt McLeod. The muscular redhead was Eric Blass. My nemesis, Jared thought. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. Mary looked at him, eyebrows raised. She was tall, and (in Jared’s opinion) perfectly proportioned.

Had she not done that, Damian Sorley would eventually have killed her. Clint had no doubt of it. He did not view that as childish behavior, but as self-preservation. If he said so to Warden Coates, however, she would refuse to hear it: she was old-school that way.

… from Sheriff Lila Norcross’s duty roster: Terry Coombs, Pete Ordway, Elmore Pearl, Dan “Treater” Treat, Rupe Wittstock, Will Wittstock, and Reed Barrows. It was a solid group, in Terry’s opinion. They were all force veterans of at least a year, and Pearl and Treater had both served in Afghanistan. The …

That was when Clint had lived with Dermot and Lucille Burtell, who boarded their fosters not in their pretty Cape Cod house, but in a long shed-like structure out back with bare, splintery plywood floors and no insulation.

Diana Coombs was a freshman in college at USC. Her father made a gaspy, watery sound. “Most of the West Coast women are asleep, never woke up. I hoped maybe she was up all night, studying or something, partying even, but . . . I know she’s not, Lila.”

… ambo pulled up, the doors sprang open, and Dick Bartlett and Andy Emerson, two EMTs that Terry had worked with before, got out fast, already gloving up. One carried a backboard, the other toted the portable hospital they called First In Bag. Terry grunted. “Only the Assistant Duck’s Ass, huh?

… uni in the lawn chair was that asshole Don Peters) to show all was cool and then said to Jeanette, “Now I’m going to have to discuss this with my therapist.” She laughed, pleased. It occurred to Clint, not for the first time, that if circumstances were entirely different, he …

… fell into step with an elderly woman named Dorothy Harper, a member of something called the First Thursday Book Club, and one of the townsfolk Lila had originally drafted to help defend Margaret. “You must be so proud of your niece Sheila!” Dorothy remarked, leaning on a cane, a flowered …

“What do we got?” called Drew T. Barry of Drew T. Barry Indemnity, standing outside his storefront across the street. Linny could practically see the columned figures of premiums scrolling across the backs of Drew T. Barry’s eyes.

All were holding hands except for Elaine Geary, who had her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection. She was directing her gaze first to the counter, then to the empty booths, then out the door.

A retired schoolteacher named Eliot Ainsley called a radio show in Sydney, Australia, to explain his intentions and his thinking before he cut his wrists and went to lie down alongside his sleeping wife.

… deputies, all male—Terry Coombs, Reed Barrows, Pete Ordway, Elmore Pearl, and Vern Rangle. Sitting outside the circle of cops was Barry Holden, the public defender who had briefly handled Evie Black’s case, and a white-bearded elderly gent that Clint knew from around town, Willy Burke. Lila was smoking. She had …

… his combover, was interviewing a clinical psychiatrist named Erasmus DiPoto. “Has there ever been an outbreak like this in the history of the world, Dr. DiPoto?” George asked. “An interesting question,” DiPoto said. He wore round rimless glasses and a tweed suit that must have been hotter than hell under …

The muscular redhead was Eric Blass. My nemesis, Jared thought. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. Mary looked at him, eyebrows raised. She was tall, and (in Jared’s opinion) perfectly proportioned.

OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY, DRS. ERIN EISENBERG, JOLIE SURATT, GEORGIA PEEKINS. There were a few people with cocooned family members sitting in front of the doors, but only a few. This was a good idea.

… Women’s 35–45 Year-Old Division, and snapped one of Erin Makepeace’s elbow ligaments in 2011 to repeat—was like a spring trap. Her right hand swung up, catching Fritz Meshaum’s wrist and squeezing with fingers made of steel, jerking down so violently that he was pitched forward on top of her. The …

… woman—Old Essie to the volunteers at the shelter, Essie Wilcox once upon a time—jounced her shopping cart up the short, grassy embankment that surrounded the high school parking lot. After she had gained the plateau of the pavement, she pushed toward the athletic fields and the scrub woods beyond, where …

Nothing against Doe, a deer, a female deer, but Black seems a better one for black times. Call me Evie Black.” “So it’s not your real name?” Fresh from the dentist, Hicks spoke from a mouth that was still mushy from Novocain. “You couldn’t even pronounce my real name. Names.”

… to go to St. Luke’s and beg for Father Lafferty to take her confession. She backed down the driveway, headed east on Tremaine Street, did a California stop that would have earned her a ticket if she hadn’t been the sheriff, saw the smoke rising out Route 17 way, and …

… the traffic light across from the high school, Frank Geary tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. He was on his way to Judge Silver’s house. The old judge had called him on his cell phone; by the sound he’d barely been holding it together. His cat, Cocoa, had been …

It wasn’t until lunch that Frankie Johnson sat down next to Jared and said the weird female sleeping sickness that used to be only in Australia and Hawaii had shown up in DC, Richmond, and even in Martinsburg, which wasn’t that far away.

… “I ain’t no lady,” grumbled an ex-inmate named Freida Elkins. “Speak for yourself, Sheriff.” “I can’t tell you who’s dead,” Michaela resumed, “because during most of the fighting I was stuck in the prison. I know that Garth Flickinger is dead, and . . .” She was about to mention …

Or that business with Fritz Meshaum, where he had been a little out of control, granted, but Meshaum deserved it. Anyone who would do a thing like that to an animal deserved it.

… doesn’t fully develop until you’re much older,” said Gail Collins. “Briony was only twelve or thirteen when she told the lie. You can’t blame her.” Gail held her glass of white wine in both hands, cupped around the bowl. She was situated at the nook table by the kitchen bar.

7 It took awhile for Garth Flickinger to extricate himself from the couch. “Hold on, hold on,” he said—pointlessly: the door was too thick and his voice too raspy. He had been smoking dope non-stop since he returned home from his visit to Truman Mayweather’s stately pleasure trailer.

He certainly had no use for Gary Barrows, an ugly little terrorist whose social graces seemed to extend no farther than waving around toy rifles and yelling about Star Wars. Leanne’s face, screened in that white crap, made it seem that she wasn’t really human at all.

… The news anchor on duty this morning was George Alderson. With his glasses and stooped shoulders and thinning hair, he didn’t look anything like the matinee idol types that usually sat behind the big desks and read the news. He looked like a mortuary attendant. Also, he had an unfortunate …

ERIN EISENBERG, JOLIE SURATT, GEORGIA PEEKINS. There were a few people with cocooned family members sitting in front of the doors, but only a few. This was a good idea.

“Tell me.” “Gerda Holden? Oldest of the four Holden girls? She’s disappeared.” Which almost certainly meant something mortal had happened to her in that other world. They all accepted this as a fact now. “How’s Clara taking it?” “About as you’d expect,” Janice replied. “She’s half out of her mind.

… in the house except for his pet iguana (Gillies), probably nothing would have surprised him. Should Sir Harold Gillies himself, that long-dead pioneer of plastic surgery, have come wandering downstairs to the kitchen to toast a cinnamon Pop-Tart, it would have barely pushed the envelope on the phenomena that Garth …

… how she had confessed to telling Don’s ex, Gloria, not to marry him, because “Donnie, I know how you are with girls.” The hurt of that went all the way to the bone, for Don Peters loved his mother, had loved her cool hand on his feverish forehead when he …

… but he would have been willing to bet Grampa Holden’s shotgun that none of them looked like Michaela. “She just . . . what? Kissed you? Like when the prince kissed Princess Aurora in the cartoon?” “Yes,” said Michaela. “Like that. And she breathed down my throat. I think that’s …

Gus Vereen, the owner, was planted on a stool by the cash register, reading a Dean Koontz paperback. Behind him was a small TV with the sound muted. Across the bottom of the screen ran a crawl reading AURORA CRISIS DEEPENS. “I read that one,” Lila said, tapping his book.

… Lampley’s right arm—the arm that had put down Hallie “Wrecker” O’Meara in the championship match of the 2010 Ohio Valley Women’s 35–45 Year-Old Division, and snapped one of Erin Makepeace’s elbow ligaments in 2011 to repeat—was like a spring trap. Her right hand swung up, catching Fritz Meshaum’s wrist and …

“You already did,” Eric said. “Harriet Davenport.” More prehistoric laughter. Why am I listening to this? Jared asked himself, and it occurred to him again: Mary is going to a concert with one of these sickos.

“There’s a man named Harry Rhinegold in Coughlin. Ex-FBI, retired there two years ago. Fine man, fine record, several Bureau commendations—I’ve seen them on the wall in his study. I’m thinking I might talk to him, and see if he’ll sign on.” “As what? A deputy?”

Howland, that was his name. Teacher from the community college over in Maylock. Howland was looking up at the sermonizer with an expression of wry amusement. “We shoulda seen this coming!” the trucker/preacher proclaimed.

He looked rocky but sober. “Jack Albertson told me you guys were here.” Albertson was one of the retired deputies who had been pressed back into service two days before. “I got some pretty bad news from Bridger County fifteen minutes ago.” There was no smell of booze about Terry.

… of the trailer contained an ID for Mr. Jacob Pyle, of Little Rock, Arkansas. How much strength did it take to pound a man’s head through a wall like that? Terry wondered. The trailer walls were thin, granted, but still. He duly photographed everything, then did a three-sixty panning shot …

Janice Coates’s view was less sanguine. It was her attitude that, when dealing with convicts, you were better off not letting your hopes rise too high. Maybe that was why she was the warden—the bull goose—and he was just the resident shrink in this stone hotel.

Linny asked from her desk. “Doesn’t Janker get a say?” “Janker agrees in absentia,” Judge Silver replied. “Having saved his incompetent bacon in my courtroom on more than one occasion, I can say that with complete confidence.

5 Jared Norcross and Mary Pak were sitting on the bleachers during Period Three PE, their tennis rackets put aside for the time being.

… Jason, for instance, who killed himself at thirteen by drinking a bottle of off-brand drain cleaner. Clint could summon up Live Jason, and he could summon up Dead Jason lying in his coffin. That was when Clint had lived with Dermot and Lucille Burtell, who boarded their fosters not in …

… Having been on Good Report for sixty days, Jeanette Sorley had common room privileges three mornings a week, between eight and nine in the morning. In reality that meant between eight and eight fifty-five, because her six-hour shift in the carpentry shed began at nine. There she would spend her …

Mary and Jeff are coming over. You want to hang with us?” The little girl had braces now, and it seemed like she’d grown about seven feet. Soon the boys who didn’t want to play with her after school would be chasing her for maybe a kiss.

It was a text message from Jessica Elway. Now that she finally had the baby down for a nap, she planned to smoke a jay and take off her clothes and avoid the TV and the Internet, both of which were utterly freaky-bizarro today. Was Anton interested in joining her?

Jodi West and Claire Ryckman were the regular day PAs. Like Clint they were nine-to-fivers. “They never showed. So we got no one on medical. Coates is pissed. Says she’s going to—” “You didn’t see anything on Mountain?” Hadn’t Lila said that it was Mountain Rest Road?

Johnny Lee Kronsky’s scuffed apartment door was here, at ground level, between two windows with plastic sheeting for glass. Kronsky, a mythic figure in this part of West Virginia, answered and spied the bottle in the bag. “Those who come bearing gifts may enter,” he said and took the bottle.

“Push!” Erin said. “Just as hard as you can! On three! Jolie, don’t let it face-plant on this filthy fucking floor when it comes! Tiff! One, two, three!” Tiffany pushed. The baby seemed to shoot into Jolie Suratt’s hands. It was slimy, it was beautiful, and it was dead. “Straw!”

… hustled up the aisle toward them, pursued by JT Wittstock, the coach of the football team and father of two of Jared’s mother’s deputies, Will and Rupe Wittstock. Jared didn’t know the coach to speak to, but at the department’s Labor Day party Will and Rupe had won the sack …

Judge Wainer and Judge Lewis are both asleep. Just our luck to’ve had a couple of female judges on the county circuit.” “All right, so go ahead and call Charleston and find out who they’ve appointed as interim,” Clint said.

She had adored the Judy Blume novel as a thirteen-year-old and related intensely to its portrait of what it was like to be an adolescent girl, how adulthood suddenly …

The owner, Kabir Patel, was gone, of course, as were his three well-mannered (in public, at least) sons. His wife had been visiting her family in India when the Aurora struck, and was presumably cocooned in Mumbai or Lucknow or one of those other places.

… of B-11, the cell she had shared with Kayleigh Rawlings for the last four years. The cell door was open. On B Wing, all the cell doors were open, and Maura did not believe they would roll closed and be locked from the Booth tonight. No, not tonight. The tiny …

It was Kent Daley, riding his bike across the softball field from the tangle of waste ground beyond. He was wearing a backpack and his tennis racket was slung over his shoulder. “Norcross! Pak! You see all those birds take off?” “They were moths,” Jared said. “The ones with frenulums.

… with a militia led by Kinsman Brightleaf (nee Scott David Winstead Jr.). This happy band refused to pay its taxes, accept the legality of the Constitution, or surrender its stockpile of automatic weapons. When people learned that Clint was a psychiatrist, they often entreated him to diagnose the mental diseases …

“Where did you hear that?” Kitty McDavid was one of Jeanette’s favorite people—smart and feisty. Rumor was that Kitty had rolled with a heavy crowd on the outside, but there was no real meanness in her, except for the kind that was self-directed.

… had once arrested who had been known as “Larry Large.” However, baby Alexander had an irresistibly comic way of rolling his eyes around, as if he were anxiously attempting to gain his bearings amid the flowering of female faces that loomed above him. A plate of slightly crispy (though still …

After that, Blanche was to call Lawrence Hicks, the vice-warden, and inform him that his recovery time from wisdom tooth surgery was being curtailed; he was required on the premises immediately.

Ms. Leanne Barrows of 17 Eldridge Street, for example: wife of Deputy Reed Barrows. It was her habit to lie down for a nap with her two-year-old son Gary around eleven each day. That’s just what she must have done on the Thursday of Aurora.

… single interview room was likewise empty, as was Lila Norcross’s office. Linny Mars, the dispatcher, had the place to herself. Behind her desk hung a poster of a snarling, buffed-out con wearing an orange jumpsuit and curling a couple of hand barbells. THEY NEVER TAKE A DAY OFF, the poster …

… Tree, son of a former Dooling inmate named Linda Bayer, breathed air for the first time a week after Lila and Tiffany returned from the wreck below Lion Head. It was another few days before Lila made his acquaintance at a small gathering in Elaine Nutting Geary’s repaired home. He …

Linny Mars, the dispatcher, had the place to herself. Behind her desk hung a poster of a snarling, buffed-out con wearing an orange jumpsuit and curling a couple of hand barbells. THEY NEVER TAKE A DAY OFF, the poster advised, AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU!

Lowell Griner was thinking about his father and about suicide, which might be preferable to thirty years in State. Maynard Griner was dreaming about a slab of barbecued ribs that he’d eaten a few weeks earlier, right before the bust.

… green earth spoke more nonsense than the late Lowell Griner Sr.—he had also believed in UFOs, vengeful spirits of the woods, and had taken as gold the empty promises of the coal companies. Big Lowell Griner, he was called, perhaps in honor of that old Jimmy Dean song about Big …

… was when Clint had lived with Dermot and Lucille Burtell, who boarded their fosters not in their pretty Cape Cod house, but in a long shed-like structure out back with bare, splintery plywood floors and no insulation. The Burtells held what they called “Friday Night Fights,” with their half-dozen wards …

10 Magda Dubcek, mother of that handsome young pool-polisher-about-town known as Anton the Pool Guy (he had incorporated, too, so please make out your checks to Anton the Pool Guy, LLC), tottered into the living room of the duplex she shared with her son.

… made sure they were watered, and checked that Maisie Wettermore, the high school volunteer, was due in at six to feed them and take them out again. Yes, she was on the board. Frank left her a note concerning various medications, then locked up and left. It did not occur …

… shared a dismal basement room with good old Marcus. Clint remembered his foster brother Marcus’s wonderful cartoons. Marcus drew people so that they were eighty percent nose, pretty much just noses with wee legs and wee arms, The Nose-It-Alls was what he called his strip; he was really good, and …

Margaret O’Donnell, the fourth member of the First Thursday Book Club, was Gail’s sister, and the only woman Blanche knew who had a stock portfolio. “Who says that?” Dorothy asked. “About the brain?” “Scientists,” Gail said. “Pish-tush!” Dorothy waved a hand, as if to make a bad smell go away.

… rented to go to the prom in with Mary Jean Stukey. Her in a pink strapless dress with puffy sleeves, the corsage he’d brought her at her wrist, him in a rented tuxedo. This was in the golden age before he had ever seen the white-eyed corpse of a pretty …

5 Jared Norcross and Mary Pak were sitting on the bleachers during Period Three PE, their tennis rackets put aside for the time being.

Angel pointed at Maura Dunbarton, an elderly trustee who was in for life. Maura was now placing magazines from her wheelie cart on the tables, doing it with infinite care and precision. Her white hair stood out around her head in a filmy corona.

Maynard Griner was dreaming about a slab of barbecued ribs that he’d eaten a few weeks earlier, right before the bust. Neither man had any idea what was going on in the wider world. The bailiff on guard duty was sick of waiting around. “What the fuck.

one woman shouted out. “Please say my Micah wasn’t one of them!” “What about Lawrence Hicks?” asked another. There was a babble of questioning voices. Lila raised her hands. “Ladies, ladies!” “I ain’t no lady,” grumbled an ex-inmate named Freida Elkins. “Speak for yourself, Sheriff.”

Michaela Coates, Michaela Morgan she called herself now but little Mickey to Magda, forever and always, whom she had babysat all those years ago.

The three retired deputies—Jack Albertson, Mick Napolitano, and Nate McGee—made ten. Don Peters, Eric Blass, and Frank Geary made lucky thirteen.

… When the officer on duty—this morning it was Millie Olson—got a green on her board, indicating the main gate was locked, she opened the inner gate. Clint brought his Prius trundling alongside the fence to the employees’ parking lot, which was also gated. Here a sign cautioned MAINTAIN SECURITY! ALWAYS …

Mary he had been counting on; ten-year-old Molly Ransom not so much. She had already been sitting in the elderly Datsun’s backseat when Jared assisted her grandmother back to the house, and Mrs. Ransom insisted that he take the girl.

He didn’t matter now. Mr. Dunbarton had been put into an everlasting slumber early on the morning of January 7, 1984.

That was something to be thankful for today. Mr. and Mrs. Pak must be going crazy.

Mrs. Colby made him stay on the bus with the driver, the one who had the stutter.” Eric lofted the ball, went up on his toes, and whacked a killer serve that barely topped the net. Instead of trying to return it, Curt flinched back.

… can reminisce about the time I yelled at Mrs. Fenton for spraying her weed killer where my daughter had to breathe it in while she was riding her trike. Fine. Make me the bad guy if that’s what gets you through the day. But right now I will keep my …

Relegated him to the junkheap along with her invisible friend, Mrs. Humpty-Dump? “It was your favorite, too.” “Because he was afraid of the man with the car! The one who ran over the cat! He was taking care of me!”

… one, that if he’d known for certain that Mrs. McGee might some day reawaken, he wouldn’t have bet at all; and two, that at least he had used up his bad luck for the week.

… Mrs. Pak and Mary’s younger sister had both fallen asleep by Saturday morning, and her out-of-town father was still attempting to make his way back from Boston.

… 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.

“She’s sleeping, but not in one of those cocoons. Go see for yourself. Ask how she’s doing it. Tell her if she wants my soul, she can have it. I just want to see Myron again. He’s my baby, and needs his mama.”

7 Nadine Hicks was of the old school; in the days before Aurora she had been wont to introduce herself as “Mrs. Lawrence Hicks,” as though by marrying her husband, she had to some degree become him.

Nana Geary got to her feet. She brushed her hands down the front of her shirt, which was now very worn and raggedy at the sleeves . . . but still her favorite. “My mom doesn’t know I’m here,” she said, “so I hope no one will tell her.”

… the apartment he lived in with his aunt Nancy, checks began to arrive made out to Robert Sorley. The amounts were never large—twenty-two dollars here, sixteen dollars there—but they added up. These checks were drawn from the account of a woman named Elaine Nutting. In the cards and letters that …

… The three retired deputies—Jack Albertson, Mick Napolitano, and Nate McGee—made ten. Don Peters, Eric Blass, and Frank Geary made lucky thirteen. Frank quickly martialed a half-dozen other volunteers including Coach JT Wittstock, father of the deputies who shared his surname, and the defense-first coach of the Dooling High School varsity …

… yards away, upstairs in a B Wing cell, Nell Seeger—Dooling Correctional inmate #4609198-1, five-to-ten (Class B possession with intent to distribute)—sat up in her top bunk to thumb off the television. The small TV, a flatscreen about as thick as a closed laptop, rested on the ridge at the foot …

The woman’s name is Norma Bradshaw. She works at the Shopwell store, on the other side of town. In the produce section.”

This was just after Olivia, my wife, passed. I know it’s ridiculous to say, but it seemed like . . . a message.” He drew his forefinger through the valley between the cat’s ears, rubbing gently.

Judge Oscar Silver was down on the ground beside her, staining the knees of his khakis. Sprawled on its side, the cat almost appeared normal, except for its right front leg, which hung loose in a grotesque V-shape.

… earlier, in 1999, when a prospective patient named Paul Montpelier had come to the young doctor with a “crisis of sexual ambition.” He had asked Montpelier, “When you say ‘sexual ambition,’ what do you mean?” Ambitious people sought promotions. You couldn’t really become vice-president of sex. It was a peculiar …

… five other deputies, all male—Terry Coombs, Reed Barrows, Pete Ordway, Elmore Pearl, and Vern Rangle. Sitting outside the circle of cops was Barry Holden, the public defender who had briefly handled Evie Black’s case, and a white-bearded elderly gent that Clint knew from around town, Willy Burke. Lila was smoking.

By Dr. Philip P. Verdrusca …

A barmaid had fallen asleep sitting on a milk crate beside the door. Her cowboy boots were sprawled out in a V. Terry got out of the car, put Platinum on the seat, then leaned back in.

That was Pudge Marone, bartender and owner of the Squeak, hollering out from behind his bar. “Our own local celebrity, folks: ‘Country Strong’ Struthers. Watch out for the right hook. Carson’s my ex-brother-in-law.” Pudge was a would-be comedian with saggy Rodney Dangerfield cheeks.

Rand Quigley, the officer on the floor, poked his head in. He darted a quick, uneasy glance at the incapacitated woman with the shrouded face before shifting toward the warden and clearing his throat. “The sheriff’s ETA is twenty or thirty minutes with her prisoner.” He hung there a moment.

Red Platt, one of the salesmen at Dooling Kia, came swaying and staggering toward her. Blood was sheeting down the right side of his face, and his lower lip no longer looked completely attached—although with all the blood, it was hard to tell. “What was that?”

… steady high-pitched whine of the Power Vac, which Ree Dempster was using to clean up the sawdust between the last row of machines and the wall. “Turn that off, inmate!” Tig Murphy bellowed. He was a newer hire. Like most new hires, he bellowed a lot because he was still …

Deputy Reed Barrows was waiting at the curb, ready to babysit Lila’s current prisoner. “Be good, Evie,” she said, opening the door. “I’ll be right back.” “Be good, Lila,” Evie said. “I’ll be right here.” She laughed.

… webbing that had grown over the Honorable Judge Regina Alberta Wainer’s face, but it was, as the saying went, close enough for government work. Lowell and Maynard, chain-locked to the bench, saw it all through the reinforced glass. It was awesome. The judge, no more than five-one in heels, rose …

And Rhoda—my wife—kicked me out! I explained it wasn’t about her, it was about—I had a need, you know? Men have needs women do not always understand.” Montpelier rolled his head around on his neck. He made a frustrated hiss. “I don’t want to get divorced!

Clint wondered. His mother? Or Richie, who got his nose and three fingers broken by some prep school boys at a mall because he said they shouldn’t make fun of his purple jacket that had come from a donation box? Or Marcus?

… back,’ he’d say, or ‘Just going over to Rick’s,’ or whatever. I never questioned it. It didn’t seem like questioning was allowed. He’d butter me up. Flowers and whatever. Candy. New shirt from the mall. Stuff that’s nice for a second. But there was a part of him that was …

“Let me tell you girls something,” Rita Coombs said at a Meeting toward the end of that first summer—by then there were almost four dozen ladies in attendance. “It may be too frank for some of you, but I don’t care. I miss a good old Friday night fuck.

… Nancy, checks began to arrive made out to Robert Sorley. The amounts were never large—twenty-two dollars here, sixteen dollars there—but they added up. These checks were drawn from the account of a woman named Elaine Nutting. In the cards and letters that accompanied the checks, Elaine wrote to Bobby about …

One of these miscreants was Roger Dunphy, Dooling Correctional’s AWOL janitor. On their first Sunday morning cruise around town, Terry and Frank spied Mr. Dunphy blatantly toting a clear plastic bag filled with necklaces and rings that he’d lifted from the rooms of the female residents at Crestview Nursing Home, …

Turn there.” “You sure?” Roger Elway asked. “The smoke looks at least a mile further on.” “Trust me. I’ve been out here before, back when Tru Mayweather considered himself a full-time trailer pimp and a part-time gentleman pot grower. I guess he moved up in the world.”

He offered his hand. “Ross Albright. Got a spread two counties over. What’s your name?” “Angel Fitzroy.” Once she would have refused the shake, used an alias, and kept her hand on the knife she always stored in her coat pocket. Now there was no knife and no alias.

… of two of Jared’s mother’s deputies, Will and Rupe Wittstock. Jared didn’t know the coach to speak to, but at the department’s Labor Day party Will and Rupe had won the sack race and then nearly had a fistfight over who got to keep the five-dollar trophy. (Lila, ever diplomatic …

“Billy Wettermore and Scott Hughes just came in, which is good news, but still, to call this a skeleton crew would be an insult to skeletons. We’ve got just seven warm bodies, counting Hicks. You’ll make eight.” Clint ignored this broad hint.

… going to tell me that you didn’t know Shannon Parks?” “You know I did,” Clint said. “I’m sure I’ve mentioned her name.” “In passing,” Lila said. “But it was a little more than a passing acquaintance, wasn’t it?” “Yes. It was. We were both caught in the foster system. For …

Sharon and I have been married for—” The anchor dropped his head and traced the knot of his pink tie. There was a coffee stain on the tie. Garth thought this the most disturbing signal yet of the unprecedented nature of the situation. “—for forty-two years now.

Sheila Norcross was immediately identifiable, number 34, darting in to flick a lay-up off the corner of the backboard, then reversing on her heels, laughing. Lila studied the girl with a detective’s eye.

… She had lived with it since the night she had methodically slaughtered her entire family, finishing with Slugger, their elderly German shepherd. Petting him, soothing him, letting him lick her hand, then cutting his throat.

… aside, I feel we must—” That was when Stephanie Koch, the producer of Afternoon Events, charged onto the set. She was a leathery chain-smoker in her fifties who had seen it all, and put most of it on television. Michaela would have said Steph was armored against any and all …

… and two town board members, Bert Miller and Steve Pickering, both of whom, like Drew T. Barry, knew their way around a deer stand. That was nineteen, and once they were informed that the woman inside the prison might have information related to the sleeping sickness, maybe even knowledge of …

He pulled. There was a ripping sound that reminded Frank of a Velcro strip letting go. The face of Mrs. Susannah Kinsman Brightleaf appeared. Her eyes were closed but her cheeks were flushed, and the threads at the edges of the cut fluttered with her breath.

… he was going to name his new dog Tacitus, after his favorite Roman historian. Frank had thought it was a lot of name for a bichon frise. “My friends,” the professor said in rolling tones, “with all that has happened today, it is easy to understand why we haven’t yet …

Terry Coombs sat forward and pointed. “See that big rock with TIFFANY JONES SUCKS spray-painted on it?” “Yeah.” “You’ll see a dirt road just past it. Turn there.” “You sure?” Roger Elway asked. “The smoke looks at least a mile further on.” “Trust me.

… He—” There was a pause, a crackle, and Tiffany Jones’s voice at once receded and pitched higher. “—oh my Christ, the lab just blew! Why’d she do that for? Oh, my Christ, oh, my Christ, oh—” Linny started to ask what she was talking about, and then heard a rumbling …

“Turn that off, inmate!” Tig Murphy bellowed. He was a newer hire. Like most new hires, he bellowed a lot because he was still unsure of himself. “It’s lunch! Did you not hear the buzzer?” Ree started, “Officer, I just got this one more little—” “Off, I said, off!”

Timothy, my son, he . . . he says . . .” George Alderson began to sob. Frank picked up the controller from the side table and turned him off. “Is your mind clear enough to understand what’s going on, Dr. Flickinger?” Frank indicated the pipe on the side table.

… the prison after shooting and killing Ree Dempster, Tommy Lampley had tried to stay awake with her as long as he could. Van had been glad for the company. A cooking competition show had done him in, though, lulling him to dreamland with a tutorial on molecular gastronomy. Van waited …

She’ll be the one covered in Truman Mayweather’s blood.” “May I have your ad—” “Trailer don’t have no address! Tru don’t take mail! Just shut your gob and get someone out here!” With that, Tiffany was gone. Linny crossed the empty main office and went out into the morning sun.

… she dragged the woman, by her driver’s license Ursula Whitman-Davies, over to the front passenger side. While she didn’t much like the idea of keeping the woman in the car, she was deeply uncomfortable with the alternative, which would be depositing her in the grass next to her dead poodle.

… The officer in the Booth today was Captain Vanessa Lampley. She leaned over from the board to open the door for him. Clint sat beside her and asked if she could bring up Unit 12 on the monitor so he could check on McDavid. “Let’s go to the videotape!” he …

… Coombs, Reed Barrows, Pete Ordway, Elmore Pearl, and Vern Rangle. Sitting outside the circle of cops was Barry Holden, the public defender who had briefly handled Evie Black’s case, and a white-bearded elderly gent that Clint knew from around town, Willy Burke. Lila was smoking. She had stopped eight years …

Her name was Viswanathan. She wore large round spectacles and was so young-looking Frank figured she didn’t remember cassette tapes. She asked why he was there. “Because I scare my kid and I scare myself. I also trashed my marriage, but that’s just a side-effect.”

… The woman he’d photographed was an inmate named Wanda Denker who had a body type similar to Evie’s. Denker had been conked out since Friday night. In preparation, they’d dressed her in scrubs with Evie’s ID number and Evie’s ID pinned to her red top. Clint was grateful—and a little …

… Ordway, Elmore Pearl, Dan “Treater” Treat, Rupe Wittstock, Will Wittstock, and Reed Barrows. It was a solid group, in Terry’s opinion. They were all force veterans of at least a year, and Pearl and Treater had both served in Afghanistan. The three retired deputies—Jack Albertson, Mick Napolitano, and Nate McGee—made …

Willy Burke’s probably one of them, though. You know Willy, he never misses.” AAH, an acronym that came out sounding like a sigh, was the Tri-Counties’ Adopt-A-Highway crew, mostly retirees with pickup trucks.

… doors of St. Theresa’s in the person of Yvette Quinn, who parked her elderly Jeep Cherokee askew at the curb and came charging into the ER with her infant twin girls crooked in her arms. A tiny, cocoon-swaddled face rested against each of her breasts. She was screaming like a …