You and I, Me and You Page 6

  “On the surface, nothing has changed. We’re still working.” Michaela had moved on to zucchini. “People will still come to the office; we will still work. We will still investigate evildoers and complete our time sheets on time. We’ll still do computer forensics and stomp government corruption. We will continue finding and spanking predators of all sorts, rooting out hostile intelligent ops, and stomping Internet fraud. Need I remind you that the country knows there is no Malaysian prince bestowing millions thanks to BOFFO? So, again: nothing has changed.”

  “With no funding.”

  “Let me worry about that. Oh—one thing has changed. Effective right this second, I’m killing the Secret Santa Program.”

  “Aw.” George pouted. He’d been planning to torture Emma Jan with a hundred compact mirrors hidden all around her work space and possibly her car and home. So at last, good news.

  “I’ll ponder the funding. Your job is to worry about your colleagues.”

  “Um,” the sociopath began.

  “Consider your next remark carefully, Pinkman.” Whud. Whud. Whud-whud-whud.

  “Can’t wait to help the team with this nifty transition,” he finished in a high, giddy voice.

  I laughed in spite of myself.

  “Start with Paul.”

  The three of us groaned in pained unison.

  “He’ll take it better from you, especially if there’s a plan B.” In response to my raised eyebrows, she snapped, “I’m working on it.”

  “I feel safer already,” George remarked to the rising pile of slashed zucchini.

  “Incomprehensibly, Paul likes you—all three of the Jones girls.” Michaela pointed at me with her knife. “And you, and you.” She pointed at Emma Jan and George. “He enjoyed working with you on JBJ. Well, enjoyed might not be the correct term. Implementing his new software to help you toss a net over JBJ was something Paul hated less than most of the things he hates.”

  George mimed wiping away a tear. “Aw. That makes up for everything.”

  I could understand her concern, though. Paul was special—even for BOFFO. He was Michaela’s special project, and rightly so. So while I was concerned about having to break this news to him, I was flattered that Michaela thought we were up to it.

  “He’s taken the software in new directions and I think it’s time he had another field test. Which is why, when I knew you were off to Sue Suicide’s latest atrocity, I let you go.” She stopped chopping and chewed her lower lip. “In retrospect that was not wise. There wasn’t time to— I apologize for letting you walk in blind like that.”

  This time the three of us carefully did not look at each other. The news she’d shared was shocking enough. Now an apology? I had seen Michaela put one in the head of a “helpless” serial killer without a blink. The serial killer had also been her employee. We understood the execution a lot more than the apology.

  “Greer called and explained you’d hit a wall—and encountered Dr. Gallo. Him again; the man can’t stay away from trouble! He said you were coming to the office, which was a huge help.”

  “Greer called you? And said Gallo was there?” Was I shocked, appalled, thrilled, confused? Yes.

  “We help each other now and again,” she said vaguely. “We work for different people, but we all share info. But. As I said, my apologies. Now go find Paul and let him know about this new case. And gently hint, gently hint, that things around here might change but he’ll likely still be working in the same building with the same people doing the same things.”

  “And then…?”

  She put her knife down and looked each of us full in the face. “You’re buying me time, time I need to pull something together. I can’t do what I’m doing unless you help me.”

  Will you help me? remained unspoken. But I knew we would all be on board. Emma Jan so as to potentially prevent another uprooting in her life and career. George because he was selfish and liked his life exactly as it was. Me for the same reasons as the other two.

  “I guess we need to get to it,” I said at last, and started for the door.

  “Wait,” Michaela said.

  We turned, wondering what next—another apology? A thank-you? A death threat?

  “Take some of this damned zucchini with you. I can’t stand the wretched vegetable.”

  “The perfect surreal finish to a very strange twenty minutes,” Emma Jan muttered, and I laughed again; I could not help it. Because she was right.

  chapter sixteen

  With a start, I realized I was at my desk; George was across from me at his desk, muttering and rummaging; and my phone, neatly centered in the middle of the desk blotter Shiro insisted on using (sometimes she thinks it’s 1970) was chiming.

  I glanced at the clock; I’d lost twenty minutes. The good news was, I was fully clothed and felt no new bruises. It could have been worse. Lots of times, it had been worse. And something else—Adrienne, my psychotic “sister,” my third self, hadn’t made an appearance in over two weeks. Maybe our doctors were right. Maybe I—we?—was/were getting better. Falling in love

  (not really)

  and Moving Day and my work at BOFFO, which wasn’t just interesting but also fulfilling—we were doing pretty good, despite our, uh, eccentricities, and really, we should congratulate ourselves for all we’d accomplished.

  With that happy thought in my head, I picked up my phone and pressed the app for Shiro’s notes. I had a pretty good idea what she was going to tell me, but that didn’t make me feel better. When we were kids she’d leave real notes on real paper with black pens, her beautiful spidery writing my first lesson that something could look nice and still be awful. She almost never left me good news. It wasn’t always her fault, but that didn’t make me like it much.

  Cadence,

  BOFFO has lost funding. Michaela is working on a plan. Only you, me, Emma Jan, and George know. We—meaning George, Emma Jan, and you—are to guide Paul Torn through the transition as carefully as you can. You are also to give him the latest info on Sue Suicide, which George has incomprehensibly began calling Sussudio. Do not panic. About any of the above. That is all.

  —S

  BOFFO had lost funding? No more FBI work? No more doctors and killers and therapy and meds and work and having a good place to go every day and helping people and no more BOFFO? No more BOFFO? No more

  no

  chapter seventeen

  Goodgood! No more BOFFO

  So more fun for

  me and us and more fun for BOFFO so no more BOFFO

  okay

  That’s okay

  because

  the wheels

  the wheels on the bus go round and round

  round and round

  round and BOFFO

  The wheels on the BOFFO go round and round

  Noooo mooooore BOFFO!

  It’s okay it’s all right don’t be

  sad

  no

  don’t be it’s okay it’s okay Cadence is

  hiding

  but I’m here and it’s

  Cadence, it’s okay, we can do good we can be good we can be BOFFO without BOFFO it’s

  it’s okay to come

  it’s

  hey that

  ow!

  chapter eighteen

  I opened my eyes in time to see Emma Jan hand George what appeared to be a twenty-dollar bill. I knew without looking around that I was in one of the recovery rooms, delightful spots with no sharp instruments or hard corners, but lots of blankets and a soft mattress to come to on.

  “I honestly thought she’d take it better.”

  “Sucker!”

  “Come on,” I complained, sitting up. “That was kind of a shock. Are you two gonna tell me you didn’t freak and wanna flee?”

  “Sure, but we didn’t actually flee,” George pointed out.

  “Shut up.” Wow. Did I just … Never mind. “We’re fired? We must be fired. What the fuck are we gonna do?”

  George had a sar
castic comment ready, but forgot it and gawked at me instead. “That’s two ‘fucks’ in two hours, Cadence. Whatever the meds are, keep on ’em. I think.”

  “I’m not a child,” I grumped, smoothing my hair and wishing for a brush. And a mirror. And a job. “I can say poopy swears if I want. Which one of you nailed me?”

  “Probably I did,” Emma Jan said, raising a hand. “I might have been standing behind you with a trank.”

  “Might have.” She handed me my purse and I pulled out my mirror and looked, then groaned and clawed for my hairbrush. “Okay. God—ow! Stupid tangles. I was just thinking that Adrienne hadn’t gotten loose in ages and then Michaela fires everybody.”

  “You need to go back and read Shiro’s note again,” George said bluntly. “We’ve lost funding but she’s got a plan. Also, she’s rich. I suspect the plan is, she’s gonna run BOFFO as a for-profit, private company. Meantime we’ve just gotta keep smiling and not let Paul have a meltdown before we catch Sussudio.”

  “That … okay. That makes sense and everything.” Michaela was probably rich. Those suits! And she’d bought all the cool stuff for the kitchen out of her own pocket. “I can get on board with that.”

  I was on my feet by now, shaking out the blankets and folding them. The tranks were annoying yet great: fast-acting, put you out cold for maybe ten minutes, with no residual grogginess. Long enough for Adrienne to go to sleep and go the hell away.

  “If we need to let him know the latest, let’s get it done. Because I don’t know the latest.” I stupidly handed my pocket mirror to Emma Jan so I could move the blankets and put my brush back. And Emma Jan stupidly looked at it.

  “That bitch!” Her shriek made us both flinch, and then she flung the mirror to the floor, where it broke. And if it hadn’t, Emma Jan was right there to stomp it with her special-issue shoes: they looked like classy round-toe flats, but you could run in them, and fight in them. And stomp the bejeezus out of my compact mirror with them.

  “That bitch won’t leave me alone!”

  I rubbed my forehead to avoid George’s glare. It was deserved. A slap would have been, too. Handing Emma Jan a mirror at any time was unforgivably stupid. I wouldn’t have done it, and she wouldn’t have taken it, if Michaela’s announcement hadn’t rattled us. But still.

  “There!” She kicked a few of the shreds, scattering them. No chance of a reflection now, not on what was essentially a bunch of blitzed plastic and mirror dust. “Fixed her. You wanna come around again?” she taunted the pile of plastic and shiny dust. “You can have another helping!”

  Emma Jan had mirrored-self misidentification. She thought her reflection in a mirror was another person. Always. We looked and we saw that we needed a haircut, that nudity made us look fat, that the acne medication wasn’t working. She saw another person, the same person who had been following her around to sinister purpose since the first time she looked in a mirror.

  “I am so sorry,” I said, embarrassed beyond all measure. “Could you not mention this to Shiro? Ever?”

  Emma Jan squeezed my shoulder. “It’s not your fault that bitch is always around. I ran her off for a while. Let’s use the time—I’d like to take a look at your suicide killer, too. The weekend’s probably shot.”

  “It’s not even five o’clock,” I observed after a glance at my watch.

  She shrugged. “Sussudio’s escalating, we might soon be out of work, and I got the arrest warrant for Jesus. That’s why I came in.”

  “You did? You’re gonna go get him?” George was delighted, almost jumping up and down. “Can we come? Can we? Please? Pleaseplease?”

  “Ugh, stop it.” She shoved him back a step. “I actually prefer you when you’re being a sexist pig and ramping up the horrible. ‘Please please’ from you is so wrong. It’s freaking me out.”

  “Nobody wants you freaked out,” I said, which was nothing but bare truth. “Let’s see if we can get Paul in tonight. Let’s go get your guy while we’re waiting. Then let’s see if Paul’s gotten even smarter in the last week.” Since his IQ was more or less immeasurable, anything was possible. And … who was I kidding? I wanted to be there when Emma Jan arrested Jesus, too.

  chapter nineteen

  Luckily, Jesus was home.

  “Agent Thyme!” the son of God said, delighted. He instantly threw the door open wide and stepped back to usher us in. He was shirtless and wearing olive cargo pants. No socks; no shoes. A bold choice in December. Maybe Friday was Jesus’s laundry day. “I knew you were coming. ‘When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?’ You guys want a Pepsi or some hot chocolate or something?”

  “No, thank you.” Emma Jan checked for mirrors—she’d been to God’s apartment before, so she had a good idea of the interior—and went in; George and I were right behind her. “The time has come, Jesus.”

  “As I also knew. I told you, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Emma Jan allowed. “You also told me your ex-wife, Trixie, murdered two of your apostles, dismembered their bodies in her bathtub, then poured lye over the whole mess and sent them … ah…” She pulled out her notebook. “… ‘howling and bubbling to Hell via the City of Minneapolis’s sewer system.’”

  Jesus beamed. “Yes, I did tell you that. And much more. No one wants a Pepsi?”

  “Remind me to steal her notebook,” George muttered in my ear. “I’ve gotta catch up on her reading.”

  Jesus’s apartment, a studio on Hennepin Avenue (walking distance to BOFFO’s building, in fact), was a case of what you see is what you get. We could see nearly every inch of living space, so the three of us were confident we could arrest and detain Jesus without much trouble.

  “Yes, well, the thing is, Jesus, they’re alive. Your apostles, uh…” Flip, flip through the notebook. “Floyd and Dabney. They’re totally fine. I got done interviewing them and confirming their identities a couple of hours ago.”

  “Exactly!” Jesus was beaming, and—I’m sure it was a coincidence—at that moment a slash of sunlight fell into the apartment from the living room windows, right across his head, lighting up his dark-blond hair and making his eyes gleam. “I brought them back to life! Did I not say unto thee, Agent Thyme, ‘Floyd and Dabney are not dead. Their sickness will not end in death, for I am the resurrection and the life, so don’t worry about a thing’?”

  “Anyway, they’re alive, and this isn’t the first time you’ve accused your ex of murders that never happened. Once under oath last month, during your divorce trial.”

  “They did happen. That skanky Jezebel is killing every bud of mine she can find. ‘The Son quickeneth whom He will.’ So you folks investigating murder can take a few years off. I’ve got this. I’ll just keep bringing ’em back to life.”

  “And as we discussed earlier—” Emma Jan continued with admirable doggedness.

  “Oh, now it comes!” Jesus said gleefully.

  “—you called the FBI and knowingly made false statements—”

  Either that or he’s a loon. Still, Jesus seemed like a nice guy, kind but not arrogant, firm in his convictions but not mega-pissy, secure in his divinity but not judgmental. Kind of how I’d want Jesus to be, come to think of it. And his apartment was beautiful, all gleaming wood floors and big windows and ferns and futons.

  “—which is a crime and punishable by fine and/or imprisonment.” She took a breath. “Which, again, is why we’re here.”

  “Worry not, Agent Thyme. I shall ask my father to forgive you, for you know not what you do.”

  “I do know, actually.” Emma Jan was a tower of patience; it was pretty inspiring. Meanwhile, George was watching the scene like it was a play staged for his benefit, and I was starting to feel a little guilty about throwing Jesus in the clink. “And now we’ve got to place you under arrest.”

  “Ha! ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”

  “Now
, Jesus, I know you don’t mean that,” she chided.

  “It’s true,” Jesus admitted. “And even if it wasn’t, it was disrespectful and I’m sorry. ‘He that is without sin among you,’ and all that. I want to go. I have things to tell people. All people. I can’t do it from in here.” He looked around his small, neat studio apartment, full of sunshine and cuddly quilts and issues of InStyle and Food Network Magazine. The place smelled like toast. “It’s getting harder to leave.”

  “I’ll help you. And I’ve found some special people for you to talk to,” she continued gently. “I think they can help you with your work.”

  “Well then! ‘Straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near,’ Agent Thyme. I knew you’d want to hear the good news straight from me.” He glanced at George and me. “Oh, but I’m being rude! Hello. You work with Agent Thyme? I notice you’re not wearing white coats and carrying hypos.” He turned back to her. “I know what ‘special people’ is code for, Agent Thyme. I’m not crazy, but it’s okay if you think I am. ‘The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.’”

  “‘Above all, keep loving one another earnestly,’” George added, “‘since love covers a multitude of sins.’” He met my gape with a glare. “What? I read.”

  “I—I—I—” Shiro’s gonna be so furious to have missed this! “I— George, you—?”

  “Oh, shut up, Cadence.”

  “Now, now,” Jesus scolded. “Love your neighbor as yourself. Right now, young man.”

  “Young man” was interesting; Jesus didn’t look to be even ten years older than we were, maybe mid-thirties? Wasn’t Jesus thirty-three when he died on the cross? Uh-oh.

  Emma Jan had been mentioning the case to us for the last few days; she didn’t know how old he was because he had no birth certificate on file. No nothing on file. Jesus was off the grid.