by Eric Beetner
They put Blake on his stomach, shirt off and a bright light aimed at the entry wound in his lower back. I heard someone call for a chest tube.
Marjorie earned herself two teams, the arm team and the leg team. Already the forceps were out and a nurse smeared lidocaine around the wounds to numb her up a bit before they began spelunking, looking for buried treasure inside each of her three entry wounds. Good thing Sam hadn’t unleashed Marge’s own Smith and Wesson on her or there would be matching exit wounds and her chances would be, as Daddy used to say, “Whitman and Theresa. Slim and Nun.”
I stood by, frustrated and angry that I could do nothing. I hadn’t been able to help Marjorie, I’d gotten Blake shot twice. I had no idea if Lucas was dead or alive. I hadn’t even managed to kill the bad guy, or girl, when I had the chance.
I’d been living a life of disappointment in myself for a few years now. Ever since I took the first envelope of money from Calder and Rizzo’s guy. If I’d been in high school the level of self loathing I felt would have made me bulimic at the very least. Lucas’ ability to balance out my self hatred should be proof enough we all need a little yin and yang, give and take in life.
Standing there in the ER with a clipboard full of forms I didn’t even know how to fill out may have been my low point. I’d fucked the whole thing up from square one. Granted, it took me a while to even catch on to what the hell was happening, and by then the wheels were on motion. I had no time to think, let alone think rationally. For Christ sake, I don’t think I managed a truly rational thought for two and a half years other than saying yes to Lucas when he proposed.
At least during my tenure with Calder and Rizzo I never felt helpless. I still did my job—the real one—the DEA, catching the bad guys one. I did that and did it well, when I wasn’t spending my time undermining my own job. And I’d fooled myself into thinking I could quit taking the dirty money any time. Doesn’t everyone though?
I guess I always thought I’d have some opportunity to set things right. Helping Lucas put away Calder and Rizzo had been my plan. Fucked that one up good, didn’t I?
“Miss, is that your car?” The same annoyed nurse who handed me the clipboard stood with her hands on the hips of her unflattering scrubs.
“Sorry.” I handed her back the blank forms as I went back through the staring waiting room to Blake’s car still idling in the Emergency lane. I sat in the driver’s seat and the blood had grown thicker, stickier, colder. A shudder ran through me.
I pulled forward and parked in the small lot for emergency room visitors. I turned the car off and sat in the quiet. I tried to think of how to make this come out okay. Very quickly I stopped fooling myself. This could never be okay. I sat and tried to think of how to make this a tiny bit less fucked.
I felt a heat behind my eyes. Small, but there. I ignored it for a minute, but when it didn’t go away I realized: Her. Watching. Listening.
I turned the rearview mirror and looked into my eyes. Her eyes.
“I think your money is gone,” I said. Not sure why I even felt the need to say it out loud. She’d know if I thought it, right?
“Think he’s dead too?” she asked. Her voice came across in a bad connection. If it were a cell phone call we would have dropped it and tried again. With this weird mind conversation, we knew it was the best to hope for.
“I hope not,” I said.
“What about Blake? Is he dead?”
“No. He’ll be fine.”
“Damn.”
“How’s your leg?”
“Through and through. Hurts like a motherfucker but nothing Marjorie’s medicine cabinet couldn’t fix.”
“When is this gonna end?”
“When Lucas is dead.”
“What for?” I almost started crying. “Let it go. No one is paying you anymore.”
“I can’t help it. Now it’s in my brain and I can’t get it out. Like a bad song. He’s like We Built This City On Rock and Roll. I fucking hate it but now it’s stuck in my head and will be for days. You know how this feels. I can’t control it. I need to do it.”
“I’m gaining more balance. I sped on the way over here.”
“Look out, miss Bonnie Parker is in town.”
“I know you’re feeling it too. Tell me about Blake. You’re a better shot than that.”
“He was moving.”
“Not very fast.” She got quiet and the heat in my head flamed higher. I hit a nerve.
“You see, if you all hadn’t spent so much time trying to stop me, maybe I wouldn’t be so angry.”
“And if you kill Lucas, what then?”
“I don’t know.” I could feel her staring at me through my own eyes. Frickin’ creepy. “You don’t know either.”
She was right. I didn’t know any more than her, and I felt no more in control.
Something in the car moved. I jumped and took my eyes away from the mirror. Something small. A mouse? It happened again. Electronic. A buzzing.
Blake’s phone, wedged in the cushion of the front seat where I dropped it. I lifted it out.
An email. From Lucas.
WHEN YOU SEE IT YOU WILL…
Made it out. C&R dead. Back @ homebase.
I stared at the phone, reading it again, taking it in. Lucas was alive. Calder and Rizzo were not. Did it make a difference? Not to her.
“I guess I know who gets my twenty million,” Sam said. “Those Tiburón fucks.”
“Can this be over now?” I asked.
“You’d like that wouldn’t you? Maybe get Lucas back? Stay on track with the marriage.” I didn’t think anything of the sort. I figured on twenty-to-life. “Not a goddamn chance. Excuse me now, I’ve got to go kill Lucas.”
With a blast of static our connection cut off, like she ripped her fist out of my skull.
How would she choose to kill Lucas? Did she know his hiding place, this ‘homebase’? And if she knew, why didn’t I know?
Our connection, like our creeping good and bad sides, kept evolving. Keeping secrets from each other now, huh? Not for long, not if I had anything to say about it.
I gripped the steering wheel in my hands and slammed my eyes shut. I revved up my brain to ten thousand RPMs and dove into her mind. I experienced yet another strange sensation to add to my list of strange sensations. She tried to keep me out. My connection with her inched forward only to be yanked back like she tied a rope around my waist. Even in the midst of it I wished I could explain the feeling. Nothing can really. Being locked out of your own brain is a unique experience.
In the grey matter equivalent of hurling myself at a locked door I grit my teeth and tried again. I managed to crack a tiny wedge into her thoughts. She blared music, ran loops of static and grisly memories like shooting Barry in the head to distract me. All I needed was one piece of information.
The email. The screen on Blake’s phone kept coming up. It peered at me from around warping and static filled corners. It flashed for split seconds, like a bad edit in a worse movie. Again and again it flashed. It had to mean something.
I pulled my thoughts back to the car, grateful to be out of that screaming nightmare. It took me a minute to regain my equilibrium. Anyone looking at me would think I was drunk.
I read through the email again. Homebase? What could he mean? How did she decipher the code?
I saw it. Not in the email, under the email.
Lucas sent it from his office.
THE AMAZING RACE
Lucas hated typing. He sucked at it. The typo king of the DA’s office, they called him. As much as he could he let his secretary type things for him, made me constantly proofread his emails from home and he loved the automatic signature thing on his email. He set it up at work and he set it up at home. Two computers, two different signatures.
The email to Blake ended with the auto-filled: Lucas Royston—Deputy District Attorney, then his office address, his phone extension, his work email and t
he website for the DA’s office.
I felt bad leaving Blake and Marjorie, but there was nothing more I could do at the hospital. And I’d been given one more chance to do something right and keep the man I loved from being killed. By me.
I had to save Lucas from myself. God damn this whole thing is a mindfuck.
“Ma’am?”
A nurse was coming out and walking toward me.
“You’re not planning on leaving, are you? All gun shot wounds need to be reported—”
I knew the drill, but I had to go. Now.
“I’m needed elsewhere. DEA business.”
My mouth let me say it so I couldn’t tell if it was a lie or not.
“Ma’am, you need to be here to answer some questions about the people you delivered here.”
“Sorry. I can’t.”
I felt my foot lower down onto the pedal like it was in a concrete shoe. For a second I didn’t think my body would let me leave the scene, knowing the protocol. But the car started to pick up speed.
The nurse broke into a light jog. “Ma’am!”
I smiled as he faded smaller in my rearview.
I pulled out of the hospital lot and settled in to some headache-inducing speeding with no idea if Sam would still be at Marjorie’s house or not. If she stayed, then I’d have a head start toward Lucas’ office. As clear as our connection came in last time, it gave me a sinking feeling she was close to me, which meant not longer in the suburbs. With one major hospital in the area it would have been pretty easy to guess where we were headed. I bet we took the same shortcuts.
I got the car up to a steady ten miles over the limit and felt good about myself for the minor violation. After the multiple murders they were going to pin on me I’d be most proud of a hundred dollar traffic ticket.
I tried to sneak a peek into Sam’s view, but got only more static, screeching feedback noise and flashes of nonsense. Blocking me out. I bet she had a hell of a migraine from using all that brain power.
Right as I started to feel fancy about my speeding, a car pulled out from a mini-mall parking lot without even looking. I swerved, cutting off a driver behind me, but the woman pulling out didn’t even slow down. We hit, her front corner scraping across my back end. Then she decides to slam on the brakes.
Cars honked, traffic swerved around us. No one bothered to stop and see if we were okay. People suck sometimes. Most times. I bet if all those jerks who cared more about getting to wherever they had to be could spend a day with only their evil side, they’d be out of those cars and calling 911 in a heartbeat.
Not that anyone got hurt or anything. Skimming a few miles over the limit fit in the new parameters of my “good”ness, but fleeing the scene of a fender bender did not, apparently. I really wanted to move and get to Lucas. I couldn’t care less if Blake’s car gained a few new dings in the fender. The lady driving the other car sure wanted to talk. She got up and out of her vehicle and made it around my car by the time I opened the door.
“What the fuck are you doing? Sleeping? Or, let me guess? Texting. Were you texting while driving?”
Right away I had a few choice words stuck in my throat for her.
“I was in my lane driving along and you pulled out in front of me,” I said.
“Were you not paying attention that someone was there?”
“I was paying attention. It’s the only reason why I didn’t hit you in the door and kill us both.”
“Because you were going so fast?”
Okay, I was going a little bit fast and I was trying to see through Sam’s eyes, but still, that bitch pulled out in front of me, and now she wants to cop an attitude? This is exactly when you want an evil side to let a little bit out of the cage, just a taste. Oh, what Sam could do with this lady.
“You’re gonna pay for this you know?”
“Maura, come on honey. It’s not so bad.” Her husband, I assume. In the car, riding bitch.
“No, John, it’s her fault. She’s going to cover this. Did you call the police?”
“Not yet.” I saw him sigh and get out his cell phone. Cops I did not need.
“Look,” I said. “Let’s exchange information and the insurance companies will take care of it. I have someplace to be rather urgently.”
“Oh, so that’s why you were speeding like a maniac?”
I exhaled deeply, wanting like hell to give this lady a piece of my mind, but unable to do so. Or was I…?
“We’ll wait for the police and fill out a report,” she said. “I want it on record so an officer marks down the accident as your fault.”
“But it was your fault,” I said. I tried to get angry. I tried to let down whatever wall kept me from calling her all the names I stored in my mouth.
“Why don’t we leave it to the law to decide, shall we?” Maura turned away from me and examined the damage to her car, clucking her tongue and tsk-tsking along the way.
Something broke in me. A slow egg yolk oozing. I leaned back into Blake’s car, opened the glove box and put a hand on his pistol. My palm seared on the metal. My body didn’t want me to do this, but I pushed through the pain and lifted the gun.
I got as far as the front seat and had to drop it. Progress, but baby steps, y’know?
I’d held a gun on Sam, but couldn’t fire. Could I hold a gun on a perfect stranger?
I didn’t have time to find out so I went with plan B, which, in a way, turned out even more intimidating.
“Maura?” I said. “Come here.” I tried to channel Sam. What would she do? And after all, I reminded myself, she was me. I had it in me, just needed to find it again.
The bitch stepped over to me, hips swinging. I think she expected a profuse apology, maybe some groveling. Not today, Maura.
“See that?” I said, pointing to the gun resting on the front seat. A seat soaked in dried blood. “Don’t make me take it out a point it at your f-f—” I stammered, struggling to get the word out. “F—fucking face.”
As she looked inside the car at the blood stained upholstery and the pistol resting on the seat, she turned white as a sheet. Her mouth gaped open and shut like a ventriloquist dummy.
“You don’t want me to get the gun, do you Maura?”
She kept her eyes on the gun and shook her head violently side to side.
“Good. Then can I go now? I have things to do.”
She took two steps back, nodding her head. She reached her car again and fumbled with the door handle. Inside, her husband looked confused.
“Maura? What happened?”
I got in and left as fast as I could, hoping my little detour hadn’t given Sam the advantage.
THE SCENE OF THE (OTHER) CRIME
Even after all the crap I’d been through that morning, when I pulled in front of the Eisenhower building housing the city offices the clock outside pointed two dagger-like hands up at the twelve. What’s that the Army used to say about doing more before lunch? Even those jock-heads don’t do as much killing as I’ve seen.
Parking was grim. I ended up two blocks down at a meter. Before I got out I closed my eyes and tried to get an idea of where to find her. I got a bit of a shock.
I watched as she walked through the front doors of the Eisenhower building. Damn. She beat me there. My view came in clear. She had other things on her mind, like where and how to find Lucas, so her blocking my view had been put on hold.
I fished in my pocket for some change and came up with lint. I opened the cup holder, ashtray, glove box in Blake’s car, but not even a penny. I sucked in a breath like getting ready to rip off a band-aid and I tried walking away from the car without feeding the meter.
I felt a weird sensation, like a force field or something. I got a few paces away and gravity became stronger, the air around me thicker. I kept walking, powering my feet forward like walking in mud at the bottom of a lake. And do you know what? I made it out the other side. My feet moved easier, the air thi
nned out. Each step I took away from the violation came more normally. Before long, I broke into a jog down the sidewalk toward Lucas. Balance returned faster now each time I pushed through the pain.
I knew for sure when the gun in my waistband stopped burning my skin.
All I could think of was the last time I’d been there. The poison. The people dying all around me. The look of fear in the survivor’s eyes when they thought I was the one who’d done it.
Things could go two different ways. I could march into the lobby and have it out. Though I doubted I could shoot, still. But, I could create such a distraction I could stop her from getting very far. With security on high alert after the poison I’d surely start a shootout and either me or Sam or both would be shot. It would be a hell of a trick shot for some lucky lobby security guard. Shoot one and get the second for free. See them explain that in their report.
Before I stormed in guns a-blazing, better to get the lay of the land. As I approached the front of the building I zeroed in on her view. I watched until I knew what to do. It took a while.
Here’s what I saw:
Sam held her DEA I.D. out (bitch had it the whole time!) and spun a tale of bullshit about needing to see assistant district attorney Lucas Royston on a confidential matter. The security guard, a young guy an awful lot like Brad Pitt from Thelma & Louise, a comparison I bet he didn’t mind at all, listened to her while shaking his head.
“Mr. Royston isn’t in today, ma’am. I have the sign in sheets and the card key logs from as soon as five minutes ago. He’s not here.”
“You do see this says DEA, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You now that means Drug Enforcement Agency? Federal drug enforcement?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
Sam played it smart. She wouldn’t make it far acting like a bull in a china shop. Go in low key, throw the weight of the agency around. Solid plan. Looked like it wasn’t working for her, though. That meant I wouldn’t have any more luck. I sat still, let her do the legwork for us both. Of course, her methods are a little different than mine.
