by Eric Beetner
Her humanity was hard to see as she dragged the flat-edged piece of glass across his throat. Mike’s sleepy eyes came suddenly awake as the pain hit his brain. The sight terrified me. Down for the count and ready to pass out and wake up when the bell rang, he jolted awake when his neck split in two. His wide-open eyes said so much. “Damn, this hurts.” “This is not what I signed up for.” “Who the hell is this bitch?”
I quietly resumed my crying.
Randolph’s death had been so pleasantly blood free. Mike made up for it. They tell you in training how much blood pumps out of an artery, but you so rarely get to see it up close. Now, including Cranner, I’d seen it twice.
He reached a hand up to his neck like everyone does, knowing it won’t do a damn bit of good. Mike behaved a little bit different than other people with their throats slit in that his hand had a brass stork pierced through it. As he lifted it to his neck the stork slid out of his palm and clanged to the floor. At least something covered up the sound of blood spilling out. It reminded me of dumping out sour milk into the sink.
Sam let Mike go and he fell in a heap on Randolph’s back. I could feel the pressure of the glass shard in our palm. She gripped it tight and I feared it might break our own skin.
Another sound. A siren. Distant, but closing.
She stepped close to me. “Stop your crying. It’s weak. What would Daddy say?” He’d say exactly that. I’m weak. My drill sergeant in basic seemed like a kindly neighbor with a fresh baked pie next to Daddy sometimes. Did he create this part of me? No, that’s only more excuses. My Daddy was a saint. A saint with a clenched fist, but a saint nonetheless.
She kissed me. Flashes of a bathroom mirror, practicing kisses before an eighth grade dance, wanting to see how my face looked, braces and acne coming at you in 3-D. Her lips pressed into mine and I tasted the salt on her tongue from the tears seeping in to her mouth.
“Consider that one a gift,” she said, nodding her head down the hall to Latisha still writhing on the floor of the kitchen.
Then she vanished. I heard her car start as the sirens reached two blocks, then one block away. A glimmer of more humanity. Or maybe the desire for self-preservation taking precedence over another kill. Either way Latisha would live.
Time for the real Johnny Law.
I’d said Randolph’s name at the DA’s office. They must have called the police. I wanted to run, to join my twin in fleeing the scene. I couldn’t. I’d become sick and tired of what I couldn’t do.
WAIT HERE, SOMEONE WILL TAKE YOUR STATEMENT
Two hours later and I huddled on the porch trying not to cry again.
The police had burst in through the open door. Randolph’s body and the dead security guard made a corpse sandwich anyone could spot, even a city beat cop. I stayed put, hunched over and wiping tears. I pointed the cops to Latisha in the kitchen. I guess I seemed helpful because no one pinned me and cuffed me as the suspect. Once the four cops on the scene took in what happened, they started in with the questions.
“She just left,” I said.
“Who? Do you know her?”
“I think I used to,” I said. Figuring out a way around lying got a little easier each time. Could have been some change in my new body or it could have been experience.
I gave them my name and the officer in charge looked me up on a tablet computer. My photo, fingerprints and DEA record came on the screen. What a brave new world. At least it saved me from having to wait in a holding cell until I could dig up another I.D.
They worked over the scene and put me on ice. I gave my vague-on-details-but-vivid-on-gore statement, leaving out her name or how I knew where to be.
“I received intel,” I said. Intel from my brain looking through her eyeballs that are really my own eyes. They didn’t need to know that.
A second officer came over to join us. They whispered something between them—never a good sign.
“You say you work for the DEA?” the new guy said to me.
“Yeah.” Keep it simple and quiet. I could pull rank on him if I needed to. One thing I couldn’t do was lie if he asked me a direct question.
“Did you know about the…incident there today?”
“Yes.” Not a lie, but keep it short and sweet.
The two cops traded a look, clearly wanting to put together pieces but not knowing what they had. I was already a persons of interest at a murder scene. Now I must have been looking really interesting to them.
A car pulled into the driveway. Randolph’s wife got out, haggard and limp. She had to know what went on after she ducked out the back door. Surely they told her about her husband being already dead. It didn’t help her when she saw it up close. At least they covered his body, though the sheet was liberally stained with blood.
The cops around me turned their attention to her and left me on the porch.
I sat and watched Mrs. Randolph look, slack-jawed, from the trio of police cars to the coroner’s van to her open front door and the covered body in the hallway beyond. No one needed to tell her what went on there, but an officer came and led her away, explaining in the vaguest of details about her husband’s death.
A few stray tears leaked down my face and I felt antsy about getting away from there. It was only a matter of time before some call came in over the cop’s radio to look for me. It would be the shortest chase in fugitive history from the hallway to the front porch. Done.
An occasional radio squawk or murmured exchange between officers floated out to the porch, otherwise I sat alone with only the occasional neighbor out on a sudden and off-schedule dog walk they used as an excuse to peer into the open door like the mouth of a freshly dug grave.
Dead tired. There had been no activity on the wire in my brain for a long time. I wondered if we both felt tired at the same time. Could we sleep at different times or if one of us nodded off would the other immediately follow, even if behind the wheel of a car?
I shut my eyes and leaned against a pillar holding the small overhang above the porch. With any luck Blake would be getting closer to Lucas by now and he could explain. As much as I hated the idea of Lucas knowing my crooked ways, I knew he would be able to put an end to this. He could take the fight to Calder and Rizzo like he always wanted to.
A flash of static and the roar of feedback. Flashes popped and colors blobbed out like fireworks made of mud. I heard Blake’s voice. Because I’d been thinking of him? What new mechanism had my brain come up with now?
Then my own voice. Memories coming back in pixelated bursts? No. Her voice. Talking to Blake. Everything sounded like a broken radio in a rusted out Nova, but this time I recognized a phone conversation.
“I’ve got to meet you,” I/She said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Not over the phone. They might be listening. Your place.” The words came out distorted, too loud. A blown pair of speakers blasting punk rock in basement apartment.
“Are you in danger?”
“I can make it there, but hurry.”
“A half hour.”
“No, less. Right away.”
“Okay. I can make it in fifteen. I’ll drop everything.”
“And Blake…”
“Yeah?”
“Just don’t play that Springsteen album. You know how I hate him.”
“Right. See you soon.”
Our code. Of course she knew it. It was hers too. She’d set a trap.
A BETTER MOUSETRAP
I stood up too quickly, felt a head rush come on and had to grab the front porch pillar to keep from tipping over. I needed sleep, I needed food. I needed to help Blake.
I started walking down the path, well trimmed rose bushes lined the walkway. An officer leaned against his cruiser in the driveway.
“A colleague of mine needs assistance. I have to go.”
He acknowledged me with a wave. Another easy truth coupled with a tiny lie by omission. It seemed to fit the r
ule book.
I climbed into the Smart car. I saw Mrs. Randolph waiting in the back of a squad car. Sitting there all this time, not allowed to go inside, to see her husband. I thought keeping her away, but so close, might be more cruel than letting her look into that blood-filled eye.
I saw one of the cops with the questions from before step out of the house. He saw me in the car. I didn’t want him to say stop or I feared I’d have to. Maybe if I drove away fast so I couldn’t hear him. He watched me pull away from the curb, still not knowing what he had in me and not wanting to piss off the DEA enough to detain me to find out. Score one for a nervous beat cop.
I started toward Blake’s.
I realized I had no idea where she called from. She could have been right around the corner from his place. She could have been inside it. If Blake thought he was a half hour away that meant something, but he also said he would get there quicker. From Randolph’s place I would be at least twenty minutes.
Without my cell phone I didn’t have his number to call and warn him. Does anyone remember phone numbers anymore?
I made good time. The pre-rush hour traffic stayed light across town. At every stop light I closed my eyes and tried to see what she saw, to listen in across the miles. Nothing. Not a good sign. The darkness was her waiting. I knew it somehow.
Half way there and something in my chest caught. I sucked in a breath against my will, like being woken from a bad dream. I saw bursts of light against the windshield. Her eyes were open. She wanted me to see. I concentrated and listened.
Blake’s voice.
“Samantha? Are you here?”
I heard suspicion there. Good. I wove through traffic, three miles to go. Distant images played, sun-bleached through my open eyes. Her walking down a hall. Her glancing down at the gun in her hand.
I let out an involuntary, “Yes!” when the street sign announced I’d moved from a 35 zone to a 45 zone.
Only half watching traffic I kept the overexposed images playing on the back of my eyeballs. Scratchy Victrola sounds of Blake’s voice came through. I wanted to scream, to warn him. To tell him to run. Why couldn’t I tap into his mind with these new found powers? What fucking good were they?
She used every technique in her arsenal. She’d been the terminator, the massacre artist, the spy games poisoner, the face to face assassin. Now the cat burglar. The silent killer sneaking in for the kill. Maybe she knew the tight wire she ran through my throat as I sat in traffic, helpless. She would enjoy that as much as pulling the trigger on Blake.
She moved with slow precision. I could tell by the way she walked she tried to be as quiet as possible. Blake’s small house offered little cover.
I passed a mini-mall. A boarded up Blockbuster Video, a smoke shop, Chinese food and a pay phone. Good God, a pay phone.
I dodged the tiny car into the lot, parked, and ran to the phone. I called the police. 9-1-1. Even I can remember that number. I told them about a home invasion and gave the address. I didn’t wait or stay on the line.
Back in the car I reconnected to the bleached images and tinny sounds. I saw the back of Blake’s head. He moved slow through the kitchen. I knew his training would be alerting him that something wasn’t right. He’d know she was in the house. Would he know it wasn’t me though?
He turned. He raised his own gun. She didn’t raise hers.
“Samantha? Jesus Christ.” He exhaled and lowered his gun.
“No!” I shouted to no one.
She ran into his arms, wrapping herself around him. I braced for a tackle to the ground, but instead felt an embrace. I felt a warm sensation around my middle. She hugged him and said how glad she was to see him.
She looked up, her face behind his, her chin resting on his shoulder. She caught her reflection in the glass of the oven. She started into her eyes, through them—into mine. She knew I was watching.
What she said—about sleeping with Blake—all part of her game. Even evil can be playful. Watch a cat toy with a mouse before biting its head off if you want proof. She wanted Blake as her plaything.
I slammed on the brakes coming an inch from the car in front of me stopped at a stop sign.
They broke their embrace and I could see Blake. Look into her eyes, I thought. It’s not me. See that it’s not me.
“What happened?” he asked.
“She went after Lucas,” she said. “Did you find him?”
“Not yet. How did she find him?”
“I don’t know. I’m so scared.”
I saw it. The spark of doubt came out in her overacting, her emoting. She overcompensated for the hardness of her heart. Blake knew something was wrong.
He studied her face, her eyes. They’re blacker, I thought. Blacker than mine. See it. Notice it!
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Hold me.”
Too much. She blew it.
I swerved back into my own lane as a horn blast broke me from the five-star movie playing in my head. Three more turns. Half a mile, maybe. Hold it together until I get there Blake.
But as with everything, if I saw it, she saw it.
Their guns raised simultaneously, hers in our periphery and his aiming at me. The blasts were buried in the wires under bales of cotton, barely making a noise when they reached my brain. The pain came hot and sharp like a bee sting.
Her vision skittered left, the image breaking and dividing into lines—TV in a windstorm. My arm sizzled under my shirt. I jerked the wheel and pressed down, expecting to come back with blood. There was none, only the ghostly pain of the shot, branding-iron hot across my forearm. I hated to think what level of pain she felt.
My view of her world went all Blair Witch Project sloppy, wavering, dipping and slightly out of focus.
For God’s sake Blake, don’t kill us. I couldn’t remember if I’d told him about the fear we had. The bloodless pain I felt from his bullet didn’t calm the uneasy sense that if she died—I died.
Now I needed to get there to save him from her and her from him. One more turn and I’d be there. Off on a side street, quiet and residential. I closed one eye, trying to get a better look.
She ducked her head out from behind a doorway, then advanced. Gun out ahead, tactical lines of a well-trained agent. Blake’s house looked so bachelor sad. She traveled quickly down a hallway as I angled the car into his driveway.
I left the car at a slant as I got out, keeping one eye on her. She stepped up to a closed door. I saw her reach out and grab the handle slowly. It began to turn. I waited for either her to burst in and shoot Blake or for a shot to ring out and Blake to get two for one with a practiced trio of shots clustered around the heart. He’d done the same to a hundred paper targets.
His front door hung open from when he rushed in. My one-eyed vision overlapped as I pushed open the front door and she pushed open the bedroom door. I paused just inside, not knowing where to find his bedroom. In that bedroom Blake turned and dropped a phone. This time the gunshot cam through much louder.
I followed the sound. No flaming arrows of pain pierced me so I knew the shot had been hers. I strained to focus on my own eyes to avoid running into walls. I reached the door to the bedroom, the smell of the last gunshot hanging in the air like a bad scented candle.
The door slammed in my face. She must have kicked it shut. I pounded, tried the knob. Locked.
“Blake! It’s not me!” I think he’d figured it out, but still.
I whipped my eyelids shut, saw what she saw. She stepped forward to a closed door. Closet or bathroom? Either way, Blake was inside. She shot twice at the knob.
“Blake, if you kill her you kill me. Do you hear me?” I pounded some more, then kept on with the crazy talk. Even while pleading for my life I knew it was crazy talk. “If she dies, I die.” I had no idea if he could hear me.
She kicked at the door and the ruined knob popped off and the door flew inward. A bath towel shot out from no
where, wrapping around the gun in her outstretched hand and subduing the beast. Maybe he heard me, maybe he didn’t, but Blake decided to attempt disarming an assailant without using deadly force. Training week three.
I kicked at the door. It stayed in place.
She and Blake were wrapped in a clinch. He pushed her forward, back into the bedroom. Her gun went off, muffled and weak. I felt no pain. He pushed forward more and the backs of her knees hit the bed and she fell, Blake falling with her and landing his body weight sprawled on top of her as he went.
As I readied for another kick at the door the air whuffed out of my lungs and I felt myself pushed back as if a gust of wind blew through the hallway. I hit the wall and when I tried to push away I still felt pressure on my chest. Blake on her, and also on me.
“Blake, did you hear me? Don’t kill her.”
Moving the three feet across the width of the hall was like walking through mud. I carried a ghost version of Blake’s weight on me as I lifted my leg for another kick at the door. My eyes were open so I stayed blind to what happened in the room. When the door flew open with my kick I saw Blake rip the gun from her hand.
Her arm was bloody, so was a spot on his shirt below his collarbone. He looked up at me, more confusion now than when I first showed him the video. She took advantage of his momentary lack of focus and threw a fist up under his jaw.
I felt the weight lift off me as he fell away from her. He slid to the side, landing in bed like he was ready for a nap. She moved quickly, sliding her legs under her and getting a position over him. She hit him again and I felt my knuckles ache.
“Can I hit her?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He did. I felt a push in my ribcage and saw her tumble to the right, headed off the bed. I bent slightly, knowing it hurt her much more than it did me. He leapt up.
“Go. Move. Now.”
He put a hand on my back and pushed me toward the door. I had no plan but running away didn’t seem like the thing to do.