She was guardedly optimistic about Nick Clarkson. The boy was no longer quite so adamant in his belief that Bee Cuomo had stepped into the past, and the hashtag #speakforbee had gone two weeks with no new offense. Perhaps related to that, Cuomo had stopped harassing her on the phone. Olivia said he’d got sober, at least for the time.
The ache about Bee Cuomo would never go away, but there was a counterweight to the loss of a child now—or rather, two counterweights.
The first was physical: they’d found the artist who created the school’s entrance mosaic, and talked him into doing a new one, with a child wearing pigtails and glasses as one of the central images.
The second was in the realm of ideas. Cass Henry was writing a book about the year at Guadalupe: how a school had saved itself. Not that the book would be about Bee Cuomo, exactly—there were sure to be charts and jargon and studies and endless interviews. But basically, the truth might be as simple as it was mysterious: that sometimes the smallest thing could show a community how to heal. How to take its shattered pieces and fit them together again into something new. Linda had given Cass the book’s title—insisted on it, really. Speak for Bee.
Recently, though, evidence had surfaced to suggest that Bee’s disappearance might have been by choice: a seller of antique jewelry (some of it stolen, which explained why the woman hadn’t come forward on her own) admitted she’d bought an antique women’s Rolex from the girl, two days before Halloween. Bee claimed it was her mother’s—confirmed by Mr. Cuomo, who hadn’t noticed it was missing—and the dealer had given her $600, along with an old necklace that caught the girl’s eye.
When Olivia told her, Linda had very nearly asked if the necklace matched the one around Beatrice Weildman’s neck in the historical museum photo—but she caught herself in time. There was nothing to joke about, when it came to Bee Cuomo.
This school year began with a friendship and ended in sacrifice. It was four months since Career Day went off the rails and into death and loss and loneliness. Three months since (following vehement school board debate) Guadalupe had reopened. Eleven weeks since Linda had overseen her school’s celebration of the life of Beatrice Cuomo, with the heroes of Career Day given prominent place. And little more than a month since Linda realized Guadalupe had taken on a life of its own.
So it was something of an irony for Linda to look down at the Clarion’s headlines on the counter at her elbow:
ALVAREZ SENTENCING PHASE ENDS
Brother Arrested in Courtroom Threats
Olivia had phoned with the news that morning as Linda was dressing for graduation. The sergeant was chafing at not being permitted active duty yet, and began with the ritual question of whether Linda had heard from Gordon. The only faint benefit about the way Gordon had left was that Linda had never been forced to lie—not to Olivia, nor the investigators, not even to those hard-faced men in suits who had come asking.
All she could tell them was that Gordon was gone, and she never expected to see him again. Even the hard-faced men could see it was only the painful truth.
When the wineglass was empty, she refilled it, sticking one of the frozen dinners in the microwave. The kitchen was going cool with the coastal evening fog, so she moved to collect her dangling keys and shut the door against the night. Walking back, she bent to retrieve the fallen mail. One piece lay just under the table—a postcard, with what she assumed was an ad for a travel agency or car dealership: a bright yellow jeep on a palm tree–lined beach.
The image brought a pained smile to Linda’s face: a lanky Englishman in khaki shorts, swerving just such a car across a lonely highlands runway. Before throwing the ad into the recycling bin with the flyers, she flipped it over for an automatic glance at its back—and frowned.
Wouldn’t this make a great car for a summer holiday? Are you sure you aren’t free the end of June, to join us? Hope so—you could do with a holiday after the year you had!
Love, Beth
That didn’t look like a woman’s handwriting—far less that of a woman Linda hadn’t heard from in decades. She checked that it was actually addressed to her—yes. Funny. The writing looked almost…
The rest of the mail fell to the floor. Two quick steps took Linda to the whatnot drawer, where she dug frantically through the tangle for the magnifying glass. By the last sunlight through the window, the letters of the card’s cancellation stamp were remarkably—even suspiciously—crisp and clear.
The card had been posted in a small tourist town on the coast of Mexico, north of Puerto Vallarta.
The handwriting was Gordon’s.
For all the children who came here from somewhere else
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Lockdown is a book I have been building for nearly twenty years. At its base are a series of short stories that, when they were first published, had no apparent connection. I, however, always knew these stories were linked. It did take me a while to see exactly how the characters’ histories and secrets, strengths and fears fit into each other. But once the pieces came together, the pattern of the novel they were building toward became blazingly clear, and I began to write.
“Coming together” describes more than simply the making of the novel. Lockdown is a thriller set in a school under threat, but it is about the school’s community, its weak points and skills, and the strength it can find when pressed to the brink. A story about how rescue comes from within, and how heroism may rise from the most unexpected direction.
A book, like a school, is built by its community. This one owes much to my friends at Penguin Random House, including two women with the patience of Tibetan lamas, Kate Miciak and Kim Hovey, and Kate’s even more long-suffering right hand, Julia Maguire. Then there’s Kelly Chian, whose brisk conquest of a manuscript resembling a typesetter’s workshop hit by a tornado just boggles my mind. Alex Coumbis and Allison Schuster have the tricky and thankless tasks of nudging LRK across the map, while Carlos Beltrán makes sure what is on the shelf pleases the eye and tantalizes the mind, and Matt Schwartz bends the digital universe to his will. To them and the dozens of others who build books day in and day out, I give my eternal and heartfelt thanks.
As for the words themselves, some of them were given a push in the right direction by my friend, crime writer and basketball magnate S. J. Rozan (whose Bouchercon matches are a high point of that annual conference). Other words, and most of the ideas, were set into play by the hard-working teachers and staff of the various schools my own children attended on California’s Central Coast.
Thank you all, for teaching me so much.
NOVELS BY LAURIE R. KING
A Darker Place
Folly
Keeping Watch
Califia’s Daughters (written as Leigh Richards)
Lockdown
And
MARY RUSSELL NOVELS
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
A Monstrous Regiment of Women
A Letter of Mary
The Moor
O Jerusalem
Justice Hall
The Game
Locked Rooms
The Language of Bees
The God of the Hive
Beekeeping for Beginners: A Short Story
Pirate King
Garment of Shadows
Dreaming Spies
The Marriage of Mary Russell: A Short Story
The Murder of Mary Russell
Mary Russell’s War
STUYVESANT & GREY NOVELS
Touchstone
The Bones of Paris
KATE MARTINELLI NOVELS
A Grave Talent
To Play the Fool
With Child
Night Work
The Art of Detection
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAURIE R. KING is the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen Mary Russell mysteries, five contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, the Stuyvesant & Grey novels Touchstone and The Bones of Paris, and the acclaimed A Darker Place, Folly, C
alifia’s Daughters (written under the pen name Leigh Richards), and Keeping Watch. She lives in Northern California.
LaurieRKing.com
Facebook.com/LaurieRKing
Twitter: @LaurieRKing
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Laurie R. King, Lockdown
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