June twisted her large lips, then shook her head.“I just got out, reporter.They’ll round me up again soon anyway, sure as death and taxes, but I don’t want to give them any reason to bring me back sooner.I got a business to run.”
Her eyes flicked to the smaller woman, and Emily suddenly understood.“You…are you a—a madam?”she asked, recalling the term at the last moment.“Is that why you’re here?”
“ ’Course it is,” June said.“Police have to pretend to be shutting downthe same brothels they patronize, now don’t they?Wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”
Emily shook her head.“No, I’m sorry.”
“Right.Well, goodbye, reporter lady,” June said, turning to leave and beckoning the tiny Lila, who followed in her wake.
“Wait!”Emily said, darting after them as they headed east toward the village.“You won’t talk to me at all?Can I buy you lunch?Cigarettes?”
June stopped short and regarded Emily with exasperation.“My time’s valuable, and the goddamn state keeps robbing me by putting me in that place,” she said.“I’m a businesswoman.I don’t have time to talk to you.”
“I want to do a story on the prison,” Emily said, trying to keep the desperation from her voice.“The conditions inside.There’s a story there, isn’t there?”
June sighed, nodded.“Yeah.There’s astoryall right.”Excitement flared again in Emily’s stomach.“But no one ever gives a shit when we tell ’em,” June continued.“Told the police a dozen times.They know.Everyone knows.They call it the ‘House of Horrors,’ for Christ’s sake.”
Doctor is evil…
“What kind of horrors?”Emily nudged as her memory scanned the prisoner’s note.June’s mouth puckered again.Emily knew she had to offer her something, hook her trust somehow.“I heard from someone—I can’t say who—but they’re alleging the conditions are atrocious: vermin, not enough to eat, abuse.Can you speak about any of that?”
“ ’Course I can speak about it, kid, speak til I’m blue in the face, but it won’t make any difference, that’s what I’m telling you.Everyone knows what it’s like in there, but it’s not going to change.”
“The public doesn’t know,” Emily said, mind scrambling for a way to seize this interview, to convince June Jones to tell her everything she knew.
“Because they don’t want ’em to,” June snapped, and Emily saw an unexpected shimmer of tears in her eyes.“You want to know what it’s like in there, eh?Go get yourself thrown in.Lord knows it’s easy enoughto do with that goddamn law.Although maybe not for a high-class lady like you,” she said, looking Emily up and down and scowling.“I betyoulot have a whole other set o’ rules than the ones the likes of us gotta live by.Let’s go, Lila.”
“Wait—please!”
But June stalked away, the small girl trailing her mother hen.Emily took a step forward but knew enough not to follow.She was not going to get any more information out of June Jones.
“Damn it,” she cursed, tapping her bag again.Her heart pounded as she watched June and Lila grow smaller in the distance.She loved that feeling of adrenaline, like when she had too much wine at dinner, or rode the roller coaster at the CNE.It coursed through her now like electricity, exciting and energizing and a little frightening.
But she wanted more of it.More of it in this job, more of it in her own life, more of that intoxicating rush that reminded her she was alive.Men were allowed to have it—it was encouraged.Military men, adventurers, police officers—even male journalists like her dad, and pilots.There weren’t many women celebrated for chasing danger, though one was her hero Nellie Bly, for a record-breaking trip around the world.
Emily’s busy mind skipped ahead, writing her future.She now had the details of the Incorrigible Law and this account from June Jones to take back to Doris.Could she convince her boss to let her try to scoop this story?If she could somehow break this…well, an exposé like that could solidify her career and establish her as a journalist independent from her father’s name.Doris might promote her, and that could be the beginning of something big.
How to go about it, though?She clenched her fist to stop herself tapping again and began to pace the sidewalk instead.Movement always helped to grease the gears of her mind.
She couldn’t very well camp out by the prison gates waiting for inmates to be released at random.So how to get in touch with them?
Suddenly, Emily was rooted to the spot, the skin on her arms tingling as a thought hit her like an electric jolt.
Nellie Bly was famous for her record-breaking trip around the world in seventy-two days, yes—but also for her work as a journalist.She’d gone undercover at the insane asylum at Blackwell’s Island in New York in 1887 to break the story of the deplorable conditions there.
Maybe June Jones was right.Maybe the easiest way to get this scoop, to uncover the true story behind the prisoner’s note, was to get into the Mercer herself.It didn’t sound as though the warden would welcome a journalist in for a tour of the place, so it would have to be a secret.She’d have to get herself declared “incorrigible” as a way to get inside.
She knew she had the guts to do it.She was William Radcliffe’s daughter, after all, and had inherited the sense of daring—though her mother would call it recklessness—that had made him such a successful correspondent.He never shied away from leaping into the fray, getting as close to the story and its subjects as possible.Emily wanted to be on the ground, get her boots into the proverbial mud like her father had.Be arealreporter.
She turned back to face the building, dark and imposing and sinister as a bad omen.In some way she couldn’t quite explain, the opportunity felt familiar, as though Emily had been waiting for it her whole life.
And it, in turn, had been waiting for Emily.
CHAPTER 5
RACHEL
Huron County, Ontario—May 27, 1996
