The Kingmaker

A dozen police cruisers, lights flashing but no sirens. Silent as the grave. What's all this? Wait, that's the house. Why are they all in front of the house? "Let me through -" "We can't do that. Someone take her down to the station." "I said to let me through -" "Everything's going to be fine." "Let me through!" "I'm sorry." --------------- “How can you just close the case? Is that even legal? Three people are dead.” With a sympathetic sigh, the mousy-haired woman sat down on the chair next to Eden with a languorously patient grace. She straightened her ugly mauve skirt and shifted her bottom around on the plastic seat before answering, clearly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. “I know this must be so hard for you,” she said after a lengthy pause. Oh, a practiced monologue on the way. Everyone needed one of those. “Well,” Eden said. “You’re kind of making it seem like it shouldn’t be.” The woman continued as if she hadn’t heard anything. “And you’re so very young, you never deserved any of this. Heaven knows.” “Thanks for heaven’s confidence. It’s very useful.” “And tomorrow, the court has decided to send you to a state-sponsored caregiver so that you can finish your schooling in peace. It’ll be a great chance to heal and open your mind to new possibilities, Eden. You’ll find better opportunities out there, ones that really suit your talents. Staying here will only stunt the growth of your beautiful mind.” Eden gave the woman an incredulous look. “Mrs. Hoggsfan. My entire family is lying on tables on the other side of this wall, and you're talking to me about better opportunities? What is this to you, a job interview?” Silence. To Eden’s undying relief, the woman chose that moment to give up on delivering her torpid, soulless sermon. She stared at Eden with the look of someone who had just put a spoonful of food in their mouth and then felt something wiggling on their tongue. “Mrs. Hoggsfan,” continued Eden. “I don’t think we’re on the same page here. Let’s start over, since we’ve gotten the hard part out of the way.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the wall, indicating the morgue that lay beyond it. “When I ask why they’re closing the case, what I mean is this: why are they giving up on a triple murder two days old without even trying to find the one responsible? Who does that? Why? And what do they have to gain from it?” Mrs. Hoggsfan said nothing, and merely continued to watch her with bugging eyes. A few strands of hair sprang free from the woman’s messy bun. “This is ridiculous. And wrong. If there was nothing else that could be done - nothing, then believe me, I would go in peace and sadly languish in the city orphanage or wherever -” “You’re not being sent to an orphanage -” Eden waved an impatient hand between their faces at the woman’s weak-voiced protest. “That’s not my point. I’m trying to say that I can’t even mourn in peace because of how incredibly c****d up this all is. It isn’t even subtle. What are you all going to do when I go and report this to, I don’t know, the state’s attorney general?” “Eden,” the woman began again, her voice sickeningly cajoling and sympathetic. “I know this must be hard for you, but -” “Can we not repeat ourselves? Do you have more than one setting?” Eden stood up and moved away as if she couldn’t bear to even be near the woman, and paced up and down along the narrow corridor with her hands clasped behind her back. “No. This is a blatant manipulation from within city law. I won’t just stand here and eat it.” She turned around and narrowed her eyes at the woman who was still sitting in her seat but now appeared visibly more uncomfortable than she had a moment ago. “Mrs. Hoggsfan, I’m not specifically accusing you. But you are a cog in the machine, so if I tell you these things, you’ll report back to your superiors, won’t you.” Eden resisted the temptation to roll her eyes when the woman declined to respond. How professional and bureaucratic. If only she didn’t want to scream, to rage, to beat the floor and the walls in the ceiling until her hands bled right now. If only she didn’t want to reach over and pluck the woman’s eyes from her head and fling them down the hallway. It was so hard to push back the tidal wave of grief that she knew lurked just around the corner of her mind, where she had forced it to remain in wait like a shaking tower missing all of its supports. It was so much harder to be patient with the idiots that surrounded her when she utterly, unabashedly, wanted to curl up and die. All she had was her coldness, the ability to shove aside emotions to examine at a later, and better, date. Because grief could come later. Now, she wanted revenge. “Mrs. Hoggsfan, please. I’m not here to waste my time or yours. So if you could just - dial your boss the district attorney and let him know that I’d like to meet in the morning. He can always avoid me, but then I’d have to go crying in the streets like the orphan girl I am about how Mr. Beauchamp is so heartless to even the most vulnerable of his constituency, a.k.a. me. And as far as I’m aware, district attorneys in Alexandria are still elected by local voters. On an unrelated note, aren’t elections just around the corner in a couple months?” More silence. Eden’s head pounded with the beginning of another brutal headache. Stop, she told herself sternly. Later. She couldn’t let go here, not now. When she was safe and alone in the dark somewhere no one could see, she could let the dam shatter and finally just feel. But not right now. Feeling was not allowed, not yet. She had so many things to do first. “Eden?” She leaned forward slightly. “Yes?” The woman seemed to look for the right words to say. Why couldn’t she have figured that out before calling her name, Eden thought impatiently, but she somehow found the willpower to wait until the district attorney’s assistant could speak again. “How old are you, again?” She did roll her eyes this time. Irrelevant, always. How many times had she heard that question in her life? University lectures, fellowships, student conferences, tech demos, she couldn’t escape it. “Fourteen, thanks for asking. I love that question, it’s my favorite.” Mrs. Hoggsfan gave her a smile of mixed nervousness, disconcertedness, and worst of all, pity. Eden hated that. It just reminded her even more of everything that had happened - stop! She clenched her fists and dug her nails into her palm to punish herself for the distracting thoughts that insisted on creeping over her mind from all sides. Please, she begged herself. Not now. Crying never solved anything, and right now was the most important time of all to hide every weakness, every vulnerability, every little imperfection that they could dig their hooks into. Cold. Empty. Efficient. That was all she needed to be, and that was all she would be. Things would work out. They had to. “Do you have any friends you want to be with, Eden?” Friends? She had a few of those, sure. She knew how to twist herself into the kind of thing they liked, what they wanted. The quick-witted, cheeky little prodigy friend that they could tote around like an exotic pet. Funny, cute, charming. But friends that she could rely on, friends she could lean on through thick and thin and the loss of the only three people she loved in all the world, all the universe? Eden pointed at the wall again, indicating the morgue once more. “Yes,” she said. “But my sister’s dead, too, and you all won’t let me see her.” Mrs. Hoggsfan said nothing, and stagnant silence fell between them again. One of the ceiling lights chose that moment to flicker a few times before dying completely. What an apt metaphor, Eden thought bitterly. Fine, then. They could have it their way, all of them. “Right, so I guess you’ll let the DA know everything that I said. My face comes up in the local newspaper more than enough times already, but with everything that’s happened now, I’ll make sure to let the public know every second of every hour what the DA’s office did tonight. Don’t let him forget that I can and will get the state attorney general’s attention if he doesn’t fix this, either. I don’t care if I have to flood the AG’s office with photocopied letters every hour and a phone call on top of that. And not just the attorney general. Every state supreme court justice, every city commissioner. The President. Everyone will know. I don’t care what I have to do. And believe me, I will get there. I don’t care what it takes.” Eden was almost panting by the time the last vehement word left her mouth. She thought her chest would cave in. Was this grief? Was this what it felt like, a weight that crushed her lungs and a vice that squeezed her heart until she thought it would burst into pieces? Mrs. Hoggsfan smiled. Slow and sad. Pitying. “All right,” she said. “Then let’s take you to where you’re staying tonight, at least.” Eden stared at her, contemplating whether she should fling herself at the woman and gouge her eyes out. Make her feel the smallest fraction of the screaming agony, the dark fury and rage and choking anguish crawling under her skin right this second. “Okay,” she said. “That’s a great idea. Let’s go.”