by Jamie Quaid
“We’ll get the bastards,” I muttered, more to myself than to them. I’d seen enough of the license plate to know where to start. The Zone was an hour’s drive and a gargantuan psychological distance from D.C., but those were government plates I’d glimpsed while on my knees.
I saw disbelief in the kids’ eyes, but they politely refrained from arguing—rightfully so. They knew no one cared what happened to people who lived in a blighted area so poor that the inhabitants couldn’t escape their unmarketable homes. And I looked more like a bronzed garden gnome with limp hair than a champion of justice.
I could hear the ambulance siren wailing in the distance. I prayed the buzzing in my pocket was Max texting me that he was on his way. “Leibowitz, did you catch the license plate number?” I shouted.
Standing in the intersection, directing traffic around him, he shot me a disgruntled look. “You want me to lose my job reporting a senator? You really think I’m that stupid?”
Yeah, I did. “That’s what you get paid to do! They’re not above the law!” I yelled back, but maybe I was the one who was stupid, expecting justice in the face of all evidence otherwise. “Did you see who ripped off my deposit bag?”
This time, he stared in disbelief. “Did the bus hit you in the head? Don’t go blaming me for theft if Legrande accuses you of stealing. There wasn’t nobody back there but us.”
Visions of unemployment and homelessness danced in my head. Andre would be furious. I’d had a lot of bad days in my twenty-six years, but this one was promising to rank right up there with the day I got arrested and had my leg crushed.
2
The ambulance arrived. Leibowitz took names. I took the partial license plate one of the kids had written down.
Seething with repressed rage at failing in my responsibility to Andre, frustrated at my inability to help innocent kids, and exhausted from overexerting my bad leg, I checked my cell phone for Max’s message. There was none. The buzz had been a wrong number.
The very bad awful day threatened to escalate.
My knees ached from where I’d scraped them on the sidewalk. That’s what I got for trying to look professional by wearing a skirt when jeans would do.
I also did it to annoy Andre, who’d learned his lesson about believing anything in a skirt was available. That didn’t make my scraped knees feel better or reduce my guilt over losing the deposit. If Andre docked my next month’s pay for his lost cash, I couldn’t pay rent or buy groceries. I’d have to drop out of school within weeks of finals. Or study in the streets.
With medics and cops to care for the kids, I sat dejectedly on the bus stop bench and tried Max’s number, again. No answer.
What in hell had I ever seen in him in the first place? Yeah, he was a sexy bad boy who made my heart go pitter-pat when he grinned, but grins and hot sex didn’t make a relationship.
Facing my uncertain future, I finally understood that I couldn’t afford his chronic irresponsibility. I’d never really had someone I could count on, but repeating the mistakes of the past was not a sign of intelligence. I’d been a sex-starved idiot. Six months of neglect was more than enough to prove that he would never change—especially now that he wasn’t taking my calls. I knew I wasn’t any prize and that Max could have any woman he wanted. I could either get mad or get depressed. I chose the former.
Buoyed by self-righteous rage, I tried to reach him one more time. This time, when all I got was his cheery “Enjoying life. Later!” I shouted, “We’re finished! Done! Kaput! Bring me my car and get the hell out of my life, Maxim MacNeill!”
I wasn’t so good at laying it on the line in person.
I don’t know why I’d put up with Max and his bad habits for this long. Because my mother would hate him, was my best guess. But my mother was in Bolivia with the Peace Corps and hadn’t been home in years. Dee Clancy had barely been able to wait for me to leave for college before taking off. Motherly, she was not.
Which was no explanation but an excuse.
I was still sitting on the bench long after the ambulances and police cars had departed, furious to the point of tears. I was making up lists of all the things I would say to Max should I ever speak to him again, when a weak, prolonged blare of horn rattled my already overstimulated nerves. I sought the source, but the semi pulling into the intersection blocked the view of the hill behind.
Cursing the limp hair falling in my face, I brushed it out of my eyes and stood up to see around the semi as its trailer cleared the intersection. Behind it, coming down the hill, I recognized the rusting hood of my old red Escort.
From the way he was hitting the gas, Max must have received my message. Fine. Let him be mad. He couldn’t be any angrier than I was. And I had far more reason.
Wishing I had enough hair to pin the limp strands out of my face so I didn’t look so pathetic, I stepped up to the curb. I blinked in astonishment when the Escort didn’t slow down.
He wasn’t stopping.
The Escort was accelerating like a rocket launcher—right at me.
I froze so long that I could see Max’s eyes narrowed in fury and his fingers clenched white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
My boyfriend was trying to kill me!
Shocked into action, I dived for the protection of the concrete bus stop bench. With as much anguish as fear, I screamed, “Damn you, Max!”
The heat of the engine was almost upon me as I fell to the sidewalk behind the bench on already bruised knees.
At the pain, I automatically cried out, “Damn you to hell!”
The rusted Escort slammed into the light pole where I’d just been standing. I shivered and huddled in the protection of the bench. In horror, I watched as the pole cracked and the car kept on going, careening into the bank’s brick wall. Metal and mortar flew.
I felt the impact like a small earthquake. Scrambling backward, I could only stare in alarm as the cracked light pole split in two, teetered ominously, and then tilted. Snapping under the tension, live wires crackled and sparked—igniting the gas from the shattered car in a ball of fire that engulfed the Escort.
With Max inside it.
I screamed. And screamed some more.
• • •
The paramedics insisted on taking me to the hospital. I had no insurance and no desire to spend one more minute of my life in a hellhole of sanitary captivity. I insisted on walking out after they’d taken my vital signs and established I still lived.
I was too numb to process more than mobility. Not until I was outside in the humid Baltimore heat did I realize I had no way home.
I preferred being numb to believing Max had tried to kill me or reliving that giant ball of flame. I didn’t want to know where he might be or what he might be suffering right now. I should have asked, but my head was still filled with horror. Thinking made my aching head worse, so I closed the door in my mind for now. My survival instincts were strong and my internal GPS was set on Go Home.
I was standing in the diesel fumes outside the emergency room, trying to figure out how I would get there, when Andre’s electric blue Mercedes sport coupe screeched to a halt at the curb.
He got out and stared, looking as white-faced as I felt. “What the devil did you do back there?”
That wasn’t precisely the way I wanted to look at events. Without being asked, I settled into his comfy leather passenger seat and leaned it as far back as it would go. Sitting down relieved the inequality of my legs, giving my hip muscles a chance to relax and unknot.
He climbed in and glared when I gave him my address as if he were a taxi driver. Rudeness held back my tears. I was almost out of defenses, and I despised being weak.
“Did you at least make my deposit before you blew up the bank and your boyfriend?” he asked, but his voice lacked the venom the words ought to have conveyed. For Andre to avoid his usual sting indicated a high level of concern, probably for his cash and not for me.
“Nah, I spent it at a spa and boutique on the other side o
f the harbor,” I said, trying to recall events in the order in which they happened, still seeing only a white-hot burst of electricity and orange flames. “Can’t you tell from my designer shirt?” My hand-dyed silk top was torn and had blood on it, although whose, I couldn’t say.
“You fly as well as fry?” he asked sarcastically, knowing how long it would take to reach the ritzy port in rush hour, even if I could afford the toll road.
A TV news van raced into the hospital parking lot. Man, that was all I needed—the media, which could easily draw attention to my imperfect past. I sank deeper into my seat as if I had guilt written on my face for everyone to see.
“I’m not thinking too straight right now, Legrande. Fire me and get it over with. But give me the courtesy of dumping my carcass somewhere close to home.” I was aware of aches and scrapes and my smoke-seared lungs, but they didn’t register well inside my buzzing head.
“If the money is gone, it’s gone,” he said with surprising pragmatism. “If some nurse is opening a new back account with it, I won’t begrudge her the lagniappe. Since your spectacular debacle of flames will be all over the news, I can report the deposit to the bank’s insurance company as lost in the fire, and no one will know the difference. You kept a tally, didn’t you?”
Grateful for this one small candle in the darkness, I grunted acquiescence and remained silent the rest of the way to my place. The memory of what had happened to the deposit lurked behind a door in my head that I didn’t want to open.
When we finally pulled up to it, at least Legrande didn’t comment on the run-down tenement housing I called home. He knew how much he didn’t pay me. I doubt if he knew I was probably the only student in the universe actually attempting to pay back my loans while still attending classes.
“Thanks for the ride.” I opened the door myself.
From beneath a dip of dark hair, Andre drew down his eyebrows and cast me a dubious look. “I ought to walk you up. You don’t look so hot.”
“Leave these fancy wheels for two minutes and you won’t have any. I can make it to the elevator.” I didn’t mention that the elevator wasn’t working. “Thanks again.”
I climbed out and limped off without looking back. Getting friendly with Andre wasn’t happening. I liked keeping my work and private lives separate. Besides, Andre wasn’t trustworthy. I understood why Lady Justice was ambivalent about him. Even though he was thoughtful enough to take me home and let me off the hook for the missing deposit, he’d just worked out a scheme to cheat the bank’s insurance company. I liked my men obvious, and Legrande was far too murky for my simple needs.
Although Max’s reason for trying to murder me was none too clear.
I dragged my aching knees and burning lungs up the three flights of stairs to my apartment without anyone noticing or caring what state I was in. I wanted oblivion. Maybe the nightmare would go away if I got some sleep.
I kept my keys and coins in a rawhide pocket pinned inside my waistband where pickpockets and purse snatchers couldn’t grab them. I was always cautious. I couldn’t believe I’d left the manacle unlocked on the bank deposit bag.
I was obsessing about my error in duty rather than thinking about the empty apartment I entered.
Max’s leather jacket lay across my sagging sofa. Crap.
I dropped onto the hideous gold upholstery, hugged the jacket, and cried, rocking back and forth as if I were quieting a wailing baby. I didn’t know if I mourned Max or my lost innocence. I could be a bitch, but no one had ever tried to kill me before.
• • •
I must have fallen asleep on the couch. I woke to the gray light of a cloudy morning and tried to orient myself. I added “aching back” to my list of woes as I listened to the silence. Or almost silence. Garbage trucks crushed trash in the distance, and the interstate traffic was a persistent dull roar in the background.
I still held Max’s jacket. I felt strangely empty. My face was sticky with tears.
Preferring to hang on to my current state of numbness, I struggled to remember what day it was and decided it was Saturday. I didn’t have class. Good thing. I didn’t have a car to get there.
I contemplated just lying there for the rest of the day, but even though my body liked that notion, my head couldn’t tolerate inaction. Images of fireballs were already springing to life.
I needed something to do, something to keep me occupied, something to keep thoughts of Max at bay.
I had a senator’s car to track down and the mystery of a missing deposit bag to solve. That should get me started. Anything except think about Max.
I stumbled into the shower and fought to shampoo my hair with the cheap stuff I’d bought at the dollar store. The water pressure was down again, and I could scarcely rinse out the meager suds. I was used to living like this. I’d spent the first years of my life living in an RV while my tree-hugging mother traversed the country looking for who knows what. Vagabonds R Us.
Maybe she had the right idea and I should join the Peace Corps. My noble notion of becoming a lawyer and standing up for the little guy wasn’t working out so well. Almost being murdered by my boyfriend had finally warped my idealism—two weeks short of completing my law degree.
Eventually getting rid of the suds, I wrapped a towel around myself and stood in front of the steamy medicine cabinet mirror to dry my oddly electrified hair. Mousy brown and limp, my hair wasn’t worth expending much energy on. Pins and barrettes merely slipped out of it. Today, just to annoy me, it possessed abnormal springiness.
As I glared at the tangled mess, a black scrawl on the mirror caught my eye.
I blinked, trying to decipher the scribble. The backward scribble:
ytsuJ
Pain struck me right between the ribs and twisted. My full name is Mary Justine Clancy. Everyone called me Tina—except Max. He had insisted on calling me Justy.
Why would Max have written my nickname backward on my mirror?
I tried to erase the letters, assuming they’d been written sometime in steam. But the letters didn’t come off.
They’d been etched from inside the glass.
3
How had Max etched my name behind the glass? And why? Had he popped acid or gone insane before he tried to kill me?
My doorbell sounded, and I considered not answering. But, totally creeped out, I didn’t want to be left alone with that weird mirror message or the anguish it caused. I shoved a clip in my damp hair, dragged on capris and a tank top, and hurried to answer the persistent ringing.
Crossing the bare linoleum squares of the living room, I missed the noisy blare of the radio that Max left on every minute of his waking day . . . and sometimes longer. On weekends, he was usually outside, tinkering with his bike and revving the engine instead of helping me with chores. I tried to summon annoyance and be glad he wasn’t around anymore. It was nuts to miss a man who wanted me dead.
My aching head couldn’t believe yesterday was real. Until I knew for certain, I was hanging on the thin edge of a crumbling cliff of sanity.
I peered out the peephole but didn’t recognize the narrow-eyed, square-jawed Clint Eastwood type in the corridor. Keeping the chain lock fastened, I cautiously cracked open the door.
“Miss Justine Clancy?” the man asked, flashing what appeared to be a badge. “I’m Detective Leo Schwartz. May I come in?”
A policeman. The hated specter of my past. The last one I’d had a close encounter with had crippled me for life. Did I really want to hear what the Man had to say?
Considering the alternative of sitting here, trying not to think—maybe. That said something very unhealthy about my state of mind.
I cautiously opened the door. “Come in, Detective. You look hot.” Okay, stupid thing to say to a man, even if he was a hunk. Policemen make me nervous. “May I get you something to drink?”
“Water would be fine. Doesn’t this place have air-conditioning?” He dabbed at his high brow with a real cotton handkerchief, drawing my g
aze to his blond buzz cut and Slavic cheekbones. The detective had some interesting ancestry.
“Not that anyone wants to pay to fix,” I replied. I poured two glasses of ice water, added slices of lemon, and would have carried them to the front room, except the detective had followed me back to the kitchenette. He took a seat on a counter stool and sipped gratefully at the drink.
It was early May, but the humidity was high, and he’d apparently abandoned his jacket in the warmth. Broad shoulders and muscular biceps looked good in his neatly pressed blue short-sleeved shirt. I supposed cops had to wear some kind of regulation dress, but if it included neckties, he’d lost his. I don’t do cops, so I resisted any escapist fantasies and focused on his disapproving demeanor.
“How may I help you, Detective Schwartz?”
“I need to complete the accident report,” he said, removing pencil and paper from his pocket.
A flashback to the limo crashing into a corner of children had me taking the other stool. I hadn’t reported it. Had Leibowitz given my name as a witness? I really didn’t want to revisit yesterday. “Do they usually send detectives for accident reports?”
I slid my finger through the condensation on the glass and felt my newly heavy hair fall out of the meager clip. I shoved the clip in a pocket and raked my hand through more hair than I knew I possessed.
“When a car loses control and runs off the street, narrowly missing a pedestrian, it’s usually an accident,” he said without expression. “It’s not quite as clear-cut when a car accelerates and narrowly misses the car’s owner. And the car’s driver is in a relationship with said owner.”
Put like that, my moment of terror almost sounded like a TV movie. I’d rather have talked about the kids, but I’d learned authority had a one-track mind. “You make it sound like a domestic dispute. I’d called Max to pick me up. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
