by Glenn Ickler
“Move your ass,” said John.
I moved it across the porch toward Zhoumaya’s side of the duplex. John was two steps behind me with the knife pointing at my spine. As I reached the porch steps and Zhoumaya’s wheelchair ramp, I calculated my chances of turning, running, and going into the street. I didn’t like the odds—one lunge with that knife could cost me a kidney or a spinal cord. I kept walking straight and stopped in front of Zhoumaya’s door.
“Ring the bell,” John said. He was close behind me, but not so close that I could have spun and deflected the knife if I’d been capable of such a move, which I was not. I rang the bell.
We waited. After a suitable interval I rang it again. “Maybe the bell doesn’t work,” I said after another wait.
“Try knocking.”
I knocked. No answer. What a surprise. “Maybe she’s asleep.”
“Maybe she’s not home,” John said. “Maybe she’s gone where she thinks it’s safe. Maybe you can tell me where that is.”
“Maybe I can’t. In fact, definitely I can’t. I have no idea where she is.”
“Let’s go back to your place and talk about it.”
“Nothing to talk about. I honest to God don’t know where the woman is.”
“Move it. Back to your place. Now.” I felt the tip of the knife prick my back, directly behind my left kidney. I moved.
“Let’s go sit in the living room,” John said as I opened my front door. I kept walking through the archway into the living room. It had grown dark while we were standing outside Zhoumaya’s door, so I switched on the light and got still another surprise. Lauralee Baker was sitting on the sofa, putting on the red spike heels.
“Oh, shit, I thought you were gone,” Lauralee said.
“I thought you said your wife was away,” John said.
“This isn’t my wife,” I said.
“How cozy,” said John. “Now we can all have a nice little chat about where I might find Mrs. Jones.”
“Who the hell is Mrs. Jones?” asked Lauralee.
Chapter Twenty-Six
On the Cutting Edge
IHAD A QUESTION also. Mine was, “Where the hell are the cops who should be responding to Al’s call?”
I didn’t ask it out loud. Instead, I explained to Lauralee that Mrs. Jones was my next-door neighbor and that this man, who said his name was John, was hoping to talk to her. Seeing the fright already present in Lauralee’s eyes, I thought it prudent not to mention that John was the author of Zhoumaya’s death threat.
“So why is John holding a knife?” Lauralee said.
I turned to John. “Yes, why are you holding that knife? I’ve already told you that I have absolutely no idea where Ms. Jones is.”
“Maybe she gave you a hint where she was going,” John said.
“Definitely she did not,” I said.
“Maybe if I ask again, something will come to you,” he said. He gestured toward Lauralee with the tip of the blade. “Stand up and come over here, cutie pie.”
The color drained from Lauralee’s face as she rose and walked toward him. When she got within arm’s reach, John grabbed her with his left hand, spun her around, and pulled her against his body. She screamed. He said, “Shut up,” and clamped his left hand over her mouth.
Placing the knife blade across Lauralee’s throat, John turned to me. “Now, Mr. I Don’t Know Anything, let me ask you again: where is Mrs. Jones?”
“Let me tell you again that I do not know where she is,” I said. “Now please take that knife off of Lauralee’s throat.”
“Lauralee, huh? Nice name. Pretty girl. Be a shame if her throat got a big wide cut in it.” He pressed the knife tighter against Lauralee’s throat and her eyes bugged out so far I thought they’d go beyond the tip of her nose.
I decided it was time to tell a lie. Where had I said Martha was? Oh, yeah, Duluth. “Okay, okay,” I said. “Ms. Jones went with my wife to Duluth. Now please let go of Lauralee.”
“Duluth, huh?” John said. The knife stayed at Lauralee’s throat. “Where’s Duluth?”
“Up north. Almost 200 miles. Now please take away the knife.”
“Damn it. I’ve got to get another car.” He lowered the knife to his side, moved his left hand from Lauralee’s mouth to her back and pushed her away from him so hard that she fell to her hands and knees.
I helped Lauralee to her feet and led her back to the sofa. She was shaking like an Eskimo sitting bare-ass on an ice floe.
“Why do you need another car?” I said to John.
“Because I burned up the one I got in Chicago,” he said. “What do you think those cops are looking at out there, Mr. I Don’t Know?”
“You torched your car to decoy the cops?”
“Yeah, that’s what I did. You think Budget will be pissed off at me?”
“You probably won’t get your insurance deposit back,” I said.
“Very funny. Now, let’s all go get into your car.”
“My car? Okay, I’ll give you the keys. You can take it.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the keys.
John shook his head. “I need a driver who knows the way to Duluth,” he said. “A driver who knows where Mrs. Jones is staying in Duluth.”
“She’s not in the motel with my wife,” I said.
“But your wife will know where she is. So let’s go see your wife in Duluth, Mr. I Don’t Know.” He motioned toward the front door with his knife. As I took a step toward the door, wondering why in hell the cops weren’t coming through it, John turned to Lauralee. “You, too, cutie pie.”
I stopped. “Why her? She’s not involved in this in any way. She was just visiting when you came in.”
“Yeah, just visiting on the couch with her shoes thrown all over hell,” John said. “I wish I’d seen what was going on when I rang the bell. She’s coming with us because we’re one big happy family off on a road trip to visit your wife and Mrs. Jones. Come on, cutie pie, get off your tight little ass and get moving. Right behind your don’t-know-anything boyfriend.”
Instead of moving, Lauralee bowed her head and started to cry. John grabbed her left arm, hauled her to a standing position, and flung her toward me. If I hadn’t caught her by the shoulders she would have gone down on the floor again, maybe landing on her face this time.
“Move it, goddamn it!” John yelled.
With my right arm around Lauralee’s shoulders, I started toward the front door. We were still a couple of steps away when we were halted by thunderous knock that shook the door and a voice shouting, “Police! Open this door.” Then another loud knock rattled the door.
“Guess you’re too late,” I said to John.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. With the speed of a striking rattlesnake he knocked Lauralee away from me, grabbed me from behind, and wrapped his left arm around my chest. The knife’s blade slid against my throat. “Okay, Mr. Don’t Know Anything, tell the bastards to come in.”
“It’s locked,” I told him in a voice gone soprano.
“Then you open it.” He pushed me forward so I could reach the knob. As I pulled the door open, John hauled me back a couple of steps. We were facing a porch full of policemen in full riot gear with weapons drawn. At least half a dozen assorted gun muzzles were pointing at me.
“Don’t shoot,” I said as loud as I could squeak in my state of terror. It probably sounded silly to the cops, but it was all I could think of at the moment.
All the guns stayed locked onto me as the officer closest to the door told John to drop the knife and step away from the man he was holding. John did neither.
“This gentleman and I are going for a ride in his car,” John said. “We are going to walk past you and get into that car. If any of you makes a move to stop us this gentleman’s throat will be sliced all the way to his neck bone.” For emphasis, he pressed the razor-sharp blade tighter and I sensed that the skin had been penetrated.
“The second you do that, we’ll blow you away,” the le
ad officer said.
“I’m counting on you and your men to have the good sense not to force me to slice this gentleman’s head off.”
“You should have the good sense to give it up right now,” the cop said. “You’re not going to leave here, whether you hurt the hostage or not.”
“Any attempt to stop me means this gentleman is dead,” John said.
“Hey,” I said to the officer. “This is my life we’re talking about. Please just let us walk to the car with my throat in one piece.”
“You think he won’t kill you after we let him get away?” the officer said.
“I’ll take my chances on that,” I said. “Just let us go to the car.”
“The man’s talking sense,” John said. “Better listen to him if you don’t want his blood on your hands.”
I could feel a thin, warm stream of that very blood trickling down my neck from where the blade had nicked me. “Please, Officer, he’s right. You don’t want my blood on your hands,” I said.
“You aren’t going anywhere,” the officer said. “Drop the knife and release this man right now.”
I felt John’s muscles tighten and the blade press harder. I was about to scream at the damn fool policeman when I heard a loud whack and felt John’s hands and arms go limp. The knife clattered to the linoleum at my feet and the floor shook as John went down behind me like a crashing blimp. I spun around to find myself looking at a cop with a wooden baton the size of a Louisville Slugger in his hand and a satisfied smile on his face. “Bingo,” he said. “Nice of you to leave the back door unlocked.” Nice of Lauralee, I thought.
I felt my knees turning to soft rubber. “Nice of you to get here before your partner let this guy cut off my head,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to sit down.” I staggered around John’s motionless body and collapsed into the closest chair. The officer who’d been blocking the doorway followed me.
He held out his hand. “I’m Officer Burnham,” he said. “I wasn’t going to let him cut your throat. I was just stalling for time until Officer Wilson got close enough to take the bastard out.”
I gripped Officer Burnham’s hand with mine, which was still shaking of its own volition. “Nice to know,” I said. “If you’d stalled him any longer, I wouldn’t be talking to you.” I wiped my other hand across my throat and it came away smeared with blood.
“Yeah, the timing got a little dicey,” Burnham said. “Let me get somebody to look at that scratch on your neck.” Scratch, hell, it felt like a canyon. Burnham went away and I cupped my hand over the wound, slumped back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling, which appeared to be whirling in circles. I was wondering how the ceiling could swirl like that when the entire room went dark.
The next thing I saw was the face of a female EMT whose hands were applying a disinfectant to my wound. The medication set my flesh on fire and I yelped. The EMT stepped back and laughed. “I told you this would sting a little but I guess you didn’t hear me,” she said. “You seemed to be kind of out of it for a minute or two.”
“Obviously the guy didn’t cut deep enough to get your vocal chords,” said a familiar voice. I turned toward the sound and saw Alan Jeffrey looking down at me. “I was just thinking how peaceful that would be.”
“No way. I’d get an artificial larynx and turn the volume all the way up,” I said.
“Damn modern technology,” Al said. “I guess it’s just as well that he didn’t peel your Adam’s apple.”
“He came close. He was rotten to the core.”
“Well, this lady has something to stem the blood.”
Al backed away and the EMT, who said her name was Jackie, pressed a square of gauze against the wound on my neck and stuck it down with two strips of white tape. “The wound is oozing a little, so you’ll want to change that dressing in an hour or so,” she said. “I’ll leave you some gauze and a roll of tape.”
“Oozing?” I said. “How much is that in pints?”
Jackie laughed again. “You won’t be needing a transfusion. It’s kind of like you cut yourself shaving.”
“I can’t stand the sight of blood, especially when it’s my own,” I said. “That’s why I use an electric shaver and not a blade.”
“Then stay away from big men with sharp knives. I’ll be leaving now. If that wound doesn’t heal the way it should, call your doctor. Bye.” She dropped two packets of gauze and a roll of adhesive tape into my lap and departed with a flick of her hand.
Al returned to my field of vision. “You gonna be okay?” he asked. “You’re not going to lose your head over this?”
“Seems like everything’s still in place,” I said. “Thanks for calling in the troops.”
“Lucky I called you when I did.”
“If you hadn’t, I’d be on the way Duluth with Mr. Obachuma and his knife.”
“Why Duluth?”
“I told him that was where Martha and Zhoumaya went. I’m a habitual liar when someone’s throat is in danger of being cut.”
“He had the knife to your throat before the cops came?”
“He had the knife to Lauralee’s throat before you called.”
“Who’s Lauralee?”
“Hey, Mr. Mitchell,” said Officer Burnham. “Didn’t I see a woman in here when you first opened the door?”
“Yes, you did,” I said.
“So where the hell is she?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Looking for Lauralee
YES, WHERE WAS LAURALEE? She had slipped away with as little sound as one hand clapping while John and I were haggling over the future condition of my throat with Officer Burnham.
A quick search of the apartment, including all the closets and both bathrooms, convinced us that she was not inside. Officer Wilson said he had not encountered her on the back deck during his surreptitious entrance. I wanted to get down on the floor and check under the bed but I was so shaky that I wouldn’t have been able to get up, so I asked Al to do it.
“Nothing under there,” he said. “Not even a dust bunny. Congratulate Martha on her housekeeping for me.”
“How do you know that I’m not the one who busts the dust bunnies?” I said.
“Because the floors in your old apartment were hopping with dust bunnies before Martha moved in.”
“That’s a hare-brained accusation,” I said, even though I knew he was right.
Two officers were assigned to search outside for Lauralee. Two others had the pleasure of handcuffing Robert “John” Obachuma, who had been revived by EMT Jackie and her partner, and were walking him to an ambulance that was double parked in front of the house for transportation to Regions Hospital. There he would be shackled and held under armed guard while being checked for a possible concussion. “Wouldn’t want to be accused of police brutality by the nice man who was going to slash your throat,” Officer Burnham said.
As the ambulance pulled away, it was followed immediately by a dark-colored Prius that had been parked at the curb beside it. I pointed to the departing Prius and said, “I’ll bet there goes the woman we’re looking for. She snuck out to her car but the ambulance had her parked in.”
“Damn it, I’ll bet you’re right,” Burnham said. “We didn’t check the cars for occupants. We need to get a statement from her. Do you know where she lives?”
“I do,” I said. “I have the address at my office. I’ll e-mail it in the morning.”
“You can bring it with you in the morning when you come in to give your statement. How about nine o’clock?”
“How about later in the day? I have an assignment to meet someone at seven thirty in Falcon Heights.”
We agreed on 1:30 p.m. and Burnham departed, along with his troops, leaving Al and me alone.
“You really think you’ll be up to meeting this John Doe guy in the morning?” Al said.
“Wouldn’t miss it for all the knives in Liberia,” I said.
Al said he’d be ready at 7:00 a.m. and departed, leav
ing me alone with Sherlock Holmes. I was about to sit down with the cat when I realized I had a story to report, even if it was my day off. I couldn’t imagine facing Don O’Rourke the next day if his first knowledge of my visit from Robert Obachuma came from a TV news report.
I decided to do it by phone. Fred Donlin, the night city editor, expressed surprise and concern, and then transferred my call to a veteran reporter named John Boxwood. John expressed surprise and concern as well, and then said to tell him what happened and he’d put the story together. I’d been planning to dictate, but discovered that my mind was too messed up to think coherently in orderly sentences, so I agreed to this.
In a disjointed, back-and-forth way, I told Boxwood everything that had happened. I thought about leaving out the visit from Lauralee Baker, but decided to include it with the explanation that she was a source in the Marilee Anderson case who had come to give me some background information. I was afraid if I didn’t mention Lauralee that the police report would include her presence and every other news report in the Twin Cities would pick up this tidbit. If Martha heard if first from Trish Valentine reporting live, she would assume that I was hiding something from her, which would have been correct.
When I finished my staggering report to Boxwood, I put down the phone and collapsed on the sofa with Sherlock beside me. It was then that the reality of what I’d just been through crashed into my brain. I was sweating, but I felt cold and started to shake. I’d been threatened by other killers, but never in such a close, physical manner. Both looking down a gun barrel and being pushed over the side of a boat into deep water had been terrifying. But being held in an iron grip and having a knife blade actually slicing through the skin of my neck had been beyond horrific.
For the first time in several years, I found myself feeling that I absolutely needed a drink. Only alcohol could steady my trembling body and soothe my racing, jumping brain. I told myself that this would be the most damn foolish thing an alcoholic could do and felt relieved that there wasn’t any alcohol in the house.