Storm Vengeance

by Pamela Cowan

  “No, that’s okay. I think you’re better at this. I’ll just be your assistant,” said Lauren. “Here, you’re gonna need more. That slow-acting stuff takes a lot. No sense wasting a needle.” She took the second vial of liquid from the case and reached for the needle.

  Lauren held up the new bottle but didn’t wait for the woman to read the word Lantus in bold blue letters. She filled the syringe and handed it to Storm.

  “You’re killing me,” the woman said, as if the realization was a new one.

  “Of course we are, Aislynn Clevidence,” Storm said, repeating the woman’s name so she would remember it—the only reminder of a kill she allowed herself. “Why do you think we’re here?”

  The nurse’s eyes flew wide as the full impact of their intent hit her.

  Storm stepped forward. The toes of the nurse’s shoes skittered across the floor, making tapping sounds, but she seemed to have lost the energy to kick at them anymore.

  Storm delivered the second shot, close to the first.

  “Pull up my pants. At least give me some dignity,” the woman demanded.

  Storm began to reach down to comply when Lauren shoved her aside.

  “What dignity did you give me?” asked Lauren. “What dignity was there in leaving me to lay in my own piss for hours just because I begged for my pain medication? What dignity was there when you grabbed my leg and twisted until I cried? You are a horrible, evil old woman, and I’m really glad you’re about to die.”

  “How long does this stuff take?” Storm asked.

  “Around an hour,” Lauren said.

  “Okay, so we wait, but not here. Let’s go find a breakroom or something.”

  “You can’t leave me here. You have to call an ambulance. I’m sorry for everything. I mean it. I was a different person. I’m not the same person now.”

  The two women ignored her, began to walk away.

  “Bitch. Loser. That’s all you are, all you were. Your friend too. You think you can kill me and get away with it? You think you won’t be in prison for the rest of your miserable life, or maybe get the needle yourself. I hear that stuff doesn’t even work right. I hear that stuff burns through you inch by inch, but you’re still awake for every one of them. That’s where you’re going, bitches.”

  Lauren started to turn back, but Storm blocked her. After a moment Lauren preceded Storm into the hall.

  They found a lunch room far enough away to dull, though never completely shut out, the sound of the nurse’s voice. She ran the gamut from hysterical shrieks to angry shouts to a silence that never lasted long enough.

  From the break room refrigerator they stole two cheese sticks from a large open package, and two Diet Cokes.

  “This seems really weird, sort of surreal sitting here having a snack,” said Lauren.

  “What else should we do?” asked Storm. “You said it would take an hour. I don’t want to sit there and be a voyeur for an hour. We’ll wait for a while and then go and watch the end.”

  “Why bother? Why not wait the whole hour and then just go deal with the body?”

  Storm shook her head, slid her soda around in the damp circle it had left on the table. She wasn’t sure how to explain her philosophy. She thought about it for a while and then said, “I guess it’s like this. A friend of my husband’s likes to hunt. One day he came to dinner, and he told us if you eat something, you should know how it was killed. He thinks people who buy meat from stores never understand or honor the sacrifice the animal made for them. When I kill someone, even though I know they deserve it, I feel like I have to suffer too. That I have to be there to watch and to feel bad. I don’t want to honor what they’ve done, but I do want to honor their death. Does that make sense?”

  “Jesus, not at all. That’s sort of fucking bent,” said Lauren. “But if it’s something you need to do, I’m game to go with it.”

  “Well, it is something I need to do.”

  “Okay then, but I have to warn you, overdosing on insulin isn’t fun. Cold sweats, trembling hands, intense anxiety, a general sense of confusion, seizure, loss of consciousness, and death,” said Lauren.

  “You sound like you’re reciting one of those warning things that comes with a prescription.”

  “Well, I studied about the damn stuff long enough. Anyway, like I said. It’s not going to be fun, or pretty.”

  Storm flashed back on kills with Howard, the cutting, the burning, the special whip. She shuddered. No method of killing someone using a needle could be as vicious and ugly as Howard’s.

  “. . . it’s all done we put her in the incinerator, right? That’s why you and Howard picked this building.”

  Storm snapped back from her musing in time to catch what Lauren was saying and respond.

  “Yes, that and the fact that he worked here and had a key, the same key we used tonight. And yes, we’ll put her in the incinerator, though that’s not what it’s called. Come on, bring your soda and I’ll show it to you.”

  As they walked, Storm explained that the building was leased to a company that manufactured acids used in the creation of computer chips. By-products were destroyed in a special incinerator called a thermal oxidizer, a series of large barrels, the first big enough to hold a couple of people.

  The first barrel used intense heat to incinerate anything placed inside it, and then fans pulled the gases that were formed through various passageways and filters, finally releasing water vapor into the atmosphere.

  “They say the vapor isn’t dangerous or toxic, but Howard told me they always release it at night. Sort of strange, right?”

  “Looks like the boiler in the basement of my high school,” said Lauren. “Only square.”

  “Yeah, it kind of does,” Storm agreed. “Where did you go to high school?”

  Lauren hesitated, then: “Here and there. We moved around a lot.”

  “No, I meant, what school did you go to here? Southridge, Westview, Aloha?”

  “Uh, Westview. Hey, what does this do?” she asked, pointing at a large red button.

  “That’s the start button,” Storm explained. “You push that and there’s this sort of whooshing sound and then a sort of crackling. You can feel a little heat coming out of the thing. Not much, but you still can’t open it for a pretty long time afterward.

  “Speaking of team . . .”

  Pulling her cell phone out of the back pocket of her pants, Storm pressed a button on top.

  “Is it time to go back?” asked Lauren.

  “Not yet. Another fifteen minutes.”

  Lauren shrugged. “Whenever. You’re the expert. I’m pretty amazed at the setup you have here.”

  “Well, it was Howard’s set up, really. I just sort of inherited it.”

  “Yeah, but still, it kind of makes you feel good, right? I mean, as much as I wanted to get back at her, I didn’t want to get caught either. I’m feeling pretty safe about that now.”

  “Yeah, well Nurse Ratched won’t cause you any more problems.”

  “Nurse who?”

  “Seriously? You never read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”

  “No. Don’t think so.”

  “Never saw the movie?”

  “Nope. Should I?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, maybe we could go together.”

  “Maybe,” said Storm after a long beat. “Maybe we could. Anyway, getting back to the issue of getting caught. We do have a good set up, but you can’t get too cocky about it. Things can always happen.”

  “Like what kind of things?” Lauren took a sip of her soda and Storm did the same while she thought about it.

  “It’s the unexpected things. Like one time, Howard and I decided to take this woman at a parking lot. It should have gone easy. She was a client, and I had the excuse worked out that I needed to talk to her about another client. I was talking her up, very buddy, buddy. I got her to follow me into the parking lot where Howard was waiting. Only problem was her friends saw Howard a
nd sensed something was wrong. They rushed in, and I had to throw myself into the middle of things to give Howard time to get away. I got stomped some, but it worked.”

  “You got hurt?” Lauren asked.

  “Broke my arm, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that one of her friends works in the building across from the courthouse where I work, and I run into her now and then. She knows something was weird about that night. Every time she sees me, she stares holes into me. It makes me nervous. That’s the kind of unexpected problem I’m talking about.”

  “So this woman. . . What’s her name?”

  “Celine.”

  “So this Celine person, what’s the worst she can do?”

  “Not much. She already told the police she thought I was involved in some way. She said it looked like I was blocking her from getting to her friend. I explained that the man was swinging a bat and broke my arm. That it wasn’t my fault I fell and got in the way.”

  “And they believed you.”

  “Well, I don’t think she did, but the police did, or I wouldn’t be here now.”

  Without discussing it, the two women headed back to the break room. The half-light cast double shadows against the hay-yellow walls and dark pink carpet.

  There had been no sounds from the nurse for several minutes. Storm looked at her cell phone. “Time to go,” she said.

  When they stepped through the doorway, the first thing Storm saw was the woman’s twig-thin white legs. There was a moment of regret as she wished she’d pulled the woman’s pants back up and given her some dignity. It would have been the right thing to do.

  Standing in front of the bent gray head, she reluctantly reached out and shook the woman’s shoulder. She rocked slightly on the end of the leash. Storm bent down and looked into the woman’s face.

  “Damn, we’re too late.”

  “She dead?”

  “Yes. Aislynn Clevidence. I got that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s get the cart and finish up here.”

  “Okay,” said Lauren, “and then let’s talk about your father.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THEY DIDN’T TALK ABOUT Storm’s father. At least not right away. Because the day after they killed the nurse, Storm’s husband had a surprise for her.

  “I know you took a couple days off next week for Thanksgiving,” he said, as he expertly flipped a pancake and she set out milk and O.J. on the breakfast bar. “I was thinking maybe we could do something fun with those days.”

  Fun, she thought. The last Thanksgiving had been fun. They’d had a party and everyone they’d invited had come, Tom’s business partner and his obnoxious boyfriend. The next door neighbors, her best friend, who had brought along the boyfriend she’d finally decided was the one. With all those friends and the kids, it had been a wonderful evening full of good conversation and lots of laughs. But that night could never be repeated, not with the same people.

  Tom’s business partner might be able to attend, though the obnoxious boyfriend was now an ex. The next door neighbors had gone to Europe to visit relatives. Her best friend. Well, that was the worst of it. Her best friend was gone.

  Sometimes she’d see something on TV or read something and think, I need to tell Nicky about that. Then she’d remember, she’d never talk to Nicky again.

  Of course she could talk to Nicky’s boyfriend, the one she called, The One. She saw him now and then. His work as a lawyer brought him out to the Washington County Courthouse once in a while. And of course she’d seen him at the memorial service, hugged him even, sharing their loss. But since then she’d felt no desire to see him, to tear open the old wounds for either of them. Just a glimpse of him was enough to take her back to that night. So she avoided him, ducking into bathrooms or into hallways. Just thinking about it made her chest felt tight and her eyes sting with unshed tears. She blinked them away.

  “That’s right, fun,” Tom said.

  She’d let herself drift away and had to pull herself back into the conversation. “Fun?” she asked, turning away to put plates atop the four Scooby-Doo place mats. Scooby-Doo had made some sort of comeback and Lindsey, her

  daughter, thought the reruns of the show were hilarious. “What sort of fun?”

  “I want us to take a trip to New Mexico.”

  “New Mexico. Why New Mexico?” It was an out of nowhere suggestion, and Storm had no clue what had prompted it. That in itself was strange, because after twelve years of marriage Storm was pretty good at guessing what Tom was going to say.

  “Rylan and I bid on a project there and we got it,” he announced, his voice and expression full of suppressed excitement.

  “New Mexico?” Storm repeated. “Why didn’t you tell me about it? Does this mean you’ll be commuting from there? I mean, Seattle’s been tough enough, but New Mexico is like halfway across the country. How do we make that work?”

  Tom shrugged. Storm hated how he stood there, hunched over the stove as if expecting a blow. Even if she were just projecting emotions that weren’t his, she felt an urge to comfort him. She stepped across the kitchen and slid her arms around his waist, rested her cheek against his shoulder blade. “I guess Rylan can do some of the work,” she said.

  “Or we could just pick up and move there for a while,” he suggested. He placed the last pancake on the stack, turned off the oven, and turned within her embrace.

  She kept her arms loosely around him and put her cheek against his shoulder, hiding her expression, but it didn’t help. Something, maybe the tensing of her muscles, must have telegraphed her anxiety and her instant resistance to the idea, because he immediately began what seemed like a well-rehearsed argument.

  “It wouldn’t have to be forever. I’m thinking a year, possibly two. We could rent out the house furnished, so it would be here ready when we want to move back in. The kids would go to school in a new place, but that might feel like an adventure, and then summer vacation would be there. You and the kids would be able to explore a part of the country you’ve never seen. You wouldn’t have to work. This is a huge contract. Big enough to keep us in Krispy Kreme donuts and Starbucks coffee for a long time.”

  “But Tom,” Storm broke in dramatically, “What if there are no Krispy Kremes or Starbucks in New Mexico?” Then she looked up at him with what she hoped was an appropriately exaggerated look of horror.

  She got the result she’d hoped for. Tom’s relief was expressed with a wide smile that lit up his eyes like flares. His happiness was contagious. Storm smiled back, and then Tom kissed her and she kissed him back, and they were getting carried away with the smell of pancakes and coffee in the air, and wasn’t that nice?

  At the same time, somewhere in a tiny dark corner of her mind, Storm began to process and analyze what moving to New Mexico might mean.

  First, she would be leaving her job. Not a job she really cared about anymore, but a job that gave her access to a database filled with child abusers, sex offenders, and violent criminals, a few of whom were deserving of her special attention.

  Second, she’d be giving up the kill room and the safety it afforded her.

  Third, she would be leaving Lauren behind. Lauren had been helpful with the nurse, a woman who’d earned the relatively gentle death they’d delivered. It was nice to work with someone who understood and approved of her way of doing things. Even Lauren’s reluctance to deliver the injection was a point in her favor. She was not the sick, malicious person Storm’s last partner had been. Would she ever find anyone else like Lauren? Unlikely.

  Third, her father. Lauren’s private investigator was—

  “Mom and dad are kissing. Yuk,” said Joel, sliding around the end of the bar.

  They broke the kiss and stepped apart. “Does that kid ever walk anymore?” Tom asked. “Every time I see him, he’s running or doing a cartwheel or something.”

  “I’m not running, Dad. It’s Uni. She’s running.”

  “Who is Uni?” Tom asked, turning a
way to pick up the plate piled high with pancakes.

  “That’s Joel’s horse,” Storm reminded him.

  “Oh sure, I knew that. How is old Uni?”

  “He’s okay. He got dead in the closet last night, but then he went to the doctor and got better.”

  “Hell of a doctor,” said Tom.

  “Horses aren’t allowed in the house,” Lindsey told her brother as she walked sedately into the kitchen. She had dressed for school and the fine blond hair she’d inherited from Tom was brushed, though the part was crooked.

  Storm resisted the urge to find a comb and straighten it. Only nine, Lindsey was already stubborn about her independence and didn’t like being fussed over. Storm knew and understood that quality.

  “Uni can come in the house. He always comes in the house and he stays in the closet at night, so that’s okay, right?” Joel looked imploringly at his mother and she couldn’t help but take his side this time.

  “Uni is special and so yes, he can be in the house,” Storm said.

  Joel said nothing more, just slid into his seat and reached for his glass of orange juice, but not before shooting his sister a look of wild triumph.

  “It’s an imaginary horse,” Lindsey said, trying for the last word.

  “You had an imaginary sister, remember?” asked Tom.

  Lindsey shrugged. She was far too old to talk about Ixy, her imaginary childhood confidant, but she had named her new Barbie Ixy, and Storm sometimes heard her talking to her late at night. She wondered if last year’s intersection between her vigilante life and

  her family life had affected her daughter more than she realized.

  New Mexico. A new beginning. Another attempt at a life without all the craziness. It could be good. It could be right.

  Lauren didn’t agree.

  They met at McMenamins Grand Lodge, a restaurant and hotel in Forest Grove, a small town about eight miles west of Hillsboro, which was the county seat and the town where Storm worked.

  It was Monday and Tom had bought tickets for the family to fly to Albuquerque, New Mexico on Wednesday. But before they left, Storm wanted to talk to Lauren, let her know why she was leaving, and see if she’d learned anything from her investigator about the whereabouts of Storm’s parents.