But by then, Lori was older and she soon figured a way to get out of the house. She ran, found a cavelike hiding place that no one knew about. Even so, Fenner at last spotted her on the street, when the child ventured out for a few moments like a little animal coming up for food and air. Fenner followed her, Jack discovered him stalking her, and in a rictor of renewed fear he hadn’t waited for the cops, he’d killed Fenner just as he’d killed Hal. Only this time, he didn’t hide the body. He was too tired, he had ended the nightmare that threatened Lori, it was over, he was willing to take the lumps. When Max Harper found him with Fenner’s body and arrested him, no other cop could have been more fair, could have treated him straighter than Max did. It was Max who helped him through the legalities of placing Lori with Cora Lee French and the senior ladies, and in selecting an attorney to draw up a trust for Lori that included the income from the sale of their house and of his half of the electrical company that he and his partner had established before Lori was born.
Now, Harper himself could be facing trouble, and Jack would like to give him a heads-up. In the hospital, with the guard right there in his face, he hadn’t been able to say anything to Cora Lee or Lori. But now that he was back in prison, all he needed was a few seconds in the visiting room, with the guards’ attention diverted. If a guard overheard him talking about criminal plans on the outside, and told the warden, Warden Deaver would be required to pass that on to Molena Point PD. That was too many people knowing. As much as Jack respected the warden, he didn’t trust all the guards or every cop, not even among Harper’s own officers.
How was he going to give Lori or Cora Lee any message for Harper, in a secure visiting cubicle, able to speak only through a monitored phone? He lay there worrying until he wore himself out. And then, drifting off, he got to thinking for some reason about that stray cat. Prison cat. Wondering if, when he got out of this bed and back among the prison population, back to his gardening job, he’d see that cat again. Strange he’d think about that.
He hadn’t had a pet since he was a kid, hadn’t had time when he was grown. And he’d never paid much attention to the cats that hung around outside the prison. Living on mice and gophers, he guessed, and on handouts from the inmates and some of the guards. He’d paid little attention except for the big yellow tomcat that had followed him and made up with him. Came trotting over every time it saw him working outside, hung around the whole time he was digging weeds and trimming bushes. He’d liked stroking it and scratching its ears. Tomcat could purr like a buzz saw. There was something about the simple honesty of an animal, unlike the deceptive layers of most humans, that eased him. When he imagined a world without animals in it, without Lori’s beloved horses, without the birds that scavenged the prison yard, the friendly dogs all over Molena Point, the rabbits around the prison he saw leaping across the fields, the shy cats slipping away, he thought that such a world would be cold, and one-dimensional, that a world made up only of humans would be far more discouraging, even, than the prison that was now his home.
LORI COULDN’T STAY awake as she and Cora Lee drove through the dark midnight hours. Tired from a long morning’s work at the cottage, then school, and then riding Smokey with Charlie Harper, she fell asleep before they were out of the village onto the highway. She slept all the way to Soledad, woke when Cora Lee pulled off the freeway to park in a long line of cars beside the six-lane. She imagined, inside the cars in front of them, unseen people dozing cramped and uncomfortable, waiting for morning to enter the prison, each with his own sad story. The night was still except for an occasional bump or click from within another car. She knew the noises were only sleepers shifting position, but they sounded stealthy, made her uneasy. The dark emptiness of the night, among so many strangers who could be convicts themselves, made her glad the doors were locked and that Cora Lee had her phone and her pepper spray. The night had turned cold, the wind from the freeway forcing icy fingers in around the closed windows, the glass cold against her hand. She yawned, pulled her coat collar up, and despite her fear she curled up against the door, dropping once more into sleep.
She dreamed that Benny was trapped underneath a whole stack of Maudie’s quilts. Maudie kept frantically pulling off quilts, trying to free him—but then the quilts were pale hands, thin, white hands reaching for him, Maudie throwing quilts over the hands to try to smother them.
She woke at first light, cold and cramped, and startled that she was in the parked car. Some time during the night she had crawled over into the backseat and lay twisted up in the blanket Cora Lee had thrown over her. Rising up, she looked into the front.
Cora Lee was asleep behind the wheel, her head resting against the side window. Her dark curly hair was so short it was never out of place. She had pulled her creamy down jacket over her legs. Her hand lay inches from her cell phone, and from the can of pepper spray half concealed beneath the edge of her jacket. Looking out across the freeway, Lori studied the huge, pale box that was the prison, a cold, impersonal building. She hated this place, it made her feel as small and helpless as a bug. Pa shouldn’t be here, he should have gotten a medal for killing those two men, not be locked up. She hated the powers in the world that you couldn’t reason with, powers that sucked the life out of a person.
Cora Lee didn’t wake until the cars around them began to start up, their engines grumbling in the cold morning. At once Cora Lee was awake, starting their own car, nosing along in the slow line to the 101 freeway and crossing over, above it, then into the prison yard. Through the gate and into the parking lot, where everyone piled out of their cars and made a dash to get in line, or for the Porta Pottis. They got in line, and in a little while Cora Lee turned to the lady behind them, a short, square, black-haired woman, and asked her to hold their place. They couldn’t take turns standing in line to use the Porta Pottis, if a guard saw a child standing there alone he’d come to investigate, tell them that was against the rules. It was so cold they were both shivering. Coming back, they washed their hands with the wipes Cora Lee had brought; then Cora Lee unwrapped their sandwiches, to eat standing in line. Cream cheese and ham, from their paper bag. Milk for Lori, which they’d kept cold in an ice chest in the car. Orange juice for Cora Lee. Around them, the lawn was neatly cut, the bushes trimmed so perfectly they looked artificial. As if the trustees who cared for them had all the time in the world, and she guessed they did.
It seemed hours until they reached the gate, dumped their trash in a receptacle, and went inside. People ahead of them had to empty their pockets, hand over their purses, go through a body scan. Like at the airport. At least they weren’t patted down, she’d hate that, a stranger’s hands all over her. Cora Lee had locked her purse in the trunk. She dropped her car keys on the table. A guard pulled Pa’s file, their picture IDs were checked, and they signed in. They moved on through the narrow entrance building, a few people at a time, and through a barred gate into a prison yard, then into the prison itself. Down a hall, this time not to the visitors’ big, open room with its long table and vending machines, but to a small room where they sat down at a little square table, in hard chairs, but again facing a clear glass barrier, with a phone on either side of the glass. “Why is it different?”