by John Ridley
She said: "Yeah."
"And would you try to carry out that objective without holding back?"
"If I could keep freaks from taking any more lives? I'd go after that any way I had to." The statement only at its outer edges was any kind of cover for Soledad's current career as a provocateur for IA.
"Then what we're working toward is the same thing."
"You and me?"
"You, me. Others who are like-minded. How are you on trust?" "I suck at It."
For the first time since he'd sat down next to her, maybe since they'd first crossed paths, Raddatz showed anything like lightness. With a smile: "You and me both," he said. "But I've got to ask you for some. You have a problem with allocating a little trust, well, then here's the out you were looking for."
And for a sec Soledad considered things. Considered how many lies she was living. The cop lies. The personal-life lies. If she had any honesty left in her, anything similar to trust, if she felt it, would she know it?
"What," she asked Raddatz, "are your boys' names?"
"John. Jason. John's the older one." "You like being a father?" "Love it."
"Like being married?" "I love my wife."
"Not what I asked. Like being married?"
That question didn't get answered so quick.
When it did: "You get married, it's like taking a picture. It's two people at one point in time, and same as a picture nothing's supposed to change. Maybe that was all right when somebody invented marriage ten thousand years ago, or whatever. Ten thousand years ago people lived until they were fifteen. Nineteen. You get married, it's not good… fuck it, you're dead in a couple of years anyway.
"People don't typically die anymore at fifteen or nineteen, O'Roark." Back to using her surname. "People go till they're eighty, ninety years old. I don't care how much you love somebody, you try going fifty or more years of navigating being who you are and who your partner's looking to make you into."
"Your wife, what did she want you to be?"
"A guy who cared more about living than changing the world."
Soledad, bringing things back around to the issue at hand: "And if I can show a little, show some trust?"
"You get to witness something amazing."
"Something…?"
Raddatz, looking right to Soledad: "You get to witness the end of fear."
There's no cure for cancer. All the docs can do is sledgehammer it into submission. Remission. But even when it's gone, it's not really gone. It's always there. A sleeper agent waiting to be activated same as an embedded terror cell. And that's the thing: It's waiting. It's patient. Cancer is death. A form of It. Death In all its forms Is hard to beat. Ultimately impossible to beat. Life is finite. Death's got all the time in the universe.
Taking that into consideration, Gin's surgery, her early phases of recovery looked good. The docs thought they'd gotten all the malignant cells out. All that science. Best they could say was they thought they'd gotten them all out. Anyway, they were happy with the probability.
Gin'd always prided herself on looking as healthy as she was for her age. Not looking young for her age. Looking young was an illusion. She was healthy and she liked looking healthy. Fit and relatively trim. So along comes the chemo. There goes her hair. And how chemo makes most patients lose weight, it worked opposite for Gin. Gin ballooned. The thing that kept her alive distorted her nearly beyond recognition.
The ironies of life.
Soledad got all that from e-mails her mother sent. E-mails. Very complete, and completely removed from any kind of emotion.
E-mails.
And Soledad used to think a once-a-week phone call was cold.
Your husband disappears. You go to the cops, file a missing person report. Unpleasant. Unsettling. But that's what you do. It's what you do if you ever want to see your man again. You do that. And you pray.
For Diane Hall, filling out that report must've been the hardest thing in the world. She did the job with two competing hopes: that her husband would be found, but not found out.
The finding took a while. At least, it took a while for all the paperwork to line up, for the people who track bodies and names and fingerprints and dental records to realize that a John Doe cooling at LACFSC was Anson Hall, reported missing six days prior by his wife. They finally had a name to go with the body and the one other known fact regarding it. The John Doe was a freak.
Normally, a missing person comes up dead, a loved one can expect as sympathetic a dial-up as you're likely to get from cops who make bereavement calls three or five times a week. Maybe, if things are slow, someone on the city payroll might actually swing out to the survivor's place and deliver the news in person. As death goes, things are rarely slow in LA.
What Diane Hall got, Diane Hall got an MTac unit rolling on her house backed by a full complement of uniformed cops. A police bird overhead. Diane got ordered from her house hands up. Diane almost got shredded because she came out of her house clutching her six-year-old son rather than, as cops had ordered, with hands skyward. MTacs moved in, Diane got shoved to the ground, the muzzle of an HK pressed-jammed- against the side of her head. She and her boy got cuffed. The six-year-old got cuffed. put into separate ApCs and whisked to a secure lockup in East LA. The only part of town that allowed for a temporary holding facility of metanormals. Not coincidentally, East LA had the highest population of illegal immigrants who were just trying to get by in life, but couldn't much complain about super-people getting incarcerated in their backyards because if they did they were likely to get a little incarceration thrown their way prior to being shipped off to whatever country they'd border-hopped from.
DNA tests got done on Diane and on her son. Both came back negative. Diane was transferred to the county lockup. Her son got sent to Children's Services.
A cop came by at some point and informed Diane of all the laws she had broken that revolved around harboring a person she had known to have metanormal abilities. She'd pretty much broken all those laws twelve years prior when, in a chapel in Vegas, she said before immediate family and God "I do."
The knowledge itself, the knowledge she was cohabiting with a metanormal, was illegal. But a senator from Texas was sponsoring an amendment to the Constitution banning the whole concept of such unions. Turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. The only thing the citizenry disliked more than freaks was the Constitution getting fucked with.
A public defender came by at some point and informed Diane her best bet was to cop a plea, cooperate with investigators and inform on any other metanormals she was aware of.
Diane asked the lawyer when she was going to be able to see her son again.
The lawyer didn't know when. Or if.
Diane spent the following just-shy-of-a-day crying, and did a real poor job of trying to kill herself by swallowing a spoon that came with her next meal. The spoon got removed.
Diane got removed to a hospital ward, strapped down and put on meds.
Her mind floated. Vegas. I do. Happiest day of her life. C-sections hurt like hell. Do it again. She'd do it all again. Even the spoon down the throat.
Raddatz and panama and Soledad came by at some point and informed Diane they were from DMI and they had questions for her. They had questions and she, for her sake, better hope they liked her answers.
And in the private visitation room in the county jail Diane said to the three cops:
"I think we were… it must have been about two years we were dating. Even though that was back in the Age of Heroes I think he, I think Anson was scared. I think he thought I wouldn't.
In the room were a table and four chairs. Raddatz and Diane were the only ones who sat.
Diane looked too empty of strength to do anything but sit. Raddatz had been through enough interrogations to know they could go for hours. Might as well take a load off early.
Soledad was on her feet. Sitting made her feel relaxed. She'd gotten hip even in the most innocuous of situations- especially
in the situations that seemed to hold the least amount of peril-being chill could get you killed.
Panama was on his feet because it allowed him to slink around the room, edge the perp up by his ever-shifting presence. Tough-Guy Cop one-oh-one. And pointless. Diane, looking like she'd been poured into her chair, had all the edges worn from her. To Soledad, Panama going to one wall of the room then crossing to lean on another came off like a monkey making its way around a cage.
Diane, finishing her thought: "It was so silly the way I found out. Saturday on an afternoon. He was making lunch, cutting meat. The knife slipped, ran across his fingers. I gave out this yelp, but when I went to Anson… the blade of the knife was bent. Not a scratch on his hand. I remember holding his hand. I remember, no matter what I had seen, his flesh felt normal to me. I knew regardless what he was, to me he was, all he was, was just a man. Just a man I loved."
From his spot behind Diane, Panama: "I think you misunderstood the question. We didn't ask about your love life. We asked if you knew what happened to your husband."
"He's dead." She was fiat with that. Beyond acceptance. It didn't matter. Nothing did. The fact that her husband wasn't around to share her life made life not matter.
Without him, without their son, she didn't have a life. They were all, in a way, dead together.
To herself Diane wondered if she could get another spoon. Diane wondered if she could get another spoon or a sharpened comb or maybe she should just take her bedding and… then they really could be dead together.
But that, that was the thing. They weren't really dead together. Their son was alive. Somewhere. He was being processed by some municipal agency. He was at some location being given all the perfunctory love and attention a minor could get from a civil servant who was just trying to rack enough hours to make retirement worthwhile.
Diane was going to leave him to that? She was going to leave their son to the city? The moralists and the demagogues could label her an unfit parent. They could assail her for breaking the law. The law. Yeah, she broke it. She broke it in favor of a promise made before God. But only a truly unfit parent would abandon their child to a system that did not recognize love. That legislated, that institutionalized bigotry. A system that gave birth to, and moved to the sway of, the euphemized organisms of hatred. The White Citizens Council. The Moral Majority. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Focus on the Family.
So in the room, sitting in the chair, wearing her county lockup jumper of bright, bright orange, Diane gave herself strength with a thought, with a mission: Keep it together. For our son, keep it together. And get him back.
"Do you have any idea how?" Raddatz asked.
"What?" Diane had lost track of the questioning.
Raddatz reminded himself the flightiness of interviewees is the reason he'd taken a seat. This shit could go on for hours. "How your husband died; do you know how?"
"You told me. The police did. The other ones. They told me he was dead, and that's all. How would I know anything more?"
"You're good at keeping secrets." Panama, from a corner of the room different than the one he'd most recently occupied. "You kept it secret your husband was a freak."
A scoffing sound from Diane. A pitying sound.
"Kept that a secret, maybe you're keeping other secrets."
"Why did you file a missing person report." Soledad. "You knew if he was found, your husband could be exposed. You could be."
"I was worried about him."
Panama: "Guy's bulletproof, and you're worried about him?"
Soledad, to Panama as he wandered: "Only four corners in the room. How about you pick one?"
The look from Raddatz to Soledad: Be cool. Panama kept on. "Something must've given you concern."
Diane asked: "You're not married, are you?" Soledad laughed.
"He's, he was my husband. I don't need any other reason to be concerned about him."
"You'd have reason to be concerned if he was involved in-"
"Where is our son?" "Don't worry abou-"
Raddatz cut off Panama with: "Your son is in protective custody."
"Being taken from his mother, he's protected how?"
"You go for a ride in the car, you don't put your kid in a child seat"-Panama kept up a stroll as he talked, did the walking just to be contrary to Soledad-"you get pulled over, the state can take your kid 'cause you kind of suck as a parent."
"I am not a bad-"
"You leave a kid around a freak-"
"Stop calling him a-"
"You leave a kid around a goddamn freak, what do you-" Diane was crying.
Soledad's cane was covered with blood, as was one wall of the room. Panama's head was literally split open. Really, really, it was more cracked open, or crushed but In a way that left a separation in his skull. Soledad was ready to run a marathon. Compete an entire triathlon. She had that much energy. That much power. Killing
Panama had been that invigorating. As much violence as she had delivered in a limited lifetime, this violence was positively delicious. In her head it was.
In the room where she and Raddatz were, where Diane was crying and Panama was leaning against yet another wall, all the more violence Soledad would allow herself was to say:
"She's a mother. Leave her alone."
"I don't care if she's-"
The sound of her flesh twisting up around the cane in her grip, her own blood ripping through her veins. Soledad was going hypersensitive again. Death was coming.
"Take a walk." Raddatz giving orders to Panama.
Even from Raddatz, Panama didn't take orders well. "What do I need to-"
"Chuck, go get some air."
The sound of Diane sobbing.
Panama stood around. His way of showing he didn't let himself get pushed around. The more he stood, the more ball-less he looked.
That became obvious to him. Eventually. The flat of his hand slapped the room's steel door. A CO opened it. Panama went his way muttering slurs.
Diane cried on.
Soledad had said, talking about-defending- Diane: She's a mother. The emotional connection to a mother, as Soledad was in the process of maybe/maybe not losing hers, is where the compassion for, the defense of Diane came from, Soledad told herself. The woman had knowingly maintained a long-term relationship with a freak. Put how many lives at risk just to satisfy her own base emotions? There wasn't any other compassion to be had for her. How could anybody ever love a…
So what Soledad was about to do wasn't about compassion, she told and told and told herself in the span of a couple of seconds. It was about, it was just a bone being tossed.
What Soledad tossed: "Mrs. Hall, if you cooperate with us, we can make your cooperation known to the right people."
Soledad got eyebrow from Raddatz.
Diane asked: "The right people? What does, what does that-"
"People with authority. People who could get you back with your son."
"O'Roark."
"I can't make guarantees. But if you help us, I will talk to somebody. Just so you know, my word carries weight."
Raddatz's hand worked his jaw, rubbed all around it, wiped down his mouth. Maybe he was suppressing a scream. Maybe he was trying to keep from saying anything because Soledad seemed to be on to something.
"Help you how?" Diane's voice was no longer flat. It was raised just slightly by hope.
"We've got reason to think your husband was murdered."
Raddatz stepped back in, took over again before Soledad could hand out any more freebies.
Soledad was wordless. That Raddatz was openly backing a murder theory was news to her. For the minute she was just listening.
"It'd take a hell of a lot to kill a man like your husband. We need to try and find out exactly what."
"I don't know what I can tell you."
"You can tell us the names of the other freaks he hung around with." Raddatz was direct with that, sure in tone. For him there wasn't any doubt Anson conso
rted with others of his own kind, no matter Diane said otherwise.
"He didn't-"
"You want to see your kid again or not?"
Like a knife to Soledad's gut. That Raddatz had taken the hand she'd extended Diane and was using it to slap her…
"He didn't talk with other metanormals. He wouldn't take a chance like that."
"Like that?"
"A chance letting anybody know he was different.
Even others like him. When you people arrest them, when you torture them-"
"'We don't torture-" Soledad started to say.
Regardless of the bridge of fidelity Soledad was trying to build, Diane didn't care about Soledad's POV of the world. "When you do whatever you do. When you do to them what you're doing to me now, he didn't want to take the chance his name would ever be given, or that he would name names. Mostly, he didn't want to take the chance you people would take Danny from us."
"Danny," Soledad said. "Your son?" she asked.
Diane said: "Do you know what…" She had to take a couple of seconds, get herself back together. "Anson used to wear bandages. Every three or four months or so he'd put a little bandage on the back of his hand or a finger or one on his neck. Never made a big deal out of it. But he wanted people… he wanted it in their minds they'd seen him cut, hurt. He never wanted people to suspect he couldn't be hurt. He was that careful. I know there are other metanormals in the city. Everybody knows it. If Anson ever talked with them, that I don't know about."
If Diane was a liar, she was a helluva one. But knowing you could close the separation from your child with a lie well told could give any mother a tongue of gold.
"All I can tell you," Diane continued, "I think he knew."
"Knew?" Soledad asked.
"That he'd been found out. Or… or something bad was going to happen."
"Why? Why do you say that?"
"Maybe I'm just using hindsight. But Anson had been carrying… concern. For weeks it seemed. It seems. And more than what I'd come to accept as normal."
"What" Raddatz asked, "were his normal concerns?"
"That he'd he exposed, hunted down by the police. You see on TV every other month, somewhere someone is being exposed as a metanormal, assaulted by police-"