He cleared his throat again so that he could ask Sara, “Is there anything I should be doing?”
“No, just stay where you are.” Sara used a raised, clear tone Will thought of as her doctor’s voice. “Amanda. This is Dr. Linton. Can you tell me today’s date?”
She groaned out a pained breath. “I told Edna to shore up those steps a million times.”
Will sat back on his heels. Something sharp pressed against his knee. He felt blood sliding across his ankle, dripping through his sock. His heart was pounding so hard that he was sure Sara could hear it.
“Will,” Amanda mumbled. “What time is it?”
Will couldn’t answer her. His mouth felt wired shut.
Sara took over, saying, “It’s five-thirty.”
“In the evening,” Amanda said, not a question. “We’re at the children’s home. I fell down the basement stairs.” She lay there taking deep breaths of the pungent air. “Dr. Linton, am I going to live?”
“I’d be very surprised if you didn’t.”
“Well, I suppose that’s as much as I can ask for right now. Did I lose consciousness?”
“Yes,” Sara answered. “For about two minutes.”
Amanda spoke more to herself. “I don’t know what that means. Are you touching my foot?”
Will pulled away his hand.
“I can move my toes.” Amanda sounded relieved. “My head feels like it’s been cracked open.” He heard movement, the rustling of clothes. “No, nothing sticking out. No blood. No soft spots. God, my shoulder hurts.”
Will tasted blood. His nose was bleeding. He used the back of his hand to wipe his mouth.
Amanda let out another heavy sigh. “I’ll tell you what, Will. You get past a certain age and a broken bone or a cracked head is no laughing matter. It’s with you for the rest of your life. What’s left of the rest of your life.”
She was quiet for a few seconds. From the sound of it, she was trying to keep her breathing steady. Despite the fact that he was obviously not going to answer, she told Will, “When I joined the Atlanta Police Department, there was a whole division assigned to checking our appearance. The Inspection Division. Six full-duty officers. I’m not making that up.”
Will glanced up at Sara. She shrugged.
“They would show up during roll call, and if you didn’t fix what they told you to fix, you were suspended without pay.”
He put his hand to his watch, wishing he could feel the second hand ticking by. Grady Hospital was only a few blocks away. There was no reason for the ambulance to be taking so long. They knew Amanda was a cop. They knew she needed help.
Amanda said, “I remember the first time I rolled up on a signal forty-five. Some jackass had a CB radio stolen out of his car. We were always getting forty-fives on CB radios. They had those big antennas pointing like arrows off their back bumpers.”
Again, Will glanced up at Sara. She made a circling motion, indicating he should keep Amanda talking.
Will’s throat was too tight. He couldn’t force out the words, couldn’t pretend that they were all just a bunch of friends who’d had a bad day.
Amanda didn’t seem to need encouragement. She chuckled under her breath. “They laughed at me. They laughed at me when I got there. They laughed at me when I took the report. They laughed at me when I left. No one thought women should be in uniform. The station would get calls every week—someone reporting that a woman had stolen a squad car. They couldn’t believe we were on the job.”
Sara said, “I think they’re here,” just as Will heard the distant wail of a siren. “I’ll go wave them down.”
Will waited until Sara’s footsteps were on the front porch. It took everything in him not to grab Amanda by the shoulders and shake her. “Why are you here?”
“Is Sara gone?”
“Why are you here?”
Amanda’s tone turned uncharacteristically gentle. “I have to tell you something.”
“I don’t care,” he shot back. “How did you know—”
“Shut up and listen,” she hissed. “Are you listening?”
Will felt the dread come flooding back. The siren was louder. The ambulance braked hard in front of the house.
“Are you listening?”
Will found himself speechless again.
“It’s about your father.”
She said more, but Will’s ears felt muffled, as if he was listening to her voice underwater. As a kid, Will had ruined the earpiece to his transistor radio that way, putting the bud in his ear, dunking his head in the bathtub, thinking that would be a cool new way to hear music. It had been in this very house. Two floors up in the boys’ bathroom. He was lucky he hadn’t electrocuted himself.
There was a loud thunk overhead as paramedics shoved open the front door. Heavy footsteps banged across the floor. The bright beam of a Maglite suddenly filled the basement. Will blinked in the glare. He felt dizzy. His lungs ached for breath.
Amanda’s words came rushing back to him the same way sound had come back to his ears when he’d grabbed the sides of the tub and thrust his head above water.
“Listen to me,” she’d ordered.
But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to know what she had to say.
The parole board had met. They had let Will’s father out of prison.
three
October 15, 1974
LUCY BENNETT
Lucy had lost track of time once the symptoms had subsided. She knew it took heroin three days to fully leave your bloodstream. She knew that the sweats and sickness lasted a week or more, depending on how far gone you were. The stomach cramps. The throbbing pain in your legs. The alternating constipation and diarrhea. The bright red blood from your lungs giving up the Drano or baby formula or whatever was used to cut down the Boy.
People had died trying to leave H on their own. The drug was vengeful. It owned you. It clawed into your skin and wouldn’t let go. Lucy had seen its castoffs laid out in back rooms and vacant parking lots. Their flesh desiccated. Fingers and toes curled. Their nails and hair kept growing. They looked like mummified witches.
Weeks? Months? Years?
The stifling August heat had been broken by what could only be fall temperatures. Cool mornings. Cold nights. Was winter coming? Was it still 1974, or had she missed Thanksgiving, Christmas, her birthday?
Sands through the hourglass.
Did it really matter anymore?
Every day, Lucy wished that she was dead. The heroin was gone, but not a second went by when she wasn’t thinking about that high. The transcendence. The obliteration. The numbing of her mind. The ecstasy of the needle hitting vein. The rush of fire burning through her senses. Those first few days, Lucy could still taste the H in her vomit. She’d tried to eat it, but the man had forced her to stop.
The man.
The monster.
Who would do something like this? It defied logic. There was no pattern in Lucy’s life to explain why this was happening. As bad as some of her johns were, they always let her go. Once they got what they wanted, they tossed her back into the street. They didn’t want to see her again. They hated the sight of her. They kicked her if she didn’t move fast enough. They shoved her out of their cars and sped away.