Death Warmed Over

by Kate Flora

  I was grateful that Trish hadn't gone for a delicate, feminine desk, but had retained a massive ark of a thing, heavy wood with sturdy, file-filled drawers that had slowed or stopped the bullets he'd managed to aim at us. At least I thought it had stopped them. A person could be injured and not even notice, and something had struck my arm. This was not the time to unfold ourselves and check.

  In the silence after the first barrage, Trish's breathing was so loud in my ear I couldn't hear much else. Her breath and a low keening noise. Then I heard a man's voice. Strained and full of deadly menace. "Dr. Gorham. You have ruined my life. Now I'm going to ruin yours. And I want to see your face when I do it. I want to put a bullet right between your fucking eyes."

  His heavy footsteps lumbered toward the desk. Just like I'd counted bullets, I counted steps. I figured it was about twelve or thirteen steps from where he'd been standing to where we were huddled.

  His threat had been to her, but I doubted that he'd spare me.

  I didn't want to go without a fight.

  I had no weapons.

  There was nothing to grab or throw or swing.

  My pepper spray was in the briefcase I'd flung at him.

  I held my breath, counting. Three, four, five, six. What could I do? Just crouch here like an animal and let him shoot us? Attack him in the hope that he'd be too surprised to shoot?

  There was a flurry of rushing feet and a commanding voice said, "Police, Dr. Harrington. Drop your weapon."

  "I'm afraid I can't oblige you," Harrington said.

  "Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head. Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon!" Loud and insistent. Filling the room.

  There was an endless silence.

  An explosion. A single shot.

  Then a flurry of explosions. If Harrington didn't kill us, the cops coming to our rescue probably would.

  Then a silence, feeling louder than the gunfire, followed by a commotion of voices.

  The air had the singed scent of gunpowder. My ears were ringing. Trish was sobbing softly. I unwrapped from her, not realizing until then that I'd been protecting her with my body, and slowly pushed to my feet, pulling her up with me as I rose on shaky Gumby legs.

  A uniformed policeman was crouching by Harrington's body and shaking his head. Another still had his gun out, staring at us like he thought we might be more bad guys. I figured the hard-faced man in the sports coat who filled the doorway was probably Furst.

  "Please. Ask him to put that gun away," I said.

  Not my voice, but one borrowed from someone smaller and more timid. The voice of a woman who's just been shot at. Who has been anticipating the impact, the pain, the end. I'm no fainter, but I could feel a swirling darkness out at the edges. Two bodies in a single week is more than the average consultant should be expected to deal with. More than I could deal with.

  Trish just stared at Harrington's sprawled body and didn't say anything, her expression stunned.

  I could hear her breathing go shallow, the way someone breathes when they're about to be sick. She was making small moaning sounds. I had to get her out of here. Get her to the bathroom and then get her into a room without a body in it. Get her a sweater and some hot tea and that wonderfully competent head of counseling in to hold her hand.

  I've stared down the barrel of a gun pointed at me. It does something to the soul. You can hold yourself together while it's happening, as Trish had done, but it occupies the landscape and imbeds itself in your brain in a way that can't easily be shaken off. It will be with you for a long time. Maybe forever. It becomes the wallpaper that decorates the inside of your head.

  In his foolishly dramatic death, Harrington had managed one last violent act. He'd done all the things Trish was warning him about. Confirmed his reputation as a bad person. Hurt the school. Hurt her, badly, even if she hadn't been wounded.

  I figured we'd need to leave the room to them to do their crime scene stuff, and that once we left, we probably wouldn't get back in for hours. I would need my laptop and my files. Steering Trish by the arm, I took a step toward my briefcase, which was between us and the door, my belongings spilling out onto the floor. God. Harrington was still warm, blood oozing onto the carpet, and the consultant in me was already thinking about damage control strategies.

  The officer with the gun swung toward me, gun still raised. A sudden, terrifying gesture. I let go of the scream that had been building since Harrington appeared in the door.

  "Put the damned thing away, Bobby!" Furst barked.

  Bobby.

  Flipper hits the ball, ball hits the bumper, careens up the table and everything lights up. Ding! Ding! Ding!

  Ginger hadn't said Bobby and she hadn't said baby. She'd said Babi. Short for Babette.

  Whoever Babette was, she had something to do with Ginger's death.

  Chapter 29

  Then Furst stepped in and shut the pinball machine down. "What happened here?"

  I thought it was pretty obvious. Considered my first smartass reply, "You're the detective, figure it out," and rejected it. But I wanted to get Trish out of this room, while he might have a different agenda, so I didn't want to antagonize him.

  "Dr. Harrington came with a gun."

  What did we used to say as kids when we played Clue? I wish to make my accusation? Dr. Harrington, with a gun, in the headmaster's office. Dear me, why had I ever wanted to be a grownup?

  It wasn't easy being a functioning grownup right now. I was feeling lightheaded and holding off an earthquake of tremors that wanted to shake me like a rag doll. Trish was a couple strange shades of green and dead white and clearly about to throw up. I wished Furst would use his detecting skills and notice our condition so I didn't have to explain about our being crime victims and all.

  I took a step toward the door, towing Trish with me. "I... we... We need to get out of here... Please... can we go... somewhere else?"

  "Hold on," he said. "You're bleeding. Did you get shot?"

  When I didn't immediately respond, he repeated his question in the slow, loud way people talk to the shell shocked.

  Had I been shot? I dropped my gaze to the arm he was staring at. Not shot. Impaled. A thick sliver of wood had stabbed through the creamy cashmere and buried itself in my arm. Below it, a ribbon of red ran down to my wrist and across the back of my hand. Brilliant, shiny drops of red formed on my fingertips and dripped onto the carpet.

  I looked back at him, the tears in my eyes turning him into a blur, then squeezed my eyes shut. Just a splinter, officer. A Godzilla-sized splinter. Adrenaline can keep pain at bay, and I was charged with adrenaline. Now that I'd seen it, though, it started to hurt.

  "I really liked this sweater."

  From the doorway, I heard Roland's voice, and then his rushing steps as he crossed to me. "Thea! What the hell! Are you okay?"

  "Who the hell are you?" Furst demanded.

  "Detective Roland Proffit, Maine State Police."

  Roland had drawn me, and Trish, because I wasn't letting go of her, into a reassuring embrace. Two big hands patting two trembling backs.

  "Maine? This isn't frigging Maine," Furst said. "What the fuck are you doing here? This is a crime scene."

  "So don't keep these ladies standing around in it," Roland said. He started steering us toward the door, then paused and turned back. "Thea, is that your briefcase?" Pressed against his chest, I didn't lift my head, I just nodded.

  "And the package I'm supposed to pick up?"

  "Is in my car."

  "Okay," he said. "I'll grab the briefcase and we'll all go some place quiet." He shifted his address to Furst. "It looks like this lady..." He meant Trish. "Needs a restroom. And fast." Over our heads, he asked, "Okay if I take these ladies out of here before one of them loses her breakfast all over your crime scene?"

  In my limited experience, cops really don't like it when you're sick. Furst didn't object. Surprisingly, he didn't even object when Roland retrieved my briefcase. I figured Trish and
I could get our purses later. It was my work that I needed to save right now.

  Roland plunked me down in a chair in the hallway, and, still holding Trish firmly by the arm, said, "Restroom?"

  She made a faint gesture toward the end of the hall and he half led, half carried her there. When the door had closed behind her, he came back to me.

  "What am I going to tell your husband?"

  "Nothing. We're not speaking right now."

  "Thea!"

  Okay. No sense in being a brat or making this harder than it already was. "The dead guy? Venerated faculty member fired for having a computer full of child porn. I guess he didn't take it very well. He decided to punish Trish for firing him and I happened to be in the room."

  "He shot at her?"

  "And at me, after I walloped him with my briefcase and dragged her behind her desk."

  "Nobody gets into the situations you do, Thea." He shook his head. "Wallop a guy holding a gun with a briefcase? You don't know the meaning of scared."

  Guess I had him fooled with my tough girl act. "Oh, I think I do, Roland. I didn't know what else to do. He was going to shoot her."

  The shakes got me then. I couldn't hold them off any longer. They grabbed me and shook me like a ragdoll. Roland, who had been my rock before, didn't fail me. He dropped into the chair beside him and put his arms around me. It must have been like holding a flopping fish.

  "That's it," he said. "I'm calling an ambulance."

  Through trembling lips I said, "No ambulance. No hospital. I hate hospitals, Roland."

  "You're bleeding and you're in shock."

  What I meant as "It's just a big splinter and the shock will pass" came out as gibberish. He waited, patiently holding me, until I found my voice again. Finally I managed to say, "Tea?" and he went to find someone who could help with that.

  I needed a pair of scissors so I could cut my sweater and explore the extent of my injuries. It felt like someone had pounded a stake through my arm. That was something I would deal with in a while when I didn't feel so much like a boiled noodle. I just wanted to pull the darned thing out. That was what heroes did, right? And weren't we all the heroes of our own stories? But I didn't know if that would do more damage and then I couldn't drive home. Probably I could only figure that out by going to a hospital, and hospitals are the enemy.

  I huddled on my chair, annoyed with my body for letting me down and knowing I was being totally irrational. Weren't crime victims allowed to be irrational? After a while, when she didn't come back, I figured I'd better go and check on Trish. She'd left the door unlocked and I found her huddled in a corner, arms around her knees, looking forlorn.

  "Roland is finding us some tea," I said, holding out my hand. The one that wasn't dripping blood. Reluctantly, she let me pull her to her feet.

  "He was going to shoot me," she said. She looked dazed and was still horribly pale. With reason. She'd just been the target of a fusillade of bullets and heard her attacker say he was going to shoot her right between the eyes.

  I got out my phone. "Your counseling service. What's the number?"

  She told me and I called, awkward with one-handed dialing. Bryan O'Connor said he would be right over. I lowered the phone, surprised to find that simple act had taken so much effort. I hadn't bled much, as far as I could tell, but I felt like I was down a few pints. I wanted to find a dark room with an empty bed, crawl in, and pull the covers over my head. Someone else could be Thea the Great and Terrible for a change. The take charge, expert fix-it person who helped people with their emergencies.

  Instead, I moved on to another one-handed dialing job. To the office. To Bobby. I didn't care what had to be put on the back burner, I needed him, or Lisa, here as soon as possible to help handle this mess. Once I'd briefed one of them, made sure things here were on the right track, I was taking myself out of service and back to the shop for repairs.

  "I can't believe you did that," Trish said.

  "Did what?"

  "Hit him with your briefcase."

  "As a device to stop him, it didn't work very well."

  "Or maybe it saved my life. Our lives."

  I didn't have much memory of the situation. Life changing things can happen so fast.

  Roland came down the hall, followed by Trish's assistant, Andrew. Andrew stared at me, momentarily speechless. I'd been cradling my damaged arm against my body and now there was blood there, too.

  "It looks much worse than it is," I said.

  "I've got tea in the conference room," he said, swallowing and trying to look away. "And Larry's in there."

  Head of Security. Or in this case, insecurity. But I didn't say anything. None of my flippant thoughts or remarks fit this situation. We were just grateful to be alive. Soon enough, Furst and the gun-happy Bobby would reappear and want to do interviews. We were lucky to be given some time to recover.

  Following Andrew's gaze, Trish stared at the blood. She looked like she might be going to be sick again.

  "Maybe you've got someone in the infirmary who could take a quick look at it?" I suggested. "Someone who could come here?"

  I didn't want to leave Trish alone yet.

  She nodded and looked at Andrew. "If you could?" she said. He turned, the perfect assistant, ready to do her bidding. Then he turned back. "Let's get you settled in the conference room and then I'll make that call."

  * * *

  An hour later, fortified by tea and scones, Trish was setting up shop in the conference room. Our purses had been retrieved from the crime scene and Furst had sent a minion to tell us to be ready, he would want to talk to us soon. The splinter from hell had been extracted and I'd been bandaged. Bobby was on his way. The Director of Communications was bringing his staff over so we could start dealing with the fallout.

  I walked Roland out to my car so I could give him Ginger's package. Opening that locket and searching the internet last night felt like they had taken place years ago. Back in a time when I was still young and energetic. Now I was old and weary, uncertain how I would even summon the energy to drive myself back to Maine. Assuming I was ever done here.

  I had no idea what time of day it was. Just that it was cold and gray and gloomy. I was sick of winter. Right now, I was sick of everything. I crunched across the icy parking lot with Roland at my side, ready, I knew, to grab my arm if I started to slip. The arm that wasn't injured. He's such a gentleman. He's such a hero. I love the old-fashioned guy who stands ready to serve and protect. Today I had badly needed some serving and protecting. In a perfect world, it would have been Andre. That was something to be dealt with later.

  I unlocked the car and took out the envelope. "One thing," I said. "I don't know if Andre told you, or what it means, but there's a locket in here with two photos. One is Ginger, except that we now can assume her name is Penelope. The other is a little girl named Babette."

  Time to share my under-the-desk epiphany. Talking about it would drag me back there. But I'd be talking about Harrington and the gun with Furst anyway. There was no way I could protect myself from bad stuff today.

  "You remember, the morning Ginger was killed, that she said a few words?"

  He nodded.

  "I thought one of them was Bobby. Now, having seen the locket—a thing she kept when she otherwise completely sanitized her life—I think what she said was Babi, a nickname for Babette."

  He had his notebook out and was writing this down. "Remind me what else she said."

  "Babi. Airy. Safe. So sorry." Words that would be burned in my mind forever. As I said them, I could smell burning again. See Ginger's desperate face. What had happened in her life that had made that strong, exuberant young runner named Penelope change her name to Ginger and live so carefully all these years? If Babi was a name, I thought airy had to be a name, too. There might be something I could track down, if I did more searching. I wanted so badly to have the whole business over and done. I wanted Ginger out of my head.

  "I'm heading down to Stafford no
w, to look at yearbooks," he said. "See if I can get a last name, maybe even something that will lead us to her family. And that, in turn, may help us locate her killer. It has to have something to do with why she changed her name."

  But he didn't go. Instead, he bent down, studying me with eyes that read people for a living. "I don't want to leave you like this, Thea."

  Like what? Like a consultant with too much work on her plate who just got another big helping? Someone broken and wounded and about to be at the mercy of Detective Furst? Abandoned by her horse's ass of a husband? Was I worse off than I thought? I hadn't looked in a mirror and didn't want to. For once, I kept my mouth shut. Roland had been nothing but good.

  "I'll be okay. I'm tough. You need to go catch Ginger's killer."

  "There's no sense in telling you this, knowing how stubborn you are, but you don't have to stick around here and keep working. You are allowed to say you can't right now, and go home. Take some time to process this. You do know that, don't you? That you aren't superwoman? That even Andre or me, in a case like this, would take some time. We're human."

  I was feeling all too human. "Thanks, Roland. I know. I just need... You know me, I need to get things here under control. We both also know that until he's done his interview, there's no way Detective Furst is letting me leave. But as soon as that's done and I've briefed the guy who's taking over, I am out of here."

  He nodded. He couldn't argue with that.

  "So you need to get out of that bloody sweater, do whatever needs to be done here, and get yourself back home. Take a day off. Get some rest."

  He patted my shoulder, his hand warm and firm, giving me his 'you'd better tell the truth' look as he asked, "Are you going to be okay to drive with that arm?"

  "I've driven with worse."

  He rolled his eyes.