WEDNESDAY
May 7, 2008
7:26 a.m.
The driver of the red Ford Mustang convertible saw nothing and no one as she maneuvered expertly through the city streets that made up her normal route to work. Alicia Keys was expertly hitting every one of her notes on the stereo, but she was oblivious to it. She didn’t see the other cars, the traffic lights, or the three stop signs that stood between her and her parking space at City Hall. She was slave to her routine while her thoughts were elsewhere. Hands went up as she passed, but no one was smiling. Not many were smiling these days.
Finally, she safely pulled into the parking spot that was identified on the curbing with the following: MAYOR. No previous mayors had ever thought it necessary to label the space that ultimately ended up being left unoccupied each day of the year. However, one morning, without a word, there it stood. The City Clerk was traditionally the first to arrive each morning at 7:00 a.m. sharp to unlock the building and start the coffee. The new paint was nearly dry then. Mayor Peterson never admitted to anyone how in the world she could say with absolute certainty how she knew that, although she was forced to hide her right forefinger for two days until the evidence was gone. Mathew Peters swore that there had been no paint when he had swung his giant street sweeper early that morning. There had been no one to confess that the honorable new mayor had either asked or coerced them into doing her dirty work, but there it stood. In the end, no one hated the woman, although very few expressed any kind of love for her. She was liked about as strongly as any other mayor who had graced the town with their service. The day the paint showed up was commonly referred to as Black Monday, however.
When she turned off the ignition, a rather sad little man came into her view and snapped her out of her thoughts.
“Good morning, Your Honor,” Councilman Johnson said before she had even fully disembarked her vehicle. He stood in the street beside her driver’s side door. “I apologize, but I need to speak with you.”
“Good Lord, David,” she said, already exasperated with the meek little man, with the morning, and with the cup of coffee she had yet to taste. He said nothing further. He just stood there. She turned to face him finally. “Must you apologize for everything? Is that all you do?” He had no answer. She stared back at him for a moment.
“What?” he asked, meeting her eyes. He suddenly felt like he was back in school and the teacher had just asked him a question in front of the entire class.
“Are you going to let me out or is it your duty to prevent me from doing my job?”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor.” He moved out of her way, but not by much. He was standing in the gutter now, blocking out her title there on the curb.
“And that’s another thing: Stop calling me that! My name is Katherine!”
She opened the door and stepped out onto the street. She started to slam the door in disgust, but she adored the car that saw her through the divorce, so she caught herself in time. What she really wanted to do was to slam the man. He was calling her at home (four times this week already and it was only Wednesday) and now he was meeting her before she even got into the building.
“When it is just the two of us and we’re not doing anything terribly official, call me Katherine.”
She was willing herself to become calm now, but he wasn’t helping much. Now, if she really wanted access to that sidewalk, she was going to have to go around him.
“I’m sorry.”
“What is it you want?” she sighed and began to walk around him. Not that it would take long, the stick figure of a man.
“I tried calling you last night but you weren’t home,” he said, shuffling his feet in order to stay in front of her.
“The hell I wasn’t!” she confessed, before being able to catch herself. Oh, well. What do I care! “What did you want? Why are you stalking me?” she said at last. “Does Bea know that you’re calling me at all hours of the day and following me around?”
She finally reached the door, Councilman Johnson still shuffling to keep position. She pictured those little Remora fish that secure themselves to the bottom of sharks now when a far more terrible thought occurred to her. Her hand stretching for the door handle, she spun back around to face the man, almost bumping into him.
“Who’s dead?”
The councilman retreated a step with the shock of the close contact with the mayor as well as her sudden question. “What?”
“How many dead this time? The only time you call me is when it’s bad news. So, what happened? Who’s dead now?”
“I think we are,” he said. It seemed that it was finally his turn to speak so he was not going to miss the opportunity. He stood a little taller suddenly. “That’s why I was calling, I assure you! Do you know that we have lost two vendors already? We lost the lady and her family that always come down from Denver, and we lost someone from San Jose.”
She said nothing as she allowed the information to seep in. This was her first Swedish Festival and she was losing it. She was the first female mayor that the town had ever had, but that was not what she would be remembered for. As she stared at the man, the murals behind him on the wall of the old Ostrom’s Pharmacy building, which now housed the Kingsburg branch of the Fresno County Library, caught her eye. The five images conveyed not only a wonderful depiction of how well-rounded Kingsburg life was, paying homage to the past while looking to the future, but the images of Olympian Rafer Johnson and Kingsburg Recorder Editor Ed Jacobs. This was a reminder of what became of the town’s heroes. What might become of me if I allow this to continue?
Now, her tone and basic demeanor changed. Now, both she and the Councilman were standing tall. She nodded once, still looking over the murals, and then turned back to face David Johnson straight into his eyes. If she were to see this through to a quick and logical conclusion, she realized, she would have to do it. If she were going to be scoffed at and vilified by both media and townspeople alike, and characterized as a colossal failure of a mayor, it would be because she failed. It would not be because the Council was weak or slow to react. It would not be because the Chief of Police was immensely under-qualified. If she was going to go down with the ship, then the divers were going to find her skeletal remains firmly attached to the helm.
“Come inside, David,” the Mayor said at last, reaching for and opening the door. She held it open for him with an unusual smile. “Let’s talk.”
8:29 a.m.
Police Chief O’Donnell arrived at the Department a lot later than he ever would have under ordinary circumstances. And these were very far from ordinary, indeed.
The chief had worked in his office until well after hours the night before. Without the presence of any real leads or developments, there had been little to do but monitor the radio traffic and hope against hope for some breakthrough. Pulling himself away from his office by sheer force of will, he headed for home but did very little except monitor traffic from his “other” office on the second story, where Carol would not be disturbed. After another three hours of nothing, he reluctantly turned in for the night.
During the night he awoke several times to use the bathroom. Only once did he actually need to do so; but each time he turned on the radio and monitored the traffic. He did manage to sleep some.
Now he was back at his first office.
O’Donnell parked in his usual spot, facing north on California Street. Rather than head for the main entrance, however, he walked briskly around to the back of the building for the Earl Street entrance. With very little sleep under his belt, he was in no mood for talking. Not until he got some coffee. A lot of coffee. He used his key and snuck inside.
He navigated the route quickly and reached his office without being greeted by anyone. After entering and closing the door behind him, he counted his blessings.
“It’s about time you got in!” came a familiar voice from behind his desk.<
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He froze in place. His left hand was still firmly holding onto the handle of the door. He contemplated the solid oak door, closed his eyes and sighed. His first reaction was to quickly slam it back in place, but even that did not seem strong enough. A part of him now wanted to shout the Lord’s name in vain at the top of his lungs. It felt right to him; however, the longer he thought about it, the more it felt anticlimactic. Ultimately, he did nothing.
“Katherine,” he greeted her simply.
He barely glanced in the mayor’s direction. He simply headed for his regular chair for whenever Her Honor was visiting.
“Do you have any idea how long I have been waiting here for you to finally drag yourself in to work?”
Now he wanted to get back to his feet, retrace his steps to the door of his office and slam that sonofabitch for all that he was worth. “No, I don’t,” the chief said without stopping to think about his words before he threw them out there. “But I plan on asking every single member of this department until I find one of them who does know. You know what I’m going to do then, Your Honor?”
“No.” She studied the man with her eyes and said nothing else. Her hands were clasped together on the top of his desk.
“I’m going to fire them!”
“You can’t do that.”
“You can’t keep barging into my frigging office, either, but that doesn’t appear to be stopping you! Perhaps if you had an office of your own, you’d understand!”
“Listen,” the mayor said, ignoring the comment. Not many knew that the mayor did not actually have an office, but only a mail slot at City Hall. “We can keep fighting like this or we can solve our problems.”
“Really?” he asked, extending his hands. “That’s fantastic! Now we’re finally speaking the same language!”
She sighed with an odd grin on her firm but lovely face. She folded her arms at her chest now and leaned back in the chief’s leather chair.
He sat up and rested the palms of his hands upon his knees. “The problem as I see it is this: You can’t help me. Oh, you can stay the hell out of my office and out of the way of my men and women while they bust their butts trying to keep the people of this town safe. But that’s all!” He jumped to his feet suddenly and forcefully planted his hands upon his desk. He leaned over it. He wanted to really see her now. “Look. I have had a lot of time to think these past three days. I know you’re worried about the festival, Katherine. Right now I bet it seems like your festival, but it isn’t. What’s happening to this town was going to screw whoever was mayor whether it was you, your predecessor, or anyone else after you.”
The mayor said nothing. She just continued to stare at him.
“But I’ve got to tell you. Another day or two and we have to cancel the whole damn thing.”
The mayor suddenly lost her grip on that grin she had been wearing. She looked like all of the blood had rushed to her head. A bead of sweat bubbled on her forehead and began to descend toward her eyes.
“Absolutely not!” she said in the firmest of whispers. He frowned. “Do you hear me, O’Donnell? Absolutely not! We’re not going to lose the festival. We’re not going to lose one more damn vendor. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
She stood and walked around the desk. She did so and did not stop until she was facing the man, their noses almost touching. For his part, he simply stood there and took it. The mayor started to say one more thing but stopped when the sabers behind him on the south wall caught her attention.
“What?” he asked, seeing the mayor lose her focus.
“I want you to look at something,” she said, still giving orders.
She’s growing too attached to this office, the chief thought. “At what?”
“Your swords.”
“They’re sabers. I’ve seen them. In fact, I mounted them there myself, if it’s any consolation to you.”
She stepped to the side, but did not walk past him. Instead, she seemed to hover there, their shoulders touching neither romantically nor in the least bit friendly. She lowered her voice again, feigning control. “Are they sharp?”
“They might be.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
The mayor paused a moment then turned so that her lips were mere inches away from the man’s right ear. “If I lose this festival, someone will need to fall on a sword. … Saber,” she corrected herself.
She leaned closer. They were almost touching now. He could feel the breath before he could hear the words that were carried there. “And it will be damn apropos that they hang in your office and not mine.”
9:09 a.m.
The vampire turned his head to the right in a fitful slumber as two wars were being waged. On the one hand, as the sun worked its way into the sky, the light was trying its level best to locate the vampire as he slept there, buried beneath a thick layer of old blankets in the abandoned barn. Like agents of good, the sun’s rays crawled over the fabric, knowing instinctively of his unholy presence there. They pounded against him, somehow knowing that they were individually not strong enough to break through but hoping to weaken the fabric’s defenses so that the next ray might get further, deeper. Other rays, like drops of water, ran along the perimeter looking for a hole, but burning off before they could do so.
There was a very distinct part of Nathaniel that wished that the sun’s rays would indeed find him there and do their worst. He was tired of everything—living, fighting, hungering.
On the other hand, images filled the back of his eyes.
Images of home…