****Act
Three****
“Her name is Jana Macek, twenty-nine, immigrated
from Romania seven years ago,” Lindsay told Jill as they marched down a
whiteout hospital hallway, heading toward the private detention rooms for
patients on psych hold.
“She's a senior research assistant for Lavin
Pharmaceuticals in Brisbane. One arrest for illegal drug possession last month.
Her supervisor says Jana got hooked on meth through a boyfriend, and she's
currently AWOL from rehab, paid through the company's insurance.”
“I'm guessing her job is history now,” Jill said.
“Correct. Boss says she's a really smart girl, but
they're cutting her loose.”
“What about the other victims?”
“One was Jana's boyfriend, Lyle Overbey, former
chem major at Santa Cruz and convicted meth cooker. No names for the other two
yet, but I won't be surprised if they're in the system. Birds of a feather and
all that.”
“So Parson Drive was definitely a cook house?”
“Oh, yeah. There's product scattered everywhere -
cocaine, oxy, a little weed, and a lot of crystal. The entire second floor was a
lab set-up. Looked real professional, though a lot of the equipment was smashed
to junk,” Lindsay recounted. “Sorry you couldn't tour the scene. DTSC said
it'll take a while to get the hazardous crap cleaned up and processed for
evidence.”
“It's okay,” Jill assured her. “I'm not eager
to die of toxic shock.”
“CSU worked the first floor pretty hard. Plunkett
says these three victims were killed first, about two hours before the Seeger
Street murders. Since our guy had the Parson Drive address on him, it looks like
he went there first, stab-slash-stab, then visited Seeger. Stab-slash-stab,
repeat as necessary.”
“Any idea why Jana Macek wasn't killed with the
rest?” asked Jill.
“We got ideas out the wazoo. Mine is that Vlad was
really looking for the second house, but didn't know how to get there. He storms
the first house and does everyone but the Romanian girl, because he needs her
help to find his real targets,” Lindsay theorized. “Jana had on a coat and
sneakers with her nightgown. Since the Seeger house is only about three miles
away from Parson, and since no one in this drama owns a car, I'm thinking they
walked over and she got him through the door.”
“Still, once he's in the house, she becomes a
liability,” Jill persisted. “Why not kill her then?”
“With five victims at Seeger, things might have
gotten out of hand. Maybe she skipped during the riot.”
Jill anxiously chewed her bottom lip. “Sounds
plausible, but there's wiggle room in that schedule. Even at twenty minutes a
mile, that leaves Big Vlad time for reflection before going in.”
“Yeah.” Lindsay grimaced and shook her head. They
paused to show their identification to the duty nurse and were buzzed through
double doors into the secure ward. “I keep thinking, what if he stopped
somewhere else along the way? We could find a third scene, a fourth...”
“Shhh!!” Jill flailed her hands at the notion of
a Michael Myers-style spree killer carving a gruesome path through their city's
trashy underbelly. Between the ancient Zodiac killer, the recent Kiss-Me-Not
murders, and the current Hallelujah Man cases, San Francisco already had an
unsavory reputation as a Mecca for pattern murders. “Two scenes, eight bodies
– that's quite enough.”
“I know, I'm just sayin' there's a dozen dope holes
between Seeger and Parson.”
“Honey? Stop. Please. I beg of you,” Jill
insisted, not actually begging so much as demanding. “Has Jana said anything
useful?”
“Not unless you want to hear a shell-shocked junkie
say she's sorry a thousand times.” As they came to a stop outside a numbered,
barren hospital cell, Lindsay heard their lone witness jaggedly calling out in
perpetual apology. “That started in the ambulance - five hours ago. They say
she hasn't shut up yet.”
Jill bristled at the horrible, pathetic cries; the
woman sounded terrified. Jill braced a hand against the steel door frame and
peered through the narrow observation window. Jana Macek, strapped to a bed,
writhed around like a snake doused with kerosene. “My God. Can't they sedate
her?”
“They did. Twice. Girl's got the drug tolerance of
a musk ox. The shrink just told me questioning her before tomorrow would be
pointless,” said Lindsay. “How 'bout you? Find a passable translator yet?”
“The Romanian Consulate General's office is sending
an attorney from Los Angeles tomorrow. They're concerned that we might not
provide fair and impartial counsel for their mystery citizen – who, by the
way, is still without a name,” Jill snitted. “We're trying to light a fire
under the feds, but they're suddenly dragging ass on getting us an ID.”
“Which means one of two things: the giant is
someone important, or someone who's not supposed to be here. They're playing CYA.”
“The bureaucrat's favorite game - cover your
ass,” Jill concurred. She shut her eyes and ran a hand through her hair. “So
much for my slam dunk. More like a lay-up and a hard foul.”
“Hey, you'll get your points. Our guy did it, we
just don't know why.” Lindsay let out a weary groan and leaned against the
wall beside Jill. “He gets caught with the knife in his hand and leaves a
living witness. Still, he keeps saying 'No culpa, no culpa' over and over. I
don't understand.”
“You will. We will. Tomorrow, all will be
revealed,” Jill said, wiggling her fingers as if summoning aid from the mystic
forces of truth and justice.
“If only,” Lindsay said, grinning. Her smile
jerked into a wince as the swollen welt on her upper lip cracked a little.
“Can't believe I nearly got taken down by a wooden apple.”
Jill gave a sympathetic giggle and yanked on the
sleeve of Lindsay's leather jacket. “Come on, sissy. Let your favorite lawyer
buy you a drink. I'll throw in some extra ice for your war wound.”
The exhausted cop reluctantly peeled herself off the
wall. “Sounds like a plan.”
“It's a fine plan,” Jill agreed, tugging the
taller woman along toward the elevators. “Sheer elegance in its simplicity.”
Actually, the idea of spending a few hours with her
best buddy, ratcheting up tequila theories about hit men for Romanian drug
cartels, sounded pretty fantastic to Lindsay. They'd probably wind up discussing
the serials as well, because the Hallelujah Dick was never far from their
thoughts, and because Jill sometimes experienced Newtonian idea storms while
drunk and dancing to eighteen minute reggaeton remixes.
Thing was, Lindsay had somewhere else she dearly
wanted to be, and she was tired enough to admit as much to Jill.
“Can I get a rain check?” she ventured. “I wanna look in on Cindy.”
If Jill was disappointed, she hid it well. Her sly
smile indicated Lindsay's refusal wasn't much of a surprise. When she spoke with
Cindy earlier, the reporter seemed pretty chill about the whole stalker thing -
though she ranted a bit about chickens and piranhas, which Jill wrote up to
frustration, work-related and otherwise.
In that conversation, Cindy had referenced Lindsay
more than usual, enough to be conspicuous. Jill noticed that Cindy Thomas was
steadily creeping up the inspector's priority list, too, though she remained too
keen to say as much out loud.
“An even better plan,” Jill asserted. “Call if you need backup. We'll shoot some Grey Gooses... or is it Grey Geese? Flip it - we'll kill some vodka.”
Lindsay clicked out a silly wink/point combo. “Will
do.”
****
Cindy put the finishing touches on a mediocre,
routine story about the county expanding its enhanced 911 services, pasted the
text into an email and flushed it from her computer toward the Register's story
dump. It would resurface toward the ass end of the A-section, she knew, and her
wobbly pride took another kick to the shins.
Still, it was work, and steady print jobs like hers
were hard to come by. In the current turkey burger economy (as a certain Ms. Fey
had put it), a working writer couldn't afford to make too many waves, unless
they relished the idea of covering dry cleaner grand openings for the local
penny saver.
She flipped shut her laptop and pushed away from the
desk, rubbed the dancing light spots from her eyes.
“Dinner time,” she called out, and her voice rang through the empty apartment. At times like this, she wished she had a dog. Or a person. Whichever. Some sort of anchoring companion might help her feel less adrift in her own home.
Once in the kitchen, Cindy found she had neither the energy nor the self-esteem to cook anything real. Lean Cuisine and Diet Coke would suffice. While prepping the microwave meal, charitably labeled a 'Cafe Classic', she reviewed her scant list of options for company.
Danny would commiserate with her about the Register's
weak-kneed reaction to her stalker; Claire would tell her to pack a bag and come
over; Jill would take her out to get hammered and laid; Ellen would nag about
why she never called her anymore; Lindsay would... would...
And there, Cindy's coherent train of thought derailed
into memory. The memory of a thumb tenderly priming her mouth, of a kiss so dead
solid sweet, it strummed her veins like nickel-wound strings and set her blood
pounding in time with the earth's churning iron heart. There, looping within
that memory, Cindy Thomas experienced four minutes of unrepentant nirvana as a
soggy Halloween pirate, levitating above the city sidewalk while Lindsay Boxer
kissed her.
The microwave mocked her with impertinent beeping, as
if it had never been in love.
She ate her food-shaped food, drank her bubbly soda.
Belched indelicately toward the television news anchor - a shellac-haired,
dead-eyed dolly who criticized San Fran police for not apprehending the
Hallelujah Man with the same tidy alacrity as today's junkie slasher.
“Moron,” said Cindy to the blithering blond. “You try catching one of these pricks.”
Try it, she thought. Let the cockroach crawl inside
your head and slick up a nest from newspaper clippings and human blood. Let your
failed pursuit of him define your career. Let him steal you away from your
friends, your lovers, your life. Let him murder your family. Try it, Cindy
thought, try sleeping on broken glass for a few years, then maybe you'll have
the right to run your mouth about the people chasing this vile, cunning freak.
“Moron,” she said again, for it bore repeating.
She went to the kitchen to trade her soda for a beer,
but heightened paranoia made her glance toward the front door, the small gap at
the bottom. Cindy's breath hitched and she froze in place. A shadow slithered
under the lit gap. It departed, then returned. This indecisive spill of
anti-light rhythmically oozed across her hallway floor several times.
Cindy figured it must be the stalker, out there
pacing, debating whether to leave another note/flower combo or just skip
straight to the kidnapping and murder.
Not one to dither in the face of danger, and already
spoiling for a fight, she snatched up her pepper spray and - for good measure
– her French rolling pin, and crept toward the other creeper.
On the count of five, because three wasn't quite long
enough, Cindy threw the locks and flung the door wide. She screamed bloody hell
and charged into the hall with spray at the ready and her rolling pin raised
high, like the club of a savage barbarian who was learning to make her own pie
crusts.
Lindsay Boxer nearly pissed herself from shock. She
stumbled back against the wall, one hand raised in surrender and one hand
covering her eyes, just in case Cindy got trigger happy with the Capsicum.
“Jesus H. Christ, Thomas! Don't shoot!”
Cindy's fearsome shout wilted to a meek eep, and she
lowered her ersatz armaments. “Sorry! Sorry.”
Sick to death of that word, Lindsay shook off the
apology. “My fault. I should have called first.”
“That might have helped. God, Linz, you nearly
scared my hair white.”
“Back at ya.” Lindsay managed a thin smile,
impressed by Cindy's assertive response to a perceived threat, but concerned
that this wasn't the safest approach. “Did you call 911?”
“Err... no. There wasn't time.”
“Well, if this happens again, call for help before
launching your attack.” Lindsay squinted at Cindy's oddball secondary weapon.
“Is that a rolling pin?”
Cindy brandished the kitchen implement in a martial
manner. “Don't laugh at me. I'm in a Naomi Campbell headspace.”
Lindsay quailed at the very notion. She shoved her
hands in her back pockets and looked toward the open apartment door. “Feel
like talking?”
“No.” Cindy crossed her arms and immediately
reconsidered. “Maybe. I don't know! I hate feeling trapped in my own house, I
hate missing out on your funked-up case, I hate that big-mouthed, empty-headed
bimbo on Fox News, and I really feel like hitting somebody! Is this normal?”
“You've traded spooked for pissed-off,” Lindsay
said, with a sage nod. “Excellent – that's progress.”
“I acclimate quickly,” Cindy said, finally
relaxing enough to recognize an opportunity. “I find that cold beer aids me in
this process. Care to join me?”
“Thought you'd never ask.”
****
Lindsay's slasher case update was handled fast and
neat while popping beers in the kitchen, and Cindy broke the bad news that
Claire found only one set of prints on the notes – Cindy's own.
The flowers were generic roadside poppies, bound in
everyday, dime-store kite string. A scant trace of powder was pulled from each
note - perhaps an indicator that the stalker used latex gloves - but Dr.
Washburn postponed chemical analysis of this powder when a stream of late
afternoon corpses flooded the morgue.
“That was totally inconsiderate of you, by the
way,” Cindy quipped. “Commandeering my personal forensics expert for actual
police work.”
“Sorry. Them's the breaks.”
All the
while, they were careful to stand several feet apart. In the living room, they
didn't sit close. Once they exhausted work-related topics, conversation stalled
like a cold engine. Things had definitely changed between them; their previous
sense of ease had been magnetized into simultaneous attraction and repulsion via
one electric kiss.
“This is weird for me,” Cindy stated. She curled
her legs into her chair as Lindsay slumped deeper between couch cushions. “Is
it weird for you?”
Lindsay sipped her beer and thought it over.
“Yes,” she said.
Cindy waited for elaboration, but none came. “Yes.
And...?”
“And... I don't know.” Lindsay shrugged. She
stared at her boots and latently realized she was tracking microscopic amounts
of meth and blood all over Cindy's floors. Another guilty straw on her
choke-a-horse bale. “It's weird.”
The reporter clenched her teeth and wondered if
anyone had ever used torture to make Lindsay talk. Though she had no branding
irons or pliers handy, she could probably improvise an Inquisition-style
scenario with dripped candle wax and a garlic press. “You should know, this
taciturn thing? Is doing nothing to quell my violent urges.”
“So hit me. I probably deserve it.” Lindsay
grinned and shrugged again. “Just not on the mouth, okay?”
Cindy instantly seized a throw pillow and flung it at
the other woman's head. The quick-handed cop batted it aside and laughed. Only
then did Cindy notice the slight plumping of her friend's upper lip. “Someone
already bopped you on the mouth?”
“The crazed potential witness at the second – or
first – crime scene. She threw wooden fruit.”
“Ouch. I'd offer to kiss it better, but you might
not call me for another week,” Cindy joked.
Lindsay swallowed her smile. She had avoided talking
to Cindy for the same reason she had dodged Pete's calls all week: she hated
hurting people. The very thought of it made her stomach ache, made her spine
wilt like overcooked pasta. Still, procrastination was rarely a sound method of
problem solving, especially when the solutions were so obvious, so inevitable.
“I didn't want to talk to you until things were
settled,” she finally admitted. “Things with Pete. And I've put that off
because - ”
“You're not sure about this,” Cindy guessed,
pointing between them. Though her hand was steady, she couldn't hide the waver
in her voice. “You're not sure about me.”
“Cindy, when it comes to stuff like this, I
wouldn't know 'sure' if it jumped up and bit me,” Lindsay confessed. She
lowered her eyes, thinking the words might come easier without seeing Cindy's
face.
“I've spent a long time on my own. Mostly because I
wouldn't settle for less than I had with Tom. I believed if I was patient and it
was meant to happen, I'd find that again. It took a while, but eventually Pete
came along. He's patient. Seems to understand me. Maybe he's the man I've been
looking for.”
Somewhere above Cindy's head, an invisible guillotine
blade trembled on a wire. She'd spent so much energy wishing that Lindsay would
talk, and now she prayed for her to stop. She felt a sick stab of envy for Pete,
and bit down before it flourished into something worse. Wide-eyed and paralyzed,
she waited for the blade to drop.
Luckily, Lindsay hadn't quite finished her thought.
“Then again, maybe not,” she said. “Fact is,
I'm not sure about him. Fact is, I don't think about him much anymore... ”
Here, Lindsay took a deep breath and fixed Cindy with
a warm, steady gaze.
“... because I think about you all the damn time.
Not just about kissing you again, or even taking you to bed – although, God
knows, I want you something awful.”
At last, Cindy blinked. Her guillotine sprouted wings
and flew back to French history. She lightened inside, her blood fizzed like
champagne, and she held her chair arm to prevent a collision with the ceiling.
“There's more to it. I feel like... like we'd be
good together. I know there'd be problems. I mean, you drive me absolutely crazy
sometimes, you know?”
Cindy snorted softly and nodded.
“Still, I think it might be worth the trouble, if
you want to take a run at something.” Lindsay glanced away and absently wrung
her hands. “But I don't want to pressure you.”
“Pressure me?” Cindy croaked, stunned as a
lottery winner. “Linz, everything you just said - I've been there for about a
year.”
Lindsay looked equally stupefied. “No.”
“Yes. Seriously. Welcome. So glad you could make
it,” Cindy said, and wondered for the hundredth time how this woman could be
so crazy honest and so oblivious in equal measure. “You and me? It's
happening. Actually, it's been happening for a while now. I suspect you're the
last to know.”
“Aww, man.” Lindsay let her head fall back
against the couch. “You could have warned me.”
“Why? So you could run screaming in the opposite
direction?” Cindy clucked her tongue at that silly suggestion. “You had to
muddle through on your own, without a map. Like Lewis and Clark.”
Lindsay frowned sourly. “At least Pocahontas had
their backs.”
“That was Sacajawea,” Cindy blurted, then shook
her head to avoid getting sidetracked by trivia. “Now that we're on the same
page... are you going to talk to Pete? I mean, like, soon?”
She sounded so eager, so ready to let Lindsay
bulldoze her life, that the older woman smiled and waltzed straight though her
anxiety. “Yeah. I will.”
“By way of incentive - you're not seeing my
birthday suit until you're officially single,” Cindy vowed.
Lindsay raised her brows at the enticing prospect of
a barenaked redhead. Though Cindy's rowdy good cheer was doing wonders for her
own mood, Lindsay knew there was another potential hindrance. “Same applies
for you.”
“Me? I'm good to go,” the reporter insisted,
snapping her fingers. “Strip right now, if you like.”
“But... I thought you were seeing somebody.”
Unwilling to squander their momentum, Cindy
downplayed those concerns. “Nothing steady. I haven't talked to Ellen or
anybody else since you put the smack on me,” she explained. “That kiss
essentially ruined my social life.”
Lindsay chuckled and stretched out her legs in a
half-conscious, preening display of denim and sinew. “I'd apologize, 'cept I'm
not sorry.”
“Nice. I'm digging the arrogance.” Cindy perched
on the chair's edge and considered whether she would need specialized tools to
extricate Boxer from those skin-tight Sevens. “Would it be completely
tasteless to ask you to call Pete right now?”
“Completely. I'm burnt tonight. I swear I'll call
tomorrow.”
Lindsay tried in vain to stifle a yawn; after today's
trials, jump-starting her lazy speech center had drained the final amps from her
battery. Still, even this weariness held a certain satisfaction, like her plain,
hardy words laid the keystone for a bridge, and tomorrow promised a new
crossing. As she moaned and stretched her arms high, her shirt rode up and
flashed a band of sun-gilt stomach.
Cindy's eyes homed in on the bare skin. She licked
her bottom lip and said, “Let's send him a text message.”
“No! Jesus.” Begging the universe for a little
more strength, Lindsay straightened her top and ground out a long breath. “I
should probably go home while we're still pretending to be civilized.”
“Hey, I can restrain myself. Literally. I have some
cuffs in the fun drawer.”
The words 'cuffs' and 'fun drawer' gave Lindsay a
humid jolt somewhere south of the border. “Oh, brother... ” she said, and
readied herself to get up and run.
“Wait – I'm kidding. I'll meditate, or think
about baseball or something. You don't need to go.” Cindy shifted a bit,
quietly unnerved at the thought of being alone again. “Do you need to go?”
The idea of spending a night on this couch held
little appeal for Lindsay. The couch was too close to The Bed, where slept The
Cindy, who was still off-limits. Despite her own instinct to push people away
when she was in crisis, Lindsay understood the need for fellowship during a
siege, and she wouldn't embarrass Cindy by making her grovel for solace.
“I'll have to bolt early,” she said. “Jacobi
would give me hell if I showed up tomorrow in these same clothes.”
Cindy stood and breathed a sigh of relief. “Early
is good. I'll make breakfast.”
Lindsay drained her beer and pulled off her boots.
She placed her gun on the coffee table and splayed across the sofa while
offering a warning. “I don't usually eat much breakfast. Don't go to any
trouble or you'll spoil me.”
“Oh, the spoiling will commence forthwith, on a
variety of fronts, so I advise you not to fight me,” Cindy replied.
“Besides, you haven't really had breakfast 'til you've had breakfast with
me.”
“Oh-ho! Now who's being arrogant?”
“My dad always said it's not bragging if you can
back it up,” Cindy explained. On her way to the bedroom, she heard a low,
sweet whistle, and smiled.
She brought back a pillow and blanket and shut off
the lights. She hesitated near the end of the couch, wanting to say something
more serious, when Lindsay's rusty voice whispered through the darkness.
“It's gonna be okay,” she said. “Seems like a
lot right now, but we'll work it out. All of it.”
When Lindsay said things that way, with such surety
and conviction, Cindy believed as though she'd brought truth down from the
mountain on lightning-scribed tablets. She bid her guest a good night, knowing
she would sleep well for the first time in a week, and hopeful this would be the
last night they'd spend apart for a while.
For Lindsay, sleep remained elusive; while listening
to Cindy prepare for bed, she thought about Pete and flushed hot with guilt. She
thought about Claire and Jill and how they would react to the changes which
seemed certain to occur. She thought about Jana Macek screaming horror, and
guiltless men who murdered as if they had special dispensation from God. She
thought about catching Cindy's stalker in the hall and stepping on his neck.
Somewhere along the line, her restless imaginings
transitioned to better dreams. Though she slept alone that night, it felt like
Cindy was already in her arms.
****
Of all the ways to wake up, rousing to the smell of
coffee and cinnamon ranked pretty high in Inspector Boxer's good books. She
rolled off the couch and shuffled to the bathroom in her sock feet, cleaned up
and met Cindy in the kitchen.
“Cinnamon rolls, fruit, coffee,” the reporter
announced, already dressed and astonishingly perky for the early hour. “I kept
it simple.”
“Beautiful.” Lindsay helped herself to coffee and
watched with hooded eyes while Cindy alternately nibbled on a roll and slices of
orange.
“You're shtaring,” Cindy mumbled. “What's
wrong?”
Lindsay wasn't fully awake, and her inhibitions still
ran low from a night of pleasant dreams. “Nothing's wrong,” she said.
“Just thinking how good you'd taste if I kissed you right now.”
Cindy promptly choked on her orange slice. She
coughed and spit the mangled fruit into the sink.
“I shouldn't have said that out loud.” Lindsay
blushed and rubbed her eyes. “Sorry.”
Still red and dizzy from coughing, Cindy mildly
jiggled her head. “It's okay. Just don't talk like that while I'm chewing. I
could meet a tragic, senseless end before we even get started properly.”
It was a joke, Cindy's reprimand, but it still made
Lindsay flinch. She sipped her coffee and nodded agreement to the first rule of
their incipient relationship: no spicy talk during meals. She nabbed a cinnamon
roll and took a bite, and her eyes nearly rolled back in her head – it was
that good. Or she was that hungry, that happy. Maybe a blend of all three
factors. “Wow,” she whuffed between bites. “Since when can you cook like
this?”
“Since enlisting in Alton Brown's culinary army.
Once I establish a breakfast beachhead, lunch and dinner will fall trembling at
my feet,” Cindy proclaimed. She snapped her heels together and marched from
the kitchen.
Lindsay saluted and held quiet, too charmed to ask
who Alton Brown was.
Cindy ducked out the front door and retrieved the
paper, hoping against hope that her 911 story got decent placement. She popped
the rubber band, spread the Register out on the counter, and her breath ran
short.
“Lindsay... ”
Accustomed to bad news, the inspector immediately
assumed something humiliating and scandalous had made its way onto the front
page. “What? Did they get a shot of Vlad in his blood suit?”
White-faced and mute, Cindy pointed to the 3x5 index
card taped to her paper's masthead, a card with this simple, block print
inscription:
“Can you not see that your soul is in danger? Sodom
burned, and all the infidels with her.”
****
Dr. Claire Washburn had barely rolled out of bed when
the call came. Thirty minutes later, she arrived at the forensics lab to find
Lindsay Boxer and Cindy Thomas waiting in the hallway, huddled tight on a bench.
They saw her approach, and Lindsay discreetly unwound her arm from the
reporter's shoulders.
“You okay, honey?” Claire inquired, with a
sympathetic smile.
“I regret every time I ever wished for fan mail.”
Cindy looked up and sighed. “From now on, I'm incognito. I'll wear a blond wig
to crime scenes. My new pen name is Kitty Pimms.”
Claire squatted before Cindy and gave her hand a
reassuring squeeze. “You'd make a cute blond, but I like you the way you are.
And you don't look like a Kitty to me.”
“Me, neither,” Lindsay interjected. She jutted
out her lower jaw, clicked her teeth, and Cindy smiled like that gonzo face was
the loveliest thing she'd ever seen.
Though she knew she was missing something, Claire
didn't disrupt the moment by asking. Every time she witnessed Lindsay behaving
this way toward Cindy, all protective and sweet, she felt a fragile tickle of
potential. The sensation was kind of delightful and kind of scary, like a tiny
fish swimming around her ankles in murky water.
“Are you sure you don't mind doing this for me?”
Cindy asked. “I feel like I'm jumping the line.”
“It's one of the benefits of club membership,”
Lindsay asserted. “This, and a complimentary beat-down when we find this
guy.”
“Amen.” Claire extended her free hand to Lindsay.
“Gimme the note. I'll run it for prints and start the powder analysis.”
“You're the best ever, Claire,” said Cindy.
“Tell that to my husband,” Dr. Washburn said.
Through the plastic bag, she read the note's plainly homophobic inscription and
frowned nastily. Then she gave Lindsay a funny, questioning appraisal (same
outfit as yesterday? or do all her clothes look that much alike?) and turned for
the lab. “Call you when I get something.”
****
With Claire in the lab and another M.E. on duty in
the morgue, Cindy decided she'd feel more comfortable hunkering down elsewhere
for the workday. The homicide bullpen was too open, and it wasn't entirely
kosher for a reporter to embed with the squad, anyhow. One phone call to Jill
Bernhardt solved the 'where to put Cindy' problem, and the reporter was happily
ensconced in Jill's office by eight, where she immediately logged on to the web
for research-slash-distraction.
Jill herself was heading for the hospital to question
Jana Macek in the presence of a psychiatrist and a public defender. She tucked
the Seeger & Parson murder files into her valise, checked her identification
and issued Cindy a warning. “Don't mess with my bookmarks. Don't move any
files, don't clean or fix anything.”
“And if I do?” Cindy dared, for Jill's computer
was in sad disarray and she ached to neaten it up.
The attorney made a dangerous face and waggled her
fountain pen like a lead sap. “I will make you sorry,” she promised.
“There may be pinching.”
Cindy grinned, looking so grateful for the teasing
that Jill couldn't maintain her distance. She walked over and put a hand on her
friend's shoulder, leaned down and kissed her cheek. Just about then, her door
burst open, heralding the arrival of Inspector Lindsay Boxer and Jill's boss,
acting District Attorney Denise Kwon.
“If that oily midget thinks we're stupid enough to send a
foreign prisoner to his embassy, he's got another thing coming,” Denise was
saying as she donned her coat. “Possession being nine-tenths of the law, if he
wants to see our guy, he'll play by my rules.”
Lindsay made affirmative noises and shot her friends
a helpless glance. She looked morbidly tired, and Jill could tell she was
currently being swept along in Denise Kwon's terrible wake.
“What's happening?” Jill asked.
“The Romanian consul's attorney is trying to
dictate terms for questioning.” Denise snorted and wrapped her throat with a
fantastic emerald scarf. “I told him he could meet us at the detention center,
or walk west until his hat floats – I don't care which.”
Cindy giggled, and Lindsay gave her a slow, warm
smile. Jill blinked at them, cleared her throat, and asked Denise how she could
help.
“I need that witness statement.” Denise held up
her BlackBerry and canted an eyebrow at her most reliable legal eagle. “Send
me highlights as soon as you can. If the suspect won't talk, I'll need
leverage.”
Denise turned heel and blew out of the office.
Lindsay was clearly reluctant to follow; she lingered near the door and balled a
fist against the frame. “Sure you're good?” she asked Cindy.
The reporter gave a calm, steady nod. “Go do your
thing. I'll be right here... fixing Jill's computer.”
Jill sneered and thumped her friend's skull. She
gathered her things and went to stand by Lindsay. “I'll get back as soon as I
can. Don't worry, though – there's a hundred hunky cops downstairs who would
love nothing more than to rescue a beautiful, helpless girl.”
Lindsay stayed mum, but her jaw flexed like she was
chewing rubber.
“I'm not helpless,” Cindy growled.
Before Jill could recant, Denise materialized behind
them like a well-dressed, angry specter. “Ladies? We need to hustle,” she
barked, and finally seemed to notice Cindy Thomas was present, and didn't appear
to be leaving. “Someone tell me why there's a reporter lounging in Bernhardt's
office.”
Cindy piped up and answered for herself. “They're
hiding me from a creepy, God squad stalker. The paper chucked me out because
they think it's the Hallelujah Man.”
Denise's eyes bulged. Her glove squeaked as she
gripped her briefcase handle.
“It isn't him,” Lindsay added. “We're
ninety-nine percent sure.”
“No one
knows she's here,” Jill interjected. “We promise, there won't be any
trouble.”
Looking from one pleading face to the next, Denise
could tell it was pointless to argue impropriety; for these women, friendship
had nullified the meaning of that particular word. She couldn't comprehend that
kind of bond, and the resulting green zap of jealousy erupted from her mouth.
“Sometimes your little club seems like a
co-dependent cluster of ass pain,” Denise said, and hied away down the hall.
Jill choked back a laugh. She pointed at Lindsay.
“Ass pain.”
“You are,” Lindsay cleverly deflected.
They smiled and waved goodbye to Cindy. Just then, it
felt like an ordinary morning, and did right up until Jill locked the door.
****
The detention center consult room was barely big
enough to contain the assembled group, so Lindsay and Jacobi stood behind
Denise, with the mammoth prisoner and his ratlike counsel seated opposite.
Denise cued the guards to begin recording the interview. The prisoner whispered
something to his attorney, and pointed toward the police contingent. He actually
smiled and nodded at Lindsay as if they were old friends.
“He tells me to relate every word properly, or he
will dismiss me,” the lawyer explained. “His English is perhaps not so bad
as I thought.”
Denise smelled a full confession in the offing, and
told him to start at the start. For the next several minutes, the strangely
mellifluous voice of a spree killer held them all entranced; the translated
English echo seemed like subtitles on a gripping foreign film.
“My name is Vladimir Zmed. Two nights ago, I took
eight lives. By the grace of God, I feel no guilt over these actions,” he
began, ending much of the suspense early.
“In Romania, I was a doctor of medicine and a
biochemist. As a loyal Party member and government consultant, I made powerful
enemies. I was jailed for twelve years after the revolution – after Ceauşescu
was hanged – on false drug charges. My ideology failed me. I was a broken man.
This pain became a blessing, for during my imprisonment, I disavowed the Party
and welcomed God into my heart.”
His broad mouth curved into a beatific smile. “I
broke with my past and surrendered my will to Him – and He gave me peace.
After my release, I had no license to practice medicine, and was forbidden to
leave the country for ten years. I started a small laboratory outside Sibiu,
where I tested people and animals for illegal drugs. It was piss and blood
everywhere, every day, but I was happy. I bothered no one. I married a kind,
simple woman, and we made a son.”
He stopped for a moment and breathed deep and slow,
as if trying to steady himself. Lindsay watched him closely, and she recognized
the pain in his eyes. She knew what was coming next.
“The baby was sickly, born with neuroblastoma, and
he... he died in my arms. I spent that night wandering the streets. At home, my
wife closed the windows and went to sleep with the gas on. I buried them both in
one day. It was more than I could bear, so I raged at the Lord and demanded His
reasons. One night, He gave me the answer in a dream: I was to cure my son's
illness. It took me six years, but I did His will – I killed the cancer.”
****
“The letters started coming a few months ago, all
written in Romanian, all marked 'Official' or 'Urgent' and things like that,”
Jana Macek explained.
She sipped some water and rubbed at her wrists,
chafed and raw from a night spent battling her restraints. Whatever medication
cocktail the doctors served up seemed to be working; she was lucid and spoke in
a plain, factual monotone, but she seemed rather disconnected. Dr. Luke Bowen
once said it was called a 'flat affect,' a severe reduction in emotional
expressiveness, and Jill still thought of it as such.
“Dr. Zmed is totally xenophobic – he hates
foreigners. My name was listed on the Lavin Pharma website, so I guess he
checked me out and decided to contact me about his miracle cancer vaccine.”
Jill raised her eyebrows. “A cancer vaccine?”
“Yeah. It's not as far off as you'd think,” Jana
said. “He was injecting viral loads into tobacco plants - using them as
replicators, like some of the Mayo Clinic experiments - and he claimed he'd had
a breakthrough. He wanted me to come to Sibiu and help him, but I was... I'd met
Lyle by then. All I wanted to do was get high and screw, you know?”
Pink flared across Jill Bernhardt's cheeks. “Mmh.
Go on.”
“I stopped corresponding with Zmed. I thought he
would drop it and leave me alone. He had told me he couldn't leave the country,
so I didn't give him another thought. Until he showed up on my doorstep three
days ago. God, was he angry... ”
****
“Greed never changes. It took half of everything I
had, but I bribed the right government officials and obtained false German
travel papers. I arrived in New York last week and used the other half of my
savings to get my samples past those port criminals.”
He paused there and nodded at the attorney's
translation, indicating he was pleased with the man's veracity on this touchy
point.
“I came here, to Jana, and told her my plants would
arrive in a shipping container the following morning. We could take them to her
lab and she would see... but she didn't care.”
Zmed flicked his fingers and sneered. “She was rude
and skinny and stunk like a whore, and her home was full of vermin. Her lover,
the black man, told me to go. I left Jana a hotel card with my room number, and
I went away. I told myself I would try again tomorrow when I had the plants.”
****
“Lyle had some of his friends over, asshole
tweakers from Seeger Street – did I tell you they stole my TiVo?”
Jill was not surprised and did not care.
“Bummer.”
“Yeah. Assholes. Anyway, they were freaking out
about Zmed. He's a really big guy, you know. Like... really big. Like a redwood
that talks, or something.”
“Yes, I've seen him,” Jill assured her. She
sensed the girl's mind beginning to wander, and routed the conversation back
toward relevant matters. “What happened next?”
“Oh, they wanted to know why he was there, and I
told them he was a doctor and had some fabulous new miracle drug for Lavin. They
seemed so interested, but I didn't want to talk about it with them. Because they
were assholes.”
I just bet they were interested, Jill thought.
“Zmed called again the next day, and I didn't
answer. I thought about calling him back and telling him to try another company,
but I couldn't find the card from his hotel.” Jana pressed her fingers against
her mouth like she was smoking a phantom cigarette. Her hand started to tremble.
“I guess Lyle's friends had already taken it.”
****
“They kept saying Jana's name, and I opened the
hotel room door. They hit me with a metal bat. They stole my cases, all the
vials and all the plants... it was everything I had, you understand? There are
no other successful cultures. I had to get them back. This was not simply my
work. This was God's work.”
He laid his hands flat on the table and examined
them, as if expecting divine light to emanate from his ordinary, mortal flesh.
“I went to Jana's house and she would not let me
in, so I broke the door. Her man tried to push me out. I believe he was altered
by drugs. He became very angry – angry like me. He went to his kitchen and
returned with a cook's knife. He presented it like an offering, and I knew what
God wanted me to do.”
Zmed looked straight at Lindsay. “I took the knife
and pushed it through his heart.”
****
“He killed everyone except me. He made me take him to Lyle's friends,” Jana recalled.
“Once he went into the house and started cutting people, I ran back home. By
then, I was gone inside, like my mind shut down. He killed them all, too. Didn't
he?”
Jill said that he did.
Jana nodded thoughtfully. “Do you know what
happened to the plants they took?”
This tardy concern seemed like an afterthought, an
insult to everyone involved.
“No,” Jill said. “There were no tobacco plants
logged at either scene.”
“That's a shame. I know Zmed's crazy, but what if
he was right?” Jana belatedly wondered. “Wouldn't it be funny if those
idiots smoked the cure for cancer?”
Jill wanted to reach across the table and smack her.
She had what she needed, and so ended the interview and fled the hospital before
she lost her temper.
****
“Some ran, some threw their drugs at me, some
begged... they all died. I never found the plants. They probably threw them away
or destroyed them when they saw no narcotics in my belongings,” Zmed said.
“Regardless, I tore the house apart searching. I
even dug through garbage cans of other houses until sunrise. I was cold and
tired. I fell asleep near a heating unit, beneath a hedge. Then Boscher found
me, and now I am in jail for what I did.”
Jacobi glanced at his partner, who stared at the
floor. She didn't like the shape of her name in this man's mouth; it sounded
warped, like his faith.
Denise Kwon tapped her nails against the table.
“Okay, then,” she said. “I take it Dr. Zmed
doesn't want a trial?”
His attorney conveyed the question, and Zmed opened
his hands and shrugged.
“God will judge me innocent,” he said. “I will
await Him in prison.”
****
No one spoke as they left the detention center.
Denise broke off and headed for her own car. Even though it was her day to
drive, Lindsay handed Jacobi the keys to their unit and took the passenger seat.
She grew up thinking God, church and fellowship
should mean love, acceptance and family. For many people, that was no longer
true. Moral relativism apparently creates a sub-class of zealots who imagine God
as an intolerant, bloodthirsty Caesar, and
themselves as his Praetorian Guards. If the end is Heaven, the means is
always justified.
Something was broken in these people's hearts and
minds, and Lindsay Boxer couldn't fix it. She could only clean up their messes
once the damage was done. Like a janitor with a gun.
Lindsay's phone rang halfway back to the Hall. She
answered it quickly, hoping for good news. “Hey, Claire. Please tell me you
got something.”
“You're not gonna like it,” Claire began. “The
powder residue is an exact match for the gloves we use here in the lab.”
“Son of a -” she began, and bit back the curse.
“So the notes were contaminated during testing?”
“Nope. I was extra careful,” Claire assured her.
“Lindsay, these gloves are special ordered for investigations and forensics.
The powder is unique for evidence elimination purposes.”
When it dawned on the inspector what her friend was
trying to imply, her blood went cool. “You're saying the stalker is a cop.”
****
Cindy squeaked surprise when the shave-and-a-haircut
knock sounded at the door. She knew it was probably too soon for Jill or Lindsay
to get back, so it was probably someone looking for -
“Miss Thomas?”
Looking for her, evidently. Who knew she was up here,
anyway?
“It's Officer Graham.”
Oh. Cop. Nice guy with the chair and the water.
Recipient of her 'I nearly got hit by a taxi' lie. But what did he want?
“Just checking in to see if you want some coffee or
a muffin or something while you're waiting for the inspector to get back.”
Nice. Lindsay sent him to check on me, Cindy assumed.
She had the mid-morning blahs, and fresh coffee and carbs sounded like heaven.
“Sure thing,” she called out. She peeked through
the blinds, just to be sure, and opened the door. “Dude. You're an angel.”
Over a tray of coffee and pastry, Graham gave her a
shy grin. “I try,” he said.
****
