Interference

by S. L. LUCK

  Hunkered inside her office for the better part of the day, she resisted looking outside—but each time she did, the mass was bigger and the signs were meaner. Justice for Tammy! Bring Back Our River! Garrett Stinks! Don’t Take Away Our Festival! Festival = Freedom. Don’t Let Our Kids Down! We Are Not an Experiment! Attention Whore! Not Even Your Husband Likes You!

  During her twenty-three years of working in various municipal and provincial offices, she had seen her fair share of demonstrations, but never before had they been so hostile, never before had their attacks been so personal. Worse: because the city was already bursting with journalists, the insults against her were splashed across national and international news networks. Her husband, who—it turned out—did like her, saw the signs on TV and proceeded to call every hour to ensure she was safe. Such was his worry that Ada even spent the better part of an hour she didn’t have begging him not to come and “kick some lowlife ass,” as he so eloquently put it.

  Her only saving grace, if it could be called that, was that Jessica Chung was suspiciously absent from the charge. Ada didn’t know what to make of it. Presently, she turned on the foot massager under her desk and let the machine knead her tired feet. Ada was just closing her eyes for a moment of peace when her communications manager, Nicole Lewis, scrambled in.

  “Unless it’s good news, I don’t want to hear it,” Ada told her, wishing she hadn’t had that last espresso.

  Nicole slipped a single sheet of paper onto the desk, pushing it toward Ada with one finger. “I think you’re going to like it,” she said, then leaned forward with an enthusiasm that piqued Ada’s interest.

  Ada peered at the paper. The message was printed on a pattern of confidential watermarks. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Nope. As long as you’re on board, it’s a go. Isn’t it great?” Nicole’s bracelets jangled against Ada’s desk as she pulsed with excitement.

  On any other day, Ada would have been thrilled by a visit from the Prime Minister, but at the moment it felt like a surprise inspection. Already there was intense scrutiny over everything she did; she did not want nor need his eagle-eyed retinue combing over the city.

  “Dial it back for me. Since when did our Prime Minister become interested in our festival?” She used her toe to turn off the massager and slipped her unsatisfied feet back into her shoes.

  “Since Anabelle Cheever broke out of the hospital,” Nicole said, waiting for the news to settle in.

  “What are you talking about?” Ada’s eyes swung to her desk and mobile phones, and she cringed at the unheard messages lighting in their electronic corners. Something as important as Anabelle’s escape should have crossed her desk the old-fashioned way—in person or conveyed through her secretary, Carla. Next time, she would tell Carla to staple it to her goddamn head if she had to. Ada frowned. “And sit down, already; you’re making me nervous.”

  Nicole sat. “I thought you heard.”

  “I would have if somebody thought to tell me.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Just get on with it.”

  Her enthusiasm obliterated by Ada’s annoyance, Nicole was careful with her explanation. “It happened yesterday morning. Apparently, her father picked her up at the 7-11 down the street from the hospital. The nurses didn’t know she was gone until Anabelle was already home.”

  “Good God,” Ada groaned.

  “It’s not like she wasn’t better,” Nicole reasoned. “Her recovery might’ve been posted on the internet, for all her parents talked about it. I can’t blame them for wanting her home. If my daughter were being held like that, I probably would have done the same thing.”

  “You’re not saying her parents were in on it …”

  “How else would she have gotten home with all the security around the hospital?”

  “She wasn’t a prisoner,” Ada said, for no reason other than to vocalize a half-truth.

  For the sake of Garrett’s endangered ICU unit, the hospital’s medical team had kept her apprised of Anabelle’s condition, so Ada knew the voltage running through the girl’s body had ceased. But the knowledge didn’t lessen her fear that, once at home, Anabelle would begin lighting up the city like a human Tesla coil. Ada also knew there were a great many eyes from the federal administration monitoring Anabelle’s case that wouldn’t be too pleased to have an asset—as they once inadvertently called Anabelle to Ada—on the loose.

  Nicole crossed her legs and leaned back against the chair. “The Cheevers believe she was. Her father went on record with the Gazette just this morning and made a statement that she was being held against her will, if you believe it. Apparently, their lawyer was with them when her doctors showed up at the house and tried to return her to the hospital, but by then the family got the press involved and there was no way they could take her back without making it look like she wasn’t being arrested. People would have lost their minds, Ada. She’s the miracle survivor. Half the city thinks she’s some kind of saint.”

  A long sigh escaped Ada’s lips and she reached for her sparkling water, thinking as she drank. There was no lessening the tragedy of the nurse’s murder, but Ada was painfully aware that had she not additionally been dealing with the fallout from Tammy Cormoran’s death, she wouldn’t have missed news of Anabelle’s escape. After a time, Nicole removed her suit jacket and hung it on the back of her seat. Ada noted small sweat stains on Nicole’s blouse and recognized for the first time since she had sat down that they were both victims in the same storm.

  Ada asked, “How much of this was on the news?”

  Nicole shook her head. “Jane Fresley gave me most of it,” she said of the Prime Minister’s director of communications. “Shifty as they are, they knew they’d be blamed if Anabelle was forced to go back, so they made a deal with the family to allow the team to access Anabelle in exchange for her freedom.” Nicole’s fingers air quoted the last word.

  “Team meaning what I think it does?”

  “Medical, scientific, military, the usual when you’ve got something weird going on,” Nicole said. “And that brings us to the festival. They want to make a splash of her recovery; use it as an endorsement of our technological and intellectual superiority. Wave the hell out of that flag to all the immigrants they think are going to pay off our debt. It’ll make him look good; for a while anyway.”

  Rereading Jane Fresley’s letter, Ada knew there was no refusing the proposal. The Prime Minister was coming to Garrett tomorrow morning, where he expected the parade to open with his motorcade, in which he would ride with Anabelle Cheever. Ada’s lips fluttered as she blew out her frustration.

  “I thought you’d be happy,” Nicole said.

  “Ecstatic,” Ada said, sarcasm oozing out of her. “It’s just not a good time right now. People are jamming our help lines because they’re worried their water is going to run out. Boyce has got his hands full trying to contain the animal attacks. He’s only got two guys and they’re busting their backs running around the city. One murder and now there’s a rumor spreading we’ve got a serial killer on the loose. And the protesters aren’t just going to go away if we ask them nicely.” She threw up her hands.

  Nicole stood and went to the window. Two floors down, the smaller gathering she’d earlier elbowed her way through now overtook the entirety of the square. There were banners, signs, flags, cardboard cut-outs with Ada’s face and devil horns on them, megaphones, adults, children, teens. The vast majority of the signs vocalized support for the festival, even threatening violence if it was canceled. At the outer rim of the square, however, there stood about a dozen people holding a long banner. This Is Not the Time to Celebrate, it read. Beside it were two elderly women struggling with oversized signs of their own. Their Shame on You and Change the Date signs clipped each other as one of the women stumbled against a bicycle rack.

  Looking down at the square, Nicole said, “Most of this will go away once the festival starts. Once they get their beers and their cider
s and their cotton candy, there’s not going to be a whole lot of protesting. It might be another story afterward, but these people just want to have a little fun, Ada. And they want to know that their city and their government are looking out for them. I think a visit from the PM will solve a lot of our problems.”

  Ada knew that although outwardly Canada had an unresponsive relationship with demonstrators, they were increasingly being silenced and criminalized across the country. If any of the city’s residents ended up in jail because of the PM’s visit, it would only infuriate them more, and doubtless they would blame her. When she was little, her mother always told her that the best escape from between a rock and a hard place was to find the weak spot and break right through with a hardness of her own; but when the rocks pushed right back—what then? Ada figured she’d have to choose who she could tangle with most successfully. It certainly was not the Prime Minister.

  She said to Nicole, “Tell Jane we’re delighted to have him, and to let us know if there’s anything they need. You’re going to coordinate this on our end, then?”

  “I’ve already sent her the information on the staging area and the parade route.”

  “Dan’s aware?”

  “He will be,” Nicole said. “Now that you’re on board.”

  “I had no choice,” Ada said, and dismissed Nicole to begin the inane task of conferring with the Prime Minister’s Office.

  Alone at her desk, Ada ordered a Greek salad with chicken to be delivered to the security office on the ground floor, wishing she were instead at home in her pajamas with a glass of red wine near the fireplace. She called her husband for her hourly safety check-in. They both knew she would be late again, and Mathew offered to pick her up when she was ready, but Ada declined. If the city was going to jeopardize her safety, it was damn well going to pay for a security detail to see her safely home. She didn’t tell Mathew about the special visitor coming tomorrow; she would do that later in bed and let Mathew give her a reason to stay faithful. Ada was already looking forward to it.

  A short time later, her desk phone rang, the little red light indicating a call from the building’s security department. Her stomach grumbled as she picked up the receiver, expecting that her dinner had been delivered, but instead her head of security, Joseph Weber, asked if she was expecting visitors. Ada said she wasn’t and was about to leave it at that when Joseph said, “Can you spare five minutes, Mrs. Falconer?”

  “For whom?” Ada asked, wondering who was sly enough to convince Joseph to ask.

  “There’s four of them, ma’am,” Joseph said. “I’ve got two priests, Dakota Cardinal, and another gentleman. What’s your name, sir?” There was a muffled reply and then Joseph reported, “Ed Norman. They say they are waiting on Dan Fogel too.”

  Two priests walk into a mayor’s office … Ada thought to herself and directed Joseph to have one of his men accompany them upstairs once Dan arrived. She stretched while she waited, leaning her head toward each shoulder, arching her spine in, out, exercising her breath to gain a few moments of peace. Already, the sky outside was dark, and Ada wondered why the meeting couldn’t wait. She wasn’t particularly religious, so she would have had little issue declining their audience, but if Dan Fogel was part of the group, Ada knew that it would be wise to listen to whatever they had to say.

  Her salad was brought up shortly after and she took a few quick bites before there was a knock at the door. Her assistant Carla had already gone home for the evening, so it was Joseph himself who poked his gray head in. His glasses slid down to the end of his nose as he regarded Ada apologetically.

  “I appreciate you seeing them, Mrs. Falconer. I just couldn’t say no to Father Bonner; we’ve been going to his church for decades. Tabitha would have killed me.”

  “No problem, Joseph,” Ada said. It was her desire to maintain close relationships with all her staff, so she knew Joseph’s wife Tabitha sometimes leashed him up so tight that he couldn’t so much as fart without her permission. A vulgar metaphor, she knew, but no less true. Joseph thanked her again and brought Carla’s chair into her office so the five men would all have a place to sit.

  “Thank you, Joseph,” Ada said as he left.

  A minute later, Dan Fogel entered, his normally attractive face now fatigued and dappled with shadows. He waited until the other men were seated before he took his own chair to Ada’s left, next to the window. Beside him sat a priest in suit and collar that Ada didn’t recognize. One chair over was the priest Ada knew as Father Robert Pauliuk of Holy Redeemer, who had suffered the loss of his wife in a fire two decades ago. Next to Father Pauliuk was Dakota Cardinal, whom Ada knew through his leadership in the community. The white-haired stranger on the end was fixated on the picture of her family vacation in Jamaica the year before.

  “Beautiful children,” the man croaked.

  “I had to bribe them with toys to get them to smile for that one,” Ada recalled of the time that now seemed ages ago. Five pairs of eyes fell on her chicken salad, so Ada closed the lid and pushed it aside. She said, “I tell my staff not to eat at their desks because no job is so important that you can’t take a break, but I think there’s an exception for when your city is going to ruin, no?”

  Dan held up his palms. “No judgement. We came unannounced anyway.” He looked to the other men as if hoping they would speak, but when they didn’t, Dan said, “We don’t want to keep you, Ada, but there’s something we’d like to discuss with you.”

  “Sounds ominous. Has there been another murder?”

  It was the priest beside Dan who spoke. “Not yet.”

  “Oh?” Ada’s stomach suddenly soured, and she took from the small beverage cooler near her bookcase a can of ginger ale. Only the old man accepted her offer of a drink, and Ada passed him a bottle of water before returning to her chair.

  “When you hear what they have to tell you,” Dan said, “you’ll understand that I’m here unofficially. I can’t put what they’re saying on record because, truthfully, I don’t believe it would help any; if anything, I think it could cause a lot of trouble. But I have no reason to doubt them, Ada. None at all. There’s been too many incidents these days that we have no answers for. You know it yourself.”

  “I’m listening,” she said, and then each man took his turn explaining his own account of events.

  For nearly an hour, Ada listened first to Father Bonner, then to Father Pauliuk, then to Dakota Cardinal, and finally to Ed Norman while Dan Fogel watched them attentively. Occasionally, Ada would glance at Dan to confirm what she was hearing was true, and Dan would nod on and tip his chin to the man who’d made the disclosure. Ada heard of Sylvia Baker, whom they all referred to as “the devil woman,” and of her reaching into their heads and into their dreams. She heard of congregants terrified to sleep and of residents fortifying their homes against demons, and of their agreed recommendation that the Fall Festival be postponed until events in Garrett normalized.

  Only, it wasn’t really a recommendation. The men before her were absolutely convinced that something terrible was going to happen at the festival, and they were adamant that the only way to prevent calamity was to take away its venue.

  When they were finished, Ada asked Dan, “Can’t you just arrest her? Isn’t there something you can book her on?” Immediately, Ada felt foolish, probably appearing as though she’d watched too many late-night cop dramas, but in the immediate moment she felt it was the most reasonable solution to their problem. This way, they could not only contain their concern but also preserve the city’s dignity as one that didn’t acknowledge the occult.

  Dan said, “I wish I could, but I have nothing to go on. We’re not in Salem, and it’s not the seventeenth century when we could try her for witchcraft. Unless there’s a sudden rise of puritanism, there’s nothing we can hold her for. Thanks to the extra support we have right now, I was able to double our patrol for the festival; but if you ask me, I’d rather not have to be there in the first place.”

&n
bsp; Ada absorbed their alarm, felt it creeping up her tired feet and settling in for a long stay in her already overstimulated nervous system. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms beneath her breasts, letting out her bottom lip to blow air at her bangs as she looked at the ceiling. The men waited for her to speak, and when she did, Ada found her voice a little unsteady. “I can’t expect it was easy for you to come see me, but I want you to know that I’m glad you did. Anything that affects our citizens is important to me …”

  Sensing the political niceties were a precursor for their letdown, Dak said, “I’ve been running things since Perry’s been away with his family—”

  “Please pass my sincere condolences to his family,” Ada interrupted.

  “I will. I’m sure he’ll appreciate that. I’m grateful for your time, Mrs. Falconer, but I get the feeling that you’re not onboard with our proposal. I know it’s a lot to digest, and a lot of it doesn’t make much sense, but that doesn’t make it false. With all due respect, I can’t in good conscience let the fair go on, whether or not you agree with us.”

  Ada blinked at Dak. “Are you saying you’ll cancel it if I don’t?”

  “I will,” Dak said, his confidence unnerving Ada just a little too much for her liking.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Cardinal, but last I understood, I run the ship around here. Whether the festival is going to proceed or not will be entirely of my doing, as I’m sure there will be a hundred other people lining up to take your place if you find yourself unwilling.” Ada gestured to the window. “Look outside if you don’t believe me. Our citizens want their fair. They want something to take their mind off the terrible things that have happened, and I’m not about to take it away from them. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but there are other entities at play here besides some woman planning a trick. We’ve got a very capable and competent police force, and we’ve been fortified by equally capable and competent law enforcement partners. If something were to happen, we would be more than prepared to deal with it. Now, if we understand each other, I have work to do.”