On their way to the burn center, Kate sat holding Roz’s unscathed hand with her own. Roz’s pain came in waves, indicated by a clenching of her grip. At the height of one spasm, she turned her head and gasped, “Talk to me.”
“About what, Roz?”
“Anything. Take my mind off this.”
Kate seriously doubted that words alone would make much progress in pain management, but if words Roz wanted, then words she would have. And, Kate figured, the stronger the better.
“We caught Carla Lomax,” she told her, and waited for Roz to ask what Carla had been caught for. Roz did not ask, which confirmed a number of Kate’s suspicions. “And Phoebe Weatherman is on the run. Did you actually know, Roz? Or just suspect?”
The searing agony from Roz’s legs was clearly battering at the woman, on the edge of overwhelming her. It was, Kate tried to reassure herself, a far better sign than lack of feeling—the fire had not gone deeply enough into Roz’s skin to destroy the nerves. Roz held herself rigid and spoke in short gasps, but her words and thoughts were clear, as if willpower and grammatical precision were enough to keep the pain at bay.
“I told you. I did not know. I suppose. I did not want to. If I had. I would. Have told you. I said I wouldn’t. That was a lie. I do not condone. Murder. As a way of solving problems.”
Oddly enough, Kate believed her.
“Phoebe’s gone. Underground. You won’t… catch her.” The last phrase coincided with a sudden buildup of pain, and Roz panted and groaned in the back of her throat until the wave had passed. When her eyes came open again, they were commanding Kate to continue, and Kate realized that words were indeed an effective analgesic; they’d certainly taken her mind off her own pain for a moment or two. And from a more selfish point of view, taking into account Roz’s temporary dependence on rigid order, questions put to her were likely to be answered before Roz stopped to consider what she was doing. Reluctantly, then, Kate continued.
“You don’t have any idea where Phoebe has gone?”
Roz shook her head.
“Roz, she’s killed three people.”
“Kate. I do not. Know.”
Kate decided that was all she was going to get at the moment, and she sat looking at Roz and thinking about going underground, and about choosing invisibility as a way of life, as a form of self-defense. At the thought, and at her growing awareness of the community of invisible women out there, waiting to enfold Phoebe Weatherman, she had to smile in spite of the pain shooting up her arm. With a glance at the paramedic, she leaned over to speak quietly in Roz’s ear.
“And what about the LOPD? That’s Maj, isn’t it?”
In Roz’s pinched features, alarm mingled with the pain, and Kate hastened to explain herself.
“I figured it out when I realized that the reason we didn’t focus on Phoebe Weatherman was because she was just a secretary. Of course, she wasn’t ‘just’ anything, but she was invisible—like the Web site said. And like Maj always seems to be. Roz, I promise you, anything you say to me in the current circumstances will be completely inadmissible. There’s not a judge in the country would allow it as testimony. So you’re safe to tell me: I know Maj has had nothing to do with the murders, but she is behind the actions of the Ladies, isn’t she? She’s written all over it, her kind of humor.” I can’t…
“Roz, I swear to you, on anything I hold precious. On Lee’s head, if you like: Even if I could, I will not do anything with what you tell me.”
The injured woman said nothing, but eventually, her eyes holding Kate’s, she nodded, and the faint twist of a smile, affectionate and admiring, came across her mouth. Yes, it was Maj.
“Roz, I love the two of you. I owe you both one hell of a lot. So I’m not even going to ask for the names of the women who did the actual assaults—which I assume that Maj had nothing to do with, considering the shape she’s in at the moment.” The image of Maj Freiling, seven months’ pregnant and dressed as a ninja assault warrior armed with a roll of duct tape, danced through Kate’s mind, nowhere near as impossible as she would have wished. She pushed the image away, but she knew it would return at unlikely moments. “I want you to tell Maj that if she stops now, if she closes down the Ladies and doesn’t attack any more men, I won’t go any further with it. But she’s got to stop. Now.”
Roz held her eyes, and nodded again. Kate sat back, palm still clasped to palm, satisfied.
Roz’s eyes drooped and then shut, which Kate hoped meant that she had drifted off, but after a minute Roz said, “Still, it was a great Campaign while it lasted, wasn’t it?”
Kate struggled to keep her face straight, and failed. “I hope—” she began, and then snorted loudly, startling the ambulance attendant. “I hope you guys bought stock in duct tape before you started.” The alarmed paramedic stared at the two injured women with the tears starting down their faces, and fumbled hastily for his bag.
At the hospital, Roz was whisked away, and Kate put off treatment of her own burns to phone Lee. She told her to bring Maj to the hospital, reassured Lee that her own burns were minor, put down the receiver, and looked up to see Al Hawkin furiously shouldering his way through uniforms and nurses alike. He stopped when he saw her standing there— half her hair burnt to a frazzle, her shirtsleeves scorched and covered with ash, stinking to high heaven, her left forearm wrapped in the paramedic’s gauze—and most of the storm clouds left his face.
“God damn it, Martinelli, don’t do that to me. Lee would wrap those crutches of hers around my neck if I let anything else happen to you.”
She tried to stir up some resentment at his protectiveness, but failed. She did manage a stir of feeble humor, however.
“Oh, you know me, Al. I like my cases to end with a bang.”
And on the other side of town, in a pool of blood on the wall of the shelter for battered women, dark Kali smiled.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
laurie R. king lives with her family in the hills above Monterey Bay in northern California. Her background includes such diverse interests as Old Testament theology and construction work, and she has been writing crime fiction since 1987. The winner of both the Edgar and the John Creasey Awards for Best First Novel for A Grave Talent, the debut of the Kate Martinelli series, she is also the author of five mysteries in the Mary Russell series, including The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and most recently, O Jerusalem, as well as a thriller, A Darker Place. She is at work on her eleventh novel, Folly.
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Night Work km-4 Page 32