Then There Were Nun

by Dakota Cassidy

  Sweet heaven and a candy striper, he had a gun. Gilligan had a gun. What was going on?

  “Put your hands up in the air where I can see them and do it now!” he hissed, showing me the gun, a shiny revolver, glinting under the bright moon.

  I threw my hands upward, trembling as they were, and gasped for more air in my lungs, still stinging from my fall and the foot to my gut.

  Swallowing hard, I licked my dry lips and, for the first time, really took a good look at my attacker. It was Gilligan all right. He wore his white hat and the navy pea coat, just like he had when I’d first met him outside the store.

  But why in all of damnation was he holding a gun to Solomon’s head? For that matter, where had he gotten a gun? Was he going to rob me?

  So what to do next? What would Stevie do?

  Then suddenly, in my whir of thoughts, I knew what she’d do. She’d find a way to distract him away from Solomon, who literally quaked with terror, his eyes pleading with me to help him as his hands fluttered and flapped.

  So I made a point of backing away, and somehow I managed to speak. “Solomon, where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  Gilligan gave Solomon a hard nudge, as though they were buddies. “He’s been with me, haven’t ya, pal? But you slipped away when I wasn’t looking. Best friends don’t do that, do they, Saulie? They don’t run away from their friends. Silly Saulie!”

  But he shook his head violently. “Not my friend. Not Saulie’s friend. You are not my friend!” Solomon cried on a hacking cough, trying to get away, but he was too weak.

  My eyes went wide and my head throbbed, but I pushed forward and began to bargain because I didn’t know what else to do.

  I looked directly into Gilligan’s eyes, pleading with mine. “Just tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you. I have money tucked into the back pocket of my jeans. Take it and I’ll never tell anyone about this. I swear. Just let Solomon go. Please.”

  But he shook his head as though I were madder than a hatter. “I don’t want your money, you idiot!”

  Well, what the flibbetyjib kind of robbery was this then? “Then what do you want?” I squeaked in confusion, my arms beginning to ache and tingle.

  “I want you to shut up while I think!” he yelled at me, hugging Solomon closer to him and pressing the gun tighter to his side—and that was when I saw the tattoo on his arm. A very slender arm, I might add.

  “Sorry! Sorrysorrysorry,” I muttered, as I remembered the words he’d said when he was talking about the mad bad guy. He’d said he had a tattoo…

  Solomon shifted and shuddered, and I said a silent prayer he’d stay still. But he couldn’t stop his hands from fluttering, meaning he was beyond distressed and had no other outlet to express his fear. Worse, his eyes flitted from place to place, his body swaying against Gilligan’s.

  “My liege,” I said, forcing my voice to remain steady. “Pay heed. Stay the course and all will be well. You are strong. You are wise. Stay the course.”

  Instantly, he caught my gaze and whispered, “Please, please, please, please, pleeease make him let me go! I want to go. King Solomon wants to go!”

  But Gilligan leaned into Solomon’s ear and whispered, sinister and low, “Shut up, you halfwit! You got away from me before, but you’re not getting away now!”

  As my mind raced and I sought the best way to understand what Gilligan wanted, I remembered Stevie telling me when she was in a particularly sticky situation, she stalled by getting to know her attacker—by personalizing herself to him.

  So personalize I did. “Listen, let’s make a deal, okay?” I offered in a shaky voice. “You let him go and you can have me, right? I’m easygoing. I don’t eat much, I travel light. Oh, and I’m an ex-nun. Maybe I can pray for your absolution? I do sort of have an in with the people upstairs, if you know what I mean. Plus, come on. I’m super nice. Ask anyone—”

  “I can’t let him go, you stupid, stupid fool! He saw me! He saw me through the window that night, and now he has to die—and you have to die, too!”

  I blurted the words out before I really thought about them, my arms aching so much, I thought I’d have to have them amputated if I got out of this alive. “He saw you what?”

  “You’re bad. Mad and bad!” Solomon cried.

  But Gilligan’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits in his head, glinting with malice from beneath his white hat. He tightened his grip on Solomon, making him whimper. “Shut up, you yapping fool!”

  “Solomon told you!” Solomon crowed like a parrot. “Solomon told you he was mad. Mad and bad, mad and bad!” And then he coughed, his thin shoulders racked with violent shudders.

  “Shut up!” Gilligan ordered, this time driving the gun against Solomon’s temple and knocking his Viking hat off.

  Mad and bad. Mad and bad. Those words kept running through my brain.

  As though I’d been struck by a thunderbolt, I suddenly saw everything very clearly. I wasn’t sure about the whys and wherefores, but I was sure of one thing. “You killed Fergus?” This homeless man had killed Fergus McDuff?

  And that was when he cackled, sort of long and really evil. Just like in the movies—which is crazy. Who knew that really happened?

  He gripped Solomon’s arm, keeping him close to his body by twisting it behind his back. “You bet I did—and I’m going to watch that pig traitor Cross Higglesworth take the fall for it!”

  Pig traitor? Pigtraitorpigtraitorpigtraitor. The words whooshed through my mind—and then it hit me, for all the good knowing would do me. This had to be someone from the Blood Squad. Who else would call an ex-police officer a pig?

  Of course, because I’d only just put this together in my mind, and in my excitement that I’d finally gotten one daggone thing right, I had to open my big mouth and share my revelation.

  “You’re from the Blood Squad!” I all but yelped loud enough to wake the dead, then just as quickly realized I was consorting with the enemy like we were playing a game of Trivial Pursuit.

  Now he smiled, wide and dripping menace. He wanted to share, too, I suppose. Gloat. Brag. Stevie said some killers liked to do that, in order to take credit for their crimes.

  “You betcha, I am,” he sneered, the spit forming at the corner of his mouth glistening under the full moon. “And I’m going to make that undercover rat-pig pay! It took me a little while to find him, but when I did, all I needed was somebody to take out. Somebody he knew. The fact he argued with that ugly old dinosaur made him a perfect victim. The rest was easy.”

  Oh, sweet heaven. His words made me gulp my fear as my legs shook and my heart throbbed against my ribs. But I had to keep him talking because he had a gun. A. Gun. People. I didn’t have an inkling how I was going to keep not just Solomon but myself from, at the very least, losing an eyeball.

  And what would I defend myself with? As I tried to keep it together, I realized the alleyway had nothing to hide behind, nothing that would be of any help to me in aiding an escape. We were surrounded by brick and nothing else.

  Still, I forced myself to ask from trembling lips, “So why didn’t you just kill Higgs? Why kill Fergus?”

  He lifted his chin defiantly, and there was something about the way he did it that struck me as peculiar. It didn’t seem true to his character…or something like that. I can’t explain it; there was just something out of place.

  Gilligan clucked his tongue. “Because I want Higgs to suffer,” he drew the word out on a raspy breath in a sob of agony. “Do you know what they do to ex-cops in the pen? Do you have any idea how long he’ll go away for murder in the first degree? That kind of hell will go on and on. If I killed him, it’d be over too soon. He needs to pay over and over for what he did to my Matias and Diego! Day after day after day!”

  My Matias and Diego? Who was this? Dear heaven, who?

  At those words, my entire body went cold and clammy for a moment, my pulse pounded in my ears—and then something odd happened. It was as though an en
tity other than the evil inside me took hold. Something calm. Something purposeful, and for whatever reason, real or imagined, I wasn’t afraid.

  Then I heard Stevie’s voice in my head. I heard all her words of wisdom rush through my brain in a wave of sentences, and I felt resolve.

  If Gilligan was going to kill me, I’d go down fighting—but not without some answers to all my questions.

  “It was you who planted Higgs’s hair at the crime scene, didn’t you? You framed him,” I said, all the while searching every nook and cranny of the dark alleyway for something to help me get us out of this mess.

  Gilligan rocked back on his heels, taking Solomon with him, his smile full of devilish glee. “Yeah. Nice touch, right? I needed to cement the deal. What better way than physical evidence? Gets ’em every time.”

  “So it was you in the dumpster? It was you who jumped on top of me?”

  His grin grew into an ugly sneer. “Yep. I had to get in there somehow, didn’t I? So I climbed the fire escape, broke in the window, and dumped some of Higgs’s hair there. That was easy enough to get from his brush. I knew forensics would do another sweep. Those idiots always do. Clever, don’t you think?”

  Golly, my arms were surely going to fall off if I didn’t think of something to save us soon.

  Thus, I stalled some more, trying to keep my eyes on this madman and Solomon, who whimpered and groaned each time Gilligan snarled.

  “And the tic-tac-toe mark on Fergus’s neck? Why? To what purpose? You do realize even the police wouldn’t fall for him doing something as stupid as carving a gang sign on a victim when he has an identical sign on his arm, don’t you?”

  He flashed the gun again, pulling it away from Solomon’s temple and pointing it at me. “So Higgs would know somebody from Blood Squad had been there. It was my special calling card just for him. Just for that lying, traitorous pig! I wanted him to know someone was coming for him.”

  Ahhh. Okay. Point for the bad guy.

  He sounded so pleased with himself, I wanted to retch, but that wouldn’t get Solomon away from him. So I inhaled and continued to ride this feeling of deep calm.

  What I said next wasn’t going to endear me to Solomon, but it would endear me to Gilligan, and that would have to do. I’d apologize a million times—later—if we lived. Stepping forward (a bold, crazy move, I know), I turned my back to the opening of the alleyway, looking Gilligan dead in the eyes while my chest heaved and my lip throbbed.

  “And Solomon? Why can’t you let him go? You’ve heard him babbling. He’s a fool,” I said, though my heart ached at my cruel words. “No one pays attention to him. No one cares what he says. No one believes what he says. He talks like a pirate some days. Let him go. Shoot me instead.”

  Yep. I said that, and I don’t know where the courage to say it came from, but I meant it. I don’t even know what Gilligan would gain from shooting me instead of Solomon. But if he had to take someone out to assuage his rage, I wanted it to be me.

  Gilligan shook his head with a hard twist of his neck. “But don’t you see? I can’t let either of you go! You both know too much. He has to go just like you do, Sister Trixie Lavender!”

  My eyes went wide. He knew me?

  “What? You look surprised. I know all about you, Trixie Lavender, and your friend Coop, too! All your little homeless friends couldn’t stop talking about you, especially that crazier than a bedbug Madge. If you’d have just kept your nose out of it, if you’d just stopped poking around—”

  “Trixie?” I heard a man call out.

  Higgs. The person he most wanted dead in all this. I couldn’t let Higgs get to the alleyway.

  I don’t know what made me do so, knowing I was likely going to lose my life because of it, but I yelled back, “Go back, Higgs! Call for help!”

  Yes. I told an ex-undercover police officer to call for help as though that wouldn’t incite him to come see what was going on.

  “What’s going on, Trixie?” he yelled again, this time closer, and in that second, in that very tiny, minute, heaven-sent second, Gilligan became distracted—and I took my shot.

  My only shot.

  I dropped my head low and used my feet to propel me, aiming for the middle of Gilligan like a bull aims for a red flag.

  I roared, “Duck, Solomon!” just before I crashed into Gilligan, who, in the moment, I oddly thought wasn’t nearly as heavy or muscled as I’d anticipated, and knocked him to the ground.

  We crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and grunts. I heard his enraged scream whistle through my ears as we landed, but if nothing else, Solomon heeded my words and fell to the left of us before all hell broke loose.

  Then I did the only thing I knew to do—the only thing I thought might come close to saving us. I straddled him and grabbed for his hand—the hand with the gun.

  And listen, I’m not an exerciser by nature. In that, I don’t do it willingly. So I don’t have a kung-fu grip, and I’m certainly not winning any contests for most fit, but I clung to that man with my thighs like I was riding a bucking bronco.

  And that worked for a hot minute.

  But I’ll be darned if he didn’t buck me right off him, catching me off guard and hurling me to the ground, where my head flopped backward with such force, I cracked it on the slimy ground.

  With a groan, I rolled to my side and willed myself to a sitting position to see Solomon cowering in a corner, coughing up a storm.

  And then Higgs was there, launching himself on top of Gilligan with a howl of rage so loud, it rattled my bones, but he, too, missed the hand that held the gun, and I knew I had to do something. But what?

  Oh, divine intervention, don’t fail me now!

  Just as Gilligan yanked his arm upward, just as he rolled with Higgs over the alleyway’s hard surface, his hat fell off and I realized, this wasn’t a Gilligan at all—this was more like a Ginger or a Mary Ann.

  Her hair, dark and thick, fell to just past her neck, gleaming under the moon.

  That was when I heard Higgs bellow, “Iris?” His voice was full of surprise—and a bit of anguish, if I heard correctly.

  Iris? Why did I know that name? Iris, Iris, Iris… Her name rang through my mind on an endless loop, and then like a slap to my head, I remembered.

  She was Matias and Diego’s mother!

  “You killed my baby!” she screamed up at him with a ragged sob, bringing the gun down hard on his temple with a crack so hard, so loud, I cringed. “As sure as you’re here in front of me! I hope you rot in Hell!” She railed against him, grabbing him by the hair and driving the gun into his chest.

  That was when I saw Higgs clearly, just as the streetlamp hit his face. He was bleeding, disoriented and I knew I had to do something.

  Maybe some of that divine intervention came into play, maybe it was just pure luck, but when I screamed Higgs’s name in warning, as loud and with as much force as I could, Iris somehow got lost in her rage and I got lucky, because that was the moment I lunged for her arm.

  A shot rang out, booming and harsh in my ears, seconds before, there but for the grace of something, I landed on Iris’s arm, knocking the gun out of her hand, the clack of it hitting the ground sharp and resonant in the alley.

  I scrambled to find it, to ensure she wouldn’t get her hands on it once more, but Higgs had Iris covered when he hauled her upward, dragging her to the brick wall and pressing her against it with the fiercest look I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face, bar none.

  As I scrambled, I realized my foot hurt something fierce—and that’s when I saw I’d been shot, clean through my sneaker. Oddly, there wasn’t a lot of blood, but sweet fancy Moses in pajamas, it hurt. Yet, I couldn’t think about that. Solomon was huddled in a corner, terrified and I had to get to him.

  “Trixie? Trixie Lavender? Where are you? What’s happened?” I heard Coop call out.

  Thank all that was good and mighty, Coop was here.

  “Call 9-1-1, Coop—now!” I yelled, crawling to where S
olomon sat rocking, his whimpers tearing at my soul. I spotted the gun, too, just before I reached out a hesitant hand and placed it on his knee, while I used my good foot to kick the gun out of the way.

  He jerked in response to my touch, but I calmly spoke to him in the way I hoped would best reach him. “My liege,” I whispered. “’Tis a brave man you are. Come, we must gather our spoils and cheer your victory! Take my hand, I shall lead you to Castle Hawthorne!”

  He curled into a tighter ball, but he did look at me, and in his eyes, I saw sheer terror. “He was a bad, mad man. A bad, mad, mad man! Make him go away!”

  I smiled in sympathy, keeping my eyes focused on him even as my foot throbbed, among just one of the many places on my body. “Yes, my liege. But look yonder,” I suggested, pointing to where Higgs had Iris pressed tight against the brick. “The enemy has been captured and all is well in the kingdom. Peace reigns. Come, take my hand. We’ll travel together to safety.”

  And miracle of miracles, he took my hand in his clammy grip, his skin so warm, I knew I had to talk him into seeing a doctor. His eyes, so frightened, so glassy, darted to mine briefly, desperately searching, before he looked away and began to rock again.

  But he was still holding my hand.

  By now, Coop was at my side, with Knuckles right behind her, his eyes wide, his face full of concern. “Trixie girl, what happened?” Then he looked down. “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” he almost shouted when he saw my foot, lifting me from the ground with strong arms while Coop helped Solomon, who still clung to my fingers.

  “Oh, Coop! Can I tell you how glad I am to see you?” I crowed, my voice hoarse as I wrapped my free arm around her neck.

  She gave me an awkward thump on the back as I craned my neck to see where Higgs was. “The police officers are coming, Trixie. When you didn’t answer my text after you were done with the stakeout, I grew worried. I made Knuckles bring me to you straight away. He brought me on his motorcycle. I love his motorcycle. Can I have a motorcycle?”

  I smiled up at them both in gratitude. “How about we talk about that later? Until then, you did good, Coop. You did so good.”