DMV, page 17
He opened the door a few inches and peered out. The man on the porch was middle-aged and dressed in an expensive suit. His face was red and contorted with anger, and he glared at Zal through the crack in the door. “Where are my orange cones? What did you do with them?”
“What?” Zal said, confused. He was still groggy.
“The cones I use to save my parking space. I know you took them.”
Bernard, Zal thought.
“You were having a party last night. I saw the riffraff parked all up and down the street, but I didn’t say anything at the time, because I wasn’t going to be home. I just stopped by for a few minutes after work and then left for the night. But when I got back this morning, my cones were gone! And someone was in my spot!”
Zal closed the door on him. Locked it.
That was his next door neighbor? What a jerk.
Feeling wide awake now, he ignored the resumed pounding and started toward the kitchen, intending to make himself some breakfast.
“You stole my cones!” his neighbor yelled. “I’m calling the police!”
“You do that!” Zal shouted back.
Who did that asshole think he was?
By the time he reached the kitchen, the guy had given up, which was too bad. Zal would have liked the man to waste his time standing on the porch and knocking on the door, while he took a long hot shower then ate a leisurely breakfast.
It had been over three weeks since he’d mown the lawn—manual labor was not his forte—and the grass was pretty overgrown. His dad had always made sure the yard was perfectly maintained, and Zal decided that he ought to at least make a minimal effort to keep the place up. He didn’t want to be the one with the trashiest house on the block, so after breakfast he went out to the garage, and wheeled both the mower and edger around the side of the house to the front yard.
He’d been lucky enough to find a parking spot in front of his own house yesterday, and as he pushed the edger down to the sidewalk, he glanced over to see which vehicle was ahead of his. It was a Range Rover, the Calverts’ from down the street. Smiling to himself, he wondered where his next door neighbor had ended up parking.
Hopefully far away.
“Psst! Zal!”
He was bending over, ready to pull the cord to start the edger’s motor, and he straightened at the sound of the voice. Mr. Garcia was standing behind a leafy tree in the strip between the sidewalk and the street, waving him over.
It was unusual behavior, to say the least, and, curious, Zal left the edger where it was and walked up to the tree.
Mr. Garcia glanced quickly around. “That lunatic who lives next to you came over and woke you up at the crack of dawn, didn’t he?”
Zal smiled. “Yeah.”
“He asked you about his precious cones, right?”
“Yes, he did. I told him I didn’t know anything about it.”
Mr. Garcia leaned forward. “I took them.”
“What?” Zal laughed.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. Every time he leaves to go somewhere, he pulls out into the street, parks his car, blocking the whole damn road, then takes those things out of his trunk and sets them up to save his spot. On a public street! Like he owns the road. Yesterday, I finally got tired of it. So after he left, I took his cones.” Mr. Garcia lowered his voice. “They’re in my garage.”
“Good for you!”
“I was thinking maybe I should put them back today. I don’t want to be caught stealing.”
“Serves him right,” Zal said. “Besides, they look like real traffic cones. He probably stole them from a construction site.”
“Then what do you think I should do? I’m sorry to burden you with this, but when I looked down the street this morning and saw him pounding on your door… Well, I don’t want to cause you any problems.”
“It’s no problem for me.” Zal thought for a minute. “You know what you should do? Put them in your trunk, and then take them to a dumpster somewhere and throw them away.” He grinned. “And if he gets some more and does it again, next time it’ll be my turn.”
Mr. Garcia laughed.
“I’m serious. Who does this guy think he is? If he’s going to be such a jerk about things, he deserves what he gets.” Zal glanced toward his neighbor’s house. “You know, I don’t even know his name.”
“I don’t, either.”
“Does he live alone? Or is there a Mrs. Psycho?”
“I haven’t seen anyone else.”
“Well, you did good. I say, get rid of those things, and if he does it again, I’ll do the honors next time. We need to nip this in the bud. For the sake of the neighborhood.”
Mr. Garcia grinned. “For the sake of the neighborhood.”
Waving, he walked up the street toward his house, while Zal returned to his edger and, bending down, pulled the cord to start the engine.
EIGHTEEN
Rosita had been spending most of the downtime she had at work, as well as much of her free time at home, trying to find out everything she could about the DMV. But while anecdotal evidence was piling up on the social media feeds of both her and Beverly, the agency clearly had the wherewithal to scrub search engines of negative publicity, since her dedicated research turned up only minor complaints about long wait times and unfriendly staff members.
She could find no mention of training camps.
Or cartoonish illustrations on driver’s licenses.
Or even crazy tests like the one Todd had taken.
But the personal testimonies of those sharing their stories with her and Beverly were very detailed and very specific, describing incidents and practices not even hinted at anywhere else. And some of those stories were horrifying.
There was a woman who claimed that she was pretty sure she’d killed a man during her driving test. Five minutes in, the examiner sitting next to her had ordered her to swerve and hit an elderly gent who was nearly at the end of a crosswalk. She’d had no intention of doing any such thing, but at the last second, the examiner grabbed the lower third of the wheel and yanked on it. The car hit the old man, who went flying off to the side, and the examiner cackled. “Got that sucker!” He then told her, “Head on back. You passed with flying colors.” She reported the incident to the police, but they didn’t believe her since no body was found at that location.
Another woman wrote that, after failing her written test for the third time, she had been locked in a small cell in the DMV office for two days, where she’d slept on the hard tiled floor. There was a sink, so she’d had water to drink, but she’d been given no food, and as there had been no toilet in the room, she was forced to use a wastepaper basket to relieve herself. After she was released, no one believed her, not even her boyfriend.
An anonymous man posted about his encounter with the DMV, where he had been led into a side room after submitting the paperwork to change the address on his driver’s license. There, an armed guard had forced him to strip naked. He was then led into another room and restrained, made to stand with his hands at his sides while a group of women seated behind a table jeered and made fun of him. Once he put his clothes on again, he was told that the updated license would be sent to his home within the next six weeks. His attempts to complain up the chain of command had gone nowhere, and he’d been too embarrassed to tell the police.
Those three were only the tip of the iceberg, and Rosita and Beverly were trying to figure out a way to leverage these experiences and use them to pressure the DMV to tell them where Jorge was and what was happening to him.
Yesterday, her mama had called. Rosita was usually the one to phone her parents, since international calls were so expensive, but she’d been avoiding them since her brother’s disappearance, not wanting to talk about it with them, not wanting to worry them. She’d kept the conversation as short as possible, pretending that she had an important appointment she could not miss, but still the subject of Jorge had come up, and she’d told her mama in the vaguest terms possible that he was all right.
She vowed to herself that she would find him before her parents called again.
After spending yet another lunch hour trying unsuccessfully to find something new about the DMV that would help in her quest, Rosita emerged from the staff office behind Circulation to relieve John, who was scheduled to take his lunch. When John returned, Rosita moved over to the Reference desk, where her friend Michelle was also on duty this afternoon.
Today was Wednesday, which meant that many of the seniors who were the library’s regular weekday patrons were instead at the farmer’s market, so inquiries were intermittent, giving Rosita and Michelle plenty of time to catch up. Although Rosita had been back for a few weeks now, Michelle had only returned from furlough a couple of days ago, and the rumor going around the library was that there was probably going to be another round of layoffs. The city budget was still in dire straits, which meant that the regressive city council once again had the library in its sights.
At the same time, both the city and the library board were actively looking for new sources of revenue, and one of the funding ideas was to allow certain DMV services to be offered at the library.
It was not unprecedented. Already, it was possible to obtain a passport at the library one day a month. But the DMV idea bothered her. After everything she’d learned recently, she did not trust the DMV.
“How do you think they’ll do it?” Michelle asked. “Last hired, first fired?”
“They didn’t last time,” Rosita pointed out. “My guess—my hope—is that they’ll offer a golden parachute to some of the older employees, then leave those positions unfilled. You know, save money with an accounting trick.”
“You really think so? With this city council?”
Rosita sighed. “No, you’re probably right. I suppose it’s more likely that they’ll try to cut people’s hours so they don’t have to pay benefits. Make everyone part-time. Or replace paid staffers with volunteers.” She shook her head. “I don’t know anymore. People are…” She trailed off.
“Are what?”
“Remember at the beginning of the pandemic? We were all in it together. Sasha even made masks and gave them out to friends and family. I still have mine, in fact. Then a month or two in, she became militantly anti-mask. It was all a hoax, she said. Instead of listening to doctors and scientists and people who’d spent their whole lives studying viruses and diseases, she started believing Facebook friends and TV hosts.”
“Like that TV host who was president,” Michelle said disgustedly.
“Exactly. Pretty soon, she was out there protesting against tyranny, as though not listening to medical advice was the equivalent of storming the beach at Normandy.” Rosita looked toward the non-fiction stacks. “There’s this anti-science, anti-intellectual attitude out there now. We can’t seem to agree on anything anymore. Not even facts. And that makes things like funding the library not a priority. God forbid the public should have access to information.”
A nervous boy in his early teens, accompanied by his mother, made his way across the flat carpet to the Reference desk. “Hello,” he said in a soft voice. “I have to do a report?”
Rosita smiled at him. “Do you need some help?”
“Yes!” The boy looked relieved. “I need to find three books about Chinese people working on the railroad. It’s for my report,” he added.
“Let’s have a look.” Rosita stood, leading the boy over to the nearest library catalogue terminal. She showed him how to look up books dealing with a specific subject, then find the call letters of those books and write them down on the scratch paper provided. She pointed out where the range of call letters were displayed on the ends of the shelves on each aisle.
Thank you, his mother mouthed over his head. “You see?” she told her son. “It’s not that hard, is it?”
Then all hell broke loose.
There was what sounded like an explosion, an impossibly loud boom, followed by crashing noises and terrified screams. The boom was so loud it was almost deafening, and for a half-second Rosita thought a bomb had been detonated in the library, but another boom followed, and then another, and she realized with horror that there was a gunman in the building. Someone was shooting the place up.
The mother and her son were frozen in place, clutching each other, and Rosita rushed over to them, pushing their heads down, leading them in a crouch down the nearest aisle, toward the corner of the library furthest from the entrance. The mom was screaming, though the boy had gone mute, and Rosita pressed on the woman’s back and told her to stay quiet.
The three of them ducked under a small study table, breathing heavily. Rosita listened, trying to figure out what was happening and where. She heard cries of terror, and below that moans of agony, but the gunshots seemed to have stopped, at least for the moment, which made Rosita think that this wasn’t just some random attack but that the shooter had specific targets in mind.
It was a straight line from the library’s entrance to the Reference desk, and she prayed Michelle was okay.
There was another shot that sounded like an explosion, followed by renewed screaming. Immediately after, the tread of heavy clomping footfalls accompanied by metallic clicks and clunks announced the arrival of the police. Thank God the station was just across the street.
“Help!” a man called out. His cry was echoed by others.
“Drop your weapon!” a loud voice ordered.
“I have permission!” the gunman shouted. “I’m licensed! I’m an active shooter!”
She recognized that voice. It was Will Caskey, from Acquisitions. He’d been laid off during the last round of cuts. She didn’t know the man well, but he’d always seemed nice, and she had a hard time reconciling the quiet guy in the back room with a crazed vengeful shooter. He didn’t even look like the kind of person who would own a gun.
“Drop your weapon now!”
“I can show you my driver’s license!”
“Now!”
“Stop him!” a woman screamed. “He’s—”
There was a single loud whipcrack report, and then the sound of heavy running footsteps. Masculine voices were speaking, saying things too low for her to hear. Although victims were still moaning and crying out in pain, the frightened screaming seemed to have stopped.
Rosita waited a moment, then emerged from her hiding place. “Stay here,” she told the mom. “I’ll come back and let you know if it’s safe to come out.”
Keeping near the far wall, creeping out carefully, Rosita made her way toward the center of the library. Other people, patrons and employees, were standing up from where they’d been crouching, peeking out from behind bookcases. Ahead, she saw with relief, Michelle was getting up off the floor in back of the Reference desk.
Who had been shot? she wondered. Had anyone been killed?
Six policemen, four wearing armor, were gathered around the unmoving body of the gunman. Two were crouched next to him, one talking into a wrist radio. Several other uniformed officers were jogging into the library through the open doorway.
She was right. It was Will Caskey. His eyes were wide open, as was his mouth, and it looked as though his face had frozen in the middle of saying something. Both of his arms were outstretched, and while the gun he’d been shooting had ended up a couple of feet away from his right hand, the fingers of his left hand were still clutching something thin that Rosita could not exactly see.
One of the crouching policemen reached out and took the item from Will’s hand. It was a card, and the officer held it up, looked at what was on it, then turned it over, frowning. “Huh,” he said. “The guy wasn’t lying. His driver’s license really does say he’s allowed to be an active shooter.”
****
“You’re not going back,” Todd told her.
Rosita gave him a level stare. “I am not quitting my job.”
“You were almost killed!”
“I wasn’t almost killed. And now I’m even less likely to be killed. What do you think the odds are that another crazy person is going to come into the same library and do the same thing? It’s like being hit by lightning.”
“Bullshit.”
“Besides, we’re right across from the police station—”
“A lot of good that did you.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m not going to argue about it.”
“Just take a few days off, is all I’m saying. Let things settle down, then decide.”
“There’s nothing to decide. And this is probably the best time to be there. The cops are going to be extra vigilant, and everyone’s going to be hyper-focused on looking for anything unusual. Not to mention that I just got back from being furloughed, and they’re talking about cuts again. If I want to keep my job, I should probably show them that I take it seriously.”
“Maybe you should look for another job.”
“I like my job. I intend to keep it. Besides, there are crazy people everywhere. There’s no guarantee that one workplace is safer than another.”
But—”
“No buts.”
Although she would never admit it to Todd, she actually was a little bit nervous about returning to the library, although her first thought upon pulling into the staff parking lot the next morning was a practical one: had someone managed to remove the bloodstains from the carpet?
As a matter of fact, the bloodstains were gone, but the entire Circulation area was still cordoned off, and fragments of shattered wood from the shot-up walls and furniture seemed to be everywhere. The library director held a staff meeting in the empty open lobby and informed them that the library would be closed for the rest of the week, until the place could be made to look presentable enough not to frighten children. Contractors were coming in tomorrow to repair the walls and counters, and a custodial crew had already started to clean up the mess. The staff was charged with inventorying their individual areas and making sure the computers were functional.
