Jameson is the guy who came to see me, and John Vandenberg is the name of the student Jordan said was all upset about Dr. Abubakar’s lecture and so forth.”
Alice wrote that down. Then she took another deep drag, got up without comment, and took the half-smoked cigarette to the outdoor container. She ground it out, pushed it in, and came back.
She sat, drumming her fingers on the hard surface of the table. I wondered where she had gone in her mind. I realized I had no clue. I had my own ideas, but knew continuing to shut up was best, at least right now.
“Mel,” she said, looking up at me.
“Mel?” She was referring to her colleague and often partner, Mel Billman. Mel had been on the quad when Alice had cut down the noose, I recalled. He was a tall, mixed-race guy who rarely said anything, but when he did it was best to pay close attention.
“Mel’s a gamer, is that what you mean?” I asked.
“Yeah. Think so.” She tapped her pen on her teeth. “Last year, maybe it was, he went to some convention here in Chicago, think it was about these game things. Excited about it.”
She took her pen and jotted something down.
“Mel was excited?” I said, disbelief in my voice.
Alice actually grinned a little.
“For him, yeah. Ten more words than usual.” She rooted in her jacket pocket, took out her phone and started scrolling.
“Today’s duty roster shows he’s on. I’ll tell him about what that pastor from Michigan said and the mess they could be making with these crap games. What’re the names he gave Jane?”
“Revenge,” I said, the word coming out in a grim tone, “as well as ‘Hitman,’ and ‘Death Rally.’ ‘Revenge’ is the most popular, apparently.”
Alice looked up from writing.
“Yeah. Right.”
She made another note, put the notebook away in another pocket, and stood up.
“Alice,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah. I know you sorry as hell, but you gotta think first.” She paused. “You know that stunt you pulled yesterday?”
I just nodded.
“Me? If I’d done it, I’d be dead today.”
She put her hands on the table surface and leaned over so our faces were closer. I could smell the cigarette smoke on her breath.
“You wanna be brave and hell, you throw yourself at stuff scares the shit out of me. But you brave enough to walk around in a black woman’s skin? You brave enough for that? They want us purely dead, Kristin. Every damn day.”
I took a breath.
“If I could, Alice, I would.”
She stood back up.
“Yeah. That’s why I can just about stand to know you. But you can’t. You purely can’t.”
She turned and walked away, head high.
I just sat there and thought. Some popular historian had written a book on our current, what Alice would call “mess” in America, and blathered on about “summoning our better angels.” It wasn’t the angels we needed to be concerned with. It was the demons that lurked right below the surface, demons created by the kinds of hatred that had festered in our history. And this demonic legacy was bubbling up through the cracks now, cracks opened wider by these white supremacist yahoos. I gazed across the lawn toward the tree on the quad in the distance. How long before we had another noose? Or worse?
I walked slowly back to my office, thinking. When I got there, Abubakar wasn’t present. Then I remembered he had a class this afternoon.
I opened my computer and started researching identity-masking software. Maybe I couldn’t live in a black woman’s skin, but I could become someone else online and get these bastards.
Chapter 6
Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people.
—Dante Alighieri, The Inferno
Late Tuesday evening to Wednesday
I was terrified. I ran through grey, ruined streets, where charred corpses were strewn everywhere. There was no color except the blood that ran like streams in the gutters. I couldn’t see a way out. A blast of flame hit the wall nearest me. I had to move. I had to run. There was no one left alive to save. Then there was a gun. It was in my hand. I was the killer, not the prey. My gun moved across the landscape, seeking, seeking. It found a target. It was pointed at a woman who ran from me into a boarded up building. I fired and fired and chunks of the building flew in all directions. And then a body shattered a window above me and started to fall. I was falling. I screamed.
“Mom! Mom!”
The voice seemed far away.
“Mom!” The voice was more frantic. Then there was a loud bark right in my ear.
My face felt wet and I jolted awake.
“What?” I croaked.
I opened my eyes, and my son Mike’s scared face was inches from mine. He was on the bed with me, holding me by the shoulders. The dog was on the bed on my other side, panting and, I realized, drooling on me.
“Mom, you okay? You were screaming,” Mike said, not letting go of me.
“Yes,” I said shakily. “I’m okay. I just had an awful nightmare.”
I struggled to sit up, and Mike released my shoulders, but he didn’t move off the bed.
“Molly, get off!” I said to the dog, and she jumped down, though she whined a little. I moved over so Mike could have more room next to me on the bed. I shoved my computer aside where it was lying beside me. The computer. I must have fallen asleep playing one of those idiot video games, I thought. I was relieved to see the screen had gone dark while I’d been asleep. It would have been horrible if Mike had seen it. I closed it and put it on the end table. Then I put my arms around my trembling child.
“You okay?” I peered into my son’s face, still tight with fear. “And where’s Sam?”
“Yeah. I’m okay. It’s just . . . I heard you scream, and I ran in here, and Molly ran after me, and you wouldn’t wake up.” He paused, swallowing. “Sam’s still asleep. You know him. He could sleep through an earthquake.”
He hesitated, then choked out, “What’s wrong, what’s the matter?”
I try to be honest with the boys, while realizing how young they are. Though Mike acted like he was so mature, he was just a little boy pretending to be the dad they didn’t have. My heart hurt. I thought for a second about what to say.
“I was doing
