Sleeping Beauties: A Novel Read online

  “So many good sales right now,” Evie rattled on. “Washer-dryer. Grills. Babies that eat plastic food and poop it out again. Savings galore all over the store.”

  “I see,” said Lila, as if the woman was making sense. “What’s your name?”

  “Evie.”

  Lila twisted around. “And a last name? How about that?”

  The woman’s cheekbones were strong and straight. The pale brown eyes glowed. Her skin had what Lila thought of as a Mediterranean tint, and that dark hair, ooh. A splotch of blood had dried on her forehead.

  “Do I need one?” Evie asked.

  As far as Lila was concerned, that carried the motion: her new acquaintance was definitively, catastrophically high.

  She faced forward, tapped the gas, and popped loose the mic. “Base, this is Unit One. I’ve got a woman in custody, found her walking north from the area of the lumberyard on Ball’s Hill. She’s got a lot of blood on her, so we need the kit to take some samples. She also needs a Tyvek suit. And call for an ambulance to meet us. She’s on something.”

  “Roger that,” said Linny. “Terry says it’s a real mess at that trailer.”

  “Roger that.” Evie laughed cheerily. “A real mess. Bring extra towels. Not the good ones, though, ha-ha-ha. Roger that.”

  “One, out.” Lila racked the mic. She glanced at Evie in the mirror. “You should sit quiet, ma’am. I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. This is serious.”

  They were approaching the town line. Lila rolled the cruiser to a pause at the stop sign that brokered the Ball’s Hill–West Lavin intersection. West Lavin led to the prison. Visible on the opposite side of the road was a sign that warned against stopping for hitchhikers.

  “Are you injured, ma’am?”

  “Not yet,” said Evie. “But, hey! Triple-double. Pretty good.”

  Something flickered in Lila’s mind, the mental equivalent of a glittering fleck in the sand, quickly washed over by a frothing wave.

  She looked in the rearview again. Evie had shut her eyes and settled back. Was she coming down?

  “Ma’am, are you going to be sick?”

  “You better kiss your man before you go to sleep. You better kiss him goodbye while you still have the chance.”

  “Sure thi—” Lila began, but then the woman bolted forward, headfirst into the dividing mesh. Lila flinched away instinctively as the impact of Evie’s head caused the barrier to rattle and vibrate.

  “Stop that!” she cried, just before Evie smashed against the mesh a second time. Lila caught the flash of a grin on her face, fresh blood on her teeth, and then she battered against the mesh a third time.

  Hand on the door, Lila was about to get out and go around to the rear, tase the woman for her own safety, settle her down, but the third strike was the last. Evie had crumpled down to the seat, gasping in a happy way, a runner who had just ripped through the finish line. There was blood around her mouth and nose, and a gash on her forehead.

  “Triple-double! All right!” Evie cried out. “Triple-double! Busy day!”

  Lila unracked the mic and radioed Linny: change of plans. The public defender needed to meet them at the station just as soon-as. And Judge Silver, too, if the old fellow could be persuaded to come down and do them a favor.

  2

  Belly-deep in a clutch of sweet-fern, a fox watched Essie unpack her cart.

  He did not think of her as Essie, of course, did not have a name for her at all. She was just another human. The fox had in any case been observing her for a long while—moons and suns—and recognized clearly her ramshackle lean-to of plastic sheeting and canvas draping for the foxhole that it was. The fox also understood that the four chunks of green glass that she organized in a semi-circle and referred to as “The Girls” held great meaning to her. At times when Essie was not present, the fox had smelled them—no life there—and sifted through her possessions, which were negligible, except for a few discarded cans of soup that he had licked clean.

  He believed that she represented no threat, but he was an old fox, and one did not become an old fox by proceeding too confidently on any matter. One became an old fox by being careful and opportunistic, by mating as frequently as possible while avoiding entanglements, by never crossing roads in daylight, and by digging deeply in good soft loam.

  This morning, his prudence appeared to be unnecessary. Essie’s behavior was entirely in character. After she removed the bags and sundry mysterious items from her cart, she informed the glass fragments that mother needed a snooze. “No tomfoolery, you girls,” Essie said, and entered the lean-to to lie on the pile of mover’s quilts she used as a mattress. Though the lean-to covered her body, her head poked out into the light.

  While Essie was settling into her sleep, the fox silently bared his teeth at the male mannequin top that she had set in the leaves beside the lean-to, but the mannequin did nothing. It was probably dead like the green glass. The fox chewed his paw and waited.

  Soon the old woman’s breath settled into a sleeping rhythm, each deep intake followed by a shallow whistle of exhalation. The fox stretched slowly up from the bed of sweet-fern and slunk a few steps toward the lean-to, wanting to be absolutely sure about the mannequin’s intent or lack thereof. He bared his teeth more widely. The mannequin did not move. Yes, definitely dead.

  He trotted to within a few lengths of the lean-to, and stopped. A whitish fluttering was appearing over the sleeping woman’s head—white strands, like cobwebs, lifting from her cheeks, unfurling breezily and settling on her skin, coating it. New strands spun out from the laid strands and they quickly covered her face, forming a mask that would soon extend all the way around her head. Moths circled in the dimness of the lean-to.

  The fox retreated a few steps, sniffing. He didn’t like the white stuff—the white stuff was definitely alive, and it was definitely a different creature altogether from those he was familiar with. Even at a distance, the scent of the white stuff was strong, and disturbingly mingled: there was blood and tissue in the scent, and intelligence and hunger, and an element of the deep, deep earth, of the Foxhole of Foxholes. And what slept in that great bed? Not a fox, he was certain.

  His sniffs became whines, and he turned and began to trot away west. A sound of movement—someone else coming—carried through the woods behind him, and the fox’s trot became a run.

  3

  After helping Oscar Silver inter Cocoa the cat—wrapped in a threadbare terrycloth bath towel—Frank drove the two short blocks to the house at 51 Smith Lane that he paid the mortgage on, but where, since he and Elaine had separated, only she and their twelve-year-old daughter still resided.

  Elaine had been a social worker until two state budgets ago, but now she worked part-time at the Goodwill and volunteered at a couple of food pantries and at the Planned Parenthood in Maylock. The upside of this was that they didn’t have to find money for childcare. When the school day ended no one minded if Nana hung around at the Goodwill with her mother. The downside was that they were going to lose the house.

  This bothered Frank more than Elaine. In fact, it didn’t seem to bother her at all. Despite her denials, he suspected that she planned to use the sale as an excuse to depart the area altogether, maybe take off for Pennsylvania where her sister lived. If that happened, Frank’s every other weekend would become a weekend every other month, at best.

  Except for visiting days, he made a concerted effort to avoid the place. Even then, if he could arrange for Elaine to bring Nana to him, that was his preference. The memories that went with the house—the sense of unfairness and failure, the patched hole in the kitchen wall—were too raw. Frank felt as though he had been tricked out of his entire life and the best part of that life had been lived at 51 Smith Lane, the neat, plain ranch house with the duck on the mailbox, painted by his daughter.

  The matter of the green Mercedes, however, made a stop-in imperative.

  As he jerked over to the curb, he spied Nana drawing with chalk in the
driveway. It was an activity you’d normally associate with a much younger child, but his daughter had a talent for illustration. The previous school year she had won second prize in a bookmark-designing contest held by the local library. Nana’s had shown a bunch of books flying like birds across a cloudbank. Frank had framed it and hung it in his office. He looked at it all the time. It was a beautiful thing, imagining books flying around inside his little girl’s head.

  She sat cross-legged in the sunshine, butt planted in an inner tube and her rainbow of implements arrayed around her in a fan. Along with her drawing ability, or maybe in accordance with it, Nana had a gift for making herself comfortable. She was a slow-moving, dreamy child, taking more after Frank than her vibrant mother, who never messed around about anything, was always straight-to-the-point.

  He leaned over, popped the door of his truck. “Hey, Brighteyes. Come here.”

  She squinted up at him. “Daddy?”

  “Last I heard,” he said, working hard to keep the corners of his mouth turned up. “Come here, okay?”

  “Right now?” She had already glanced down to her picture.

  “Yes. Right now.” Frank took a deep breath.

  He hadn’t started to get what Elaine called “that way” until he was leaving the judge. By which El meant losing his temper. Which he rarely did, no matter what she thought. And today? At first he had been fine. Then, about five steps across Oscar Silver’s grass, it was as if he had tripped some invisible trigger. Sometimes that just happened. Like when Elaine had kept after him about yelling at the PTA meeting and he’d punched that hole in the wall and Nana had run upstairs, crying, not understanding that sometimes you punched a thing so you wouldn’t punch a person. 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.

  That cat could have been my kid was what he had been thinking as he crossed the grass. And then, boom! Like time was a shoelace and the length of it, between him walking and getting into the truck, had been knotted off. Because suddenly he was in his truck, he was driving for the house on Smith, and he couldn’t recall getting in the truck at all. His hands were sweaty on the wheel and his cheeks hot, and he was still thinking about how the cat could have been his kid, except it wasn’t a thought. More like an urgent flashing message on an LED screen:

  e r r o r  e r r o r  e r r o r

  m y k i d  m y k i d  m y k i d

  Nana carefully placed a stub of purple chalk in the empty spot between an orange and a green. She pushed up from her inner tube and stood for a couple of seconds, dusting off the rear end of her flowered yellow shorts and rubbing her chalky fingertips contemplatively.

  “Honey,” said Frank, fighting not to scream. Because, look, she had been right there, in the driveway, where some drunk asshole in a fancy car could drive right over her!

  m y k i d  m y k i d  m y k i d

  Nana took a step, stopped, studied her fingers again, apparently with dissatisfaction.

  “Nana!” Frank, still twisted into a lean across the console. He slapped the passenger seat. Slapped it hard. “Get over here!”

  The girl’s head yanked up, her expression startled, as if she had just been awakened from sleep by a thunderclap. She shuffled forward, and when she reached the open door, Frank grabbed the front of her tee-shirt and tugged her up close.

  “Hey! You’re stretching my shirt,” Nana said.

  “Never mind that,” Frank said. “Your shirt’s not the big deal here. I’ll tell you what the big deal is, so listen to me. Who drives the green Mercedes? Which house does it go with?”

  “What?” Nana pressed at his grip on the front of her shirt. “What are you talking about? You’re going to ruin my shirt.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? Forget the fucking shirt!” The words were out and he hated them, but he was also satisfied to see her eyes jump from her shirt to him. He finally had her attention. Nana blinked and inhaled.

  “Okay, now that your head’s out of the clouds, let’s get together on this. You told me about some guy on your paper route who drove a green Mercedes. What’s his name? Which house does he live in?”

  “Can’t remember his name. I’m sorry, Daddy.” Nana bit her lower lip. “It’s the house beside the one with the big flag, though. It’s got a wall. On Briar. Top of the hill.”

  “Okay.” Frank let go of the shirt.

  Nana didn’t move. “Are you done being mad?”

  “Honey, I wasn’t mad.” And when she said nothing: “Okay, I was. A little. But not at you.”

  She wouldn’t look at him, just kept rubbing her goddam fingers together. He loved her, she was the most important thing in his life, but sometimes it was hard to believe she had all four wheels on the road.

  “Thank you.” Some of the heat was draining from his face, some of the sweat cooling on his skin. “Thank you, Brighteyes.”

  “Sure,” said Nana. The girl retreated a small step, the sound of her sneaker sole against the pavement impossibly loud in Frank’s ear.

  Frank straightened up in his seat. “One more thing. Do me a favor and stay out of the driveway. For the rest of the morning, anyway, till I can sort something out. There’s a man driving around crazy. Draw inside with your paper, all right?”

  She was biting at her lower lip. “All right, Daddy.”

  “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

  “No, Daddy.”

  “All right. That’s my girl. I’ll see you next weekend, okay?”

  He realized his lips were incredibly dry. He asked himself what else he was supposed to have done, and a voice inside him replied, “Well, gee, what else could you have done? Maybe you could have, I don’t know, this will probably sound totally wild, Frank, but hey, maybe you could have not freaked the fuck out?” The voice was like an amused version of Frank’s own voice, the voice of a man who was kicked back in a lawn chair and wearing sunglasses and maybe sipping on an iced tea.

  “Okay.” The nod she gave him was robotic.

  Behind her, on the pavement, she had drawn an elaborate tree, its canopy spreading up one side of the driveway, its gnarled trunk cutting across. Moss hung from the branches and flowers bearded the base. Roots trailed down to the outline of an underground lake.

  “I like what you got there,” he said and smiled.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” Nana said.

  “I just don’t want you to get hurt.” The smile on his face felt like it was nailed on.

  His daughter sniffed and gave him another robotic nod. He knew she was sucking back tears.

  “Hey, Nana . . .” He started, but the words he wanted dispersed as the interior voice piped up again, telling him she’d had enough. To just leave it the hell alone.

  “Bye, Daddy.”

  She reached out and pushed his truck door gently shut. Spun and jogged up the driveway, scattering her chalks, striding across her tree, smudging the greens and blacks of the treetop. Head down. Shoulders shaking.

  Kids, he told himself, can’t always appreciate when you’re trying to do the right thing.

  4

  There were three overnight filings on Clint’s desk.

  The first was predictable, but concerning: one of the officers on staff the previous night speculated that Angel Fitzroy seemed to be ramping up to something. At lights-out Angel had attempted to engage the officer over an issue of semantics. The authorities at Dooling were all strictly to be referred to as “Officer.” Synonyms such as “guard,” or “screw,” let alone—obviously!—slurs like “asshole” or “motherfucker,” were unacceptable. Angel had asked Officer Wettermore if he understood English. Of course they were guards, Angel said. They could be officers, too, that was fine, but they couldn’t not be guards, because they guarded. Weren’t they guarding the prisoners? If you baked a cake, weren’t you a baker? If you dug a hole, weren’t you a digger?

  Warned the inmate
that she had arrived at the end of reasonable discussion and could expect consequences if she didn’t lock it down immediately, Wettermore wrote. Inmate relented and entered her cell, but further asked, How could we expect prisoners to follow the rules when the words of the rules did not make any sense? Inmate’s tone was threatening.

  Angel Fitzroy was one of the few women in the prison whom Clint regarded as genuinely dangerous. Based on his interactions with her, he believed she might be a sociopath. He had never glimpsed any empathy in her, and her record inside was fat with infractions: drugs, fighting, threatening behavior.

  “How do you suppose you’d have felt if the man you attacked had died from his injuries, Angel?” he had asked her during a group session.

  “Aw,” Angel had said, sunken down in the chair, her eyes roaming his office walls. “I’d have felt, oh, pretty bad—I guess.” Then, she’d smacked her lips, gaze fastening on the Hockney print. “Looka that picture, girls. Wouldn’t you like to visit where it is?”

  While her assault conviction was bad enough—a man in a truck stop had said something to Angel that she hadn’t liked and she’d broken his nose with a ketchup bottle—there were indications that she’d gotten away with much worse.

  A detective from Charleston had driven to Dooling to solicit Clint’s help with a case relating to Fitzroy. What the detective wanted was information concerning the death of a former landlord of Angel’s. This had happened a couple of years before her current incarceration. Angel had been the only suspect, but there was nothing except vicinity to tie her to the crime, and no apparent motive. The thing was (as Clint himself knew), Angel had a history of not needing much of a motive. Twenty cents off in her change could be enough to blow her up. The Charleston detective had been nearly gleeful in his description of the landlord’s corpse: “Looked like the old boy just fell down the stairs, got his neck broke. But the coroner said someone had been to work on his package premortem. Balls was—I forget how the coroner put it, exactly, if he said fractured or whatever. But, layman’s terms, he said, ‘They were basically squished.’ ”