I’m not sure how many blanks I should fill in: facts that I learned later, educated guesses, and partial reconstructions with or without the help of other longshots. But trust me: when I start describing distant events or someone else's thoughts, I know what I'm talking about.
Usually.
So forget about me, looking down the barrel of that gun. Forget about Dewitt and Little Big Rock, and head across country to Chowchilla, Californya: home of the Basin Prison for Women.
An ugly fence rose in the middle of a patchwork of alfalfa and cotton crops, enclosing the cell blocks. Playing fields on one side and parking lots on the other. Taller buildings clustered nearer the gate, for administration and food prep and light industrial manufacturing.
Medium security, but still pretty bleak.
Inside the visitor’s entrance, a fifteen-year-old girl showed her creased permission documentation and birth certificate to guards who already knew her. Every other Sunday for the first ten months, Audrey Boone’s grandparents--her legal guardians now--drove her from San Francisco to visit Rachel.
When she'd turned fourteen, she' started taking the bus. Two and half hours each way, but Audrey didn't care. She waited in line, chatting with some familiar faces, then stepped onto the visitor’s patio and found her sister waiting.
I guess the prison administration knew that Rachel Kravitz was the daughter of the notorious--and well-connected--Carson Boone. She'd been big story for a few weeks, the girl who’d shot her own father. At first, reporters had described her as a hysterical teenaged victim of a tragic accidental discharge. Then they'd realized she'd been well-trained. She knew how to handle herself. It wasn't an accident.
So they played the 'kids with guns' angle until the real strangeness emerged.
The family owned a 'complex' in the foothills near Ventura, CA where they lived with dozens of other people. Was it a farm? A cult? A research institute?
Officially, it was the headquarters of a defense contractor, but nobody quite believed that.
And something seemed off about Rachel Boone: she'd been too serious, too weighty, for seventeen. Too grim and mature.
Maybe that's why she'd been tried as an adult, though in Califorya, you still start an adult sentence in juvie until you're old enough to move into general population. Now, after a stint in a juvenile correctional institute and well over two years at Basin, she didn't look much like a kid, not anymore. Except for her smile when she hugged her little sister.
"You look good," Rachel said. "Growing your hair out?"
Audrey nodded. "Do you like it?"
"It's cute. You’re lucky you got Dad’s hair, or you’d look like a mop." Rachel found herself mentioning Boone sometimes, just to tell Audrey that it was okay if she wanted to talk about him. She'd even call him 'Dad,' now that he was dead.
"Only not as skinny," Audrey said.
"You’re skinny enough," Rachel told her.
"Look who’s talking."
And Rachel was skinny, but not like a fashion model, not frail. She looked pretty much like she had at seventeen, except all the traces of childhood had burned away. She had muscle instead of babyfat, and her eyes sometimes turned hard.
I’m going to try to explain Rachel because she’s central not only to my own personal story, but to so many of them. She’s key. So indulge a brief simile: Rachel is a wasp. You’re a thousand times bigger than a wasp, but if one gets in your face, your heart hammers, your muscles clench. You’re scared of this tiny thing, the size of your fingernail. Because the wasp doesn’t care if you’re a hundred times bigger or a thousand, a wasp does what wasps do.
That’s Rachel. She had no power except the strength of her character, but I’ve seen her walk into some pretty dark places, and so far she’s always walked out.
Or limped.
"Blame the prison meals," she told her sister. "Better than Weight Watchers."
Audrey grinned. "You said it’s like a country club in here. Club Fed."
"Yeah, but at this club, I’m staff."
"Still on kitchen duty?"
"Laundry." Rachel shrugged. "Better than broom crew."
"’Broom crew’?" Audrey said. "Now you’ve got the prison slang? You’re like this…"
"Hardened con?" Rachel asked.
"Yeah, Rach. A hardened con who sweeps."
They crossed to a picnic table and Rachel felt like she was playing mother, but she said, "How’s that history project coming?"
They sat and chatted easily and Rachel felt a surge of satisfaction. Four years into her time inside, and she’d finally learned how to do small talk with her little sister.
When visiting hours were over, they walked together to the slow-down fence. "See you in two weeks," Audrey said.
"It’s okay if you’ve got other plans," Rachel told her, not wanting to disrupt Audrey’s life more than she already had.
"I like coming."
"Are any reporters still hanging around?"
Audrey shook her head. "Not in years. Not since you got upstaged by that missing blonde lady."
"Story of my life," Rachel said.
Audrey laughed. "I don’t know what that means."
"Me either. I just wanted to hear you laugh."
"You’re joking around," Audrey said. "That’s new. You never used to joke."
"Yeah."
Audrey grinned. "You used to be a complete bitch."
In line behind them, Mishelle said, "She still a complete bitch."
"Yeah," Audrey told her, with a hint of pride. "But never to me."
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Two days later, a guard came into the yard and found Rachel at the weight bench and said, "Lawyer visit."
"Right now?" Rachel’s lawyer didn’t exactly stop in unannounced. Actually, she wasn't sure she even had a lawyer anymore. She hadn't heard a peep from the firm in eighteen, twenty months.
"You have other plans?" the guard asked.
"Only for the next eleven years," she said.
She stood from the bench, a little embarrassed. An inmate lifting weights, like she was auditioning for a role as 'Girl Prisoner #3'. But she’d always needed to keep busy, and a three hour laundry shift wasn’t enough, so she lifted weights and jogged. The ‘recreational coordinator’ tried to get her interested in the handicraft program, scrapbooking and quilting. Rachel told her that she’d always been good on a firing range; pity they didn’t offer that.
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She'd finished her GED but ran out of money halfway through the distance-learning college courses. Now she was nine months into a job-training course, studying to be a cabinetmaker. Seemed like a good job. Join a union and pay the bills. She knew her grandparents would offer her a place to live if she got parole, but she also knew she made them uncomfortable. She didn't blame them; they saw her father in her. Something uncompromising--maybe murderous. Which her history supported. And they knew what Carson Boone was. Maybe they even suspected what he'd done to his wife, Naomi. Their daughter. Rachel's mother.
Probably not, though.
Rachel wiped sweat from her face and followed the guard inside and past the cubicles of leaded glass with embedded chickenwire, where inmates usually met attorneys.
"Not here?" she asked the guard.
"On three," he said.
She didn't like that. She didn't like not know what was going on. Still, she hid her nervousness as they buzzed through check stations and into the administrative offices.
"Who’m I meeting again?" she asked.
"A lawyer."
"My lawyer?"
The guard shrugged. "Lawyers are like crapsacks."
"Because they all stink?"
"No," he said. "Because they’re crapsacks."
"Oh." She nodded. "Right."
On three, he stopped outside an office door. "In you go."
She eyed him briefly, then went inside. It was a little office with a big desk and a bookshelf containing knickknacks instead of books.
A white guy in his mid-twenties stood behind the desk. He had floppy hair, and was wearing a suit and clutching a briefcase. He was kind of cute, and Rachel felt a pang of self-consciousness--she hadn’t seen a lot of cute guys in the past few years. In fact, she hadn't seen a lot of not-cute guys, far as that went, and she was standing there all sweaty and unkempt.
She squelched the feeling, and went still, watching him.
"Oh!" he said, as if surprised to see her. "Ms. Kravitz. Thanks for coming."
"You can call me Rachel."
"Well!" he said, with a quick glance at her sweaty jog bra. "You look like you’re keeping fit."
She didn't know what to say, so she didn't say anything, which made him nervous. (Cut the guy a little slack. Rachel can be intimidating.)
He raised his briefcase defensively. "Oh! Um, won’t you sit?"
She leaned over the desk. "Whose lawyer are you?"
"What?"
"You’re someone’s lawyer, but you’re not mine. What do I call you?"
"Jason. Jason Hölldobler. There’s an umlaut."
"You’re kidding me."
"No!" He showed her his palms "There is! Over the first o. An umlaut is the two dots over--"
"I know what an umlaut is, I used to like metal."
Rachel eyed him, thinking fast. This guy, Jason Umlaut, clearly represented someone serious, pulling a meeting here instead of the cubicles, outside of regular hours. But he was nervous, so talking to her in a prison was beyond his experience. Which meant that whoever he represented sent him here because they trusted him personally. Which meant he wasn't working for any official agency. No, he was working for someone powerful, but not military or police.
"I’m pleased to meet you," she said, mouthing the empty phrase as kept thinking.
"Oh, yes. Thank you." He pushed a file across the desk. "That’s for your autograph. Everywhere marked with a yellow X."
She opened the file. "What am I buying?"
"They didn’t tell you?"
"Not yet." She flipped through the pages, then stopped. "You’re kidding me."
"No," he said. "That’s a release."
She extinguished hte hopeful spark in her head. "I'm being released?"
"Yes. Um, you've been selected for a work-release program."
"Huh. What's the catch?"
"Well, um, if you'll sign the paperwork—"
"So what happens?" she interrupted. "I spend the days outside at a job, then come back here every night?"
Jason Umlaut shook his head. "This situation is a little unique. Officially, it's a pilot program. You're the only offender who meets the criteria."
"Oh!" Rachel nodded once as realization dawned. "I see. You work for Senator Theroux."
His eyes narrowed in alarm. "How did you know that? Nobody knows I’m here. How did you--who told you the senator's involved?"
"I have my sources."
"Even in here?"
"Yeah," she told him. "Even in here."
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A few days after Rachel arrived in Chowchilla--still in A Yard, before she got over the wall into general population--a man had appeared. In the middle of the night, a dark shape standing inside her cell. Which meant a guard, looking for some off-book recreation.
Still half-sleep, Rachel felt herself tense, taking inventory of possible weapons in her ‘fish kit’, a stubby pencil, shortened toothbrush, and plastic comb.
Then she recognized him. Not a guard, just a chubby guy in a dress shirt and a comb-over--and familiar, worried eyes.
Bob McDonald. Despite his scruffy dress shoes, he made no noise when he crossed the floor, and in the half-light he looked insubstantial.
Because he was.
"Bob!" Rachel said, surprised to find herself smiling. "Look at you."
He grinned back. "I've lost weight."
"You look good."
"You look pale," he said. "You're not eating enough. Are you eating enough? You should eat more."
"Next time bring chocolate." Rachel sat cross-legged on her bunk. "Where are you?"
"In visitor's parking," he told her, pointing through the wall. "About two hundred yards that direction. I, uh, I don't have much time. I'm leaving."
"Leaving where?"
"The States. Heading … away."
"Running away, you mean?"
"Sure." His chubby grin flashed. "You know me."
"You're a survivor."
"So far," he said. "Thanks to you."
"Then what's the problem?"
"Things are heating up. The government grabbed the Driggers last year, did you hear about that?"
"Nobody tells me anything."
"Well, they did, snatched the whole family. And word is, they finally deciphered them."
"No way," Rachel said. "They deciphered the Driggers?"
The Driggers were a family of six: a skinny grandfather in his seventies who wore white undershirts, his three daughters and two grandsons. Rachel's father had found them in backwoods South Carolina after the Seventeen Seconds, and brought them to the Ventura complex where they'd lived in a three room cottage, with dozens of screens on every wall, streaming information twenty-four hours a day: everything from fashion trends to cargo manifests to butterfly migration routes.
Boone had insisted that they functioned as a pattern recognition device, he'd said they made a supercomputer look like Clever Hans the Counting Horse. He used to watch them on the monitor for days at a time, but he'd never figured how to understand them. They might've decoded every secret in the world, but they didn't communicate anything.
"That's what I hear," Bob told her. "The government's getting readings from the Driggers. Solid gold. They're making projections. They can't see the future, but they can smell it. Except for one thing."
"What's that?"
"There's no such thing as 'the government.' There's the NSA, the DHS, a dozen other agencies, all fighting each other for scraps of your father's, um …"
"Past?"
"Yeah. Have you heard of Senator Theroux?"
Rachel shrugged. "I guess he's a senator?"
"She's an institution. She's the one who got the Driggers. She's trying to keep the cowboys in check."
Rachel didn't understand what that meant, but she said, "So she's one of the good guys?"
"She'd cut your throat for a parking space," Bob said. "But relatively speaking, yeah. One of the good guys."
"Then if she has the Driggers, why are you running?"
"You saved my life, Rachel."
She ducked her head. "I didn't do anything for you, Bob. You know that."
"You still saved my life. No telling what your father had planned for me. And, you know, you're just a ..." Bob seemed to fade for a moment. "You know."
"Inert?"
"Yeah. You've got no power, no nothing."
"Not for lack of trying," Rachel said.
Her father had spent years trying to force powers on her. That had been his longshot ability: activating powers in other people. Not always pretty ones. In fact, they were usually worse than ugly; they were usually fatal.
Collateral damage, he'd said. You've got to roll the dice.
For every ten people whose lungs exploded when he'd tried to 'activate' them--whose nerve endings turned so sensitive that they died in shock from the pain of their shirt rubbing against their skin--Boone had found hundreds he couldn’t affect.
He called them 'inerts,' like Rachel.
For every hundred deaths, he'd activated two or three people with useless powers, like turning one eye blue. A fraction of the actives changed into something useful. Into longshots like Bob, who could send a projection of himself a quarter mile in any direction, for about twenty minutes. Not exactly a powerhouse, and still one of Boone's big successes.
Unlike Rachel's mother, one of his big failures.
Bob knew all that. He knew what Rachel meant, 'not for lack of trying,' he knew what she'd lost. He said, "You're inert, but you came through."
"I guess," she said, still not sure why he'd come.
"Uh, how's your sister?"
"She's okay."
"She's a good kid. Take care of her. Take care of yourself."
"Is that what you came to tell me?"
"I mostly came to say goodbye, and …" Bob started fading again. "Things are heating up. The senator has the Driggers, but there's a new player in town."
"So?"
"So he's following your father's footsteps. And I'm talking exactly. Like his evil twin. If he takes over, things might get ugly." Bob's voice softened to a whisper. "You saved my life. You saved a lot of lives. Watch your back, okay?"
"I will."
"You need anything? I could make some phone calls. Get the old gang together and break you out of here."
Rachel managed not to laugh at the idea of Bob leading a rescue mission. "I’m fine, Bob. I can do the time and ... you take care, too. It's good to … "
He faded away completely, but his whisper said, "Rachel? Nobody else could've stopped your father. Never forget that."
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Rachel signed at all the yellow Xs. "When does this kick in?"
"There's the door." Jason Umlaut gestured behind her. "Talk to the senator. If you say yes, you won't ever come back."
"Right now? I can leave?"
"I’ve been here all morning," he said. "Getting the ducks in a row."
"The ducks? I love those fucking ducks." She thought for a second, her natural wariness kicking in. "What's the job?"
"The senator wants to give you the details personally."
"What if I turn her down?"
"Then you stay here--but only for another sixteen, eighteen months."
"Why's that?"
"That's how long it'll take to ... unwind your situation."
That meant nothing to Rachel, but she said, "Okay, let's talk to the senator."
"Do you need anything from your, uh, room?"
"A few pictures," she said. "A postcard."
"Don't take too long," he said. "I'll meet you at processing and take you outside to the car."
"Outside," she said, and smiled.