Writing on the Wall

by Jenna Rae

  Just like Buttons and Queenie, she thought, and tears burst from her eyes. Violence had stalked her for as long as she could remember. She had thought she’d escaped it for good, but it came and found her again. Would it always find her? Despair wrapped itself around her and weighed her down. She would always be afraid. She would always be weak. She shook these thoughts away. Grow up! Just stop thinking like that! But the despair stayed with her. She watched Del look at her and knew that she’d seen her falter again. She was flooded with self-loathing and shame.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be like this, you know? I want to be strong.”

  “Okay, it’s okay. Come on, let’s go.”

  Del led her as one might an invalid down the stairs and to the living room couch. She eased Lola into a sitting position and tucked a blanket around her shoulders. Lola worked to pull herself together while Del made coffee. She came in a few minutes later with the tray. It was crammed with cups and with plates of food. She sat opposite Lola and gestured at the tray. Lola shook her head, but Del handed her a cup of creamed coffee. It was sweetened.

  Leave it to a cop, Lola thought, to notice how you take your coffee. She couldn’t swallow the coffee but pretended to. Then Del rubbed her thumb against the inside of her palm, and Lola saw that she was nervous, which made her nervous. Del gestured at the coffee.

  “It’ll warm you up.”

  Lola pretended to swallow some more. The cup did warm her hands. Del snagged an apple slice and munched in silence for a few moments. There was something very normal about eating apple. It made all the bad things seem far, far away. Del’s breath smelled like apples when she spoke, and it was such a wholesome smell that it almost cleaned the remembered smell of blood from Lola’s mind again. But this lasted only a second, and Lola tried to shake herself out of her lapse into whimsy. It wasn’t helpful. It was childish. She had to stop being so childish.

  “Was it there last night?” Del’s quiet voice broke the silence.

  Lola forced herself back to the moment. “That word? Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, I saw the, you know, and I just kind of went—fainted. Really, it might have been there, and I just didn’t see it. Or maybe not. I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Del. I’m sorry. I wish I could be sure.”

  “No problem,” Del answered lightly, but Lola could tell that it mattered.

  Why, she wasn’t sure for a moment. Then, the truth hit her like a hard slap. She set down her cup too hard, slopping coffee. She had been alone in the house, and the cats had been dead, and she hadn’t seen that word on the wall. Maybe it wasn’t there, then. Maybe she wasn’t alone at all.

  Lola swallowed hard. She needed to focus.

  “Was it him?” she asked aloud. “The Creep? The man who—followed me? Or a different man? When you said about the blood, I didn’t—those letters, they’re written in blood? Buttons’ and Queenie’s blood? Oh, my God!”

  She wanted to check her body for injuries, even though she felt no pain or achiness to suggest she’d been hurt. It was the uncertainty, the not-knowing feeling, that was so scary. Like she’d left her body vulnerable and unprotected and wasn’t sure whether it had been safe or not. Like she was a bad caretaker.

  She’d felt this way dozens, maybe hundreds of times before. Every time she went away, she came back feeling like she’d lost her mind. Sometimes she wondered if one day she’d slide into the hole and not come back again. This was both a terrifying and an oddly enticing thought. Imagine, she thought with a shiver, never having to be afraid again. Never hurting again.

  Then she looked up and saw Del’s blue-green eyes darken and change. She seemed inscrutable again. I would never see her eyes again, Lola thought. I would never smell apples again, or read a book, or taste coffee, or listen to music. I would never feel the soft fur on Queenie’s belly, or—and the reality of so much death, the kitties’s and Orrin’s and young Tami Holden’s, hit her again. She bit her lip.

  “Was he in here, do you think, when I fainted?”

  Del waited a moment to answer. “I’m not sure. I think it’s a possibility.” She paused again. “The thing is, I bet it’ll come back to you. You know, if you just relax and give it some time. You’ll remember whether those letters were on the wall when you fainted or whatever, or if they weren’t.” She pushed Lola’s cup toward her. “But if you don’t remember, it’s okay. We’ll just operate under the assumption that he might have been the same guy or might not, and that he might have been here when you got back from the store or might not have been. I’ll investigate every possibility, and we’ll figure it out.”

  Lola wasn’t fooled by Del’s too soothing tone. She chewed her lower lip. What was happening? Why was this happening? And what was she supposed to do?

  “You’re scared. I get that. I don’t like all this uncertainty, either. But I’m here, Lola, and I’m going to protect you, I promise, and I’m going to find this asshole, and I’m going to lock him up, okay?”

  Lola nodded. Poor Del looked so upset. Why did I have to go away like that? She frowned at Del, wanting to apologize, to say, hey, you shouldn’t have had to deal with all of this. But Del already seemed pretty wound up. And she always seemed a little irritated when Lola apologized.

  Del shook her head in disgust. “This is so sickening. What’s wrong with people?”

  She stood abruptly, her hands clenched into tight fists, her face splotched with anger, and Lola involuntarily flinched, her head hitting the couch’s back. She saw Del take in her reaction and ease slowly back into the chair, her eyes clouded. Lola flushed, embarrassed by her overreaction, and tried to shrug an apology.

  When Del spoke again, her voice was soft. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—upset you. I just don’t like the idea that he might have been here when you were. And I don’t like being unsure of so many variables.”

  Lola nodded and forced a wan smile onto her face. She was thinking about how to say something and was reluctant to start. The last thing she wanted to do was to alienate Del. She was more than a little cowed by what she thought of as the prickly pear part of her new friend.

  “Del,” she began, “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I want to thank you so much. You’ve gone way beyond the call of duty here, and I’m feeling guilty. This isn’t your problem. Let someone else take care of it. You’ve had enough to deal with.”

  “Like what?” Del’s voice was too controlled.

  Lola almost stopped but forced herself to finish. Del was too good a person to get dragged into Lola’s mess. What if something bad happened to her? Lola had let Marco and Phil and Del all put themselves in potential danger, all because she had been weak and stupid. She’d let Tami Holden die. She’d let the kitties die. She’d let Orrin die, for that matter.

  The flashes of pain and frustration she’d seen in Del’s eyes had scorched her. She didn’t want to be the reason Del was in pain. That was the one thing she could give her friend—the opportunity to bow out of a dangerous, upsetting, frustrating mess. She’d been a coward and a weakling and let Del shoulder the burden, and that was wrong. She didn’t want to do that anymore.

  “Oh.” Lola was unsure how to proceed. “No, I just mean, what if something happened to you? What if you got hurt or even killed? I couldn’t take that.” Her eyes filled. “You’re my friend, my only friend besides Marco. I can’t stand the thought of putting you in danger.”

  But Del just looked at her, and she didn’t know what to do. In her nervousness, she kept babbling, hardly knowing what she was saying, “I was thinking, I mean, I’m kind of controversial, I guess, because of the book, and maybe you don’t want to, you know, tarnish your reputation by being connected with me. What if the other cops made fun of you? What if they lost respect for you, and that put you in danger later? I wouldn’t want that. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you because of me. Please, I—” Her voice trailed off.

  Del’s face was a mask of rigid control, and Lola felt lost. She should
n’t have said anything. Her resolve to be independent and to look out for her friend were lost in the dark blankness of Del’s eyes, the way her mouth was tight and hard. Lola’s mind swam in uncertainty. She shrank into the couch. Her mind was blank, her breath shallow. She held herself very, very still.

  “So.” The level tone in Del’s voice set off even more warning bells in Lola’s head, and she shook her head.

  “You’re worried about me? You think I can’t handle myself? You think that freak,” she gestured upstairs, her voice rising steadily, “is smarter than me? Or maybe you think a man would do a better job? Or maybe anyone but me. Oh, and what was the other thing? You don’t want me to get ‘tarnished’ by being associated with you? Why, because you’re a dyke?”

  She spat the word, and Lola flinched and gaped at her. Del’s eyes were so dark that Lola didn’t recognize them. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Del was so angry! She heard a small exhalation escape her, and it sounded like a whimper. She despised herself in that moment, maybe even more than Del did. She was miserable. And Del wasn’t done. She was burning with anger, and her body looked like it was about to explode. Lola tried not to look at her, it hurt to look at her, but she couldn’t drag her eyes away from Del’s. They were hypnotic in their flashing intensity.

  “Is that it? You think I don’t know how to do my job? And I should scurry into the closet like a fucking coward?” She huffed and shook her head, taking in the room. Her gaze returned to Lola’s face and burned into her.

  “Well, Lola, I’m not ashamed of who I am.”

  Her tone was acid, and Lola tried but couldn’t stop crying. She blinked the tears away and saw that Del’s face was granite.

  “But you don’t have to worry about that. You think you can take care of this yourself? Be my guest. You and your bullshit and your stalker can go straight to hell!”

  She stormed out of the house, and Lola stared after her, unable to do anything but let what felt like endless rivers of tears stream down her cheeks and down her chin and down her throat and down and down and down.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Ohhh,” Del groaned aloud, startling a passerby. She strode down the street, trying to regain her equilibrium. She imagined she could see herself as from a distance, red-faced, hair wild—she looked nuts or drunk or both. No wonder Lola had looked so scared. Lola was like a dog that’s been kicked too many times. That was one of the first things Del had noticed about her. She would surely never trust Del again. How could she protect Lola if Lola was afraid of her? And how could she look into those big, beautiful eyes and face the pain and betrayal and fear she would surely see there?

  Don’t be a coward. She needs help. Del squared her shoulders and marched up to Lola’s door. It was already open when Del reached it, and she stood wordlessly looking down at Lola, who stared at her feet for a moment before she finally met Del’s gaze and held it.

  “I want to help you.” Del spoke without thinking. “I want to find the guy who attacked you, and the guy who killed your cats. Whether that’s the same guy or not. I want you to be safe.”

  Lola looked at her as though from behind glass. Del debated addressing the things she’d said and decided not to. It was enough that Lola hadn’t slammed the door in her face.

  “I think I should stay here.” She waved in the direction of the couch. “I think you’re in danger. Okay,” she finished lamely, “uh, I’m gonna check on some stuff. I’ll be back here at around seven. Will you be all right till then?”

  There was a long moment when Del wondered if Lola had heard her, but then she nodded. It was like she was underwater, and Del wondered how much of that was the bad guy and how much was her. Too much was her.

  Del hesitated. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning away and escaping to her own house.

  She showered and went to the station. By then she had managed to shelve her guilt and frustration over losing her cool with Lola. She would beat herself up over that some other time. Now, the priority was finding the bad guy.

  Del tried to press a manager in the lab into moving her stuff up the line, but he refused, explaining that he couldn’t move up an animal cruelty case above homicides and assaults and rapes. She thought again of Lola’s too-still body on the floor and her blank stare and her cold hand, and she shuddered. How long before something happened that made this a high priority case? Not long at all, if her gut was right. She sat at her desk, looking over her notes and talking to herself.

  “The writing on the wall—it’s signature behavior, something extra, the kind of compulsive shit only a certain brand of freak does.” She got a few weird looks from a passing group of civilians, but she ignored them. She logged on and searched the database, sure that the guy was an experienced destroyer of people’s lives, someone who’d been popped before. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, and her eyes scanned the endless, tangled webs of information that crawled with agonizing slowness onto the screen. She also needed to consider the possibility that the writing on the wall was a red herring.

  That’s what I’d do. I’d get the investigation off on the wrong foot. I’d find something distinctive, forensically clean, and visually and emotionally evocative. Something like writing “whore” on the wall in blood. That would keep everybody all frothy and focused on the wrong shit. She wished she knew which of the two it was, signature or bullshit. She had to investigate both possibilities equally.

  It was starting to feel like one of those books she’d loved as a kid. If the guy turns left, turn to page eighty-nine. If he turns right, turn to page ninety-six. Only in real life, it was a hell of a lot more frustrating. And she could go down the wrong path just long enough for the bad guy to hurt or take or kill Lola.

  It was several hours later that she noticed the time. She should have been tired, but she was wired and restless and only reluctantly kept the bike at the crawl required in the city. She loped up Lola’s stairs like a kid late for curfew, but the door opened before Del could even knock.

  Lola was composed when she pulled the door open. She looked like she’d just gotten out of the shower. Her skin was damp, her hair still wet and a little wavy. She wore an oversized hockey jersey and sweatpants, and Del couldn’t help but smile. She looked like a little girl dressed up in her big brother’s clothes. Except for the fact that her skin was pale, and her eyes were ringed with deep purple. Del felt the smile slide off her face.

  “Hi,” she said, lamely.

  Lola nodded, her face still and expressionless.

  Del started to say something innocuous, but Lola cut her off with a quiet voice.

  “I thought you might be hungry.” She led the way to the kitchen, which smelled heavenly. Del nodded her thanks and sat down to a heaping plate of salad and pasta and garlic bread. She ate steadily, too hungry to watch her manners, and had polished off the whole plate before she noticed that Lola wasn’t eating. She had a cup of coffee in front of her and sipped from it occasionally, silently watching Del.

  Del cleared her throat. “Listen,” she began, “about earlier. I—”

  “No, please.” Lola reddened and shook her head, and a strand of hair danced near the top of her cup. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I offended you, and I honestly didn’t mean to. I didn’t say it right. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” She sighed in frustration. “I still haven’t figured out how to say it right.” She turned her head and frowned.

  Even frowning, she looked soft. Sweet. A pang of something sharp and undefined made Del suck in her breath. Was it desire? That, and maybe something else, something that made her stomach hurt. Del was struck again by how vulnerable Lola looked, all round cheeks and big doe eyes and soft-looking hair. No makeup, no artifice, no flirting, but she was somehow the picture of desirability.

  She pictured Janet—her always-painted nails, always-reddened lips, always-lacquered hair. In contrast, Lola was all softness, warmth, realness. She made Janet look hard and plastic and cold. Del couldn’t b
elieve how much she wanted to stroke that soft hair, kiss those full lips, hold Lola’s soft, warm body against her own. She shook the thought away. It was inappropriate. Completely inappropriate.

  “Lola…” Del searched for words. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were trying to be a good friend. And that’s what I’m trying to be, too. I don’t know why I flipped out like that. I care about what happens to you, and the last thing I want is to hurt you.” She paused. “I’m sorry for being such a jerk.”

  Lola’s laugh startled Del.

  ‘“I’m sorry.’ ‘No, I’m sorry.’ ‘No, I’m sorry.’” She used her two hands like little puppets and smiled at Del with brilliance that was only a little forced.

  Del felt an answering smile spreading across her face. The two women broke into loud, snorting laughter. Only someone listening very closely, thought Del, would hear Lola’s creeping hysteria. It sobered her, and she saw the moment when Lola heard the change. She didn’t say anything, and they just looked at each other across the table for a long moment.

  Something was happening, Del felt it. What it was, she couldn’t say, but she was reminded of the hunting trip with her daddy. A million invisible nerves stretched between Lola and her and bonded them, and the feeling was strange and scary and somehow right. She knew that Lola felt it too, and she saw her own wonder and uncertainty and fear mirrored in Lola’s wide eyes. Had she felt the same thing with that nasty old man? Del cleared her throat, suddenly desperate to end the moment. Lola offered her a small smile and jerked up out of her chair to clear the table. So, she too had felt the restless need to escape.

  Del rose and tried to help, but Lola didn’t seem to notice her. She worked very quickly and quietly, her movements efficient. She looked tired, all of a sudden. Del had the urge to pull Lola toward her and just hold her. She would nestle in, her head just under Del’s chin. She’d be warm and real and round and soft. Del’s arms itched to reach out and snag her jersey and pull her in and kiss the top of her head. And her soft, sweet lips. It wasn’t a sexual urge, but a warm, family kind of feeling. A softness. She hadn’t felt like this since she was a kid, when she’d loved this or that stray dog or feral cat, and maybe even her parents, once upon a time. It was damned confusing, feeling all these things.