by P. J. Morse
“She doesn’t fit in,” Greg said. “Oh, and that pink notebook in her duffel bag. The one in the stalker’s handwriting.”
I started tugging against Tortoise and Hare. “No! I found it in Dawn’s duffel! Someone planted it there!”
Greg told me, “I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’re not the one who shapes the story. I know you were screwing with Wolf’s head the other day. I should have made Patrick kick you out then, but that idiot said no. Private detective? What the hell kind of bullshit is that?”
At this point, Hare turned against me. “If you were a good private detective, you wouldn’t have said anything.”
Greg said, “We’re going downstairs, and we’re going to kick you off on camera.”
“Patrick!” I screamed.
I didn’t hear a response.
But I remembered that Muriel, Shane, and Wayne said they’d help me get Patrick out of the house, and I was going to call on them. As soon as Tortoise and Hare led me past the bathroom, I stomped on Tortoise’s foot, hard. He let go of me. Then I pushed Hare, and the weight of his camera brought him down to the floor.
“Sorry, fellas,” I said, ducking into the bathroom and locking the door.
The bathroom window faced the woods, and I had to gamble. I threw open the window and started waving my arms like crazy, hoping the Queen of the Forest and her minions would see me.
I considered jumping out, but I would have landed on the patio. I had less of a chance of breaking bones if I had to fight Greg and Hare. Tortoise would be a challenge, but I thought I could outwit him.
I threw open the bathroom door, only to find Greg with his foot raised in the air, as if he were ready to kick it down.
“Can’t a girl powder her nose?” I asked.
Greg tried to jump for me, but I shoved him back, and he almost went over the stairs. Then Lorelai began shrieking from somewhere on the first floor. “Oh my god! He’s naked!”
“What the hell? Get out of here! You’re dirty! That’s disgusting!” Topaz screamed.
I heard heels rushing toward the spiral staircase. “There’s a naked man in the house!”
“And he’s dirty! He smells like pot!” Topaz yelled, her heels clacking also. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Environmental freedom now! Environmental freedom now! Free the woodland creatures!” a male voice yelled. I thought it was Shane, bless him.
At the words “naked man,” Greg, Tortoise and Hare sprang into action, practically diving down the staircase. Tortoise stopped and looked back at me, as if he knew he should keep an eye on me.
I said, “You know they’re wrong.”
Tortoise didn’t say anything, but he went with Greg and Hare in pursuit of the naked man. I felt lucky. The joint Wayne gave Tortoise on the Exes Episode went a long way.
Once Tortoise was gone, I ducked into the closet at the top of the stairs. I had to move fast. I threw open the dresser drawers that led to the passage and ran down the stairs, right for the gun at the bottom.
I saw the loose board and pried it up, relieved that I could at least protect myself if the stalker went after me or the crew tried to throw me out.
But there was nothing under the board. Someone in the house had a gun, and it wasn’t me.
I ran up the stairs and toward the door of the passage that led to Patrick’s room. I heard Topaz yelling, “He’s slippery! I ain’t grabbing him!”
I shoved open the passage door and entered Patrick’s room. He was standing in the regular door to his room, apparently deciding whether or not he should get involved with the mess downstairs. “Patrick, you have to get out of here!” I yelled.
Patrick jumped back and closed the door to his room. He did not look relieved. “How the hell did you know about that passage? Get away from me!” He grabbed a note from the nightstand by the bed and waved it back and forth. It was purple and smelled of Eau De Psycho.
I ran toward him. “You’ve got to get out of here, okay? You wanna know why I asked you about Sean?”
“Why?”
“The person who killed Kevin and hurt Dawn is in this house!”
Patrick didn’t budge. “Are you sure it’s not you?”
I reached for him. “Just let me take you to the road, and you can do whatever you want after that. I will let you go after that, I swear.”
His face softened. I asked, “Do you have a cell phone?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Then get it, and let’s get out of here. That naked guy is with me.”
“Huh?” he asked.
“I’ll explain later,” I told him. “Let Wolf and the crew deal with whoever’s left over.”
He didn’t move, but I’d drag him out if I had to. I walked to the door to see if anyone was outside. Although the secret passage was the sneakiest way out, the front door was definitely the shortest. Then I heard the door to the secret passage creak. I turned my head and saw Lorelai come through the door, and I was relieved. For a moment, I thought that maybe she was the bodyguard Wolf hired.
Then she shot Patrick in the chest.
Patrick staggered back. I didn’t have a gun, so I picked up the nearest chair and threw it, striking Lorelai in the head. Patrick fell toward the bathroom and started crawling. Lorelai then disappeared back into the secret passage.
Patrick was bloody, horribly bloody. “Her? Her? Get her! Get her!” he kept gasping. “I’ll get a towel… Go! Go before she — ”
More gunfire erupted, this time popping through the bathroom walls. I heard someone scream. Patrick looked at me and said, “I’m sorry.”
I saw his phone on the floor, ran back, and handed it to him. “Call for help! Lock the door behind me!”
He had been digging under the sink. “Wait… wait…” He pulled out a large bottle of bleach and pried open a false bottom. A gun fell out. “Wolf told me to hang on to it. Take it… take it now.”
With Patrick’s gun in hand, I raced down the stairs, keeping myself low and moving along the walls opposite the secret passage. I saw holes in the wall from where Lorelai blasted through them. Of course Kevin told Lorelai about the passage. She had been with him from the beginning, ever since Bikini Girls Ahoy. He trusted her and told her everything, and look what he got for it.
“Get down! Lorelai’s got a gun! Hide!” I screamed, hoping someone would hear me.
Greg, Tortoise, and Hare were by the front door. They were all covered in mud. “What now! What now!” Greg was screaming.
“Is this for real?” Hare asked.
“Of course it’s real,” Tortoise snapped.
“Shoot it anyway!” Greg screamed.
“She’s going to shoot you first!” I yelled, crawling on the floor toward the bar. “I told you to get down! Watch the walls — Lorelai’s in the passage! She shot Patrick!”
“What? Who?” Hare asked. “You mean you’re not the stalker?”
“Fuck this,” Tortoise said. “I’ve been to prison, and this ain’t no prison.” He walked out the front door.
Greg decided it was his turn for a nervous breakdown. “I just want to eat at a nice restaurant! And smoke real cigarettes! That’s all I fucking want!” Then he directed his words at me. “I am sick of this stalker bullshit!”
At that moment, a bullet struck him in the gut. He looked as stunned as I felt. Hare, whose reflexes were as fast as his nickname, ducked down and grabbed Greg’s legs before another bullet whizzed by. That one would have hit Greg in the head. Hare climbed on top of Greg and covered him.
“Agggh!” Greg screamed. “God, it hurts! I’m gonna sue!”
“Hang on, man!” Hare screamed.
I heard running and shouting as I made my way back to the elimination room and ducked behind a tuffet, where I could hide and get a decent aim at Lorelai if she came out of the passageway behind the armoire. I could see Greg bleeding all over the floor, and Hare looked so vulnerable.
Tortoise yelled from outside, “You okay?
” Maybe the rest of the crew made it out, maybe Topaz. Patrick was probably still in the bathroom. And where was Shane?
I heard the noise of stilettos on the floor and wondered how Lorelai got out of the passage so quietly. I hissed to Hare, “Play dead!”
Hare was a pretty good actor. He went limp, and Greg’s blood soaked his shirt. I thought Hare might make it out alive. But I worried about Lorelai picking off anyone standing in the yard.
Then I saw Topaz in the entrance to the hall. She was one of the few I hadn’t seen or heard during the fray, and Topaz was never quiet for long. She had a gun.
She looked at my gun.
I looked at her gun.
The look on her face suggested she might be thinking I was the stalker. Greg sobbed, “Don’t hurt me!”
Topaz’s eyes narrowed. “What happened in Patrick’s bedroom? You tell me now!”
Then I saw a white arm smeared with blood loop around Topaz’s neck. Her torso jerked backward, and then she disappeared into the doorway between the elimination area and the bar. “Before you do that, Lorelai — ” Topaz pronounced each syllable clearly, and I knew that was for my benefit “ — you should know I am not alone and someone can take your ass down.”
I heard a scream, a gunshot, and a grunt from Topaz. A body hit the floor. I fired my gun into the doorframe, hoping that maybe I would hit Lorelai since it sounded like Topaz was the one who took the shot. I wasn’t worried about taking a bullet myself. Lorelai had been so busy firing that she just might not have any bullets left.
“Get the message? I said I wasn’t alone. Now let me go into the other room, Lorelai,” Topaz said, “or I will have Katherine pump you full of holes.”
Topaz staggered in, blood gushing from her leg. Her gun was gone, and Lorelai emerged, fully loaded, a gun in each hand. She was shaking, her face was contorted, and a trickle of red ran from her ear, where I’d hit her with the chair.
All the time I had suspected Topaz, Greg, Wolf and even Cookie at one point. I had been an idiot. Topaz was the second mole in the house. Wolf wasn’t bluffing. He really did hire a professional. And Lorelai just about killed her.
“You!” Lorelai screamed at me. “You? You’re the fucking one who is going to stop me? Country Kathy?”
Greg was whimpering. Hare didn’t move. Topaz crouched down by me.
“Drop it,” Lorelai said.
I wasn’t dropping anything. She was trembling. The worst that could have happened was for her to have a nervous twitch and shoot any one of us. She got Greg and Patrick, but she must not have been that good if she only hit Topaz in the thigh, and the head wound I gave her wasn’t helping. “I’m a better shot than you, Lorelai,” I told her. “Now, we need to talk before anyone else gets hurt.”
“Drop it,” she said again.
“I can put a bullet in between your eyes right now,” I said. I was exaggerating slightly, but I could certainly shoot her somewhere that mattered. “You can try me, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You may have been lucky so far, but you won’t be lucky this time.”
Lorelai leveled both guns. “Nothing personal, but I will get this done.”
“Was it worth Kevin? Dawn? Patrick and Greg? If you wanted an eye for an eye, it seems like you’re going for the whole face,” I told her. I could see Topaz twitch from her position. She had landed at a good angle and could come at Lorelai from the side. Had I been doing enough to stall? I could tell Topaz was supporting herself on her good leg. Lorelai was emotional and didn’t have the sense to cover herself properly. She wasn’t even looking at Topaz, assuming Topaz had been subdued. But she forgot that Topaz wasn’t a quitter.
Lorelai snickered. “Honey, it will never be enough after what they did to Sean Morgan.”
All the stalker stuff was actually a cover. Lorelai started out as a stalker, and then she shifted over to vengeance. Stalking was merely what she was good at, so she just transferred her skills to Patrick, throwing out a red herring while she went after Kevin.
“This is all about Sean Morgan? You think Sean Morgan killed himself because of this? He killed himself because he had bigger problems than television!” I yelled. “Ask Patrick — he’ll tell you!”
Lorelai’s face twitched.
“Why didn’t you stop with Kevin? What about Dawn?” I asked. “Why’d you make Fred go to sleep when you were in the Hummer? You could have died that day!”
“It doesn’t matter if I die! I want to stop this whole business!” she screamed. “This whole business is wrong! When I pushed Dawn, I thought you people would finally listen, but nooo… I didn’t hurt Dawn! This business hurt her! Not me!”
Topaz asked, “You’re pissed off about Sean?”
Topaz had been with me, step by step, except for that one point. That was the one place in which my forest friends helped. Then again, Lorelai had us all fooled. She might have fooled us the whole way if she could have controlled her rage.
“Nuclear Kings Sean?” Topaz asked again, as if she couldn’t believe anyone would kill just for the sake of Sean Morgan. “The one who killed himself? You gotta be shitting me.”
I understood Lorelai’s source of her anger, but she had unleashed a fury that she couldn’t put back in the bottle. She wasn’t going to stop getting revenge for the death of Sean Morgan until we stopped her.
“Shut up!” Lorelai screamed. “He’s not Nuclear Kings Sean! He’s just Sean! And he didn’t have to die! Patrick betrayed him, he betrayed the music, and so did you! You don’t really love the music!” Her voice quavered, and she waved the guns, almost as if she wanted to wipe a tear from her eye.
The moment was brief, but it was more than enough. Topaz and I locked eyes for a split second. I ducked down, and Topaz flew through the air, propelled by the strength of her good leg. “Nobody shoots me and gets away with it, bitch!”
Apparently Topaz had been drawing on her real personality the whole time. For someone who got on my nerves for so long, she was a good person to have in my corner. She slammed Lorelai in the nose with her fist, followed by a brutal head butt. Lorelai tried to shoot, but she couldn’t steady herself to get a breath. I dove for her and grabbed her by the knees. She fell back and dropped the guns. “Sean, Sean…” she cried.
Hare came to life and grabbed Lorelai’s weapons. He ran off with them, toward the pool. I guessed he was going to send them to a watery grave.
“Show’s over!” Topaz yelled.
I struggled with Lorelai and tried to pin her down, but I had to hold on to my gun. The blood coming from both her and Topaz made us slippery, and Lorelai managed to stand up. “Hare! Camera guy! Get me something to tie her up with, and get a doctor!” I yelled.
Topaz staggered slightly. She was tough as all hell. She wasn’t just talk. But she was losing blood. She came toward me like she wanted to help, but she collapsed.
Lorelai wasn’t done yet. Even with all the blood spurting from her nose, she punched me in the stomach. I wrapped my arm around her body, but she managed to slip away from me, and she took off for the front door. I followed, and I heard Tortoise screaming.
I wasn’t as fast as I thought I would be because Lorelai’s elbow drove the air out of my lungs. She was already heading down the front stairs toward the driveway and the road. Of course she had no reason to worry. She knew which stairs she had greased and which ones she hadn’t. I went down as fast as I could, and I aimed the gun. I was going to have to shoot her in the back to stop her. If she hadn’t killed so many people, I might have felt guilty about it since shooting someone in the back never seemed fair.
Luckily, I didn’t have to worry. As soon as she made it to the road, Shane, who was still naked and muddy, leapt out from the bushes. He rammed into Lorelai, leaving her in a crumpled heap on the side of the road. Andi and Muriel, both wearing crowns of leaves on their heads, were close behind, and they piled on her. Muriel began pounding on Lorelai with her fist. “I never liked you, and I don’t like your brownies!” she screamed. “They
taste too much like cake!” Andi started biting Lorelai’s ankles. The whole time, Lorelai chanted, “Sean… Sean… Sean…”
I ran down to try to pull all parties involved out of the road before they were creamed by a car. I just grabbed an arm and a leg — I didn’t know whose was which — and started pulling, and I sent a silent “thank you” to our little forest creatures right when I heard screeching brakes.
My body stiffened, and I braced myself to meet my maker, after all that trouble of going on a reality show and corralling one seriously messed up Nuclear Kings fan.
The car screeched to a stop, and I saw that it was the production van, which must have come from the main driveway. Tortoise and Hare jumped out. Tortoise pushed off Shane, Andi, and Muriel, snatched Lorelai from me and lifted her right up by her arms. I thought I heard her shoulder dislocate. She screamed, “Sean! Sean! It’s the cameras that killed him! Sean!” Her legs flailed, but it was useless. Hare, who was covered in Greg’s blood, was already tying her up with some electrical cord in the van.
“Who are you?” Tortoise asked Muriel, whose crown of twigs was skewed.
Hare laughed. “It’s the babe in the woods. Half the crew is in love with you!”
“She is the Queen of the Forest, and you should thank her right now.” I hugged her quickly. “That crown looks good on you. And, Shane, I’ve never been so happy to see a muddy naked man in all my life!”
I couldn’t tell if Shane blushed, but he nodded and hid discreetly behind Muriel, who was much thinner and didn’t cover him up very well.
While Tortoise and Hare dealt with Lorelai and got Shane some clothes, I ran back into the house to check on everyone else.
Once I entered the door, I began to hear sirens, and I saw Wolf carrying Patrick down the stairs. Patrick lifted his head slightly and smiled at me. His shoulder was wrapped up tightly in sheets, and he was bleeding through. “It’s okay. Wolf knows what to do.”
Grunting, Wolf laid Patrick down by Topaz, who was lying on her back on the floor, but she had elevated her leg on one of the tuffets. “Hi, Patrick,” Topaz said. “Ain’t getting shot a bitch?”
