Never Flinch (Holly Gibney #4)

Chapter 14

1

Holly is preparing to leave for Madison, the next stop on Kate’s tour, when Izzy calls and tells her Russell Grinsted isn’t Trig. “His alibis for Rafferty and Sinclair both check out. His gun and his wife’s are the wrong caliber. Bottom line, the guy wasn’t scared to see us, just pissed off.” As an afterthought she adds (not without satisfaction), “Our visit may have tipped his marriage over. It was teetering anyway. He’s been cheating on his wife.”

Holly hardly hears that part. She can feel her cheeks heating with the kind of flush that would look feverish rather than pretty if she looked in a mirror (so she doesn’t). “I sent you on a wild goose chase. I’m sorry, Isabelle.”

“Don’t be. It was a good deduction, just off-base. It happens. You were right about the other thing. We’ve got a forensics guy who’s also an amateur graphologist. He spent part of his Saturday night looking at an enlarged photo of Reverend Rafferty’s calendar under magnification. You were right. It’s TRIG, not brIGGS. T into B was the giveaway, he said. No question in his mind. If the Bill Wilson alias means the guy has been going to meetings, we have a real chance of finding out who he is. Trig isn’t like Dave or Bill. It stands out.”

“I’m really sorry, Iz. I went too far out on a limb and it broke off.”

“Quit with the sorry,” Izzy says. “Number one, we had to re-interview Grinsted anyway. Number two, we have a potentially valuable lead and that’s down to you. Number three, you’re always too hard on yourself. Give yourself some fucking credit, Hols.”

Holly almost says, I’m sorry, I’ll try , then chokes it off. “Thanks, Izzy, that’s kind. I reached out to my guy in the recovery program. If he knows a Trig, he’ll let me know and I’ll let you know.”

“I’ll be doubling down on that,” Izzy says. “This will come as a shock to you, but there are a lot of cops who have substance abuse problems and some of them go to recovery meetings. I’ll circulate a memo that asks about Trig and guarantees anonymity for any cop who has info. You concentrate on taking care of that woman you’re bodyguarding. They’re saying nasty things about her on that so-called news station. The Big Bob.”

“I’ll do my best,” Holly says, and ends the call. She goes into the bathroom and splashes cold water on her burning cheeks. She understands that Izzy is right; all her life she has dwelled on her failures while discounting her successes as coincidence or pure luck. Some of this was no doubt the result of growing up in the shadow (no; under the thumb) of Charlotte Gibney, but she suspects some of it is just the way she’s built.

I need my own program , she thinks. Call it SEA. Self-Esteem Anonymous .

Her phone chirps. It’s Corrie Anderson, telling Holly she and Kate are saddling up for the drive to Wisconsin.

“I’ll be half an hour behind you,” Holly says. “Keep on the main-traveled roads and watch out for cars that seem like they’re sticking with you.”

“Not easy,” Corrie says. “After Iowa City, we’ve picked up the usual tail of Kate fans.”

“Watch for a woman on her own.” She almost adds, Probably wearing dark glasses , but that’s stupid. On a sunny morning like this, most drivers will be wearing them.

“Roger that.” Corrie sounds insouciant, unconcerned. Holly doesn’t like it. “Hold on. Kate wants to talk to you.”

There’s a rustle, and then Holly’s boss is on the phone. “I just want to thank you again for what you did last night. I was frozen in place. So was Corrie and everyone else. You, however, were not.”

Holly starts to say something about how she didn’t even think, just reacted. Then she thinks of Izzy saying, Give yourself some fucking credit, Hols . What she says is, “You’re very welcome.” Saying that is difficult but not impossible.

She ends the call feeling good about herself again. Well… no. Holly never feels exactly good about herself, but she does feel better, and decides to treat herself to a breakfast pastry before getting on the road.

Her phone rings again as she’s going out the door. It’s Jerome. He says he’ll be happy to research fundamentalist churches that have gotten in trouble with the law.

“I know it’s a big ask,” Holly says, tossing her suitcase into the backseat of the Chrysler (the luxury of which she is coming to enjoy). “I’m sorry to take you away from your book.”

“I told you, I hit a roadblock on it. I’ll finish it eventually—it’s how I was raised—but I guess I wasn’t made for fiction. Research, though… I love that shit.”

“Well, do what you can, but don’t let your novel go cold on my account. My idea will probably come to nothing, anyway. I’ve already pulled one boner on the Surrogate Juror thing.” Leaning against her car in the mellow morning sunshine, she tells Jerome how she thought Trig might have been a nickname for Russell Grinsted.

“Don’t let it get you down,” he says. “Even Aaron Judge strikes out once in awhile. Actually quite a lot.”

“Thanks, J.”

“Don’t mention it, Hollyberry.”

“That’s one,” she says, and can’t keep the smile out of her voice. “You get two more.”

He laughs, then says, “I’ll hoard those. Stay safe, Hols.”

“That’s the plan.”

2

It was Chrissy who went to sleep in Cabin 6 of the Davenport Rest, but it’s Chris who wakes up, yawns, stretches, and gets into the rusty, coffin-sized shower. He doesn’t need coffee; as a person that grew up in the Real Christ Holy Church of Baraboo Junction, he has never used it. Or alcohol. Or drugs, including aspirin.

He’s in a good mood. Deacon Fallowes mentioned Brenda’s Bitches last night, and Chris woke up thinking about them this morning. Pastor Jim (also Andy Fallowes) likes to say that “the Way of the Cross is a hard way,” and it’s true, but that makes every victory sweeter. The day the church bested Brenda’s Bitches was a sweet day indeed. It’s true that Mama didn’t care for what happened, but as the Book of Titus says, women should not be argumentative, but submissive.

Not that she argued much that day; just a few words was all. As Isaiah says, “The ox knows its owner.”

The bathroom’s one towel is little more than a rag, but Chris doesn’t care; he’s having a pleasant walk down Memory Lane to Rawcliffe, Pennsylvania, and the Rawcliffe Women’s Center.

That day he was all Chris.

3

Women’s Center , indeed! Like Pastor Jim and Deacon Andy, Chris has always been amused by how the godless find sanitary terms for their evil. A women’s center, not an abortion mill. Pro-choice instead of pro-murder.

At least , he thinks as he dresses in jeans and a tee-shirt from the blue suitcase, Brenda’s Bitches had the balls to call themselves something honest. They were bitches and proud of it .

This was a year before Dobbs v. Jackson . Chris found out later, after they got back to Wisconsin, that the Bitches got to know one another—wait for it, wait for it—at the Rawcliffe PTA, Rawcliffe being a small and prosperous city not far from Hershey. By the time the Bitches got organized, Real Christ Holy had been picketing the Women’s Center for almost five months, sometimes joined by like-minded local protestors but usually going it alone on days when it rained or snowed. As Pastor Jim liked to say, “Deal with it, brothers and sisters, and remember it’s always sunny in heaven.”

Funded by Hot Flash Electric money (Harold Stewart, Chris’s father, religious and completely na?ve, had no idea that the name of his company had a certain female implication), Real Christ Holy might pick a target in any part of the country, but once they picked it, they stuck with it.

There were women in the Rawcliffe PTA who approved of the protests, if not always of the signs the Real Christers carried (dismembered fetuses, bloodstained doctors’ smocks, ABORTION PROVIDERS BURN IN HELL), but there were a dozen or more who did not. These ladies met at the home of Brenda Blevins, who was particularly incensed by the sign Pastor Jim was carrying. This was after an abortion doctor, Henry Tremont, was shot and killed by a religious martyr named Taylor Verecker as Tremont was coming out of church. Pastor Jim’s sign read TAYLOR VERECKER WAS SENT TO DO GOD’S WORK.

The Blevins woman had an idea for a counter-protest, one that would generate plenty of headlines, and some of her friends, furious at the Real Christ Holy interlopers, went along with it. Also, it was funny. Chris was willing to admit it. No one ever said godless libtards lacked a sense of humor.

Blevins, partial heir to a chocolate fortune, had plenty of money—probably not as much as Chris’s father, who had donated almost his entire fortune to Real Christ Holy, but she was wealthy enough to purchase nine motor scooters and nine leather jackets, all as pink as Barbie’s Dreamhouse. On the back of the jackets: brENDA’S BITCHES.

The nine women picked a drizzly day when Real Christ Holy only had a few local protestors helping them out. They formed up in a V -shape on Fourth Street, Blevins at the forefront. They rode their scooters at the protestors at about twenty miles an hour, singing a version of “We Shall Overcome” that rhymed overcome with God-bothering scum.

The Real Christers scattered before them. News photogs and TV cameras—all alerted by the resourceful Ms. Blevins—caught everything on film. The murder factory was in a strip mall at the end of Fourth. There was plenty of parking lot there for the counter-protestors to swing around in and return to the street. The Real Christ Holy protestors scattered again when they did. Signs were dropped and run over. Still singing, having a whale of a good time, the pink motor scooter drivers put-putted a couple of hundred yards up Fourth Street, circled, and returned yet again, singing and slinging such epithets as “Run, you self-righteous assholes!”

The Real Christ Holy men and women were cold, damp, and in too much disarray to be immediately angry. They were used to being shouted and jeered at, but not driven at. Most just looked bewildered. Chris’s mother was rubbing her arm. The rightside mirror of a scooter had clipped her on its way by. Her sign, GOD SENDS KILLER DOCS TO HELL, lay at her feet. Chris was infuriated to see his mom looking sad and damp and beaten, with her no-color hair (women in Real Christ Holy did not dye) pasted against her cheeks.

Jamie Fallowes, Andy’s son, grabbed Chris. He shouted, “I’ve got an idea! Come on!”

The two young men beat feet to the 7-Eleven at the far end of the strip mall. There they bought all the cooking oil and olive oil on the shelves. Jamie waited impatiently for Chris to pay with the Hot Flash credit card (Real Christ Holy did not believe in plastic, which was a tool of the deep state), then the two of them returned to the Women’s Center, young men who were excited and laughing their heads off. Brenda’s Bitches were back on Fourth Street, swinging around for another bombing run.

“Help us!” Jamie shouted to the other protestors. “Come on, you guys!”

Only Pastor Jim stood back (but smiling) as bottles of cooking oil were passed around, opened, and emptied across the parking lot the Bitches were using as their turnaround point.

“What are you doing?” Gwen Stewart asked her son. She had picked up her sign but refused to take a bottle of Wesson oil. “That’s dangerous!”

Women from the center, some wearing nurses’ uniforms—how grotesque was that—had come out to watch and cheer on the Bitches.

The scooters came back, Brenda in the lead, bent over her handlebars. A few of the Real Christ Holy protestors were still spreading oil, but most just stood aside with Pastor Jim and Deacon Andy. The scooters swept into the parking lot. “ Bitches rule! ” one shouted as she went by.

They reached the turnaround point. The asphalt was wet as well as oily, and every single one of them spun out. The singing and shouting were replaced by screams of surprise and pain. Most of the pink scooters slid all the way to the storefronts. One jumped the curb and struck the show window of Richard Chemel’s Pawn a couple of others staggered to their feet; Brenda Blevins herself was on all fours with blood gushing from her nose.

Nurses and aides—plus a couple of young women who’d come in for the procedure—began helping the downed women to their feet. One of the nurses, wearing a smock printed all over with bluebirds (something cheerful for the mommies to look at while their babies were being sucked away in pieces), approached Jamie, who was grinning. She was trembling with outrage. “ How low can you go? ” she screamed. “How rotten can you be to hurt a bunch of women?”

Chris stepped between them before Bluebird Nurse could punch Jamie in the nose, which she seemed ready to do. “You’re killing babies,” Chris said. “How rotten is that?”

Bluebird Nurse looked at him, cheeks burning, mouth open. Then she spread her arms wide and actually laughed. “I’ve got a pregnant rape victim in there today, but I can’t talk to you about that or anything else. Can I? You’re lost. The whole fucking bunch of you, lost. It’s the Great American Divide. At least you’ll go to jail.” She wheeled around and repeated, “ The whole fucking bunch of you! ”

But no one went to jail. Not Brenda’s Bitches, not the Real Christ Holy protestors. Pastor Jim had a local lawyer—one of the good ones—on call, and the lawyer pointed out it was the Bitches who had started it. The security footage from the Women’s Center cameras confirmed this. And while the cooking oil trick was sort of low, the Real Christ Holy group had been observing the buffer zone decreed by FACE, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Also, several of Pastor Jim’s crew exhibited bruises from passing scooters, almost all of them created after the fact. The one authentic bruise was on Gwen Stewart’s arm, and she refused to show it to the police when they came. When Pastor Jim asked her—in his gentlest voice—why not, she only shook her head and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I might have already had it,” she said. “I bruise easily these days.”

4

Chris’s good moods (which almost always happen when he is Chris) are as fragile as an overinflated balloon, and this one pops as he’s putting his suitcases into the Kia’s hatchback. It’s that memory of Mama saying, I might have already had it. I bruise easily these days . Mama who said, Our secret . Mama who stood up for her twins when their own father was ready to throw them out of the church… and possibly out of their home. Mama had been nobody’s ox that day.

She didn’t already have a bruise, Chris saw the scooter’s mirror clip her himself, but it was true that she bruised easily. Because, it turned out, she had leukemia. Six months after the Rawcliffe protest, she was dead. Once the initial diagnosis was made, there were no doctors and certainly no hospitals. Prayer was Pastor Jim’s prescription, and all six hundred members of Real Christ Holy prayed for Gwendolyn Stewart without ceasing. In the end, God’s will was done. When Andy Fallowes found Chrissy crying behind the house the day after the burying, wearing pedal pushers, makeup so ineptly applied it was clownish, and a wig all askew, he did not condemn her. He only said, “What could doctors have given her except one more year of suffering?”

It was cold comfort, but better than no comfort at all.

5

Holly is in Rockford, Illinois, Kate’s truck about sixty miles ahead, when she gets a call from Izzy. She pulls into a Circle K and returns the call. Izzy is brief and bitter: “The son of a bitch got another one. Elderly farmer upstate in Rosscomb. Name of George Carville. A neighbor saw him sitting slumped over the wheel of his tractor and got concerned. The notes were in his fucking hat . Brad Lowry, plus Finkel and Wentworth.”

“Did anybody see—”

“We’re still checking, but so far nothing.”

“Is it your—”

“Our case? No, it still belongs to the State Police and the Cowslip County Sheriff, but Tom and I are going up there and I have what you like to call Holly hope. It’s rural. People take note of strangers. It was either carelessness or pure arrogance.”

“Maybe both. Keep me informed when you can. And again, I’m sorry about—”

“I will, and stop apologizing .” With that, Izzy is gone.

Before pulling back onto the highway, she gets a call from Corrie. They have arrived in Madison. “Kate wants you to join us for lunch, if that’s okay.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

6

When the women see Holly come through the door of the hotel restaurant, they exchange a look, then burst into gales of laughter. For a moment all of Holly’s insecurities, never far from the surface, come rushing back. She thinks about high school. Laughter directed her way always makes her think of high school. Her left hand flies to the zipper of her slacks to make sure it’s pulled up all the way. Then Corrie is waving to her. “You have to see this! It’s too crazy!”

Holly comes to the table. Her breakfast Danish was hours ago and she was planning on a hearty brunch, but now she’s not sure if she’s still hungry.

“Corrie is a hero,” Kate says solemnly. “She saved the day.” Then she starts laughing again and holds up this morning’s Quad-City Times . Holly takes it, not sure what Kate is talking about but at least sure ( pretty sure) that she’s not the butt of the joke.

The headline of the story below the fold reads WOMAN POWER ADVOCATE ATTACKED AT RIVERCENTER. Holly can’t remember any news people among the eBayers (funny how that word sticks), but the accompanying photo looks a little too pro to have been taken with a phone. The Incredible Hulk, identified as Victor DeLong, 46, of Moline, Illinois, is sprawled facedown on the pavement. The baseball bat is in the gutter. The folding chair lies close by, legs up. In the foreground, turned toward the camera, looking extremely startled and extremely pretty, is Corrie Anderson. According to the news, it was Corrie who kicked the chair and tripped the would-be assailant.

“I’ll call and have them print a correction,” Corrie says.

Holly gets on that one posthaste. “Don’t you dare. I like it just the way it is.” Her mother’s firm dictum about women in print is never far from her mind: A lady’s name should be in the newspaper only three times—birth, marriage, death .

Of course for Holly, that ship has sailed.

“Corrie getting in the paper for her heroic efforts is only half of our happiness,” Kate says. “We’re at the Mingo on Friday night, and life is good.”

“The last holdup was an insurance issue,” Corrie says. “Sista’s band will have a lot of equipment onstage. Insurance company was moderately crappy about that.”

“Of course it was,” Holly says. She’s thinking of the donkey with the big teeth. It doesn’t haunt her dreams, at least not yet, but give it time.

“Instruments and monitors, lots of power cords, plus Sista Bessie’s cyclorama, which I’m told is famous soul singers from the old days. Kate had to sign a waiver.”

“Of course she did,” Holly says. “Insurance companies are so poopy.”

The women laugh at that, although Holly doesn’t consider insurance companies like Global funny. She says it’s great news… although she was hoping to see Sista Bessie sing the National Anthem at Dingley Park. Plus Izzy pitching for the police team, of course.

Holly likes to think she can root with the best of them.

7

Barbara is in her small (but cozy) study over her parents’ garage that Sunday morning, trying to write a poem. It’s not going very well, because thoughts of her “Lowtown Jazz” poem—now a song—keep intruding. Time and time again she finds herself staring off into space, trying to think of words that rhyme with jazz without resorting to her rhyming dictionary. So far all she’s come up with is spazz (not exactly politically correct) and Alcatraz . It’s a relief when her phone rings, and a pleasure when she sees who’s calling.

“No rehearsals today,” Betty says. “You busy?”

Barbara looks at her scratchings and crossouts. “Not very.”

“Come on to the hotel and get me. Show me something in this town that’s fun . You up for that?”

“Sure, but what kind of things do you like?”

“Surprise me.”

8

Betty is waiting in the lobby of the Garden City Plaza, looking frumpy and anonymous in a shin-length skirt, bobby sox, kerchief, and wraparound shades. They go out the way Barbara came in, through the parking garage. They emerge in an alley behind the hotel.

“Where are we going?” Betty asks.

“You’ll see. Are you up for a walk?”

“Walk sounds good.” Betty slaps one meaty buttock. “I need to bust some calories.”

“Judging from the way you’re moving onstage, I’d say you’re busting plenty.”

They walk down Clancy Street and eventually come out on the waterfront. A block further along they come to Lakewood, the small amusement park with the Wonderland Pier at its far end. By then the two of them are chatting like old friends instead of new ones.

“Don’t know if you like amusements,” Barbara says. “This place just got going for the summer, and it doesn’t look like much stuff is open yet—”

Betty grabs Barbara’s hand and swings it. “ Somethin’s open, because I smell cotton candy.”

Betty buys two cones, and they sit on a bench, eating pink clouds. “Every bite tastes like childhood,” Barbara says.

“Same,” Betty says. “You thought any more about touring with us?”

“I think… I ought to stay here. Try to write some poems. The music… I don’t know… it kind of gets in my way.”

“Cock-blocks the muse?”

Barbara bursts out laughing. “Never thought about it that way, but you’re not wrong.”

Betty trashcans her cone—she’s vacuumed it up—and points across the boardwalk, which eventually leads to the pier. “ That’s open, too. Come on.”

Barbara looks at the Dodgem Cars and bursts into giggles. “Are you serious?”

“Girl, I’m going to mess you up.”

Betty buys tickets at the booth and crams herself into one of the cars. Barbara gets into another one and they race around, cranking their child-sized steering wheels, the poles on their cars spitting sparks and smelling like model train transformers. Barbara hits Betty first, spinning her into one of the padded rails. Betty shrieks with laughter and rams a twelve-year-old out of her way, chasing Barbara. By the time the overhead power dies and the cars drift to a stop, they have had several collisions and teamed to run a couple of teenagers into a corner, where they battered the kids relentlessly.

Barbara is laughing hard, and so is Betty.

“He’p me out of this thing, Barbara, I’m fucking stuck!”

Barbara takes one arm. One of the teenagers, bearing no animus, takes the other. They pull Betty out of the little car’s cockpit.

“Like a cork out of a wine bottle,” Betty says. “Thank you, Barb. Thank you, son.”

“No prob,” the boy says.

“Let’s find the restroom before I piss my pants,” Betty says.

They have the women’s bathroom to themselves. Betty asks if Barbara has a boyfriend.

“No one steady,” Barbara says. “I try em but don’t buy em. How about you?”

“Girl, I’m too old for that.”

“Never too old,” Barbara says, hoping for both their sakes that it’s true.

“I was married, but that didn’t work. He was into dope and I was into booze. Was a wonder we didn’t kill each other.”

“I’m scared to drink,” Barbara confesses. “Both grandfathers, paternal and maternal, were alcoholics.”

“I haven’t had brown liquor in seven years,” Betty says. “You go on and stay scared. It won’t hurt you none.”

They ride the Ferris wheel, and when it stops at the top, with endless miles of lake disappearing into the morning haze, Betty takes off her kerchief and holds it up, letting it unfurl like a banner. She opens her hand and lets it fly away. They watch it go, a red streak against blue sky. Betty puts an arm around Barbara and gives her a hug, brief but strong. “This is the nicest time I’ve had in awhile.”

“Me too,” Barbara says.

“Listen, now, because I’m speaking truth. That title poem in your book, ‘Faces Change,’ it scared the hell out of me.”

“Me too,” Barbara says.

“Was it a true thing? Did you maybe see something?”

“I did.” The Ferris wheel starts to move, bringing the real world up to meet them. “I’d like to tell myself it wasn’t real, but I think it was.”

Betty nods with perfect understanding. Which is a relief. She doesn’t ask questions, which is a greater one. “Like a dog howling in the moonlight at what it can see and you can’t.”

“Exactly like that.”

They buy ice cream and walk to the end of the pier. The sun is warm, but the breeze coming off the lake is cool. It’s somehow the perfect combination.

“You sing with the Crystals next Saturday night,” Betty says, looking out at the water. “Sing with me. Hear that audience go crazy… because they’re gonna. Then you decide. But no matter what, you and I are going to stay tight. That work for you?”

“Yes,” Barbara says, and knows that some day, maybe soon, she’ll tell Betty about what happened in the elevator when Chet Ondowsky showed his real face. Underneath was nothing human. Not even close. Nobody knows about that but Holly and Jerome, but she’s pretty sure Betty—who knows about dogs howling in the moonlight at what only they can see—would understand.

“Good.”

“Can I ask you something, Betty?”

“Anything.”

“What rhymes with jazz?”

Betty thinks about it, then holds up the remains of her ice cream. “H?agen-Dazs,” she says, and they both shriek with laughter.

9

There’s some sort of mix-up about the DoubleTree reservations in Madison, so after brunch the three women have to wait for awhile in the lobby while their rooms are made ready. Kate isn’t happy about that but says nothing. At least not then.

That afternoon Corrie spots her boss in the pool and makes calls while Kate swims her endless laps. Holly goes back to her room and looks at the threats Kate’s stalker has sent. There’s the note Corrie picked up at the hotel desk in Spokane—accompanied by a photo showing Kate and Corrie laughing—and photographs of the anthrax card, outside and in.

Spokane: You only get 1 warning, so receive it well. Next time it will be you and it will be for real. She who speaks lies shall perish.

Omaha: A BASIC CARD FOR BASIC BITCHES on the outside. On the inside: HELL AWAITS THE DECEIVER. Carefully printed. Holly is surer than ever that their stalker is a religious crazy. In the case of Izzy’s killer, maybe not religious (except in the AA/NA sense) but just as crazy.

Oh, and the picture titled LESBIANS. Which makes Holly think of Al Pacino in Scarface .

Holly goes back to the email she sent to Izzy, before signing on to Kate McKay’s Magical Mystery Tour.

Nicely turned phrases. Perfect punctuation. Lawyer, or possibly… judge? As in Judge Witterson, who sent Duffrey to prison?

She’s already goofed up once, suggesting Russell Grinsted might be Trig. She won’t do that again. She goes to the website for Buckeye County District Court and finds a photo of Judge Irving Witterson. He looks to be in his late sixties or early seventies, which makes him an unlikely choice for Trig. Nevertheless, she sends the picture to John Ackerly, with a brief note attached, asking if he’s seen this guy at meetings, calling himself Irv… or Irving… or Trig.

Enough. It’s not your case. Get out of this room and breathe some fresh air. Take a walk, clear your head.

It’s a good idea. It never occurs to her to swim in the hotel pool; she knows how to breaststroke and backstroke, her father taught her as a child, but besides worrying about yeast infections, she has none of Kate’s body confidence, and the idea of being seen in public wearing a bathing suit makes her wince.

She doesn’t even get as far as the parking lot. Corrie is sitting outside her room in the sun and crying. When she sees Holly coming, she puts on a smile.

“Hi, Holly!” Trying for chirpy.

Holly steals a chair from in front of the adjoining room and sits down beside her. “What’s wrong?”

Corrie tries to widen her smile and succeeds in turning it into a grimace. “Nothing. Really.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“But it is.” Corrie scrubs a palm up her cheek in a furtive tears-begone gesture that Holly knows well. She was once Corrie’s age, and not very well prepared for the world. The dirty truth is that she wasn’t prepared at all. “It’s just that Kate ripped me a new one once we were alone. Wasn’t the first time, won’t be the last. She can be generous, and she can be harsh.”

“What was it?”

“About having to sit in the lobby. Because I forgot to call ahead and arrange early check-in. I forgot to do it because the rooms were in your name. There were people outside waving autograph books. She hates being gawked at.”

Also hates not getting the Class A glide , Holly thinks. Hates being treated like the rest of the peons .

Holly says, “I should have done it.”

Corrie shakes her head. “You have your job, I have mine. It’s just… there’s so much to keep track of.”

Holly is surprised by how angry this behavior makes her, even though she can admire Kate for her courage and plain speaking. Part of it is because she’s been treated as Corrie was this morning—John would say she can identify —but it’s also simple unfairness. This young woman had bleach thrown in her face, and except for her own quick wits, could have inhaled anthrax dust. All Kate has suffered is having blood and guts dumped over her luggage; she didn’t even have to replace the clothes in the luggage. Corrie has stuck with her through everything, all to get a scolding for not arranging early check-in at the hotel.

She says, “That’s unfair.”

Corrie glances at her, and something in Holly’s expression clearly alarms her. “Don’t say anything to her! Don’t you dare get me in trouble! I understand how stressful things are for Kate. I really do.”

What Corrie doesn’t understand is that Holly would be incapable of going face to face and toe-to-toe with Kate McKay about this, anyway. Incapable of saying, You treated your personal assistant badly and that is not acceptable .

Holly has faced a loaded gun; on at least two occasions she has faced creatures for which there is no scientific explanation. It’s not courage she lacks, it’s the fundamental self-worth necessary to call someone out on their hurtful behavior. She may never be a person who can do that. It’s a deeper character flaw than not wanting to be seen in a swimsuit, and she doesn’t know how to fix it.

Never mind , she tells herself. After all, I’m just another employee . And immediately dislikes herself for thinking that way.

“I won’t say anything, Corrie. But it’s poopy behavior.” And, sadly, the best she can muster: “Very disappointing.”

Corrie puts a hand on Holly’s wrist. “You have to think of the pressure she’s under. Been under for years, starting with quitting the Pittsburgh City Council over that vote to get books about the so-called homosexual agenda out of the elementary school libraries—”

“I know about that,” Holly says. “I’ve read her books, Corrie.”

“But it was the Supreme Court decision—Dobbs—that turned most of her focus to the abortion thing. When they kicked it back to the states.” Corrie is looking at Holly earnestly. “It’s become a state-by-state crusade for her. Mobilizing the vote. Calling out men in power who have barely masked religious agendas. Is she a little insane on the subject? Sure. Maybe all super-dedicated people are. And how they hate her. Headlines like THE BITCH IS BACK in Breitbart , with a little asterisk replacing the I , so the Karens who read it won’t be offended.”

Holly hates that Karen pejorative, thinks it’s not much different than kike or dago , a label that says don’t think, just hate. She doesn’t say so. Corrie is on a roll, so let her roll.

“Social media is even worse. Memes of Kate’s face crossfading into a watermelon being blown apart by a .410 shotgun. Kate giving the Nazi salute. She’s been accused of enticing underage girls to Epstein’s Island. Of taking sheep-gland shots in her vagina to keep looking young. People who used to shoot at targets with Osama bin Laden’s face on them now shoot at ones with Kate’s face. Every night when she goes out, she knows her enemies will be there, booing and cursing. But she faces them. Faces them and stops them cold with humor and bravery.”

“I know. I saw.”

“It’s not just this stalker. That guy with the baseball bat would have put her in the hospital or actually killed her, if you hadn’t kicked that chair in his way and tripped him.”

Holly knows this, and she knows something else, as well: Kate just stood there. Her face in the newspaper photograph says it all: This cannot happen to me. I’m too special .

“It’s no wonder she blows off steam once in awhile. That’s all I’m saying.”

Holly makes no reply.

Corrie says, “You don’t like her, do you?”

Holly thinks about how to answer. Finally she says, “I respect her.” This much is true, but she still thinks that Corrie deserved better.

Deserves.

10

Trig is in his home office. The radio is tuned to the Big Bob, as it usually is, but he’s hardly hearing it. Some local yokel is killing Sunday afternoon with a call-in show that mixes buy-sell-or-trade items with politics. Meanwhile, Trig has got insurance forms to fill out, three sets for three separate entities. What a word that is! Only an insurance company with a spokes-ass named Buster would call people entities.

This would be a busy week even if I wasn’t killing people , he thinks… and then has to laugh. Thank God he still has a funnybone. He only has a few attachments to the real world since Annette McElroy, and that’s one of them.

Sensayuma , he hears his father’s ghost voice. Where’s your sensayuma, Triggy ole Trigger?

Giving him an affectionate squeeze, or maybe—if he was drinking or in a pissy mood—thumping him alongside the head. Sometimes at the Holman Rink, when the other team was on a power play, his father would grip Trig’s arm so hard he left bruises, only letting up when the power play expired. And if he showed Daddy those bruises later, would Daddy say, Where’s your sensayuma, Trig? Of course he would. And for Mom? Gone . It was just Daddy and Trig. She left us, buddy. Went walkabout.

Well.

Maybe.

He looks at the Global Insurance papers without seeing them. Listens to the radio, where some call-in dinkleballs is trying to sell a power mower, without hearing it. He’s thinking of Daddy. He does it more and more. Thinking of Daddy and thinking in Daddy’s voice.

You’re going to be caught, Trigger, where’s your sensayuma about that? What you did today was so fucking risky I can’t even tell you. Do you want to be caught?

Maybe part of him does. What most of him wants is to do it again and again and again. There are still jurors left to wear the guilt, plus Judge Witterson. Might he add him? Sure, if there was world enough and time. Why not? Finkel and Wentworth killed themselves and God hit Cary Tolliver with the cancer stick. How many can he get? His dead father assures him that time is short, and Trig knows that’s true… but why stop at thirteen or fourteen?

From the radio, the guy with the power mower for sale is telling the host that the “rhymes-with-witch” is going to be doing her gig in Buckeye City after all. He calls her Kate McSlay. Trig pushes back from the elderly home computer he keeps meaning to replace and listens.

“You’re talking about the motormouth feminazi,” the host says.

“Right!” the call-in guy says. “Real Americans will be at Dingley Park, watching the cops and firemen play softball for charity—”

“Not to mention Sista Bessie singing the National Anthem,” the host interjects. “That’s a big deal.”

“Yeah, some Black lady,” the caller says dismissively. “But the fake Americans will be at Mingo, listening to McSlay talk about killing babies and how it’s all right to let their kids grow up queer.”

“You mean gay,” the host says, laughing.

“Gay, fag, queer, call it what you wanna. And taking guns away! What I think is someone should use a gun on her . One in the head and zip-zap, problem solved.”

“Here at the Bob, we don’t condone violence,” the host says, still laughing, “but what you do on your own time is your own business. Let’s go back to that mower. Is it a Lawn-Boy?”

“Yeah, and hardly been—”

Trig turns off the radio. He thinks, as he did at the dentist’s office, that seven at a blow would be too many. But what if he could get the two fame-hags? Maybe with their assistants? If he can hold out until Friday night, it might be possible. He can’t put slips of paper in their hands, not if he burns down the rink with them inside it, but he can still show their names, and in letters four feet high. Trig leans back in his chair, folds his hands over his slight paunch, and chuckles.

Hasn’t lost his sensayuma after all, it seems.