Me, Myself and Why? Page 13

  Not so much as a scratch. ThreeFer wasn’t drugging them, wasn’t getting them drunk. He was soothing them, calming them—and they never fought when the knife slipped in.

  Not a single one of them fought. That, more than anything, stuck in my brain, stuck in Shiro’s, too. We knew people fought to live. It was both awful and wonderful, the way we clung to life. The damage we could take, would take—to stay alive.

  Yes. Awful. And wonderful.

  A painting didn’t fight; neither did a sculpture. They just let themselves be made.

  Could Tracy Carr be right? Was he working on what he thought was his art? Could he stop himself if he wanted? Like my friend Cathie couldn’t not scrub her kitchen floor with a toothbrush? Or how George could never walk away from his own reflection, physically or metaphorically?

  No. ThreeFer couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop. That whole “please catch me before I kill again; I secretly wish to be stopped which is why I left a fingerprint at the last crime scene” is one of the biggest myths in law enforcement.

  Because they never wanted to stop. If they wanted to stop, they would. ThreeFer wouldn’t, and why? Because making his art made him Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, and God rolled up into one divinely talented sandwich. He would never, ever give that up.

  It made me wonder: what wasn’t I giving up?

  Chapter Forty-nine

  After a couple hours of analytic drudgery, I decided I owed Cathie (or did I owe myself?) a quick call. I shoved some folders off my desk, found my cell phone (neatly clipped to my belt—thank goodness they’d started making them small!), and tapped her number.

  It rang, and rang, and rang, until it was snatched up and a very groggy voice moaned, “Whoever this is? Mmm. You better be on fire. D’you know what time it is?”

  “It’s me. Cadence.” Ever helpful, I added, “Cadence Jones?”

  “Cadence, we’ve been friends for over a decade. I know your frigging last name. Why are you bugging me at the crack of dawn?”

  “Because it’s the crack of noon. How’d your meeting with the art guy go?”

  Another pitiful sound, this time between a groan and a whimper. “Why d’you think I’m so damned hungover?”

  I eyeballed a few e mails—oh man, they were going to try the Secret Santa thing again. Why, why, why? Hadn’t they learned from last year’s debacle? The Secret Santa ritual was the perfect thing to make paranoids more paranoid, the kleptomaniacs steal more, and the social misfits fit worse.

  One poor colleague thought I was shooting rays into her brain from my bra straps, to punish her for taking the gift I had specifically bought for her. I went braless for a week (in January! January!) but she would never believe I wasn’t stealing her thoughts with my C cups. It’s better now. She’s more comfortable in the lab than she ever was in the field.

  “It was great! He was great.” Uh-oh. Cathie was still sharing the lewd details of her evening. I’d better pay attention.

  Her dates were, apparently, more energetic than mine. Hey, I could date. I have dated. So have my sisters. Adrienne, of course, dated too much. But even Shiro had a girlfriend a while ago. Lucy (or was it Lucia?) dumped her the second time Adrienne showed up.

  This suggests Shiro’s gay, but I think she’s more attracted to the person inside. So far, the people inside—Lucy, Betty, Ellen, and Madi-son—have all been women. According to Cathie, who asked my sister (since I couldn’t), she had loved every one of them exclusively, and had her heart broken each time. Because of her sisters, one of whom wasn’t gay, and one of whom was everything.

  Meanwhile, Cathie was still twittering in my ear. “That guy knows his Rembrandts from his van Goghs, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t, actually.” Tina wandered by and set a Frappuccino on my desk, and I winked at her. I clawed frantically for my purse, dug, and waved another pasta recipe at her for her party this weekend. She nodded, took it, and went on her way.

  I decided to rejoin the conversation. Not that I ever had the upper hand when it came to Cathie. “So, I’m glad you had a good evening.”

  “To put it mildly, fruitcake.” Only Cathie could disparage my admittedly ragged neurosis without suffering a loud, agonizing death. “Sorry about missing breakfast yesterday. I haven’t talked to Patrick. How’d it go?”

  “You haven’t seen him today?” It occurred to me she might not even know about the date. A mild panic set in. What if Patrick never came home?

  “No. Hang on.” I heard her walking down the hall with the portable. “Patrick? He’s not in his room. Of course, if it’s noon, he’s probably wheeling and dealing around town. . . . But I’ll check the kitchen.”

  A few moments later, we had our answer. “He left a note on the counter.” She giggled. “It says: ‘Don’t ask.’ ”

  I couldn’t hold back a snort. “You wouldn’t have believed it if you’d been there.”

  “No way!” Right away Cathie sounded more awake. “So dish on the breakfast. Shiro hopped out of you and julienned his ham loaf?”

  “Don’t I wish. It was Adrienne. She threw syrup on him and he liked her. He liked Shiro, too. He asked us out that night, and we went!”

  “Which one?”

  “All of us!” I howled, the true horror of the situation finally sinking in. I ended the date by coldcocking him. Who does that?

  “All right, calm down before you pop a vein.”

  “You never mind my veins.”

  “So how’d the date go?”

  I told her.

  She hung up, laughing.

  I was just about to return to work when

  Chapter Fifty

  I turned my attention to the screen, and the desk full of files around it. Cadence had gotten the investigation off to a good start, but she was clearly overwhelmed emotionally. She needed help, she was feeling resentful, and it was time to pitch in with more than a flying sidekick.

  Pam glided by, dressed in her penguin flannel pajamas and carrying several case files. I snapped my fingers to get her attention.

  “What, I’m your dog? I’m a trained seal?”

  I was unmoved by the girl’s irritation. I had a job to do and so did she. And I was really very hungry. Some things could not wait. “Hush. I require copies of this, this, and this. And please arrange a data dump within the next two hours.”

  “Do I look like I’ve cloned myself?” She nodded down at the paperwork she was dragging around. “Can’t you see I’m just a teeny bit busy, and maybe you could torture one of six other assistants instead of throwing more work at me?”

  I checked my watch. “George and I are going to leave for lunch in less than a minute. I require these tasks to be finished upon our return thirty minutes from now.”

  Pam narrowed her big dark eyes. “Oh,” she said slowly. She took a step backward but I was certain she had not realized it. “It’s you. I thought—yeah. Sure, it’ll be ready when you get back.”

  “Excellent.” Pam rushed away, the fluorescents bouncing off her bald, stubbled head. She had one of the most aesthetically pleasing complexions I had ever seen, all dark skin with mahogany undertones, and the cheekbones of an Egyptian princess.

  I stood, walked past the printer, and caught George at the elevators. “Lunch,” I ordered, and he sensibly complied.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  George stared at the innocuous-appearing, environmentally unfriendly plastic foam take-out box, and at the cheap chopsticks and black plastic utensils gripped in my fist.

  “Is that it, Shiro?” His voice was hushed; he was looking at the take-out equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant. When I had explained my culinary mission, he abandoned all hope of Culver’s frozen custard and accompanied me. “Is that actually it?”

  “It is,” I confirmed, restraining myself from stroking the box. I had been on a mission for decent duck for several years. Then, a few weeks ago, the hideously named Lotus Garden EZ Take ’N’ Go had hired a new chef who was getting rapid local attent
ion for his Roast Duck with Apples, a dish the Pioneer Press dubbed “ambrosia in a soggy carton.”

  I have a couple of weaknesses, gustatory curiosity being one. Thus, I determined to have ambrosia in a soggy carton before the first snowfall. And now it was mine.

  We were almost back at headquarters, where I planned to savor my lunch at my desk while studying files. The smell coming out of the box was beyond heavenly—almost beyond imagining. Ahhhh, duck.

  George shook his head. “I’m not believing you dropped twenty bucks for a retarded chicken.”

  I ignored him.

  “We should’ve gone to Culver’s. Ah, shit.”

  “Stop whining.”

  “I’ve got a lot to whine about—and so do you.” As we walked through the lobby I saw what George had seen first: Frick and Frack had stepped from the elevator banks and were headed straight for us.

  I suddenly felt very protective toward my duck. My grip tightened on the doggy bag holding the soggy carton.

  “Awwww, if it in’t the loving couple,” Frack oozed.

  “Didja enjoy your noon quickie?”

  I answered them with a cordial “Shut up.”

  They traded glances. “Hey, we’re not judgin’. So who are you now? You’re the weapons expert now, arencha?”

  “And you care why, precisely?”

  “We got seniority,” the other one said. “We’re next up and we got this goddamned fraud case while you’re chasin’ psychos.”

  “Takes one to catch one,” Frack jeered, an interesting comment from a confirmed kleptomaniac and arsonist. A thief with impulse control who likely wet the bed until he was twenty-four, in other words. “How come Michaela dumped ThreeFer on you?”

  “Ask Michaela,” George suggested. “She loves it when guys second-guess her.”

  Frack then did an incredibly stupid thing, even for him: he reached out and grabbed George’s horrific tie and yanked.

  Would have yanked. I dislocated his thumb before he could complete the move.

  “Aw,” George said happily over Frack’s drilling shriek. “I didn’t know you cared, Shiro.”

  “I do not.” This was nothing but the truth. However, I needed to stop this chain of threats before it started. If these bullies felt comfortable reaching for George’s tie, they would feel comfortable reaching for my duck. And my duck was inviolate. Preventative violence was the most efficient answer here.

  As Frack thrust his wounded hand between his thighs and hunched over in pain, Frick suddenly pushed past his partner until we were almost chest to chest.

  “You fuckin’ make me sick, you crazy bitch. Walkin’ around here like your shit don’t stink. You’re nothing in a real fight, Shiro. I wish I could see you take someone on without all that fancy Jew-jitsu shit, you won’t last two—”

  Without dropping my duck, I swung a right hook into his nose, switched the doggy bag to the other hand, followed up with a left cross, and then smashed him across the lower jaw with the back of the same fist. He crashed spectacularly into the receptionist’s desk, and I heard several things break. Her mouse. Her computer screen. Her collection of tiny crystal dolphins. His lower left ribs.

  “Wish granted.”

  “Say hi to the ER attending for us,” George added.

  I stepped past them to get back to work, George on my heels like an evil puppy.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  About thirty minutes later, I glanced up to see Pam with the work I had given her. She had changed out of her green-and-white sushi pajamas and into her pink-and-black poodle set. Not much of an improvement.

  “Your witness is here.”

  I arched my eyebrows and picked my teeth with a tiny duck wing bone. “Oh?”

  “Tracy Carr? She said she needed to see you?”

  I frowned but did not comment. I loathed it when people made statements into questions? Like that? Was that not pathetic?

  “She didn’t say exactly which one of you . . . er, your sisters, she wanted to speak to. Probably she doesn’t know.”

  “Very well. I will come out and collect her momentarily.”

  I finished my notes for Cadence, tossed the bone in George’s top drawer (where I found two more ties with disturbing dead-animal patterns), then went out to talk to Tracy Carr.

  “Good afternoon.”

  She stood at once, the only one in the reception area besides the receptionist, whose name frequently escaped me (Cadence would know: she knew everybody’s name, no matter how inconsequential—that woman was a genius at wasting time) and Opus, the floor’s janitor. He was emptying the recycling bins in that methodical way of his, slowly answering Tracy Carr’s questions.

  I confess: I was surprised. Opus rarely engaged anyone. Cadence was developing a bit of a soft spot for him, and I could not say he had offended me during his time with us thus far. A withdrawn, disheveled, gentle giant of a man, he had been with us for nearly two years. He had no concept of small talk, time, or dates, but could name pi to the thousandth digit after the decimal in less than twenty minutes. I have seen many things, but if I had not seen that myself, I would never have believed it.

  He answered questions from Tracy Carr—what was his morning like, where did he buy groceries, and so on—slowly and deliberately. To her credit, she did not stare or laugh or refuse to make eye contact; or was she overly bluff and hearty.

  Refreshing.

  She caught sight of me, gave Opus a farewell pat on the shoulder, and walked right over. “Hi. You wanted me to come in?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Clearly.”

  Opus was standing in what I thought of as “his” way: shoulders slumped, head down, and quiet as a stone.

  “Thank you for entertaining my guest,” I said to him.

  “I’m here.”

  “Yes.”

  He paused so long I assumed he had finished, and started to turn away. I turned back at his “She’s here, too.”

  “Yes.” I think I would have found this irritating had it been someone else. But I was not insensitive to his issues. He went out and found employment (or was recruited), which could not have been easy. Others would have chosen a simpler path. Others would have hidden from the world. And the world would not have noticed, or thanked them. “Thank you.”

  “Okay.” He walked out with a stack of emptied bins.

  “Do you think he’ll be all right?”

  A rude question, but courteously phrased. “He is perfectly fine within his parameters.”

  “Oh. That’s good. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about supper. If you and I went for a coffee, I wouldn’t need the bodyguard. And I’ve been thinking about what you said and you’re right; it would do me good to socialize.”

  Cadence and her socializing! I had the courtesy to intervene when she got herself into physical confrontations; why could she not return the favor when she tossed out meal invitations like confetti?

  Oh, good. Here she came.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  “So thanks,” Tracy said, lifting her coffee.

  “You’re welcome. We should do this again sometime.” I meant it—I had enjoyed the conversation with Tracy, who regaled me with polite and increasingly articulate questions: about why I liked coffee more than tea, why I loved my career, what sports teams I liked, and my colleagues at BOFFO—even Opus, whom I gathered she had talked with while Shiro was around.

  “I’d like that.” She winked. “I promise to ask fewer questions next time, and let you ask your share.”

  “Hey, no problem. Heaven knows I’ve asked you my share of questions already.”

  My phone rang. It was Michaela; even if I hadn’t recognized her strained voice, the chopping sound in the background was a dead giveaway.

  “Shiro Jones!”

  “It’s Cadence, boss.”

  “Yes, yes. Pam tells me you’re off having coffee. If you’re done socializing with civilians, I thought you might get yourself to a
crime scene.”

  “Well, not that you asked, but I’m actually working. I—wait. Is it—?” I cut myself off, noting Tracy’s presence.

  “It is. Your partner’s already on the way. Move; he’ll pick you up at Nicollet and Tenth.”

  I barely said a proper good-bye to Tracy, which made me feel bad. There was no excuse for being rude, no matter how quickly a serial killer was escalating. We didn’t all have to be savages. At least, I used to think so.

  Chapter Fifty-four

  I had barely climbed in before George was pulling away from the curb; the door swung shut and nearly closed on my ankle. I jerked my foot out of the way without a word; time was definitely not on our side.

  But I had to complain when he threw a large wad of crinkly paper straight at my face.

  “What the—?”

  “It came about two seconds before we caught the squeal. Who’s the asshole?”

  It wasn’t a wad of crinkly paper. Well, it was, but it was paper wrapped around what appeared to be three hundred purple irises. George took the next corner at roughly the speed of sound, so I was squashed against my door when I tried to find a card.

  Never mind the card; my life was in danger. I clawed for my seat belt and, after way too long, heard the comforting click.

  “I have no—” There it was, the little sneaky card. I grabbed for it, missed as George stomped the accelerator to catch the light, swiped again, missed as he whipped over to the far left lane (aaggh! this wasn’t England!), then finally got my hands on it.

  “To my three favorite girls—let’s try it again.”

  “Barf,” was my partner’s comment.

  “He certainly is brave,” I admitted, secretly pleased. “Also persistent. It’s a known quality when dealing with bakers.”

  “Oh. Your friend’s wack-job brother.”

  “No, my friend’s quite normal brother. Your trouble, George, is that you see wack jobs everywhere.”

  He didn’t bother to respond, not that I could blame him. The truth was the truth, after all.