by Pamela Cowan
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE EMERGENCY CENTER waiting room was painted in decorator colors: sage green, slate blue, and cinnamon. Mahogany-veneered tables and comfortably thick padding on the chairs added to the sense of style. After three hours of waiting to be seen, Storm was wishing they'd passed on the designer fees and hired more medical staff.
She had called home and gotten no answer. Not a big surprise given the hour. She left a message saying where she was, that she'd be home soon, and not to worry. It was what she'd have done if she really had been attacked in a parking lot.
Finally, she was called from the front waiting room to the back waiting room, where she got to rest on a gurney with a ridiculously thin mattress while she spent her time trying to figure out what all the strange machinery was for. She didn't try too hard, since she really didn't want to know.
Lying there gave her too much time to think and feel. The planning, the boredom, the dread, and the guilt had all taken their toll. The pain, the odd and ugly feeling that her body had been assaulted, broken, she held all of it, buried it inside. She couldn’t risk losing control, so she couldn’t share her feelings with anyone. The sense of loneliness that engulfed her was like being caught in an undertow in a black churning ocean. It threatened to take her down, so far down she might have gotten lost.
Even before the fire, she had learned how to remove her emotions, compress them, and send them deep into an empty darkness at the bottom of her soul. From there she could stare out, a wretched feeling beast, and be safe, protected by the very same sense of detachment. After the fire, she had become an expert at disconnecting from emotions.
Trusting Tom had allowed her to inch out, bit by bit, a thin-skinned creature afraid to venture too far from its shell.
Working with Howard to avenge and protect had allowed her not to creep from the dark but to explode from it, crashing forth in a blaze of anger, not afraid, not tentative, but fully alive and filled with righteousness.
She had no faith, but she wondered if that feeling of passion was similar to the religious fervor she had read about in the histories of zealots and martyrs. Certainly she had no trouble finding the guilty and making them pay for their sins.
When she thought she might have been one tick of the clock from losing her mind, a nurse arrived to take her to x-ray. From there, things moved more quickly.
After a series of x-rays, she was taken to a third room, where her arm was set in a cast. Before it was fully firm, the curtain was swept aside, and a nurse came in. Tom was right behind her.
“Your husband was worried about you,” the petite, red-headed nurse told her. “I told him you'd been very brave.”
“You make me think you're about to give me a sticker or a lollipop.”
“Do you want a sticker?” the woman asked.
Storm shook her head. “No, just joking.”
“Okay. Someone will be back soon to sign you out.”
Storm nodded, a little taken aback. The woman had no sense of humor.
Tom had taken a seat on a rolling stool beside the bed, and now he reached up and took her right hand. His hand was cold. She smiled at him. “Don't look like that. It's just a broken bone, not a death sentence.”
“Stormy, what happened? Your call didn't make much sense. A fight in a bar? What the hell?”
“Is that what I said? Well, no, there was no fight. We left McMenamins early, but a couple of the girls wanted to stop at this place called The Cooler, just to check it out, and I let them talk me into going along.”
“What were they thinking? That place has a pretty bad reputation.”
“Does it? They said it was a good place to go dancing. I didn't get a chance to find out either way. I saw one of my clients in the parking lot, stopped to talk to her, and all of a sudden this man came out of nowhere, hit me with a baseball bat or something, and grabbed her. It was horrible.”
Tom stood and wrapped Storm gently in his arms, careful of her injured arm and bandaged hand. “You must have been scared out of your mind. Where was your gun?”
“My gun?” asked Storm. She never carried her gun. It was an odd question.
“Yes. I noticed just this morning it wasn't in the lock box. I was getting my hard hat off the shelf and moved the lock box. It felt empty.
“Oh.” For a moment she felt as if he was setting her up, trying to catch her in a lie. She was so careful with all the little lies, all the half-truths she told him. It was terrifying to think he wasn't oblivious to her deceit.
“It’s locked in the trunk of the car. I was planning to go to the range last week, but I forgot.”
“You hate going to the range. Tell me the truth.”
Shaken from the night's activities, her injuries throbbing, wondering if Howard had gotten away free or if he’d been caught and the police were coming for her, left Storm unable to respond. She couldn’t even come up with a reasonable story. The truth that she’d started keeping her gun in the car since the night she’d crept into Helena Smith’s house and found herself outmatched, well, that was a truth she’d keep to herself.
“It's your father, isn't it?” Tom asked, letting her go and sitting down on the edge of the gurney. “You've been so tense since you found out. I knew something was wrong, but until you told me about him being released . . . how did I not see how hard this has been on you? I hate how scared you must be. So scared that you feel like you have to carry a gun with you. God, Stormy, can you ever forgive me?”
Dumbfounded, Storm could only stare open-mouthed at Tom as he continued.
“I should have seen how upset you were about your father. I should have offered to help you find the bastard, hired a private investigator or something. Instead I left you to deal with it on your own, like I always do. Stormy do the taxes. Stormy pay the bills, plan the menus, cook the dinners, buy the presents, keep up the housework. Why you put up with me I will never know.”
Stormy reached out with her bandaged hand and gave Tom an awkward pat on the head. “You’re an idiot, Tom McKenzie”, she said, a sense of lightness filling her, or maybe it was just the pain pills kicking in. “Now go find someone and get me the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr. Day was a county holiday. A day set aside for observance and community service. Storm was meeting with Howard. It seemed fitting, since she believed the result of their association had been, in a way, a service to the community.
After all, they had put an end to four child abusers, offering at least a little hope that the children who had been in the care of those monsters had a better shot at lives free of threats, fear, and pain. Storm had no regrets, but she was ready to end her double life.
They met at the picnic table at Jackson Bottom Wetlands. Storm grimaced at the aptness of the name. All around her, the ground was soaked, puddles forming even on the higher ground above the marshes. The marsh itself looked like a lake, with trees growing from the water. The creek that ran alongside the trail, usually at a leisurely pace, was now swollen with rain, and it rushed past, churning up a dirty white froth and making a low-pitched roar.
Pulling the cord that tightened her raincoat's hood, she watched Howard trot up from one of the many trails in the park. Just as he reached her, the clouds opened up and a bar of sunlight broke through, dazzling reflections bouncing off the mirror-like face of each puddle and drop of water it touched.
“You made it,” Howard said.
Shielding her eyes, Storm said, “Of course. I need to hear how it went with Ms. Ruiz.”
“Fine. Just fine. Down to the last detail. Just the way you outlined. Is that a cast?”
The elastic at the end of the sleeve of Storm's coat was stretched wide to accommodate the cast, which covered her arm from just below her elbow to the base of her thumb and fingers.
“Yep. Want to guess how I got it?”
“I thought maybe I hit you. Things were happening so fast. Did I actually—”
“
Yes, you actually. You broke my arm.”
“Holy crap. I never meant for you to get hurt out there. Damn.”
“It's okay. Should be out of the cast in four or five weeks. Not the end of the world.”
“Still. Must have hurt like hell.”
Storm shrugged. “Tell me more about Ruiz. I didn’t get to see much of what happened.”
“Sure. He looked at her, his eyes narrowed against the sun. All around them, from every surface, a wispy mist began to rise. Water dripped with no discernible rhythm from the nearby trees.
“I missed her with the bat,” he said. “She was fast. Knew how to duck. Finally, I just grabbed her, got a lock around her neck, and dragged her to the van. She kicked the hell out of my shins on the way, so I punched her out and tossed her into the car. Her friends saw everything and would have been right on me except they had to get past you first. I saw you get knocked down, or you fell down, but anyway, it slowed them up enough so I could get the hell out of there.
“She started coming around when we reached Evergreen. I didn't hit her again. It was easier to let her walk than to carry her. She tried to run, but I got her into the building okay. Once I got her to the room, I tied her up like usual, but it didn’t work for me. You can’t have sex with a corpse, and every time I grabbed her ankles and pulled her legs up she started to choke, you know, huh?”
Storm swallowed hard, trying not to imagine the scene in all its graphic detail. “Just tell me you got rid of her body and cleaned up.”
“I'm getting to that. Anyway, I took the noose off her neck and hung her up by her wrists. That worked fine, except she kept fainting. Man, I thought she was tough, but hell, by the time I cut her down, she was so out of it. All I had to do was drop her in the cart. So, yeah, I got rid of her body and all her stuff. I dumped the van and everything went like clockwork.”
“She was still alive? You burned her alive?” Storm asked, her eyes staring with a disquieting intensity, her voice nearly a whisper.
Howard leaned forward to hear. “Burned her? Oh, hell no. I snapped her pretty neck first. You taught me that. Don’t want anyone coming to outside the room, moving around, making a mess, huh? Why you gotta worry so much?”
Storm shook her head, unable to speak. Clouds crossed the sun, and a shadow took away the painful glare. Storm dropped the hand that had been shielding her eyes to her hip. “You know what they do to people who kill people? How can you ask why I'm worried?” She drew her lips back scornfully and shook her head at the ignorance of his question.
“I just meant, why don't you trust me? You'd think by now I’d have earned some trust. I helped you with that woman you tried to take out by yourself. I come up with a good plan to get that Angela woman. What’s it gonna take?”
“The question isn’t whether I trust you,” said Storm. “It’s just how far can I trust you. We had an agreement about who we would target, but you broke that agreement. You killed that woman, the one you picked up in Portland, the one that hadn't done a damn thing to get herself killed. Maybe that did a little something to my trust in you.”
“Okay, I guess I can see that,” said Howard, uncharacteristically agreeable.
“Can you. Well, good.” Deciding it was time, Storm said, “It won't come as a complete surprise when I tell you we're done. I've decided it's time to stop the justice killings.”
“You always say that.”
“What?”
“You do. You say that after every one. We aren't going to do another. We've been lucky so far. We shouldn't push our luck.”
Storm, hearing her words echoed back to her, was dismayed. It was true. She had said those things, just as Howard repeated them, each and every time.
“But this time I mean it,” Storm argued, sounding peevish and unsure even to herself. “We really have been lucky. And this last one . . . it felt wrong. I don't know for sure this woman was an abuser. She put her kids in danger, yeah. But she didn't hurt them herself. At least, not that I could see. Maybe it was even a one-time thing, a complete accident.”
“Sure, I can see that,” agreed Howard. “I wondered about it myself. So you feel bad now, but what about the next time you hear about some kid getting locked in a closet or some meth freak leaving his kid on a furnace to slow roast and walking away free and clear, huh? You think you'll be able to walk away? You never have before.”
Storm hugged her bad arm to her side protectively. It still ached, and sometimes a sharp twinge of pain traveled from forearm to shoulder, reminding her that the injury was recent and far from healed.
“You look . . . you get this look sometimes,” said Howard. He stepped forward and raised his hand toward her face. She flinched and he said, “Shhh, it's okay.” He took a strand of hair that had come free and slid his fingers down its length.
She stepped back. “Don't.”
“Don't what? Don't be nice? Don't tell you the truth?”
“Don't touch me. I don't like it.”
“Are you sure about that? I remember that kiss. I think about it every night. I thought about it when I was banging that little Mexican chica.”
“Were you thinking about it when you stuffed her in the oxidizer and hit the button?”
“Nope. I was thinking about her at that particular moment.” Howard smiled, and Storm's stomach twisted and sank. She had felt like this once before, on a roller coaster. Just as the ride reached the crest of an impossibly high climb, it paused, and she knew it was about to fall backward and down, a long way down.
Her stomach made the fall first, and she realized then, and she still knew that the anticipation, the moment before the fall, was the worst moment of all.
Now she was there again, stalled at the very top, ready to fall into the abyss, except this time Storm knew the abyss was inside and she could fall forever.
She didn’t want Howard. She wanted Tom. He was her knight in shining armor. If she could have transported herself back to their room on the mountain to the night she'd told him about her father she would have. That night she'd steeled herself, expected shock and anger, but had received sympathy and acceptance instead. That was what had kept her going ever since.
When she let him, Tom was the strong presence beside her that made it easy to face the night, to sink into bed and fall away, give up control, and float into a welcoming darkness. He was the warm body who held her when the nightmares came and shook her from that slumber.
For a short time, she'd been disconnected from him. She had been hollow. All the little moments of happiness that made life more than just something to tolerate held no worth. They were simple things, like the smell of fresh ground coffee, the feel of sun on her face after a long week of overcast days, the taste of Tom's dessert invention: waffles dotted with syrup and covered in whipped cream. Even Waffle Whips were tasteless when she felt detached from Tom.
Then they made love, and somehow, as she went through the motions, through the act of joining bodies, she rejoined him. “Where have you been?” he'd asked.
“Far away,” she admitted. “But I'm here now.”
“I'm glad,” he said. “I missed you.” He whispered all those little endearments that were links in a metaphorical chain that held them together and separate from the rest of the world.
She couldn't risk losing that connection to Tom again. Her fear of drifting into the darkness and not returning was as real as other people’s fears of closed places, or spiders, or death.
It was true she'd felt a moment of—something—when she kissed Howard. There was the sick thrill of danger, a compulsion to step off the cliff and see how far she could fall. The cost of learning could have been pretty high: Howard and the justice killings or Tom and her children. There was really no choice to be made.
“You know what I like about you?” Howard asked.
Storm shook her head, not caring in the least, but curious where this was going.
“Well, there are lots of things I like. I like that you're tall and t
hat you have long dark hair that you hardly ever let down because you've got that stern librarian thing going on. But I can see by the look you're giving me that you don't want to hear about that kind of like.” Howard gave her a crooked smile.
Storm crossed her arms and waited.
“Mostly, I like you because you like to pretend you have it all under control, but the truth is you’re rarely sure of yourself. You’re not like those people who think they got it all figured out. Come on, you know the kind I mean, huh?”
Storm nodded.
“Once they get to that idea, that they know it all, that's when they get stuck. They're done, as far as I'm concerned. They can live a hundred more years, but they're basically just a lump of dried-up clay, hardening a little more every year but not really changing.
“People like you, though, you’re never sure you're right. You're always looking for the path, the one way, but you never find it. You'll change your pattern and shift this way and that, and by the time you get old, well, you won't be anything like who you are now.”
“And that's a good thing?” Storm asked.
“That's hella good,” Howard agreed. That's where all the creative stuff comes from. The outside-the-box stuff. Nothing about you is set in stone.”
Now it was Storm's turn to give a twisted grin. “Is that a line that works on a lot of women?”
“Don't be a bitch,” Howard warned, his voice suddenly going low and the same hard look back in his eyes. “I'm trying to give you a compliment. You suck at taking them, obviously, so I'll just say this. I'm not ready to quit yet. I'll let you know when I am. In the meanwhile, you get back to your office and you find us another waste of air.”
“I told you. I don't want to do this anymore.”
“I know what you said, but you aren’t the boss. I'm not saying I want to do this forever, either. I'm not a fucking serial killer, huh? What I do want is some respect from you. I've held up my end, hell, more than my end of our bargain. I'm not going to let you lay down the law about when we stop.”