surreal, almost intended to deprive the inmates of sleep. Earlier this morning, she’d pleaded not guilty in the little makeshift courtroom inside the jail and been given a court date of May 11.
Her truck was still in the parking lot at Prolabs, so she walked eight blocks to the downtown station in a light drizzle, waited forty-five minutes to board a bus, then rode out to Willow Creek. She walked the last mile to Prolabs campus. It had stopped raining, but she was wet and cold and her feet had never hurt so much. She wished she had gone straight home and changed into sneakers before retrieving her truck, but that would have added an hour to her travel time.
She could have called her friend Paul to help her out, but she wasn’t prepared to talk about her ordeal yet. Or even to admit to anyone that she had been fired and arrested on the same day. She had to form a plan first, to feel more in control. She couldn’t let anyone see her this vulnerable.
It was Saturday, so the company’s parking lot was nearly empty. She was glad not to run into anybody. As soon as Sula climbed in her truck, tears of relief pooled behind her eyes but did not spill over. She drove home in a state of numb exhaustion, peeled off yesterday’s clothes, and lay down to sleep.
When Sula woke late that afternoon, she was disoriented for a minute. The bright sky made her think it was noon and that she’d slept late. Then it all came rushing back, the humiliating arrest and sleepless, bone-bruising night on the jail bench. She shook it off and crawled out of bed, determined to move forward.
As she showered, her stomach growled and she realized she was ravenously hungry. She hadn’t eaten since her breakfast of scrambled eggs and cantaloupe the day before. She really wanted Chinese food, Mongolian Beef, in particular, but now that she no longer had a job, she couldn’t justify spending the money. She dressed in comfy black sports wear, then made a turkey sandwich and heated a can of vegetable beef soup.
Reading through the want ads as she wolfed down the sandwich, Sula found two jobs to apply for. A public relations position with the county and a technical writing position offered by Microprobes, just down the road from Prolabs. The possibilities perked her up a bit.
Halfway through the soup, she got full and pushed it aside. She grabbed a notepad and pen from her purse and started a list of things to do: 1) Write a letter to the FDA explaining what was on the disk and where it came from. 2) Make a copy of the disk. She needed a computer with a big hard drive and CD burner. Paul could help her with that.
Sula continued her list: 3) Mail the letter and a copy of the CD to her public relations contact at FDA. 4) Send out letters and resumes for both jobs. 5) Apply for unemployment. 6) Call Barbara, her custody lawyer, and let her know about her new situation.
Sula felt better already. Except for the vile taste in her mouth. On her way back to her computer desk, she stopped in the bathroom and brushed her teeth, which felt fuzzy with neglect. Dark circles showed under her eyes and she thought she looked older than she had yesterday morning.
While waiting for her computer to boot up, she jotted down some ideas for her FDA letter. When Windows was up and running, she decided to check her e-mail. She deleted a promotion from Apple without opening it, then scanned through Paul’s note, in which he complained about his boyfriend and invited her to go see Three Dog Night at the McDonald Theater.
Sula hit reply, then wrote Paul a quick note saying she would have to pass on the concert for lack of funds and asked him about burning a CD of some large files. She clicked Send, then glanced up at the top of her computer case.
The disk was gone.
Sula’s chest tightened in a painful squeeze. Someone had come into her home and taken it. Her breath went shallow and she fought for air. Be calm, she told herself. The disk had to be here somewhere. The idea that Rudker had broken into her home with the purpose of stealing the disk seemed…crazy.
What else? She was not the type to misplace things. Yet, maybe she had put it away somewhere. Sula searched frantically through her desk drawers. Not finding it, she took two deep breaths and started again, this time making herself move slowly. Piece by piece, she removed every item from her top drawer: the scissors, the bottle of white out, scraps of paper with phone numbers, little cases with paper clips. Each went on the floor until the drawer was empty. The clear, unlabeled CD case was not there.
Sula repeated the same process with the other two drawers. She also inserted all the disks she did find into the drive to look at their contents on screen. As she went through the motions, she knew it was pointless. She had left the disk on top of her hard drive. Now it was gone. She had no roommates, dogs, or ghosts who could have moved it.
Anger and frustration burst from her in a wordless wail.
Halfheartedly, she rummaged through her dresser drawers, night stand, and closet shelves, then flopped back on the bed and stared at the dingy ceiling. She had lost her job and risked her custody hearing for nothing. She had underestimated Rudker and he had beaten her. How had the bastard gotten in? Sula jumped up and rushed to the kitchen to check the door that opened into the garage. It was unlocked. She never left it unlocked. Never. It was a ritual to check that door in the mornings before she left the house.
She crossed through the garage and checked the door leading into the side yard. It was also unlocked. She couldn’t guarantee she hadn’t left it that way. So he had come in through the garage and had jimmied the interior lock somehow. She knew it wasn’t difficult. Any teenager with a student body card could get past a cheap lock. She had never worried much about it because she had nothing worth stealing, and that would be obvious to any thief observing the size and value of her rental.
Had he hired someone? It was hard to imagine Rudker breaking into her house, standing here in her kitchen. Had he handled her personal things? Her lingerie? Sula fought the urge to gather up all her clothes and run them through the washer.
She had to sit down. Her body and brain were both exhausted. She told herself to let it go, that it was over, she had done all she could do. She had to stop thinking about Nexapra and focus on finding a job. Focus on her custody hearing and her chance to get her sweet little boy back into her life. Once she was past that she would move, so Rudker wouldn’t know where she lived. She crumpled the list of things to do and tossed it in the trash.
If only Calix were here, she thought, sitting on the other side of the table, leaning forward eagerly to hear the rest of this sorry tale. Her sister would laugh in the right places without making Sula feel stupid. She would tell her she had done the right thing and everything would work out fine with Tate. Sula knew she would never have another friend like her big sister. It seemed she was destined to spend her life alone, talking to herself, and making lists of things to do. She felt the cold fingers of the abyss latch on, ready to pull her in.
Time for a distraction.
She tried to read her book about freelancing, then remembered she hadn’t taken her Celexa this morning because she’d been in jail. Sula went to the kitchen and swallowed one of her tablets, then went back to her computer and logged onto CompuServe. The New Mail icon was lit up in bright yellow. She clicked it and her Inbox appeared. Paul had responded to her e-mail about opening and copying a big file. It was unusual for him to be home on a Saturday night, but if he was home, it was not unusual for him to be online. His draft was brief: No problem. Bring it to EFN Monday afternoon.-P
Sula decided to tell him everything. She couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. Paul was a good friend and would not judge her. They had met at the University of Oregon four years earlier in an economics class. They had been lone liberal voices in a sea of young Republicans and had shared an opposition to the trickle down theory of economics. They later bonded over coffee and their mutual orphan status. Paul had graduated with a political science degree the same term she finished with a BA in Journalism. In Eugene, his degree was about as worthless as an art history education, so he worked part time as a waiter and part time as a computer tech for Rent a Nerd.
Sula hit reply and began to type: Hi Paul. I no longer have the disk. It’s a long and bizarre story, but here’s the short version. I overheard Diane Warner (a scientist at Prolabs) tell Rudker (the CEO) that a drug they’re testing makes some people kill themselves. She said she could develop a screening test to prevent it. He told her to shut up and forget about it. Then he came out and saw me standing there, so he knew I heard.
Then Warner disappeared and eventually turned up dead (more on that later). I got worried that her discovery would disappear too and the drug would get approved and a lot of depressed people would kill themselves. (You know how I feel about that.) So I searched her office and found a hidden disk with the DNA data. Then Rudker saw me outside her office and had me fired and arrested (more on that later ).
