“There really is a lot to this job, Sheriff.”
“Would you just get on with it? I’ve got problems of my own.”
Melinda watches the reverend drop the remains of his cigarette to the ground and twist off its cherry with his black cap-toe shoe. When he’s ready, she leads him through the aluminum scaffolding outside the building, through the remains of green canvas sheeting that once served as a door, and into the skeleton of a lobby. They proceed up a steel staircase covered in dust and wood chips, splinters and trash.
The reverend is in no kind of shape to walk up six flights. They stop on the fourth floor landing so he can catch his breath. Melinda waits for him a few stairs up.
The sixth floor is partly encased in glass and partly exposed to the elements. The day is listless in the heat and the open floor feels like an abandoned stage. Melinda walks through plastic sheeting and across exposed wires that lead both to and from nothing, to a spot that overlooks the corner where Dr. Lydia Jones was found contorted and broken.
She is not acrophobic, but there is a pull from the void beyond the edge and it scares her. She had always imagined a window, but there was no window when Lydia fell because there was no window frame because there was no wall. If Lydia leapt to her death, it was easily done here, and if she was pushed that would have been just as simple. Not wanting to look fearful in front of Reverend Green, Melinda walks closer to the edge. But it isn’t really the embarrassment that drives her forward. The pull reaches further into her gut and for a moment Melinda thinks she can feel what Lydia felt. Seeing the edge. Almost wanting to stand there. Down below, the street, is what took her life. But here—this was the beginning. The place where it might not have happened. Melinda starts to breathe faster only a meter from the edge. She cannot step backwards, not yet, but she needs to hold something. To do that she needs to stand even closer—to brace herself against the steel strut and anchor herself.
Melinda turns her head and looks at Reverend Green. He is stationary and expressionless and as she looks at him—at his height, at his weight, at his long arms and patent leather shoes, his dark skin and white eyes, his crisp white shirt stained yellow at the collar—she becomes terrified. If he wanted to, with an outstretched hand, he could send her over the edge.
“Are you all right?” he asks her from the middle of the room.
“What?”
“You appear ashen.”
“It scares me to be up here,” she admits.
“Why are we here, Deputy?” he asks.
Melinda cannot remember Irv’s instructions. She cannot contain the enormity of the problems in her mind right now, and all she can think about is Lydia. Of actually being Lydia. Standing here.
“Did Lydia come to see you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Did she take her own life? Did she . . .” Melinda tries to turn and face the reverend, but that will leave the edge behind her. He could push her. But the edge could pull.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“But you suspect. You must suspect something.”
Reverend Green walks closer to Melinda. He stops a few feet away and looks down at her feet. There are footprints everywhere. She looks down briefly but her eyes fix on his face. He looks passive and calm, but this only scares her more.
“What does all this tell you?” he asks her, delicately moving a cheeseburger wrapper three inches to the left.
“Nothing,” she says.
This limbo—this space between Green and the edge—is too unstable, and if she does nothing she’ll have to collapse to the floor and crawl out, but she doesn’t want to do that. Taking a sharp breath, she backs up another step and grabs ahold of the girder that separates her from an almost seventy-foot drop. When her hand touches the cold metal she becomes Lydia. She can see through her eyes. As in a vivid morning dream she is fifteen years older, and black, and accomplished. She is dressed in elegant clothing and she’s wearing heels, not a beige deputy’s uniform and boots. She’s lighter and not weighed down by a gun.
Does the world look different to her this way, or does she simply look different in the world? There is a difference, but what is it?
She cannot release the girder. She is stuck there. To calm herself she looks up. Away from the ground, out into the city as though there is a window; something protecting her from the world, not exposing her to it.
“Isn’t that Jeffrey’s home?” Melinda says.
“What?” says Green.
“Over there,” she says, hugging the beam tighter. She doesn’t lean out but with her remaining courage she points to a white church steeple with a broken cross at the top. Below is the rooftop that is the same color as the house they visited.
“Yes,” says the reverend. “It is.”
“Do you think that means something?” she says to him.
“I can’t imagine what,” he says.
Melinda hears Fred Green’s feet shuffle toward her. She turns her head and sees him extending his hand to her. His palm is open. “You’re too close to the edge, Deputy. Take my hand, please. Come on back. It’s dangerous.”
Reborn. Again
Last month, in the small town of Glåmlia near the Swedish border, Sigrid’s own team of Beredskapstroppen took a similar position around their target. They were under her command, and her order was to attack. These men—around her now in a crescent—can end Marcus’s life instantaneously and with a twitch of a finger. She will see him die before she hears it. They
