Disclaimer: Jericho does not belong to me.
Heather has had to make a lot of mental adjustments since the night that she climbed into that truck and followed Ted back to New Bern, and she likes to think that she has rolled with the difficulties of the situation in which she has placed herself reasonably well. She knew on an intellectual level that things would be different in the town in which she grew up (not that she had given herself much in the way of time to ponder such a thing when she decided to take the plunge and leave Jake behind on the road back to Jericho). She had known (in theory anyway) that each community coping their way through this disaster would be doing it in a slightly different manner. New Bern is different than Jericho; Jericho is different than New Bern. If she had the chance to look over the way any other communities are getting along, then she is sure that they would be different from both of them. She is not going to play the so and so would have handled it this way instead game - no matter how tempting of a mental exercise it may be.
She may have grown up here, but she is a visitor now (and there are some people around that are bound and determined to make sure that she has no chance of forgetting that fact of her current existence). She is trying to focus on getting the job she came to do accomplished without spending much time questioning the restructuring that had occurred before she arrived (and that has continued to unfold in the time that she has been present). Mostly, she succeeds at this well enough that some of the questions she would normally be inclined to ask do not come flying out of her mouth at inopportune moments. (It did not take any time at all for her to learn that her hometown had become the sort of place where questions were not encouraged.)
There are just a few things that she cannot seem to keep herself from getting hung up on as she watches them play out around her – no matter how much she tells herself to keep her head down and her work progressing. (She cannot completely turn it off – she still has people here that she cares about and feels like she needs to look after.) One of those things is the man that the majority of people in town seem to be looking to to lead them during this time. She does not understand – she maybe cannot understand since she has not been here the whole time to experience what it was like and how things unfolded. It does not seem to matter how often she reminds herself of that fact – it cannot dissuade her from wondering what it is that people find to inspire the confidence that the man seems to feel is his due.
She does not remember Sheriff Constantino being this . . . well, creepy for lack of a better word back when she had been a teenager. She had, of course, not been in the habit of running afoul of the law back in those days. Given that, it might be that the man has always exuded this strange vibe and she was just never in a position to notice it before. She doubts that this is the case given that the man has continually won reelection with little to no opposition since the year before she was born. It seems unlikely that people would not have exhibited a little more distrust – surely there would have been less amity toward his reelection campaigns if he always set people on edge the way that he does now? Truly, she never spent more than a passing moment in the man's presence before, so she does not have much information for building a basis for comparison. A few phone calls to the local police department from neighbors may have been made during her growing up years, but no one ever realized that the noise disturbances had been some experiments with dry ice. Thus, she did not have any law enforcement run ins on her resume.
She wishes she could still say the same. The truth is that the man kind of makes her skin crawl – and that makes her uncomfortable not only for the obvious reasons but also because she can not seem to put into words a reason as to why that is. It is not the edgy prickling at the back of her neck feeling of being watched (although she has had plenty of those moments since she arrived back in town). It is not the gross eyes brushing across her skin feeling that she associates with jerks who are over their limit in bars either. This is different than those sensory experiences. She cannot put a name to it. She just knows that the man gives her the heebies.
The only semi logical reason she can think of is the easy way he assumes more responsibilities in the town seemingly with every passing day. She has watched a variety of people step up into various leadership capacities since this all started back when she was still in Jericho, and there has always been a certain level of hesitancy to those individuals. They tended to give off a sense of doing because it needed doing or radiated a discomfort that she figured came from knowing that responsibility carries a weight to it compounded with the knowledge that the situation did not provide much leniency for learning curves or slack to catch yourself with if you happened to stumble along the way.
Even Grey Anderson (at his most pontificating, jerky moments) honestly believed that there were things that should be done differently and in a manner that he viewed as better – he was doing what he did out of a desire to serve.
Phil Constantino does not fit with any of what she has grown used to seeing as a pattern. He seems pleased when the people around him back down on issues of leadership. The once and still Sheriff and now Mayor of the community never seems to encourage people to keep trying to find their footing in this upended world of theirs. He simply commends people for recognizing their personal short comings and limits and gladly takes on whatever mantel of leadership they previously held – consolidating control of one more area of life in the town. Then, he appoints someone who will follow his orders to handle the "day to day" for him. It is disturbing, and she knows that she is not the only one who feels that way.
People can pretend all they want, but she can see and feel the tension that rises in people whenever the man makes one of his visits to check up on their work in the factory. She can recognize the silences for what they are when her friends from childhood do not say certain things when there is any chance of someone overhearing. It is not her imagination; it is not just her.
There is something very wrong in this place.