by Joshua Corin
Once he’d left earshot, Xana asked Chief Scheer if the mayor’s mouthwash habit was due to fastidiousness or if instead he was trying to conceal the telltale reek of whiskey or bourbon.
To which the police chief replied, “Let me introduce you to my deputies.”
Okay, then.
The police station made up a good quarter of the entire first floor. It adjoined the city court and the city clerk’s offices. Only two of the department’s on-duty deputies were actually in-house at the moment, along with a teenage girl with a crew cut who sat by the phones. Deputy Stephen Everett was stationed at a scanner, digitizing some old paperwork while listening to classical music at low volume.
The other deputy was at a desk and struggling with that day’s crossword puzzle in the newspaper. He looked to be about twelve. His name tag read bradshaw but Chief Scheer introduced him as Buzz.
Konquist’s nephew.
Buzz possessed none of his uncle’s rumpled appearance but was instead quite clean-cut and geometric. Small square frame with a nice sphere on top. Rectangular hairdo, aided by a spritz of probably the same name-brand spray his father had used and his father before him.
Chief Scheer then brought Xana to his office and he shut the door behind them. This was unexpected, but Xana played along with friendly abandon. But then the large man perched himself on the lip of his desk and crossed his meaty arms and waited and waited and waited until Xana had no choice but to ask him what he was waiting for.
“I’ve been a good host,” he said, “so I’m allowed to be offended. Plus, we got history.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Chief.”
“Just ask me the question, damn it.”
“The question?”
“What you came here to ask. Because I got to tell you, Marx, there’s just so much insulting my intelligence can take.”
Chapter 17
Did he actually know why she was here or was this his tactic at getting her to confess? Either way, Xana knew she had to say something, and she really didn’t have the time to draw this out, impugn him for impugning her, blah, blah, blah. The tour had already sucked up almost twenty minutes, and Hayley was in no condition to be patient.
And so she said, “It’s about your drone.”
He tossed his tiny plastic spittoon into the trash, sat behind his desk, and typed a few commands into his computer. In a few moments, his printer was spitting out four pages of information, which he then handed to Xana without a word.
At the top of the first page was the word Armory.
What followed was an inventory of every pistol, shotgun, Kevlar vest, riot shield, helmet, Taser, tear gas canister, and rubber bullet owned by the city of Stone Mountain. There were listed quantities. There were itemized costs. On the last page was a contact sheet of their suppliers.
Nowhere on the first page, nowhere on the second page, and nowhere on the third page was there mention of a Predator drone.
“I’d have thought you better than this, Marx,” muttered the chief. “Believing far-fetched rumors. Who sent you here anyway? Because I know whoever it was wanted it off the books. Last I checked, the Justice Department and the Defense Department have each other’s phone numbers.”
“Chief…”
“Your friend mustn’t think very highly of us good ol’ boys out here in the sticks. He probably suspects we have trouble putting our pants on in the morning because we always got to have a gun in each hand. He should come here himself. We can show him our tanks and our helicopters and then we can have him fly our drone himself if he wants, because we’re so dumb we need the help of a city boy like him to get it right.”
“Chief, I never said anything about the Defense Department.”
He glared granite-faced at her. “Beg your pardon?”
“All I said was drone. And suddenly you go off on a tirade about the Justice Department contacting the Defense Department and about tanks and helicopters. Lots of police departments use drones for surveillance. Who said I was talking about a military drone?”
“Don’t you even.” He waggled a thick finger toward her face. “I know this is about that mosque. Even now you’re trying to play me for a fool. Well, I don’t deserve it, Marx. Especially not coming from you.”
“Meaning?”
“Oh, you want me to say it. Fine. Much like this community, you’ve got a tainted history. You did some shit you wish you hadn’t. You want to throw the KKK in my face? Fine. This city produced its share of rot. But we have worked hard to put that behind us. This community has chosen a black man to be their chief of police. This community has been rehabilitated. And now you come here and accuse us of this vile nonsense.”
“I didn’t create the rumors, Chief.”
“Yeah, and how many rumors are still floating around about you, huh? Are all of them true? I bet if I went online, if I googled your name, I could find a whole lot of filth that people have written about you. I bet if I were to call up the field office and ask some of your coworkers in the FBI what they think of Xanadu Marx, they’d tell me. But let me ask you this: Do the police knock on your door every time someone drives drunk through the streets? No, they don’t. So get the fuck out of my city, lady, before you soil the place.”
Visibly chagrined, Xana got up and left the chief’s office. She thought for a moment about questioning Buzz, but in the end decided against it. Her business on these premises was done.
Or at least she needed to convey that impression.
Because although she appeared visibly chagrined, she was festering a fury that, in her less sober times, she would have unleashed with…well, any number of ways, and very few of them productive. Even now she really, really wanted to pick up a chair and toss it through a window, not to punish the window or the chair but to give her rage a voice and a means of expression.
She maybe needed a few minutes to cool down before getting on the highway and returning to Atlanta, and if she was going to sit here in her car to cool down, she certainly was going to crank up the air-conditioning. Cold air blasted out from the vents and chilled the beads of sweat that had formed along her face and neck. Xana never used to sweat like this, not even in the summertime. She spent a good deal of her childhood in the deserts of central Asia on her father’s myriad archaeological digs. No, these bouts of perspiration only commenced with her vow of sobriety.
Oh, she needed a drink.
To be fair, she always needed a drink—but men like Chief Bumblefuck back there, spouting judgment as if his life was nothing but white linen and rose petals…
Xana needed a drink. She settled for NPR.
“—not willing to speculate at this time about a connection between today’s incidents in Atlanta and Dearborn.”
Dearborn?
“What advice would you give to Muslim Americans living in cities such as Seattle and Los Angeles where they are about to gather at mosques and community centers for their morning prayers? Should they stay at home?”
“Well, Lois, I would never presume to tell another person how to conduct themselves religiously. I can assure you that the FBI, in tandem with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, is on high alert, and this includes securing any and all future potential targets.”
“Such as?”
“Once again, I’m not willing to speculate at this time.”
“Do you know when we can expect a statement from the White House?”
“I do know that the president has been briefed and is following this situation closely.”
“Thank you. That was Castor Hayden, deputy director of the FBI.”
What the fuck was going on? Xana took out her phone. Her signal was weak, so it took her sixty seconds rather than six to refresh her news app and learn about the suicide bombing in Michigan. She read article after article and absolutely none of
them answered her fundamental question: What the fuck was going on?
So she called Detective Konquist.
“Hey, there,” he said. “What did you find?”
“I’ll get to that in a second. I just heard about Dearborn.”
“Yeah, that’s all everyone’s talking about here outside the hospital. Are you on your way back? I think I can get you inside. You’ll have to wear one of those whatchamacallit space suits, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Space suit? Oh. The quarantine. Right.
The quarantine.
Because there weren’t only two attacks so far. The quarantine made three.
Xana nibbled on her lip. Something about the quarantine didn’t feel right. The other two attacks were so finely targeted. On the other hand, releasing plague in a hospital, endangering not only Muslims but also all the workers and the patients…
“You still there?” asked Konquist.
She was about to share her musings with him, but she caught herself mid-breath. What was she doing? This was exactly the kind of behavior that continually got her—and others—in trouble. She had assured Jonesy that she was a reformed woman, and she had meant it. And look how easy it was to slip back into old habits.
Innocents had been killed. This much was undeniable. More were in danger. Yes. But the world was full of saviors. She needed to remind herself that she was not the only competent person in the room. Professionals who were much better informed than she was were running the show. So cut it out, Xana. You’re a bystander now. And bystander interference usually made matters worse. She didn’t appreciate Chief Scheer’s accusations, but she could see where he was coming from.
“Hello?” asked Konquist.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m on my way back.”
“You never answered my question. What did you find out there?”
Xana shifted into reverse. “A whole lot of nothing.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll call you when I get near the hospital,” she replied, and hung up.
Xana backed out of the parking lot and merged onto the main road. Soon she would be on the highway and soon she would be at Hayley’s bedside, and the world would continue to turn. She drove in silence. Stopped at a red light. In the distance, an airplane soared through the pale blue sky. Maybe she had been in this country too long. Yes. Maybe she would travel. Take a river cruise down the Nile or up the Amazon. Explore Western Australia on horseback. She could get a job on one of those hundred-ton ocean liners and live at sea. That might be nice. Look at that airplane soar through the pale blue sky. How easy it would be to get away from it all.
Maybe she might even go to Cozumel. That had been the destination of Flight 816 over a year ago now. The flight that had been hijacked. The flight she had helped rescue. As a bystander.
No. Enough. Her mind was made up.
The light turned green. She neared the entrance ramp for the highway. And there, looming to her right, was Stone Mountain itself. Seventeen hundred feet above sea level. Eight hundred feet above the hill on which it sat like a granite top hat.
The airplane in the sky. The flat-topped mountain.
The quarantine.
The disparate ideas clicked together like long-lost puzzle pieces, and suddenly Xana was swerving away from the entrance ramp and instead following the signage for Stone Mountain. Curiosity trumped common sense, but dear God, she hoped she was wrong.
Chapter 18
Judy Diller handed the governor a handkerchief to wipe the pancake makeup off his face. Behind them, the capitol media room continued to buzz with camera operators and boom operators and audio engineers, not to mention media personalities, but for now, they were finished with Georgia’s first executive.
Judy, the governor, and the rest of his staff—which included, alas, smug and tubby Poncho—quickly made their way en masse up the wide marble stairs and away from any indiscreet microphones.
“How did I do?” the governor asked Poncho, who walked alongside him starboard.
Judy, who was port, scowled, and why not? She oversaw communications around here. She had spent all morning prepping the governor for the gauntlet he had just run through. Why hadn’t he directed the question at her?
Two words: boys’ club.
“You were Daniel in the lion’s den,” Poncho answered, already out of breath on only the fifth step, “and aside from the question about the ACLU—”
“Yeah, that came out of left field, I thought. One of those gotcha questions they try to bedazzle folks with. I didn’t like it.”
“It makes me wonder if they know something we don’t,” Judy added.
“Then make sure we know what they know,” the governor retorted, “would you, please?”
And so Judy remained on that fifth step while the others, including His Majesty King Poncho of Smarmyland, continued upward. She then descended the steps and returned to the media beehive. It was time to gather some honey.
The question had come from the team with MSNBC. Their on-air talent was standing so close to the door that Judy could read the Twitter feed on her phone. And if this had been Judy’s first day on the job, she might have struck up a conversation with the reporter and tried to get the information out of her.
This was not Judy’s first day on the job.
She passed the reporter and found the segment producer, who was downing a protein shake by one of those metal trees that lighting instruments point from.
“Elise, isn’t it?”
Elise nodded. “Your man is good on camera. He should do more one-on-ones.”
“You can have his next available all to yourself if you tell me who your source is at the ACLU.”
Elise chuckled through her nose. Not especially attractive, but, like her on-air talent, she was a slim, short-skirted blonde and could probably get away with a nasal giggle every now and then.
“Something funny, Elise?”
“You’re asking me to divulge something you already know I won’t. Come on, Judy. That’s a little funny.”
“So make a counteroffer. CNN or Fox would love an exclusive with the governor this afternoon. Did I mention we’re thinking about a press conference? I can guarantee your network the first question.”
“A moment ago you were promising a one-on-one.”
“And you rejected it, Elise. So now you get the first question. Would you prefer you get the second question?”
Elise searched the room for a trash receptacle. Judy took the empty can from her and dropped it in the bin that lived by the potted fern. It was not lost on her that she had now acted as garbage disposal twice today—and that didn’t even count the figurative.
“I’m not going to give you my source,” said Elise, “but I might be able to help you out.”
“That’s all I’m asking.”
“Okay. As my question implied, we have a source on the record and a second source ready to confirm that the governor participated in two phone calls this morning with the law firm of Bennett, Schwartz, and LeBatton.”
Judy shrugged. Was that law firm supposed to mean something?
So Elise elaborated. “Bennett, Schwartz, and LeBatton are who you hire when you’re expecting to be sued by the ACLU. Why would the governor expect to get sued by the ACLU?”
“Elise, do you have any idea how many lawsuits get filed against the state of Georgia every single day?”
“I’m not talking about lawsuits against the state, Judy. I’m not talking about the attorney general’s office. I’m talking about the governor personally hiring outside counsel. So I’m left to speculate why that might be.”
“Too bad speculation isn’t the same thing as news,” replied Judy.
“Did the governor receive advance notice about this morning’s attack and refuse to act on it because the targe
ts were Muslim citizens?”
Judy maintained her chilly composure. “No comment.”
“Yeah. I’ve a feeling you’re going to be saying a lot of that.”
Elise checked her phone, indicating that their conversation was over. Neither of them had won, but Judy still felt like she had lost. Bennett, Schwartz, and LeBatton? What the hell?
She left the room and slowly wound her way up the staircase. This was absolutely not the best day to discuss these allegations with the governor, but the conversation needed to happen very soon. Speculation wasn’t the same thing as news, but the networks had twenty-four hours to fill and more and more they were filling them with pundits instead of journalists, and all these pundits contributed was speculation.
As to the allegation implied by Elise’s question that the governor had let this attack occur, that he was an Islamophobe…her mind cycled back to her chat with Poncho. He was an asshole and a fool, but was he a racist? He certainly attributed—and justified—racist motivations to wide swaths of the population and not out of cynicism, either, but out of a twisted sort of Poncho-specific pragmatic idealism.
There really was nobody like him whom she had ever met. Not even close.
And so when Judy reached the second floor, she detoured from her office and instead went on a quick hunt for her ex. Predictably, he was in the alcove by the restrooms, fighting with a snack machine that refused to unhook a bag of cheese chips.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“Oh, you flirt,” he replied.
“I immediately regret this decision.”
“Wasn’t that part of your vows?”
After helping him acquire a bag of cheese chips from the machine—the trick was to kick the machine on its bottom at the same time you pounded the machine on its top—she led him back to her office.
This time she closed the door.
“Are we about to start a conspiracy?” he asked.
She summarized her confab with Elise.
Waited for his take on it.
