“At this hour we’re continuing to follow a breaking story that began in Australia,” Alderson said. The expression on his face attempted to combine concern with skepticism but landed closer to constipated.
You should retire and go bald in the comfort of your home, Magda thought, and toasted him with the first rum and Coke of the day. Go Turtle Wax your head, George, and get out of the way for my Michaela.
“Medical officials in Oahu, Hawaii, are reporting that the outbreak of what some are calling Asian Fainting Sickness and others are calling Australian Fainting Flu continues to spread. No one seems to be sure where it actually originated, but so far the only victims have been women. Now we’re getting word that cases have popped up on our shores, first in California, then in Colorado, and now in the Carolinas. Here’s Michaela Morgan with more.”
“Mickey!” Magda cried, once more toasting the television (and slopping some of her drink onto the sleeve of her cardigan). Magda’s voice held only a trace of Czech this morning, but by the time Anton got home at five PM, she would sound as if she had just gotten off the boat instead of living in the Tri-Counties for almost forty years. “Little Mickey Coates! I chased your bare ass all around your mother’s living room, both of us laughing fit to split our sides! I changed your poopy diapers, you little kook, and look at you now!”
Michaela Morgan nee Coates, in a sleeveless blouse and one of her trademark short skirts, was standing in front of a rambling building complex painted barn red. Magda thought those short skirts served Mickey very well. Even big-deal politicians were apt to become mesmerized by a glimpse of upper thigh, and in such a state, the truth sometimes popped out of their lying mouths. Not always, mind you, but sometimes. On the issue of Michaela’s new nose, Magda was conflicted. She missed that sassy stub that her girl had when she was a kiddo, and in a way, with her sharp new nose, Mickey didn’t look so much like Mickey anymore. On the other hand, she did look terrific! You couldn’t take your eyes off her.
“I’m here at the Loving Hands Hospice in Georgetown, where the first cases of what some are calling the Australian Fainting Flu were noticed in the early hours of the morning. Almost a hundred patients are housed here, most geriatric, and over half of them female. Administrators refuse to confirm or deny the outbreak, but I talked to an orderly just minutes ago, and what he had to say, although brief, was disquieting. He spoke on condition of anonymity. Here he is.”
The taped interview was indeed brief—little more than a sound bite. It featured Michaela speaking to a man in hospital whites with his face blurred and his voice electronically altered so he sounded like a sinister alien overlord in a sci-fi movie.
“What’s going on in there?” Michaela asked. “Can you fill us in?”
“Most of the women are asleep and won’t wake up,” the orderly said in his alien overlord voice. “It’s just like in Hawaii.”
“But the men… ?”
“The men are dandy. Up and eating their breakfast.”
“In Hawaii there have been some reports of—growths, on the faces of the sleeping women. Is that the case here?”
“I… don’t think I should talk about that.”
“Please.” Michaela batted her eyes. “People are concerned.”
“That’s it!” Magda croaked, saluting the television with her drink and slopping a bit more on her cardigan. “Go sexy! Once they want to stir your batter, you can get anything out of em!”
“Not growths in the tumor sense,” the overlord voice said. “It looks more like they’ve got cotton stuck to em. Now I gotta go.”
“Just one more question—”
“I gotta go. But… it’s growing. That cotton stuff. It’s… kinda gross.”
The picture returned to the live shot. “Disquieting information from an insider… if true. Back to you, George.”
As glad as Magda was to have seen Mickey, she hoped the story wasn’t true. Probably just another false scare, like Y2K or that SARS thing, but still, the idea of something that not only put women to sleep but caused stuff to grow on them… like Mickey said, that was disquieting. She would be glad when Anton got home. It was lonely with only the TV for company, not that she was one to complain. Magda wasn’t about to worry her hardworking boy, no, no. She’d loaned him the money to start the business, but he was the one who’d made it go.
But now, for the time being, maybe one more drinky, just a little one, and then a nap.
CHAPTER 3
Once Lila had the woman cuffed, she wrapped her in the space blanket she kept in the trunk of the cruiser, and thrust her into the backseat. At the same time, she recited the Miranda. The woman, now silent, her brilliant grin faded to a dreamy smile, had limply accepted Lila’s grip on her upper arm. The arrest was completed and the suspect secured in less than five minutes; the dust sprayed up from the cruiser’s tires was still settling as Lila strode back around to the driver’s side.
“They call moth watchers moth-ers, spelled like mothers, but not said like that.”
Lila was turning the cruiser around and pointing it back down Ball’s Hill toward town when her prisoner shared this bit of information. She caught the woman’s eyes, looking at her in the rearview. Her voice was soft, but not especially feminine. There was a wandering quality to her speech. It was unclear to Lila if she was being addressed, or if the woman was talking to herself.
Drugs, Lila thought. PCP was a good bet. So was ketamine.
“You know my name,” Lila said, “so where do I know you from?”
There were three possibilities: the PTA (unlikely), the newspaper, or Lila had arrested her at some point in the last fourteen years and didn’t remember. Door number three seemed the best bet.
“Everyone knows me,” said Evie. “I’m sort of an It Girl.” Her cuffs clinked as she hiked one shoulder to scratch her chin. “Sort of. It and Girl. Me, myself, and I. Father, Son, and Holy Eve. Eave, a roof underhang. Eve, short for evening. When we all go to sleep. Right? Moth-er, get it? Like mother.”
Civilians had no idea how much nonsense you had to listen to when you were a cop. The public loved to salute police officers for their bravery, but no one ever gave you credit for the day-in, day-out fortitude required to put up with the bullshit. While courage was an excellent feature in a police officer, a built-in resistance to gibberish was, in Lila’s opinion, just as important.
As it happened, this was why filling the latest open position for a full-time deputy had proved so difficult. It was the reason she had ultimately passed on the application from the animal control guy, Frank Geary, and hired a young vet named Dan Treater instead, even though Treater had almost no experience in law enforcement. Smart and well-spoken as Geary obviously was, his job-file was too big—he’d generated too much paperwork, written up too many fines. The message between the lines was one of confrontation; this was not the kind of guy who could let the small shit slide. That was no good.
Not that her staff as a whole was some kind of crackerjack crime-fighting squad, and so what, big deal, welcome to real life. You got the best people you could, then tried to help them along. Roger Elway and Terry Coombs, for instance. Roger had probably absorbed one hit too many as a lineman for Coach Wittstock’s Dooling High School football team in the early aughts. Terry was smarter, but could become dispirited and sullen if things weren’t going his way, and he drank too much at parties. On the other hand, both men had fairly long fuses, which meant she could trust them. Mostly.