And now it’s my turn to gasp.
The battered, bluish face in front of me belongs to Michelle Ling, the TV reporter who’s been covering the executions since day one.
I kneel down beside her and place a hand on her arm. “Are you okay?”
Her chin crumples as she shakes her head. “No,” she wails again, only this time, it’s not angry or frustrated. There’s a defeated finality to it that makes me think she’s not okay for more reasons than one.
“Hey, he’s gone now. Do you want to go into the capitol building? It feels safe in there.”
She shakes her head again.
“Sweetie …” I don’t know why I’m calling her sweetie. She’s probably ten years older than me. “Do you have an office around here or a news van?”
She nods.
“Okay. Let’s get you covered up, and we’ll go there.”
I help her adjust her clothes and pull my spray-painted hoodie on over her head. She manages to stand and pull her panties back up, wobbling on an expensive pair of red slingback heels.
They match the lipstick smeared across her face.
“Here we go,” I say, wrapping an arm around her waist.
I notice Quint and Lamar standing by a dumpster about half a block away and give them a thumbs-up. I hope they threw that monster inside.
“Where to?”
Michelle points down the street, and we begin to walk.
“What were you doin’ out here by yourself, honey?”
“Scouting locations.” She sniffles. “I’m a reporter.”
“I know who you are.” I force a small smile.
Michelle hangs her head in a way that tells me she’s more embarrassed about me knowing who she is than me seeing her almost naked. “There’s no execution today because the governor took off to go golfing, and the station is breathing down my neck about it. They want me to get some kind of behind-the-scenes footage to show during that time slot.”
She covers her face and starts to cry again. “I hate this job! I hate it!” she screams. “I hate these people!”
“Can you quit?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.
Michelle shakes her head. “I need the money.” She swipes her long, thin fingers under her eyes and sniffles. “My husband died two months ago. In a car accident. I didn’t find him until three days after he went missing because none of the ambulances or cops were working at that point.”
“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Michelle wraps an arm around my shoulders and keeps walking. She’s still shaking from the attack. “When I found him, there was a half-naked woman in the car with him, and our bank account was empty.”
I shake my head. “That’s so awful, Michelle. And you know what’s worse? I think everybody who lived through April 23 has a story like that.”
“What’s yours?” she asks. Her voice sounds like an echo, like the words were formed in some hard, empty, faraway place.
I take a deep breath and try to compress my grief into as few syllables as possible. “A few days before April 23, my dad tried to kill my mom and me in our sleep with a shotgun before he turned it on himself. But I wasn’t in bed like he thought.”
“That is awful,” Michelle mutters. No I’m sorry. No pity or sympathy. Just the factual observation of a jaded journalist.
It’s kind of nice.
“My dad was always anxious and depressed,” I continue, “a nonproductive, like the World Health Alliance lady said, but the nightmares finally made him snap. Just like they wanted them to.”
Michelle shakes her head. “They’re murderers. All of them. The World Health Alliance, our government leaders—they killed twenty-seven percent of the population with a few clicks of a mouse, admitted to it, and we’re just supposed to say thank you?” She sounds so cold, so bitter, but her skinny arm is still wrapped around my shoulders like she needs me to keep her going. “We should be executing them.”
The E-word makes my breath catch and my steps falter.
Michelle looks me up and down like I’m the one who needs help. “You okay?”
Leaning into her side, I nod, but then I shake my head as I inhale warm traces of vanilla on the hoodie she’s wearing.
“My fiancé is supposed to be”—I have to swallow back a sob before I can say the word—“executed tomorrow.”
“Oh my God. Wesson Parker? I covered his sentencing yesterday.”
Michelle leads me around a corner where a sudden rotten stench slaps me in the face and makes my stomach turn on contact. Without warning, I lean over and puke on the sidewalk, right next to a dead Bony wearing a King Burger mask covered in flies.
“And I’m pregnant,” I cry, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand as we stumble away from the bloated corpse. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I don’t even know where he is.”
“I do,” Michelle says, stopping about fifty feet short of the Channel 11 news van. Lifting a shaking finger with a jagged, broken nail clinging to the end, she points in the direction of a modern-looking building across the street.
Fulton County Police Department, the sign announces.
“He’s in there.”
My shoulders slump, and my heart breaks all over again as I take in the fortress in front of me.
“I’m guessing they don’t have visiting hours,” I mumble in complete and utter defeat.
Michelle reaches into the neck of my sweatshirt and pulls out a laminated card on the end of a lanyard. “They do if you’ve got one of these.”
Rain
Buzz.
The exterior door unlocks after Michelle flashes her media pass at the bulletproof window. She pushes her way through with the grace of a seasoned professional despite the fact that she’s wearing my spray-painted hoodie, ripped jeans, and filthy hiking boots.
The cops inside reach for their guns as soon as they see those neon-orange bones but immediately relax when the cameraman and I walk in. Or should I say, hobble in. Michelle’s feet are a full size smaller than mine, so these slingback pumps are killing me.
“Good afternoon, Officers,” she announces as we walk into the center of the police department lobby.
I’ve never been in a police station before. I expected it to feel more like a jail and less like the Department of Motor Vehicles. There is a counter where you talk to someone through a window, a few cubicles with yellowing desktop computers that look like you might have to crank ’em to start ’em up, and a sea of mismatched plastic chairs bolted to the floor.
“Officer Elliott, Officer Hoyt, this is my cameraman, Flip, and our new reporter”—Michelle looks at me with a blank expression on her face, and I freeze, realizing that I never told her my name—“Stella McCartney,” she declares without missing a beat.
It’s the same name that I saw printed on the label inside her skirt.
I manage to squeak out a tiny, “Hello,” without letting my voice shake too much.
“Gentlemen, as you know, there will be no sentencing or execution today, so the governor has demanded that I get some behind-the-scenes coverage to show during that time slot to ensure that the one true law stays top-of-mind for the citizens of Georgia. However, as you can see”—she gestures to her outfit—“I’ve been involved in an … incident. So, Stella here is stepping in as my replacement.”