by JJ Gould
Janet glanced over at Sean, whose face was frozen and unreadable. The threat was obvious, the scapegoat named.
Meyer said smoothly, “So before we agree and sign the testimony I’ve read to you all, do any of you who were present have questions?”
There was a long, leaden pause. Then dry mouthed, Ann Johnson asked, “W-What about the sales rep?”
Meyer fixed a stare at Ann. “Sales rep?”
Ann Johnson cleared her dry throat. “Yes. He, uh, he was there. Does he sign this?”
No one spoke. The woman stopped writing on the legal pad and murmured something in Meyer’s ear.
“Oh.” Meyer leafed through the papers. “There was a medical-equipment representative for Panco, Devon LaCroix. He was the one who provided the trays of equipment to Dr. Hall before surgery. Of course, he was not in surgery—records show he checked out of the building at”—Meyer checked—“6:50 a.m. Ten minutes before Mrs. Sanderson’s operation. He was not there at all.” He paused and looked at each of them slowly, one at a time. The weight of silence grew heavy. “Are there any other questions before we sign?”
There were none.
“Good.” Meyers’s smile was wide and empty of any humor. “After a traumatic event like this, I suggest we all take the day to think about the frail and uncertain lives we all live. God bless you.”
Later, Janet found herself at the same mall bar she’d gone to after the original surgery, drinking her third Long Island iced tea. Holy shit.
Chapter 14 - Stan
Stan Martin was the type to enjoy the English language and liked to keep arcane words from slipping off the table. For this reason, he took double pleasure in dandling young John on his knee. The little guy made no sound and still looked as serious as a judge, but Stan sensed he liked it as much as Stan did.
“Cute little feller.”
The kid who made that comment had an accent as thick as a Louis L’Amour character and, in fact, resembled one as well—mid-twenties, lean through the hips, wearing cowboy boots and western shirt. Probably no more than one hundred sixty pounds but sinewy, like he could work all day. It was obvious that the kid next to him was his brother. They weren’t twins but were so close in appearance and age that Stan could not tell which was the older.
The other kid smiled and nodded. “Yep.”
Claire was sitting at the kitchen table in the apartment they were renting, and she looked like she could be a sister to them. Same wiry build, same relaxed, calm, no-nonsense look. She continued the conversation over a piece of scratch paper. “See, the house is solid, built in 1924, but the basement is shot. Cracks in the foundation and some termite tracks.” She had the lot sketched out on the paper. “But as you can see, it’s a double lot. I figure we can dig a new foundation next to it and move the house onto it. There’s a drop-off to this side big enough for a walkout, maybe a second entrance.”
Stan raised an eyebrow. “That seems pretty ambitious.”
“But doable.” Claire looked confident.
Her cousins seemed in agreement. “Yep.”
Claire pointed to one of them. “Wes, here, was a slip hippy for a summer, helping pour concrete for silos. Slip forms, you know? The kind where you start with a ring at the bottom and just keep slipping the form up higher and higher till it’s done.”
Wes seemed content to let her do the talking.
“And Cal did some general construction for a couple years too. Knows his way around.”
Cal said, “I do, some.”
Stan started to object. “I thought you brought these guys here to talk about the radio station.”
Wes nodded again. “That too.” He reached for the baby. “Do you mind? I always liked babies.”
Stan handed him over, and Wes chucked John on the chin and made a clicking sound like he was riding a horse. The baby studied him seriously while Wes continued. “Cal and I worked with some tower jockeys for a year or so—helped set up a station by Butte, run up the tower, a thousand-foot FM job, and then wired the place for electricity and studios too.”
Stan was surprised. And a little skeptical.
Wes read the look. “We know what we’re about, mister.”
Stan raised a hand. “No, no. I get it. You just seem a little young to know all this stuff.”
Cal grinned calmly. “We’re fast learners.”
Wes was making a face at the baby. “Yep.”
Claire chimed in. “And they can check in and maybe give me a bit of help or advice at the end of the day. I said they could have the other bedroom and kick in a little rent.”
It was obvious Claire had been doing a lot of thinking, and Stan knew enough to let her do it. He shrugged and offered, “It’s still a big job. You’re going to need some other help.”
Claire smiled. “Oh, sweetie, I’ve got that all figured out.”
Chapter 15 - Jessica Wright
There were thirty-three attorneys who looked after the well-being of Hall-Hauptmann Hospital, the clinic, the media, and sundry other ventures, and Jessica Wright was the lowest on the totem pole.
“Rosie!” her granddad had said. He was the only one who called her that. “Forget teaching! You’ve got the brains for it. Why not law school?”
So off she’d gone to the University of South Dakota, where a law degree was still affordable and where South Dakota businesses trolled the graduating classes for the best and brightest. Seven months into her career, she was learning a whole lot more than her professors had ever taught her. Especially that day.
She was fast with a pencil—she’d taken shorthand as a summer school course at the high school in Pierre, since her dad said it might come in handy—so she’d been tagged to back up Everett Meyer’s tape-recorded meeting between the doctors Hall and a bunch of very nervous nurses. Once the meeting was over, she’d shoved the stack of papers and the legal pad into her leather briefcase—a law school graduation gift. She was hurrying alongside Meyer down the hall to the hospital parking lot.
“They seemed kind of nervous.” Jessica was fishing a little bit. She might have been green as grass, but there was definitely something wonky about what she’d just witnessed.
“Yes, they did.” Meyer seemed pleased. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye as if trying to decide. Jessica had seen that look before on older men who thought money made them attractive.
She gave him a look back. Don’t even think about it, buddy.
He was smart, anyway—she had to give him that. Meyer instantly made his expression more professorial. “It’s important that all the people we represent know the importance of the law and that justice is nothing to trifle with.”
He moved his leather attaché case from one hand to the other to check the time on his Rolex. Maybe he wanted to know what time it was, or maybe he wanted Jessica to see the dazzling watch that was worth more than her annual salary. Then he paused at the doorway to the parking garage. March in South Dakota could still be quite nasty, and Meyer had no coat.
Jessica decided to level with him. “It seemed like some of them were maybe lying or at least hiding the truth. What does the law say about that?”
“The law is gray on that.”
“And what if we think they are lying?”
“It’s gray on that too.”
“What if we find out for sure they are lying?”
Meyer smiled pityingly. “My dear, the beauty of the law is that it is all the same color: gray.”
Jessica grew stubborn—a little streak from her rancher granddad. “If any of them are lying, and it gets out, then what are we supposed to say? What are we supposed to do?”
Meyer opened the door. The meeting was almost over. “If—let’s say if—what you presume is true, no one in that room would be stupid enough to talk about it.”
Chapter 16 - Deidre Hall
Deidre Hall might have married into the Hall dynasty, but there was no doubt who ran the show. She looked with contempt at her husband and stepson. “
You did what?”
Harrison avoided her gaze and plucked at some nonexistent lint on his cashmere sweater. “I told you, Meyer took care of it.”
Deidre stepped close to him, forcing him to meet her eyes. “No, you did not tell me about Meyer. You did not tell me about the meeting. You did not tell me about this”—he pointed to the younger Hall—“failure.”
The younger Hall tried to bristle at the word but could only cringe out a defense. “It could’ve happened to anyone! She was obese and had poor bone health…”
“Shut. Up.” Her sharpened fingernail kept pointing at the younger doctor, but her eyes remained locked on her main prey. “I’ve warned you about this, Harrison. You are to tell me about such things before you tell anyone else.” She raised herself to her full height and looked him in the eye. “You must be punished.”
His eyes widened in a mixture of fright, shame, and excitement. “Yes, Deidre.”
Chapter 17 - Benjamin Hall
When Dr. Harrison Benjamin Hall V was a little boy, he had no idea about his family legacy. He was just Benjy, a lonely kid in a big house, with a stable of matronly and slightly disapproving nannies. The first thing they took from him was his name. When he got older, he was told that Benjy was too juvenile and suggested that Ben was a possibility and Harry was never a possibility.
He also learned that his career options were severely limited. He was a Hall, not just wealthy and honored but also obliged to carry on the name started by Harrison Benjamin Hall in the post–Civil War years. The original Hall had been an eager and ambitious young man who moved to Sioux Falls—Dakota territory—to ply his trade in the booming businesses of divorce and alcoholism.
Because of lax territorial laws, wealthy and unhappy husbands could take up residence at a luxurious hotel in the burgeoning town of Sioux Falls and file for residency and divorce. Ninety days later, they could leave as free men… free from wives perhaps, but not from alcohol. The recent horrors of the Civil War left many veterans medicating themselves with large quantities of alcohol, an affliction so common that it was known as “the soldier’s disease.”
Young Harrison Benjamin Hall was an intern for the famous Dr. Leslie Enraught Keeley, inventor of the “gold cure” for alcoholism. Hall was impressed by the men’s desperation to be free of the disease and the amount they were willing to pay, so upon moving to Sioux Falls, the first thing he did was hang out a shingle for what he called “the ivory cure.” Soon, he had a big enough trade to build his own clinic and hotel on Phillips Avenue, with alcoholics on the dry, austere second floor and divorce seekers on the opulent, wet first floor.
The young and prosperous Hall soon branched out into other endeavors, including politics and the press, picking up an influential family through marriage and lucrative land investments through chicanery and connections. By the time Harrison Benjamin Hall Jr. arrived, the original Hall was the editor of the largest newspaper in the territory and one of the first senators of the brand-new state of South Dakota. And the Hall empire continued on its inevitable way, content to be a very large fish in the small pond of South Dakota.
Decades and generations and history kept piling up until more than one hundred twenty years later, the family empire landed squarely on top of young Benjy with its pressure, expectations, and criticisms. His father especially. Hall the IV, as Benjy called him, gloried in the name and power of those on the inside, intoning the need for the fifth generation to carry on the obligations of his family, pompous and domineering.
Until Deidre. Hired as a nurse at Hall-Hauptmann, her goals were much higher. She was a stunning beauty, tall and statuesque with ice-queen-platinum hair and witch-green eyes. Within one week of meeting the Fourth, she had him wrapped around her long fingers. Cooing and beguiling one day, aloof and snappish the next, Deidre had him on his knees in short order.
He was besotted and, within five months, had dropped his wife of fifteen years and proposed marriage with a ring of colossal carat weight. She took the ring with one hand and grabbed his face with her sharpened fingernails in the other. Benjy watched in fascination as she locked his father in a long kiss, nails digging into his flesh, blood dripping down his cheek and chin.
About a year later, after she’d moved in and had the whole house redecorated, he heard them one night yelling and screaming. Curious, he crept down the hallway and saw them through the open bedroom door. His father was trussed to the bed, naked, while Deidre, also naked, whipped him with a leather strap.
Benjy stared, astonished and aroused. Deidre looked up and saw him through the crack in the door, her face triumphant, like she’d been expecting him. Benjy stole back to his room, still ashamed, still aroused.
Later that night, his door opened, and Deidre, wearing nothing but a diaphanous robe, floated in to stare down at him. The robe slipped off, and she threw back the covers, exposing cringing, excited Benjy.
“Now it’s your turn,” she hissed and cut a line down his belly with her fingernail.
Chapter 18 - Claire
Claire pulled up her truck next to WorkReady, the day-labor place that looked like a Laundromat on the outside and smelled like disinfectant, stale cigarette smoke, and despair on the inside.
It was nine o’clock in the morning. About twenty people were lounging about the place, waiting for work. About half of them looked like they were hoping work wouldn’t show up.
Sioux Falls was notorious for having one of the lowest unemployment rates in the state. Since at any given time, economists figured that one out of twenty people were switching from one job to another, they said that statistically, five percent unemployment meant everyone who wanted a job had one. Sioux Falls hovered around two percent, and local wags would often point to some guy leaning against a shovel and say, “He must be one of the three percent.”
Claire knew that WorkReady wasn’t going to increase her odds much, but she wanted to try an experiment. She walked in and eyed the crowd. Slack-jawed, they eyed her back.
“Hey, baby, you need some help today?” A slim pock-faced man with a greasy ponytail sidled up to her and the baby.
John eyed him then looked away. Claire followed the look. On the edge of a fiberglass bench sat an enormous Lakota Indian—Lakota because Claire figured because this was where their tribe was from, and Indian because his long black hair hung down the back of his sleeveless denim shirt. His eyes were blank and empty, his hands and arms and neck covered with crude tattoos, cuts, and scars.
Yikes, not him!
She walked toward the back of the office area, her back to the native, trying to sneak by. John had other ideas. While she was sidling by, he lurched himself forward and away from her arms. Swaying to catch her balance, she stepped sideways and into the space of the massive Lakota. Startled, he looked up in time to catch the baby in one hand with an apprehensive Claire a few inches away.
Caught in his space, awkwardly grasping for her wiggling baby, she decided to trust her instincts. “You wanna hold him while I fill out some paperwork?”
He was no longer looking at her. His eyes were instead locked in astonishment on John.
Here goes nothing. She backed away to the counter and asked for the paperwork for finding day-labor employees. It took about fifteen minutes.
When she was done, the bored, raspy-voiced attendant glanced over the papers and flicked some ash into a cup underneath a No Smoking sign. “You got anyone in particular you wanna hire?”
Claire glanced back and did a double take. The Lakota was staring into John’s eyes while two streams of tears ran down his scarred cheeks. The baby was staring back at him.
“How ’bout that big guy with the baby?”
Chapter 19 - Matt Bradley
It was Matt Bradley’s last formal day at KCHD-AM 1610, at least under the protective wing of Hall Media. The shoe took a while to drop in the heavily regulated broadcast world. First, there was a buzz about a possible sale of the radio section, with Hall Media dumping the whole radio flo
or, a rumor that had all the employees nervous and had Trent Wheeler patrolling the halls like the captain of a freighter during U-boat season.
After that, it was heard that no, just one station was being sold. There were still rumors among the jocks that South Dakota Public Broadcasting had nabbed one of the FM frequencies. Those with contacts made frantic calls from about what the pay and benefits might be for those who moved over to the public side.
And then the shoe finally dropped. KCHD was out. There was a sigh of relief all around the building. Salespeople double-checked their numbers to make sure they had no paying advertisers. More sighs of relief. “Nope, only a few bonus spots, no big deal.”
Now that everybody was safe, the gossips in the building looped around to glean what they could from the sole employee of KCHD, Matt Bradley. At the news that he was to move to an undisclosed location in town to unknown owners of a station with an undisclosed format, Matt became gloomy. But since Matt was always gloomy, no one noticed.
Matt’s introduction to broadcasting had been accidental. A Sioux Falls native, he was a paperboy for the Sioux Empire Plains Beacon, delivering papers on the north side on his bicycle, a big gloomy kid grinding his way through one hundred fifty papers a day. Each year, they’d post the pictures of the top delivery boys on the back of the Sunday paper, and each year, Matt Bradley would loom over all the other kids, big for his age, old for his age, a gloomy expression on his face. On a particular Saturday morning, Matt was picking up papers from the loading dock, along with the stacks of inserts to be stuffed into each paper before delivery, when Maynard Magnusson, the farm director for KHAL, came wheeling into the lot in a hurry.
