Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis

by P. T. Dilloway

  Donovan took her badge out of her jacket. “Police,” she said. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  The girl’s chalk-white face turned a rosier color. “Am I in trouble?”

  “Are you Megan Putnam?”

  “Yes.” The girl looked down at her feet. “I think I am.”

  Donovan rolled her eyes. Another damned nut job, only this one was more brazen than the others to actually take up residence in Megan’s dorm room. “You think you are?”

  “Well, I can’t be sure exactly. I woke up this morning and I didn’t know who I was.”

  “Amnesia?” At this point Donovan wished she still smoked so she could take a cigarette out of her jacket; some nicotine would really hit the spot. Instead, she could only take out a stick of gum and chomp viciously on it. “Are you fucking with me?”

  “No.” The girl’s face had turned a deeper red and a whistle came out with her breath.

  “You really expect me to believe you woke up with amnesia?”

  “It’s true.”

  “And let me guess: you can’t remember where you were for the last week?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Donovan wanted to spit out the gum, but there was nowhere to leave it except on the floor, so she continued to savage it with her teeth. “Do you know we’ve been looking for you? Your father is very worried.” This was a slight exaggeration, but in this case she thought not a serious one.

  Megan—if that was her real name—put a hand to her chest. Her face had turned magenta now and the whistling had become more pronounced. “My inhaler,” she said. “I need it.”

  “Fine,” Donovan said. It was possible this pale waif could have a weapon stashed in the room, but Donovan doubted it. “Just try to keep your hands where I can see them.”

  The girl staggered across the room; she gasped for air now. She reached into the pocket of a mangy yellow sweater. Out of instinct, Donovan reached for the pistol in her shoulder holster. She relaxed her grip on the weapon when she heard the gentle cough of an inhaler.

  “What the hell is going on here?” a girl’s voice shouted from behind her. Donovan turned and drew her weapon.

  ***

  In all her life, Amanda Murdoch had never actually had a gun pointed at her. She’d had a jealous girlfriend throw a beer bottle at her in high school. Her freshman year at RSU some asshole had even pulled a knife on her and taken her purse. Not a gun, though. At least until now.

  She had wondered what her reaction might be if someone did aim a gun at her. Would she try to chop it away like in the movies? Would she stand there and make a wisecrack? Or would she wet her pants and turn into a pool of jelly?

  She hadn’t expected she might completely lose her mind. Like a near-death experience, she watched herself lean towards the barrel of the gun. Her face turned as red as Megan’s did during an asthma attack as she screamed, “Go ahead, you fucking bitch! You go ahead and pull the trigger! I fucking dare you, cunt!”

  The woman in the black leather jacket and white T-shirt actually smiled at this. She jammed the pistol back into her shoulder holster. Then she held up a gold badge. Gradually Amanda’s spirit returned to her body so she could see it was a police badge that belonged to Captain Charlotte Donovan of the Rampart City PD. Before they could exchange any words, Amanda heard the telltale sound of Megan gasping for air. “Oh shit,” Amanda said.

  She brushed past Captain Donovan to find Megan on her knees at the foot of her bed. The inhaler had slipped from her hand while she clawed ineffectually at her throat. Amanda put her hand on Megan’s back and knelt down beside her. “It’s all right, Megan. I’m fine. You’re fine. She’s not going to shoot anyone. Are you?”

  “Not unless you’re sure you want me to.” Captain Donovan actually smiled; she looked amused while Megan struggled to breathe. “You want me to call an ambulance?”

  “No, she’ll be fine. She just needs to relax. Come on, Megan, take it easy. Focus on your breathing.” Amanda picked up the inhaler and pressed it into Megan’s hands. “Take a couple of shots of that.”

  Megan’s breathing eventually settled down; her face began to revert back to its usual paleness. Before she closed her eyes, she grabbed the front of Amanda’s shirt. “I don’t want to sleep,” she whispered. “I don’t want to dream.”

  “Don’t worry, nothing in your dreams can hurt you.” Amanda rubbed Megan’s back gently. “I’ll be right here. If you get into any trouble I’ll wake you up.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  With that Megan allowed Amanda to help her back onto the bed. Amanda rearranged the covers to tuck in her roommate. She waited to make sure Megan was really asleep before she turned back to Captain Donovan. “You could have killed her. And me.”

  “Shouldn’t sneak up on a cop,” Donovan said. She stepped into the room uninvited and sat down on Amanda’s bed. “So, you think she’s the real deal?”

  “You think someone could fake that?”

  “If she can then she should get an Oscar.” Donovan pitched a wad of green gum into the trashcan. Amanda sat down at her desk and tried to look as calm and confident as Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, but she didn’t have a skirt on and she couldn’t smoke in the dorm. “So she turned up with no memory?”

  “Yeah, that’s about it.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. I came back from…I came back early this morning and found her in bed as if she’d never left.”

  “You didn’t see who dropped her off?”

  “No. I wasn’t here.”

  “Out at a rave or something?”

  “Or something.” Amanda gestured towards Donnovan. “Can I have a stick of gum?”

  “Knock yourself out.” Donovan flipped a pack of mint Trident to her. The gum’s minty flavor did little to ease her mind as Donovan asked, “She didn’t have any idea where she was?”

  “She didn’t know who she was, or anything else. She was pretty much a blank slate.”

  “But she knew how to walk and talk and all that. I mean she didn’t wake up a vegetable or zombie or anything, obviously.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” The gum turned sour in Amanda’s mouth. “Do you think someone might have done something to her? That she might be repressing?”

  “I don’t know. I’d leave that to the shrinks.”

  “Shrinks?”

  “We’ll have to get her examined. Should have a doctor look at her too.”

  “A doctor? Why?”

  “To look for signs of sexual assault.”

  Amanda nearly fell out of her chair at this, but she gripped the edge of the desk to maintain her balance. “You can’t do that,” she said.

  Captain Donovan raised an eyebrow; the amused smile returned as she held up her badge. “Really? I think I can.”

  “No, I mean you can, but I already know they’ll find something.”

  “Really? Do tell.”

  “Look, you’ve got to promise not to tell her—or her father. You saw what happens to her when she gets too stressed. This might kill her.”

  “That will depend on what you have to tell me. I’m not a reporter; I can’t take things ‘off the record.’”

  Amanda looked over her shoulder at where Megan slept peacefully, like Goldilocks in the old story, safe in the bed until the Three Bears showed up. Amanda leaned towards the police captain and whispered, “Look, I’m not sure about the tests you guys run, but she was sexually assaulted. Or at least she had sex. It might have been consensual.”

  “Might have been?”

  “I wasn’t there, OK? I heard about it later.”

  “So what did you hear?”

  Amanda checked over her shoulder again, but Megan was still asleep. “I don’t know why, but she got it in her head she liked this one boy—a jock. I mean, I tried to tell her he was way out of her league but she was in love. You know how that is.”

  “Not really, but don’t let me
stop you.”

  “Well, anyway, someone told this boy about Megan—OK, it was me.” Amanda hadn’t cried in years, but she couldn’t stop herself now. “I didn’t think they’d actually do anything, you know? I thought…I don’t know, maybe I thought it’d be good to take some wind out of her sails. I mean, she was mooning about him all the time, writing these sappy poems and stuff. It was nauseating.”

  “I’m sure it was. So you thought you’d get her raped?”

  Amanda brought her hand back to slap the woman, until she remembered that woman was a police captain. She dropped her hand into her lap. “I didn’t want her to get raped. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “So what did happen?”

  “Well, from what I heard, it all started out fine. They went to dinner and saw a movie and all that typical bullshit.”

  “Then he took her to Lover’s Lane, right?”

  “They parked somewhere, I don’t know where exactly,” Amanda said. She did know exactly—so did everyone else—but she didn’t want to reveal it and have cops swarm all over the place. “And they did it.”

  “You mean they fucked?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  Amanda again checked to make sure Megan was asleep. Her roommate did of course not snore; she slept soundlessly unless she had a bad dream, in which case she’d start to wheeze. “The problem? You saw how she gets when she’s excited. Do the math.”

  “So she had an asthma attack while they fucked. Big deal.”

  “The big deal is that afterwards he told everybody about it. I mean everyone. The fucking janitor probably knew. People would go around imitating her having an attack while she was coming. It was sick.” Amanda left out that the first time she’d heard about this in the lounge with some kids from her Renaissance Lit class she had laughed along with everyone else. “Eventually it came back to her and she was mortified. I thought she’d die; she was crying so hard and turning blue.”

  “She didn’t die, obviously.”

  “No, she didn’t. And, I guess this is really all my fault.” Amanda buried her face in her hands. Through her hands, she said, “I said that maybe she should go home for a little while. You know, let things cool down.”

  “But she didn’t go home. Unless her maid lied.”

  “I don’t know. That’s all I know. Really.” Amanda looked up, but Captain Donovan hadn’t moved from the bed. “I don’t know how she lost her memory. Maybe you should ask the maid about that stuff.”

  “I will.” Captain Donovan finally stood up. She reached into her jacket, this time not for her badge, gun, or gum but a business card. “If she remembers anything, give me a call.”

  “What about the doctors?”

  “I’ll talk to her dad about a shrink. From what you’ve said, that’s all we need.”

  “Thanks.”

  The captain put a hand on Amanda’s shoulder and looked her in the eye. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s your fault. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

  “Thanks,” Amanda said again.

  “And what you did earlier, that took a lot of guts. You get tired of this college shit we could use a kid like you on the force.”

  Amanda stared at the card long after Captain Donovan had left. Her literature degree wouldn’t be worth the paper it was printed on; maybe she should consider a career change. She’d usually been on the other side of the law, so maybe it was time to even that out.

  As she considered this, she heard a sound like thunder and then the entire dorm rocked; she was thrown to the floor, her desk hit her on the head, and her world turned dark.

  Chapter 22

  Throughout Rampart City, there were some places where not even the Sewer Rat dared to go. Police stations were out for obvious reasons. The Plastic Hippo once Don Vendetta began to use it as her base of operations and stocked it full of gun-toting goons who shot first and asked questions later—as Emma Earl knew all too well. And the entire “Heights” area where the rich lived. Sometimes he passed beneath these on his way to somewhere else, but when he did he would always move quickly in case anyone noticed him.

  Rampart State University was another of those locations where Jim Rizzard did not travel. As someone without a formal education, he felt intimidated by a place of so much learning and sophistication—or at least that’s what he thought happened there. Pepe had visited the school often enough in his role as Emma’s watchrat, but his understanding of human activities was limited.

  So it came as a surprise when he emerged from the sewers to find students engaged in anything but learning. Some lay on the grass to nap, eat, or play games. Near the courtyard fountain, he saw more on benches; they kissed as he and Emma had in his special place. Nowhere did he see anyone studying.

  That the burnt coffee smell he and Pepe had detected in the alley had led them here didn’t come as a huge surprise. Emma worked on the campus, so maybe he had overreacted to everything. Maybe she was perfectly fine and had left him at the gravel yards to go to work the next morning as usual. That didn’t seem in character for her, but stranger things had happened.

  In order to move around the campus, he had taken off his ratskin jacket again and used it to carry Pepe along. His clothes were torn, dirty, and smelly, but from what he observed around the campus, this wasn’t all that unusual. Not even his wild, tangled hair looked out of place among these children.

  As he walked along the green pasture between the buildings, he wondered how Emma could work at a place like this. His knowledge of human culture wasn’t the most extensive, but he did know how smart she was, and how talented at so many things. She should work somewhere like that TriTech place, somewhere opulent instead of at a rundown dump populated by loafers. Of course she had worked at the Plaine Museum for a while, until she lost that job for reasons he didn’t understand. Was there no other place that would accept her? Maybe they were both outcasts in a way then.

  A plastic disc landed at his feet to interrupt his thoughts. “Hey dude, help us out,” a boy with long, greasy hair like Jim’s said. Jim picked up the disc and attempted to throw it overhand, but it didn’t go anywhere. The boy snickered at this. “Dude, haven’t you used a Frisbee before?”

  “No.”

  “Throw it like this, dude.” The boy demonstrated throwing the disc with a sideways motion. Jim tried this and watched the disc sail through the air; it passed over the boy’s head to land in a fountain. “Thanks a lot.”

  “You welcome,” Jim said. Then he continued to follow the trail. Inside the bag, Pepe became excited as they both detected the scents of fried foods in the air. “No time for snack,” Jim said in ratspeak to Pepe.

  Neither of them had eaten in some time, but as he approached the cafeteria, Jim knew they couldn’t eat inside there. He didn’t have any money for food. It was too early to search the dumpsters for anything of interest, so their stomachs would have to wait. Still, the burnt coffee smell was pronounced inside the cafeteria.

  His nose was sensitive enough—as was Pepe’s—that he could separate the burnt coffee scent from that of normal coffee. As well, he could also detect Emma’s scent mingled with it. That meant she had been here. From the strength of it, she had been here fairly recently. So she must have stopped off for some breakfast before she went to teach class.

  He found more rumpled, lazy kids inside the cafeteria. He noted a few adults as well, but none who looked like Emma. He followed the trail through the line; he ignored the cashier who asked if she could help him. The trail snaked through the cafeteria, to a table at the back, which at the moment was occupied by three young women.

  They stopped their conversation to look up at him. Their noses crinkled and their eyes watered. “Do you want something?” a girl with blond hair asked.

  “Emma Earl. Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  “You mean Dr. Earl? She’s over in the science building,” a brunette said.

  “Not t
oday. Alicia has her class and said she didn’t show up so everyone got to leave early,” another brunette said.

  “Thanks.”

  Before he could turn to go, the first brunette said, “What’s in the bag? It looks like it’s moving.”

  “Nothing important,” Jim said. He patted the bag to tell Pepe to settle down; a half-hour in the makeshift bag had begun to make him claustrophobic. Jim hurried away before the girls could ask him any more questions. Once he was out of earshot, he hissed a warning to Pepe.

  He was wrong to think the rat had become claustrophobic. Instead, while Jim had talked to the girls, Pepe had detected a new trail. This one led out a side door of the cafeteria, towards some brick buildings clustered on the far side of campus. It would probably be the science building where the girls said Emma worked.

  Jim could smell the trail now as well. He hoped it meant soon he would find Emma safe and he could take her into his arms. Such fantasies had begun to crop up more frequently after the kiss last night, though he knew he shouldn’t think that way. Despite her kind heart and the time she’d spent in the sewers, Emma was still a surface dweller. She would never go underground to live with him in the sewers. From his brief time spent with her aboveground, he wasn’t sure if he could live there. Certainly there were good things about it, but there was so much he didn’t understand.

  As he pondered his future with Emma, he saw the building explode.

  ***

  She awoke to her bed shaking. At first Megan thought Amanda must be trying to wake her up, but when she opened her eyes, she didn’t see her friend. Maybe it was a truck, she thought.

  Before she could turn over to go back to sleep, she smelled smoke in the air. She sat up and saw Amanda sprawled on the floor, her desk on top of her. “Amanda?” Megan said. She rolled off the bed to kneel at her friend’s side. When she touched Amanda’s head, her fingers came back soaked with blood. “Oh no.”