“Congratulations, huh? Big promotion. Cue the marching band.”
Frank’s right eyebrow was wryly arched. They both broke into laughter, but Terry’s dried up quickly.
“Hey,” Frank said. His hand found Terry’s, squeezed it. “Keep it together, okay?”
“Okay.” Terry swallowed. “How many women are still awake?”
“Don’t know. It’s bad. But I’m sure you can handle this.”
Terry wasn’t. He drank his doctored coffee. He chewed his bacon. His dining companion was quiet.
Frank drank from his own coffee and looked at Terry over the rim of his cup.
“Can I handle it?” Terry asked. “Can I really?”
“Yes.” There was no doubt at all in Frank Geary’s voice. “But you’ll need all the help you can get.”
“You want me to deputize you?” It made sense to Terry: besides Lila, they were down at least a couple of officers.
Frank shrugged. “I’m a town employee. I’m here to pitch in. If you want to give me a star, that’s fine.”
Terry took another slug of the laced coffee and got to his feet. “Let’s go.”
Aurora had knocked out a quarter of the department, but Frank helped Terry fill out a roster of volunteer deputies that Friday morning, and brought in Judge Silver to administer their oaths on Friday afternoon. Don Peters was one of the new hires; another was a high school senior named Eric Blass, young but enthusiastic.
On Frank’s advice, Terry posted a nine PM curfew. Two-man teams began canvasing Dooling’s neighborhoods to put up the notices. Also to settle folks down, discourage vandalism, and—another notion of Frank’s—to begin cataloging the whereabouts of the sleepers. Frank Geary might have been a dogcatcher before Aurora, but he made a helluva law officer, with a terrific sense of organization. When Terry discovered he could lean on him, he leaned hard.
Almost a dozen looters were collared. This really wasn’t much in the way of police work, because few bothered to hide what they were doing. They probably believed their behavior would be winked at, but soon learned better. 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, where he sometimes moonlighted.
“They don’t need them now,” Dunphy had argued. “Come on, Deputy Coombs, gimme a break. It’s a clear case of salvage.”
Frank seized the janitor by the nose, squeezing hard enough to make the cartilage creak. “Sheriff Coombs. You’ll call him Sheriff Coombs from now on.”
“Okay!” Dunphy cried. “I’ll call im President Coombs, if you’ll just leave go of my schnozz!”
“Return that property and we’ll let this ride,” Terry said, and was gratified by Frank’s approving nod.
“Sure! You bet!”
“And don’t you fuck the dog on this, because we’ll be checking.”
The great thing about Frank, Terry realized during those first three days, was that he grasped the enormous pressure Terry was functioning under in a way that no one else seemed to. He never pressed, but he always had a suggestion and, nearly as important, he kept that leather-encased silver hip flask—very cool, maybe it was a black thing—at the ready for when Terry got low, when it seemed the day would never end and his wheels started spinning in the awful, surreal mud of it all. He was at Terry’s elbow the entire time, stalwart as hell, and he was with him on Monday, Aurora Plus Five, outside the gates of the Dooling Correctional Facility for Women.
Acting chief Coombs had tried several times over the weekend to convince Clint that he needed to release Eve Black into his custody. Rumors about the woman who had killed the meth dealers were circulating: unlike all the others, the stories went, she slept and woke. At the station, Linny Mars (still hanging in there; you go, girl) had received so many calls regarding this that she had taken to hanging up on anyone who asked. Frank said they had to find out if the rumors were true; it was a priority. Terry supposed he was right, but Norcross was being stubborn, and Terry was finding it increasingly difficult to even get the annoying man on the phone.
The fires had burned themselves out by Monday, but the countryside near the prison still smelled like an ashtray. It was gray and humid and the misty rain that had been falling off and on since early Friday morning was falling again. Acting Sheriff Terry Coombs, feeling mildewed, stood at the intercom and monitor outside the gates of the Dooling Correctional Facility for Women.
Norcross still wasn’t buying the transfer order that Judge Silver had signed for Eve Black. (Frank had assisted with that, too, explaining to the judge that the woman might possess a unique immunity to the virus, and impressing on the old jurist the need to act quickly and keep things calm before a riot started.)
“Oscar Silver’s got no jurisdiction in the matter, Terry.” The doctor’s voice burbled from the speaker, sounding as if it were coming from the bottom of a pond. “I know he signed her in at my wife’s request, but he can’t sign her out. Once she was remanded to me for evaluation, that was the end of his authority. You need a county judge now.”
Terry couldn’t fathom why Lila’s husband, who had always seemed down-to-earth, was being such a pain in the ass. “There’s no one else right now, Clint. 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. As if they’d come to a happy compromise, as if he’d given even a single damn inch. “But why bother? Eve Black is now asleep like all the rest.”
Hearing that put a lead ball in Terry’s stomach. He should have known better than to believe a bunch of loose talk. Might as well try to question his own wife, a mummy in the basement dark, sprawled atop the dingy quilt on their old couch.
“She went down yesterday afternoon,” Norcross continued. “We’ve only got a few inmates that are still awake.”
“Then why won’t he let us see her?” Frank asked. He had been standing silently throughout the exchange.
It was a good question. Terry jabbed the call button and asked it.
“Look, here’s what we’ll do,” said Clint. “I’ll send you a picture on your cell phone. But I can’t let anyone in. That’s lockdown protocol. I’ve got the warden’s book open right here in front of me. I’ll read you what it says. ‘State authorities must enjoin the facility and may remove the Lockdown Order at their discretion.’ State authorities.”
“But—”
“Don’t but me, Terry, I didn’t write it. Those are the regulations. Since Hicks walked off on Friday morning, I’m the only administrative officer this prison’s got, and protocol is all I have to go on.”
“But—” He was starting to sound like a two-cycle engine: but-but-but-but.
“I had to put us on lockdown. I had no choice. You’ve seen the same news I’ve seen. There’re people going around torching women in their cocoons. I think you’ll agree that my population would be a prime target for that breed of vigilante.”
“Oh, come on.” Frank made a hissing noise and shook his head. They hadn’t been able to find a uniform shirt large enough to button across his chest, so Frank wore it open to his undershirt. “Sounds like a bunch of bureaucratic gobblydegook to me. You’re the acting sheriff, Terry. That’s gotta trump a doctor, especially a shrink.”