“We lived like this for three days, but it rained on the fourth and we stretched our faces upward gasping for the water. The rain tempered the fires and turned everything sodden. Others who’d lived came out of their shelters for the rainwater, small hovels or miraculous buildings that hadn’t collapsed. We met a man named Ezra who brought us with him back to his shelter. It was only a matter of time before someone came to pick us up, he told us. They knew we were there—there were drones zipping about the place, filming the survivors, so they knew we were still alive. He was living in the basement of a building in the South Side. There were vending machines with food and bottles of water and more water he’d saved from the toilets. He gave us all something to eat—bags of peanuts and animal crackers. Ezra told us about the bomb. We listened to the radio. I realized that everyone I knew had died. I realized that the destruction was so swift and terrible that whoever I had once been could have died with the rest of what I had known. I felt like a dragonfly that had been trapped in amber and suddenly freed. I was new—
“Ezra planned our way from the city, packing up as much as we could carry—four of us shouldering the load would give us a better chance at surviving, he figured, but it never came to that. We heard the sound of helicopters. Men in protective clothing airlifted us to a hospital in Ohio. We were kept in separate rooms, but I know that Steven died from radiation poisoning. I don’t know if Elizabeth died or not. I was in the hospital for nearly a year, a sickness so overwhelming that I figured each day might be my last, but I lived. I lived—”
5, 4 IBID.—
Dawn by the time we say good night. She shuts her door as I leave, soft enough I hear the click and dragging sway of her chain lock and the heavy fall of the bolts. Crimson hallway carpet the color of pomegranates, early morning light the color of wool. The scent of her apartment lingers in my clothes—coffee, oil paints, container orchids and soil. Leaving her feels like a mistake, somehow, a critical lapse now that I’ve found her—but last night Albion said if we hesitate here we both will die.
“Why? Who’ll kill us?” I asked. “Who are they? The men who killed Mook—”
Just after 3 a.m. when she brewed a second carafe of coffee. We sat facing each other on her couch, where we’d been all evening. Albion tugged on her earlobe—a little nervous tic when she’s thinking.
“I really wasn’t sure who they were until you found me, but now I’m certain,” she said. “Waverly’s brother, Gregor, and his sons. Rory and Cormac. Rory was just a teenager when I knew him. Cormac was older. He was married—I remember he liked showing us pictures of his two little girls. The brothers used to come up to the house during hunting season for weeks at a time and Waverly’s brother would stay for even longer stretches. There’s something odd about him, the brother—I don’t know if he can take care of himself fully. Sometimes he goes catatonic for hours at a time. They’re from Birmingham, in Alabama—”
“Timothy mentioned Alabama,” I said. “The first time I met him he told me a story about driving through Alabama and passing roadkill in the middle of the night. Miles of roadkill. He said he was with his wife—”
“If Timothy brought a woman to Alabama, then she’s dead,” said Albion. “He took her to his uncle’s farm—”
“Jesus,” I said—already assuming that Timothy had killed his wife, but the blunt image of his uncle’s farm still jolted me. Barns and sheds, maybe—decapitations and hands cleaved away, imagining what might be hidden in those fields. “Lydia Billingsley,” I said. “Timothy’s wife was named Lydia Billingsley. Her body was found in Louisiana. There are other women, too. Actually, I wanted to ask you about a specific young woman Timothy had a relationship with—”
“I’m sorry, Dominic,” she said. “I can’t help you with that—”
“Anything you know will help me. Anything you can tell me. I understand talking about Timothy will be difficult—I don’t want to take that for granted, but I believe he may have killed the young woman I’ve been researching—”
“Let her go,” said Albion.
“What?”
“Let her go,” she said. “The dead deserve their rest—”
My feet feel hammered flat from the walking I’ve done, blisters like water balloons between my toes. Starbucks for coffee and oatmeal—a window seat where I watch the traffic gather and clot as morning thickens into the rush hour commute. Click through offers for a free latte if I fill out a customer satisfaction questionnaire, but all I can think of is Albion and Waverly’s family and the desire to disappear. I need to think. Redraw my lines of inquiry into the death of Hannah Massey. Hourly forecasts, cloudless and radiant. Albion told me to let the dead rest and in the moment I assumed she meant Hannah Massey, but realize now she may have been referring to herself. I wick headlines from my line of sight—there’s a gas station across the way and sunlight glinting off windshields and chrome distracts me.
I notice the error message first—
Red text and a faint notification ping: identification failure.
The SFPD app I’ve left running in the background keys on a police officer at the pumps across the street but fails to identify him; 3× zoom, 9×—he’s wearing SWAT armor, without a helmet, an oily slick of hair and porcelain-fine features; 12× zoom—thin lips, like Timothy’s, and smallish eyes. I store his image. The app locks onto his badge number but again fails identification, reporting invalid as checked against the existing roll.
Call 911 for immediate confirmation?
What would happen if I called the cops on him? The car he’s filling is a San Francisco PD cruiser—steel cages over the fenders and slim-profile lights along the roof. Worst-case scenario: Waverly has police cooperation, they track my 911 call, flush me out, find Albion.
“Dismiss,” I tell it.
Fuck. I schedule an AutoCab pickup and receive a ping just a few minutes later when a cab pulls into the Starbucks lot. I nestle into the rear seat and decline when the cab prompts me to load my personal account.
“Cash,” I tell it, scrambling in my wallet for enough to cover the fare. I tell the cab the hotel address and decline options for a scenic route or self-guided city tour. A last glimpse through the rear window as the gas station recedes into the distance: he’s still at the pumps.
Call Albion.
Her avatar’s an image of a sparrow.
“Dominic?”
“You have to leave—you have to get out of your apartment right away. I’m in a cab right now on my way back to my hotel and I saw him, one of the men who killed Mook. I think it was one of them—”
“Slow down,” she says. “Tell me what’s happening—”
“There’s a Starbucks near your apartment, with a gas station across the street. A Shell, I think. I think I saw one of the men who killed Mook. Only one of them—dressed like a cop. I don’t know where the other two are. He’s right by your apartment, he might be coming for you. You have to leave. Now—”
“Dominic, are you safe?” she says.
“I’m okay,” I tell her. “I don’t think he saw me—”
“Go back to your hotel and wait there,” she says. “Call me when you get there. Be ready to leave. Lock the doors. Don’t open for anyone, do you understand?”
“You need to leave,” I tell her.
“I will,” she says. “What hotel are you staying in?”
I forward her the hotel’s address and she disconnects.