Working Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  “Come on,” I argue. “Don’t you think that’s a bit farfetched?”

  “You can believe that if you want, but I know the truth. They’re out there. Hell, do you have any idea how many man-made satellites are now in orbit around the earth? More than eight thousand. Eight thousand! Why do we need eight thousand satellites? For cell phones and TV signals? Not hardly. Of course, the official line is that only about six hundred of those satellites are actually working.” He scoffs so hard and fast it sounds like a gunshot.

  “Like we’re gonna believe that!” he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “And even if it is true, we only need a handful of well-placed satellites to handle all the communications and legitimate research needs we have in the world. Know what all those other satellites up there are for?”

  I have no idea but I’m beginning to hope one of them is aimed at Arnie. And that it has a death ray of some sort, though I’ll settle for stun mode.

  “To watch us. That’s what they’re for. They can remote control a satellite right now and aim it at your house. They have special cameras that can see right through your roof and walls, watch you in your bedroom, watch you in your bathroom, for Christ’s sake!”

  My face flushes hot as I think about some super-duper eye-in-the-sky watching me in my bathroom. The very idea gives me the heebie-jeebies.

  Arnie sucks in a deep breath and looks around the room with a startled expression on his face, as if surprised to find himself here. “Sorry,” he says. “I sometimes get a little emotional about this stuff.”

  The man is a master of understatement.

  “So, anyway—he makes a broad sweep with his hand—“this is where I work.”

  “It’s…um…very nice. Are you happy here?” I can hear how dumb it sounds even as I say it, but I’m still a bit rattled by Arnie’s rant and it’s all I can think of at the moment.

  “Yeah, I love it,” Arnie says. “Izzy is great to work with. He’s got a great mind. And I’m often on my own here. I work better that way.”

  That isn’t too hard to believe, I think.

  “My primary function is to review, examine, process, and interpret the evidence we collect, everything from fibers and dust particles to bloodstained clothing.”

  “So, walk me through a case from start to finish,” I say, glad to have him finally focusing on the topic I want to discuss. “Tell me what evidence was collected and what you did or intend to do with it. For instance, that case that came in this morning, the woman who was shot to death. What have you done with the evidence related to her case?”

  I purposely don’t mention Karen’s name, striving for a tone of reasonable curiosity peppered with indifference. I don’t know if Arnie knows of my connection to the case, but if he doesn’t, I want to get as much out of him as I can before he finds out. Hurley told me to stay away from Karen’s autopsy, but he didn’t say anything about learning what the evidence might reveal. Besides, if I’m going to be investigating cases, I need to know all this stuff.

  Arnie leans back against the countertop and wags a finger at me. “See, now that’s where you’ll go wrong every time. Lesson number one: Why do you think she was shot to death?”

  I blink at him in confusion. “I was there at the scene. I saw her.”

  “What did you see?”

  “A woman with a bullet hole in her chest and lots of blood all around.”

  “How do you know it was a bullet hole?”

  I think about that. “Because the cops said it was.”

  “Don’t believe what you hear. Only believe what you know to be true based on your own observations and research. Are you absolutely certain the hole in her chest couldn’t have been made by something else?”

  “No,” I admit.

  “For the sake of argument, let’s assume it was a bullet hole. How do you know the bullet killed her?”

  “Well, she was dead. And I do know dead,” I assure him. It’s amazing the things I can take pride in.

  “But how do you know she was shot while she was still alive? How do you know she wasn’t killed by some other means and then shot to cover up the real method?”

  I think Arnie is getting a bit farfetched now, but I’m starting to get into it. Besides, he has a point. The clues have to be carefully and scientifically evaluated. I’m beginning to see how jumping to conclusions can be dangerous.

  “Well, there was a lot of blood,” I tell him. “If she was already dead when she was shot, her heart wouldn’t have been pumping and there wouldn’t have been so much blood. Plus, there were some sprays of blood, from arterial pressure. If she’d been dead already, she wouldn’t have had any arterial pressure.”

  Arnie gives me a look of surprised pleasure. “Very good,” he says. “That’s the type of observational skills that will serve you well around here.”

  I beam at him, feeling like a character in an Agatha Christie novel.

  “Now, let’s look at the other evidence we have on that case.” He turns toward the countertop and picks up a clipboard.

  “We have lots of trace evidence,” he says, scanning what appears to be a checklist on the clipboard. “We have the bullet that killed her—it’s from a .357 Magnum and we can match it to a specific gun if we find one. We also have some trace evidence Izzy found on the body that doesn’t appear to have come from the location where the victim was found: two blond hairs, each one about an inch or so in length, and three wool fibers in a teal blue color, most likely from a carpet.”

  I feel my skin grow cold. David’s hair is blond and the carpet in our living room is teal-colored wool.

  “Then there’s this,” Arnie says, showing me a picture. It’s the back of a shoulder, the white skin marred by three, oval-shaped bruises. In my mind I replay the scene where David leapt from the couch and grabbed Karen by her shoulders, shaking her. Somehow I know his fingers will fit those bruises perfectly.

  I must look as shaken as I feel because Arnie is staring at me kind of funny and asks, “Are you all right?”

  I nod.

  “You weren’t there during the autopsy this morning, were you?”

  I shake my head but offer no explanation.

  “Why not?”

  There is a long silence while I stare at the walls and Arnie stares at me. Then I have a brainstorm. “I’m sorta kinda too close to the case,” I tell him. “I know the victim.” I hope this will be explanation enough. At the hospital, it was always understood that no one would work on anyone they were related to if it could be avoided. I feel certain the same principles apply here.

  “Know her how?” Arnie persists.

  I let out a perturbed sigh, realizing that Arnie won’t give up until he knows it all. “I think I might be a suspect,” I admit.

  “A suspect?” I expect Arnie to throw me out of his lab immediately. Instead he says, “Wait, let me guess. Your almost ex was dipping his wick in the victim.”

  “Yeah,” I say, surprised and impressed by Arnie’s ability to ferret out the truth. Later I’d learn the dink had known the whole story all along and had, in fact, assisted Izzy on the autopsy in my absence.

  “So did you do it?” Arnie asks.

  “No! Of course not.”

  “Bet you would have liked to though, huh?”

  I start to utter another protest but quickly realize Arnie will see right through it. “The thought might have crossed my mind a time or two,” I admit sheepishly.

  “Good.”

  “Good? I admit to contemplating the homicide of a woman who is now dead and you say good?”

  “Absolutely. One of the most important things you’ll learn in this job is who you can trust. Had you told me you’d never thought about killing the woman who stole your husband, I’d know you were lying to me. It’s perfectly natural to hate the other woman, to wish all kinds of pestilence on her, and to dream up at least six miserable ways for her to die, preferably with you as the executioner.” He stops and gives me another long look. “Though I
gotta say, if your husband was baking his cake in someone else’s oven when he had you at home, he must be a total idiot.”

  I’m flattered. And more impressed with Arnie each passing minute. “Thanks,” I say, bestowing him with my best smile.

  “So do you think your old man might have offed her?”

  My mood does an immediate nosedive. I don’t know what has me more upset, the thought that David might have killed Karen or the fact that I even care.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he did it. But I saw—”

  I stop, realizing I’m about to tell Arnie about the argument I witnessed. Until I have a chance to evaluate things a little more I don’t want that information to get out. But Arnold Paranoianegger zeroes in right away. “What? What did you see?” he pushes. I know in my heart he’ll never let it go and I resign myself to spilling the beans. But then the phone rings and I realize that for once, the Fates are on my side. My salvation proves painfully short-lived, however.

  “Yeah, she was here,” Arnie says into the phone, widening his eyes at me. “But she just this second left. Want me to see if I can catch her?” He listens, says, “Hold on,” and then hits a button that sends the caller to Hold Hell. “It’s Detective Hurley,” he tells me. “You know him?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I roll my eyes and lick my lips. Talk about conflicted!

  “He wants to talk to you. Should I tell him I wasn’t able to catch you? There’s a back stairway to your left that will take you straight out to the parking lot. Go right now and by the time Hurley figures it out you’ll be long gone.”

  “You’d do that for me? How do you know you can trust me, that I’m not a killer?”

  “Because you didn’t lie to me. And because Izzy says so and his word’s good enough for me. Besides, I consider myself to be a good judge of character and I can tell you’re not the killing type.”

  I can’t help myself. I sandwich his face between my hands and plant a big kiss on his forehead. “Thanks, Arnie. I owe you one.”

  As I dash toward the stairs, I hear him say, “Hot damn! Can’t wait to collect on that one!”

  Chapter 8

  Thirty seconds later I’m in the parking lot sliding into the front seat of my car. I know Hurley is going to be pissed but frankly I don’t much care. I’m not ready to talk to him yet and still haven’t thought up a reasonable, face-saving excuse for my scarf being below David’s window. And unless Steve Hurley is the densest brick in the building, it won’t take him long to put two and two together. In fact, I’m pretty sure he already has except he’s come up with five and doesn’t know it.

  I’m not sure where to go. Once Hurley figures out I’m not at the office he’ll probably check the cottage, so going home is out of the question. I consider hiding out at Izzy’s house—it’s only two in the afternoon and Izzy won’t be home for several hours yet. That’s a good thing, because while I’m not sure I can count on Izzy to compromise himself by hiding me from the police just because I don’t feel like talking to them yet, I know Dom will do it. Dom hates cops, for reasons I’ve never been able to ferret out. Still, if I go to Izzy’s it won’t be hard for Hurley to find me there—it’s a little too close to home for comfort.

  I want to talk to David, but I know he’ll be tied up at the hospital for hours. The lack of sleep is catching up to me, so I make a short-term decision on where to go by pulling into a Quik-E-Mart for a cup of the sludge they try to pass off as coffee. I park on the far side of the store, away from the street and next to the garbage bins, just in case Hurley is cruising the streets looking for my car. As I climb out and shut the door, I hear something rustling around inside one of the Dumpsters. For an insane moment I seriously consider walking over to look inside but then a vision of John Hurt with a crab-legged alien stuck to his face wises me up and I hurry into the store instead.

  The girl behind the counter looks to be about fifteen years old though I know she has to be at least eighteen to work here and sell cigarettes. She is tall—damn near as tall as me—and built like a pole, straight up and down, not a curve anywhere, her pants threatening to slide off her boyish hips. She is dressed head to toe in black and has dyed her hair to match. The heavy eyeliner around her eyes gives her a sort of punk Cleopatra look, though I doubt Cleopatra ever had tiny hoops pierced through her lip and each nostril. There are multiple hoops in each ear, too, plus two in each of her eyebrows and one in the web between her thumb and fore-finger on each hand. Her belly button also has two hoops in it—one silver and one gold—and through the tight fit of her short black T-shirt I can see that she has a hoop through each nipple as well. Rounding out the piercings I can see is a barbell-shaped stud in her tongue that clicks on her teeth when she talks. I shudder as I think about the piercings that I can’t see and wonder if this is what my niece Erika will look like in a few years.

  I pay for my sludge, the price of which is relayed to me in clicking grunts, and head back to my car. Again I hear the odd rustling sound coming from the Dumpster and again I decide to ignore it, figuring it’s probably a rat. But then I hear a tiny, plaintive cry that freezes me to the spot. A second later, I hear it again—a pitiful cry that tugs hard at my heart-strings.

  I set my coffee on the car roof and against my better judgment, close in on the Dumpster, the smell of rotting food growing stronger with each step. The top of it is closed but there is a smaller door high up in the front that is hanging open several inches. Standing back as far as I can, I reach for it and pull. After waiting a few seconds to make sure nothing is going to leap out and get me, I cautiously poke my head inside.

  About two feet below the hole, between an empty beer bottle and a large potato chip bag, two blue eyes gaze up at me, tiny but lively. At first I think it’s a baby, one of those hidden pregnancy dumps that teenagers seem so fond of these days. Then I comprehend the fur, whiskers, and pointy ears that go with the eyes. It’s a baby, all right, but not a human one. And not John Hurt’s alien either. It’s a kitten: longhaired, gray and white, barely as big as my hand.

  It squalls and mewls, its eyes beseeching me. I reach in to scoop it out and its claws immediately dig into my sleeve and hand. I coddle and shush and murmur, stroking its fur and trying to gently pry its claws from my skin. It quiets finally, but those claws aren’t budging. I realize there will be no escape without blood being drawn, so I do the only logical thing left—I get in my car and drive one-handed to my mother’s house, cursing as I watch my forgotten coffee cup spew its contents all over my back window.

  My pale coloring and Scandinavian features come from my mother, though her hair long ago turned from pale blond to pure white. She hasn’t seen more than five minutes of sunlight in the last decade for fear of developing melanoma and has had every mole that had the audacity to appear on her body promptly removed. Consequently, her skin is so white it’s almost translucent, a detail she uses to great advantage whenever pallor is a symptom of her disease du jour.

  Despite her paranoia and a deep conviction that she must be harboring some dreaded illness, my mother is the picture of health—physical health anyway. She takes a handful of vitamins and herbs every day, eats balanced meals, and hasn’t an ounce of fat on her body anywhere—a trait I apparently did not inherit. My mother treats her body like a temple, albeit a temple she expects to crumble any minute. That’s not likely, however. No self-respecting germ or disease would dare to set up shop in my mother’s body. I fully expect her to live to be 130 or more.

  Unfortunately, her wonderful physical condition is offset by her mental health, or lack thereof. In addition to her hypochondria, or perhaps as a result of it, she has a mild case of OCD—obsessive-compulsive disorder. While the disease can manifest itself in any number of quirky little habits or traits, in my mother it is limited to an obsession with germs. No germs are allowed. They are wiped, sprayed, disinfected, and otherwise obliterated from every surface imaginable. You really can eat off my mother’s floors. In fact, never being one to let good f
ood go to waste, I have done so many times in the past.

  Though my mother is generally happy to see me, today the living fur muff I have wrapped around my wrist tempers her delight.

  “What? Are you crazy?” she screeches, throwing her hands up in disgust and backing away from me. I half expect her to make the sign of the cross with her fingers and hold them out in front of her to ward me off. “Do you know what kinds of diseases cats carry?” She begins to shake. “And…and…that cat-scratch fever thing, that’s nothing to sneeze at, you know. Not to mention that pulmonary disease you can get from cleaning out their litter box.”

  “That’s only a problem if you’re immuno-suppressed and vulnerable to opportunistic diseases, Mom. Which I’m not.” One nice thing about having a mother who’s a professional hypochondriac is that she knows almost as much medicine as I do. I don’t have to talk lay lingo with her like I do with most people.

  I head for the kitchen, grab a saucer from the cabinet, pour a little milk into it, and put it down on the floor. The kitten sniffs the air a second and finally withdraws its claws. I set it down next to the saucer and watch as it steps into the middle of the milk, shakes its foot once for good measure, and begins to drink. Mom draws in a hiss of disgust and I know she will throw the dish away after I leave.

  “Well, what about me?” she says, staring at the kitten, her lip curled in disgust. “You know my aunt Beatrice had lupus and that affects your immune system. What if I have a genetic tendency for something like that?” Her hand reaches up to her neck and she digs her fingers in near her carotid, checking her pulse.

  If my mother can be believed, she has had more aunts, uncles, cousins, and grand-whatevers than anyone else I know, though I’ve yet to see any proof that most of them ever existed. Every last one of these relatives supposedly succumbed to some awful disease—generally something rare, highly obscure, and genetically linked. And if someone in the lengthy family roster fails to fit an awful-disease bill, my mother always knows a friend, a neighbor, or a friend-of-so-and-so’s who will fit. She claims to have seen more cases of rare and unusual diseases than most long-term medical professionals.