Читать книгу Soul Murder - Daniel Blake - Страница 11

Jesslyn left early the next morning, as though she was going to work as usual.

She’d told Mark – Mark Beradino, her partner – nothing. It helped that she liked to keep her work and home lives separate – whatever Mark knew of her job was what she chose to tell him, or not tell him – but still…How could she explain it all to him? Where would she even begin?

She had no idea; and, until she did, she figured it was best to keep quiet, and somehow square the silence up between herself and God.

What she did know was that the longer she left it, the harder it would be. Every secret she kept from Mark made keeping the next one both easier and necessary.

She hadn’t told him about her affair with Mara, so she hadn’t been able to tell him about Mara’s complaints, so she hadn’t been able to tell him about yesterday’s tribunal, so she hadn’t been able to tell him she’d been dismissed, so she had to go off today to keep the pretence that everything was normal.

And going off today meant she’d have to go off tomorrow, and the next time.

She couldn’t keep doing that indefinitely; at least, not without somewhere to go and something that would pay her, because corrections didn’t pay like Wall Street in the first place, and she didn’t have much in the way of savings.

So she needed a job. Not just any job – a job which offered shifts. Prison work wasn’t nine to five; like the police, prison officers worked eight-hour shifts, sometimes on the night watch. She couldn’t keep up the pretence for long if she took employment as an office clerk.

It didn’t have to be a great job. In fact, it almost certainly wouldn’t be.

But as long as it paid, and got her out of the house, it would do, at least until something better came along. And she could pass the time by savoring the righteous anger which burned within her. She’d given her life to her vocation, and she’d been cast aside like a piece of flotsam.

That wasn’t the way you treated people. There would be retribution; that was not only her right, but her duty too.

She recited to herself the words of Exodus 21: 23. ‘And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.’

Burning for burning. Stripe for stripe.

Jesslyn realized she was heading towards Muncy; reflex, perhaps, or providence. Ahead, she saw signs to the DuBois travel plaza, where she’d stopped yesterday.

She pulled off the interstate, parked the Camry, and went back into the burger bar.

Esmerelda wasn’t on duty today. At the counter was a guy with acne and eyeglasses who could barely have been out of his teens. His nametag proclaimed him not only to be ‘Kevin’, but also the manager.

‘Help you?’ he said, in exactly the same tone Esmerelda had used the day before. Must have been something they taught at burger college.

Jesslyn couldn’t remember feeling as demeaned as she did now. Only her faith that God would provide, and that He moved in mysterious ways, forced the index finger of her right hand up and in the direction of the EMPLOYEES WANTED sign.

‘I’d like a job, please,’ she said.