Thinking of Michaela Mateo also made her think of the woman’s young daughter. Catalina. Cat. Six years old when her parents died. Cindy had gone so far as to suggest to Jonny that they adopt the girl, because it had already become clear that her own dreams of having children weren’t likely to come true. Jonny had said no. It was too much. Too soon. It made her wonder whether, in his heart of hearts, he really wanted kids at all.
She looked up. Her husband was in the doorway of the conference room. He hadn’t said anything.
Maggie took the hint and got up and left them alone. He took a chair and put it beside her and straddled it backwards. Their arms brushed against each other. His dark eyes were distant.
‘What were you thinking?’ he said quietly.
‘I wasn’t,’ she admitted.
She knew he wanted to yell, but he didn’t. He reached for her shoulder and pulled her gently against him. She folded herself into his body and felt his strength. And his worry and relief, having her in his arms.
‘Don’t scare me like that,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry, but you realize that’s what I live with every day, don’t you?’ she murmured.
That caught him short, but he knew it was true. He didn’t let go.
‘This guy at the mall,’ she said. ‘He’s not nothing, Jonny.’
‘He hasn’t committed a crime,’ he reminded her.
‘That you know of.’
They were silent, and it could easily have disintegrated between them again. Him yelling. Her yelling. They both knew how to fight, but she didn’t want to. Not now. It wasn’t worth it.
‘Hey, I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘I got a flier from Bobbie at the travel agency. Last-minute cruise specials. How about we go to Alaska in June? We can do it cheap.’
Jonny separated himself from her and smiled. ‘A vacation? Me?’
‘Every couple of years, I get to drag you out of Duluth.’
‘I know, but why now?’
‘No reason,’ she said, which wasn’t really true. She felt strange. She felt shadows around her, and it made her want to combat them with happier things. ‘You know I’ve always wanted to do this.’
He looked as if he would protest, but this time, he gave in. ‘Okay.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Book it. Sure.’
Cindy kissed him, and she didn’t believe in peck-on-the-cheek kisses. Their kisses were always hot and hard. She liked it that way. ‘Thanks, babe,’ she said. ‘That means a lot to me.’
He stood up and took her hand. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’
Cindy hesitated. ‘Janine was at the mall today, too. We were both at the clinic.’
‘You shouldn’t be talking to her.’
‘I know.’ Cindy stopped herself, but then she added: ‘She thinks you’re going to arrest her.’
Jonny didn’t comment. He shoved papers into a satchel. He didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no, but she knew him well enough to realize that his silence was a yes. He was building a cage of evidence for her friend, and soon enough, he’d put her inside it.
Maybe that was the right thing to do. Cindy wasn’t naive. Janine was probably guilty of murder. Nothing else made sense. Even so, Cindy wanted to find another explanation. She wanted to believe that Janine was innocent.
‘That guy at the mall today really creeped me out,’ she told him.
Jonny stopped and looked at her. He didn’t chastise her again. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘He threatened me,’ Cindy went on, ‘and it didn’t feel empty. He told me bad things happen to people who pry into his business. That’s what Jay Ferris did for a living, Jonny. He pried into other people’s lives. What if Jay found out who this guy was?’
16
Ross Klayman arrived at his mother’s house after dark.
The old RCA television in the living room was on. It was always on, driving him crazy. The same sewer of reality programs. Empty-headed sluts squeezing their silicone tits into bikini tops. Rich trust-fund babies playing drinking games. Celebrities grinning for the cameras and pretending they had ordinary lives. They were destroying the country. Chipping away the foundation brick by brick, until soon they would all be living in anarchy. Unless good people tried to stop it.
‘How can you watch this filth?’ Ross asked his mother.
Jessie shrugged and didn’t answer. She was draped across the sofa in a roomy T-shirt and yellow panties. Her feet were bare. She drank from a can of Miller Lite, and she already had two empties stacked on top of each other on the coffee table, next to an empty plastic tray from a Lean Cuisine dinner. Her eyes didn’t leave the television set.
‘Where were you today?’ she asked.
‘Out.’
‘Out where?’
‘The mall.’
He sat down next to her. The television was a noisy drone in his ears. She propped her feet on his thigh.
‘Did you eat?’ she asked.
‘I had a power bar.’
‘Do you want a beer?’
‘No.’
Ross rarely drank. Alcohol was poison. It clouded his mind, and he wanted his mind sharp. If you were a soldier and hunter, your only real weapon was the clearness of your brain. Your gun was an extension of your arm, which was an extension of your mind. You had to know how to focus. To plan. To execute. The drugs that fouled other people’s heads were the enemy.
‘I’ve got a temp shift working a concert at the DECC tomorrow,’ his mother said.
‘Uh huh.’
‘Might turn into something more.’
‘Good,’ he said.
But it wouldn’t. It never did. She couldn’t hold a job.
He found himself staring at his mother’s feet. She kept her nails painted red, and a callous bulged from her big toe. He knew what she wanted, so he massaged her arches, pressing deeply with his thumbs until she twitched on the edge of discomfort. It was their evening ritual. When she worked, she spent hours standing, leaving her flat feet sore by the time she came home.
Jessie gave him a crooked, slightly drunken smile. Her red hair, streaked with gray at the roots, was pulled back tightly behind her head, framing her oval face. She had a chirpy, too-happy voice. ‘You really are the best son in the world, you know that, don’t you?’
Ross rubbed her feet without answering.
‘The scale says I’m down a pound,’ she told him.
‘Good for you.’
He didn’t think one pound would make any difference. Twenty pounds might, but that wasn’t going to happen. His mother binged on diets to lose ten pounds, and then she binged on junk food to put on fifteen. She wasn’t fat, but her panties and T-shirt were both a size too small for her current weight.
It was just the two of them. Ross and Jessie. That was the way it had been since he was eight years old, when his father took a page from a Springsteen song and went out for a drive and never came home. Fifteen years had passed since then. Jessie in and out of jobs. Ross in and out of school. They’d spent most of those years in a little apartment in Fargo. His mother worked security at a local mall, and her boss was a former high school coach confined to a wheelchair. She spent most of her time straddling his lap. Wheels didn’t turn bad people into angels.
When the boss’s wife found out about the affair, he fired Jessie. She found a bus-stop-bench lawyer who wheedled a settlement out of the mall owner, and they used the money to get out of Fargo and buy a small house in the town of Gary, southwest of Duluth. That was a year ago. Jessie took part-time security jobs when she could get them. Some months were flush. Some weren’t.
Ross had applied for jobs, but he couldn’t wash the contempt off his face at interviews, and after a while, he gave up. He spent most days hiking in the woods. Sometimes he went far north, almost to Canada, taking with him only what he could carry on his back and living off the land for days at a time. That was how it was supposed to be. Man. Nature. Values.