Kristof saw or sensed my discomfort. But he said nothing, not an "Are you okay?" or, worse yet, a
"Here, let me do that for you." He just glanced my way now and then, knowing if I wanted to talk about it, or if I wanted to stop, I'd say so.
Finally, on the final wall, I hit my wall, the article that made my brain scream that it'd had enough. The headline read: MODERN-DAY MEDEA MASSACRES TOTS. The jaunty, off-the-cuff alliteration enraged me almost as much as the article itself. I could imagine the reporter, sitting at her news desk, completely oblivious to the details of the crime, the unthinkable horror of it, as she struggled to find the right headline. Gotta keep it short and catchy. Hey, look, I even tossed in a classical reference—
guess that college education paid off after all.
My own education didn't include a college degree, but I knew who the mythological Medea was, and what she'd done. As I'd suspected, the article was about a woman who'd killed her children to punish her husband. Three children, all under five, drowned in the tub, then laid in their beds. When her husband came home, he'd gone in to kiss them, as he always did, and found them cold and dead. His crime: philandering. Theirs? Absolutely none. Victims of a revenge that no crime imaginable could warrant.
Kristof slid over and read the headline over my shoulder. He put his hand on my hip and I let myself lean into him and rest there a moment before I pulled away.
"Gotta hope there's a special place in hell, I guess," I said.
"I'm sure there is."
I'd have been just as happy to stick this crime on my "no" list, and never have to think about it again, yet something near the bottom made that impossible. A quote from a friend of the family. The kind of thing ordinary folks say when a microphone is thrust into their face, their opinions sought, wanted, important.
The kind of thing they'd hear played on newscasts for days and sink a little with each iteration, wanting to scream "I didn't mean it like that!" The perfect sound bite. The friend had admitted that Sullivan had threatened revenge against her unfaithful husband, horrible, violent revenge. So why had no one reported it? "Because we didn't think she had the guts to pull it off."
I glanced over my shoulder at Kristof, and saw his mouth tighten as he read the same line.
"Guess I should move her to the top of my short list," I said.
"Definitely. I've found one or two other possibilities over here."
We finished the last few cases. When we were done, I had a list of six possibilities plus three very good candidates.
"I think I'll get Medea out of the way first," I said. "All three are in jail, and I have transportation codes for those cities. So it's just a matter of getting to the prisons from there."
"Do you want me to come along?" he asked.
I shook my head.
"Then why don't you get Jaime to help you locate the first one, and while you're gone, I'll dig up directions for the other two."
"Thanks."
We agreed to meet up back at my house, and I left in search of Jaime.
Chapter 14
I MET JAIME IN THE LOBBY AS SHE WAS RETURNING from her show. The business lounge was open around the clock, so she found directions for the prison easily. I took them and left. To get to Amanda Sullivan's prison, I had to walk fifteen miles beyond the city drop-off point. Most of the way, I jogged. I needed to stretch my muscles and shuck the faint sense of claustrophobia that settles in me after spending too long in any one place. After reading those articles, inactivity wasn't the only thing that got my legs moving. The Fates said the Nix struck every few years, and that left the illusion that I had plenty of time. Maybe they'd done that intentionally, so I wouldn't feel pressured into rushing, but those articles had made me painfully aware that just because the Nix struck on average every two years didn't mean she wasn't out there right now, lining up her next partner.
By the time I reached the prison, it was morning. I entered through the visitors' door. Got to skip the security check, though. Good thing, too, because there was quite a lineup.
I slid through the metal detector, past the two women at the front of the line. Both were older than me, one maybe in her late forties, the other fiftyish. Mothers of inmates; I could tell that by looking at them.
The older one held her chin high, defiant, certain someone had made a terrible mistake, that her child was innocent, and someone would pay for this travesty. The younger one kept her chin down, meeting the guard's questions with a polite murmur and sad smile but not meeting anyone's gaze. The guilt of a mother who sees her child in prison and sees herself to blame, not quite sure what she's done, but certain she's done something—maybe it was that glass of wine in her first trimester or that parent-teacher meeting she missed in fifth grade, some minuscule parenting oversight that had led to this.
I walked past them and into the waiting room—a windowless gray blob of a room that said "We'd really rather you didn't come at all, but if you must, don't expect the damned Hilton." Shabby red-vinyl chairs dotted the room like an outbreak of chicken pox. Goodwill rejects, by the looks of them. Yes, there are things even Goodwill won't touch. From the way the visitors milled around the chairs, giving them wide berth, they weren't touching them, either.
As I crossed the room I passed spouses, lovers, parents, and friends, all waiting impatiently… eager to see their loved ones or eager to get this duty visit over with. In the far corner, nearest the guard station, stood a huddle of college-age kids, mostly male. Their badges proclaimed them to be visitors from the state police college. Not one of those badges was flipped over or tucked under a jacket, but all were displayed prominently, lest someone mistake them for a real visitor, someone who actually knew one of the lowlifes in this place. An attitude that would serve them well in law enforcement.
I walked past the cop wannabes, past the guard station, crossed to the prisoners' side of the Plexiglas partition, then headed through the door they'd enter. I came out in a single-level cell block. The first couple of cells I passed were empty, though they showed signs of habitation—a shirt draped over a chair here, a paperback open on a bed there. The inmates must have been out doing something. Work detail maybe, or occupational therapy, exercise, whatever. The particulars of prison life were a mystery to me, though some might say it was a life experience I'd earned many times over.
"Here, let me do that for you." He just glanced my way now and then, knowing if I wanted to talk about it, or if I wanted to stop, I'd say so.
Finally, on the final wall, I hit my wall, the article that made my brain scream that it'd had enough. The headline read: MODERN-DAY MEDEA MASSACRES TOTS. The jaunty, off-the-cuff alliteration enraged me almost as much as the article itself. I could imagine the reporter, sitting at her news desk, completely oblivious to the details of the crime, the unthinkable horror of it, as she struggled to find the right headline. Gotta keep it short and catchy. Hey, look, I even tossed in a classical reference—
guess that college education paid off after all.
My own education didn't include a college degree, but I knew who the mythological Medea was, and what she'd done. As I'd suspected, the article was about a woman who'd killed her children to punish her husband. Three children, all under five, drowned in the tub, then laid in their beds. When her husband came home, he'd gone in to kiss them, as he always did, and found them cold and dead. His crime: philandering. Theirs? Absolutely none. Victims of a revenge that no crime imaginable could warrant.
Kristof slid over and read the headline over my shoulder. He put his hand on my hip and I let myself lean into him and rest there a moment before I pulled away.
"Gotta hope there's a special place in hell, I guess," I said.
"I'm sure there is."
I'd have been just as happy to stick this crime on my "no" list, and never have to think about it again, yet something near the bottom made that impossible. A quote from a friend of the family. The kind of thing ordinary folks say when a microphone is thrust into their face, their opinions sought, wanted, important.
The kind of thing they'd hear played on newscasts for days and sink a little with each iteration, wanting to scream "I didn't mean it like that!" The perfect sound bite. The friend had admitted that Sullivan had threatened revenge against her unfaithful husband, horrible, violent revenge. So why had no one reported it? "Because we didn't think she had the guts to pull it off."
I glanced over my shoulder at Kristof, and saw his mouth tighten as he read the same line.
"Guess I should move her to the top of my short list," I said.
"Definitely. I've found one or two other possibilities over here."
We finished the last few cases. When we were done, I had a list of six possibilities plus three very good candidates.
"I think I'll get Medea out of the way first," I said. "All three are in jail, and I have transportation codes for those cities. So it's just a matter of getting to the prisons from there."
"Do you want me to come along?" he asked.
I shook my head.
"Then why don't you get Jaime to help you locate the first one, and while you're gone, I'll dig up directions for the other two."
"Thanks."
We agreed to meet up back at my house, and I left in search of Jaime.
Chapter 14
I MET JAIME IN THE LOBBY AS SHE WAS RETURNING from her show. The business lounge was open around the clock, so she found directions for the prison easily. I took them and left. To get to Amanda Sullivan's prison, I had to walk fifteen miles beyond the city drop-off point. Most of the way, I jogged. I needed to stretch my muscles and shuck the faint sense of claustrophobia that settles in me after spending too long in any one place. After reading those articles, inactivity wasn't the only thing that got my legs moving. The Fates said the Nix struck every few years, and that left the illusion that I had plenty of time. Maybe they'd done that intentionally, so I wouldn't feel pressured into rushing, but those articles had made me painfully aware that just because the Nix struck on average every two years didn't mean she wasn't out there right now, lining up her next partner.
By the time I reached the prison, it was morning. I entered through the visitors' door. Got to skip the security check, though. Good thing, too, because there was quite a lineup.
I slid through the metal detector, past the two women at the front of the line. Both were older than me, one maybe in her late forties, the other fiftyish. Mothers of inmates; I could tell that by looking at them.
The older one held her chin high, defiant, certain someone had made a terrible mistake, that her child was innocent, and someone would pay for this travesty. The younger one kept her chin down, meeting the guard's questions with a polite murmur and sad smile but not meeting anyone's gaze. The guilt of a mother who sees her child in prison and sees herself to blame, not quite sure what she's done, but certain she's done something—maybe it was that glass of wine in her first trimester or that parent-teacher meeting she missed in fifth grade, some minuscule parenting oversight that had led to this.
I walked past them and into the waiting room—a windowless gray blob of a room that said "We'd really rather you didn't come at all, but if you must, don't expect the damned Hilton." Shabby red-vinyl chairs dotted the room like an outbreak of chicken pox. Goodwill rejects, by the looks of them. Yes, there are things even Goodwill won't touch. From the way the visitors milled around the chairs, giving them wide berth, they weren't touching them, either.
As I crossed the room I passed spouses, lovers, parents, and friends, all waiting impatiently… eager to see their loved ones or eager to get this duty visit over with. In the far corner, nearest the guard station, stood a huddle of college-age kids, mostly male. Their badges proclaimed them to be visitors from the state police college. Not one of those badges was flipped over or tucked under a jacket, but all were displayed prominently, lest someone mistake them for a real visitor, someone who actually knew one of the lowlifes in this place. An attitude that would serve them well in law enforcement.
I walked past the cop wannabes, past the guard station, crossed to the prisoners' side of the Plexiglas partition, then headed through the door they'd enter. I came out in a single-level cell block. The first couple of cells I passed were empty, though they showed signs of habitation—a shirt draped over a chair here, a paperback open on a bed there. The inmates must have been out doing something. Work detail maybe, or occupational therapy, exercise, whatever. The particulars of prison life were a mystery to me, though some might say it was a life experience I'd earned many times over.
