Sleeping Beauties: A Novel Read online

  Clint wasn’t in the business of flipping on his patients and told the detective so, but he had mentioned the inquiry to Angel later.

  With an expression of glassy wonderment she responded, “Balls can fracture?”

  Now he made a note to himself to drop in on Angel that day, take a seismology reading.

  The second filing was about an inmate on janitorial duty who claimed that there was an infestation of moths in the prison kitchen. A check by Officer Murphy found no moths. Inmate willingly submitted to a urine drop—clean for drugs and alcohol.

  That one seemed to translate as a case of an inmate working hard to drive an officer crazy and an officer working hard to return the favor. Clint had no interest in continuing the circle by following up. He filed it.

  Kitty McDavid was the last incident.

  Officer Wettermore had jotted some of her ranting: The Black Angel came up from the roots and down from the branches. Her fingers are death and her hair is full of cobwebs and dream is her kingdom. After the administration of a dose of Haldol, she had been moved to A Wing.

  Clint left his office and passed through admin toward the east section of the prison, which contained the cell wings. The prison was shaped roughly like a lowercase “t,” with the long central line of the corridor known as Broadway parallel to Route 17/West Lavin Road outside. The administration offices, the communications center, the officers’ room, the staff lounge, and the classrooms were all situated at the west end of Broadway. The other corridor, Main Street, ran perpendicular to West Lavin. Main Street went from the prison’s front door straight ahead to the craft shop, the utility room, the laundry, and the gymnasium. On the other side of Main Street, Broadway continued eastward, passing the library, the mess hall, the visitors’ room, the infirmary, and intake, before arriving at the three cell wings.

  A security door separated the cells from Broadway. Clint stopped here and pressed the button that notified the Booth that he wanted to enter. A buzzer sounded and the bolts of the security door retracted with a clunk. Clint pushed through.

  These wings, A, B, and C, were arranged in a pincer shape. In the center of the pincer was the Booth, a shed-like structure armored in bulletproof glass. It contained the officers’ monitors and communication board.

  Although most of the prison population mixed in the yard and elsewhere, the wings were organized according to the theoretical danger presented by each inmate. There were sixty-four cells in the prison; twelve in A Wing, twelve in C Wing, and forty in B Wing. A and C were set entirely on ground level; B Wing was stacked with a second level of cells.

  A Wing was medical, although some inmates considered “tranquil” were also housed there, at the far end of the corridor. Inmates not necessarily tranquil but “settled,” such as Kitty McDavid, were housed in B Wing. C Wing was for the troublemakers.

  C was the least populous residence, with half of the twelve cells currently empty. When there was a breakdown or a severe disciplinary issue, it was official procedure to remove the inmate from her cell and place her in one of the “Eye” cells in C Wing. Inmates called these the Jerk-Off Cells, because ceiling cameras allowed the officers to observe what the inmate was doing at all times. The implication was that male officers got their jollies by spying on them. The cameras were essential, though. If an inmate might attempt to harm or even kill herself, you needed to be able to see it to prevent it.

  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 yelled cheerily.

  Lampley gave him a look.

  “Let’s go to the videotape! You know, it’s what Warner Wolf always says.”

  She shrugged and opened Unit 12 for visual inspection.

  “The sportscaster?” Clint said.

  Vanessa shrugged again. “Sorry. Must be before my time.”

  Clint thought that was bizarre, Warner Wolf was a legend, but he dropped it so he could study the screen. Kitty was in a fetal position, face twisted down into her arms. “Seen anything out of line?”

  Lampley shook her head. She’d come in at seven and McDavid had been snoozing the entire time.

  That didn’t surprise Clint. Haldol was powerful stuff. He was worried about Kitty, though, a mother of two who had been convicted of forging prescriptions. In an ideal world, Kitty would never have been put in a correctional facility in the first place. She was a bipolar drug addict with a junior high school education.

  The surprise was how her bipolarity had manifested on this occasion. In the past, she had withdrawn. Last night’s outburst of violent raving was unprecedented in her history. Clint had been fairly confident that the course of lithium he had prescribed for her was working. For over half a year Kitty had been levelheaded, generally upbeat—no sizable peaks or valleys. And she’d made the decision to testify for the prosecution in the Griner brothers case, which was not only courageous, but had a strong potential for advancing her own cause. There was every reason to believe that she could be paroled soon after the trial. The two of them had started to discuss the halfway house environment, what Kitty would do the first time that she became aware that someone was holding, how she would reintroduce herself to her children. Had it all started to look too rosy for her?

  Lampley must have read his concern. “She’ll be all right, Doc. It was a one-off, that’s what I think. The full moon, probably. Everything else is screwy, you know.”

  The stocky veteran was pragmatic but conscientious, exactly what you wanted in a head officer. It also didn’t hurt that Van Lampley was a competitive arm wrestler of some renown. Her biceps swelled the gray sleeves of her uniform.

  “Oh, yeah,” Clint said, remembering the highway smash-up that Lila had mentioned. A couple of times he had attended Van’s birthday party; she lived on the back of the mountain. “You must have had to come to work the long way. Lila told me about the truck that crashed. Had to bulldoze the whole heap, she said.”

  “Huh,” Van said. “I didn’t see any of that. Must’ve got it cleaned up before I left. I meant West and Ryckman.” 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? Clint was sure—almost sure, anyhow—she had.

  Van shook her head. “Wouldn’t be the first time, though.” She grinned, displaying a big set of yellowing choppers. “There was a truck that flipped on that road last fall. What a disaster. It was from PetSmart, you know? Cat litter and dog food all over the road.”

  5

  The trailer belonging to the late Truman Mayweather had not looked good the last time Terry Coombs was out here (to cool down a domestic disturbance involving one of Truman’s many “sisters,” who had vacated the residence shortly thereafter), but this morning it looked like high tea in hell. Mayweather was sprawled beneath the eating table with some of his brains on his bare chest. The furniture (mostly purchased at roadside rummage sales, Dollar Discount, or Chapter 11, Terry guessed) was scattered everywhere. The television was upside down in the rust-scaled shower stall. In the sink a toaster was making friends with a Converse sneaker mended with friction tape. Blood was splashed all over the walls. Plus, of course, there was a hunched-over body with his head sticking out through the side of the trailer and his plumber’s crack showing above his beltless jeans. A wallet on the floor 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 with one of the department’s iPads. He stood just inside the door long enough to send the ph
otographic evidence to Linny Mars at the station. She would print off a set of pics for Lila and start two files, one digital and one hard copy. To Lila, Terry texted a brief message.

  Know you’re tired, but you better get out here.

  Faint but approaching came the recognizable sound of St. Theresa’s one and only fully equipped ambulance, not a full-throated WHOOP-WHOOP-WHOOP, but a somehow prissy whink-whink-whink.

  Roger Elway was stringing yellow CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. Terry called to him from the trailer’s steps.

  “If Lila finds out you’ve been smoking at a crime scene, she’ll tear you a new one.”

  Roger removed the cigarette from his mouth, examined it as if he’d never seen such a thing before, put it out on the sole of his shoe, and tucked the butt into his shirt pocket. “Where is Lila, anyway? Assistant DA’s on his way, he’ll expect her.”

  The 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? Two dead and we still don’t rate the top guy.”

  Roger shrugged. Bartlett and Emerson, meanwhile, after the initial hustle, had come to a halt beside the trailer, where the head stuck out of the wall.

  Emerson said, “I don’t think that gentleman is going to benefit too much from our services.”

  Bartlett was pointing a rubber-gloved finger at the place where the neck protruded. “I believe he’s got Mr. Hankey tattooed on his neck.”

  “The talking turd from South Park? Seriously?” Emerson came around to look. “Oh, yeah. So he does.”

  “Howdy-ho!” Bartlett sang.

  “Hey,” Terry said. “That’s great, guys. Someday you should put your routine on YouTube. Right now we got another corpse inside, and there’s a woman in our cruiser who could use a little help.”

  Roger said, “You sure you want to wake her up?” He jerked his head at Unit Four. A swatch of lank, dirty hair was plastered against the rear window. “Girlfriend be crashing. Christ knows what she’s been on.”

  Bartlett and Emerson came across the junked-out yard to the cruiser, and Bartlett knocked on the window. “Ma’am? Miss?” Nothing. He knocked harder. “Come on, wakey-wakey.” Still nothing. He tried the doorhandle, and looked back at Terry and Roger when it didn’t give. “I need you to unlock it.”

  “Oh,” Roger said. “Right.” He thumbed the unlock button on his key fob. Dick Bartlett opened the back door, and Tiffany Jones spilled out like a load of dirty laundry. Bartlett grabbed her just in time to keep the top half of her body from hitting the weedy gravel.

  Emerson sprang forward to help. Roger stayed put, looking vaguely irked. “If she eighty-sixed on us, Lila’s gonna be pissed like a bear. She’s the only wit—”

  “Where’s her face?” Emerson asked. His voice was shocked. “Where’s her goddam face?”

  That got Terry moving. He moved next to the cruiser as the two EMTs eased Tiffany gently to the ground. Terry grabbed her hanging hair—why, he wasn’t sure—but let go in a hurry when something greasy squelched between his fingers. He wiped his hand on his shirt. Her hair was shot through with white, membranous stuff. Her face was also covered, her features now just dimly visible, as if seen through the kind of veil some older ladies still wore on their hats when they went to church out here in thank-you-Jesus country.

  “What is that stuff?” Terry was still rubbing his hand. The stuff felt nasty, slippery, a little tingly. “Spiderwebs?”

  Roger was looking over his shoulder, eyes wide with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. “It’s coming out of her nose, Ter! And her eyes! What the fuck?”

  EMT Bartlett pulled a swatch of the goo away from Tiffany’s jawline and wiped it on his own shirt, but before he did, Terry saw that it appeared to be melting as soon as it was off her face. He looked at his own hand. The skin was dry and clear. Nothing on his shirt, either, although there had been a moment ago.

  Emerson had his fingers on the side of Tiffany’s throat. “I have a pulse. Nice and steady. And she’s breathing fine. I can see that crap billowing out and then sucking in. Let’s get the MABIS.”

  Bartlett hauled the orange MABIS all-in-one kit out of the First In Bag, hesitated, then went back into the bag for disposable glove packs. He gave one set to Emerson and took another for himself. Terry watched, wishing mightily he hadn’t touched the webby stuff on Tiffany’s skin. What if it was poisonous?

  They got a blood pressure that Emerson said was normal. The EMTs went back and forth about whether or not to clear her eyes and check her pupils and, although they didn’t know it then, made the best decision of their lives when they decided not to.

  While they talked, Terry saw something he didn’t like: Tiffany’s web-encrusted mouth slowly opening and closing, as if she were chewing on air. Her tongue had gone white. Filaments rose from it, wavering like plankton.

  Bartlett rose. “We should get her to St. Theresa’s, stat, unless you have a problem with that. Say so if you do, because she seems stable . . .” He looked at Emerson, who nodded.

  “Look at her eyes,” Roger said. “All white. Gag me with a spoon.”

  “Go on, take her,” Terry said. “It’s not like we can question her.”

  “The two decedents,” Bartlett said. “Is this stuff growing on them?”

  “No,” Terry said, and pointed to the protruding head. “On that one you can see for yourselves. Not Truman, the guy inside, either.”

  “Any in the sink?” Bartlett asked. “The toilet? The shower? I’m talking about wet places.”

  “The TV is in the shower stall,” Terry said, which wasn’t an answer, was in fact a total non sequitur, but all he could think of to say at first. Another non sequitur: Was the Squeak open yet? It was early, but you were allowed a beer or two on mornings like this; there was a special dispensation for gruesome corpses and creepy shit on people’s faces. He kept looking at Tiffany Jones, who was slowly but steadily being buried alive under a diaphanous white fog of . . . something. He forced himself to speak to the question. “Just on her.”

  Roger Elway now said what they were all thinking. “Fellas, what if it’s contagious?”

  No one replied.

  Terry caught movement in the corner of his eye and swung back to look at the trailer. At first he thought the flock lifting off from its roof was butterflies, but butterflies were colorful, and these were plain brown and gray. Not butterflies but moths. Hundreds of them.

  6

  A dozen years before, on a muggy day in later summer, a call came in to animal control about a raccoon under the floor of the converted barn that the local Episcopalian church used as a “pastoral center.” The concern was possible rabies. Frank had driven right over. He put on his facemask and elbow-length gloves, crawled under the barn, shone a flashlight on the animal, and it had darted, just the way a healthy raccoon should. That would have been that—rabid raccoons were serious, trespassing raccoons not so much—except that the pretty twenty-something woman who had shown him the hole under the barn had offered him a glass of blue Kool-Aid from the bake sale going on in the parking lot. It had been pretty nasty—watered down, not enough sugar—but Frank drank three dollars’ worth in order to stay there in the yellowing churchyard grass talking to the woman, who had a wonderful big laugh and a way of standing with her hands on her hips that made him feel tingly.

  “Well, are you going to do your duty, Mr. Geary?” Elaine finally asked in her patented way, abruptly chopping the head off the small talk, and getting to the point. “I’d be happy to let you take me out if you put a lid on that critter that keeps killing things under the church floor. That’s my offer. Your lips have turned blue.”

  He had come back after work and nailed a piece of scrap over the hole under the barn—sorry, r
accoon, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do—and then he had taken his future wife to the movies.

  Twelve years ago.

  So what had happened? Was it him, or did marriage simply have a shelf-life?

  For a long time, Frank had thought they were doing all right. They had the kid, the house, their health. Not everything was hunky-dunky, of course. Money was touch-and-go. Nana wasn’t the most engaged student. Sometimes Frank got . . . well . . . things wore him down, and when he was worn down, a certain edge emerged. But everyone had failings, and over the course of twelve years, you were bound to spring an occasional leak. Only his wife didn’t see it that way. Eight months ago she’d told him exactly how she saw it.

  She had shared her insight after the famous kitchen wall punch. Shortly before the famous kitchen wall punch, she told him she’d given eight hundred dollars to her church, part of a fund drive to feed starving kids in some abysmally fucked-up part of Africa. Frank wasn’t heartless; he grasped the suffering. But you didn’t give away money you couldn’t afford to give away. You didn’t risk your own child’s situation to help someone else’s kids. Crazy as that had been—an entire mortgage payment zooming its way across the ocean—it hadn’t prompted the famous wall punch. That was prompted by what she had said next, and the look on Elaine’s face when she’d said it, simultaneously insolent and closed off: It was my decision because it was my money. As if her marriage vows meant nothing to her eleven years on, as if she could do anything she wanted without putting him in the loop. So he had punched the wall (not her, the wall), and Nana had run upstairs, wailing, and Elaine had made her declaration: