Killer Karma

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Killer Karma Page 6

by Lee Killough


  He hummed to himself all the way to the door and onto the street. This just might work.

  Not just for Razor, either. It would let him talk to Sherrie! Let him explain all about Sara Benay and reassure her about their marriage and his love for her. Even if the full force of that red-haired temper laid into him for Monday night, no problem. He welcomed it. Anything to get straight with her.

  8

  Was his ziptrip ticket good to go home again? Cole pictured it and concentrated.

  The Tenderloin blurred…and — success! — turned into the front hall.

  The house lay dark and silent, not surprisingly. Sherrie rarely managed to stay awake past ten or eleven…even waiting up for him when he worked night shifts. He always came in to find her dead to the world on the sofa, bathed in the glow from the television screen. With school tomorrow and her mother being a day person, too, everyone in the house had settled for the night by now.

  He started up the stairs, only to stop at a whine coming from the livingroom. He turned and saw Tiger on the sofa, looking toward him. A pale shape lay beyond Tiger. Cole’s chest tightened. Sherrie?

  Yes. He found her in a cocoon of blankets with Tiger at her feet.

  Tiger’s tail stub worked like a slow metronome. Cole scratched his ears, then sat down on the coffee table and reached up to run his fingers across Sherrie’s hair. His chest tightened still more. “I’m sorry, babe. I won’t make it home this time.”

  Never again slip in the door, tickle her awake, and lead her up to bed. When they were first married, he liked waking her by undressing her enough to make love right there. After the twins came along, he carried her to the privacy of their bedroom. Moving here ended the Rhett Butler stunt, too. The narrowness and pitch of the stairs made it impractical, not to mention life threatening, and for some reason she found the alternative carry, being slung across his shoulder like a sack of grain, unromantic.

  Tiger whined again.

  “Shhh,” Cole whispered. “Settle.” Sounds Tiger or the kids made always snapped her awake. He wanted to wake her slowly.

  Too late. Sherrie sat bolt upright, eyes flying open. “Cole?”

  He choked at the desperate hope in her voice. It sparked hope in him. Maybe it would make her see him. “Yeah, it’s me…sort of.”

  “Cole?” She twisted, peering around her…looking straight through him.

  Hope crashed. The disappointment felt like being stabbed.

  “Tiger, what did you hear?” she asked.

  The dog stared Cole’s direction and whined again.

  She reached down to pet him. He kept whining. Sighing, she moved the pillow to where her feet had been and rolled up in the blankets again with her arm stretched out so her hand rested on the dog’s neck. Her eyes closed.

  Tiger propped his chin on the other side of the pillow and watched Cole with questioning eyes.

  Cole shrugged. “We’ll let her go back to sleep, then make another try.” Hopefully without pushing her alarm buttons this time.

  Here breathing soon settled into a regular rhythm again. He gave her another minute, then covered the hand on Tiger’s neck with his hand. “Nurse. Nurse Trask. Help me.” A name she had not been called for years ought to seem dream material.

  She pulled her arm back under the blanket.

  He leaned down to her ear. “You have to help me. Some naked little bastard shot me in the heart with a red arrow and I’m mortally wounded.” It had been a corny thing to say to her way back then, but it amused her, even though she came back dryly, “All bleeding stops eventually.”

  Now she smiled, too, but remained asleep.

  Shit. Cole cocked a brow at Tiger. “What do you think, boy? Do we need a little more irritating piece of the past to wake her?” Like the incident at their wedding when her father tried to hit on his mother. He laid his hand against her cheek. “Uh…honey…if I tell you something, will you promise to keep your cool?” Which she had not, then. “Give me the cake knife so I can cut off his nuts!” “My father’s cop buddies have handcuffed Eddie to the steering wheel of his rental- ”

  He broke off as Sherrie frowned and burrowed deeper under the blanket, away from his hand.

  Dismay spread through him. Red said there would be people who never saw him, but…Sherrie…not even in dreams? He raised his voice. “Sherrie! Come on. Please. Let me tell you about Sara Benay. Wake up a little.”

  Instead, she fell more deeply asleep, breath slowing even more and heart beating steadily on.

  Pain wrenched his chest as though to tear it apart. “Sherrie…” If she never saw him, how could he explain things to her?

  After a last touch on her hair and pat on Tiger’s head, Cole backed out of the livingroom and headed upstairs. He could not leave for Razor’s place without looking in on the kids.

  Near the top of the stairs, a thought dropped into his gut like lead. What if Razor turned out to be blind to him, too?

  He tried shrugging off the possibility. Think positively. Even if the dream ploy also failed with Razor, he was just back to using the computer, right? But now he could not help wondering if computer messages would work either. Might he have to find a way to help Sara all on his own?

  At Hannah’s door, he shoved the questions aside. Right now, only his family mattered.

  Joanna slept on the futon in Hannah’s room. In her own bed, Hannah lay rosy-cheeked and curled with her head almost against the safety rails. He kissed her forehead and stood watching her for several minutes, listening to her breathing and heartbeat, remembering the baby smell of her, before moving on to Kyle’s room.

  There a faint glow coming through the comforter betrayed that number two son was still awake…reading under the covers by his book light.

  Cole slapped the hump marking Kyle’s butt. “Lights out, sport. I know Horatio Hornblower is great stuff, but tomorrow you’ve got school.”

  Kyle read on, oblivious to him.

  Up in the attic where Travis and Renee had their rooms, Travis was asleep. A tear stain crossed his check. Cole’s throat closed. He had visions of Travis keeping a brave front while Sherrie told them about the car, then giving way to tears in the privacy of his room.

  Cole ran his fingers across the rumpled hair before leaving. “Hey, partner, you don’t have to try to be so tough, you know.”

  Renee’s room was dark, too, but without surprise he found her awake. Another night owl. She sat in front of her beloved peacock window, wrapped in her bathrobe, violin tucked under her chin. By day, the fan of panes she had colored with glass paint cast a rainbow across the floor. Now only light from the street lights silhouetted her as she played quietly.

  Even at a whisper, he recognized the piece, Barber’s Adagio For Strings. The melancholy music always reminded him of the Omaha Novembers of his childhood…overcast skies, bare trees, the ground carpeted with dank leaves. Was it one of the choices for her upcoming recital?

  A recital he had to miss.

  Thinking about that, Cole realized in despair how much else he had to miss. He would never know if Renee made it to the concert stage. He would never walk her or Hannah down the aisle, see his sons turn into men, or know his grandchildren. He and Sherrie would never do the things they had planned for retirement. The strains of the Adagio wrapped around him… tonight sounding even bleaker, sighing of unutterable loss.

  Grief and searing anger boiled up in him. He might be here to pull Sara out of the mess he landed her in, but that son of a bitch in the Elvis mask was unfinished business, too. Before he left, he would hunt down the bastard and ruin his life.

  9

  The anger at his killer fueled Cole’s resentment at walking to Razor’s place. Damn it, he ought to be able to ziptrip! Standing in the hall outside Renee’s room, still hearing the Adagio, he tried again…picturing the apartment…straining to remember every detail as he imagined himself in the apartment. Did he need to take into account that at this time of night the drapes would be closed? Or maybe
open just a crack, enough to admit light from the street and from the ground floor shoe store’s sign…and from the right angle, give a glimpse of the Coit Tower to the east.

  The hallway blurred…turned into Razor’s front room. Cole stood behind the futon, at the window. Triumph at making it here mixed with bafflement. What was different this time? Yes, he thought about the view from the window, but could that detail really be what did the trick? Shaking his head, he turned away from the window.

  Razor had the futon made out into a bed and wore sleep shorts and a t-shirt, but he still looked wide awake. Propped against pillows, he watched a movie on TV with the sound muted and closed captioning on.

  Checking out the movie, Cole grimaced. He knew this one and it had barely begun. “Come on, amigo…you don’t need to watch this again. You know Segal whips Tommy Lee Jones’s ass and keeps Honolulu from being nuked. Turn it off and go to bed.” He moved behind Razor and dropped his voice to a drone. “Your eyelids are feeling heavy. Heavy…heavy. You’re getting sleepy…very sleepy.”

  Razor remained wide awake.

  Scratch suggestion as a solution. The TV remote Razor held gave Cole an idea, though. It should not be much different from a computer, right?

  He reached down across Razor’s shoulder, put a finger on the power button, and closed his eyes. “Time to go to sleep.” He fished around until he felt the tickle, and heard the click of the TV shutting off.

  Razor muttered. Cole opened his eyes to see Razor pushing the power button.

  Well of course Razor would turn it back on. Cole turned it off.

  Muttering, Razor hit the power again, this time with a hard punch of his thumb…and kept the thumb resting on the button.

  Though that did not block his access to it, Cole decided to change tactics. He went for Mute. The closed captions disappeared and the sound came on.

  The mutter became an expletive. Razor re-muted the sound.

  Cole found himself enjoying the game. He went to the channel buttons and switched up one. When Razor changed back, Cole dropped down a channel.

  With expletives turning into a longer curse, Razor returned to the movie channel. Cole hit the Menu button. Razor cleared that off the screen…accompanied by an expletive he never used around Holly.

  Cole grinned. Now what could he do. Oh, yes. There was that time at home when Hannah played with the remote. He punched DVD.

  The screen went blank except for the message VID, replaced moments later by: “Unusable Signal”. And as he had after Hannah’s monkeying, Razor began trying every button on the remote to restore normal TV function. His disgust and frustration grew visibly with each failure. Even turning the TV off and on did not restore the picture. Finally Razor happened to punch WHO-Input. Cole was ready, poised over the power button. As the movie came back, he turned off the TV.

  That did it. Swearing in a tone which suggested only supreme self control let him keep it under his breath, Razor hurled the remote away from him. Fortunately, into the easy chair, not through the TV screen. He set his glasses on the end table, switched off the lamp, and flung himself flat on the futon.

  Cole watched in satisfaction. They should be in business any time now.

  Razor took several deep breaths and let them out slowly. His whole body relaxed and Cole heard his heart rate drop. In less than a minute, Razor’s breathing stabilized.

  Asleep, just like that. Razor had done it in their patrol unit, too. Cole shook his head. It still amazed him. Razor woke just as abruptly, too. When their call number came over the radio, he went from dead to the world to fully alert, snatching up the mike for a reply. Possibly making it harder to convince him he was still asleep.

  Cole considered the possibilities. He could wade through the futon, or sit on an invisible chair. That should be freaky enough for a dream.

  He gave the chair a try. It worked fine, except it seemed…blah. Maybe make it a lounger? He lifted both legs and leaned back with his hands behind his head. No. A lounger still lacked the craziness a dream ought to have.

  Staring at the ceiling, he suddenly remembered coming home after one late shift to find some old movie playing on the TV and Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly dancing up the wall. He should be able to do that, too…and better.

  Behind him, Razor sighed and rolled over. Cole turned. Tension cranked tight in him. Time to see if he could pull this off. “I hope to hell you’re not ghost blind, amigo.” He stepped between the futon and drapes, grabbed one of Razor’s ears to give him a shot of cold, and hissed, “Sergeant coming.”

  Razor sat bolt upright, eyes snapping open.

  He heard! Would he launch into one of his start-in-the-middle conversations that made it sound to a sergeant as if he had been awake all along? It had been worth crying wolf once in a while just to see what came out of Razor’s mouth.

  “I don’t know if there’s any good answer,” Razor said. “The Quakers thought their concept for Eastern State Prison was…” About which time he registered where he was and fell back on the pillow. “Sheesh. You’re starting to lose it, Kev.”

  Cole laughed. “I don’t know. Your reflexes look as fast as ever to me.”

  Razor jerked back upright and reached for the lamp. “Cole? Where the hell have you been?”

  “No, don’t turn the light on! You’ll wake yourself up.”

  Razor twisted toward him…and blinked. “What the hell? What’s with the glow-in-the-dark getup?”

  Cole looked down at himself. Glow? Well, maybe a faint one. The important thing was… Razor saw him. Maybe they could skip the dream scam and just talk. Except, he realized, what happened when he came to the revelation that he was dead? No, better stick to the plan. “You’re dreaming.”

  “No.” Razor squinted at him. “You look like those moon and stars we put up on Holly and Kyle’s bedroom ceilings.”

  “I mean this is a dream.” Time to prove it. Cole imagined a curved surface reaching to the ceiling and trotted up it while Razor’s jaw dropped. Weird. The room appeared to revolve while he walked in place. “And, shhh.” He doubted Holly would hear him but he lowered his voice to encourage Razor to do so. “Just in case you’re talking in your sleep, you don’t want to wake Holly.” It felt like a dream…standing here with the furniture hanging overhead and Razor gaping down at him.

  Then Razor felt himself and the bed around him, and squeezing his eyes shut, shook his head.

  Shit! “Razor, no…don’t wake yourself up!” Cole dashed back down to the floor, mind racing ahead of him. “You need to keep dreaming. There…there are issues for you to work out, and this is the way to do it.”

  Razor opened his eyes. “Issues?”

  “The blood in the car for one. It’s mine and I’m dead. In your heart of hearts, you suspect that. Which is why you’re dreaming of me as a ghost.” He waded into the futon and sat down. “You know that even if I killed Sara Benay and decided run for it, I’d have contacted you and Sherrie.”

  Razor stared at Cole’s legs disappearing into the futon.

  Cole punched his shoulder. “Pay attention. The other issue, the most important one, is Sara Benay.”

  Razor expression went baffled. “Benay? Why is she an issue?”

  “She’s in some kind of danger because of me.”

  “Danger?” Razor sounded skeptical.

  Cole leaned toward him. “I don’t know whether it’s from witnessing my murder and recognizing the killer, or being caught searching the Flaxx company books for evidence against Donald Flaxx, but there’s this cloud of terror in the 2EC garage that I think is hers. From her apartment it’s obvious she blew out of there in one hell of- ”

  Razor blinked. “What? Wait. How did she happen to be searching the Flaxx books?”

  Cole winced. But he had to tell Razor. “Sara works in Flaxx’s Bookkeeping department. She’s the informant I met Monday evening. On Wednesday she left me a phone message saying she’d found- ”

  “Did you put her up to it?” Razor reac
hed for his glasses and peered at Cole through them.

  Cole cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”

  Razor frowned. “Not exactly? What the hell does- ” He broke off, sighing. “What am I doing? You’d think I’m really talking to you.”

  Cole heard rising disbelief in that tone. He tried to keep Razor involved. “It’s your subconscious trying to work things out. Checking the books was her idea.”

  Razor eyed him skeptically. “Her idea.”

  “Basically.” He told Razor about the surprise call from Sara on Monday. “And we arranged to meet at Bon Vivre, where- ”

  “Wait.” Razor frowned. “If she called Wednesday to tell you she’d found something, then the meeting Monday was for what…other than sending you to the men’s room to call in the cavalry?”

  “Which didn’t come,” Cole said. “I had to rescue myself.”

  Razor grunted. “I got tied up. I’ve already apologized for that. What happened at Bon Vivre?”

  Across the table in the back booth she chose, Sara had shed her shoes and rubbed her feet, then downed nearly half the brandy and soda he ordered for her. “Here’s to Earl Lamper’s health. Preserve me from ever having Mao Tse Gao as my boss full time.”

  Some interviewees had to circle a while before coming to what they wanted to talk about. Cole sat back to wait on Sara. “Lamper’s sick?”

  “He had an emergency appendectomy last night.” She took another slug of her drink. “He’s such a sweetie to work for. Carries a share of the load; doesn’t give someone grief if they can’t make it in because their sitter didn’t show up that morning; doesn’t care if we come in late or play games on our work stations…as long as the work’s done and accurate. He even brings us flowers on our birthdays. But General Gao…” She grimaced. “If she’d divided Earl’s accounts among all of us, there wouldn’t be that much extra work for anyone.”

 

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