"Down! Down!" Sweetheart hits her wooden tray with the open palm of her hand. Her discarded spoon rattles.
Daryl puts his spoon down and unlatches the tray. Sweetheart turns around in the highchair, backs down off it slowly, feeling for the floor, and promptly starts to run off.
"Wait!" Carol demands, and the toddler submits to having her hands and face wiped with a cloth napkin before she's set free. The little girl runs over to Stinky's plastic aquarium on the footlocker and kneels down to babble at her pet lizard. "Don't talk to anyone about anything I've told you about this case," says Carol, returning her attention to her husband, "not even Mitch."
Daryl grunts, as if it was a given he doesn't gossip anyway. "Could probably tell Gunther, though. Bet Dianne'll tell 'em."
Carol thinks of what she overheard outside the hallway and suddenly feels less hungry. She stirs the last of her stew slowly and watches it ripple.
Daryl lowers his head to catch her eye. "Y a'right?"
She lets go over her spoon. "I'm worried about Gunther." She tells him what she overheard.
"Gunther's gonna be fine. 'S a damn workhorse." Daryl says it with exaggerated confidence, and Carol realizes he's not just reassuring her. He's reassuring himself. Gunther is his friend now, too.
Gunther's one of the "boys" Daryl plays poker with once a week. The "boys" rotate – sometimes Garland can get away and join in, and sometimes Dante or Santiago - but Gunther, like Mitch and Daryl, is always there. Carol is glad Daryl's found a group of male friends here in Jamestown. He's never been quick to make friends, she knows, and she was the first real friend he'd ever had. Rick was his first close male friend, and then there was Aaron. But he's never had a group of guys before.
"'Sides, he ain't been drinkin' for a long time now. 'Sposed to fix his blood pressure."
"I think he's recently learned he has a problem other than just his blood pressure."
"Probably just pulled a muscle breakin' a horse," Daryl mutters.
"Yeah," Carol says quietly. "Maybe."
Daryl slurps down the rest of his broth and clears his bowl almost angrily to the tub. She wishes now she hadn't mentioned it. "Santiago thought I was forty-six," she says by way of changing the subject.
He plops back down in the wooden chair again and draws his mason jar of iced tea a bit closer. He looks at her curiously. "And?"
Carol shrugs. "And it was flattering, that's all."
"'S flattering about it?"
"Because I'm a lot older."
"Ya are? How old are ya?"
She chuckles and pushes her now nearly empty bowl forward. "I've told you before."
"Yeah, but that was…dunno. Year ago? Two years ago? Three?"
"And how old was I then?"
"Fifty?" he guesses.
"I turn fifty-four next Tuesday," she admits, even though she wasn't planning to mention her birthday. "I'm an old woman. I'm a grandmother."
"Fifty-four ain't old. 'N yer the sexiest damn grandma I ever saw."
She smiles. "How old are you?"
"Fifty-two?" he guesses.
"I think fifty-one. That dairy girl thought you were forty-two, though."
"Nah she didn't. Just said that 'cause she wants to take a ride on the Daryl Express."
Carol's glad she hasn't been sipping her tea, because it would just about stream out of her nose right now. When she's done laughing, she says, "I prefer the longer, winding route."
He smirks. "Yeah? Wanna see the scenery tonight?"
"I'm not sure how late I'll be back from my meeting. But I'm glad I've taught you some of my corny sex joke skills." She stands and clears her bowl, pausing to kiss the top of his head on the way there. After she sets the bowl down in the soapy tub of water, she's swept back against Daryl's chest and assaulted with a string of little kisses on her neck.
"Daddeee!" shouts Sweetheart, running from Stinky's aquarium behind the couch in the tiny living room and to the kitchen counter. "Dadeee! No! Dat tickles mommy!"
"Mama likes me to tickle 'er." Daryl nips at Carol's neck, and she squirms and laughs.
Sweetheart wedges herself half between their legs and tries to push Daryl off. "Dada! No!"
"Ah. I see now." Daryl steps back, sweeps the toddler up, swings her a bit and says, "You wanna be tickled, too." He lifts her up by her armpits and blows a raspberry on her stomach through her faded Elmo t-shirt, and she howls with laughter.
Carol washes the dishes while Daryl brings a laughing Sweetheart into the living room to play with her. There's a bit of family fun time before Carol tucks Sweetheart into her bed and reads to her from her now favorite book, Chick A Boom Boom. Sweetheart points to the D. "B!" she says proudly. She points to the F. "E!" she cries.
When Carol's kissed her on the forehead and drawn her curtains, she finds Daryl in the armchair fiddling with his crossbow. "She don't know any of her letters," he says as Carol snaps on her gun and badge.
"She' not even three, Daryl. That's perfectly normal. They'll start teaching her in preschool."
"VanDaryl knows."
"It's not a competition. And if you try to make it one, Daryl, you're going to lose. VanDaryl's…he's really smart."
"So's Sweetheart."
"She's no dummy," Carol agrees. "And she's got a lot of energy. She's going places. Just probably not the same places VanDaryl is going. They're different kids. And Gary's a whole other can of worms. Don't do the comparison thing. It's not fair to any of them."
"Mhmhm," Daryl agrees. "Just…" He lays his crossbow across his knees. "Dunno what 'm doing' here, Carol. As a daddy."
"I think you know exactly what you're doing. Just loving on her. And keeping her safe. That's all you have to do." Carol leans down and presses her lips gently against his forehead. "I'll be back…I don't know when. After ten maybe. I might try to talk to Dianne after the meeting. Don't wait up for me. I know you leave early to hunt tomorrow."
He nods. "Been havin' trouble findin' game since June. Think they're movin' to other lands. Might have to find new huntin' grounds. Gonna look at a map. See where all the old parklands were."
"There's a whole section of maps in the library. I'll take care of getting Sweetheart to and from daycare tomorrow," she assures him.
When her hand is on the door handle, he says, "Get that black widow."
[*]
Earl's cabin has been reconstructed since Olivia, Jeremy, and their baby Hope moved out and Rosita became his wife. The wooden divider that ran between the two halves has had an open doorway cut out in the middle, and there's a window cut out on one side so they can peer in on Benji's room when needed. The baby's room is divided from the hallway, if that's what you call it, and the kitchen with wood stove by a heavy drape on the other side. Rosita and Earl's bedroom opens onto the living room where the fireplace rests, but there's now more furniture around the hearth.
Carol takes a seat on the couch – the worn and torn leather cushions of which have been recovered with cloth slipcovers - between Dianne and Santiago, because Sarah seems more comfortable in the wooden and wicker rocking chair. Rosita, her AR-15 dangling over her shoulder, kisses Earl goodbye before slipping out the door to her front guard duty.
Earl peeks in on Benji, draws the curtain over his little window, and returns to lean by the hearth. "So let's review what we've learned."
Carol recounts what she learned about Susan Lawson's recent spending habits. She shares with them Dr. Ahmad's conclusion that the chest shot was at close range and the fact that Lawson wouldn't buy cherries and seemed to be hiding the fact that he had a fortune.
Earl and Santiago talk about what they found in the bedrooms of the Godspeed. "The two-foot test didn't prove anything," Earl says. "Any which way she would have had to shoot at close range. They clearly slept apart at least some of the time, but we can't prove they slept apart that night. The sheets have been burned, so we couldn't examine the blood stains. The blood seeped through to the mattress, so it was burned too, but, after talking to Alvarado…Dianne? Want to fill everyone in on that?"
Dianne has looked distracted the whole time Earl's been talking. She's been staring into the empty hearth, which has one stick of charred wood leftover from the last cool day in early May. Carol wonders if Gunther has shared his bad health news with her and if that's why she looks so off in her own head. Dianne turns her attention to Earl now, fishes into the front pocket of her button-down, short sleeve shirt, and pulls out a plastic bag with a bullet inside. "Lieutenant-Commander Alvarado fished it out of the mattress when they went to clean the room. He asked Andrew if he wanted it, but Andrew said no since they already knew what happened."
Carol shakes her head. "Well, now we know why Dr. Ahmad didn't find a bullet in his chest." He did find a bullet in the walker's head however. It penetrated the front of the transformed Lawson's forehead, went through his brain – if you could still call it a brain - and then lodged in a bone in the backside of the skull without coming all the way out.
"Alvarado held onto it, just in case," Dianne continues. "It's 9 mm, matches her gun, but we knew that. She said she shot him twice." She leans forward and Earl takes the bag from her and lays it on the mantle. "Ballistics, even if we had it, wouldn't tell us anything we didn't already know. But now we know there was a hole in the mattress, and a bullet in that hole. Alvarado says the hole was about in the middle of the mattress, three feet from the head."
"So about where the chest would be if a man was lying in bed," Carol observes. "If he was crawling out of bed toward her when she shot him, and on his side, or half sitting up, or in any position other than lying on his back, the bullet hole should have been in the wall."
"Exactly," Earl agrees. "And Andrew said he thinks Lawson was on his back when he got to the scene. We knew that, but the bullet hole in the mattress suggests he never left his back."
"She shot him in his chest while he was asleep," Carol concludes. "And then she waited for him to transform, and when he sat up, she shot him in the head, and he fell onto his back." She looks at Dianne. "What did Alvarado say? Did he hear the gunshots that night? Were they far apart?" If there was at least a five-minute delay between the shots, that's evidence Susan Lawson waited for her husband to transform between shots. If the shots were back to back, their case is shot. Carol's never seen a transformation take place in seconds before, but she has seen them take place anywhere between five minutes and twelve hours. And Lawson was clearly turned.
"Lieutenant-Commander Alvarado says the first shot probably woke him," Dianne replies, "but he thought he was dreaming, and he drifted back to sleep. Then the second shot woke him for good. But he has no idea how long passed between shots, if he drifted back to sleep for thirty seconds or thirty minutes. He feels like he was asleep for a while, but he can't swear to it. He grabbed his rifle and ran for the Godspeed after the second shot."
"Did you talk to Connie?" Carol asks.
"Connie obviously didn't hear anything," Earl says.
"No, but she was sleeping right beside Alvarado. She might have noticed when he woke up both times, and how much time passed between the two times he woke up."
"Good point. Would you talk to her then?" Earl asks. "You've been learning sign language, right?"
"Yes. I'll talk to her." They use sign language with VanDaryl a little here and there, though he can hear (partially) and talk (a little loudly and with his words not quite annunciated correctly). But sometimes it's easier to communicate with him that way – no repeating yourself.
"It doesn't seem likely you could fall back to sleep between two shots right on top of each other," Santiago notes. "There couldn't have been more than a minute between shots if she was really shooting twice at a cannibal coming at her."
"So at this point," Sarah says, "we're all sure she did it. We're just trying to gather enough evidence to prove it in court?"
Earl nods. "So what was your read on the widow when you talked to her?"
"I took Carol's advice and pretended I was just bringing her a casserole to help her through her mourning. I was a visiting, concerned neighbor. Sorry, honey," Sarah tells Santiago, "but I had to talk shit about you to build comradery to get her to talk."
"What shit?" Santiago asks with alarm.
"Mostly made up."
"Great. Now it's going to go everywhere and everyone's going to believe it." He drums his fingers with irritation on the arm of the couch. "Wait, what do you mean mostly made up?"
Sarah smiles affectionately, "Anyway, she admitted to me her husband was no prize either."
"Oh, so now I'm no prize?"
"I'll find a way to make it up to you tonight, I promise."
This lightens the cloud across Santiago's face and he shoots her a lecherous smile.
Sarah rests a hand on her pregnant stomach. "She came to Jamestown early, less than two years after the Outrbeak, after Jamestown was secured. She married him because she said in those days, it seemed women either had to be whores or break their backs hoeing the new fields or finishing the outer fence. If she married him, he promised she wouldn't have to work. But then he turned out to be a cheap bastard. They were always squeaking by, even though he had a fortune in ammunition – which – Carol got this right – she didn't know about until three months ago."
"I imagine it angered her to learn that," Carol says.
Sarah nods.
"Enough to kill him?" Santiago asks. "I mean, it seems clear she did kill him, but…really? After over eight years of marriage? And to start spending like wild right after, and to place that advertisement, and to admit to Sarah she didn't have the happiest marriage - would she really be that stupid?"
"In my experience as an insurance investigator in the old world," Earl says, "Criminals are a lot dumber than you would think."
"Is that what you did?" Santiago asks. "Did you even carry a gun in that line of work?"
"With a citizen's concealed permit, sure. And what did you learn in the Border Patrol? Are criminals geniuses?"
"I didn't do any investigations," Santiago admits. "Mostly tracking and apprehensions and intercepting smugglers. But…no. I didn't find the criminals among them to be the sharpest tools in the shed. Still. To murder your husband. After eight years."
"Don't worry, honey, I don't plan to kill you in your sleep," Sarah assures him.
"Why didn't she just leave him?" Santiago asks.
"Because then she wouldn't have had his 3,000 rounds of ammo," Carol says. "Or his 15 hour a week widow's pension. Anger. Greed. There as common motives as any."
"3,000 rounds doesn't last forever," Santiago says. "Especially not the way you say she's been spending it."
"Which is why she's looking for a new working husband," Sarah tells him.
"Any response to her ad?" Earl asks.
"She's had a couple nibbles, she said," Sarah replies. "But they were just looking for sex."
"Sounds like she wouldn't mind being a prostitute," Santiago mutters. "Could have just become one in the first place."
"Well, she didn't actually have to have much sex much with Lawson," Sarah says. "He had a little trouble getting it up."
"How on God's green earth did you get her to tell you that?" Santiago asks. "You didn't lie and say I have trouble in that area, did you?"
Sarah shrugs and Earl chuckles.
"You know that's going to go all over town, and I'm never going to live it down," Santiago complains. "I can't go to poker night now!"
"Well you won't be able to go to poker night anyway for a while after the baby comes," Sarah reminds him.
Santiago shakes his head.
"So to recap," Earl says, "the evidence is as follows…" He rattles off everything they have to make a case against Susan Lawson. "Carol, you talk to Connie in the morning and see if we can get some more evidence that way. Santiago, you come with me when I make the arrest tomorrow night. We'll let her fill the tavern's coffers for another day first."
As they all shuffle out of Earl's cabin, Carol asks Dianne, "Are you all right?"
Dianne sighs. "I was distracted in there. I'm sorry. It's just…over dinner, Gunther kind of dropped a bomb on me."
"You need to talk?" Carol asks. "The tavern's open for another hour. I could buy you a drink?"
Dianne nods. "Yeah. Yeah I could use a sounding board."
Together, they walk through the now torch-lit old fort to the path that leads to the Indian Village and the tavern.