Mean Woman Blues

by Smith, Julie

  Mentally, he ticked off avenues he’d followed, trying to decide if he’d left out anything. Lovelace! he thought. He hadn’t called his niece. The thought filled him with panic. Anxiously, he dialed her number.

  “Hi, Uncle Isaac.” She must have caller I.D.

  He could hardly get his breath. “Lovelace. I saw a man who looked like my father. It can’t be him, but I can’t be sure it’s not.” There was a tiny trickle of calculation in what he was saying, the way he was saying it.

  She picked up on his peculiar phrasing. “Isaac, your OCD is back, isn’t it? Oh, Isaac, I’m so sorry.”

  “Lovelace, I can’t be sure. It might be him and it might not.” This was one of the manifestations of his OCD: When it was in full force, he couldn’t be sure of certain things. “Can you be extra careful for a few days? I’ll call back when I can be sure.”

  “Are you all right? Is the man in New Orleans?”

  “Of course, I’m all right. I’m not even in New Orleans. Listen, you shouldn’t have to suffer for this problem; it’s my problem. I’m really sorry I frightened you, but I just… can’t be sure.”

  He hung up sweating, thinking, I really blew that one. The last thing he wanted to do was terrify her, but he’d had to talk to her, to make sure she was where she was supposed to be, if nothing else.

  Before he was even off the plane, Isaac accessed his messages. Terri’s cheerful voice chirped out at him: “Hi, Isaac, I’m really sorry I forgot to call. I had dinner with an old friend from New Orleans…” Here she laughed. “…dinner and a whole lot of drinks. Somehow, it just slipped my mind. Everything went great with the show. See you later this morning.”

  He’d heard Terri’s voice; he knew she was fine. But he couldn’t be sure. Okay, he was obsessing; he knew it. But he also knew it when he washed his hands twenty times a day and checked ten times to make sure he’d locked the door. It wasn’t something he could help. He hardly even bothered apologizing to himself— just took a taxi home, jumped on his scooter, and sped to her house.

  But she wasn’t home. He was deeply disappointed. Her mail had come and hadn’t been collected. That argued that she hadn’t gotten back yet. He could wait for her. Should he? On the other hand, she could have gone to the store or something, maybe out to lunch.

  He obsessed so long about it, it actually constituted waiting. His cell phone battery was dangerously low, but he didn’t dare leave his phone off. And finally, inevitably, he ran out of juice.

  That made his decision: Nothing to do but go home. He half-hoped she’d be there, and he was disappointed when he didn’t see her car. The minute he walked in, he began cleaning. He cleaned the already spotless kitchen; he swept the floor, carefully counting each stroke; he stripped the bed and put the linens in the washing machine. Then and only then did he permit himself a shower. He ran it till the hot water gave out, and still he stayed in. His fingers and toes were like raisins— ice-cold raisins— by the time he stepped out.

  He wished he had something white to dress in. The White Monk, his former persona, had dressed only in white, and it was what he needed now, but he’d thrown out all his white to begin his new life.

  He picked up his broom and started sweeping again. When he’d swept the requisite number of strokes, he called Terri again and then his next-door neighbor, Pamela, his best friend in the world. “You haven’t seen Terri, have you?”

  “No, why?”

  “Pamela, I think I’m going crazy.”

  “Oh, really?” she sighed. “So who’d notice, here in the Bywater?” She paused, and Isaac knew he was supposed to laugh, but he couldn’t force even a chuckle.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll dig out my grandmother’s secret recipe for sanity-inducing tea— she was a witch, you know. I’m putting on the kettle now. Meet you at the door in thirty.”

  Good old Pamela! He knew she meant seconds, not minutes, and that was so typical of her, always there for him in situations a neighbor should never have to go through. And those situations had occurred at a time he’d never even spoken to her! It was during the period of his famous vow of silence, which hadn’t fazed her even slightly. She wasn’t kidding about sanity standards in the neighborhood.

  Sighing, he put his newly charged cell phone in his pocket (in case Terri called) and picked up a tissue to open the door. When his OCD was in full flower, he couldn’t touch doorknobs.

  Stepping onto his porch, he glanced toward Pamela’s, saw that she was on her porch, waved briefly, and started down his steps.

  * * *

  The young doctor slipped out of the room, probably to find some equipment to torture him with.

  He said to Lovelace, “I went to Dallas because Terri disappeared on me. I thought my father might… oh! You don’t know.”

  His niece looked sad for some reason, as if he’d said something that reminded her of a tragedy.

  “What’s wrong? You told me Terri was okay.”

  Lovelace sat down on the bed. “Isaac. Terri’s fine. It’s you that got shot in the head.”

  He didn’t see what she was getting at. By the time he’d put it together, the resident was back with another doctor. “I am brain-damaged,” he said, just as they walked in.

  They didn’t have all the answers he needed, but they did have one: He’d only been out about a day. Not too bad, considering. He made a stab at more info: “Hey, do you guys know who my father is?”

  The resident, the young woman, pursed her lips. “Look, you’re going to get the best care we can give you whether your daddy’s the governor or the garbageman.”

  Isaac was mortified. But it must mean his father hadn’t been arrested.

  When he was alone with Lovelace again, he said, “My father tried to kill me, right?”

  She looked at something out the window, then turned back to him before she spoke. “If he didn’t, it’s a hell of a coincidence. Here’s all I know: Skip Langdon was supposed to pick me up at the airport last night, but she ended up sending Terri because she had to take a sudden trip.”

  “To Dallas?” Isaac whispered.

  Lovelace shrugged in frustration. “Terri thinks so. Skip asked her if Mr. Right could be your father…”

  “Terri knows about my father?”

  “Isaac, for Christ’s sake! That’s the least of your worries now. Terri gave Skip a tape of the show, and then Skip suddenly had to go somewhere. Terri and I watched the tape last night.”

  “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  Lovelace hesitated. “I don’t know; I just don’t know. I don’t know him well enough to say.”

  “It’s him, Lovelace.”

  “Okay, let’s say it is. So here’s what we think happened. He catches on that Terri’s your girlfriend because of what she told him, and he knows you’ll be watching the show. And if you see the show, you’ll know it’s him.”

  “Which I did. So then what?”

  “Then he gets someone to try to kill you.”

  “Who?”

  She shrugged, as if she answered the question every day.

  “Terri and I think it has to be someone from the past. From the church.”

  “If there’s anyone left. Maybe he hired someone.” He adjusted the bed so he could sit up.

  Lovelace put a hand on his. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. You’ve got to face something, Uncle dear.”

  “You mean that my own father tried to kill me? It could have been a lot worse. It could have been your father.”

  His brother Daniel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  By the time Shellmire caught up with Skip in Dallas, their prey was gone. Getting there ahead of him had only meant waiting for him in a hotel room, but in a way, that was good. She used the time to calm down, and, given the personality of Paul Hargett, the special agent in charge, she needed all the serenity she could muster.

  Hargett was a distinguished-looking guy, graying, in his early fifties, with a tight set around the mouth. He had been in Dallas less
than a year, having recently been transferred from Philadelphia. He looked like a man who didn’t care either for heat or for Texans, a man driven by nightmares about the grassy knoll and Waco, terrified that something equally nasty would happen on his watch.

  Shellmire had faced a major fight to get Skip in on the anti-Jacomine effort. As a general rule, the feds didn’t like letting anyone in, much less some disgraced cop from another city, and Hargett was guarding his fiefdom like it was the Vatican. The easiest thing for Shellmire would have been to cave.

  But he and Skip had worked this case too long together. He knew for a fact that she knew more about Jacomine than any living person in law enforcement. He probably knew, as well, that this was a situation in which fine points weren’t really going to be important. But he had a well-developed sense of fair play. He talked her in as a consultant. The thing that tipped it was the debacle at the television station.

  Hargett was in a fury, mad at himself, probably. Until then, he claimed he’d proceeded cautiously, knowing he couldn’t just go and arrest a popular television personality on her say-so and Shellmire’s. He had to be absolutely sure; he had to set a trap that Jacomine couldn’t wiggle out of, but he’d disappeared before the trap was set. In reality, Skip figured, he probably hadn’t taken the Jacomine sighting all that seriously.

  But boy, he was making up for lost time now, sending those goons out to Jacomine’s house. He had that “poor little wife,” as he called her, at the office already.

  “Good,” Skip said. “Don’t let her go for any reason.” She spoke way too strongly for diplomacy’s sake, especially under the circumstances. She had reasons for saying it— two, at least— but Hargett didn’t ask what they were. He just set his mouth a little tighter and added a frown.

  Seeing her mistake, she tried to get him back. “Look, you can’t overestimate this man. Whatever you think is the worst-case scenario, he’ll up the ante. And he loves kidnapping; he has a history of kidnapping whoever he wants to spend time with— along with whoever he wants to kill.” She hesitated. There was something she needed to get on the table, but she didn’t want to insult the man. “Like Rosemarie Owens,” she said. He only grunted.

  He might be blowing her off, but then again, he might not have read the file. “You know he kidnapped her once before,” she added, thinking it said everything he needed to hear without bludgeoning him. And then she thought, Hell, bludgeon him. “I’m sure you’ve already sent someone to her house, but if you haven’t, my advice is to do it immediately.” The man’s balls were not her problem; Jacomine was.

  He didn’t go with them into the interview room, only introduced them quickly to Agent Stirling Pennell and admonished her, “Officer Langdon, you’re sitting in on the interview as an observer only. Please refrain from participating.”

  Pennell said to Shellmire, “We might be barking up the wrong tree here. I don’t think the wife had a clue.”

  Shellmire sighed. “Gotta start somewhere,” and Pennell led them into the room where she waited.

  She wasn’t at all what Skip imagined: someone on whom Jacomine could prey; someone beaten down, poor, vulnerable; someone looking for a hero— even Owens (who was nothing like that now) had been only thirteen when they met. This woman was young, but she looked way too bright to fall for Jacomine’s routine, too privileged to need him. She was pretty, in a Texas kind of way— the blonde hair, nicely styled, the blue eyes, the manicured nails— but she wore no makeup, and that was unusual for a suburban Southern woman, even one who planned to spend the day at home. That could indicate something was wrong, that she was depressed.

  That could be good. Maybe her marriage wasn’t going well.

  Ideally, the way Skip would have conducted the interview would have been to start there, to find out what their connection was, what hooks he had in her.

  And then it came out they’d met on the show; there it was. Karen wouldn’t have been on the show if everything had been going well in her life. She did fit the profile, at least in one way. Usually they were blind-loyal as well. If this one was, they had to deprogram her, bombard her with tapes and newspaper articles, evidence of his crimes. Or maybe it didn’t matter; maybe Jacomine had already left the country.

  And then Karen had said the magic words, “Rosemarie Owens.” Skip could see by Pennell’s face that they surprised him, made him realize his boss was new in town, might not know who she was, Jacomine’s history with her. He left the room.

  The next few minutes were as excruciating as any Skip had ever spent— imprisoned in a room with a witness she was forbidden to speak to, a potentially excellent witness, and almost worse, not knowing if Hargett had thought to cover Owens’s house. The impotence was unbearable.

  Things went rapidly downhill from there. The witness got tough. And then it turned out that not only had Hargett failed to pick up on the Owens connection, he apparently hadn’t realized that pretty little Mrs. Wright came from a family with juice, a family that was going to be outraged at her treatment.

  Her lawyer— whose name was Scott Frentz— came barreling in like Wyatt Earp, having apparently first called a judge. He wanted her released now, this minute. Skip bit her lip: No! She figured Karen for a dupe, but she desperately wanted her in jail to protect her from Jacomine.

  She must have made an involuntary sound. Pennell glared. He wanted her out of there; it was obvious. He said to Frentz, “I don’t care if the whole McLean dynasty comes down here and pickets; do you realize who this man is? The most dangerous criminal in the country is who! Number Two on the FBI’s Most Wanted List!”

  “Her family wants her home with them.”

  It wasn’t a negotiation; it was just a way of wasting time. Karen was going to jail all right, that was decided, but only for minutes. Juice had already been applied. Frentz had her bonded out almost before the cell door slammed. Evidently, her uncle the state senator had something going on a federal level. The only thing left to do was keep her under surveillance.

  Skip could have spat. And then Hargett called her into his office. “Agent Pennell feels you were a disruption during the interview.”

  “With all due respect Agent Hargett, I followed my instructions to the letter. The witness did ask to speak to me, and, honestly, I think we’d all have been better served if she’d been permitted to.”

  It wasn’t tactful, but he was throwing her out anyhow; she was sick of tactful. “As we would have if you’d sent someone immediately to Owens’s house.”

  A dangerous flush spread over his face; Skip hoped she’d never have to work with him again. She’d burned her bridges. “We won’t be needing your services any longer, Officer Langdon.”

  She said, “Yes, you will,” rose from her chair, and left.

  He’d need her services, and he was going to get them, whether he wanted to or not. She wasn’t going to be in on any FBI action, but now she could damn well talk to Karen.

  Shellmire was waiting for her outside Hargett’s office. “He threw me off the case.”

  “Shit!”

  There wasn’t time for more before Hargett opened his door and shouted, “Shellmire, get in here!”

  Feeling slightly dazed by the speed at which things were going, Skip left the building— to make Hargett happy— and pulled out her phone on the sidewalk.

  Her only shot was Karen. She figured if Senator McLean had come riding so handsomely to her rescue, he’d probably know where she was going. She phoned his office and asked for him.

  “Who may I say is calling, Ma’am?”

  “My name’s Skip Langdon. I’m a police officer who met his niece this morning.”

  “Just a moment.”

  To her surprise, she was connected almost immediately with the senator. “Officer Langdon. I’ve heard about you. Karen likes you; that ass Hargett hates you.”

  She laughed. “Well, that was quick. Actually I didn’t get a chance to talk to Karen before Hargett threw me out, which he did, five minutes ago. L
isten, Senator, she’s been through hell, and there’s a good chance it’s about to get worse. I’m unofficial here, but I think I can honestly say I know the man she married better than anybody else in America; I need to talk to her, and she needs to talk to me. Any chance you can put us in touch?”

  “Up to her,” he said. “You got a cell phone? This is a hell of a thing. Hell of a thing.” She pictured a handsome, white-haired man shaking his head; for all she knew he was as ugly as Jacomine before the doctors.

  She gave him her number, rang off, and waited— but not for long. Karen called back almost immediately.

  “Officer Langdon! I…”

  “Call me Skip.”

  “Skip. I’m dying to talk to you. I think you know things— about me.”

  “You mean about what you’ve been through?”

  “What I’m going through.”

  “Look, can I see you?”

  “Please. Yes. Please. I’m at my uncle’s house. Just get me a pack of cigarettes on the way. Ultralights.”

  “What brand?”

  “Any brand.” She gave Skip the address. “I feel so… I don’t know. Like I’m running on empty.”

  Skip was about to reholster her phone when it rang. It was Shellmire: “Bad news, Skip. They found a body at Owens’s house. No sign of either Jacomine or Owens. We’re trying to figure out if any of her cars are missing.”

  “Whose body, for Christ’s sake?”

  “Young white male, shot in the chest. No I.D. yet.”

  “He’ll go after Karen next.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ll lean on Hargett.”

  “Fat lot of good that’ll do.”

  “Skip, for what it’s worth, he made a big mistake dumping you. You’re getting a rotten deal all around.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not my day, but at least I’m doing better than that poor bastard at Owens’s house.”

  But not a hell of a lot better, she thought.

  * * *

  Karen hated that throw-your-weight-around thing the McLeans always did. Until today, that is. Until today.