Me, Myself and Why?

by MaryJanice Davidson

  Chapter Sixty-four

  I found myself sitting at my kitchen table, my head pillowed on my arms. I blinked—morning sunshine was streaming into the room. I was sore all over my back and neck. And ravenous.

  Boy. Boy oh boy, I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy to be a multiple than I was when I was able to escape that nightmare of a bloody bedroom. I decided to leave Shiro (at least I hope it was Shiro) a thank-you note. She inevitably tossed them into our fireplace, but still. It was the thought that counted.

  I went to the fridge and grabbed the first thing I saw—a Coke. I chugged it in about four belch-inducing swallows, then heard the phone ring. I plunked the can on the counter and looked at the caller ID: Cathie.

  “Hey there,” I answered. “What’s up?”

  “Cadence? Is that you?”

  “Hi, Patrick. I thought you were Cathie.”

  “Yeah, I’m at her apartment right now. Listen, are you all right?”

  “Sure.” Odd. He sounded worried. But about what? “Are you all right? You sound stressed.”

  “I am stressed! You promise you’re okay.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on is that I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  “That’s sweet,” I said, remembering the way he smiled at me just outside the apartment.

  “No, seriously. I’m worried. I’ve knocked on your door, called, texted you . . . nothing. The only thing that stopped me from dialing 911 was calling your work number that Cathie gave me. Your boss told me to stop being such an overbearing male influence or she’d flay my privates. Charming woman. But at least I was reasonably sure you were alive. Where’ve you been?”

  I shook my head. “Patrick, are you messing with me? I just saw you last night. Woke up on top of you after Adrienne tackled you, accepted your peace offering of duck . . .”

  “Um, Cadence.” The pause was disturbing. “That was three nights ago.”

  I nearly dropped the phone. “Three nights?” Rats! That would explain my exhaustion. And soreness. And appetite. “Golly, what happened?”

  He sighed. “I was hoping you’d know.”

  I spotted what I’d been too thirsty and hungry to see when I woke up: files neatly stacked on my table, and several pages of notes in Shiro’s precise handwriting. Also, daily newspapers from the last three days.

  “Ah. Okay. I see. Um, Patrick, I’m fine. Thanks for calling. I’ve gotta go.”

  “But—”

  “Patrick, if it’s been three days, I’m way behind on work. And I’ve got a killer to catch. And I think I missed Tina’s party, holy old rat guts!”

  “You’re so weird.”

  “Glad you’ve been paying attention. I promise to make it up to you. Give Cathie a hug for me.”

  I hung up on him before he could protest, sat back down, reached for the top page of Shiro’s notes, and began to read.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Cadence,

  First, my regrets for your extended absence. I had a great deal of work to do. I have been able to pull some information together which I hope might assist you in our investigation. As you will see by the end, I cannot go any further myself. The time has come for you to finish putting the pieces together.

  As you already deduced, I have found numerous examples of the number three throughout the ThreeFer file. Where we erred was assuming the instances of three were him/her telling us about him/her. I now think he/she has been telling us about . . . us.

  I now strongly suspect he (I do not feel the nonzero chance of a female suspect warrants further consideration, so will in the future refer to ThreeFer as he) suffers from our common affliction, MPD.

  I grimaced and resisted the urge to crumple Shiro’s note into a teeny tiny ball. This just got more and more awful.

  I have prepared condensed files for you from the last crime scene. Knowing too much detail would upset you for personal reasons, I had George edit certain aspects of the material and focus only on those elements that truly matter. Three points I must make:

  1. George still whines like a crippled camel when the case lead assigns him work. This is inefficient. Please put your persuasive “people skills” to good use, and ask Michaela to assign him elsewhere.

  2. Beyond the obvious nature of the deaths, there is very little at the crime scene that indicates reckless violence. The blood is contained to the bedroom area, and mostly the bed itself, and as you know we have puzzled over the lack of defensive wounds on the victims, suggesting some emotional bond between the murderer and the victims—or possibly between the murderer and us.

  3. The murderer used large spikes to keep the bodies standing against the wall . . . but as you will see from these edited photographs, he did not nail the bodies there, but rather propped them up. Strange, given that they were already dead, that he would not simply mutilate them further to get the proper pose. He risked having them fall off the spikes, rather than hurt the bodies further.

  I took some time with this information before reading further. Shiro was surprised by not just the artistry and care, but something approaching tenderness. Tenderness implied familiarity. Familiarity implied . . . acquaintance, or worse.

  Barf.

  You will also notice I have left morning editions of the local papers for you. They include some real-estate offers, and I have followed up with some deals on the Internet. See the attached printouts—in particular, the one highlighted in blue.

  It took time to find this one, and I am afraid I needed George’s assistance to contact the local police from some out-of-state locales. Apparently, Michaela feels his phone manner is better than mine. I did monitor his calls to ensure he would ask the correct questions.

  These calls confirmed that one of our very few witnesses, the gentleman from the Pierre scene, has since moved to Minneapolis. You will recall Mr. Scherzo was the man who found the Pierre bodies and called the local police. He is here now, a strong coincidence. I suggest you alert Michaela and then interview this witness once more. Only you have the skills necessary to conduct the interview properly, so that his suspicions are not too quickly aroused. His current address, as you will find in the 297B file, is 369 Tarragon Way.

  By now you may have come to the same conclusions I have

  Thanks, Shiro; usually you assume I’m still foundering in ignorance.

  but in case you have not,

  Oh, great. Guess I got ahead of myself.

  I shall say it simply: If this man is not the killer, he knows the killer. And the killer, whoever he is, knows us.

  Good gosh, she really thought I was an imbecile!

  I looked at the clock and gasped. No time to waste! I ran out of the apartment so quickly, I was all the way to my car before I realized I was barefoot, and in a T-shirt and panties.

  It must be Tuesday.

  Chapter Sixty-six

  The house was in a somewhat rough neighborhood in North Minneapolis—the type that looked better by day than by night, despite the peeling paint on every aging house and broken machinery on every unkempt lawn. Scherzo’s was a bit neater than average: pale green with a high chain-link fence surrounding the carefully mowed crabgrass.

  There was a BEWARE OF DOGS sign at the front gate, but a quick visual check down either side of the house revealed nothing. Same with a rattling of the gate and a loud “Hello.” Dogs were probably inside.

  I unlatched the gate and stepped up the cobblestone path to the door, taking in the low-maintenance pebble-and-bush garden and three-season porch that fronted the house.

  Just as my hand touched the latch to the porch door, three Dobermans came whipping around the corner.

  They weren’t inside, I told myself, freezing in terror at their size and speed. They were hiding in back. They were quiet. And they were well trained. Now they’re going to have me for a

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  SNACK ON THIS, BITCHES!

  BAM!

  KA-POW!

  B
AM-BLOOIE!

  Just like in the old Batman television show! Holy hot dogs, Batman! Batgirl saves the day!

  Damn.

  Puppies can take a hit.

  Okay fine

  Get up

  You too

  You three

  Growl growl growl

  (honk honk honk)

  Let’s go again

  This time

  Animal

  To

  Animal

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  That was fun.

  Not even close

  To bored yet.

  What was I doing here?

  Besides killing dogs.

  Who cares.

  Let’s go

  Have some

  FUN

  Lessee

  Lots of houses

  But no bars

  Where can a girl get a guy to buy her a drink?

  Need wheels.

  Need to go round and round.

  Need to fly.

  Need to flap my wings.

  Need to . . . dance!

  Dancing in the street till it ain’t no thing,

  Can I get a “what-what” from the dead doggie section!

  WHAT-bark!

  WHAT-yip!

  WHAT-crack!

  Thank you, hound-homies!

  Give a ghost-puppy snack to the spines that went

  CRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAACK

  Walking

  too

  far

  (This is almost boring)

  Whom does a girl have to FUCK

  To get a drink around here?

  WOOOT THERE IT IS

  ON THE CORNER

  Tell me do you have

  A beer

  A lonely, lovely beer

  Something I can wrap my lips around and kill

  FUCK!

  Who closes their goddamn liquor store first thing in the morning? Not me. Not my liquor store. No, when I have a liquor store I’m gonna run it MY way. I’m gonna SMASH the window when I want to get in, CLIMB through and apparently KNOCK OVER a display or two on my way in, RUN down the aisle

  WHEEEEEE FREE AS A GOOSE

  And then SMASH the door to the refrigerator unit in the back, REACH in, and GRAB. THAT. BEER.

  Yep. It’s gonna be just like this. Except I’m not going to have that fucking alarm going off.

  Damn it. Alarm. I didn’t pay for my drink.

  And why

  Should I?

  Should a girl like me pay for her own drinks?

  NO.

  Not a damn decent man around here who’ll do it.

  I need to call a man.

  I need

  To call

  PILLSBURY!

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  I woke up in Patrick’s SUV, which smelled rudely of alcohol and vomit.

  Judging from the bites and scratches on my arms, not to mention the split skin and shards of glass all over my fists and wrists, I assumed I had a much more serious wound somewhere I could not feel. I’m in shock, I told myself. Great. Dead by Doberman at twenty-seven. Life is too rich.

  But wait. Why was I in Patrick’s SUV instead of an ambulance? What was he even—

  “You okay back there?” He turned briefly to verify I was awake. “Cripes, Adrienne. You could have told me you needed to yark. I would’ve stopped.”

  My blood froze. “Adrienne was here?”

  “Adrienne was everywhere.”

  “How did you find her . . . I mean, me?”

  “She called me. Gave me the address: 369 Tarragon Way. I went there, found some dead dogs, heard the alarm blasting down the street, followed the sound, and saw a bit of a crowd gathering around the liquor store.”

  I closed my eyes and prayed for death.

  “No one wanted to go in, and they figured the police would take another good forty or fifty minutes to show, since you weren’t moving and no one was in imminent danger. I slipped in through the window you busted, found you unconscious at the back with a dead case of Sam Adams and a half-empty bottle of Grey Goose vodka, and dragged you out the fire door . . . which, no doubt, would have triggered the alarm, had one not already been blaring. Brought you back to the car and drove away. Um, Cadence . . . someone may have taken down my license plate.”

  God, as usual, was ignoring my prayers. “Don’t worry about it. Michaela will make sure this disappears.” After she pulls my left boob into a phallic shape and cuts it off. Good golly, Adrienne! Could you have left me in a bigger mess? And I’ll bet you didn’t even check inside the house after you killed those dogs. Not that it would have been any better if you had.

  “We need to go back,” I told Patrick.

  “You need to go to a hospital first.”

  I looked over my wrists and started picking out the glass. It hurt. Also, there was probably some rabies protocol I would be wise to follow. “Fine. Hospital first. But then we need to go back.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Thanks for the flowers,” I remembered.

  Patrick smiled at me. “Adrienne thanked me first. I had no idea she liked irises. I mean, literally liked them. She likes to eat them.”

  “No, she likes to turn virtually anything she can into a straw, through which she sips vodka. That’s what she likes.” And here came the hangover I didn’t deserve, right on cue.

  “Uh, no offense, hon—”

  I braced myself.

  “Is your boss really going to cover this up? A federal agent breaking and entering? Destruction of property, public drunkenness?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Was that—it was! I spat out a purple iris petal. “The government needs us.”

  “Because you’re really good at your job?”

  “Because we do what most people can’t. And we keep doing it. We keep showing up, and wading through blood and guts, we keep chasing the really crazy people, the ones who really would just as soon kill you—or a nurse, or a child, or a father, or a waitress—as look at you.”

  “Your incredibly stressful and dangerous government work can’t drive you crazy,” Patrick guessed, “because you already are.”

  “Well. Yes.”

  Patrick chuckled and accelerated. “It makes as much sense as anything the government does, I suppose.” He peeked at me, a glance full of warmth and teasing affection. “Certainly hiring you makes more sense than trying to rewrite the tax code for the zillionth time.”

  I spit out another blossom and laughed; I couldn’t help it.

  Chapter Seventy

  The hospital visit was routine, in that I went from curtained area to curtained area without any information or courtesy until they were done poking and prodding and bandaging me. They kept Patrick confined to the waiting area, so we didn’t even get to talk. Instead, I used the time to check in with Michaela, advise her of what had happened, listen to her urge Opus out of her office, since “this was no time to be emptying wastebaskets when my best agent’s hurt,” make her call Opus back in so the poor man could do his job, assure her I was okay, assure her a man hadn’t done this to me, plead with her not to go castrate someone anyway, hush the nurses who tried to tell me not to use cell phones in this area, apologize profusely to the nearby patients whose heart monitors chose that moment to go berserk from cell interference, turn the cell phone off, apologize to the nurses for not listening, ask them for a landline, suffer their silent treatment for a while, plead with them for a landline, call Michaela again, apologize for cutting her off earlier, get her to agree to clear Patrick’s license plate with the authorities, refuse Michaela’s offer of assistance for my return visit to Scherzo’s house, and apologize one last time to the nursing staff.

  With all that activity, after which Patrick insisted we get lunch (drive-through Arby’s), it wasn’t until that afternoon that we got back to the house. I insisted Patrick stay in the SUV—frankly, I would have liked to see him go home, since my own car was still parked on the street. But it being a free country and all, the most I could do was get him
to promise to stay in his vehicle and keep a cell phone handy. (No heart monitors in the neighborhood, I supposed.)

  The dogs were still dead on the front lawn. All had spines broken backward to the point where they made nearly comical U shapes in the crabgrass. Flies dotted their broken teeth.

  “Bless it,” I breathed.

  I had my hand on the porch door—darn it, I really had to stop doing that—when I heard the sound of smashing furniture. It was coming from inside.

  Chapter Seventy-one

  A bit surprised I was still there—usually Shiro would have jumped in at this point—I barged through the door and porch and, entering the living area, saw the shape of a large man bursting out the back door. I had no time to take in any features before I saw something worse: Jeremy Scherzo, our witness from South Dakota who had recently moved here, lying on the floor and bleeding profusely from the head.

  I scrambled back to the porch and called out to Patrick to call 911 and tell them a federal agent was on the scene. Then I rushed back to Jeremy’s side. When I did, I was relieved.

  “Dj-dj-is he still here?”

  I gave a small smile at the sight of his eyes opening. A quick mental recall of local police and BOFFO notes reminded me that the man was easily excitable and had a slight stutter. “No. He left. I don’t think he’ll be back.”

  “Yi-yi-he’s been calling me. Threatening me. I think it’s the same guy.”

  “What do you remember about him?” I looked over his scalp. The wound appeared superficial but was still bleeding. I pulled off my windbreaker and used it to apply pressure.

  “Big. Sh-sh-strong. He surprised me. Tried to t-t-choke me from behind.”

  “What did he use?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “Soft. My-my-maybe rope. I got my finger underneath and we-we-when I didn’t die, he tossed it and just sh-sh-started pummeling me.”

  Seeing him point vaguely to a corner, I turned to look. He’d left evidence. Unintentional evidence! Then my heart froze.

  Coiled randomly in the corner, like a snake with no fashion sense, was a piece of cloth featuring a pattern of pink and purple hippos laced with the bloody crimson marks of vivisection.