I double over and his fist lands on my back, slamming me into the floor. Hannah’s cheek presses against the oil and glass pooled on the ground. She’s crying, the fight gone out of her; a mark shows where the laptop clipped her forehead. My ribs are on fire and I can’t take full breaths.
Creep crawls on his hands and knees toward the gun. He’s too fast. I roll on to the back of his legs and begin clawing, climbing up his thighs, hauling on the fabric of his trench coat. It’s not enough. His fingers are inches from the grip.
At the periphery of my vision, I sense movement. The giant egg-light cracks into the back of creep’s head. It doesn’t break, bouncing off, but dropping him flat to the carpet and granting me time to slide up his back. We fumble over the Glock. I bang my forehead into his skull every time his fingers touch the gun. Finally my hand closes on it. I have the weapon. Kneeling on his back, I press the muzzle to his head. Before I can even think I’m pulling the trigger.
All my anger and frustration are in the act. I can get away with this. It’s self-defense. This is righteous and any man that drives girls to suicide deserves it. Deserves worse than this. I want his death and I’ll be a hero for it. My eyes clench, and a long scream fills the room. The burning in my throat reveals the source. Every muscle in my body tenses for the recoil. Police boots pound down the hall.
I don’t finish pulling the trigger.
I stop. A small part of me knows the point of no return for the trigger and eases off, keeping the barrel pressed hard into the base of his neck. In that moment, as I sit astride him, holding a deadly weapon, my grip slippery with fear, I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do.
“Move even a little bit, you maggot-infested butthole, and you’ll eat your brains.”
His body sags beneath me.
“Police!”
I don’t take my eyes off of creep.
“Remove the weapon.”
I can’t. I shake my head. The blaze in my chest is expanding and I draw short unsatisfying breaths.
“Janus?” It’s not a voice I recognize. “I’m Constable Francois, I know you from the precinct. Can you remove the weapon from the man’s head?”
I begin to quake and my vision narrows. I know the tone of his voice. It’s the same one I’d used with Hannah. When I’d said, Don’t do it. The gun moves up away from creep’s head until I can’t see it any longer.
“Good, good work, Janus,” the cop says. “I’m coming beside you and will take the gun from you, all right?”
“Creep,” I say. “He’s a creep.”
“Okay, Janus, we’ll sort this out. Everything will be just fine.”
I swallow and the gun leaves my hand. With the gun’s weight no longer anchoring me to the spot, I roll from the man. I cry out from the pain in my chest and ankle. Creep’s expression is one of relief. That he’s happy to see the police officer. I bet being beat by a couple of girls won’t help his ego.
Hannah’s sobbing, but alive. Everything will be okay. Around the living room, six police officers are at various stages of holstering their side arms.
They ask a woman to remain for questioning; it’s the old chick from the elevator and she stands in the frame, pale and shaking. I owe her for the well-timed egg strike.
“That’s the one who said a man was about to die,” she says. “Called him a sorry excuse for a human.” And of course, that sounds pretty bad when you’ve just pressed a gun to the guy’s head.
“I tried to stop her,” she continues, “but I missed.”
I’m aghast. She’d aimed for me?
“You have the right to remain silent—” They begin, and then the cuffs come out. There’s enough to go around for everyone.
Chapter 26
Hours of community service remaining: 1985 minus 1, minus 10 hours for stopping creep.
Behind my back, my fingers twitch with tweet withdrawal; it’s been a couple of hours since I was online. I enter the processing area of the Ottawa Police Department for the second time this week. This time it’s no joke. Fingerprinted, photographed, and then deposited into a small room, I feel small. Oil from the lava lamp soaks my pants. Before the steel door shuts, I hear Hannah crying, and I’m struck by the urge to yell, ‘Don’t say anything!’ though really we are the victims here; we’ve done nothing wrong … not much.
I listen to the buzz of the lights as I try to take the shallowest breaths possible while not blacking out from the pain in my chest.
I’m so tired. I miss my mom and worry that I won’t be seeing her anytime soon. My cheek presses against the cool metal of the table. Without the use of my cuffed arms, my face takes all my weight and it too starts to ache. They’re probably interrogating Hannah first and I wonder what she’ll tell them. My plan to hack creep’s router was illegal. My not telling the police about her and creep was dumb. But she stole Ethan’s gun, then picked creep’s pocket, broke into his apartment, and shot at him. A plea of self-defence might be a tough sell, but what do I know? She’ll be a hero at school. If they ever let her out of here.
After fifteen minutes my attention flags. My mind is numb and I only wish that my body was too. The cuffs press my arms tight to my ribs causing pain with every breath. Even with the sound-proofing, I catch a muffled argument outside the room. Then the door snaps open.
Haines fills the doorway, face implacable.
“Remove her cuffs,” he says.
A constable dips past Haines and unlocks my handcuffs with a great deal more care than when they were affixed.
Then Haines takes a seat and a guy in a rumpled suit rushes in to stand beside me.
“Hi, Janus,” he says, rubbing his eyes as if still waking up. He’s holding a Venti of something. “I’m your legal counsel. You know your rights? That you don’t have to answer any questions and I’d advise you not to.”
I nod and Haines waves his arm as if to brush away everything the lawyer has said.
“From the top,” Haines says.
And I tell him. I can’t distinguish between what’s right and what’s wrong anymore, and I desperately want to know just how evil I’ve become. I want to be judged. I explain how Hannah first asked for my help, and then went rogue. I reveal my strategy to record creep and then threaten him with the recordings to force him to stop.
“I was planning to ask Hannah if she wanted to send the recording to the police,” I say. “But she really scared me.”
He takes notes while I speak and continues on writing after I stop.
“You actually put a gun to his head?” He is shaking his cranium.
“I didn’t pull the trigger. I just told him I would unless he kept still.”
“And that’s the bravest part of it all,” he replies, mouth splitting into a broad grin that brightens the room. “I might have fired. Hell, I don’t even really know. I’ve only had to draw my weapon twice, and never to save my life. Never while wrestling someone twice my size.”
The door bursts open and bounces off the wall, sending chips of concrete to the floor.
“What’s happening here?” Detective Williams looks as though she ate a jalapeño. “This is a sixteen-year-old girl.”
Almost seventeen, I want to say and then realize she’s yelling at Haines.
She strides to the chair and jerks my arm upward. I scream and she stumbles back.
“Sorry,” I say after I recover. “The creep punched me in the chest. It hurts.”
“I’m taking you to the hospital.”
At the prospect of seeing my mother, I nearly sob with relief.
This time when Williams reaches for my elbow it’s in support, and she guides me out the door, only to collide with Constable Chow. His hug sends stars into my vision and I cry out.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he whispe
rs in my ear, but the roar of pain has made it impossible for me to reply.
Agony clouds thought—it’s my only excuse because, when it clears, I say: “I love guys who love chicks.”
Everyone stares at me.
“Fuzzy chicks. Chicken chicks. They’re cute.” I add. “So fluffy. I want one.”
“Hospital—now.” Williams leads me to a cruiser parked underground, and while I wait at the rear door, she opens the front. “Oh, I think you’ve earned a front row seat.”
I smile, the spark of my hope fanning, and ease myself onto the seat like I’m Edna and a hundred and eight years old.
“Can you take me to the General Hospital?” I ask.
She shrugs. “It’s not the closest.”
“I know, but my mom is already there. Family reunion in the Emergency Room.”
It’s clear Williams is proud of me when she drives so slowly it’s as if she’s checking out homes to buy. She radios in to the hospital to expect me. The garbled response says that they’re ready.
“You can drive a little faster, you know. I thought it was a bonus of being a cop.”
Williams hesitates and then, with a shrug, she flips on the sirens. My back presses into the seat as the cruiser screams to the hospital. When we arrive, I’m whisked through the Emergency Room, rubbernecking for my mom. The steely-eyed triage nurse says my mom’s already out of the ER. I am given VIP treatment by jumping the queue of a hundred or so bleary, sniffling riffraff.
Williams, having abandoned the cruiser out front, stands near the bed as the doctor approaches. It’s a young woman whose eyes are bagged with sleep.
“I was told the patient’s an officer?” She yanks a green curtain around us.
I glance at Williams.
“She’s part of the unit. Injured on the job. Punched in the side. That gives her priority.”
My sob of relief costs me a wave of pain, which spurs the doc into action.
“Can we take this off of you?” she asks, tugging at my sweater.
I move to lift my arms and nearly collapse from the jab of agony.
“I need to cut it away, okay?”
I manage to spit out two uhs, which she takes for acquiescence. Beneath the doctor’s shears, the halves of my sweater fall to the ground.
“Jesus,” Williams says, then bites her knuckles.
Bruising is beginning to slide down around my neck over my chest. Where creep hit my side, a hill of red bulges, darkest at the center and then fanning out to an angry pink before fading to my natural, if sickly yellowish tone. The doctor’s fingers probe the swelling and I wince with every touch until she’s well away from the point of creep’s impact.
“We’ll need an X-Ray,” she says. “But you might have cracked a rib or three.” Her pen scribbles on a chart as I struggle into a hospital gown.
“Can I see another patient?” I ask. “My mom came in earlier but I don’t know where she is. Tina Rose?”
The pen keeps scratching notes. “I can look into it while you go to imaging.”
I sigh, but agree. In a minute, she’s back with some pills in a cup and a prescription for radiology.
“Do you need a wheelchair?” the doc asks.
Although I shake my head, my knees buckle when I stand and Williams guides a wheelchair under me.
“Thanks,” I say.
“No problem, partner.” She winks and pushes me through the ER.
“Am I really back in the High Tech Crime Unit?”
Williams frowns. “To be honest, I can’t say. I think you’ve got Haines on your side, but the captain—”
“I shouldn’t have added the video.”
Thinking back to the captain’s face when he saw himself singing, I don’t get my hopes up. It would be hard to welcome my return to the unit.
“No, everyone knows that he likes to dress up and sing sometimes; it’s not that.” I gape, open-mouthed. His cross-dressing wasn’t news? “After he realized it wasn’t you who broke his privacy, it’s actually your assumption that all of it put together made him a potential killer—well, that’s what got him upset.”
“I failed the profile,” I say, suddenly realizing. “The test.”
Williams purses her lips together.
“The captain’s openness about his struggles with alcohol and comfort with dressing like a woman … it’s part of why everyone loves and respects him. We’re all guilty of judging. Making assumptions. As a cop, it’s something you have to do on the spur of the moment. It’s hard … but important.”
The guy running the X-ray machine snatches my form and wheels me into the room.
Imaging only takes ten minutes but by then the doc has disappeared. As Williams pushes me back to the ER, the squeaking of the wheelchair reminds me of my mom.
“I’ll duck out and find you a shirt to wear, okay?” Williams asks.
“Don’t worry about it; they say backless is coming into style.”
“Only a minute,” she replies. “I need to check in with the precinct too.”
Alone, I can’t sit still. I wheel to the reception and inquire about my mom.
I learn she’s on the psychiatric ward. That … well … that saddens me, but deep down I knew where she’d be. It’s not the first time.
“Doctor Selkirk is looking for you.” A nurse who looks like most men’s fantasies—with see-through white skirt and blouse and fuchsia-colored underwear—envelops me in a cloud of sugary perfume. I don’t resist when she wheels me back into Emergency.
“Several bruised ribs, a hairline fracture, but no serious breaks,” the doctor explains. “I’ll bandage you up, but the best we can really do is give you something for the pain and to keep the inflammation down. I want you to tell your parents that if you spike a fever you need to see another doctor.”
Sure, my parents. How normal that must sound to most kids.
The doc’s hands are cold and smell of lemon antiseptic as she slowly unwinds a huge wad of gauze around my back and chest. I wince as she passes over my ribs, the fabric taut.
“Any more injuries and you’ll look like a mummy,” Williams says from the curtain. She’s returned. A blue shirt hangs over her forearm.
“At least I’ll be well preserved for future generations,” I say.
The bandage slips under my armpit and wraps around my chest. If I seemed flat-chested before, I now look like Keira Knightley.
“All set,” the doc says.
When Williams shakes the shirt out, I see it’s her spare uniform from the cruiser.
“I want you to try this on,” she says.
As she helps me with the buttons, tears threaten. My mom would like to be doing this. I know she’d be here if she could be.
“My mom’s up in the psych unit,” I explain, choking down my grief for later. Maybe I’m like a squirrel, but instead of nuts, I store sadness. I balance on the edge of laughter and tears. Nuts—evidently it’s my mom who is nuts. “Thanks for everything.”
“I can stay,” she says.
I doubt that’s true; she’s on duty. “My mom’s boyfriend is here. He’ll make sure I get home.”
“Okay, then, Jan.” Williams turns to leave, pulling the curtain wide. “You were awesome today. I’m so proud of you.”
Four hours ago I nearly blew the brains out of a guy. I can’t see that as awesome.
“I am an officer, you are a high school student,” I say, repeating what she’d said, what seems like years ago now.
Her radio barks, interrupting her smile.
“Thanks for the shirt,” I add. There’s no way I’m returning it.
She leaves talking into the radio. Alone, I don’t move.
The fluorescent lights, the shock, the pills, the whit
e walls, bleeps, dings, clean smell and not so clean stench, it overwhelms me.
I pull the curtains back shut, trying to gather my strength. I practice the expression I’ll use on my mom. A smile that says: Hey, don’t worry, you get better, I’m doing fine. Great even.
Chapter 27
Hours of community service remaining: 1985 minus 1, minus 10 hours for stopping creep and minus 10 hours for each rib bruised.
<
The nurse buzzes me in through the locked doors and points me to a room near the end of the hall. If the ER seemed like rush hour, it’s clear that it’s night on the psychiatric ward. Even the attendants whisper at their station, or hustle from room to room like shadows to check on patients. Fewer dings bleat and, if not peaceful, the ward is at least calmer.
With the tips of a new set of crutches propped up on my wheelchair’s footrest, their cool aluminum shafts rub against my neck. I let the wheelchair glide to a stop just shy of my mom’s doorframe. I swallow and test my smile muscles.
I inch forward. She’s lying there, staring at the ceiling. Peter’s at her bedside, a curtain behind him separating off my mom’s half of the room. Her legs are so weak, they barely fill out the blankets pulled over her. Pallid skin, exhausted eyes, cheerless and bloodless lips.
“Oh, Mom.” I roll to her flank and grip cold fingers. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m saying goodbye. I don’t even have time to try a smile on Peter before I break into wracking sobs, despite the injured ribs that punch me with every desperate cry.
After a time, I rub my eyes and dry the tears from where they’ve fallen on her forearm.
“Are you okay?” Peter asks, eyes flicking to my hospital bracelet and wheelchair.
I can’t help scoffing. “Just perfect.”
“The doctors are doing a great job,” he says.
Assured Destruction: The Complete Series Page 31