“Oh, it’s you,” Aimee said.
“I got pulled away all day on an investigation in the Sandy River Valley and wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?”
I was still standing in the doorway because I was afraid of tracking in mud, not that the carpet wasn’t already sullied in just about every way possible.
“It’s kind of a personal investigation.”
“That seems to be a hobby of yours.” She dropped the child beneath her arm, who somehow managed to land on her bare feet, like a cat. “You want a Mountain Dew? We had pizza for supper, but there ain’t none left. The kids just about ate the box, too, the little goblins.”
“Pizza and soda? I thought you were all about healthy eating.”
“I figured the kids deserved some junk food after everything that’s happened, and there’s only so much meal prep I can do with a microwave and a bathroom sink.”
The televisions were on in both rooms, turned up loud and tuned to different stations. Aimee had been watching a documentary on Marie Curie, while, through the other door, Homer Simpson’s voice was droning on about an extraterrestrial roaming Springfield’s forest.
“Emma, why don’t you go annoy your brothers.”
The little girl shot off like a bottle rocket into the next room.
Aimee muted the volume on her TV, then closed the pass-through door. The walls were thin as cardboard, and I could hear every word of The Simpsons.
“This looks like a nice enough place. How do you like it otherwise?”
“The manager took one look at us and asked if we’d ever had bedbugs. Other than that it’s peachy.”
I felt my neck grow hot. “What?”
“I guess we don’t fit the profile of his usual customers.”
I reached for the doorknob.
“He’s gone home for the night and there’s a lady on behind the desk. Don’t go venting your wrath on that poor woman.”
“Do you want to move to another motel?”
“What for? We’ve already been insulted. And who’s to say the next place will be any more welcoming? I’ve always hated motels. Now sit down and have a Dew. It’ll cool off that famous temper of yours.”
Aimee had to clear aside the empty pizza boxes—six of them!—for us to have room to set our drinks down on the ridiculously tiny table. It was a testament to the stress she felt that she’d broken down and bought her kids this fast-food dinner. She hadn’t yet pulled the shades on the back window, so the view was a reflected version of us, projected on black glass. My face looked like the ugliest version of me.
“The manager had no cause to insult you like that.”
“Mike, look at us. You don’t think it’s the first time someone asked me if I’d checked my kids for head lice? We’re trailer trash. That’s how the world sees us, anyhow. You need to let it go.”
I grasped for a response that wasn’t falsely reassuring or tainted by well-meaning condescension. Instead I changed the conversation.
“I just came from visiting Billy.”
Her happiness at this news made the world right again. “That’s wicked cool. I’m so glad you went to see him. That man looks up to you like you wouldn’t believe.”
The sentiment embarrassed and confused me. I was the last person I would have recommended to be anyone’s role model.
“You’d never know he’d nearly died yesterday,” I said.
“The man’s always been a regular Rasputin.”
Why did Aimee’s self-taught erudition keep surprising me? I was nearly as bad as the judgmental jerks who kept putting her down.
“He told me you’d been by, also your lawyer. I guess a couple of guards came to visit, too?”
“There are a few nice ones at the prison. The trouble is, the good guys all leave when they get a whiff of the shit piled up in there.”
Out of an abundance of caution I decided against sharing my encounter with Rancic with her.
“How are you doing with all this?”
“Me?”
“You said you can’t quite believe it’s happening. I understand your skepticism. I share it. But aren’t you a little hopeful?”
“Prosecutor Hildreth was all over the news earlier saying how Billy Cronk is a menace to society, and how he was convicted by a jury of his peers, and how letting him out is just a political stunt—which it is.”
“Meanwhile you have to keep up a brave façade.”
She narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin. “I can see why the ladies like you, Mike Bowditch. You may be as clueless as any man about the female sex. But at least you know your limitations.”
I wiped the condensation from the soda can on my pants. “Thanks. I guess.”
“Yeah, I got to be strong for the kids’ sake. But also on account of Billy. The man’s terrified of coming home again.”
“That’s common among people getting out of prison, I’ve heard.”
“I’ve got more confidence in him than he does in that regard. Hell, I was there when he came home from his last deployment, and that wasn’t no picnic. But that’s not what’s got me rattled. The thing that kept me up all night was what really happened in the prison laundry room.”
“The police think it was simple revenge against Dawn Richie for throwing those two guys into solitary.”
“So what did the remark mean about her being a rat? Billy told me what Dow said when he attacked her.”
“Maybe she had gone to the higher-ups with suspicions they were engaged in something. Drug smuggling would be my first guess.” I declined to share with Billy’s wife what he had told me about Dawn Ritchie’s propositioning him in exchange for protective services.
“How is that ratting, though? That’s a term you’d use for another inmate. Richie is a CO. It’s her job to snoop out the convicts dealing inside the walls.”
“I doubt Trevor Dow or Darius Chapman possessed a sophisticated lexicon, Aimee. You may be reading too much into things.”
“Says the pot to the kettle.”
At that
