he’d probably be dismissed, maybe even jailed. In this city, at this time, with a fucking unioner, it’s going to be madness. It’s his word against what every bastard in the city wants.”
She sat very still, looking at the paper. She reached out and touched the words as though she could rearrange them into something better.
Hayes opened his eyes as though he had heard something. He sat up and looked at her, mouth slightly agape. Then he said, “Don’t do it.”
Samantha turned to him. “Don’t do what?” she asked.
“Don’t go to the police.”
“They’ll kill him with this story. You said so yourself.”
“They’ll kill you, too, if you give yourself to them. You’ll link the company to the police even more.”
“Then the hell with the company!” she spat. “They’re going to throw him in prison, Hayes! That or ruin him!”
“You don’t know that. But he’s going to be the sacrificial lamb either way. You’ll just bring yourself down with him.”
“I don’t care! They need to know the truth! Someone does, just one person!”
“They won’t care. They can’t afford to care.”
“Shut up! Just shut up for once in your damn life!” She stood and went to the wall and leaned her head against it. “I won’t let them do this to him. It isn’t right.”
Hayes did not answer.
“Why couldn’t he have left?” she asked quietly. “Why couldn’t he have just left that man there and come with us?”
“Because Garvey was made for lost causes,” said Hayes. “That’s why he’s stayed in his hometown, after all.”
“He believes he can help,” said Samantha.
“I never doubted that he believes it. He believes it with all his heart. It’s whether he should believe it at all that I wonder about.”
She sat down again on the floor and crossed her arms and pulled her legs up close to her chest.
“Samantha…” Hayes said. “I know what you’re about to do. If you do it, it’ll bring hell down. Hell on everyone.”
“Will it help Donald?” she asked, lifting her face.
“Probably. It very well could. But-”
“Then I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Just be quiet.”
Hayes looked at her a moment longer, then lay back and slept again. She waited, thinking, and then left.
Samantha did not go to her apartment. She knew that would be watched. Instead she walked into the nearest post office, her skirt mud-stained and her face still smudged. The clerk stared at her as she calmly asked for a box of envelopes, some nice paper, a pen, and several bottles of ink. “Doing some letter-writing, ma’am?” he asked nervously.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
When she had gotten her supplies she went to a phone station and called information. A bleary-voiced woman answered the phone. Samantha asked her for the address of a major newspaper.
“Which newspaper?”
“All of them, I should think,” Samantha said.
She wrote them down. Then she went to a nearby shop and purchased some new clothes and cleaned herself up until she looked decent. She found a quiet restaurant and she sat in the back and began to write, first one letter, then two, then three, all the way up to ten, one after the other. Once she was done she walked to the mailbox tubes and slipped the letters in, the pneumatic lines greedily sucking each letter out of her hands.
She sat on a bench then, not certain what to do, vaguely aware that she was putting things in motion that were far beyond her control. She suddenly felt that she had tipped something very large and very heavy over, and it had just passed its equilibrium and now there was no going back. She felt strangely detached. She had never really done a stupid thing in her life, and she’d always been careful about each decision she’d ever made. Normally she wouldn’t even conceive of doing something like this. But whenever she thought of Garvey lying in some cell she knew that it was not a choice at all.
She sat for a moment longer, then stood and began walking toward Evesden Central Police Department.
She wanted to wait for him on the front steps, but they told her they were going to be letting him out on the side. When she asked why, the duty officer gestured out toward the street in front of Central, and she looked and saw several men loitering, watching the building front with hooded eyes. She turned away and went down to the side of the station.
She stood in the small loading dock with the municipal workers for more than an hour before Garvey came shambling out. He wore ill-fitting clothes that were certainly not his own. His hair was uncombed and his cheeks bore days of stubble. He blinked up at the sunlight. When he saw Samantha his shoulders drooped as though he was stunned and deeply disappointed, all at once.
“Sam,” he said softly. “Sam, what are you doing here?”
She did not answer. She simply walked to him and held his face to make sure he was all right. Then she kissed him. He withdrew in surprise, then gently returned it.
“Samantha,” he said. “Jesus, Samantha, what the hell?”
“They were going to prosecute you,” she said softly.
“We need to get out of here. Is there a car nearby?”
“There’s a cab waiting at the end of the lane.”
He grabbed her and looked back at the front of the building, where a crowd was forming, presumably waiting for him. Someone’s amplified voice shouted at them, telling them to keep their distance.
“They were going to prosecute you,” she said. “I couldn’t let you do that to yourself. I couldn’t. So I went to them and asked to speak to your lieutenant.”
“Jesus.”
“And I told him what had happened, what had really happened. And then he got his major. And I told him and he went and got the commissioner. And I told him and they all seemed to think for a bit.”
Garvey shook his head and kept hustling her down the lane.
“And then once I had them all in a room together I told them I had written ten letters, each to one of the major newspaper publishers telling them what had actually happened, about the… the assault and everything, and they’d be getting them by the end of the day. So either they could go public with the story or they would wind up fighting the papers.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“And I suppose they decided to let you go.”
“God, Sam. That may make it worse,” he said. “That may make it worse for everyone.”
“I don’t care. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right what they were doing to you.”
They climbed into the cab. “Where’d Hayes stash you?” Garvey asked. “No. Wait. Don’t tell me. Just get us close and we’ll let you out.”
Samantha gave the driver an address only a few blocks away. Garvey nodded, his face drawn and thin and white as a sheet.
“They’ll fire you for this, you know,” he said. “This’ll be the end of it. Of your career. Jesus, Samantha, they’ll crucify you for this. Unioners may be after you.”
“I know. I don’t care anymore. Will the Department ever take you back?”
“Not after this, I don’t think. They said they were going to committee over it soon but they were hinting real hard that I should maybe resign. Maybe I should. Seems like the alternative would be a hearing.” He bowed his head and sighed. “You can love your job, but that doesn’t mean it loves you. You can love your city and you can love your country and your people, but they don’t love you back. They’re just things. Things that get too big and one day they just scrape you off their back. They don’t need you.”
“I do,” she said. “I need you. I do.”
He looked at her. His brow and cheeks lined and loose. Dark eyes soft and haggard. Then he leaned his head against hers and shut his eyes.
