by Spencer Baum
Push-ups, sit-ups, squats, jumping jacks…on Wednesday she was only able to do half her normal count. On Thursday, three-quarters.
As the days dragged on, the sound of the silence evolved, as it was apt to do. You learn this in solitary. There is no such thing as pure silence, just varying degrees of quiet. A solitary cell becomes a blank canvass for the sounds of your body. Your footsteps, your breathing, your heartbeat.
Sounds of the world you might not normally notice become jarringly clear. An air conditioner kicking on. A light bulb that hums. The swoosh of water through the pipes in the wall.
The most interesting sounds were those just outside the front door.
Now that her cellblock was right next to the guard station, Jenna could press her ear to the door and, sometimes, make out the words the guards were saying. A woman talking about her daughter’s prom dress. Two men talking about some celebrity scandal. Carryout lunch orders, carryout coffee orders—for two days in a row, the guard named Louise asked someone to get her a “grande decaf skinny vanilla latte.”
And at night, television. The TV came on when guards named Arnold and Chris were on duty. Near as Jenna could tell, Arnold and Chris started their shifts at five, but waited until six-thirty or seven to turn on the TV. The TV was quiet when it first came on, growing louder as the clock marched into the night. By eight o’clock the TV was loud enough that Jenna could hear every word.
How wonderful it was to listen.
On Thursday night they watched a basketball game and Jenna relished the sound of it, listening intently as the commentators described enough for her to see it in her mind. Lakers versus Rockets, a competitive game, lead changes throughout the fourth quarter, Rockets win on a 3-pointer at the buzzer.
On Friday night the guards watched a string of crime shows, one after another, and though the dialogue made frequent references to earlier episodes she’d missed, by the end of each hour-long show, Jenna found herself knowledgeable enough to be invested in the plot.
Sometimes the shows went silent without warning, the silence often followed with conversation that might include a third voice that belonged to neither Arnold nor Chris. From the conversations, Jenna gleaned that Arnold and Chris weren’t supposed to be watching TV. She was eavesdropping on two employees who were shirking their duties, guards who were supposed to have their eyes on the dozen monitors that showed live pictures of the cellblocks, rather than the one monitor that showed whatever TV station they selected that night.
Half-way through Friday’s TV session there came a sharp knock on the door right where Jenna was listening. It startled her and made her jump to her feet.
“Enjoying the show?” came Arnold’s voice.
“Who, me?” said Jenna.
“Yes you. You don’t think we can’t see you in there? Plopped down in the entryway, your ear to the door…we know what you’re doing.”
In that moment, Jenna was terrified they were going to take the TV away from her. It surprised her how frightened she was to lose it.
“The sound of it is soothing to me,” she said.
Arnold laughed. “Hear that, Chris? It’s soothing,” he said. “Had there been a TV for her to listen to in Block G she might never have tried to escape.”
She stepped away from the door, still worried that a click was coming.
“Well by all means, Inmate, stick your ear to the door and be soothed,” Arnold said. “One less person for us to keep an eye on.”
Then he turned up the volume, and Jenna, feeling a rush of gratitude she could hardly explain, said, “Thank you.”
On Saturday, Arnold and Chris’s voices arrived early—a different shift schedule? The TV popped on that afternoon at 4:30. They watched a sci-fi movie with a plot that was hard for Jenna to discern but with music she loved. An epic film score that partnered an orchestra with a synthesizer. She spent the whole of the movie with her eyes closed, enjoying the music, marveling at how different it sounded than popular film scores from before her time in prison.
One movie ended and another began. Was it a sequel to the previous movie? A sequel scored by the same composer? She was just beginning to get into the themes when Arnold changed the channel to some talk show. It was all she could do not to bang on the door in protest.
A single voice blared from the television speakers.
So I’m here tonight with Gabe Chancellor, whose piece in Logic Lighthouse Magazine hits newsstands on Monday…
It was a woman’s voice, one Jenna had heard before. The voice, the ubiquity of the voice, predated her imprisonment. They were watching The Tammy Flanigan Show.
…Logic Lighthouse released an excerpt of the piece on their web site today, and the excerpt references a memoir that will be published in full next week…
Jenna almost got up and left. She almost resumed the day’s pacing in protest of this change away from her marvelous film scores to gossipy, trashy Tammy Flanigan. It was nothing more than inertia that kept her in place. The effort it would take to change gears, the simple mental exertion it required to change from one task to another—that was why she stayed put and was in position to hear the next sentence that came out of Tammy’s mouth.
…needless to say, Mr. Chancellor, this story you’ve written about Jenna Duvall has got people talking…
At the mention of her name, Jenna’s body jerked into awareness. She leaned in to press the whole side of her face against the door.
A man’s voice came on next.
The response has been exciting, that’s for sure, he said, but not entirely surprising.
Had Jenna heard that voice before?
You knew you had a big story before you published it, said Tammy.
Oh yes. I knew I had a big story from the moment Jenna looked me in the eye and tossed a slip of paper on the ground, said the man.
The reporter.
From the Church.
Her letter.
“He’s found the memoir,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes to listen more intently.
Let’s start with that moment, said Tammy. You were at the San Miguel Church in Albuquerque…I’m going to read from the excerpt posted at Logic Lighthouse today: ‘The funeral seemed like it was over. I thought Jenna was gone…
Jenna replayed the moment in her memory as she listened.
…the driver was about to shut the door, she tossed a slip of paper onto the ground…
She felt like she might cry. After years and years of bad luck, had something finally gone her way? Had the reporter found the memoir?
That’s a pretty amazing story, said Tammy.
What’s amazing is what happened next, said the reporter.
You picked up the paper.
I picked it up and found a handwritten note, addressed to no one, but a clear cry for help that was directed at me.
Tell us what was in that letter.
I actually have it right here. Sounds of a paper unfolding—did the reporter bring Jenna’s letter to the studio with him? Was he about to show the actual letter to the world?
And so this, what we’re seeing here, said Tammy, this is Jenna Duvall’s handwriting.
Yes. Let me read it. ‘Before he died, I gave something to Kyle. Something important.’
Jenna’s crying became sobbing as she listened to Gabe Chancellor read the letter aloud. Her words, her message—for once someone had listened to her, and in so doing, validated that she was a real human being. For years now she’d felt like she wasn’t part of the world anymore, like her version of the truth was a joke to everyone else and her words weren’t meant to be taken seriously.
I knew right away what a big deal this was, said Gabe.
A huge deal. Epic. Story of a lifetime, said Tammy.
That’s exactly what it felt like.
She listened as the reporter she met in Albuquerque recounted a tale that began with a cardboard box in Kyle’s fireplace, a laptop and two framed photographs hidden inside.
We have one of those photographs, said Tammy. Let me get it up on the screen for our viewers.
Jenna wanted to bang on the door, wanted to scream to let her out so she could look at the TV and see what photo they were talking about.
There’s the photo, Tammy said. Okay Gabe. Tell us what we’re looking at.
What we’re looking at is three young people taking a selfie in front of the Trent Ames Center for the Performing Arts at Mary Nolan College.
“Oh no,” said Jenna.
Now I look at this picture and I see some interesting things, said Tammy. I see Jenna’s brother Kyle…
“Oh God,” Jenna whispered.
…I see Seth Daron. And I see a young woman...
Get back to the memoir! Jenna thought. Not this! I want to hear more about the memoir!
…tell us about the young woman in the photo, Tammy continued.
The young woman in this picture is the same young woman that Jenna once claimed was the actual killer of Barbara Lomax, said Gabe.
What the hell was this photo? Where was this going?
You’re saying this woman in the photo is Sunny Paderewski, said Tammy.
Sunny Paderewski, Gabe agreed.
I’m looking at this picture, said Tammy, and I’m thinking about how America reacted when Jenna swore that the real killer was some girl named Sunny that nobody could find.
For years now, said Gabe, the name Sunny Paderewski has been an afterthought when we talk about Jenna Duvall and the murder of Barbara Lomax.
To me, Sunny Paderewski was just a bit of trivia, or even conspiracy theory, but nothing more, said Tammy. But you’re saying we need to look at Sunny in a new light.
Oh yes, said Gabe. When I began following the trail of clues I found in Kyle’s apartment, I discovered that not only is Sunny Paderewski quite real, but that she is the central thread that holds together this strange web of connections that leads to Nathan Cavanaugh.
Nathan Cavanaugh?
Okay, and that’s where your story gets really interesting but also really hard to believe, said Tammy. Let’s talk about--
Click.
Silence.
Arnold’s voice: “Boss is coming.”
“No,” said Jenna. “No! Turn it back on! Turn it back on!”
CHAPTER 51
The sound of the TV never came back. Jenna waited at the door all night, listening, but heard nothing but chatter from the guards. Whatever Gabe Chancellor’s interview with Tammy Flanigan meant, Jenna would have to decipher it on her own.
He said something about a connection between Sunny and Nathan Cavanaugh. What kind of connection?
She thought about her conversation with Bart after she woke up in the hospital, about the Devlin employee badge he’d shown her, the picture on that badge, a skinny, short-haired version of Sunny.
She thought about all the things she didn’t know about Sunny, everything Sunny had ever told her, from who she was to where she’d come from—how none of it led anywhere when it came time to find her and bring her to trial. No trace of the girl after she disappeared. And now, years later, Sunny was here. Here at the Tetradome complex with a new face, a new name, sly as ever, leaving Bart Devlin just as flummoxed as Jenna was the day of her arrest.
She thought about this new version of Sunny, a girl whose employee badge named her Foster Smith, her hair buzzed short on the sides but her bangs (her purple bangs) grown long enough to cover the scar on her forehead. In her mind, Jenna saw this girl sneaking around the cellblocks and the rest of the complex, prepping it for Jenna’s attempted escape.
If Sunny knew Nathan, was she trying to break him out too?
Only if their “connection” was a friendly one. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was contentious.
Maybe it was complicated. Or tenuous. Or nothing at all. Jenna was going off a single sentence she heard on a gossipy cable news program. For all she knew, the “connection” between Sunny and Nathan that Gabe Chancellor had discovered could be meaningless. Maybe their paths crossed in childhood. Maybe there was a relation by marriage in their extended families.
But what if it was more? The fact that Sunny and Nathan were both antidomers, that they were both radicals, that they…
Jenna took a deep breath. The next thought coming to her was so heavy she had to steady herself for it.
She had to clear her mind.
The thought was about her brother.
Something her brother had said to her in the final minutes of their visit at the State Pen, when he was agitated and volatile.
Secrets Kyle had been holding. Confessions. He’d had a secret sexual relationship with Sunny. He’d shown her the gun.
Jenna was so hung up on those two confessions she’d all but forgotten about the third.
About the chemicals.
I gave her the gun and I gave her the chemicals. That’s what he said. I helped her rob Carson Supply.
If there was a connection between Sunny and Nathan...
She saw Kyle in her memory, his face glowing in the sterile light of the prison, tears rolling down his cheeks, madness in his eyes.
I did it for her, Kyle had whispered. I wasn’t right in my head. I didn’t mean to do it.
What was he trying to tell her? Something about chemicals.
Something so painful to him that he couldn’t even say it.
He was able to talk about Sunny and the gun—two gut-punches of confessions he had the strength to make—but whatever he had to say about the chemicals was so bad he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
And now Jenna thought about Gabe Chancellor talking to Tammy Flanigan.
Not only is Sunny Paderewski quite real, she is the central thread that holds together this strange web of connections that leads to Nathan Cavanaugh.
A connection between Sunny and Nathan.
A connection between Sunny and the Desert Ridge Bomber.
“The chemicals,” Kyle had said. “I think she gave them…”
And that was it. That’s where Kyle stopped speaking, leaving Jenna with so little to go on that she couldn’t possibly finish the sentence. Could she?
Could she finish it now? Now that she was considering a possible connection between Sunny and Nathan?
Now it was possible that Kyle’s sentence, his whole sentence, had he been able to say it, might have been, “I think she gave them to Nathan Cavanaugh.”
“Bloody hell,” Jenna said.
Nathan Cavanaugh had set off a bomb that killed fifty-eight people.
Nathan Cavanaugh was an antidomer radical, just like Sunny.
Nathan Cavanaugh claimed that his bomb, an ammonium nitrate powder keg that was so powerful it blew out the back wall of an entire floor at the Desert Ridge Hotel, was his own creation, but Jenna remembered news analysts speculating that he had help from an unknown source, that his bomb was the work of an expert.
Was this the connection? Did Sunny make the bomb Nathan used to murder all those people?
Was this what Kyle was trying to tell her? That he and Sunny robbed a supply store and the materials they stole fueled the bomb that detonated in a ballroom of the Desert Ridge Hotel?
Alone in the cage they’d constructed for her, Jenna felt crushed under the weight of Kyle’s secrets. If Sunny built the bomb that Nathan detonated, if Kyle knew of this connection between them, more than knew, helped...
To think he’d been keeping those Goliath-sized secrets to himself all this time. What it must have done to him, to his already fragile psyche.
It broke him.
Night passed to late night passed to wee hours of the morning. It wasn’t lost on Jenna that she was dealing with this news, with these implications, the night before she was slated to run in the Finale. She needed to get some sleep.
Her body so riled up, sleep was slow to come, and when it came, her dreams were terrifying. In one dream she was drowning in the open ocean, her arms and legs unable to move as a sea dragon swam up at her from the darkne
ss below. In another dream she was running from monsters in the Qualifier race, listening to the slurping sounds of gory death behind her, telling herself not to turn back and look, but ultimately turning back anyway, and seeing her brother back there, the poor guy getting torn to ribbons by overgrown beetles.
The final dream of the night was about Sunny. Sunny was begging Jenna to wake up, probably for another ill-fated escape attempt. This dream was mostly darkness. Just a cold room and the sound of Sunny’s voice, coming in from the distance. Jenna, it said. Wake up, Jenna.
In the dream, she told Sunny to go away. She said they had tried and failed, and it was hopeless to try again.
But Sunny was relentless.
Jenna, wake up.
Jenna, I need you to get up now.
Jenna, we don’t have much time, and I need you to wake the fuck up.
She woke up. Her room was dark, save the soft light of a glowing screen.
Jenna? Are you awake?
It was Sunny. Was this still the dream? Maybe. She rubbed her eyes.
Jenna?
It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like a soul-sucking late-night jerk from sleep, complete with a racing heart and an empty pit in the stomach, the feeling of an alarm clock in the middle of the night, or a phone call waking you with terrible news.
Jenna, it’s me. Get out of bed and come to the desk.
The sound came from the Yack Shack computer. Its screen was on. Sunny’s face was filling the monitor.
No, not Sunny’s face. Foster’s face. The new Sunny. The girl with purple bangs.
“What the hell?” Jenna said.
“Good morning!” said the girl with purple bangs. “Sorry to wake you, but this was the best time to do this. The guard station is at shift change right now.”
“Sunny?” said Jenna.
“It’s me, Jenna. Come over here. Come to the screen. We need to talk. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Jenna felt like her head was filled with sludge. She was certain now that this wasn’t a dream. But still it frightened her. She stepped out of bed and walked towards the Yack Shack. As she did, her sleep-soaked mind toyed with vague memories of old horror movies, of murderous ghosts reaching out for the living through electronic screens.