1

Well, your honor, I really appreciate this last chance to set the record straight. Like I said up on the witness stand this morning, I was born Vivian Marley Hobson-Dawson but always went by Viv Dawson till I changed my name to Wheeler when I got married twenty years ago the seventeenth of this next month.

You already know about me being a landscaper down around Seal Rock when the M-virus hit town nearly five long years ago, the Dirge torched our neighborhood and killed Uncle Trey in cold blood for trying to protect some poor Zama, and we all turned into DPs scattered to the four winds.

You gotta believe me, please—I am not that gunrunner the prosecutor keeps saying I am. I know he’s doing the best job he can in these troubled times, but you got the wrong woman, plain and simple.

The real Sunny set me up to take the fall for her right after the Marines rolled into Waldport back at the end of July. She picked me out of that hornet’s nest in the safe haven bulging at the seams where me and Jake were living hand-to-mouth day in, day out same as everybody else. Then she hooked me with that good Samaritan bait of hers after hearing me tell a Guard how the two of us got separated during the food riot out on the Spit.

Like I keep telling anybody bothering to listen, all you gotta do is track down my husband, and he’ll vouch for me. Hope and pray he’s all right ’cause I haven’t heard a peep from him since. That’s not like him, you know, leaving me in a tough spot like this for close to three months without being able to find me or at least get word to me—even if I am a couple hundred miles from home and the Meltdown’s only now easing up enough for those surviving to start pulling things back together here and there.

If any of my kids were around, they’d vouch for me too, but I got no idea where they are either. All I can do is pray they’re safe and sound too while I wait to hear from ’em like a whole lot of others are still doing nowadays. Thought I was gonna go crazy not knowing what happened to everybody when me and Jake were holing up in the safe haven, but that was nothing compared to being locked up alone here in this miserable cell carved out of a supply closet in a rowdy jailhouse full of shameless men with all their howling and cussing and sinful ways and him not in arm’s reach.

And then there’s all the overtime the hangmen keep racking up on the yard right out that barred window in full view not even a stone’s throw from here. Painful enough laying awake half the night worrying about what’s coming down the pike, but hearing all these guys whimpering in their sleep makes me wonder how come I’m not a total basket case like Gonzo Willy was till he finally met his Maker, bless his soul.

Anyhow, that rotten Sunny knocked me out cold with a fish billy or some such thing, stripped me naked, dressed me in her clothes, and planted a knife and a pistol on me. Then she messed with my ID to make it look suspicious and got a lowlife to swear to those bounty hunters I was her ’cause of that crock about the J tattooed over my heart meaning something in her life instead of my husband’s initial.

Sure as I’m sitting here on this flea-bitten, mangy excuse for a mattress, she’s hiding out someplace cozy, laughing like a loon about pulling the wool over all your eyes and living free and clear.

As the Lord is my witness, I’m doing everything I can to help you see the truth, including going through with this special testimony like you told me to. Used to get tongue-tied just leaving a message on somebody’s hub, but blathering on at this little recorder Keera loaned me before I got hauled back down here a bit ago makes that seem like small peanuts.

She says the bottom line is stay focused on telling the truth so you’ll turn me loose and I can find everybody and get back home and try picking up the pieces as best . . .

2

I’m back again. Guess you already know that, huh?

Sorry about having to stop ’cause of getting so choked up. My hands were still shaking something awful, and my stomach was nothing but knots after what happened at the trial and the way this is all going.

Then I started in thinking about . . .

3

OK, I can do this thing, I really can. I was hoping to hold off till Chaplain Eddy makes his evening rounds so he could help me out, but Gaines says I got no time to lose.

All right then, if I kept from bawling like a baby there in court while that prosecutor ripped me up one side and down the other for not being who he thinks I am and those vile men lied about me being Sunny, I can grit my teeth and keep going till I need another breather.

Keera says to tell you about my life all over again—what happened to everybody I know, how me and my husband fell into being DPs and got stuck in Waldport to begin with, how that conniving Sunny tricked me, you, and the rest of creation, and how I wound up all alone inside this lousy cage that’s not much bigger than I am tall.

No doubt you’ve been hearing all kinds of people claiming they’re innocent what with back-to-back trials going on around here like they are, but I hope and pray you believe me at day’s end and won’t punish me anymore for something I had no part in.

Bad enough suffering at the hands of those ruthless bounty hunters after I came to while they were tasing and strip-searching me in plain sight before some Marines put a stop to that abuse and tossed me in the hold of a Coast Guard cutter like a burlap sandbag.

But then there was the long, brutal quarantine trip up here with a bunch of foul-mouthed Dirge losers chained a few feet away whining every other minute they were awake—and me nursing a doozy of a headache and itching like no other all over—before spending months on end as the only woman prisoner on this whole godforsaken jailhouse floor.

You gotta believe me, please. I don’t wanna hang for somebody else’s crimes. I was just in the wrong place at the . . .

4

So like I keep saying, my name’s Viv Wheeler, and I was born and raised down in Seal Rock after my folks moved over to the coast from Hermiston when they . . .

Hold on a sec. All that racket cutting through the usual hubbub around here and trying to drown me out is the cellblock door busting open.

And here comes that public defender of mine waving a fistful of papers and making a beeline for me.

Praise the Lord and pass that release order she kept asking you for so I can hightail it out of this devil’s workshop and take my first breath of . . .

5

Well, shit on my shoes and make me dance.

Keera stormed out of here awhile ago after giving me one wicked tongue lashing for lying to her, you, that old prosecutor, and the rest of the world. She kept fanning my face with that damn NGS report of yours popping up out of nowhere after the fact, getting all high and mighty in her lawyer way how it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt I’m the one Mr. Barebones squawked about like a scrub jay there in court even though nobody’s got my eyeprint or voiceprint or earmark on file and my fingerprints and body scan don’t match. Then she laced into me how I gotta knock off that Viv bullshit and tell the truth for a change, pull the stupid TP plugs out of my nose, clear the frog out of my throat once and for all, and record this testimony for real.

She said that report pissed you off so bad it was all she could do to talk you out of hanging me on the spot yourself—along with the poor guy tasked with giving me that worthless lie detector brain scan I passed the day I got here. Wasn’t his fault, you know.

Anyhow, sorry about putting everybody through the wringer like that, but I figured my choices were few and far between.

I know that’s a tough sell with you sitting pretty like you are and me admitting to lying like a rug up till now, but if you could get so much as a glimpse through my eyes of what I had to do to survive the Meltdown, you’d have a whole different . . .