The hall was crawling with uniforms. White nurses, light gray EMTs, blue cops, dark gray suits that might as well have been uniforms. Strobe flashes reflected down the walls, splashing out through an open door. Crime scene investigators, taking photographs. A gray suit strode past, hauling one of those aluminum-sided cases on wheels. Jo wondered how long she had been sitting in the chair.
Two metal frames waited in the lobby, tall wheeled shiny folding frames with white padded tops with dark gray plastic bags draped across them, empty, waiting. Stretchers. Body bags. Waiting to swallow Mom and Dad, waiting to hide two shattered heads behind closed zippers.
Jo felt unnaturally calm. She knew it was unnatural, but that calm settled over her and brought her heartbeat back to normal and cleared her eyes and laid the script out in glowing words in the air in front of her. She'd tell the police what happened, exactly what happened, and then they'd arrest her and put her on trial and punish her. Lock her up in the mental hospital with the rest of the crazy people.
She gathered strength, drawing it from the air and up from the floor beneath her, and let go of the wheelchair. She walked around Mary Thomas, around that protective bulk that seemed to have shrunk back into a short round blind old woman instead of the force of nature she'd been in the room. Jo walked up to the highest-ranking uniform she could spot and laid a hand on his arm. Her hand wasn't even shaking.
"I killed him."
"This is a crime scene, ma'am. Please stay clear." Then the officer looked up and blinked. "I'm sorry. You're the daughter, aren't you?"
"I killed him. You have to arrest me."
His brow creased into a frown. He turned to another passing uniform. "Hey, Bill. Put out another call for Dr. Schofield. We need her like ten minutes ago."
Then the officer turned back to Jo. He took her arm and gently guided her through a door, into someone's office. He left the door half-open behind them. He set her in a chair and put himself leaning against a desk where he could watch the corridor through the gap of the door but no one in the corridor could see her. He shook his head.
"We've got a psychiatrist on call, ma'am, a trauma specialist. She'll be here in a few minutes. She's had a lot of training in helping victims through the shock and grief. You've had a terrible experience. Please just sit quietly and wait for a few minutes."
Jo blinked and sat up straighter. "You don't understand. I killed him. I took the gun and shot him. He hurt my mother. He hit her. He put her in that bed. Then he shot her. He had to die. Now you have to arrest me."
She felt perfectly calm and normal. That was part of the problem, part of what she'd inherited from Daddy. Casual brutality, and something more. She remembered a puppy they'd had for a week or so, she must have been six or seven. Maureen had been out of diapers, anyway.
Baby dog had messed the rug, still being paper trained, Dad went to rub the puppy's nose in it. He put his drink down on the floor, and the dog knocked it over with his wagging tail. Dad picked up the puppy and broke its neck with two hands. Tossed the dying body in a corner. Walked off to replace the drink he'd spilled. Acted as if nothing had happened. And Jo had learned not to scream or cry by then.
No conscience. Nothing outside him mattered.
That's what she was doing. She had to be crazy. Incongruity and blunting of affect, just like Maureen. Jo had learned the jargon, dealing with her psycho sister.
"Ma'am, I saw the room. Saw the evidence. I know you didn't do any such thing. Your father shot your mother and then shot himself. Murder and suicide. You saw them die, nearly died yourself. Now you're in shock. You need professional help, and the doctor is on her way. Please just sit here and wait."
He was very polite, very sympathetic, very much the well-trained police professional. Very wrong.
He didn't believe her. She could make him believe her, but she didn't dare. Using her power had caused this crap in the first place.
The policeman glanced at the door. "Please wait. She's here." Then he slipped out through the door and pulled it nearly shut behind him. She heard mumbles, low-pitched and high-pitched voices whispering in consultation.
". . . sedative . . ."
Selective hearing. She could have heard it all, made the walls amplify the sound for her, but she'd heard the important part. They thought she was just hysterical.
Jo didn't have to stay. She stood up, formed a picture in her head, and stepped into the damp darkness of the world under the hill. The black cold coffin air laughed at her, mocking. It knew her. It knew her mind, knew where she belonged.
Chapter Fourteen
Where the hell was Jo?
David paced the floor of their apartment, glancing at the clock, glancing out the window at the gloom of late winter clouds over April's bleak streets, glancing at the scrap of paper lying on the kitchen counter. The scrap of green paper with the squiggly writing and those zeros in front of the decimal point. Advance payment for the right to turn his poems into songs.
That had happened so fast it made his head spin. A check. A contract that even a musician could understand. A simple, straightforward percentage on the printed retail price of each and every CD sold, nothing about net or gross or production costs or promotion, none of that back-room accounting smoke and mirrors act. It was a flaming fairy tale in itself.
Time to celebrate, but no Jo to celebrate it with.
Last time she went
