snorted. ‘I watched people get their freakin’ heads blown off today, Mom. Is it okay with you if I try to, like, forget about it for just a little while?’
Bell wanted to embrace her daughter, same as she’d done earlier that day, wanted to pull her close, to kiss her and tell her how much she loved her, cherished her. But she also knew that such gestures would be, under the circumstances, exactly the wrong moves to make.
‘Okay,’ Bell said. ‘Sometimes talking helps, though.’
Carla’s eyes blazed. ‘Really.’ She cocked her head to one side. Deciding. Yeah, she’d do it. ‘So why,’ she said, challenge in her voice, ‘don’t we ever talk about Shirley? She’s your sister. Your only sister. But you don’t even bring her up, Mom. We’ve never discussed it. Not ever. All I know is that she’s in prison. I know what she did – and I only know that because Dad told me – but I don’t know why she did it. Or why we don’t ever go visit her. If talking is so all-fired great, Mom, how come we never talk about Aunt Shirley?’
In her head, Bell counted off ten seconds.
She added another five.
‘That has nothing to do with what happened to you today,’ Bell said quietly. ‘Nothing.’
‘Fine.’ Carla spat the word.
Bell moved toward the staircase. ‘See you in the morning,’ she said neutrally. She couldn’t risk any more conversation. Not now. Not after the topic Carla had introduced.
Both of their bedrooms were on the second floor, but Carla sometimes slept on the couch on weekend nights, falling asleep in front of the TV. This was going to be one of those nights.
Carla listened to her mother’s steps on the stairs.
She knew the sounds well, and could hear them even through the firehose blast of noise from the TV set. The old house creaked and sighed and moaned at the slightest touch, signaling the discontents of its age and its state of disrepair. They were updating it, but had to proceed gradually, bit by expensive bit, as they could afford it. The new wiring installed last month had carved a significant hole in her mom’s savings – for all the good it had done.
Carla clicked off the TV set. She needed to focus. The sounds grew fainter as Bell reached the second floor. Carla was aware of her mother’s movements overhead as she stopped in at the bathroom – there was a strangled mini-swoosh as water forced its way through a tottering series of old rusty pipes, the brief scream of ancient faucets being turned on and off – and then Carla could hear her walk into her bedroom. An old house was better than a GPS tracker.
She listened.
Silence.
Good. Her mother was in bed now. Or at least not bothering her anymore.
Carla fell back onto the couch. She drew up her bony knees until they were close to her face. She thrust that face into the small crook of her arm, trying to muffle her sobs in the soft cotton of her longsleeved pink T-shirt. She’d been determined not to reveal – not to her mom, not even to Ruthie – what she was feeling. The panic. And the confusion. And cold dread.
She’d decided to stuff it all behind the anger her mother had come to expect from her. To hide it. To use that anger as a shield. Anger was the best protection. Absolutely.
The first thing everyone had wanted to know was: Did you get a good look at him? Recognize him? Did you know the shooter?
And Carla, like all of the other witnesses, had said, No, no, never saw him before. Don’t know him.
But she did.
7
Charlie Sowards stared at the picture. It had been ripped out of the newspaper, folded over, folded again. Still, he got the idea. He could recognize her. Pick her out of a crowd. No problem.
He stuffed the photo back in the front pocket of his jeans, not bothering to fold it this time. The edge tore a little bit, but he didn’t care.
He wished the whole process was a little bit slicker, more techno, like the things he saw in James Bond movies. Why couldn’t he be issued a sleek black laptop, say, or one of those iPads, and why couldn’t the picture be sent to him in some kind of encrypted file – he loved the word ‘encrypted’ – instead of this stupid, candy-ass way?
A small picture torn out of a newspaper. Christ. A head shot, no less.