Strange Weather

by Joe Hill

“Hot. Greedy. Impossible to satisfy,” Tim said, speaking very slowly, weighing each descriptive in turn. “How do you satisfy a fire?”

  “Timmy. That was a setup. You were supposed to say, ‘Sounds like my ex-wife.’ You gotta work with me here. When I give you a perfect setup like that, you have to take it.”

  “I don’t have an ex-wife. I’m happily married.”

  “Which is amazing, considering you are the least funny, most literal man in the ranks of American journalism. Why does she stay with you?”

  “Well, I suppose the kids exert a certain pressure to remain together.”

  Aisha Lanternglass made a buzzing sound, as if he’d replied with the incorrect answer on a game show. “WRONG. Wrong. Try again, Timmy. You’re the least funny man in American journalism, so why does your wife stay with you? Think carefully. This might be another prime setup.”

  “Because . . .” His voice trailed off uncertainly.

  “You can do it. I know you can do it.”

  “Because of my thick, uncircumcised penis?” he asked.

  Lanternglass whooped. “There you go! Much better. I knew you had it in you.” By then she was turning in to the lot at the mall and could see yellow sawhorses, ambulances, half a dozen cop cars. Blue and silver strobes stammered weakly in the near-equatorial heat. It wasn’t quite noon, and she already had doubts that she would get to Parks & Rec on time to pick her daughter up from tennis camp. “Gotta go, Tim. Gotta figure out who killed who.”

  She parked and got out, threaded through the crowd to a line of sawhorses outside the entrance to the mall’s central atrium. TV vans were pulling in, the local guys, Channels 5 and 7. She figured there were only three or four dead, not enough to catch the attention of the national cable networks. On the other side of the sawhorses, it was the usual crime-scene chaos. Cops milled about. Walkie-talkies crackled and bleeped.

  She didn’t recognize any of the uniforms, and after a while she sat on the hood of her twelve-year-old Passat to wait. The lot broiled, heat wavering up from soft blacktop, and pretty soon she had to stand again, her buns getting too hot against the steel of the car. All kinds of folks had driven in to see what was happening, or maybe they’d shown up to shop and decided to stick around to see what all the excitement was about. A hot-dog truck was parked at a discreet distance, outside a party-supply store across the road encircling the mall.

  Lanternglass’s eight-year-old daughter, Dorothy, had gone vegetarian three weeks ago. She didn’t want to eat anything that had felt feelings. Lanternglass had done her best to play along, eating pasta and fruit salad and bean burritos, but the smell of hot dogs was making her feel feelings, and not empathetic ones.

  She was wandering over to buy herself a lunch to regret when she passed some black girls standing around a sporty little bubblegum-colored ride and heard one of them say, “Okello had a front-row seat. EMT is looking at his hand, ’cause one of the SWAT stepped on it. SWAT ran right by him, carrying machine guns and everything.”

  That was interesting, but Aisha Lanternglass kept going, couldn’t eavesdrop without being noticed. The hot-dog truck specialized in Asian fusion, and she wound up with a jumbo draped in cabbage and plum sauce. She could tell Dorothy she had cabbage and fruit for lunch and it wouldn’t even be a lie—it would just be leaving out details.

  She meandered back toward the scrum but slowed and stopped to chug her dog while standing near the rear bumper of the bubblegum-mobile, license plate OOHYUM. Three girls, a little past high-school age, wearing jeans so tight that none of them could fit their cell phones into the back pockets, loitered around the front end. A car like that—it was an Audi—they weren’t out of the Black & Blue. More likely they were from the Boulevards north of town, where every house had a driveway of crushed white shells and usually a fountain with a copper mermaid in it.

  The girl who’d been talking about the SWAT typed something on her phone, then said to the other two, “Okello is waiting to see if they’ll let him get his stuff and change back into his street clothes. He can’t stand that Boost Yer Game uniform. Taking it off is the best part of his day.”

  “I thought it was the best part of your day,” one of the other girls said, and they all had a good dirty cackle.

  Lanternglass saw cameras collecting in front of one of the sawhorses, like pigeons charging a fresh scattering of bread crumbs, and had to go. She finished her dog in a hurry and squeezed in among the local TV newsfolk. She was the only print journo in the bunch, the only one who would be using her phone to record whatever was said. She was used to it. The St. Possenti Digest employed eight full-timers, and two of them were on Sports, down from a staff of thirty-two just ten years before. Some days as many as five articles ran under her byline.

  Chief Rickles emerged from the mall, trailing a small gang of uniformed officers and someone from the D.A., a slim, good-looking Latino in a cowboy hat. Rickles was built like a fire hydrant and wasn’t much taller. His blond hair was so fair that his eyebrows disappeared against his pale Germanic skin. He crossed the tarmac, closing in on the cameras, stopped before them, and doffed his baseball cap. Lanternglass had somehow wound up almost nose-to-nose with him, but he didn’t appear to see her, just gazed at some point in the distance over her left shoulder.

  “I’m Chief Jay Rickles with the St. Possenti police, and I’ll be making a brief statement about the incident that occurred here today. At approximately ten-thirty this morning, shortly after the mall opened, shots were fired on the upper level of the galleria, and four were slain in an apparent mass shooting. The perpetrator was taken out by a security guard on the scene, before the shooter was able to reach the crowded food court. I speak of a single perpetrator because at this time we only know of the one. The shooter was pronounced dead at the scene at eleven-sixteen. The heroic individual who eliminated the threat as it unfolded is in good health but is not prepared to make a statement at this time.” He lowered his chin and scratched at his pink scalp, and Lanternglass was surprised to see the chief struggling against some surge of intense emotion. When he lifted his head, his very blue eyes glittered with joyful tears. “On a personal note, two of my grandchildren were at the mall today, with their mother—my daughter—riding the carousel in the food court, less than three hundred feet from the shooting. They were just three of the many children, moms, and shoppers who may well owe their lives to the selfless action of the man who stepped up to stop the shooting before it could escalate. I was able to express my gratitude to him personally, only a few minutes ago. I am sure I will be just the first of many. I can take a few questions now.”

  Everyone shouted at once, including Lanternglass herself. The chief was right in front of her, but he still didn’t look at her. She wasn’t entirely surprised. Rickles and Lanternglass had a complicated history.

  “You said four casualties, plus the shooter. How many injured?” hollered the woman from Channel Five.

  “Several people are receiving treatment for shock and minor injuries, both here on the scene and at St. Possenti Medical.”

  More shouts. “No comment at this time.” More hollering. “Still too early to know.” Lanternglass was jostled and shoved as microphones were thrust past her. She felt that Rickles was willfully ignoring her, but then she called out something that caused him to jerk his head toward her and fix her with his bright, humorous, affectionate stare.

  She had yelled, “Was the alleged shooter known to law enforcement before today? Did he have a criminal record?”

  “I never said the shooter was male,” he told her. There was no smile on Rickles’s face, but his eyes glittered. He did like saying the unexpected thing in front of the cameras. And maybe he liked, too, that he’d been able to catch Lanternglass out on making assumptions about the perpetrator of a crime.

  The crowd around her went bananas. The other reporters loved it. Rickles backed away, raising a hand, palm outward in a gesture of peace, and said that was all for now. As he retreated, someone shouted
to ask the names of his grandkids, and he returned to say Merritt and Goldie. Someone asked if he could at least confirm the age and gender of the killer, and he frowned and said, “Let’s keep the focus on the people who died today. They’re the ones the media should be thinking about, instead of glorifying the demented acts of the perpetrator to collect easy ratings.” Another roar—they loved that, too. Every reporter Lanternglass knew adored coming in for a bit of public flagellation.

  Then he was going, turning away from them. Lanternglass half expected him to be lured back yet again. Chief Rickles was a man who loved to make a statement, enjoyed his role as a public wit, scold, moralist, and legal thinker. In that way he reminded her a bit of Donald Rumsfeld, who had so clearly delighted in toying with the press and dropping a quotable line. Lanternglass thought, uncharitably, that Rickles was probably glad his grandchildren had been on the scene, because it gave him the opportunity to play two roles at once: firm enforcer of the law and grateful, relieved family man.

  But she didn’t care if he came back and had some more to say. He wasn’t going to share anything else worth knowing—if he answered more questions, it would be to suit his needs, not theirs. And besides . . . a flicker of pink had caught her attention, moving through her peripheral vision. When she stood on her toes and craned her neck, she saw the girls in the bubblegum-colored car zipping away, not onto the highway but around the corner of the mall and out of sight.

  Lanternglass went after them.

  2:11 P.M.

  The northeastern face of the mall was a long stretch of windowless sandstone brick, featureless doors painted dull brown, and loading docks. No one entered on this side except employees. The lot was narrow and faced a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence with overgrown weeds on the other side. Such places set Lanternglass on edge. They made her think of the day she’d watched a twenty-four-year-old cop named Reb put six bullets in Colson Withers.

  A pair of police cruisers bracketed the lot, one at either end. Lanternglass slowed down for a big, smooth-faced cop in mirrored sunglasses. He stood in her way until she eased to a stop, and then he walked around to the driver’s-side window and made a lazy circular gesture with one hand to indicate she should roll down the glass.

  “Family of the employees only, ma’am. You family?”

  “Yes, sir,” she lied. “My son, Okello, he works at Boost Yer Game? He was in the building when it happened. I’m with those girls you just let through.” She pointed to OOHYUM, which was just sliding into a space a third of the way down the lot.

  But he had stopped listening as soon as she said a name, just waved his hand, stepped aside.

  When she pulled into a spot, the three girls had already spilled out of their strawberry-milkshake-colored Audi, and the driver was standing on her tiptoes, hugging a gangly black kid. A thin crowd lingered among the cars, employees who’d been evacuated from the building and who were hanging around, high on excitement, telling and retelling the stories of their own narrow escapes. Perhaps because she was remembering Colson, who’d been so at home on a stage, the busy, cheerful swarm of onlookers reminded her of being backstage after a successful performance: a good bloody tragedy perhaps.

  She parked and got out, just as the boy and his girl broke their embrace. She intercepted them as they walked back toward the pink car.

  “You in there when it happened?” she asked the boy without any preamble, her phone already out to record. “I’d love to hear about it.”

  The kid slowed, a thought line appearing between his eyebrows. He wasn’t just black but black-black, like a lava-sand beach. Light disappeared into him. Good-looking, of course, but then you had to be to get hired at Boost Yer Game. Youth, health, and blackness were a lot of what they sold—to a mostly white, suburban clientele. He was still wearing the store uniform; apparently the cops hadn’t let him change.

  “Yeah. I was in there. I was the closest person to the action who didn’t get shot. Not counting Mr. Kellaway.”

  The three girls eyed Lanternglass with a mix of wariness and curiosity. The girlfriend, the prettiest of them—snub nose, slim neck, and bobbed, straightened hair—said, “Why you askin’?”

  “I’m with the paper. St. Possenti Digest. I’d love to know what it was like—to be three steps away from a bullet. The inside story. How you made it out,” she said, answering the girl but looking at the boy while she spoke.

  “My picture in the paper?” he asked.

  “You bet. People will be asking you for your autograph.”

  He grinned, but the girlfriend said, “It’s a hundred dollars,” and stepped in front of him, as if to physically block Lanternglass from getting any closer.

  “If I had a hundred dollars in my purse, I could afford a babysitter. But I can’t, which means I’ve only got about a half an hour before I have to pick my girl up from town summer camp.”

  “Shit,” his girl said. “You want to know his story, you can watch all about it on Dateline. I bet they’re good for a grand.”

  Lanternglass figured a girl with a brand-new pink Audi probably had a higher limit on her credit card than she did. She thought the girlfriend was bringing up money as a pose, a bit of spontaneous performance art. Maybe the boyfriend was from the Black & Blue and the girlfriend was from the Boulevards, and now she was trying to impress him by acting like she was street.

  “I’m not sure Dateline will be calling,” Lanternglass said. “But if they do, don’t you want them to talk to your guy instead of one of a hundred other people who were in the mall today? The person who gets their story out first is usually the only person who gets their story out. Besides”—and now she fixed the girlfriend with a direct stare—“I’d really like to talk to both of you. I’d like to know how you felt when you heard about the shooting, knowing your boyfriend was in the building, not knowing if you’d ever see him again.”

  That softened her. She glanced at her boy, Okello, who had not said anything about money and who attended to Lanternglass with calm interest.

  “I’ll tell you what happened,” he said. “You don’t have to pay me.”

  “Can I record you?” Lanternglass asked, gesturing with her smartphone.

  He nodded.

  “What’s your name?”she asked, because it was a good place to start, even if she already knew the answer.

  “Okello Fisher. Like Othello but with a k.”

  In Aisha Lanternglass’s mind, Colson died again. He died three or four times every day, even now. Facedown in his own blood. If he had not bled to death, he might’ve drowned in it.

  “What kind of name is Okello?” Lanternglass asked.

  He rolled his shoulders in an easy shrug. “My mom’s big into African history. She made me a cake with num-num berries for my tenth birthday, bought me a tribal drum. I’m like, damn, what’s wrong with chocolate cake and PlayStation?”

  She liked him already, knew he was going to give her good quotes. The girl’s name was Sarah. To keep everyone happy, Aisha got the friends’ names, too, Katie and Madison. Boulevard names, all three.

  “When’s the first you knew something was wrong?”

  “Prolly when I saw the gun,” he told her.

  “You saw the shooter?”

  “Mall only opened a few minutes before. I went up to the food court to grab Frappuccinos for Irving and myself. Irving and I have the morning at BYG. I don’t know why he works there—his family is pretty well-off. I guess his mom wants him to experience what it’s like to have a job.” Doubt flickered in his big, sensitive eyes, and he said, “You better not print I said that. Irving’s cool. They’ve had me over for dinner.”

  “I won’t publish anything you don’t want me to publish.”

  “Anyway, there’s a hoop in the BYG, and we play HORSE. Loser has to pay for the winner’s Frappuccino, but the winner has to go get them.”

  “When’s the last time you paid for his drink?” the girlfriend, Sarah, asked him with a certain teasing pride.

&nbs
p; “Irving’s okay. I have to pay sometimes. He’s not too good from the left side, though. So—yeah, usually he pays and I go get them.”

  “I won’t publish you said that either,” Lanternglass promised. “I don’t want to give away your secret winning strategy.”

  He grinned again, and Lanternglass liked him even more. She thought again that he was from the Black & Blue, not because he sounded street but because he didn’t. He spoke effortlessly, yet with a certain care in his phrasing. Lanternglass was familiar with the impulse to choose words with some precision. It flowed from the anxious certainty that a single verbal slip would make you sound like you slung drugs on the corner. Lanternglass had spent a year studying journalism in London, doing some of the things Colson never got to do, and while she was there, she’d read an essay about the English class system. Englishmen, she read, were branded on their tongue. You knew whether someone was posh or trash the moment he opened his mouth and spoke. It was even more true of being black in America. A person would make up his mind about you as soon as you said hello, just from the way you said it.

  Okello continued, “I was walking back to Boost Yer Game when she went by. We passed each other on the big flight of stairs in the central atrium. I was going down, and she was going up. I had to look at her twice because she was fooling with something high up on her leg. Like, I thought she was messing with a stocking at first. Only it was a holster. A thigh holster. She pulled it off just as I went by. She’d been crying, too. Even though she had sunglasses on, I could tell from the mascara streaks under her eyes.”

  “How would you describe her?”

  “Petite. Blond. Real pretty. I think her name was Becki. Or Betty? No. Kinda sure it was Becki.”

  “How do you know her name?”

  “She worked at Devotion Diamonds, same place she shot up. The whole mall has an employee-appreciation event on the last Saturday morning of every month, before opening. Rog Lewis—he runs the store—gave her an award once. Employee of the Month or something. She killed him first. At least I think that’s what happened. He shouted right before the first shot. I know he’s dead. I saw them wheel him out.”