39

Today is Friday. Either the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning. The morning Mills dreaded, the day he resisted. The clock and the calendar are ruthless. They go through the familiar maze of administrative nonsense: main registration, surgical registration—

Do you have a living will?

A healthcare surrogate?

Repeat your date of birth.

Please sign this form.

And this form.

Are you allergic to latex?

Please sign this form.

Please repeat your date of birth.

And initial here.

Now, here, in the pre-op room, they’re facing different faces. It’s as if the hospital called in a different crew. Different nurses, different techs, different people probing, all except Dr. Susan Waxler, who’s already come in to say “hello.” The dress under her lab coat was a gauzy free-flowing Sahara desert thing that fell just below her knees. It cinched at the waist with a thin piece of rope from which dangled tiny bronze bells. She ring-ringed softly as she came and went.

Mills’s phone rings. It’s Powell. They have the warrant to search the C-ARC.

“The judge looked at the gallery break-in, the Canning homicide, even the Aaliyah Jones details, and signed off,” she says. “With some limitations.”

For whatever reason, the warrant prohibits the removal of any religious texts, as well as the removal of religious ornaments or artifacts from the walls or displays. Peculiar. But fine. Ornaments and artifacts are not exactly within the scope of the investigation. With the exception, perhaps, of the old skeleton key.

“I’m taking it out of evidence,” Powell says. “I’m happy to bust down doors, but I’d rather see if this key fits.”

“Of course,” Mills says. “What time?”

“Sooner the better. I was hoping by noon. Maybe even 11.”

“Shit. Let me get back to you.”

“Don’t leave your wife,” Powell says. “I’ll never speak to you again if you do.”

“Like you have a choice.”

“You do,” she says and hangs up.

Yeah. The choice. How can there even be a choice? Kelly in the bed next to him, the two of them in this box of a room, not even a room, a large cubicle with a curtain. It suddenly feels, even though Mills knows this can’t be true, that all the questions of life and death must be answered here. He can’t think straight. She doesn’t look like a victim. She’s very much alive, with her sparkling eyes, her indomitable smile. She’s not wearing makeup and she is so much more beautiful as herself, just like this.

“The church warrant?” she asks him.

“Yep.”

“Ready?”

“Yep.”

“You going?”

“Of course not.”

He’s sitting in a chair as close to her bedside as he can without colliding. “Of course you are,” she says. “You’re no help in the operating room.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point?” she asks, like the tough attorney she is.

“I would never leave you here. What if something happens?” “Nothing’s going to happen,” she insists. “You don’t die from cancer in the OR.”

“You don’t know that,” he says.

“I’m pretty sure,” she argues. “Besides, even if I did die in the OR, what use would you be then? You’d rush in to revive me? Come on, Alex . . .”

He grabs her hand. “Could we not talk like this? A husband doesn’t leave his wife alone in the hospital.”

“She’s not alone,” says a nurse who comes through the curtain. She’s a husky woman with a husky voice. Contrary to what her profession might suggest, she obviously smokes. She has red hair pulled back into a frizzy ponytail, evenly pink skin, and a generously distributed constellation of freckles. She must be sixty.

“I’m Nancy,” she says. “I’ll be your pre-op nurse. Everything good?” “Fine,” Kelly replies.

“Good. Everything good with you?” the nurse asks Mills.

“Yes,” he answers, nervous. She’s a good interrogator, this nurse named Nancy.

“OK,” she says. “I just thought I heard the sound of two lovebirds arguing . . .”

Kelly laughs. “My husband’s a cop. He has an important case he’s working on. He needs to leave but he won’t leave.”

“Really?” the nurse asks, her eyebrows skyward.

“She’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to leave her.”

Hands on her hips, the nurse says, “Well, you’ll be here a while. The doctor’s backed up. What time was your surgery scheduled for?” “Eleven,” Kelly says.

Nancy offers an ironic smile. “OK, sure. We’re looking at 12:30 or 1.” She has an accent. Shoowah. Wehyah lookin’ at twelve-thuhrty aw one.

Mills looks at his watch. Ten forty-five. “I can’t execute a search warrant in two hours.”

“Two hours is conservative,” the nurse says. “If the surgeon is running behind now, he’ll continue to run behind.”

Ow-wahs. Consuhhvative. Suhhgeon.

“Where is that accent from?” Mills asks the woman.

“Boston. Can’t you tell?”

“Yeah. I was thinking maybe New York or around there.”

“Boston. Not New York,” she says with an emphatic nod.

Nurse Nancy adjusts something in Kelly’s IV. Then she attaches something to Kelly’s fingertip and watches a small screen. Pulse, maybe. Mills can’t keep up, and he doesn’t care to ask. This stuff all looks routine. The scary shit happens in the OR. Nancy pats him on the shoulder. “If I can get you to move for a sec. I need to get in here . . .”

Mills shuffles the chair back and watches as Nancy changes out a tube attached to Kelly’s arm. “What are you putting in her veins?” he asks.

“Just electrolytes for now. She’ll get the heavier stuff later.”

As Nancy backs away, Kelly turns to her husband and says, “Now, you need to leave, Alex.”

He shuffles back. He addresses both of them, as if Nancy is an older sister or an aunt. “Look, I have perfectly capable people who can execute this warrant. My team is the best. I do not need to be there, especially if it means leaving you here alone with all your anxiety about the surgery.”

Kelly rolls toward him. “What if I told you that you were making me more anxious?”

Nancy bends forward, intervening. “I’ve seen that.”

Mills says, “No.”

“If you sit here worried about the search, you’re going to drive me crazy.”

Nurse Nancy leans in again. “Forgive me for meddling,” she says. “But when you come into our house, you’re family. So, I’ll make a deal with you, Mr. Mills. You go. Give me your cell phone number. I will personally call you and text you when she’s ready to go.”

Mills shakes his head. “I’d need a thirty-minute warning, at least.”

“Fine,” Nancy says. “Thirty minutes.”

“And in the meantime, she’s just going to lie here alone and worry?” “Who says I’m worrying?”

“Of course you’re worrying,” Mills tells his wife. “You’re human. Yes, you won your case yesterday and that was a superhuman feat. But today you’re here, babe, and it’s OK to worry.”

“Get him out of here,” Kelly tells the nurse.

They all laugh, though Mills hears a resignation in his.

“If it makes you feel better,” Nancy says, “I’m going to draw the curtain, and I’m going to give her something to relax anyway. A mild sedative. And she won’t give a hoot where you are. She won’t even notice you’re gone . . .”

Kelly says, “I don’t need a sedative for that.”

Mills says, “Very funny. Are you OK with this?”

Kelly says, “I’m more than OK.”

And Nurse Nancy says, “Give her a kiss. Tell her you love her. And get out of my way.”

Mills gets up, leans forward, brushes her forehead with his hand, and plants his lips on hers for a kiss. He says, “I love you beyond reason. You are my everything of everything.”

Then he leaves the room with an ache in his chest.

Gus wakes as if from a fever dream. A morbid sense of dissolution covers him like sweat. He eyes the ceiling. It’s real. It’s permanent. There will be no passage. Next, he takes in the four walls and the thump of his heartbeat. At the same time, a loneliness descends. No. He wills the mortality of love away from him, back into the ether. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and resolves to snap out of it. And yet he walks in a cloud, barely steady on his feet as he steps into the bathroom, feels the coolness of the tile against his feet, the rest of his body pasty and damp. He looks in the mirror and recognizes the simplicity of who he is, just a man, a mortal, a living breathing sentence of subject, verb, predicate, and period. Everything has an expiration date.

“Snap out it, August!” he says to the mirror.

There is no response, but his reflection disappears. In its place, Kelly Mills. She’s weeping, sobbing really. A flood of tears washes over her face. There is blood everywhere. Rivers of blood. The vision startles him from head to toe. As his body convulses, it convulses with the recognition that he must go. He showers quickly, towels off, dresses. He runs Ivy outside. Then he’s off. He’s in his car, still in a trance. He’s racing a demon. His phone rings.

“Dude.”

“Morning, Gus.”

“Everything all right with Kelly?”

“That’s why I’m calling.”

A chill swirls up his spine. “Oh shit.”

“No, no, it’s nothing,” Alex says. “But today’s the day. And I’ve had to make the worst decision.”

Alex tells him about the execution of the search warrant at the C-ARC, how he had to leave Kelly alone at the hospital. How he’s worried beyond belief. “It’s a huge favor, man, but if you could head over there and, you know, just be there on standby, I’d be indebted to you, like, forever.”

Gus laughs. “I’m heading there now.”

“To the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I just had a vibe. Like a vibe that I was needed.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. I am. I’m calling in sick today and I’ll be there with Kelly. Now you can go focus fully on your job, Alex.”

“I just love you, man.”

“I know you do.”

Alex lets out a cascade of “thank you”s, and Gus tells him countless times not to worry before hanging up and watching for the hospital exit. In an instant, his arm squeezes tight. Something jabs his shoulder, the pain radiating down his back. He tries to stretch out his arm to release the tension, but the movement only ignites a fire. He supposes if he’s having a heart attack, he’s heading to the right place.

Mills takes the 10 to the 202. All he sees in the rearview mirror is angst and a towering hospital. Both loom. The billions of regrets hover. They’re following him, mostly asking him why he can’t fix Kelly. He’s used to fixing things. He wants to get under her hood and rewire her insides, rearrange the blood cells, give her a transfusion if that’s what it takes, but he doesn’t have the tools; he has to admit that. No tools and no words. He can’t even conjure up the right words to comfort her. Everything he says comes out sounding like Grey’s Anatomy, clichéd, cue the violins for fuck’s sake. The regrets sit in the backseat as he drives, second-guessing his every move. Truth is, uncertainty is uncertainty; there’s no way around it.

At least there’s Gus. Gus to the rescue. Better than a brother.

GPS has him at the C-ARC in thirteen minutes. He passes one of those signs on the highway that reports the time and temperature. 11:07 a.m.

101 degrees.

They’ll all be indoors by the time the heat reaches 108 as forecasted by the local meteorologists, most of whom are still engaged in that frying-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk sideshow. Mills has called Powell to mobilize the squad and the additional units needed for the search. They’ll meet him at the C-ARC by 11:30.

He dials Kelly’s cell phone. He gets her voice mail, doesn’t leave a message.

When Mills pulls into the C-ARC parking lot, he finds his squad and six officers, a photographer, and a service van, which will be used for whatever might be seized.

“Morning folks,” he says. “Let’s get out of the heat.”

The others follow him into the lobby. He hears a flute, a violin, doesn’t remember the piping in of pacifying music here in the soaring atrium, but he appreciates the irony. He tells the receptionist that his team has come to execute a search warrant.

“I’ll call the pastor for you,” she says.

“No need,” Mills tells her.

Mills advances for the main sanctuary/auditorium with the others in tow. The receptionist shrieks, “You can’t go in there!”

She is uniformly ignored. Inside the massive hall, Mills choreographs the search, telling the others what to cover. Some will take the administrative offices; others will search the study and library areas. The rest will follow Mills to the underground described to him by the contractor, David Patrick. “Good luck,” he tells the team.

As he’s approaching the expansive stage, Mills can hear a voice thundering in his wake, “Wait just a minute! Wait! Stop!”

He turns and sees whom he expects to see. He sees the elegant Gleason Norwood racing down the aisle toward him. The man is wearing a shiny silk shirt with diamond cufflinks, the diamonds refracting the overhead light in a shower of shooting stars. Gone, however, is the diamond smile. “Just exactly what do you think you’re doing?” he bellows.

“We’re executing a search warrant,” Mills replies. “Exactly.”

“For what?”

Mills hands him a copy of the warrant. “Read it. It explains everything. We have work to do.”

“Just because my son’s in custody doesn’t mean I’ve done anything wrong.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“How dare you implicate me!”

Mills gives the man a hard stare, a fierce meeting of the eyes, and says, “I’m not the one implicating you, Gleason. Apparently you need to have another conversation with your son.”

Mills climbs the stairs to the stage.

“You can’t go up there,” Norwood insists.

“Read the warrant,” Mills tells him again and crosses the stage. It occurs to him to look out to the audience and he can hardly believe his eyes. From this perspective, the place is cavernous. This is a stadium for believers, faithful, followers, or fools. Who knows? Who knows what brings thousands of people here to pray? He can’t fathom.

Something squeezes the pit of his stomach.

When the others are on the stage as well, he tells them to look for a break in the floor, a cutout, perhaps, a lift that rises from below.

“Who’s your supervisor?” Norwood demands to know.

“Just call the chief,” Mills replies without turning back to the preacher. “You’ve done it before.”

“Found it,” the photographer says.

Mills drifts her way, finds her pointing her finger in a circular direction to the floor. Sure enough, there’s a large oval cutout there, about five feet in diameter. He can’t begin to guess the circumference, and there’s no need; he can see that only one person at a time can ride the lift safely. At the front of the oval lay a button about the size of a taillight. “I’m going down first. I’ll send the lift back up. One at a time please. Take it all the way to the bottom.”

“You absolutely cannot go down there,” Gleason shrieks. He’s now on the stage, pushing away the officers.

“You touch one of my officers again, sir, and I’ll arrest you,” Mills warns him. “If you don’t think this search will end in your arrest, don’t tempt your fate.”

Mills is proud of that remark. He doesn’t know if it means anything, but he quite likes the way it stops the preacher in his tracks. He probably has enough to arrest Norwood now, but he has a hunch that Norwood, unlike his son, will clam up after Miranda. He needs Norwood talking, blabbing, frantic enough to implicate himself. Mills taps his foot on the button of the oval cutout and down he goes. He’s in a grey cylinder tube. He’s whooshed one floor down. Then he taps the button again, and he’s lowered to the bottom. When the tube slides open, he exits into a narrow hallway which is dimly lit and dark at both ends, like a tunnel. He feels as if he’s much deeper below the earth than he actually is. It’s the reddish orange glow down here that gives this passageway a far-below-the-crust kind of feel. He reaches into the lift with his foot, touches the button and sends the thing upward.

Mesmerized, Mills can’t imagine who conceived this underground and why. Certainly, he’ll find out soon, but right now in this dead silence he can sense the tremors of discord. Suddenly he’s Gus Parker. He’s feeling the feeling of things. He’s picking up vibes. He’s not Gus Parker, but in this amber light, in this forsaken tunnel, he believes that Gus has been here. Not physically, of course, but Gus has been here in his visions.

Officer Steph Pullman arrives. Two more to go.

“What the f is this place?” she asks Mills.

“Hell if I know,” he says. “Or maybe just hell.”

The others, Officer Ron Robbins and the photographer Hailey Gibson, arrive next. They ask essentially the same question, to which Mills offers essentially the same answer. “Hell if anyone knows.”

They gather around him.

“Look,” he says. “I don’t have a map to this place.” He points to both ends of the hallway. “I don’t know what’s down either end. Flashlights please.”

Then, somewhere along the hallway to the right, a door opens and slams shut with a thick metal echo.

Gleason Norwood emerges from the shadows. “We also have a thing called stairs,” he says with a gleaming smile.

Mills ignores him, pushes past him with the others. Their flashlights illuminate a dead end. There is nothing here but a wall. They back up to the metal door. It’s locked.

“Open it, Gleason,” Mills says.

The preacher does a bit of a sashay and says, “Certainly you don’t think you can order me around, do you?”

“Did you read the warrant?” Mills asks him. “You are working my last nerve, sir. We have a lot of ground to cover.”

“It’s just a stairwell, but if you insist . . .”

Gleason inserts a key into the lock and swings the thick door open. Indeed it is nothing but a stairwell, amber and empty. “C’mon, everyone,” Mills says. “Other end.”

Mills can feel the fire in his bones as he backtracks down the hallway, a kind of angry resolve to, once and for all, close this fucking case. He knows he’s closing in. Sometimes the anger helps. Orbs of lights bounce off the walls as the team heads down the long hallway, much longer to this end. The tunnel turns a corner and they follow. Another corner. Another hallway. A maze. Mills could not have pictured this. The flashlights continue to lead, to scope out the turns, to crisscross the walls, the ceiling, the floor. They might as well be excavating.

“This is it,” Pullman says. “The end.”

The orbs meet on a massive wooden door, detailed in bronze, a barred window at its center. Mills can’t see through. The flashlights don’t help.

“Gleason, what is this place?”

“None of your damn business.”

“Gleason, do I have to warn you again? If you refuse to answer you are impeding the search.”

“Storage,” the preacher says.

“Seems like a long way to go for storage,” Mills says.

“Unfortunately, for you and your search crew, the door is locked and I don’t have the key.”

Mills grabs a flashlight from Pullman’s hands and points it at the preacher’s face. Gleason balks at the sudden light, his face squirming. “We can knock the damn door down,” Mills says. “We’re equipped.”

“You had better not destroy our property.”

“Or,” Mills says, pulling the skeleton key from his pocket. “We could try this . . .”

Gleason lunges for the key. “Where in hell did you get that?”

Robbins blocks him. “No sir,” the officer says. “You don’t touch a thing down here. And you don’t touch one of us.”

Mills slides the key into the lock. He lets it sit there for a moment. He lets it sink in. He wants this moment to echo forever in the chambers of Gleason Norwood’s soul, assuming he has one. Mills rattles the key just for dramatic effect. Then he turns it just slightly to the right and the door pops open. The pop sends Gleason over the edge. He jumps forward and slams the door shut. Mills grabs the man by the shiny silk shirt and pushes him against the wall. “One more move like that, Norwood, and you’re in handcuffs. Just like your son. Pullman, the door.”

The officer complies and swings the door outward.

Beyond the threshold, blackness. A hazy, static darkness, like night.

The orbs can’t penetrate.

“Norwood, the lights,” Mills orders.

The preacher steps forward, enters the space, resigned, it seems, to the exposure. He reaches to the left, and as Mills hears the plunk of a lever, the lights come up.

Well. This is not what Mills had expected.

He had not expected to see a modern day catacomb. The sight takes his breath away. Pullman, to his right, gasps as well. Robbins mutters, “What the actual fuck?”

Before them are stone cases, the size of people, stacked four high, six across on metal racks. Racks that reach far back into the darkness of the chamber. Like an archive of death. Each case on each rack has a name crudely scrawled across the side. Thompkins 2017. Walton 2013. Bayer 2001. Bayer, R. 2001. Lippinpool 2002. Hart 2018. Marx 2007. And on and on down the line. Rows and rows.

Hailey immediately snaps pictures.

“What is this place?” Mills asks Norwood.

“I don’t have to say anything.”

“Fine,” Mills tells him. “Pullman, would you please go grab the sledgehammer from the service van and bring it down here so we can crack a few of these open . . .”

“You can’t do that!” the preacher cries.

“We certainly can,” Mills says. “If I have to ask you to read the warrant one more time . . .”

Then, with a flourish, the man with the diamond-encrusted cufflinks says, “They are exactly what they look like.”

“Burial vaults?” Mills asks.

“Yes. A sacred burial ground for our church members.”

“Do you have a license for this, Norwood?”

“We don’t need a license,” he replies defiantly. “We’re a church. This is no different than a church cemetery.”

“A church cemetery needs a license to handle bodies, to operate in general. And you need to notify authorities about the deaths. Always. Who’s buried here?”

Norwood hesitates, stutters, and says, “High-ranking members who wanted to stay close to the church. Former members of the board.” “So, if I were to match the names I see down here with church records in your office, I would be able to verify the high rankers and the board members?”

“Yes.”

“Because we’re searching your office right now,” Mills tells him.

“I demand an attorney!” the man cries.

“Call one,” Mills tells him. “We’ve never stopped you from calling your attorney. Take your time. We’ll be here a while.”

Norwood puffs out his chest. “You can’t do this to me. Don’t you know who I am?”

“You are so full of shit, there’s not enough Charmin in the world to wipe you up. That’s who you are, Gleason Norwood. Call your lawyer. You’re going to need one.”

With a huff, Norwood backs away, and as Mills listens to him make a call to his lawyer, he understands just how a life of fraud defines a man. The conversation is ardent and imploring. It is also fake. No one has a cell signal down here in this dungeon.

“You have a signal, Pullman?”

“Nope.”

“You, Hailey?”

“Nah. I lost it when I came down the elevator.”

“Thought so.”

Robbins calls to them from the back corner of the room. Mills can’t make out exactly what he’s saying. Something about a hallway.

“You’ve found another hallway?”

“It’s like another tunnel, I think,” the officer says. “I think we should check it out.”

The rest of them follow the sound of Robbins’s voice. “Mr. Norwood, you’ll need to come with us,” Mills tells him.

“My attorney will be here any minute.”

“I’m sure he can find you down here.”

“There’s nothing else to see back there. More storage.”

“Of bodies?”

Mills insists that Norwood move in front of him as they make their way to the rear of the catacomb. “The tunnel’s not that deep,” Robbins says when they get there.

Mills tilts his head and nods in that direction. “Let’s go.”

“I’m going no further without my attorney,” Norwood insists.

Mills turns to him, nearly unhinged with impatience. “As you wish. But this place is crawling with cops, so don’t do anything stupid.”

Norwood huffs but says nothing.

Mills joins the rest of his team and they enter the tunnel, Robbins in the lead, his voice and the orbs of light blazing their trail. In less than two minutes they reach a stone archway that surrounds another wooden door, the same design, the same thickness, it seems, as the door that led to the catacomb. Mills assumes the same key will fit the lock. He hands it to Robbins and his assumption is affirmed when the key slides in and the door creaks open.

The opening yields a sucking sound and a putrid smell.

Please, no more dead bodies.

Just urine. Maybe feces. Hard to tell.

Mills sweeps the walls of the dark space with his hands, feeling for a switch or a lever. He finds nothing on the right hand side, but knocks against a lever on the left. He pulls. Overhead lights come on. Discs of light hang from the ceiling in rounded cages; they resemble old-style catcher’s masks, and they emit a feeble glow. That’s it. The rest is murk and shadows. But the design of the room is clear enough. It’s an open space of tables and benches, surrounded by a horseshoe of walls. Lining each wall, three or four doors to smaller rooms or closets. Mills waves them all to the center of the room. Hailey starts snapping pictures.

The place looks like a cellblock out of the county jail.

Crash.

“What the fuck was that?” Robbins asks.

Thud.

“Hello? Anybody in here?” Mills asks.

Then another thud, and it sounds like it left a dent. That makes Mills jump back, and it startles the others as well. The doors surrounding them have come alive, pounding like kettledrums, a whole percussion of desperation.

“Who’s in here?” Mills shouts. “We need a key. We need a fucking key.”

Robbins, examining the doors with a flashlight, says, “There are no locks. So there can’t be a key.”

“Jesus,” Mills snaps. “What the fucking fuck . . .?”

He turns to the lever for the lights and sees a smaller switch protected by a plastic cover. He tells Robbins to smash through the cover with his flashlight. The assault takes maybe thirty seconds, and the busted cover falls to the floor. Mills pulls the small lever and then turns his head when he hears the sound of the doors cranking open. They open in unison. Behind two of the doors, a woman and a man on their knees. Behind another, a man sitting against the wall; he’s beaten and filthy. At another door, a man stands, his fists clenched. He’s cleaner than the other three, a more recent arrival, perhaps. Behind still one more door is a tall, skinny man, revenge in his eyes.

“Who are you?” Mills asks them.

The woman begins to bawl. The man on his knees crawls out to comfort her.

The filthy one says, “We’re dissenters . . . among many.”

“We’re the ones who’ve threatened to go to the cops,” the man with the fists says. “Finally, the cops have come to us.”

“But I thought if you were banished, they just make your family erase you and send you on your way,” Mills says. “What’s this about?” “Banished,” the woman says between sobs, “is for those who are no longer compatible with the teachings of the church. They go away peacefully and their family erases them.” She gasps for air. “But a dissenter is someone who starts trouble from the inside. Or threatens to start trouble on the outside.” She gasps again.

“OK,” Mills tells her. “That’s enough for now. Catch your breath. We’ll get you to safety and get your full statements.”

Some of the “dissenters”—well, fuck, they’re prisoners—look too weak to move on their own. He tells Robbins to call for ambulances. “Go on out to the front. Meet the EMTs there.”

Then he turns to the prisoners. “We can’t risk any of you trying to walk out without supervision, whether you feel up to it or not. You’ll be transported to an area hospital where you’ll be checked out and questioned.”

The man with the fists pounds the door. “It’s not like we have anywhere to go,” he says. “Our families disowned us. Just like Gleason preaches.”

Mills is flooded with disbelief or, rather, too much all at once to believe. “How long have you all been down here?”

The man who’s cradling the woman on the floor says, “I’m not really sure. Eight or nine months . . .”

The filthy one says, “I’ve been here almost three years.”

The woman sighs and says, “I don’t know how long I’ve been here. It’s so confusing. They feed us twice a day. That’s all we have to count the time.”

The filthy one bends to the woman. “You’ve been here almost three years too. We came about the same time.”

“Right,” she says. “Your time’s up after three years . . .”

“What do you mean?” Mills asks.

“I mean that they put you down here for three years to see if you’ll overcome your dissent. You know, they try to program you back to the cult,” she says. “They beat us. They terrorize us. They want us back as angels rising, not dissenters. But if you don’t concede within three years you go next door . . .”

“Next door?” Mills asks.

“The fucking funeral parlor,” the skinny one says. “Didn’t you see it on the way in? It’s our own private graveyard.”

“Yeah. We saw it. It wasn’t exactly described that way to us,” Mills says with a heavy sigh. He tells Pullman to stay with Norwood’s prisoners. “I have an arrest to make.”

The chamber goes silent as he turns to leave. And in this silence, Mills detects a whimpering from one of the open cells. At first, he wonders if the prisoners had been allowed to keep a kitten down here, a gesture of normalcy or comfort; the whimper is that subtle, that weak. Yes, almost a purr. But then, the skinny guy says, “there’s one more with us . . .”

And Mills realizes there’s a cell from which no one has emerged.

He asks Pullman to shine her flashlight into the dark shoebox. In it, Mills can see the light reflecting off amber eyes. He can see the scared whites, the desperate, dark ovals, and he can see the copper skin glowing. He recognizes the face, but he has to move closer to the edge of the doorway, where the thin line separates bondage from freedom. It’s her. It’s Aaliyah Jones.