Death's Echoes

by Penny Mickelbury

  “Don’t ever give me a reason to,” Gianna whispered back defiantly. Mimi held the eye-lock for a long moment before releasing it and dropping her head to Gianna’s breast. She took an erect and hardened nipple in her mouth, first nuzzling it with her lips before taking it between her teeth. Gianna was more than ready for what she knew was coming. She couldn’t have been more wrong, for what came from Mimi was a strangled sob followed by a flood of tears. Gianna sat up straight, pulling Mimi up with her. “What is it? What’s wrong, Mimi? Tell me, sweetheart, please.”

  “I quit my job.”

  Gianna was momentarily speechless. “When? Why? What happened, Mimi?” Because something huge and awful had to have happened to cause Mimi to quit a job she loved as much as she loved being a reporter. Gianna held her tightly until she stopped crying and could talk.

  “It was the day you came home and I was really drunk.” She shivered at the memory and told Gianna everything, every ugly, horrible detail of the events that led to the confrontation in the Exec’s office that led her to quit. “And here’s what’s really so odd, so strange: I don’t think I care. I haven’t missed having to write about those girls and what was happening to them in that warehouse. I haven’t missed having to write about those sick bastards who blew up Metro GALCO and killed those deaf kids and almost killed you. I haven’t missed having to write about some depraved cops who victimized some demoralized women in their own homes. I’m sick of depravity and evil and ugly, and I’m tired of trying to explain how and why it happens that some people do the depraved, evil and ugly things they do, ’cause most of it can’t be explained. Like those idiots who killed Cassie!” Mimi was shaking so hard Gianna feared that she would hurt her if she held her any tighter. “I’m not allowed to write that three women are dead due to racist stupidity so I have to try to find some other words. I don’t want to do that anymore, Gianna. I can’t do it anymore!” Tears she had been holding in for weeks, for months, perhaps even for years, poured out, and Gianna held her until they abated.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “With all you’ve had to deal with, Gianna? I couldn’t drop another morsel on your plate. You’ve had more than enough to think and worry about without me in the mix.”

  Gianna pushed her a little away so they’d be face to face, eye to eye, and said, “Nothing I do is more important than you.”

  Mimi kissed her. “And I’m grateful you feel that way, but I would do nothing to get in the way of the lives that depend on how well you do your job, not to mention those two dozen or so foot soldiers who go into battle on your command. Anyway, after I told you I quit, there wasn’t much else to say.”

  “Oh, yes there was! Everything you just said about what you feel about the work you do. The work you’ve always loved doing.”

  “And what about how you feel about the work you do? You haven’t talked about Cassie, or about the girls in that warehouse, or about the women at Sunset View or the cops who preyed on them, or about the deaf kids killed in the bomb blast. And I know why you haven’t talked about any of it, Gianna—because you haven’t had time to think about it, to say nothing of feel anything about it! It just kept happening, one after the other. Have you had time to feel Cassie’s loss at all? I worry that you haven’t talked about her.”

  Gianna gave a wry chuckle. “That’s because she keeps talking to me. I hear her in my head all the time!” She pushed herself up from the sofa; only Freddie and Cedric had legs long enough to stand up from being seated all the way back. “I need a drink and something to eat. Other than you.”

  Mimi joined her in the kitchen. “You’re not just avoiding the topic of discussion, are you? Because if you’re not ready to talk, I won’t press you.”

  Gianna kissed her again. “I actually am ready to talk. I need to talk. But I need to eat more. Is there anything already cooked?”

  “Meat lasagna for you, spinach lasagna for me, ready for the microwave, and bags of salad. Vodka in the freezer, or I can open more wine.”

  And they ate and drank and made love in front of the fireplace until several large logs were reduced to embers. Then they went to bed and fell immediately and deeply asleep. It was full daylight when Mimi awoke, and she almost fell out of bed trying not to wake Gianna, forgetting it was Freddie’s several feet taller, king-size bed, and not their own normal queen-size bed. She heard Gianna in the shower and was ready with coffee and scones in bed when she emerged. And along with breakfast came conversation.

  “Cassie’s last words—literally the last words she spoke—were ‘I love you, Gianna.’ I had nightmares for days afterward.”

  “I remember,” Mimi said. “‘No Cassie No Cassie No Cassie’ you cried out in your sleep a few times, and I thought you meant no, don’t die. You meant—”

  “I meant don’t say that to me, and more importantly, don’t mean that!”

  “You really didn’t know how she felt?”

  “Are you saying you did?”

  Mimi grinned at her. “It was all over her face whenever she looked at you. But truth be told, I think it was mostly a case of hero worship. Now Alice, on the other hand—”

  “It’s you Alice has the hots for, Ms. Patterson! I swear she was mad at me for a while because you weren’t available to share her bed, and she tried, didn’t she?”

  Mimi avoided and evaded by changing the subject. “I know it sounds way too weird, but I’ve been hearing Cassie in my brain, too!”

  “Maybe not so weird,” Gianna said, sounding pensive. “Cassie liked you, respected you. She was always amazed by the amount of information you put in your stories.” Gianna gave a wry grin. “Especially when you had info we didn’t have.”

  Mimi gave her own wry grin. “Guess that won’t be an issue in the future.”

  “Speaking of work-related matters,” Gianna said, and hurried to the front door to the briefcase she’d dropped on the floor there. She grabbed some items from it and hurried back to Mimi and dropped the items into her lap. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at, and when finally she did, she grabbed Gianna and wrapped her in a bone-bruising hug. “Congratulations my beautiful Captain!”

  “This was the reason for yesterday’s mandatory late-afternoon meeting: A private promotion ceremony for just those who were promoted.”

  “When, how did you possibly have time to study?”

  “When Eric and Tommi and Bobby and Jim were shouldering most of the load. Those four people are more wonderful than I have words for.”

  “You know they feel the same way about you.”

  Gianna first bowed her head, then shook it, as if to banish thoughts contained there. “I never wanted this. I never sought it. You know that, right?”

  “I know,” Mimi said, “which is why you’re going to be so damn good at it! It’s what your bastard of a boss knows so well.”

  “Speaking of which, he wants to know how long you’re going to be pissed off at him. He tried to call you a few times but you didn’t call him back.”

  “That’s because I have more important things to do with my time.”

  They didn’t spend the entire four days in bed. The weather was perfect and they went for walks, they drove down to the lake and rented a boat and rowed around until their arms were about to fall off. The cure for that was a long soak in a Jacuzzi the size of a small swimming pool. They cooked and ate and watched movies and talked and laughed and cried. And made love slowly and carefully. All too soon it was Sunday afternoon, and Gianna surprised Mimi with the news that they could stay another whole day because she wasn’t due back at work until Tuesday. “Oh dear, whatever shall we do for another whole day?” Mimi said. Gianna showed her.

  Mimi drove and Gianna slept all the way back home. She still was healing; Mimi remembered the doctor saying that rest, sleep was how the body healed itself from the effects of trauma, and Gianna still was traumatized, not only from being buried in the rubble of the bomb blast for four hours, but from everything
she had experienced beginning with Cassie’s murder. She had finally been able to talk and cry it out, and that in itself was exhausting. And she had slept, at first fitfully and restlessly, then deeply, and finally peacefully. By the time they were headed home Monday afternoon, they both felt calmer and clearer, and while Mimi still refused to return to work as long as apologizing to Weasel Boy was a requirement, she was back to believing that her profession not only had a necessary place in the scheme of things, but that these days it was a vital and crucial place, especially when the people in power believed in alternative facts. Question was, where would she ply her craft? Gianna didn’t think she’d have any trouble finding a job.

  She was debating whether to wake her when Gianna sat up, wide awake and fully alert. “Home already?”

  “Yes, and I obeyed the speed limit. Pretty much.”

  Gianna gave her a sideways look. “You have never obeyed the speed limit. We can stay at your place tonight if you’d rather.”

  “I’m just going to grab my journalism file and the PEN America journal and then we’re going to your place like we planned. And is there a reason the garage door won’t open?”

  He did a square block drive-around, just like Daddy D. taught him, so he was familiar with the Patterson woman’s neighborhood, the block she lived on, the street she lived on, and the approaches to her house. It was the kind of area where the houses had driveways and garages and people used them, so there was plenty of street parking. It also meant, though, that a strange car parked there for too long would be noticed, so he moved around, not staying parked too long in one place. And like Daddy D. told him to do, he was driving the Chevy, not the Jaguar. People noticed Jaguars but they didn’t pay attention to Chevys. Daddy D. also told him that the Patterson woman didn’t keep regular hours, that the kind of job she had at the newspaper wasn’t a normal 9-to-5 kinda job so there was no telling what time she’d get home. He just had to wait. He’d already jammed the garage door so she’d have to get out of her car and walk to the front door when she got home. He could take her out and be back in the Chevy and out of the area before anyone knew what was happening. The fact that she lived on a one-way street helped. Then he’d ditch the Chevy, just in case someone had noticed it—another reason for driving it and not the Jag: He didn’t mind having to ditch the Chevy but he liked the Jag too much to have to abandon and torch it.

  He was parked three houses up and across the street from where she lived, which meant she had to drive right by him to get home. White Audi convertible. He spotted the car from a block away. Not as cool as a Jag but still, a ride he wouldn’t mind having. He had time for a quick text. She had slowed down and was holding her hand out the window, pointing to her house . . . oh! He knew what she was doing! She was aiming the garage door opener at the garage door that refused to open because he had jammed it. He grinned as she pulled into her driveway and opened her door. He was about to open his when the Audi’s passenger door opened. “White bitch with her” he texted before dropping the phone into the passenger seat and getting out. He held his weapon—a Sig Mosquito with a silencer—down close to his leg as he jogged across the street. She was still looking at the garage, and she was talking to the white bitch who wasn’t looking at or talking to her, because she was looking directly at him as she ran around the rear of the white Audi. She, too, held a Sig—larger than his and not held down at her side but up and straight out and aimed directly at him, even as she ran fast as hell toward the Patterson woman and knocked her down before his shot hit her. But he did hit the white bitch. Once. She hit him half a dozen times before she went down. He heard the Patterson woman screaming the white bitch’s name. At least he thought it was her name. It was the last thing he heard because he certainly did not hear his phone ringing or the constant pinging of the arriving text messages telling him to get the hell out now because the white bitch was a cop!

  “Gianna! Gianna!” Mimi stopped calling Gianna’s name to talk to the 911 operator. “Officer down! Officer needs assistance!” she yelled, and gave her address. Then she disconnected from 911 and called Eric Ashby.

  “Miss Patterson? Mimi?” His voice was full of concern bordering on fear. There was only one reason she’d call him.

  “Gianna’s down. My house. I already called 911 with an officer down but I need you here, Eric. Please. Hurry.”

  He had disconnected after “house” so she called the Chief next. “Is she alive?” was all he said, and he disconnected when she answered yes. Then she looked at Gianna. Her face was white and bloodless because all her blood was pooling beneath her in Mimi’s driveway. Gotta stop the blood! She’d watched enough cop and hospital shows to know that. How long had it been? No more than several seconds, surely, but more than enough time to bleed out. Where was the blood coming from? Oh shit! Her thigh. Femoral artery? Oh shit! She was undoing her belt when one appeared, along with hands and arms belonging to a woman and a man—her across-the-street neighbors. A nurse and a retired Marine.

  The nurse not-so-gently got the belt beneath Gianna’s leg, threaded it, and told the Marine to tighten it. He did, and Gianna groaned and opened her eyes. She was trying to speak when screaming sirens, drawing ever closer, made conversation impossible. EMTs and their stretcher cleared a path to Gianna, Sgt. Eric Ashby in their wake.

  “Who’s the dead guy?” Eric demanded to know, certain that Mimi would have an answer.

  “The older Tompkins boy,” Mimi answered, watching the paramedics.

  “Shit!” Ashby exclaimed.

  “The Chief’s on his way,” she told him, still watching the paramedics working on Gianna, getting ready to lift her on to the stretcher.

  “Can you tell me what happened, Mimi?” he asked as he helped her stand. She told him everything she’d seen and everything she remembered as she followed the stretcher to the ambulance. She pointed to the gray Chevy across the street, told him she thought it belonged to Tompkins and he ran toward it, summoning several cops to follow him as she followed the gurney rolling Gianna to the ambulance. Then the energy shifted and the Chief was there, as were a couple dozen more cops.

  “Ashby!” he bellowed, unnecessarily, as Eric was already standing beside him, filling him in.

  Gianna was in the ambulance now, and Mimi had climbed in behind the gurney. The Chief materialized just before the doors were slammed shut and the EMTs gave him a dirty look, which he ignored. “I need you here, filling in the blanks, Patterson,” he said.

  “And I need to be with Gianna in case she needs me,” she said to him. “I told Eric Ashby everything I know.” Then to the EMTs she said, “Let’s go!” And the doors slammed and the ambulance screeched off, and the Chief of Police stood watching it disappear; then he went looking for Eric Ashby.

  “Don’t let her die,” Mimi said to the paramedic riding in back with them. “Please don’t let her die.”

  “She’s lost a lot of blood,” the paramedic said. “She’s stable for now but she needs blood right away, and a lot of it.”

  “How much longer to the hospital?” Mimi could tell where they were even if there were no windows to see through. She knew that she lived twelve to fifteen minutes from the trauma center in regular traffic, driving a regular car, and obeying the speed limit. In a screaming, speeding ambulance?

  “Five, maybe six minutes.”

  “Can you do it any faster?”

  The paramedic hit the side of the truck three times hard, and the engine revved and roared and the big rig picked up speed. Mimi took Gianna’s hand, which seemed colder than it had just a moment ago. She leaned over and began to whisper in her ear—words of love and pleas for her life. Mimi saw Gianna’s eyes move behind lids that remained closed, and she felt what she swore was a faint pressure on her hand—Gianna had squeezed her hand! Then the EMT yelled, “Her pressure’s dropping!” and they burned rubber into the ambulance bay at the trauma center. Mimi jumped down out of the way as a half-dozen trauma doctors and nurses met the gurney. She recogn
ized the doctor who’d operated on her a year or so earlier, who had tried to save Cassie Ali a couple of months ago, and the doctor recognized her. She also recognized Gianna. Everybody was running, including Mimi, but she had to stop when they reached the swinging doors.

  “I’ll find you,” the doctor said to Mimi, and they took Gianna from her. She collapsed onto a chair and was treated to a view of her lower extremities. Her pant legs were soaked with Gianna’s blood where she’d knelt beside her. She’d been debating whether to call any of their friends to tell them what had happened, but one look at herself answered the question. But who: Freddie and Cedric or Beverly and Sylvia? Both couples had keys to her house, and both couples would come immediately without question. Out of habit, and out of respect for the fact that Freddie and Cedric had arrived back in the country at dawn following an overnight trans-Atlantic flight, she called Bev first. She listened, asked no questions, said she’d call Freddie and Cedric, and would get clean clothes and be at the hospital within the hour. Mimi immediately felt calmer. A therapist by profession and her ex-lover, Bev knew her better than anyone, even Freddie, and she’d known him longer; they’d gone to university together. She could tell Bev what she was thinking and feeling, thoughts and feelings that she could tell no one else. For the second time she had watched a murderous young man die in her front yard, but this time she didn’t care. She felt no pain and no sorrow.

  “Patterson.” She looked up. The Chief and Eric.

  “They just took her. I don’t know anything yet—”

  “You were the target, Mimi,” Eric said, overriding the Chief.

  It took her a moment to process what they were telling her and another to accept it. She had naturally assumed that Gianna was the target. “Me? Why?”

  “Dexter Davis blames you for everything that has happened to him, and he sent Will Tompkins to make you pay,” Eric said, explaining that they had the boy’s phone, which he’d left in the car and from which he’d apparently never deleted any text or email he’d ever received. “You were targeted the day you had lunch with Alfreda Tompkins and she sent you the boy’s photo. That’s when Bobby showed up in her life.”