Harry Turtledove: Supervolcano: Things Fall Apart

“There’s no possibility of a mistake?” the reporter asked.

That was a mistake. Lucy bristled. “I don’t think so,” she snapped. “And this is not just my judgment, not any more. Because the issue is so important, several other analyses have been made independent of mine. They all show exactly the same result. Without any doubt, Chief Pitcavage was the South Bay Strangler.” And you can go fuck yourself, pal. She didn’t say it, but her attitude did.

“That he killed himself as soon as he knew his son would have to give a DNA sample argues pretty strongly for a guilty conscience,” Colin added.

“Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen,” the San Atanasio PIO said, which meant Enough, already. Now get lost.

They streamed away. Their trucks would send chunks of the press conference up to the satellites. People who had power would watch the chunks and decide they knew all about what had happened. Colin Ferguson knew only too well that he didn’t. Only one man ever had, and Mike Pitcavage wasn’t answering questions from any earthly authority.

“Boy, that was fun,” Lucy Chen said.

“Not,” Colin agreed.

“You all did a good job,” the PIO said.

“Thank you,” Dr. Ishikawa said.

“I hope I never have to do another job like that as long as I live,” Colin said. The coroner’s head bobbed up and down. So did Lucy’s.

And so did the public information officer’s. “I believe you,” she said. “But you did it well anyhow. You made San Atanasio look…” She paused, perhaps wondering how to finish that.

Colin took a shot at it for her: “Just bad instead of really awful.”

“That isn’t what I was going to say.” But the PIO didn’t tell him what would have come out of her mouth. Colin didn’t try to push her. Sometimes not explaining was better.

Colin stood up and stretched. Something in his back crunched. The city chair hadn’t been what anyone would call comfortable. He hadn’t been exactly loose while he was sitting in it, either.

“Back to work,” he said. “If I don’t have to mess with anything but punks and drunks and lunks for a while, I’ll be the happiest man in the world, and you can take that to the bank.”

For years, he’d walked to his desk in the big communal office in the cop shop without anybody paying attention to him unless someone needed to talk about the latest robbery or stabbing or whatever the hell. He’d taken that anonymity for granted. It was part of fitting in at your job.

Or it had been. He’d lost that immunity from notice when Mike Pitcavage killed himself. Most of the people in the San Atanasio PD had decided he’d driven Pitcavage to it by arresting Darren. The rest figured Darren had it coming, and that his father overreacted to the humiliation. Everybody on both sides stared at every move Colin made.

Now people knew the chief had had other reasons for committing suicide. They still stared at Colin. He wished like hell they’d cut it out. Chances were the world would warm up after the supervolcano eruption finally wore off before he got his wish—and the poor old world probably wouldn’t warm up again till long after he was dead and gone.

He wasn’t sorry to see Gabe Sanchez nod at him. “How’d it go, Colin?” Gabe asked. They’d worked together a long time.

“Well, it could have been worse,” Colin allowed.

The detective scratched at the corner of his graying mustache. “Can’t ask for too much more than that,” he said. Like Colin, he had a limited sense of possibility—except for the ways things could go wrong. He stood up and headed for the door. “Gotta get my fix. They’d string me up by the short hairs if I lit one in here.”

They would, too. Not many places had stricter rules against smoking indoors than San Atanasio’s. Colin was glad he’d escaped one bad habit, anyway. His eyes followed Gabe to the exit. As far as he could tell, they were the only ones that did. He was jealous of his friend because of that.

He sat down at his desk. Yes, the eyes were on him. No, he couldn’t do anything about it. All he could do was go on. People didn’t stop robbing and fighting and shooting just because Mike Pitcavage grabbed some of the headlines for a little while.

He was checking to see if they’d found a match for the prints in a robbery at the Popeye’s Chicken on Braxton Bragg Boulevard when the phone rang. He picked it up. “Ferguson.”

“Hello, Colin.” A woman’s voice: familiar, familiar with him and familiar to him. For a split second, he thought it was Louise. But it wasn’t his ex. He’d just realized as much when the voice—the woman—went on, “This is Caroline Pitcavage.”

“Oh,” he said, more an exhalation than a word. It was an exhalation of more than a little pain, as if someone had punched him in the stomach. After a moment, he managed, “I’m sorry, Caroline. I’m sorry for everything.”

“Funny,” Mike Pitcavage’s widow said, though she didn’t sound amused. “I was calling to tell you the same thing. After Darren got arrested, after Mike… did what he did, I thought some horrible things about you. I said some horrible things about you, too. I blamed you, is what I did. But now I know why Mike… swallowed the pills and put the bag over his head. I owe you an apology, a big one. I am sorry, Colin—God knows I am.”

“It’s okay,” Colin said. “Before we knew, uh, what was up, I was kicking myself pretty hard, too.” Before they knew what was up, he’d wondered whether Caroline would come after him with a shotgun. He’d also wondered whether a San Atanasio jury would convict her if she did. Not that he would have been in any position to appreciate the verdict either way.

“I believe you,” she said. “ Now I believe you, anyway. Now I just wish he would have done that years ago, the first time he got the urge to do… what he did. I lived with a monster all those years. I lived with a monster, and I had no idea. Not a clue. Not one single, solitary goddamn clue.”

“I know you didn’t, Caroline,” Colin replied. As he’d said at the press conference, some people who did things like that were normal—at least on the outside—except when the compulsion grabbed them. It didn’t happen often, thank heaven, but it happened.

Caroline Pitcavage went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “Everything I had, everything we had together, it was all nothing. No, it was worse than nothing. It was a lie. How do you go on when most of your adult life all of a sudden turns out to be a lie?”

“It’s not easy,” Colin said slowly. He’d thought he’d had a fairly happy first marriage. And he had, at least from his point of view, till Louise decided she wasn’t happy and decided to try her luck with her aerobics instructor instead. Colin had reacted to the ordinary tragedy the way an ordinary man would have. He’d drunk too damn much and he’d gone on vacation to Yellowstone National Park to run away from his troubles. And he’d met Kelly there, and his life had started to turn itself around.

But that was an ordinary tragedy. Ones just like it happened every day in towns from Nome to Key West. Caroline’s was piled a lot higher and deeper. No sooner than that thought crossed his mind, she said, “You know what the real kick in the head is?”

“Tell me,” Colin urged.

He was sorry immediately afterwards, because she answered, “If the son we raised hadn’t turned out to be a stupid little shit, I’d still be glad I was married to a mass murderer. How about that ?”

“Caroline…” Colin said helplessly.

“He didn’t take all the pills. He knew just how many he needed. I’m sure I could find another plastic bag somewhere, too,” Caroline said. Quickly, she added, “No, don’t call 911. I don’t mean it. That would be something he’d want me to do, damn him. I wonder how much Oprah or Ellen would pay me to turn myself inside out on national TV.”