Perp-Walk Prologue
I was a good girl. Before I went viral, before anyone chanted about locking me up or threatened me with death (at first only online), I never expected to be arrested. When I first got handcuffed, I couldn’t stop crying. Wondering: how can this be happening to me?
A hard-working scholarship kid; a devoted daughter to the single Mom who literally worked her own heart out for me. Later a semi-successful Gaming Designer, concocting virtual Warrior Princesses in honor of my feminist Mom. Also in honor of Mom, I volunteered for a few Pro-Choice candidates (though I was hardly an ‘activist,’ as headlines later claimed). In my mid-thirties, I finally became a wife, marrying Wally Flynn: a good guy; a fellow runner, gamer, and nerd who loved skinny, ambitious, sharp-tongued me—even if some in his family did not.
But Wally and I hoped to start our own family; surely once we had a baby, I’d be accepted by the loud, proud, conservative Flynns. This, anyway, was the—my—plan.
“Make a plan,” my Mom used to warn her control-freak daughter, “and make God laugh.” Mellow Mom would chide me for overthinking everything with this brain-twister: “Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.” I never knew what the hell that meant. Until around 7:50PM on the game-changing evening of April 8th, 2021.
Today is the tomorrow, I tell myself as I am told to place my hands behind my back. Which is hard to do because I’m crying. Because I know this is the day I’ve worried about all my life. God is laughing at me, I think, channeling Mom as I am handcuffed. Cold metal cuffs bite into my bony wrists, surely too tight. But I don’t dare say so to the no-nonsense crew cut cop. Anyway, I can’t speak because I can’t stop crying. And I can’t wipe my eyes or my runny nose with my damn hands clasped behind my back.
I feel like a Slime Monster in one of my games as the cop walks me (‘perp-walks’ me?) down the empty hall with its watchful, knotty-pine walls. My sister-in-law Susan must be in the master bedroom with the girls, my dear nieces, because I hear the baby crying. They’ll be safe with Susan, I tell myself as I am steered to the house’s front door—weirdly wide-open.
The spring night breeze cools my hot wet face as I stand in the doorway. Baby Susy is still crying. What about my own maybe-baby: the cellular being that may be beginning to form inside of me? Two squad cars are parked in the driveway, blue lights flashing. I swallow back my tears in this last moment inside my in-laws’ house. The scene of the crime.
Behind me in the Common Room, cops from the second car are snap-snapping photos, their boots thump-thumping as they circle what I can’t see, what must be the body.
Because they’re saying that man is dead, though he wasn’t, isn’t, because I didn’t—
“I didn’t DO this,” I insist yet again, my voice hoarse from all our shouting. “Please, Officer—if you just ask my sister-in-law, ask Susan—”
“We’ll talk to everyone down at the station,” the cigarette-breathed cop replies brusquely, his voice deeper and hoarser than mine. He presses the small of my back and all but pushes me out of the house.
I stumble into the chill night air, rich with crickets. Already shivering in my fateful tee shirt. I long to twist my deft slender hands, somehow slip the tight handcuffs and just—what I most love—run. Instead, unbalanced with both hands bound, I shuffle onto the driveway, crunching gravel.
The squad cars’ blue lights pulse with some code I don’t understand.
“Can we please just speak to Susan before we go?” I plead, other desperate questions cramming my mind as I am perp-marched forward. Will Susan be ‘detained’ too? Will she tell these cops what really happened with me and her and that guy? How I did—tried to do—the right thing tonight? Why isn’t Wally here with me now, instead of up on that damn mountain?
I might be pregnant, I want to tell this Officer, maybe a father himself. I stumble to a stop before the closest squad car. Its blue lights blink, harsh to my teary eyes.
“Get in the vehicle.” The Cop swings open its door. But I stiffen, resisting his hand pressing me forward. My sharp elbows—pointing out like stunted wings—twitch. “It’s not a ‘choice,’” this man adds: an edge to his flat voice now.
I stand stubbornly still, shivering uncontrollably in the tee shirt I never should’ve pulled on. Ages ago, this morning. The ‘My Body, My Choice’ shirt I wore on a foolish whim today because the men and boys were all off camping and Susan had always been so silent in Jack’s and my fierce political dinner-table fights. So I’d wondered if this shirt, just among us girls, might spark a conversation with Susan. What in all Hell has it sparked instead?
“Get in.” The Cop plants his clammy hand on my head, flattening my lush mussed-up hair, my pride. He forces me down, far down, into the squad car. Bars and a grimy plastic shield divide its front and back. I collapse onto the broken-springed backseat. I gasp the smoke-and-puke smell. I nuzzle my own hiked-up shoulder in a crude effort to wipe my face. Then I gaze up at the Cop in one last silent plea. But no.
At approximately 8PM on April 8th, 2021—as the car door slams in my smeared, shamed face—I am officially taken into custody.
Officially fucked, I think as the Greene County Police squad car with its shot springs bumps down the dirt road, leading to my in-law’s home. I’m rattling inside and out; I’m longing to press my hand over my flat belly, to hold my microscopic future-fetus in place. If there is a possible pregnancy; something I suddenly wonder if I should hope for anymore.
Every certain thing from my old life seems to rapidly retreat behind me in the cop’s rearview mirror as he swings the squad car onto the main road, picking up speed. Its siren yelps—vibrating above and inside me—then cuts itself off as if flummoxed too. The dark, pine-lined, two-lane highway unrolls in reverse from when Wally and I drove in on it yesterday. Hopeful (or I was) that this family visit would go well, go better.
How’d that work out for you? I ask my new stunned, seemingly helpless self. Was I truly out of choices? How had it—this visit, this night, my life—gone so wrong so fast?
PART ONE
Sadie,
the Wife
April 7, 2021; Mid-Day
On April 7th, the last day of my own personal BeforeTimes, I felt less than my usual Flynn Family Trip trepidation, driving across the Massachusetts state line into New York. Maybe all of it—my whole spectacular downfall—began somehow with the flush of confidence I felt as we drove toward our first visit in over a year, following our long (too long, my brother-in-law would say) pandemic lockdown.
Maybe all that will give us more perspective, I wished aloud to Wally. Maybe Jack and Susan would give their feminist Boston-born sister-in-law a second chance, this trip.
“As long as you do the same with them,” Wally at the wheel reminded me, his glasses flashing as he glanced at me. His thick curls blew sideways, the same rich auburn as his big brother Jack’s. But Jack had a beard, and a heavier ruddier face; a quicker temper.
“I know, I promise. I’ll keep my opinions to myself, this time. I’ll be a good girl.”
We’d been driving the rural highway route for hours by then. First the granite-hewed corridor of the Berkshires, then the wilder more densely forested highways tunneling into New York state. I rolled down my window, enjoying big mask-free breaths of bracing exhaust-laced Spring air, deliciously fresh to my Boston lungs, which must be as sooty as our city windowsills.
I let my long black hair—longer since lock-down, when I’d stopped getting regular cuts—blow free. Watching the green blur of soldier-straight trees, I pictured jogging alongside Wally on the dirt road by Jack’s house in the pure morning air, running hard as if we were in Boot camp, in a good way. Plus, we’d have fun, as always, with the kids, with my Mary.
“I mean, it’s not just Jack and Susan,” I reminded Wally as I slipped my iPad from my purse. “We’ll get to see Mary and the boys too…”
Wally nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “It’s always worth it. These trips…”
“True that. And I really will play it safe. Except—in Darkest Night…” I clicked on my iPad; I began tapping away on notes for my latest Darkest Night design.
The real world vanished with each key click like it did when I was just another gaming-crazed College kid. More so, now that I controlled the games. I’d parlayed my drawing chops, plus my Women’s Studies BA expertise on ‘Women Warriors in Ancient Mythology,’ into a fledgling series. I’d made my newest 2021 episodes take place in China. Hoping in some small way to counter the Asian hate prompted by what Jack called the ‘Chinese virus.’
My fingers flew along; I outlined a chase scene for Empress Chin: gliding the palace always, her bare feet under her robes never touching the stone floor.
“—Only a few minutes,” Wally gently warned me later, breaking my typing trance. I blinked and looked up from my freshly outlined plan. Empress Chin vanquishing the Orange Lord. “Earth to Sadie—” Wally at the wheel gave me a moment to re-enter reality.
“Another Flynn Family visit begins. And I’ll use all my Horror Survival gaming skills to make it the best visit yet.” I shut off my iPad with a decisive click.
“Roger that.” Wally slowed the car. “I like how you look on the bright side, Sadie—”
“The dark bright-side. Like you—”
He pulled our car onto the long dirt road leading to Jack’s. “It’s just for a week. And remember, Jack and Susan— they’re family.”
“I know. They’re your family. Our family,” I added as we bumped along the rutted road. “And this trip, I’m gonna make Jack and Susan finally start seeing me as family…”
***
We pulled to a stop; the ranch house’s front door burst open. Jack Jr. and Patrick rushed out first, their orange hair darker now. The boys—taller now too, in the year since we’d seen them—clustered around Wally as he climbed from the car, bouncing on their heels.
“Uncle WALL-EEE!” Jack Jr. shouted, barrel-chested and big-voiced like his Dad. “We’re goin’ SHOOTING with you to-MOR-row—”
Red-bearded Jack strode out behind the boys, heavier than a year before. He bear-hugged skinny Wally. “The boys don’t believe you know how to shoot, Wall-Eyes—”
“Oh yeah? You better watch your back, Bro!” Wally punched Jack’s solid shoulder.
I climbed out of the car, slipping over to Wally. The boys made gun shapes with their hands, ‘shooting’ Wally, who clutched his chest. “Agghh! But I was watching my BACK—”
“You can’t watch YOUR back,” Patrick pointed out in his serious way. A mini-version of his skinny, auburn-haired uncle, he let me give him a sideways hug.
“Uncle Wally, you gotta die!” Jack Jr. commanded, both bossy and whiney.
Wally and Jack and I all laughed as Jack Jr. demonstrated ‘dying,’ falling on the grassy lawn by the driveway. Behind us, the front door of the house opened again.
“Auntie—” Mary rushed over to me, taller than last time too, her blonde ponytail bouncing. She tackled me with a full Mary hug, clutching my waist but shouting like I was still far away. “Auntie Sadie!”
“My Mary!” I pulled Mary close, smoothing her ponytail. The boys and Wally crowded around Jack, who was showing them a Shooting Range website on his iPhone.
“An’ no GIRLS get to go SHOOTING,” Jack Jr. informed Mary in loud-mouthed Flynn fashion. She pulled back from our hug to shout back indignantly.
“It’s NOT FAIR! I wanna go SHOOT-ing!”
“You ladies are staying back here,” Jack pronounced as my silent blonde sister-in-law Susan materialized at his side with downy-haired baby Susy asleep on her shoulder.
“—We wanna give Mom and Aunt Sadie a chance to talk,” Jack finished oddly. ‘Talk’ about what? I wondered, noticing Susan shooting Jack a look. Like he was revealing some secret. Susan smoothed her already-smooth bangs, her lips sealed in a firm line.
“Ooh, Susy’s growing too!” I stepped up to Susan, smiling determinedly and pushing aside my worries. I reached out to caress the warm, blanketed bundle of sleeping Susy.
“No, she’s NOT,” Mary cut in. “Susy can’t play ANY-thing! I wanna play with YOU, Auntie!” Mary tugged my arm. She started to lead me toward the back yard, where the boys were now shouting, Jack and Wally laughing.
“Glad you’re here, Sadie.” Susan jiggled Susy, who’d begun to fuss. “You can help out with Mary. You two go and play with the boys. I need to change Miss Susy—”
“You ALWAYS need to change Susy!” Mary tugged me further toward the yard.
“No whining, Mary,” Susan turned back to the house, the sun lighting her and her daughters’ blonde hair. “You be nice to your Auntie Sadie—”
Mary yanked my arm harder, delivering a parting shot.
“YOU be nice to Auntie Sadie, Mommy!”
***
Susan,
the Wife and Mom
April 7, 2021; Early Evening and Late Night
Susan was the one—the only one, hope to God—who caught sight of Troy Scott in the trees. The young trees at the edge of the woods. Susan’s favorites. The dogwoods with their white petals just coming out, concealing Troy in his battered camo jacket. Troy spying on this first night with Wally and Sadie. Was Troy going to burst out of the trees and threaten them all?
Susan stood up, as if to check on the kids who were running round the yard in the last of the light. But really Susan stepped past Sadie and Wally and Jack, then headed over to the deck’s wood rail to send Troy a message. I see you, you moron. Stay away from our family.
Behind Susan, Jack laughed with Wally, Jack’s booming beer-belly laugh. Jack was too drunk already and it wasn’t even dark. So—no surprise—Susan couldn’t count on him for the rest of this night. She peered past their sunlit kids toward the shadowy trees. Which stood still now, leaves no longer rustling. Plus, Susan heard—under Jack’s laugh and the kid’s shouts—a distant cough. Troy in retreat? Was he crashing again in one of Jack’s unsold camper vans?
Jack fetched another beer from the cooler: Wally still nursing his first and Sadie sticking to soda. Maybe because high-strung, skinny Sadie was finally pregnant? Susan pondered this, leaning forward so her own swollen nursing breasts rested on the sun-warmed wood rail. She liked her voluptuous nursing breasts; Jack liked them too, she thought with a hidden half-smile. She’d worn her favorite peach-pink nursing blouse with its secret slits. Even that blouse felt a bit tight since she hadn’t lost her baby weight from Susy yet. Maybe she never would lose that weight. It’s worth it, to be heavier forever, so she can have another sweet baby girl.
But sometimes it seemed like all she’d do the rest of her life was watch over all these kids. Keep track of them, as she does even in her sleep. Quick-counting (here and now) the two red heads, the boys—chasing each other in circles, Jack Jr. waving a barbeque skewer like a sword but knowing not to stab pretend-scared Patrick—and silly-serious blonde Mary standing on the sidelines pretending to scold Jack Jr, even shaking her finger, but laughing too. Plus Baby Susy—thanks be to God—asleep in the house.
All safe, right now. For now. Except that moving in the trees only a few feet away had been crazy Troy in his worn-out camo jacket. Stalking them all? When Jack had promised he’d keep Troy away. Jack says he’s handling Troy, handling everything—ha—but Susan’s the only one who knows that Troy really might be at a breaking point. That former cool-dude Troy Scott really could bring down all of them, starting with hapless Jack. Because Susan’s weasel-brother Joey, for all his problems, is too sneaky to get caught. But Jack: good-natured, heavy-drinking Jack; he never was cut out for this criminal crap. Susan had warned Jack not to get dragged into Joey’s half-baked, hospital-drug scheme. Joey is older than Susan by two years, though he’s always seemed to be a younger brother—one Susan is still responsible for, like yet another kid.
“Hey Sue, the boys can take care of themselves over there! Ya don’t need to be the Mom Cop, honey. Jack Jr., he’s in charge, right buddy?”
“Darn right, Dad,” Jack Jr. called to Jack gamely. Their oldest Flynn Family joke, dating back to Jack and Wally’s Dad, the way he taught them to answer him. Susan had to smile too.
Jack and Wally gave their matching brotherly beer-mellowed laughs. Troy nowhere in sight now. So maybe Susan did scare him off. For now. Pushing Troy Scott from her mind, Susan turned back to the group, happily fed on her steak-tip kabobs. Hanging out together now like everything’s A-OK.
Jack was even talking directly to Sadie, which used to mean trouble. Though Jack had promised Susan that he’d lay off politics, for this trip. That he’d play nice.
“Sure you don’t want a cold one, lil’ sister-in-law?”
“Thanks Jack, I’m good,” Sadie replied with an underlying edge. Yes, Susan sensed, Sadie might be pregnant? How would that effect the ‘Big Ask’ Jack wants to make?
“O-K, I won’t ask why…” Jack shot Sadie a grin; Jack obviously wondering the same thing as Susan. Though Jack—nicer than Susan; she’ll give him that—would first just be glad for his little brother. “I’m not gonna mess with you this trip, Sadie.”
“You better not. I might zap you like one of my Warrior Princesses.” Sadie picked up a metal kabob skewer and aimed it at Jack, flashing the red-lipsticked smile that made her bony face almost pretty. Though she’s not the ‘pretty girl’ type like Susan. She’s the ‘striking’ type, with all that black hair and with what Susan’s Mom would call ‘good bones.’
Sadie set down the skewer and raised her ginger ale can, clicked it against Jack’s Coors.
“Right!” Wally gave his crooked grin. “That’s our Spring 2021 Peace Accord, bro—”
The brothers clanked their own beer cans; Sadie raised her soda can again. She turned to Susan, drawing her in. So Susan raised her own empty can, soda too since she’s nursing.
Then Sadie stood up. She shook back her hair—glossy, which could be a sign of pregnancy—and began gathering the greasy paper plates for the trash. “I want to help out around here this week with the kids—with everything, Susan. God, I don’t know how you—”
“How I do it?” Susan cut in, unable to stop herself. “I don’t know either. And I don’t know who’s gonna pay for all this if those camper vans don’t sell themselves.”
***
Later, after Wally and Sadie had gone to bed, Jack kept on drinking, passing out on the too-narrow couch like usual. Where he’d roll on the floor or throw out his bad back if she left him there. And she’s damned if she’d let Wally and Sadie find Jack on the floor. Besides, she still did like to wake up in the mornings beside Jack’s warm comforting bulk. So Susan—up late too after Susy’s 11PM feeding—wound up hauling Jack up and walking her half-conscious husband to bed, Jack leaning on her. She staggered and steered him in the usual way.
Her phone buzzed. She halted, her heavy husband leaning on her as she checked it. Shit. Joey. She tried to prop Jack against the wall as her phone buzzed and buzzed. Jack slipped and slid down the knotty-pine hall wall, passed out all over again.
Annoyed, Susan stepped over Jack’s outflung legs and answered the call, keeping her voice low, Wally and Sadie’s guest room right down the hall.
“Dammit, Joey, I told you—don’t call my cell… Stay away…”
Joey’s voice slurred, his words running together like they did when he was high.
“-But-Sue—Troy’s gonna tell those-guys ‘bout-me unless he gets-that-money—”
“Which we don’t have! Christ, I kept telling Jack to stay away from you and Troy. I’m so sick of covering up your shit, Joey. I’d have a degree in covering stuff up, if they gave ‘em!”
Susan looked around to see if anyone was hearing this unwise outburst. But all stayed quiet, except for Jack snoring, sitting slumped against the wall.
Joey’s urgent desperate voice resumed, strident and unstoppable like a baby’s cry.
“But-Sue—TROY—he’ll KILL me if I don’ get him that-fuckin’-money—He might even-tell’em about JACK—”
Susan freezes inside, her low whisper coming out a growl. “Jack’s gonna try, like he told you. He totally gets it that those guys are dangerous. He’s got a damn plan. But you’ve got to keep Troy away from here. From my family. Got it, Joey?”
Susan clicked off and pocketed her phone. She shot a quick hard look over her shoulder at the closed bedroom doors. Once she got Jack in bed, she’d check behind each door to make sure the kids were still there, sleeping safely. Jesus, what if Troy did rat out Jack? What if those dangerous dudes, the ones Troy owed money, showed up here? With the kids here?
Susan rallied her strength and hauled rubbery-legged Jack to his feet.
“Fuckin’ Joey,” Jack muttered, maybe not so out-of-it after all. “Fuckin’ fif-ty-K…”
“Shush!” Susan shout-whispered, and Jack did lower his own slurry voice.
“I gonna, gotta talk t’ Wal-ly-”
“To-MOR-row—” she whisper-shouted louder. “Remember our plan?”
Jack woozily nodded. But since when—Susan asked herself as she wrestled her heavy stumbling husband into their bedroom—did their plans ever work out?
Elizabeth Searle is the author of five books of fiction, most recently We Got Him, and the librettist of Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera, which has been widely produced and has drawn major media coverage, and she is co-writer of I’ll Show You Mine, a Duplass Brothers Production feature film, released in select theaters and widely on home screens in 2023. Elizabeth has other film scripts based on her fiction in development. Elizabeth’s previous books are My Body To You, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Prize (James Salter, judge); the novel Girl Held In Home; Celebrities In Disgrace, a novella made into a short film and A Four-Sided Bed, a novel that was a Boston Globe Paperback bestseller and was a finalist for an ALA Book Award. A Four-Sided Bed is in development as a feature film. Elizabeth’s script works have been featured on GOOD MORNING AMERICA, CBS, CNN, NPR, the AP and more. Both Elizabeth’s rock opera and feature film have generated national media attention.
