“Yeah, right.”
“Marry me, Anita, and all this can be yours.”
“I don’t want to marry you just so I can sleep with you.”
“If it was only sex, I wouldn’t want you to marry me,” Richard said. “But it’s cuddling on the couch, watching Singing in the Rain. It’s eating Chinese and knowing to get that extra order of crab Rangoon. I can order for both of us at most of the restaurants in town.”
“Are you saying I’m predictable?”
“Don’t do that. Don’t belittle it,” he said.
I sighed. “I’m sorry, Richard. I didn’t mean to. I just . . .”
I didn’t know what to say because he was right. My day was more complete for having been shared with Richard. I bought him a mug that I just happened to see in a store. It had wolves on it, and said, “In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.” It was a quote from John Muir. No special occasion, just saw it, knew Richard would like it, bought it. A dozen times a day I’d hear something on the radio or in conversation, and I’d think, I must remember and tell Richard. It was Richard who took me on my first bird-watching trip since college.
I had a degree in biology, preternatural biology. Once I’d thought I’d spend my life as a field biologist like a preternatural version of Jane Goodall. I’d enjoyed the bird-watching, partly because he was with me, partly because I’d enjoyed it years ago. It was like I’d forgotten that there was life outside of a gun barrel or a grave side. I’d been neck deep in blood and death so long; then Richard came along. Richard who was also neck deep in strange stuff, but who managed to have a life.
I couldn’t think of anything better than waking up beside him, reaching for his body first thing in the morning, knowing I’d be coming home to him. Listening to his collection of Rodgers and Hammerstein, watching his face while he watched Gene Kelly musicals.
I almost opened my mouth and said, let’s do it, let’s get married, but I didn’t. I loved Richard; I could admit that to myself, but it wasn’t enough. There was an assassin after me. How could I involve a mild-mannered junior high teacher in that kind of life? He was one of the monsters, but he didn’t accept it. He was in a battle for leadership of the local werewolf pack. He’d beaten the current pack leader, Marcus, twice, and twice refused the kill. If you didn’t kill, you didn’t get to be leader. Richard clung to his morals. Clung to values that only worked when people weren’t trying to kill you. If I married him, his chance at any kind of normal life was gone. I lived in a sort of free-fire zone. Richard deserved better.
Jean-Claude lived in the same world that I did. He had no illusions about the kindness of strangers, or anyone else for that matter. The vampire wouldn’t be shocked at the news of an assassin. He’d simply help me plan what to do about it. It wouldn’t throw him, or not much. There were nights when I thought that Jean-Claude and I deserved each other.
Richard turned off onto Olive. We were soon going to be at my apartment, and the silence was getting a little thick. Silences don’t usually bother me, but this one did. “I’m sorry, Richard. I am truly sorry.”
“If I didn’t know you loved me, this would be easier,” he said. “If it wasn’t for that damned vampire, you’d marry me.”
“That damn vampire introduced us,” I said.
“And he’s regretting it, don’t think he isn’t,” Richard said.
I looked at him. “How do you know that?”
He shook his head. “All you have to do is see his face when we’re together. I may not like Jean-Claude, and I hate the thought of you with him, but we aren’t the only two hurting here. It’s a threesome, don’t think it’s not.”
I huddled in my seat, suddenly miserable. I’d have almost welcomed a hit man appearing out of the darkness. Killing I understood. Relationships confused me. Admittedly, this relationship was more confusing than most.
Richard turned into the parking lot of my apartment building. He parked the car and turned off the engine. We sat there in the dark, the only illumination the distant glow of a street light.
“I don’t know what to say, Richard.” I stared out through the windshield, concentrating on the side of the building, too cowardly to look at him while I talked. “I wouldn’t blame you for just saying to hell with it. I wouldn’t put up with this kind of indecision from you, and I wouldn’t share you with another woman.” I finally looked at him. He was staring straight ahead, not looking at me.
My heart sped up. If I was truly as brave as I thought I was, I’d have let him go. But I loved him, and I wasn’t that brave. The best I could do was not sleep with him. Not take the relationship that next step forward. That was hard enough. Even my self-control wasn’t limitless. If we’d been planning a wedding, I could have waited. With an end in sight, my self-control would have appeared endless, but there was no end in sight. Chastity works better if you don’t keep testing it quite so often.
I unbuckled the seat belt, unlocked and opened the door. Richard touched my shoulder before I could get out. “Aren’t you going to invite me up?”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and turned back to him. “Do you want to be invited up?”
He nodded.
“I don’t know why you put up with me,” I said.
He smiled. He leaned into me, a light brush of lips. “Sometimes I’m not sure, myself.”
We got out. Richard held his hand out to me, and I took it.
A car pulled in behind us, beside my own Jeep. It was my neighbor, Mrs. Pringle. She had a huge television box tied into her trunk.
We walked to the sidewalk and waited for her to get out. She was a tall woman, stretched almost painfully thin with age. Her snow white hair was done in a bun at the back of her head. Custard, her Pomeranian, jumped out of the car and stood yapping at us. He looked like a golden powder puff with little cat feet. He bounced forward on stiff legs. He sniffed Richard’s foot and looked up at him with a small growl.
Mrs. Pringle tugged on his leash. “Custard, behave yourself.”
The dog quieted, but I think it was more Richard’s steady glare than Mrs. Pringle’s admonishments. She smiled at us. She had the same light in her eyes that Catherine had had. She liked Richard and made no bones about it.
“Well, now, this is advantageous. I need some strong young arms to carry that monstrous television up the stairs for me.”
Richard smiled at her. “Happy to oblige.” He walked around to the trunk and started trying to undo the knots.
“What’d you do with Custard while you shopped?” I asked.
“I carried him with me. I’ve spent a great deal of money at that store before. The salesmen fairly salivate when I come through the doors, so they indulge me.”
I had to smile. There was a sharp twang as the ropes broke. “I’ll help Richard.” I walked back to the trunk. The rope was an inch thick and flopped, broken, onto the pavement. I raised eyebrows at him and whispered, “My, my, Grandma, what strong hands you have.”
“I could carry the television up alone, but it might arouse suspicions.”
It was a thirty-inch wide screen. “You could really carry it up the stairs by yourself?”
“Easily,” he said.
I shook my head. “But you’re not going to because you are a mild-mannered science teacher, not an alpha werewolf.”
“Which is why you get to help me,” he said.
“Are you having trouble undoing the rope?” Mrs. Pringle asked. She’d walked back to us with Custard in tow.
“No,” I said, giving Richard a look. “We’ve got the rope.” If people found out Richard was a lycanthrope, he’d lose his job. It was illegal to discriminate, but it happened all the time. Richard taught children. He’d be branded a monster, and most people didn’t let monsters near their children.
Mrs. Pringle and Custard led the way. I went up backwards, sort of steadying the box, but Richard took all the weight. He walked up the
stairs like the box weighed nothing, pushing with his legs, waiting for me to go up another step. He made a face at me, soundlessly humming under his breath as if he was bored. Lycanthropes are stronger than your run-of-the-mill human being. I knew that, but it was still a little unsettling to be reminded.
We made it to the hallway, and he let me have some of the weight. The thing was heavy, but I held on, and we kept moving towards Mrs. Pringle’s apartment, which was right across the hall from mine.
“I’ve got the door opened,” she called.
We were at the door, starting to maneuver through, when Custard darted between us, underneath the box, trailing his leash. Mrs. Pringle was trapped behind the television. “Custard, come back here.”
Richard lifted with his forearms, taking the weight. “Get him. I can get inside.”
I let him pretend to struggle inside the apartment and went for the dog. I expected to have to chase him down the hall, but he was sniffing at my door, whining. I knelt and grabbed the end of his leash, pulling him back towards me.
Mrs. Pringle was at her door, smiling. “I see you caught the little rascal.”
I handed her the leash. “I’ve got to get something out of my apartment. I’m sure Richard can help you set up the TV.”
“Thanks a lot,” he called from inside the apartment.
Mrs. Pringle laughed. “I’ll give you both some iced tea, unless you have better things to do.” There was a knowing look in her blue eyes that made me blush. She winked at me, I kid you not. When the door was safely closed with her and Richard on the other side, I walked toward my apartment. Three doors down, I crossed the hallway. I took the Browning out and clicked the safety off. I eased back towards my door. Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe Custard hadn’t smelled anybody in my apartment. But he’d never whined at my door like that before. Maybe Edward’s phone call was making me jumpy. But better jumpy than dead. Paranoid it was.
I knelt by the door and took a breath, letting it out slowly. I took my keys out of my jacket pocket left-handed. I scrunched down as low as I could get and still have a decent shooting stance. If there was a bad guy in there, he’d probably shoot at chest level. On my knees I was a lot shorter than chest level. I pushed the key in the lock. Nothing happened. The apartment was probably empty, except for my fish wondering what the hell I was doing. I turned the knob, pushed the door inward, and a hole exploded out through the door, thundering over my head like a cannon shot. There was no sound for a second. The door swung closed with the force of the shot, and through the hole in the door I saw a man with a shotgun raised to his shoulder. I fired once through the hole. The door bounced open, still reverberating from the shotgun blast. I threw myself onto one side, gun pointed through the open door.
The shotgun fired again, showering the hallway with bits of wood. I fired twice more, hitting the man in the chest both times. He staggered, blood blossoming on his coat, and fell straight back. The shotgun fell to the carpet near his feet.
I got to my knees, back pressed to the wall near my kitchenette. All I could hear was a roaring in my ears, then dimly my own blood rushing through my head.
Richard was suddenly there in the doorway, like a target. “Get down! He may not be alone!” I wasn’t sure how loud I was yelling. My ears were still ringing.
Richard crouched beside me. I think he said my name, but I didn’t have time for it. I pushed upward, my back to the wall, gun in a two-handed grip. He started to stand. I said, “Stay down.” He did. Point for him.
I could see that there was no one in front of my apartment. Unless there was somebody hiding in the bedroom, the hit man had been alone. I approached him, slowly, gun pointed at him. If he’d twitched, I’d have shot again, but he didn’t move. The shotgun was by his feet. I’d never seen anybody use a gun with their feet, so I left it where it was.
He lay on his back, one arm thrown up over his head, one down at his side. His face was slack with death, his eyes wide and unseeing. I didn’t really need to check for a pulse, but I did it anyway. Nothing. There were three holes in his chest. I’d hit him with the first shot, but it hadn’t been a killing blow. That had nearly cost me my life.
Richard came up behind me. “There’s no one else in the apartment, Anita.”
I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t ask if he knew this by smell or by hearing. I didn’t bloody care. I checked the bedroom and bathroom just to be thorough and came back out to find Richard staring down at the dead man.
“Who is he?” Richard asked.
It occurred to me that I could hear again. Bully for me. I still had a faint ringing in my ears, but it would pass. “I don’t know.”
Richard looked at me. “Was he the . . . hitter?”
“I think so.” There was a hole in the door big enough to crawl through. It was still open. Mrs. Pringle’s door was closed, but the doorjamb was splintered like something had taken a big bite out of it. If she’d been standing there, she’d have been dead.
I heard the distant wail of police sirens. Couldn’t blame the neighbors for calling them. “I’m going to make some phone calls before the cops get here.”
“Then what?” he asked.
I looked at him. He was pale, the whites of his eyes showing just a little too much. “Then we go with the nice police officers down to the station to answer questions.”
“It was self-defense.”
“Yeah, but he’s still dead on my carpet.” I walked into the bedroom, searching for the phone. I was having a little trouble remembering where I’d left it, as if it ever moved from the nightstand. Shock is always fun.
Richard leaned in the doorway. “Who are you going to call?”
“Dolph, and maybe Catherine.”
“A friendly policeman I understand, but why Catherine?”
“She’s a lawyer.”
“Oh,” he said. He glanced back at the dead man, who was bleeding all over my white carpet. “Dating you is never boring, I’ll give you that.”
“And it’s dangerous,” I said, “Don’t forget dangerous.” I dialed Dolph’s number from memory.
“I never forget you’re dangerous, Anita,” Richard said. He stared at me and his eyes were amber, the color of a wolf’s eyes. His beast slid behind those eyes, peering out. Probably the smell of fresh blood. I stared into those alien eyes and knew I wasn’t the only dangerous thing in the room. Of course, I was armed. The dead man could vouch for that. Laughter tickled the back of my throat. I tried to swallow it, but it spilled out, and I was giggling when Dolph answered the phone. Laughing was better than crying, I guess. Though I’m not sure Dolph thought so.
4
* * *
I SAT in a straight-backed chair at a small, scarred table in an interrogation room. Oh, sorry, interview room. That’s what they were calling it now. Call it what you will, it still smelled like stale sweat and old cigarettes with an overlay of disinfectant. I was sipping my third cup of coffee, and my hands were still cold.
Detective Sergeant Rudolph Storr leaned against the far wall. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was trying to be unobtrusive, but when you’re six foot eight and built like a pro wrestler, that’s hard. He hadn’t said a word during the interview. (Just here to observe.)
Catherine sat beside me. She’d thrown a black blazer over the green dress, brought her briefcase, and sat wearing her lawyer face.
Detective Branswell sat across from us. He was in his mid-thirties, black hair, dark complected, with eyes as black as his hair. His name was English, but he looked Mediterranean, like he’d just stepped off the olive boat. His accent was pure middle Missouri.
“Now, Ms. Blake, go over it just one more time for me. Please.” He poised his pen over his notebook as if he’d write it all down again.
“We’d helped my neighbor carry up her new television.”
“Mrs. Edith Pringle, yeah, she confirms all that. But why did you go to your apartment?”
“I was going to get a screwdriver to
help install the television.”
“You keep a lot of tools, Ms. Blake?” He wrote something on his notepad. I was betting it was a doodle.
“No, detective, but I’ve got a screwdriver.”
“Did Mrs. Pringle ask you to go get this screwdriver?”
“No, but she’d used it when she bought her stereo system.” Which was true. I was trying to keep the lies to an absolute minimum.
“So you assumed she’d need it.”
“Yes.”
“Then what?” He asked like he’d never heard the answer before. His black eyes were intense and empty, unreadable and eager at the same time. We were coming to the part that he didn’t quite buy.
“I unlocked my door and dropped my keys. I squatted down to pick them up and the first shotgun blast roared over my head. I returned fire.”
“How? The door was closed.”
“I shot through the hole in the door that the shotgun had made.”
“You shot a man through a hole in your door and hit him.”
“It was a big hole, detective, and I wasn’t sure I hit him.”
“Why didn’t the second shotgun blast take you out, Ms. Blake? There wasn’t enough left of the door to hide behind. Where were you, Ms. Blake?”
“I told you, the blast rocked the door inward. I hit the floor, on my side. The second blast went over me.”
“And you shot the man twice more in the chest,” Detective Branswell said.
“Yes.”
He looked at me for a long moment, studying my face. I met his eyes without flinching. It wasn’t that hard. I was numb, empty, and distant. There was still a fine ringing in my ears from being so damn close to two shotgun blasts. The ringing would fade. It usually did.
“You know the man you killed?”
Catherine touched my arm. “Detective Branswell, my client has been more than helpful. She’s told you several times that she did not recognize the deceased.”
He flipped back through his notebook. “You’re right, counselor. Ms. Blake has been helpful. The dead man was James Dugan, Jimmy the Shotgun. He’s got a record longer than you are tall, Ms. Blake. He’s local muscle. Someone you call when you want it cheap and quick and don’t care how messy it is.” He stared at me while he talked, studying my eyes.
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