Lunatic Fringe

by TL Schaefer

  Chapter Two

  WHAT CAME BEFORE...

  "It's getting worse, Warren." My mother's hushed voice had a note of fear that made my stomach feel funny.

  "I don't like it," Papa said, his voice was scratchy and gruff. Not like when he was mad at something, more like when he was sad. "But we have to at least consider it. Dr. Gavin is supposed to be the best."

  I wasn't sure I wanted to know what made my normally steady parents feel like that.

  "We have to do something, and soon," Mama said, walking as she talked, heading for the stairwell I was hiding in.

  I scooted up the stairs, being quiet as a mouse, and was in bed with the covers under my chin when she poked her head in the door.

  "Aren't you sleepy, Moni-bear?"

  I shook my head, but even as I did, a big yawn split my face almost in half.

  Mama laughed, but it sounded weird, like her voice had a few moments ago.

  "Get to sleep, honey, and have happy dreams." She ran a hand over my forehead, then down my cheek. "I love you, sweet pea."

  "I love you too, Mama," I said as the night began to claim me.

  Now... Dallas

  I jerked out of the dream, heart pounding, cold sweat slicking my skin. That set of images, of Mrs. Beagley coming undone, of her overwhelming emotion, was the only dream I ever remembered—at all—and wasn’t that just peachy?

  Nine months and I was still a train wreck. Nine months since I’d walked away from my precinct.

  Eight months since I’d lost everything that mattered.

  I stared at the tastefully trayed ceiling of my perfect McMansion bedroom, tears streaking my cheeks, my gut churning just as it had with Mrs. Beagley on my final shift for the DPD. And just like that day, the taste of defeat soured my mouth.

  Joe and Tori had been gone for eight of those nine months, and every night I went through this. Waking at 0300, as if I'd set the alarm. It was either a replay of my last day at the precinct—like tonight—or a series of night terrors shuddering through me, leaving an echo of discombobulation, or fright, or arousal.

  When it comes right down to it, I’m scared. Terrified I’m losing my mind.

  Useless, futile tears leaked from my eyes, like they did almost every night now. The therapy sessions weren't helping. If anything, my PTSD seemed to be getting worse. And the tears made me angry.

  It was why I’d filed for divorce, why I’d basically given Tori to Joe when it came to custody. Why I’d hidden the key to the gun safe in an ice cube tray in the freezer in the garage.

  Why I’d given up, when I’d never given up on anything in my life.

  Divorced. No longer a cop. Losing my mind.

  I hadn't had a good night's sleep in months, and I was long past strung out. But those were only symptoms of a much larger problem. One I wasn’t quite willing to acknowledge yet, even if it had cost me my kid.

  The shrink says I’m fine, that I’m not going mad. I’m not so sure she’s right.

  It isn’t just the dreams I can’t remember, it’s more. It’s what almost happened at the stakeout yesterday.

  It’s the feelings I'd rather not face in the night, and in the clear light of day seem ludicrous and yet, are right there, staring me in the face.

  The feelings that make me think crazy is right around the corner.

  What I can’t tell the shrink, who thinks I’m suffering from PTSD, is that it isn't the desert that changed me. No, it’s been my life the last nine months...

  Ten months ago I'd been a perfectly competent cop. I'd been a fucking ace, and everyone knew it.

  Then I’d become embroiled in something I never even had the capacity to imagine and everything in my life changed.

  Nine months ago I lost it with Mrs. Beagley.

  Eight months ago Joe moved out with Tori.

  Seven months ago I came an ass-hair away from dying in Denver. Saw more than I bargained for...again.

  Five months ago I filed for divorce and basically gave Tori to Joe.

  And every day and night of those five months I wondered if I’d done the right thing. Known I had.

  And every day and night of those five months I hated Heath Farrell and his school for kids with superpowers, or whatever it was he liked to refer to them as.

  In my opinion the Colorado Academy for Superior Intellect was more like a collection of superfreaks, even if I had begun to connect with Sara Covington, the woman who’d blown the whole CASI cover up sky high. My career as a cop had blown up right along with it.

  What had happened to me in Denver had dropped the blinders from my eyes, and the emotions of everyone around me crashed in until I collapsed.

  Until anger was the only thing that could snap me out of an almost fugue state.

  It wasn’t really a surprise Heath Farrell had driven that level of animosity. Just like he had for the last thirteen years, when he'd been Joe's best friend, and one of the few men who could make me crazy with a mere look.

  Even then he'd been an iceman, one of the few people I'd been unable to read with a look. I felt nothing from him, except maybe icy regard, as if he was watching me from up on high.

  I rolled to one side and looked at the prescription bottle sitting on the bedside. I'd never been one for pills, but maybe the shrink was right. Maybe I needed them. Maybe what I'd seen in the desert had damaged me irrevocably. But it didn't feel right, just like taking the pills didn't feel right.

  I'd tried them a few weeks ago, and felt like a zombie for days afterward.

  I'd rather live on caffeine and sleeplessness, thank you very much.

  But in the wee hours, when I missed Tori so much it tore at my heart, I looked at the bottle of pills and wondered. Wondered if maybe we'd all be better off without me around.

  THE APPOINTMENT WITH the doc went as well as could be expected. She still insisted I wasn’t crazy and wanted me to seriously consider taking the meds she’d prescribed. I told her I’d think about it.

  This morning, after the nightmare, taking a handful of pills had seemed like the easy, right answer. In the cold light of day, however, it still struck me as wrong, somehow.

  It would be too easy to zone out, sit on the couch and eat Cheetos all day. That wasn’t an image I wanted my daughter to have in her head, nor a memory I ever wanted her to associate with me.

  I made nice with the doc, and allowed myself to list the drugs as an option. Way down near the bottom of said list.

  I was almost home when my cell rang, my ex-mother-in-law’s number on the display. My first thought was of Tori, that maybe she’d come down sick, so I was already diverting to the Foudy’s home as I answered the call.

  Gut-wrenching sobs filtered out of the speaker. My blood iced in response to the sound. God, was Tori all right?

  “Elizabeth, it’s Monica. What’s wrong? Is Tori okay?”

  I barely made out the words “Tori” and “fine” before she lost control again.

  "Elizabeth, take a deep breath and try to calm down. I'm on my way," I said as steadily as I could, though a wedge of fear clogged my throat.

  I broke pretty much every traffic law in creation as I sped to Westlake, the elite suburb of Dallas.

  Around me, late lunchtime traffic ebbed and flowed, slowed only by the ever-present Dallas road construction. Surface streets were no better; I gritted my teeth and tried not to road rage anyone.

  I’d never heard Elizabeth sound like that. Never.

  When my mother-in-law opened the door, she looked like shit, which was so atypical I was struck dumb.

  "Joe's dead," she wailed, hands clutching at what had once been a chic hairstyle.

  Her words cut through me and the world around me sharpened as I felt myself sliding into a cop’s hyper-focus. While the sensations around me bloomed, everything inside went on shutdown to deal with the threat, even if it wasn’t immediately apparent.

  "How?" I breathed, and the air leaving my lungs hurt, as if it had a knife edge. And then it was gone an
d I felt a weird lightness.

  Joe was dead. The man I’d made a beautiful child with was gone. A hollow sort of shock settled inside, even as my mind whirled into action.

  Elizabeth collapsed into a chair, and I distantly wondered where Lawrence, my father-in-law was. He wasn't one to let Elizabeth too far off the leash.

  "Someone hit him as he was crossing the street and never even stopped," she abandoned her hair to twist her hands.

  "Have you heard from Tori today?" I didn't want Tori finding out about her father from anyone other than me.

  Elizabeth’s face crumpled into tears at the mere mention of her granddaughter.

  I patted her shoulder a bit absently, then pulled out my cell.

  I felt sorry for Elizabeth. Family was a huge thing for the Foudy clan, and the loss of her only son had hit her just as hard as something happening to Tori would hit me.

  My daughter's cell rang once, then again, before going to voicemail. "Hi honey, it's Mom. Give me a call as soon as you get this." I hung up, then texted her for good measure. She was in class, but like every kid her age, was glued to her smart phone, even in the rich prep school Joe’d insisted she attend. She’d call me on break, or maybe even when she got home.

  I just didn’t want her to hear about her father from the social media.

  Given Joe’s relatively high-profile job as a defense attorney, the news outlets would likely pick the story up soon.

  Not that she followed the news. She was a child of her generation. Twitter was for old people.

  I considered calling the school, but right now she was occupied, and I needed to get more information before I told her what had happened to her father.

  I sat on the arm of Elizabeth's overstuffed armchair and pulled her into a one-armed hug. She might never have really approved of me, but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. "I'm here," I whispered into her hair, as she burrowed against my chest and began to sob, her heart breaking.

  My baby, my heart. The grief was a greedy, tearing thing that took a great effort to extract myself from. I knew I’d picked upon Elizabeth’s feelings, her thoughts, but dammit, right now I had more than enough to deal with, thank you very much. I shoved my mother-in-law’s grief to the back of my mind, of my heart, and focused on the matter at hand.

  When it was all said and done, I wished I'd loved Joe that much, but all the love in my heart was reserved for my child, just like Elizabeth. "Where's Lawrence?" I asked gently.

  "At the police department," she said raggedly, pulling herself together, and pushing me away.

  Well, that little moment hadn't lasted very long, and a big part of me was glad of it, even though the thought was supremely selfish.

  "It was a hit and run," she said again, half incredulously, as if it weren't quite true. "He was coming back from lunch and they just hit him..." she trailed off as if lost.

  “What have you heard from the police?” I asked. I suspected I’d be able to get more information than she or Lawrence ever would, and that my next stop would be my old precinct.

  “Just what I told you. The detective called Lawrence and told us what happened, and that they were investigating it. Who could have done something like that?” Elizabeth’s voice began to firm, become clearer. “You have contacts with the police. Lawrence can talk to chiefs and captains, but you know the little people. Could you find out what really happened? Who did this?”

  If her dismissal of the folks who made day-to-day life possible had been anything new, I would have been offended. It was simply the way the Foudys operated and had since the day I’d become part of the family. I nodded in response and stood to go.

  It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought of it myself seconds before.

  “Tell Tori I’ll come back as soon as I’m done.” Everything inside me shouted to snag her from her high-end private school, protect her from the world. But she was safe there, and helping Lawrence and Elizabeth through this was something I could do. Maybe the only thing.

  “I’ll leave it up to you to if you want to pick her up early and tell her what happened.” I didn’t need to add a request to be gentle. Elizabeth and Lawrence doted on their only grandchild, loved her to pieces. Right now, that was a wonderful thing.

  I couldn’t chance bringing Tori back home, not yet, although I knew it would look strange if I didn’t at least try. “I think it’s best if she stays here tonight, and we can talk more tomorrow.”

  Elizabeth looked relieved at my suggestion, as if she hadn’t wanted to push for that concession, and I knew right then that getting Tori out of their home at all would be a monumental effort. I doubted Joe had shared anything personal about our divorce, he wasn’t the type, but the fact he had primary custody would be ammunition for the Foudy’s to use to keep Tori away from me.

  That wasn’t a battle to be fought tonight, though. Now I needed to find out who the hell had killed my ex-husband.

  Chapter Three

  WHAT CAME BEFORE...

  The new girl in class is a bully.

  Today she pushed me, trying to take my lunch money, and when she did, I felt everything she did.

  ...Her mother yelling at her, her father telling her she was just going to have to fucking figure it out.

  ...The belt-buckle-shaped bruises on her upper and lower back hidden by her blouse.

  ...The need to take control in a world where she had none.

  ...How scared she was to be in a new school, how everyone looked at her funny, how I was even smaller than she was, and that made me a good target.

  Her feelings bombarded me, made me fall to my knees in the middle of the recess yard.

  It seemed like forever before I could breathe again, but when I looked up, she was still there, the mean expression on her face hiding the churning, churning, churning inside her.

  I feel sorry for her. My parents are the total opposite of hers. I’ve never felt anything but love from Mama and Papa.

  It didn’t stop me from hitting her back and getting both of us in trouble.

  I won’t let her do this to other kids. No way, no how.

  Now... Dallas

  The drive across town to my old precinct seemed to take forever, and by the time I pulled into the parking lot the numbness had set in.

  Joe was dead.

  Not gone on a business trip, not nagging me about my hours, or how ugly the gun safe was in our pristine, showplace of a house. Dead.

  As I walked into the building I’d spent countless hours in, this time as a “victim,” I felt nothing.

  The desk sergeant buzzed me in and led me to an interview room.

  As I walked through the bullpen, the squad looked the same, as I'd expected it would. It'd only been nine months, after all. Battered desks that had been new about thirty years past, teetering stacks of paper, even though we were supposed to have gone paperless a decade ago. The fuzzy scent of unwashed bodies the janitors couldn’t quite eradicate.

  My ex-fellow detectives looked at me in sympathy, then most turned away, embarrassed to be caught. I might not have been bosom buddies with all of them, but we'd gotten along well enough before I'd quit.

  A few looked at me as if I were some new, interesting species. Exactly what I’d expected without even thinking it. I welcomed their stares right now, because it was normal, or at least as normal as I was going to get.

  None of them knew why I'd just up and walked away from the job, although I think most of them suspected I'd finally decided to live off Joe's millions.

  And now I could. Shit.

  The thought hit me like a ton of bricks, breaking through my numbness.

  I’d automatically come to homicide because it was my stomping grounds, where I felt the most comfortable. But in the back of my mind, I’d never once thought Joe’s death was an accident, and the driver just panicked. Never thought it was as simple as a hit and run. Why the hell not?

  Maybe it was my gut, maybe it was the fact I was jaded as hell and riding a thin line that automat
ically lent itself toward suspicion.

  It didn’t really matter, I was a suspect—I had to be, because the driver fled, and the homicide investigators would think I had the most to gain. It hadn't occurred to me earlier, which showed just how much shock I was in.

  The detective who pushed through the door of Interview Two was new, had just come over to Homicide when I left.

  I didn’t even need to feel his emotions to know what he was thinking.

  Disgust marred his too-pretty face. He dropped into the chair opposite mine with a grunt. “This interview is being recorded. Detective Ethan Williams, badge number 87542, questioning Monica Foudy in the traffic fatality of her husband, Joe Foudy, incident number 145893—2020.”

  He looked me in the eye. “So, Monica,” he sneered my name, “you’re smarter than the average citizen, wouldn’t have dirtied your hands with this directly. Who’d you hire to do it? And why? Besides the money, of course.”

  I just stared at him, letting the numbness take over completely. I was a fucking suspect.

  Of course I was, but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow. The fact I’d drawn the new guy? The one obviously trying to make a name for himself? Priceless.

  “Am I being charged?” I asked, and my voice sounded cold, even to me. I wasn’t answering a single fucking question.

  His gaze dropped to the notepad on the table. How quaint, and what an obvious prop. He was stalling because he didn’t have squat.

  But that didn’t stop him from bulling forward. “Clear the air here, Monica. Help me understand what happened to make you go this far, take a step like this.”

  “Am I being charged?” I repeated. I’d continue repeating it until the sun went down.

  I’d come here to get answers, not implicate myself.

  Jesus, what a mess.

  “He was a defense attorney, right? Did he bring his cases home one too many times? Maybe lay hands on you or Tori?”