“Help me. They think I’m someone else.” She tripped in her haste and he grabbed her arms to steady her. She grabbed his arms in return. “You’ve got to hide me. Is this your place?”
Junior froze. His jaw literally dropped as his heart figuratively danced. He knew those hazel eyes. That dimpled chin and the smooth forehead that only wrinkled in sleep were the ever-present background of his mind’s eye. The girl in the green hoodie was his mother.
And she didn’t recognize him. She was staring straight into his face and she didn’t know him at all.
“Come on. You don’t want to be out here when those gangbangers catch up.” Kathryn Leo had to drag Junior back through the gate.
He followed willingly through the garden and opened the sliding glass door when she pushed him at it. She shoved past him the instant it cracked. He followed. His mother looked from the doorframe to him.
“No curtains?”
Junior looked back at the door. No curtains. His mother was in danger and they couldn’t hide here. He reached for her hand. “This way. I’ll get you somewhere safe.”
She jerked away before he could touch her and the hoodie fell back, revealing the same perfectly coiffed hair he’d grown used to seeing in her pictures and interviews. The outfit she was wearing wasn’t anything like her usual uniform, though. She looked more like JT than a venerable councilperson. She looked more like his mother than she did on TV.
Pounding footsteps and yelling outside drove both of them into action. His mother dropped to the floor. Junior looked to the street to see a woman with wild red hair running evenly, a gun held out with both hands. They hadn’t made any sound, but the woman turned and looked directly at Junior. He ducked as he slammed the glass door closed.
“Come on.” Junior grabbed his mom’s hand and pulled her through the house to the stairs. They tripped down the steps and dashed through the bedroom to the closet. Junior had to hustle her far enough into the closet for him to reach back and shut the door behind them.
He pushed open a door leading into a chintzy pink and silver bedroom lined with pictures of his mother with famous politicians. His mother wrenched herself free of him with such force that she fell to the ground. He bent forward to help her but she scrambled backwards, screaming at him.
“You stay where you are.”
He did as he was told. She looked around her in a panic.
“Where have you taken me? I will be missed.”
“Isn’t this your . . .” Junior had been about to say bedroom but he suddenly realized what he’d done. He’d traveled with her. Could he take anyone with him through the closets? Would she think he was a freak?
While Junior fell apart, Kathryn Leo pulled herself together. She’d fallen to the floor between the foot of her wrought iron bed and her wide white wood dresser with glassy pink drawer pulls. He watched her look around, waited for the wrinkled forehead and sad lecture he got whenever he’d messed up. He hated being the cause of those wrinkles. She deserved to be happy. She didn’t deserve a monster for a son.
No lecture came.
“What’s your name?”
Junior didn’t stop to think before he answered. “Junior Leo.”
“Really?” He’d earned her full attention.
Junior stepped back, lowering his head, unconsciously trying to hide on the far side of the bed. “Yes.”
She laughed at his chutzpah. “You’re going with that?”
Junior nodded. He didn’t quite understand his mother’s reaction.
She pulled herself up onto the bed. She brushed herself off and noticed her clothes. “Fuck. I’m gonna have to get the car.” She looked at Junior. “I had a car you know. I would have made it to my car if you hadn’t yanked me out of the street.”
He tried to look even smaller. “I didn’t.”
“Well, come on. At least you can try to be a part of the solution.” Leo banged open the door to the bedroom and walked out into her small but perfect main room and through to the kitchen beyond.
Junior followed because she had implied that he should. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Diejuste said she wasn’t Jane but she was—he struggled for a word—similar to Jane. This Kathryn Leo was his mother but she wasn’t at all like his mother.
Still like a duckling he followed her. He found her in the kitchen punching at a computer tablet mounted on the side of the kitchen cabinets with her left hand while she made a fancy coffee with her right. She didn’t pay any attention to his entrance. Junior looked around the magazine-ready kitchen. A small rectangular table with a fold-up extension was pushed up against the wall with two padded wooded chairs tucked under either side. White wood cabinets were mounted against a wall with a small window looking out on a fire escape. The perfectly clean range sat under this window. The Keurig machine to the left of the range looked well-used. Beside it, on the edge of the counter a red ceramic bowl held two dozen tiny oranges.
He brushed the edge of the bowl. “I’ve seen these before. In California.”
Leo glanced over from flipping through her emails. “Cutie Clementines. I have a friend who knows I like them. You can take some.” Then she turned back to her little computer, ignoring him.
“I love little oranges.”
He took two. He put one in his pocket and sat at the folded table to eat the other.
Leo exclaimed, “Ha!” at one point. Junior didn’t ask why.
When her coffee was ready, Kathryn brought the mug and her tablet to the little table. She took the other seat as though she’d invited him in. She set the tablet down on his pile of peelings.
“Recognize her?”
Junior leaned back to avoid dripping orange juices on the computer screen. He saw a woman with short messy red hair in a grey hoodie and black trench coat looking at something above the camera with an eyebrow raised, her lips pursed in disgust. Scared he was missing something, he said, “That’s the woman who was chasing you.”
“Detective Deirdre Morton.” Leo took the tablet back and swiped through to the application she wanted. “And she has an appointment with me tomorrow at ten.”
Leo sat back and waited for Junior’s reaction. He wasn’t sure what she expected so he sucked another quarter of orange into his mouth and chewed.
“You’ll be there to tell her what you saw.”
Junior swallowed. “I saw you running and her chasing.”
Kathryn smiled as if he’d made a joke. She reached over to the garbage can and brought it to the table, tilting the lid to hint that Junior should throw away the Clementine peels. He scooped them in so quickly several dropped on the floor. He bent to recover them. When he stood again, Kathryn had replaced the garbage can and was putting her mug in the dishwasher. She hadn’t paid enough attention to him to notice he’d dropped anything.
“I’m going to change into something decent. Then, since you lost my car, you can take me to my office.” She picked another Clementine from the bowl and tossed it in Junior’s general direction as she went back through the main room to the bedroom and shut the door.
Junior caught the orange. After he heard the door click shut, he put it back in the bowl. On second thought, he took three oranges from the bowl and put them in his pockets. Then he went into the main room and looked through not his mother’s shelves. She had a small collection of DVDs, including all of Hitchcock’s films, the original Manchurian Candidate, and everything Angelina Jolie had ever been in. She had all of her textbooks from college; Poly Sci, History, Econ, and Psych course books. A graphic novel version of Sun Tzu’s Art of War was the most interesting of her books. Junior flipped through it wondering why he was still waiting for her.
When she opened the bedroom door, Leo had changed into an impeccable pantsuit with two-inch heels and pearls. Her makeup was completely redone, subtle, understated. Nothing about her looked like his mother. Junior slipped the book back onto the shelf and stood, expecting her to lead the way to the front door. But she lifted a soft-sided brie
fcase from the chair beside the door and gestured impatiently for him to join her.
In the bedroom, she closed the door and turned to the closet. “Okay, Wonder Boy, show me how it’s done. Take me to my office.”
“I can’t.” Junior looked anywhere but at Leo. He’d expected a lot of reactions. He had not expected her to want to learn how to do what he did.
“You brought me here.”
“This is a bedroom.”
The friendly dropped from her face. “This is my bedroom. Do you want to explain to the police how you got in my bedroom?”
“I can only travel to bedrooms.” Junior didn’t like being threatened. He wanted to go back to Jane . . . Diejuste’s closet.
Leo rewarded Junior with her chummy voice. “What a pervert you are. My personal assistant sleeps in the office. He even has a cot and blanket. Does that count?”
Junior considered his position. He wanted to get away from this disappointment. He’d already transported her once and she couldn’t exactly tell anyone about it without serious, probably negative, repercussions. He determined, perhaps too quickly, that he would take her to the office and never see her again.
“It might work.”
He started to step past her to the closet but she stopped him.
“We’re going together, Junior. And you’re gonna show me how you do it.”
He didn’t see any harm in that. It seemed likely the trick was in his boogeyman genes and not in any action that Junior performed. He nodded and took her cold hand in his.
“I step into a closet and shut the door.” He took her with him as he put action to words. “Then if I want to go somewhere specific, I think about the person, the place, the bed, whatever details I know. I’m thinking about you and what I could see of the office behind Deirdre Morton in the picture you showed me.”
“What makes you think that picture was taken in my office?”
Junior answered simply. “There was a picture of you with the governor over her left shoulder and over her right, I could see part of a Pollock print that is virtually identical to the one you have hanging in your kitchen.” He went on with his instructions. “You should think about what your office feels like to you.”
“Feels like?”
“You have to have an opinion about your office, about the fact that your assistant sleeps there. Think about that.”
And without explaining further, Junior pushed on the door and ushered Leo out into the reception area of her office. The closet held a couple spare suits and one wool trench coat. They stepped out to find themselves behind the receptionist’s desk. On the wall to their left hung the picture and the print. The wall to their right was dominated by a forty-two inch flat screen TV. Junior looked below the television for a hidden camera.
Leo gazed around her reception area in amazement. Junior thought it might be the first honest emotion he’d seen cross her face.
“Show me again.” Kathryn gripped Junior’s arm and tried to go back into the closet.
Junior didn’t move. “No.” The anger in her face made him immediately regret his declaration and he backtracked. “It doesn’t work right away.”
She clearly doubted him but a knock at the glass doors saved him from more pressure. Kathryn Leo spun around to find a tiny Asian woman tapping on the door with a badge. The woman reached up and took her mirrored glasses off as Leo strode to unlock the door. She examined Junior with black eyes then put her glasses back on when Leo got the door open. Junior looked away before he could catch his reflection.
“Councilwoman Leo?” The woman spoke quietly, no expression on her angled features. She walked past Leo, then turned to face her, managing to place her small but imposing body between mother and son. “I’m Captain Yaksha Morioka.”
“Yes, Captain. I’m Kathryn. Can you give me one moment? I just need to finish this up and I’ll be right with you.” She went to her inner office door and indicated that Junior should preceed her inside.
He did, folding in on himself as he slunk by her. In his head he was telling himself to just push out the glass doors and run. But he didn’t.
Kathryn barely waited for the door to close before she continued bullying him. “I have cameras all over my apartment and this office. I can prove what you did and I will have you locked away in a research hospital faster than you can say ‘stalker.’ So you will come to my meeting with Ms. Detective Deirdre Morton at ten tomorrow morning and you will tell her what you saw.”
Junior nodded. He actually peeked back to reassure himself he wasn’t actually pinned against the wall. He had known kids in school who had parents that did this to them all the time. He’d seen one father actually shove his son in the locker room once. But his mother had always been kind and gentle with him. When she lost her temper, she’d walked away and come back when she was calm. She had never threatened him. She had never bullied him. She had never made him feel small. Junior missed her fiercely. A tear rolled down his cheek.
Leo misunderstood the tear of course. She grinned and handed him a set of keys. “The car is a black Escort. It’s on the street where you attacked me.” She emphasized the last words. “Get it and bring it here by 9:30. I’ll have breakfast for you, complete with Clementines.” She flashed him a smile then. “And I’ll tell you what you saw.”
He was dismissed with a wave. Junior waited until she turned to sit at her desk before he dove for the door. He tried to brush past the police captain but she stopped him with a gentle hand on his chest.
“Excuse me.” Her voice was much more gentle than her face. She took off the dark glasses and looked up at him with deeply sad eyes. “How do you know the councilwoman?”
He looked down and murmured, “I thought she was my mother.” Then he looked once more over at the picture of Leo and the governor and he walked out the front door of the office suite.
8
The Blame
Junior broke into a run only a few steps into the hall. His breath came in gasps. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs with the iron band tightening around them. The hall took a hard left at a window. Streetlights blinked on over the cars passing four stories below. Junior’s eyes darted along the panes, searching for a clasp or latch. But the window would not open. He leaned close, sucking in the stale air of the over-air conditioned hallway while imagining the crisp cool oxygen on the other side of this fixed window.
A sound, maybe real, maybe only in his mind, sent him running again. There was a lobby where this hallway dead-ended by a bank of elevators. Junior punched at the buttons—up, down, it didn’t matter—before he saw the red exit sign blinking over a black door. He tripped towards it and raced up the industrial stairs. Other people had to sleep in their offices too. She couldn’t be the only tyrant in this building.
He burst out of the stairwell into a hall two floor up. No reception desk on this floor. Just a pair of pristine white leather chairs beside a short table strewn with financial magazines. Junior rushed past these to the first office door he could see. It was locked. He pushed his way along the wall to the next. And the next. They were all locked.
Locks were not usually a problem for Junior. But this didn’t occur to him as he reeled down the hall trying every door. His mind was not his own. Grief had consumed him again. It was worse this time. Eight years ago Jane had died. She was dead. As awful as it was, even in his grief, Junior knew she was gone and she wasn’t coming back. Death was final. That was its only kindness.
He’d wanted a piece of that kindness then. He’d wanted to die too. But he should have been more specific. He should have been thinking I want to die I want to die I want to die when he ran from the body.
Jane had just taken too big a bite of the King cake he’d made himself from her mother’s recipe. She had been born and raised in New Orleans. She knew you had to take small, careful bites. But she’d laughed and yodeled at him when he brought the cake over from the oven in their brand new studio. And she’d lifted a huge bite to her m
outh, kissing some of it into his. When she choked, his heart leapt into his throat. But she’d recovered quickly, spraying cake over the picnic blanket he’d laid with plates and candles between their mattress and the desk. They’d both laughed at that which caused more spray. Even as she reached up to her lips, she mumbled, “I think I got the baby.”
She pulled the object that had almost choked her from her mouth and sang out before she looked at it. “Baby on the first bite! I’m king for the whole year!”
But her face had twisted. Her gaze flipped from him to herself. Some enormous pain, he thought, clutched at her. As her eyes dropped from his, she saw that he hadn’t hidden the traditional baby figurine in the cake. Pain forgotten, her face glowed. Junior breathed freely for the first time since they’d sat down to dinner as she slipped the ring onto her finger, cake, saliva, and all.
She started to pull it off again, “Oh no, you’re supposed to—” He didn’t know what she was going to say. He was supposed to ask first? He was supposed to put it on her? He was supposed to put a baby in the king’s cake?
She’d grabbed at her chest, still holding the ring halfway off her finger. Fear and tears leapt to her light blue eyes. Eyes that stayed glued to his until she fell over beside the picnic.
Junior was close enough that her head hit his knees instead of the hard ground of the basement apartment they’d moved into three days before. He laid her out flat on the ground. He checked her airway, called her name. He went through all the steps they’d learned side by side in the first aid segment of Mr. Planchet’s fourth period gym class. It was all useless. Jane was dead before she hit the floor. That bum heart had quit on her.
But as humans will, Junior blamed himself. He knew she was dead when he stood to search for his phone. He knew she wouldn’t be if she had never met him. He’d talked her into leaving her sheltered home to live with him. He knew it was his fault. So as he stumbled to the closet to get the phone from his jacket pocket, he wasn’t thinking I want to die. I want to die. I want to die.
Junior (A Wyrdos Tale Book 3) Page 5