Текст книги "The Coming"

Автор книги: Joe William Haldeman

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

He pointed up at the cube, which was back to Cool Moon Davis. "Not as dangerous as those guys." Miguel poured four glasses, one for himself, and slid them over. "Or the frogs, if it's them that did it."

"That would be crazy," Miguel said. "The French don't want us in the war."

"So the damn Germans."

"Doesn't have to be a foreigner," Connie said. "People in this room who'd do it if the price was right."

"Ooh-woo." Leroy sipped the neat liquor. "My ears are burning."

"It's a hell of a thing," the short man said. "No matter who gets it. It's not American."

"Is now," Connie said. She looked back at the cube as it switched back to the Walter Reed hospital room.

"Bobon" Mitchell

The cube room at the prison was crowded and silent, both rare. The warden had given permission to open the cells so that everyone could get to the news. Bobon and three other guards covered the doors, armed with tanglers, but nobody was going anywhere.

Bobon was still sorting out the murder he'd witnessed this morning. Not the first one, but Ybor was just a nice kid who hadn't hurt anyone. Why'd the warden have to drag him in there to watch? And now this damned thing.

Maybe it was all just a long nightmare. Maybe he would wake up and it would just be another morning. But he'd felt that way before, and it never worked. Just in stories.

Why did so many people feel so bad about the president? Well, she's pretty and smart and powerful, and maybe people who like one don't like the other.

At least she never could of felt anything. That boy this morning went through all kinds of hell before he died. He couldn't get it out of his head.

The inmates knew. The way they looked at him, it's like they thought he did it. Not this time. Towelheads, watch out, though.

Davis had shut up and they switched to a local reporter.

Daniel Jordon

"—here at the International Plaza, we'd like to get the reaction from some of the students here, pardon me?"

The young man turned around and revealed a diamond-shaped scar on his cheek, a member of the Spoog gang. "I ain't no student fugoff," he mumbled in passing.

Great assignment. "Young man, could you give me your reaction to the tragedy in Washington?"

He was small and frail and red-eyed. "I really don't know anything. Was he crazy? He must have been crazy?"

"Some people have said he never got over his experience in the Gulf," Daniel prompted.

"I had an uncle there, and an aunt, and there's nothing wrong with them," he said, looking intently at the ground, and wandered away.

A pretty young woman approached, tailored suit, smile. "Pardon me, ma'am, could you—"

"No! Leave me alone!"She whacked him hard on the shoulder with her heavy purse, aiming for his head.

Like a message from the gods, a little voice in his ear said, "Switching to network in five."

Aurora

"Twelve pounds of C-9 is enough to demolish a good-sized house," a man in army fatigues was saying, the smoldering ruins in the background. "That was probably in case he got stopped at the door."

"Pauling might have used a little less explosive," Marya muttered sotto voce,"if he'd known he was going to give us Davis on a platter."

"Who's next in line if Davis dies?" Rory asked. "He looks like he'd blow over in a strong wind."

"Cabinet members, I think. It's not my beat. Maybe the president of the Senate, R. L. Osbourne. She's better than most."

As they found out in a few minutes, though, Senator Osbourne had been in the meeting room and was among the dead. So were the chief of staff, the attorney general, and the UN ambassador, as well as the administrators of Defense, Energy, the CIA, FEMA, and NASA. LaSalle liked to have all her cabinet together when she made her pronouncements, watching them for shifts of allegiance.

There would be a fundamental realignment of power in Washington, as soon as everyone came back. Marya had been right about the exodus, politicos prudently putting some distance between themselves and ground zero. Of course, the explanation was that they wanted to be with their families in this time of tragedy, and their families happened to be out of town, or at least were able to catch up with them there.

The vice-president didn't live through the hour. They watched the chief justice swear in Cool Moon Davis, inside a fast helicopter headed for Camp David. Then they saw a few minutes' coverage of the traditional riot in Washington, confined to a few blocks downtown, the looting and arson quickly discouraged by armored shock troops from the D.C. Police department and an air-mobile civil disturbance unit from the National Guard. No soldiers or police were hurt.

"I'm going to watch the rest of this at home," Rory said. "I feel like people are looking at me. You're welcome to come along."

"Thanks," Marya said. "I wouldn't mind getting away, either. Of course they'll call as soon as I get my shoes off."

They stopped by Pepe's table on their way out. "Don't bother coming in tomorrow," she said. "It'll just be chaos. I'll call if anything comes up."

Pepe

"Thanks, Rory." They nodded at each other for a moment, not able to say anything, and she left with the newsie.

"Will you come stay with me tonight?" Lisa Marie said hoarsely. "I just can't ... "

"Sure." He was holding her hand, and briefly clasped it with his other. "Nobody should be alone now."

"I never even liked her," she said. "Did anybody you know?" Pepe shook his head. "But this is too horrible."

"It's not like America," Pepe said. "I guess it is now,but it's the sort of thing that happens in little dictatorships. Despot of the month."

"I wonder whether that old man will be able to hold things together." Davis was standing in a press room now, his hand to his ear, relaying his staff's answers to questions.

"He won't have to do much. I don't suppose he's made an unassisted decision in the past decade. If we make it through the next few hours, things will get sorted out."

"You think the Islamic Jihad might ... "

"If I were him, I'd be more worried about the Democrats than the Muslims. They probably have a competency challenge all worked out. If I were them, I'd wait a decent interval, and give him a chance to do some really unforgivable things. Then start the impeachment process, more in sorrow than in anger."

She tilted her head at him. "You really know a lot about American politics."

"More than I do about Cuban. I had to study it for the blue card, and got kind of fascinated." He made a mental note to watch his step, not reveal too much sophistication. Lisa Marie was no danger, but there would be a lot of press and government around soon.

"Your aliens." She pointed at the cube.

Davis peered intently. "Would you repeat the question?" A reporter asked whether he intended to follow LaSalle's aggressive strategy toward the Coming.

He looked at her with robotic blankness for a long moment, an expression that was already familiar. "I don't want to say anything specific about that. Anything at all."

Aurora

"Anything at all. My people are looking into it." It was curious to hear Davis's voice coining out of her office. She thought she'd locked it. Rory had dropped by with Marya to see whether Norm might be there, not wanting to bike home through the rain. Inside, there were two strangers watching the new president on the wall cube.

"Hello? Can I do something for you?"

The short one clicked a remote and the president disappeared. They were in identical government-gray suits. The short one was bland, normal looking, but the other was over seven feet tall, his white hair trimmed to within a millimeter of his skull. She had seen him around, the past month.

They both produced identification. "I'm Special Agent Jerry Harp of the CIA," the giant said. The other identified himself as Howard Irving, FBI.

"You didn't just fly down," Marya said. "You've been here awhile. You were both at the—"

"We have no business with you, Ms. Washington," the FBI man said. "We would like to speak with Dr. Bell alone."

"I don't think so," Rory said. "This is my office, and I say who stays or goes. Unless I'm under arrest."

"We're only concerned about national security," the tall man said in low, measured tones. "Some of what we have to ask you about cannot be made public. Not yet, at least."

"I'll be down in the lounge," Marya said to Rory. "You've got my number."

"This won't take long," the FBI man said.

Marya said, "Sure," and he closed the door behind her.

"You talked with the president and Grayson Pauling this morning," the tall man said.

"Along with the governor, the chancellor, and the dean of science. I'm the small fish in the pond. Why aren't you talking to them?"

"In due course," the FBI man said. "This is like interviewing witnesses to an accident, or a crime scene. Best to get their separate impressions, before they talk to each other."

"Why don't you just play back the crystal? Surely they keep records."

The FBI man shook his head. "It was profoundly encrypted, scrambled. If you made a copy, you'll find it's just white noise."

"Unless you made an audio recording, independent of the VR projector/receiver," the CIA man said. "You didn't do that, did you?"

"In fact, it didn't occur to me. I'm really more of an astronomer than a spy." She sat down behind her desk and looked up at him. "How could they do that, though?"

"You question the president's right to—" the FBI man started.

"No, no—I mean physically.The signal had to be decrypted on this end. Why couldn't we make a crystal of it then?"

The tall one stared at her for a moment before answering. "That was from my shop. Before you spoke to the president the first time, we modified the equipment in your room. I don't understand the electronics, but if the signal from the White House is scrambled, you only see a transient virtual image. The signal that gets to the copy head is still scrambled.

"Of course the sound waves do exist. So an audio recorder that wasn't plugged into the system would have picked it up. A videocam would've gotten the sound, too, though the only image would be of you three actually in the room." He grimaced. "If we were as sneaky as people think we are, we could have bugged the room when we installed the rescrambler."

"But you didn't think we were that important."

"We didn't know the president's science adviser was a lunatic," the FBI man said. "We might have kept closer tabs on him."

"I'm not sure who the lunatic was," Rory said. "I'll leave that up to the history books."

"You don't mean you condone this mass assassination."

"Howard," the CIA man said, "let's not—"

"I don't condoneit, but I can appreciate why the president's behavior drove Pauling to desperate measures."

"So you would have done it, too?" The FBI man was reddening. "If you could have killed the president, you would have done it, too?"

"That's a ridiculous question."

"Howard ... "

"No, it's not! If you could have killed the president, would you?"

Rory considered refusing to answer. "It honestly wouldn't have crossed my mind. I would have liked to sit with her and talk, woman to woman. She was dangerously wrong."

"Dangerous enough to die?"

"Pauling thought so." She looked up at the CIA man. "So what do you want from me? It's been a long day already, and I want to go home."

"Just a description of what passed between the president and Grayson Pauling. There weren't any other administration people there, were there?"

"Not in view. Unless you count the governor of Florida. He was a better team player than Pauling. She used that term when she got exasperated at him: 'You used to be a team player' or something."

"They argued in front of you?" the CIA man said. "Please start at the beginning."

Rory went back to the original bombshell, LaSalle essentially saying that the secretary of defense had come up with this great idea. The conversation, or argument, had only lasted a few minutes, and she was pretty sure she remembered it accurately.

"So if you were to sum up Pauling's attitude, his mood?"

"He was quiet and patient. Quietly exasperated, like a teacher or a parent. Which drove LaSalle to the outburst of temper that ended the conversation."

"Quietly insane," the FBI man said.

"Why don't you go talk to the governor?" Rory snapped. "He'll agree with you, and then we can all go home." She turned back to the tall man. "I've heard that people often become remarkably calm once they've made up their mind to commit suicide. He must have known about the noon meeting; I suppose he may have already decided he had to die."

"And destroy the government." The CIA man shook his head. "You may be right. In another hundred years, maybe less, people will see this as an act of supreme sacrifice."

"Maybe one month," Rory said. "When the aliens don't destroy us out of hand."

"Which they may still do." He checked his watch. "Almost time for Whittier, Howard."

"What, with her you made an appointment?"

He nodded. "We don't have a key to heroffice," the FBI man said.

She followed them down the hall and turned into the lounge, where Marya was watching the cube, by herself, snacking on cheese and crackers from the machine.

Marya

"That didn't take long." She offered Rory some cheese and crackers.

Rory shook her head—"No appetite"—and got a ball of juice from the wall dispenser and poured it into a plastic cup. "Not much to tell them. That conference this morning didn't go five minutes, and that's what they were interested in—evidently the White House scrambling is pretty sophisticated; the CIA didn't have a clue what went on, and they're the ones who installed the descrambler here."

"You told them the truth, of course."

Rory eased back onto a worn couch. "Yeah, that our late great president was a demented fruitcake, which seems to have been news to the FBI man."

"They ask you about Pauling? That's what CNN's obsessing on now."

"A little. The CIA guy even admitted that someday he might be seen as a hero, a martyr."

"That's not what they're saying here. They've dug up men and women who were in the service with him, going on about how fanatical and unpredictable he was."

"That's probably why LaSalle picked him. Like unto like." She took a sip of juice and frowned at it. "Warm. He didn't come on that way, though. He was the reasonable one, trying to keep dear Carly from courting votes by destroying the human race."

Marya looked at her watch. "They want me to do a five-minute spot sometime today. It won't be live; we can wait awhile."

Rory dumped the cup in the recycler next to the couch. "Crew downstairs?"

"Better be."

"Let's just do it and go put our feet up at my place. Turn on the cube and watch Washington get nuked."

"Is there anything you don't want me to ask you?"

"No." Rory stood and stretched. "God, no. I have a feeling truth, is going to be in short supply for a while. Anything we can do to keep Davis from launching those weapons, we ought to do."

"They didn't tell you not to talk about this morning?"

"I don't really give a shit. What can they do to me?" She pushed open the door. "Rhetorical question. They can pull off my toenails and make me eat them. But I don't think they will."

They took the elevator down to the first floor, where two cameramen were watching CNN on a small portable cube. "Let's gear up, guys. Five-minute spot."

She looked at the large flatscreen that provided the interview backdrop. It had the logo of the Committee on the Coming, two concentric Cs with a question mark inside. "Don't want this one, Deeb. You got one of the White House ruins?"

"Just take a minute. I'll run back and snatch one from CNN. You want to thumbprint it?"

"Sure." When the picture appeared, Marya put her thumb in a box in the lower right corner. A list of options appeared and she touched the first one, one-time reproduction rights. It chimed and the list and box disappeared.

Rory was already seated at one of two black leather chairs that faced one another across a low table in front of a blue screen. Marya whistled at the cameras. "Position A, all three." She stepped aside while one of the small cameras rolled onto its mark. The man who wasn't Deeb set down glasses of ice water.

She dropped into the other chair and looked at herself in the screen, patting her hair reflexively. She could be a frazzled mess and the editor would automatically fix the image. "No pressure, but let's try for one take and bust outta here. Deeb, when I look at you, maybe four minutes thirty, we want the logo back, and then segue into the deep space shot."

"Got it," he said. "Editor on line now."

"Good." She took a page of scribbled notes out of a breast pocket and smoothed it on the table. She looked at the wall clock behind Rory. "Eight seconds." She shook her head. "No, wait. Cameras off. We're two minutes from the hour. Rory, if I can clear it, do you mind if we go live?"

"I'm a teacher. I usually go live."

She smiled and pushed a button on her phone. "Fez, this is Marya. Scramble." She pushed another button. "Loud and clear. Look, you got the feds there? Figures. Look, I've got a White House angle that we don't want reviewed; they'd gut it or even cancel it." She nodded. "Dr. Bell down here talked with LaSalle and Pauling this morning. Can you give me five live ninety seconds after the hour?" She laughed. "Owe you one, babe." She set the phone down and looked at the cameraman. "You didn't hear that, right?"

"Hear what?" Deeb said.

"Yeah, well, go take a leak for about a minute. Be back by two." They hustled out. "Rory, the broadcasts are going through a White House censor with a five-second delay. What they can do in New York is accidentally push the wrong buttons and leave the room. So this interview, scheduled for seven, comes in live instead, on a circuit that's not controlled by the White House remote.

"I don't know how long we'll have before they're able to cut us off. So I'll ask the most important questions first."

"We might not even get on," Rory said. "This room is probably bugged by the CIA."

"Hmm. They probably wouldn't have anybody live listening in, though. We'll find out." The two men came back in and she whistled the cameras to start. She looked at the main camera. "We're going to take five minutes, commencing fourteen-oh-one-thirty."

Rory twisted around to look at the clock and then settled into an interviewee posture.

Marya faced the camera and her expression became serious, then grim: "Good evening. This is Marya Washington coming to you from Gainesville, Florida. This afternoon I talked with Professor Aurora Bell, who is chief administrator of the Committee on the Coming.

"This morning, Dr. Bell had a VR conference call from the White House. Were there other witnesses to the call, Professor?"

"Oh, yes. The governor of Florida, the chancellor of this university, and ... another professor. And science adviser Grayson Pauling."

"Did anything happen between the president and Pauling that might have presaged today's tragic events?"

"In retrospect, yes." She shook her head at the memory. "She blew up at him. At all of us, actually."

"What did you say?"

"LaSalle talked about orbiting three antimissile weapons, to destroy the alien spaceship if it made a wrong move. I think it was the DOD's idea, but she was behind it a hundred percent.

"This was beforethe new message came in. Even so, we argued that it would be suicide. The aliens' technology is so superior to ours that we would be like mice attacking an elephant. Ants."

Rory's phone was buzzing; she took it out of her pocket and skimmed it across the room.

"And Pauling was on your side?"

"As any reasonable person would be. She was annoyed at him, and then openly angry. Pauling implied that the rationale for orbiting these weapons was to have them flying over Europe. Over France, in case we did decide to enter the war. If the war happens."

"Do you agree?"

"I don't know much about politics. If I were French I'd be nervous. But the issue isn't Earth politics."

"Especially in light of the new message."

"If they believe it. The president didn't."

"You know that for a fact?"

"Oh yes. She called me back, right after the new message came out."

"Really!"

"She was mad as a hornet. 'I don't know how you did it, but it's not going to work.' "

"Well, the timing is interesting."

"Yes, but nobody on Earth could have done it. The signal started our way long before the conference call."

"We're off," Deeb said. "We had a second of white noise, and they cut to a commerical."

"Well, shit. Erase it back to Dr. Bell saying 'conference call,' and we'll continue as if nothing's happened. Okay?"

"Sure," Rory said. "It might be aired eventually."

"By historians."

"In five," Deeb said, holding out five fingers and folding them one at a time.

"Well, suppose the president were right, and it was a hoax. The hoaxers—one of whom would have to be you, or someone else who witnessed the conference call, could have had the second message made up long ago, and just signaled for it to be sent."

"But not from way beyond the solar system. It would take more than a day for the signal to get there, and more than a day for the message to get back. Parallax on the signal—comparing the angle of it from two different positions—proves how far away the aliens are."

"But a really paranoid person would point out that we have to take your word for that—yours and some other scientists' on the Moon. They could be in on it, too."

Rory smiled. "You could have said that, a month or two ago. But now it's close enough for two sites on Earth to triangulate it. It's a little fantastic to think of a conspiracy involving every astronomer in the world." Off-camera, Marya nodded to Deeb.

"Don't think nobody will suggest it, Dr. Bell. So ... would you have any advice for President Davis?"

"Only the obvious: listen to the experts. LaSalle's problem, and finally her undoing, was that she surrounded herself with yes-men, and then followed their advice when they parroted her views."

"Pauling the exception."

"Which became obvious. She might have saved her life by replacing him. Though as Pauling said in his ... suicide note, she would have died a month later, along with the rest of humanity."

"And suppose Davis does follow her example, and orbits these weapons?"

"I suspect the aliens won't even bother demonstrating with Phobos. They'll just destroy us out of hand."

"A terrible thing to contemplate ... thank you, Dr. Bell, for being with us on this strange and awful day. This is Marya Washington, reporting from Gainesville, Florida."

"Out," Deeb said.

"Just wrap it and send it on up with no comment," Marya said. "As if."

"You're going to be in real trouble over this," Rory said.

"All of us. Maybe they'll put up a statue someday." She shook a pill out of a vial and took it with the ice water.

She leaned back. "Off the record. It could work, couldn't it?"

"The maser weapon? It's never really been tested."

"I mean in principle. It goes at the speed of light, right? The alien ship wouldn't have any warning."

"Assuming there's only one alien ship, and the beam doesn't miss, and they don't have any defense against twenty-first-century weapons. A lot of assumptions."

"Just trying to look at the bright side."

"Oh, yeah." Rory crossed the room and picked up her buzzing phone. " Buenas."

It was the chancellor. "Rory, what did you do? The governor's been on the phone screaming at me. He wants you fired immediately, yesterday!"

She played dumb. "Because of this morning?"

"He just saw you on the cube. Says you betrayed him and the country and the sacred memory of the president. Divulged top secret information."

"I don't have clearance to gettop secret information. Was this an interview?"

"Yes, with that black New York woman."

"Well, I did an interview. But it won't be aired until seven o'clock tonight."

"That might be what they told you. But the governor sure as hell saw it."

"So I'm fired? Just like that?"

"No, no. But I have to give you a sabbatical, get you out of the public eye. Out of the line of fire."

"No longer head of the committee?"

"No. In fact, off the committee altogether. You have other things to pursue—go do them until mid-January. Full pay. You don't have any classes this semester?"

"No, because—"

"So do some research. Preferably somewhere far away. Turn your phone off and disappear."

"Is that an order, Mai?"

"You know it's not. Just advice, good advice." His voice was tight. "For all of us, Rory. You should've heard the governor. Our budget's in committee! He's liable to do anything."

"Okay, I'm out. Won't make a fuss over it. Can I choose my own successor?"

"Sure, of course. Thanks, Rory. I know you could fight it."

"And win. Academic freedom." She took a deep breath. "Pepe Parker would be the logical successor. I'll see whether he wants the job."

"I owe you for this, Rory. I haven't seen the interview myself ... "

"The governor's probably right. I was not respectful of the late president. But then she was a lunatic."

"Rory ... "

"I'm off-camera. Are you?"

"Sure."

"I'm coming to think that Pauling was a brave man. He didn't see any other option, so he gave his life to save the world. You were there,Mai. Am I wrong?"

There was a short silence. "No. I don't think you're wrong. But don't ask me to back you up, not until after the governor signs the budget."

"Understandable. I'll call Pepe." She pushed the "off" button without saying good-bye and stood there looking at the phone. The other three were looking at her.

"You got the axe?" Marya said.

"Yeah. Until the aliens go home or the world ends, or whatever." She punched two keys.

Pepe

His phone buzzed but he didn't answer it. His boss was on the cube, committing political suicide.

" ... nobody on Earth could have done it. The signal started our way long before the conference call—" The cube went blank and Carl Lamb appeared. "That was Professor Aurora Bell, in a transmission—" Pepe stabbed a finger at the phone. " Buenas?"

"Pepe ... " It was Rory. "The shit has really hit the fan."

"I just saw it."

"The governor wants me tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. You want my job?"

"You make it sound so attractive."

"I'm serious. Mai Barrett just put me on sabbatical indefinitely. Nobody else but you can run the thing."

He knew that, of course. "Sure, okay. Where are you now?"

"Up at the office."

"I'll be right up. Buenas?"

" Si, buenas." He turned off the phone and slipped it back into his pocket.

"What was that?" Lisa Marie said.

"My boss. Ex-boss." He finished off his beer and set the mug down with a thump. "Looks like I've been promoted." He took out a card and slid it through the pay slot. "I've gotta run. Don't know how long this will be. I will be with you tonight, though, as soon as I can get free. Call when I know."

She nodded. "Dinner if you can. I'll get us some steaks or something."

"Deal." He kissed her on the cheek. " Buenas."

" Si, buenas. Muy buena suerte."

He went a block and a half before he realized he'd left his umbrella back at the cafe. It wasn't raining hard, though, and Lisa Marie could use it.

This was how it happened. Rory sacrificed her job, making sure the world knew the truth. So he would be standing down at the Cape with President Davis, to meet the supposed aliens.

He passed a woman who was sitting on a park bench, sobbing, her face in her hands. Her white dress, saturated with rain, revealed her alluring figure. He vaguely recognized her—a student?—and slowed to say something, but then went on. She didn't want company in her grief.

Gabrielle

She heard his steps hesitate– please stop, talk to me, hold me—but he didn't stop, would she? Probably, it didn't happen all that often, you come home and find your cat lying dead, and then the president and all those others, she had poor Happy's body in a shoebox and didn't know what to do with it.

Am I being punished for sin, is my mother's God really up there counting the times I put a camera up my cunt to pay the bills? No, cats die, presidents die, snap out of it, you know better, you know better.Her nose was running and she didn't have anything in her purse; she blew into her wet hand and scraped the mucus onto the bottom of the park bench, then splashed her palm in the puddle at her feet, and rubbed her nose hard against her forearm.

Aliens dropping out of the sky, a science father figure blows up himself and everybody in the room, a perfectly good cat drops over dead, and I'm ten minutes late for an anal-intercourse shoot. Which I'm not going to do. Even if it means my job. Louis is gentle but he's just too big around. It's not the proper use for that opening; things are supposed to come out, not go in.

"Oh, sweetheart. Things can't be that bad."

She wiped her eyes and looked up. It was the old lady with the shopping cart. She sat down next to her. "What is it that's so bad?"

She looked into the old kind face. "My cat died."

"Oh, my." She lifted a corner of the sodden shoebox and looked inside. "What was her name?"

"His name. Happy."

"Never had a boy cat. Lots of girl cats. You want one?"

"Not now, no. Thank you, no."

"You got cat people and dog people, you know? My husband, he was a dog person. One reason I had to get rid of him."

Gabrielle smiled. "He take the dog with him?"

"No, that would be cruel. I kept the dog, even though he smelled bad." She leaned close and whispered. "He had gas. Both of them did."

Gabrielle wiped her eyes. "How long ago was that?"

"Thirty-some years, I guess. Buried him when Hull was president. Hardly anybody had the cube back then."

"You still think about the poor thing."

"Oh, yeah. Buried him under a big piece of plywood out in the swamp. Mall there now."

"You couldn't just bury him in the backyard?"

"No. Gosh and golly. Way too big. Laws, too."

"There are laws about burying dogs?"

She nodded slowly. "Some kinds." She looked over Gabrielle's shoulder. "Afternoon, Officer."

Rabin

He touched the brim of his plastic cap. "Good afternoon, Suzy Q. Are you ladies all right?"

"Nobody's all right, Officer. Nobody's all wrong, nobody's all right. We all of us stuck in the middle."

He smiled a little. "It's a hard day for everybody. Can't I give you a ride to the shelter?"