Time of Death

by Shirley Kennett

  No doubt about it, it’s time to make Greg pay. I can’t believe I’ve waited so long. It all seems so easy, and it feels good to let the inhibitions slip away and do whatever I want. This has nothing to do with becoming a Rich Bitch. It’s just scratching an itch.

  Greg and Cheryl Royalview are having lunch when I ring the doorbell. This is my riskiest effort yet. I can’t stand on the porch in daylight too long, and I can’t wear the black Lycra and keep my face covered. I’m potentially the object of any nosy neighbor’s furtive glances, and I’ve already had to deal with The Busybody. It’s such a thrill, doing this. I put my eye up to the peephole and have a sudden vision of my left eye transfixed by a long knife pushed in from the other side. In my vision, Greg says, “I told you I was going to the prom with somebody else! If you can’t get that fact into your head, I’ll just have to put a knife into it instead.”

  Instead of a knife, Greg’s pale blue eye appears in the peephole. We look at each other, me looking for a gleam of recognition and him trying to figure out if I’m the type to do a home invasion.

  Fortunately he is a poor judge of character based upon pupil and iris. The door opens and Greg, the little shit, doesn’t invite me in. Didn’t he recognize my eyeball? Was the whole thing so trivial to him that he can’t even remember my name?

  No matter, I force my way inside at gunpoint. Cheryl is the first to go, dispatched with a quick shot to the head. The red circle in her forehead is an imitation of the “O” her red lips form right before I pull the trigger. As a killing method goes, it’s pretty basic, but my motto is if it works, do it again and again.

  Greg, seeing his wife blown away in front of him, is understandably belligerent, but I’m prepared for that. I use a taser gun on him. His legs go out from beneath him, and while he’s on the floor I quickly get rope around his wrists and ankles. It doesn’t take long before the taser shock wears off, but by then he’s spread-eagled on the floor, arms and legs tied to immovable objects. I straddle him and let my imagination take over. It occurs to some portion of my mind that I’m no longer hurting people only when they’re sedated and can’t experience it. Looking back on it, that seems too considerate. Besides, I’ve taken a liking to the process.

  And in the new order of things, what I want, I get.

  Chapter 40

  PJ WAS ABOUT TO call a cab to get home when Schultz dropped by her office with the cart and rope fiber news. She stood up behind her desk and did a little victory dance.

  “Hey, babe, you can dance for me anytime,” Schultz said. “How about I tuck some money in your underwear?”

  She sat down heavily in her chair. “Leo, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, but I haven’t had the time.”

  “About what?”

  “Don’t call me babe,” she said.

  He blinked. “You don’t like it?”

  “No, I think it’s demeaning. It’s also a pig.”

  He looked at her suspiciously. “Is this some kind of cops-as-pigs joke? ’Cause if so, it’s a new one on me.”

  “I’m serious. Babe is an oink-oink pig in a movie,” she said.

  “I don’t mean it that way,” Schultz said. “I say it to be, you know, sweet.”

  PJ was getting annoyed. She hadn’t expected this much discussion. She would ask, he would agree, and that would be that.

  “It doesn’t seem like you say it in a sweet way all the time. Even if you do, I’d prefer you find some other term for me, especially in front of team members.” Irritation was plain in her voice.

  “Well, shit, why haven’t you said anything before? I didn’t know it bothered you.” Schultz responded in kind, and raised the stakes. He pointed at her as though lecturing a child.

  There was no use trying to explain that she’d tried several times to tell him, only to be cut off by circumstances. “Do you agree to stop?” The words came out in a very sharp tone. She was ready to escalate the cold war.

  Schultz threw up both of his hands in surrender. “Hell, yes. If I slip up, I guess you can bust my balls.”

  “Not funny,” she said, and sighed. Her anger bubble had abruptly burst. “Leo, let’s put the brakes on this. I shouldn’t have brought it up tonight. I could have found a better time, when we’re both not so tired.”

  “I got rough edges,” he went on, as though she’d handed him a live grenade instead of an olive branch. “I’m not all smooth and polished the way you are, Doc. You’re just going to have to make allowances,” he said. “Or not. See if I care.” He got up and left the office, slamming the door on his way out.

  Elbows on the desk, she cradled her head in her hands.

  Handled like a true professional, Dr. Gray. Professional what, I don’t know.

  She straightened her desk, which meant rearranging the piles of clutter that were always there, made a phone call, and then looked up cab companies on her computer. Finding several, she closed her eyes, made a stab, and picked Laclede Cab. She was hoping there were cabs this late at night. St. Louis wasn’t exactly the City that Never Sleeps. In fact, its bedtime seemed to be around 11:00 p.m.

  Before she could make the call, her door opened and Schultz was there. He stared at the floor rather than meet her eyes.

  “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  PJ asked if he would drop her off at Lilly Kane’s house. She’d called and found Lilly watching Casablanca on TV. Schultz agreed but made her promise to take a cab home even though it was less than a dozen blocks to her house from Lilly’s.

  Over milk and crumb cake at the kitchen table, PJ talked with Lilly and caught up on her son’s school week. Megabite spread out to her full length on the table in front of PJ, determined to sponge up as much attention as possible. The cat rolled over and ended up on her back, with her paws kneading the air, her tummy offered up. PJ obliged, running her fingers through soft belly fur like a comb, and being rewarded with a satisfied rumbling. If she held her hand just right, she could feel the cat’s heart beating under her finger.

  As far as Megabite was concerned, life was good.

  PJ shared that assessment while she was in Lilly’s comfortably cluttered home. She could hear her son’s light snores coming from down the hall, and that was as calming as the cat’s purr.

  It didn’t take long for Lilly’s two cats, Peanut and Butter, to get into the act. After bumping their owner’s chin several times, they sat down, tucked their paws in, and pretended not to be watching Megabite.

  Lilly wanted to know all about the dagger incident. She didn’t seem nearly as perturbed as PJ, and indicated that if the jerk came looking for Thomas while she was around, said jerk would have his reproductive equipment blown off. Lilly’s ex-husband was a cop, and she’d learned to shoot, and shoot well. She also held a fourth degree Black Belt in tae kwon do. PJ found herself wishing that the jerk would tangle with Lilly.

  Not wanting to keep her friend up too late, PJ left in less than an hour. She was ready for some serious pillow time. Her ribs were sore and so were her bruises, which were now a charming yellowish-green around the edges, while the centers were still purple. As her contusions changed color while healing, it was a reminder of the underlying process. Blood had been released from capillaries and trapped under her skin. The hemoglobin decays over a couple of weeks, and the breakdown products give a bruise its progression of colors. White blood cells charge to the scene and slowly remove the products of decay, causing the bruise to fade and disappear. In her experience, white blood cells were the opposite of teenage boys, who create but do not take out garbage.

  She phoned for a cab, waited a few minutes, and went out on the porch. The orange Pacer, looking a sickly mustard color under the streetlights, was still at the curb where she’d waved goodnight to Schultz. She found him sleeping behind the steering wheel, head back, mouth open, snoring for all he was worth. PJ knocked on the passenger’s window and was rewarded by his sudden, jerky awakening during which Schultz smacked his knee on the steering wheel.
<
br />   “What are you doing here?” she asked. She was touched that he’d waited for her.

  “What does it look like?” he said gruffly. “Get in, I’ll take you home. You sure gab a lot with your friend. I was expecting maybe ten minutes.”

  She used her cellphone to cancel the cab. At her house, Schultz followed her in without a word, and started fixing up the couch with a knit throw and a toss pillow.

  “What’s the deal?” she said.

  “The deal is I’m sleeping on the couch.” He kept his face averted, uselessly rearranging the throw and pillow.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, and climbed the stairs. Her legs were so tired she envisioned them sheathed in stone.

  Thomas’s room was directly across from hers, with the bathroom at the end of the hall. She flirted for a whole two seconds with the idea of soaking in a hot bath before deciding to just crash. She could already feel her head sinking into the pillow. Eyelids heavy, she turned into her room and snapped on the light switch.

  PJ heard a sound behind her, but didn’t process it very fast. It was unfamiliar, sliding and metallic.

  A sword!

  She whirled around. Standing behind her was a costumed creature with shaggy, brown fur. It was wide at the shoulders and its face had insect-like eyes. Her breath stopped in her lungs, and her heart nearly stopped with it. Her body tingled with the sudden flow of adrenaline, and her stomach was on a free-falling elevator.

  “I have come for Vyzer Lok and the vibrocrystal,” the thing said in a flat, mechanized voice. “Where have you imprisoned him?”

  The sword that was fastened to the creature’s arm lifted menacingly. It gleamed in the light coming from her bedroom. PJ was defenseless, except for her words.

  She was shaky and her voice came out in a whisper. “Why should I tell you?”

  The creature froze in place. Evidently this wasn’t part of its script. Then it advanced on her, the sword pointed at her belly.

  “Leo!” That was all she had time to shout, because after that her whole attention was on ducking away from the creature, running into the hall so hard she smacked into the wall, and ending up in Thomas’s room. She slammed the door and locked it. “Leo!”

  The door splintered, and the sword protruded through, barely missing her.

  No weapons here! Gun’s in my room!

  Frantically PJ looked around for something she could use. Everything was happening so fast. There was no time to think!

  The blade withdrew from the door. In its place, a hairy hand tried to push through the door, but the hole was too small. PJ’s eyes alighted on one of Thomas’s prize possessions: a Star Wars Millennium Falcon made of die cast metal. She ran to it and yanked the foot-long, heavy model off its display stand.

  The sword smashed through the door again. This time, a large part of the center of the door gave way. She heard a snuffling sound, almost like it was trying to sniff out her location. She stood to the side of the door, and when the questing hand came through, she bashed it with the Falcon with all her strength. There was a yelp, and the hand quickly disappeared.

  Cautiously she took a look through the hole in the door, just in time to see Schultz running down the hall yelling, a battering ram in boxer shorts.

  She tugged the door open, and there was Schultz struggling on the floor, trying to pin the sword arm. Her heart thudding in her throat, now deathly-frightened for him as well as herself, she circled around so that she could get near the creature’s head. She had to do something, and fast.

  They were tangled together and moving rapidly. When she had an opening, she took it, and brought the Falcon down on the creature’s head.

  Schultz flopped off the still form, and lay on his back, his chest heaving.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said through gasps for air, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

  “Did I kill it?” PJ stared at the unmoving, giant insectoid in her hallway. She felt tremendous relief that it wasn’t Schultz lying there, wounded or worse.

  Schultz rolled over, wincing, and felt for a pulse. “Nah, he’s alive. Too bad. Go call 911. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  She started to walk away, holding her side. A diving roll wasn’t the best thing for healing ribs and multi-colored contusions.

  “Wait,” he said. “Give me that spaceship, just in case.”

  “You’re not going to do anything rash?”

  “What? Oh, of course not. I got better things to do than fill out endless paperwork for squishing a bug.”

  On the way to the phone, her legs almost collapsed beneath her, and she felt nauseous. She’d allowed herself to think about what could have happened if the bug had encountered Thomas alone in the house instead of two determined adults.

  Her mind awash with bloody visions, she punched 911.

  Schultz asked PJ to get him his pants that were draped over the couch after she finished calling the police. He didn’t particularly want to greet his fellow law enforcement officers in his underwear in the hallway of his boss’s house. She was kind enough to bring his shirt, shoes, and shoulder holster, too.

  Weapon in hand, he approached the unconscious bug and tugged on the head portion of the costume. It didn’t come free until he groped around in the hair and found the zipper. With the elaborate mask removed, the two of them got their first real look at gronz_eye. It was a shock to discover that he was at least forty years old.

  “Thomas will be interested to know that,” PJ said. “Should I call him tonight?”

  “It can wait. Geez, what’s this guy’s story, anyway?” Schultz said. “This costume must cost a month’s worth of my salary. It’s got to be custom made. Doesn’t he have anything better to do than play online games, like have a life?”

  “Maybe that is his life,” PJ said. “He could have formed such a strong identification with this character,” she gestured at the costume, “that he withdrew from the real world.”

  “I wonder if he has a wife and family and a regular job.”

  “He might. People with fantasy lives like this are amazingly good at hiding them.”

  He dropped the costume hood and stepped back a few feet, watching the man warily. Schultz held his gun at his side, but ready to use in case of trouble.

  “I have to say I admired what you did here,” he said. “You delayed him and did some quick thinking with that space ship. Then you stepped right up when I was fighting the guy and whacked him. That was brave.”

  “What did you expect me to do? Run away screaming and leave you alone to get sliced open?”

  He shrugged. “I was winning. I would’ve had him pinned if you hadn’t taken care of things first.”

  “Uh huh,” she said. “Look, I don’t want to get into some kind of pissing contest here, Leo. I don’t have the equipment for it, for one thing. For another, I was scared shitless. I don’t see anything brave about what I did.”

  “People doing brave things are always scared shitless. If they aren’t, they’re just plain stupid.”

  The doorbell rang. “Patrol car’s here. You get the door and I’ll make sure our bug doesn’t crawl into the woodwork.”

  While the scene was being processed, Schultz phoned Dave, Anita, and Lieutenant Wall and left messages for them, explaining briefly what had happened. On the messages to Dave and Anita, he added that PJ was officially on recovery time and not to disturb her. All messages were to be channeled through him for the next twenty-four hours.

  While he was on the phone, he saw the splintered wood door being carried out. It shook him up, knowing that she’d gone through that alone. As soon as she’d gone upstairs, he’d taken off his clothes, flopped on the couch, pulled up the blanket, and fallen asleep. He didn’t know exactly what woke him up. It wasn’t the fact that she’d yelled for him, which she said she did. At least, not consciously. He’d awakened with a terrible fear that something was wrong, fear strong enough to propel him up the stairs to check on PJ. He’d seen the figure standing in the hallw
ay just as it plunged the sword through the door. Enraged with the idea that PJ might be on the receiving end of that thrust, he’d charged down the hallway, ready for a battle to the death. It sounded trite as he thought back on it, but that’s exactly what he was prepared for at the time.

  Then he saw PJ, or at least her feet, and relief flowed through him like a cool, mountain spring, dousing the anger that had been kindled when he saw the intruder. His training took over, and then it was just a matter of subduing another violent criminal. He was getting the upper hand when PJ’s feet shuffled closer. Before he could shout at her to get away, she swung something at the bug’s head, and the body underneath him went limp.

  It was a brave thing for her to do, and he’d complimented her on it. What he didn’t say was that it was a foolish thing. Her approach distracted him from what he was doing, and probably put both of them in greater danger. That sword could have sliced through her legs or across his throat.

  He knew why she did it. It was the same reason that he charged the formidable-looking creature with no thought for his own safety: love.

  I’d die for her. I’d kill for her.

  When the bug was handcuffed and taken out on a stretcher, his face and form immortalized in numerous crime scene photos, and. the last tech was out the door, Schultz took PJ upstairs. He needed to care for her, to do things for her, and she let him. He gently removed her clothes and pulled a nightgown over her raised arms. The sight of her bruised body disturbed him. It was too reminiscent of the battered wives he’d dealt with over the course of his career. He gave her Tylenol since her pain medication from the hospital had run out.

  He put her to bed, took off his clothes, and crawled in next to her naked. He held her hand and stared at the dim shadows on the ceiling cast by a nightlight until he could hear her rhythmic breaths of sleep. Only then did he allow himself to close his eyes. In moments, he was asleep at her side.

  Schultz awoke to pale light coming through the windows.