A little man with pattern baldness and glasses said, "She's clean, Lou. She's telling the truth." The man was a low-grade ace, the weakest sort of telepath. The cops had ten or fifteen on staff to use as lie detectors.
"To hell with it then," the man in the suit said. "We're cutting you loose. But I don't want you away from a phone where I can find you for more than an hour at a time. You got that?"
"I want to see her," Veronica said.
"Forget it. Her lawyer's there. That's all she gets."
"Who's her lawyer?"
The man in the suit sighed. "Bud?"
One of the cops looked through the file. "Lawyer's name is Mundy." He whistled. "From Latham, Strauss. Hot stuff."
"Now get out of here," the man in the suit said. Two uniformed cops gave her a ride home, then followed her inside. They had a warrant, signed and sealed. She sat on the floor and watched them as they took the apartment apart. One of them found the sexual toys in the drawer by the bed. He held up the wooden ben wa balls for his partner to see, then looked over at Veronica. "Fuck you," Veronica said, blushing, close to tears. "Leave that stuff alone."
The cop shrugged and put the balls away. Finally they left. Veronica had watched them carefully. There was nothing in the apartment, not a single piece of evidence, to connect Hannah to WORSE.
As soon as they were gone, she called Latham, Strauss. The answering service took her number. She hung up and moved restlessly through the house, putting the Plexiglas framed drawings back on the walls, refolding clothes and putting them in the drawers, wiping down the cabinets. The phone rang.
"Veronica? This is Dyan Mundy."
"Thank God."
"I was about to call you when I got your message. Hannah asked me to. She wanted you to know she's okay, they haven't hurt her." The woman's voice exuded confidence, control, a kind of artificial warmth. Veronica visualized chin-length blond hair, gold rings, three strands of pearls. "There's no way I can get you in to see her just now. She understands that, and sends you her love."
Tears ran down Veronica's cheeks. "What happened? Did she say what happened?"
"She tried to explain, but frankly, her story doesn't make much sense. She apparently had some kind of out-of-body experience. She felt this shock and disorientation and then she was suddenly off to the side somewhere. Watched herself shoot the guard as if from a great distance. I don't know how well that's going to play in court. Do you know if she's ever been treated for an emotional disturbance? Is there any history of it in her family?"
"There's nothing the matter with Hannah," Veronica said. "Somebody else was in her body when the guard was killed. It wasn't Hannah."
"That's what she said."
"What about the blond kid?"
"What blond kid?"
"When Hannah got… taken over, or whatever it was, there was this blond kid. He just keeled over, like a zombie. Then at the end Hannah was back in her own body and I couldn't find the kid anywhere."
"I don't understand. What are you trying to make out of this?"
"I don't know. But I think that kid was involved somehow"
A long pause. "Veronica, I know you're upset. But you have to trust me. She's in the hands of the best law firm in the city. If anybody can save her, we can."
She couldn't sleep. She thought of Hannah alone in a damp and stinking cell, claustrophobic, terrified out of her mind. Nothing Veronica could do would convince the police-or even Hannah's lawyer-of what she knew to be the truth. Something that wasn't Hannah had pulled the trigger.
She called all of Croyd's numbers, with no luck. Jerry would gladly help, but what could he do? His brother's law firm was already on the case. And what good were lawyers against an entire bank lobby full of eyewitnesses? Hannah's smell was still in the sheets. It made Veronica crazy with longing. It was like a heroin habit, tearing up her guts. She couldn't lie there any longer. She put on running shoes and went out onto the street.
It was nine o'clock on a Friday night. The life of the city went on without her, as it always did. She drifted toward the light and noise of Broadway, hating the faces she saw around her, wanting to throw herself into the river of yellow cabs and pound on them and scream until the world stopped what it was doing and came to help. New York was the best city in the world to be happy in, and the worst if you were desperate. It towered over the helpless, sped by them in clouds of monoxide. It shoved past them on the street without apology, and left its garbage all around them to wade through.
Life meant nothing without Hannah. Without Hannah she would end up back on the needle, would find herself giving blow jobs on car seats for ten dollars a pop. Anything would be better.
That was when she saw the gun.
It was inside the glass display case of a pawnshop, just visible behind the guitars and stereos in the window. It was chrome-plated and heavy and spoke the word "power" to her.
She went inside. The man behind the counter was fifty going on twenty-two. Veronica had had too many tricks just like him. His hairpiece wasn't even the same color as the fringe around his ears. His polyester shirt was green, with horses on it, ten years out of fashion. It was unbuttoned to show his chest hair and gold chains.
"How much is that pistol?" Veronica asked him. "Now, what would a sweet little number such as yourself want with a big, nasty Smith and Wesson. 38?" He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall behind the counter. On the TV over his shoulder, two football teams smashed into each other.
"I'm not in the mood for bullshit, pal. How much is the gun?"
The man shook his head, smiling. " I see it all the time. Sweet little thing gets a little upset with her sugar daddy, maybe catches him with his hand in the wrong cookie jar, and suddenly she's got to blow him away. This is what television has done to modern society. Everybody wants to blow everybody else away."
"Look, pal-"
The man leaned forward. "No, you look. The law says I'm responsible for what I sell. I don't like your looks, I don't have to sell you shit." He straightened up and his voice softened. "So why don't you be a good little girl and run along home to Papa?"
In that moment Veronica saw her entire life as one humiliation after another, all at the hands of men, all of whom felt they were privileged to decide her destiny.
From the father who never acknowledged her, to Fortunato who told her how to dress and how to smile, to Jerry who expected her to love him just because he loved her, to the countless men who'd used her and walked away. She was sick of it. For once she wished she had Fortunato's power, could reach out with her mind and crush this pompous, ugly little man to jelly.
The fluorescent lights overhead flickered. It should have distracted her, but instead she felt connected. The lights flashed with the rhythm of her breathing and she knew she was the cause. She felt the power flowing through the wires, flowing out of the grid and into her mind. The wild card. Croyd. It was happening. The picture on the TV rolled, then turned to snow. The second hand on the big electric clock next to it stopped, then swung back and forth like a pendulum, keeping time with the flashing lights. The man started to turn toward the TV and then went pale. He sat down slowly, his arms crossing tighter, as if he were cold. Sweat beaded his face.
"Are you hurt?" she asked him.
" I don't know" His voice was weak, and higher than it had been.
She hadn't crippled him, apparently. Beyond that she didn't care. "Give me the gun."
"I… I don't know if I can."
"Do it!"
He got onto his hands and knees, fumbled a key into the lock, slid the back of the display case open. He had to use both hands to lift the gun onto the counter. Veronica reached for it, then realized what she'd done. Why did she need a gun?
She ran into the street, waving for a cab.
She got as far as the holding tank on nerve alone. The beefy, red-haired guard outside the lockup refused to let her any farther and Veronica tried to do to him what she'd done in the pawnshop. Nothing happened.