“I’m gonna let you go with a warning this time.” She uncuffed him and shook him roughly by the shoulders. “Are you listening to me?” She opened the door and motioned him through it. “Go!” She watched his stumbling, half-falling progress down the stairs, and when he hit bottom, she called after him, “Don’t steal anything on the way out!”
She returned to the middle cell and unlocked the door, resisting the urge to say something sarcastic. Don’t be in a hurry to get the words out. She suppressed a smile as she looked down to the sheriff’s empty holster.
His face reddened and his hand moved quickly to cover the leather as though she had caught him naked. “We don’t need to mention this to anybody, do we, girl?
“Girl?”
“Lilith,” he corrected himself.
“Deputy,” she said, in the manner of striking a bargain.
He nodded and the deal was sealed. She opened the door. He passed into the narrow corridor, as Lilith studied the cell’s lock. “Now, how do you suppose she got out? Oh, wait. I see it now.”
He looked down as she pointed to the lock.
“You know, Sheriff, that piece of junk must be as old as the building. It’s a damn antique, isn’t it? Pity the parish didn’t increase your budget this year. You might’ve had that replaced.”
Lilith hit the lock once with her nightstick, but it held. She hit it a second time and put some muscle behind it. The old lock began to give.
The sheriff wore the ghost of a smile.
“Damn penny-pinching fools,” said Lilith, as she continued to hammer away at the rusted metal. “I’d really make those bastards burn for this, if I were you.”
The sheriff’s smile was wider now, and Deputy Beaudare took that to mean that he had finally found her useful.
There was only one other possibility – he might be laughing at her.
He did clap her warmly on the back, in the way that men congratulate one another, but she was still unsure of him as they descended the stairs. He disappeared into his office and emerged a few minutes later with another gun in his holster. Through the open door, she saw the credenza behind the desk was missing the black leather duffel bag. So now the escaped prisoner had two guns, the sheriff’s 9mm automatic and the.357 revolver.
“I’m going after her,” said the sheriff, almost to the door. “I want you to stay close to that phone in case I need you, all right?” And then he was gone, and the door swung shut behind him.
She sat down at her desk and resumed her job of watching a phone that never rang. Nothing had changed.
Lilith powered up the computer. At the C prompt, she prepared to enter a code, but the machine was writing its own commands. Sitting at the edge of her chair, she watched the unfolding notice of a message in a newly created private file which awaited the deputy’s personal password. She entered her password at the next prompt, and her message appeared. By the opening salutation, she knew whose work this was. How long had it taken Mallory to figure out that the password was WOLF?
Dear Rookie,
Not in your best interests if I get caught. I’ll tell the sheriff what you really are. And, Rookie, you don’t even know the whole answer to that one. I’ll call when I want you.
Lilith felt the touch of ice running along her back, fingering her spine from the inside of her skin. As she was deleting Mallory’s memo from hell, she glanced down at the disk pack on the desk. The cellophane wrapper had been sealed this morning, but now it was split open and the box was missing two computer disks. So the escapee had taken time from her busy jailbreak-morning to download the files.
CHAPTER 9
Death created no problem for Ira Wooley when the bodies were laid to rest in the vaults of existing tombs. A fresh grave required him to memorize the entire cemetery anew, but this was rare. Generally, sameness prevailed, and so this was a favorite place. The people were silent; their monuments and stone houses never changed. But the dying bouquets of All Saints’ Day had been removed from the graves, and now he walked through the alleys of tombs, making minor adjustments in his mind, fixing a new image for this city of the dead, sans flowers. “Hello, Ira,” said a voice behind him.
Startled, he turned around to see a tall figure standing at the rim of the tree circle. It was the sandwich man from Jane’s Cafe, and he was moving forward with long-legged strides, increasing Ira’s fear as he drew closer. The sandwich man was smiling, but facial arrangements for love and anger were all the same to Ira. It was a language he could not read. Now the sandwich man seemed to understand that motion communicated menace, and he stood very still.
Ira ceased to gulp the air, and the rhythm of his heart was slowing, but then he plunged into deep distress. The tall man represented a new object in the cemetery. Ira’s body slowly revolved, eyes passing over the ground, the stones, and the trees to create a new inventory. The sandwich man played the statue with endless patience until Ira had committed each object to a new schematic which incorporated the man as part of the cemetery.
When Ira was done, the man spoke again, but what he said did not come across as words yet, only noises at the moment, for the fear had not entirely subsided.
“Do you remember me? Charles Butler?”
“Do you remember me,” said Ira in a monotone.
“I wonder if you could answer a question about what happened to your hands. Would that upset you?”
“Would that upset you,” said Ira. And in the next moment, the noise had become a few words. His hands – upset him? He looked down on the bandages. His hands had done nothing to upset him.
The man was saying more, but his words became noise again, as unintelligible as the wind in the trees, the musical birdcalls and the more mechanical clicks and whirs of insects. Every sound in the cemetery was melding together, all the same noise. Ira focussed on his bandages as he began the work of shutting down the sound. At last, he entered the peaceful zone of white static.
But the man’s words came through again, noise insisting on itself, rising in inflection.
Ira cried out, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” until the sandwich man learned that ‘yes’ meant ’Shut up! SHUT UP!‘ and the man fell silent. And now Ira taught the tall stranger to stand motionless again, and to drop his eyes. It took only a little time till the man learned not to look at him directly. Then Ira’s attention was captured by a drop of water moving slowly along the leaf of a shrub. He was sliding into a trance when the drop elongated and fell off the leaf to become a perfect sphere in free fall. It splashed on the ground and freed him from fixation.
The sandwich man sat beside him so quietly, he became as the trees and the stones. And now they could talk.
“So you played five notes on the piano, and Babe didn’t like that.”
“Babe didn’t like that,” said Ira.
“Can you tell me why?”
“Tell me why.” Ira rocked back and forth, and then he began to hum. Babe had broken his hands but not his mouth. Humming soothed him and reduced the terror of a new voice which he had not been properly prepared for. Jane’s Cafe was not terrifying because he ate his lunch there every day, and his mother was always beside him. But now he was alone with the very large sandwich man, and this was wrong. The cafe was not supposed to follow him about.
But the man seemed to understand him much better than other people did. He was patient and his voice was calm, asking more questions about Babe.
Babe was dangerous. His mother had told him the man was dead, but Ira had no pictures of a dead Babe, and he had not yet seen Babe’s stone added to the cemetery.
Ira looked over the sandwich man’s shoulder as he prepared to speak to him. He delved into his store of dialogue for something appropriate. He decided upon an instruction he had received in the kitchen one bright morning, years ago. He remembered that scene best for the play of light on the wall, taking its patterns from white lace curtains. Then the fascination with curtain patterns had been displaced by his attraction to the fire of the stove’s front burner, and he had reached for it. His mother had restrained him and spoken to him out of deep concern. Now these were the same words he gave to the sandwich man. “Don’t burn yourself.”