Strange Robby

by Selina Rosen

  "What is that smell?" Jason asked, flagging his hand in front of his face.

  Kirk was driving quickly, putting as much distance between them and Spider Webb as he could.

  "What is that fucking smell?" Jason demanded again. He saw the color go up Kirk's face, and started to laugh. "You shit your fucking pants!" He laughed harder. "Big bad Kirky shit all over himself. Oh man, that's one for the books."

  "Shut the fuck up!" Kirk screamed. He'd never been more terrified in his life.

  "Well, one thing's for sure. She has the push. No more wondering about that."

  Kirk's hands would be shaking if they weren't on the wheel, and he hadn't shit his pants since he was three. So, as much as he would have liked to disagree with Jason, he couldn't.

  "I'm gonna go change my pants, and then we'll make a call to Deacon." Kirk glared at Jason. "I swear, if this ever leaks out . . . "

  "What? The fucking seat will be ruined?" Jason laughed uncontrollably.

  Kirk didn't think it was funny.

  Spider didn't stop by the hospital that day; she went straight home. Carrie wasn't home yet, and probably wouldn't be for another hour, so now was as good a time as ever.

  She dug through her drawer until she found what she was looking for. Then she stuffed it in the top of her pants quickly.

  She grabbed her old TV, headed for the door, shoved the TV in her truck and headed out. She went the long way, making sure that no one was trailing her. A quick diagnosis of her truck had turned nothing up, and she had made a habit of only wearing clothes after she had run them in the drier on high ten minutes first.

  Still, she hoped that she wasn't making a big mistake. Hoped that she wasn't giving the So-what-if guys just the break they needed.

  Robby was working on a microwave. Evan was helping him and telling him about his day. Things between them were seemingly normal, although Robby doubted their relationship would ever be the same again.

  " . . . Roseanna looked at me and asked me if I would help her with her math. 'Cause of me being so much better at it than her."

  Robby laughed. "I think you'd better work on your English."

  "I'm just excited." He slowed down. "I'm sixteen now, Robby. I got my driver's license. I know you don't want me to work, but the guy at the market said I could have your old job, and I'd help out with the money around here and still have something left over . . . "

  "And then you could buy a car and go out with Roseanna," Robby teased. "Hand me that pair of pliers."

  Evan handed Robby the pliers. "Well, yeah," he said more than a little embarrassed.

  "What about your grades, Evan? You don't make great grades anyway, except for math. If you start working, you're still going to have your chores here, and then you'll have less time to study," Robby said. He grunted a little as he pried on the screw head. Someone had striped the head out, and a screwdriver wouldn't work on it.

  "I swear I'll keep my grades up, Robby. You let Donna and Janice and Devan work, and they're younger than I am," Evan begged.

  "Donna and Janice are just babysitting a couple of nights a week here at the house. Devan mows lawns and rakes leaves here in the neighborhood, so that's not really the same. Besides, they make a lot better grades than you do," Robby said. The damn screw finally came out.

  "Please, Robby! I'll work double hard."

  Robby thought about it. Evan had turned his act around and was acting more responsible. Besides, why shouldn't he bring in some money to help with the family? "All right, but here are the rules. Your grades suffer and that's it—no argument . . . "

  "Deal," Evan said.

  "Wait, I ain't finished yet, boy. Second, you still do your chores around here, no questions asked, and no complaints."

  "Deal."

  "I'm still not finished. Ten percent of what you make goes to the house, and another ten percent goes into your bank account—just like the girls and Devan."

  "Great! Can I go tell old man Cooper I'll take the job?"

  "Get going," Robby said with a laugh.

  Evan took off through the side door for the house.

  "Bet that gets to be a handful."

  Robby started and turned to face the woman who had just walked in the garage door carrying a TV set. Even if her coloring hadn't been so strange, he still wouldn't have had any trouble remembering her. She set the TV down.

  Robby stood up and wiped his hands. He looked at her and again he saw the visions—remnants of a life filled with war and hell. "Something tells me you didn't come here to get your TV fixed."

  Spider Webb pulled something out of the front of her pants and threw it onto the workbench.

  He stared at his glove for a moment then looked at her. "I dropped it. I knew where I must have dropped it, but I didn't dare go back after it . . . If you knew, why didn't you turn me in right then?"

  "I never really wanted to turn you in at all. But after I found that I really couldn't, could I?" She held up her hand. "I noticed your hands the minute we walked in. I could feel you in my head, just like I'm sure you could feel me in yours."

  Robby walked over and slowly put his hand against hers. It was almost a perfect match, with his fingers being only slightly longer than hers.

  "I can never get gloves. Where the hell did you get this?"

  Robby moved his hand and picked up the glove. "I make them. See?" He held it out to her. "I take two pairs of work gloves, cut the ends out of the fingers on one pair, cut the whole finger off the other and sew them together. If they had found this . . . "

  "They'd go back up the line with it and sooner or later someone would remember that the garbage man had abnormally large hands, DNA evidence in the gloves. You'd be gone, and I don't think I'd be far behind you," she said.

  "Do you . . . could we be related?" Robby asked. In his whole life he'd never seen anyone with hands like his except in a picture of his father.

  Spider shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe distantly. My mother and my brother both had this . . . I'd call it a deformity, except that besides getting me teased I've never found it to be anything but a plus. Except for you, I've never seen anyone outside my family with these hands before." She paused. "I know that you have psychic ability . . . "

  "And so do you," he said.

  She nodded. "It's not lethal like yours, but yes I do." She paused again and then continued. "There are some nasty fuckers hanging around. Call themselves the SWTF, stands for Special Weapons Task Force. They're investigating your case, and they're following me. I'm not going to tell you everything that's going on because I'm not really sure I really understand it. But I will tell you this. I never had any plans to come near you again; it's just too risky. But, Robby, you have got to quit killing people, man."

  Harry Sullivan was looking over the dock at the water again. A view he was becoming increasingly irritated by. They slammed the plastic pipe into his back again, and this time he threw up.

  "I asked you what you sent her," Kirk said.

  "And I told you. Nothing!" Harry said through clenched teeth.

  Kirk hit him again.

  He saw stars. They were going to kill him no matter what he said. He knew that, and knowing that, there was no reason for him to tell them a goddamned thing. He just wished they'd kill him and get it over with. He'd tried fighting them, and they'd broken both his legs for his effort. They spun him around, putting pressure on his badly broken limbs, and he almost passed out. Then they slapped him in the face till he was almost conscious.

  "I'm going to ask you one more time." Kirk put the barrel of his gun against Harry's forehead. "What did you send the cop? What does she know?"

  Harry forced a pained laugh. "It's gonna kill ya man. You'll never see it coming; you'll just be dead. You bastards built this thing, and now it's gonna kill ya—if she don't get ya first." He spit in Kirk's face. "I'll see you in hell."

  Kirk pulled the trigger. Harry's body poured over the rail and into the river with a splash. By morning his body would be
in the next county, if the catfish didn't eat him outright. But he wouldn't be going to hell.

  Chapter Ten

  "Better is the end of a thing than the beginning

  of it: and the patient in spirit is better than the

  proud in spirit. Be not hasty in thy spirit to be

  angry: for anger rests in the bosom of fools."

  Ecclesiastes 7:8&9

  The campaign had been a disaster—for Carrie's opponent.

  He had tried to make her sexuality an issue, but these days it just wasn't that big a deal.

  Carrie had countered his attacks with information and knowledge, explaining to the voters just exactly what a district attorney did. She pointed out that while she had several years' experience in criminal law, William Barns had never worked in anything but corporate law, and never in any accountable capacity.

  Further, she had asked the voters to consider the sick and tawdry things that Barns and his wife might be doing in their bedroom. When his camp protested her tactics, she reminded the voters that he was the one that insisted that a person's sex life was the determining factor in whether they would be a good DA or not.

  In the first—and subsequently only—debate held, Carrie had presented a chart showing a definite rise in arrest to conviction rates, and a lowering of the crime rate, explaining that she would continue to run the DA's office as Richards had with his input and support.

  Barns had countered, "That's not because of the DA's office, that's because of the Fry Guy. Who, by the way, you haven't gotten any closer to catching."

  Carrie had smiled, completely unflapped by his outburst. "The 'Fry Guy' killings would appear to have stopped for the time being. You can hardly accuse the DA's office or the city's police force of shabby work in the case. As you no doubt know, there are at least two federal agencies involved in this investigation as well, and they're no closer to catching this guy than we are. The Fry Guy killings are a high priority, and we're doing everything in our power to apprehend him. I just don't think it's the most important case on the book. Not when there are people out there killing innocents—people without records of violent crime. As DA, my job is to decide which cases get tried and which don't, to make sure that innocent men aren't tried for crimes that they didn't commit, and that convicted criminals are punished to the fullest extent of the law. Richards didn't do a whole lot of plea bargaining, and neither will I."

  "Well, isn't that a whole lot of double talk that common people don't understand," Barns said.

  "By 'common,' I'm assuming that you mean 'stupid,' and I by no means believe that the voters of Shea City are stupid. Which is why they'll all be voting for me on Election Day."

  "So are you saying that anyone who doesn't vote for you is stupid?" Barns screamed. He was losing it—both the debate and his temper.

  "What's next, Barns? Are you going to scream 'I'm rubber and you're glue'? Come on. Tell us what you're going to do as DA instead of pointing fingers at me. The people can look up my record. I've got five years of experience working as a prosecuting attorney in the DA's office, three in LA and two here. Richards didn't make me assistant DA because he thought I couldn't handle the job. He didn't ask his supporters to vote for me because he thought I was inept. What can you bring to the DA's office that I can't? That's all the people want to know."

  "Family values for one thing. I've been married for fifteen years and have three kids. We go to church every Sunday."

  "So do you deal with a lot of murderers there? Because I think what the people want to know is whether you can convict criminals and get them off the street."

  "I want to get them off the street. I know how, and I have a family to protect which gives me a little more incentive than you," Barns countered.

  "The citizens of this city are my main concern. My partner is a police detective, so it's in my best interest to make sure that I don't put killers back on the street."

  "Did you hear that, people? She said she. Now do we really want our city represented by a lesbian?"

  "I'm not running for mayor, I'm running for DA. It isn't the DA's job to represent the city. If you think that being DA is a really glitzy job, then you're going to be mightily disappointed. You get pulled out in the middle of the night to look at bloody crime scenes, and dragged to the morgue to look at bodies. You spend most of your working hours dealing with the scum of the city. There is nothing at all glamorous about being DA. You have to be dedicated to your work and to the people of this city. You aren't above them, you are their employee, and you have to be able to get the job done. I know I can; I've done it; I'm currently doing it. I don't even think you know what the DA's job actually is, since you seem to think that the only real qualification you need is to be heterosexual."

  "You are monopolizing all of the time." He looked at the moderator. "She is monopolizing all of the time."

  The moderator shrugged. "Sorry, it's an open topic, one-on-one debate, which is what you asked for, Sir."

  "If you can't hold your own in a friendly debate, how do you expect to hold your own in the courtroom day after day?"

  Barns had stormed off the stage and out of the building. When a wall of reporters had tried to talk to him he had shoved through them without a word.

  The rest of his campaign was one giant homo-hating spread after another.

  Carrie had countered by continuing to show the public that she knew what the job was and how to do it.

  When a trashy looking hooker went to the news media and claimed that she was the "Family man's" mistress, 'hypocrite' was added to the list of his shortcomings.

  Carrie won by a landslide.

  At her campaign headquarters the noise was deafening as the final tally came in. There were congratulations from everyone. She gave her acceptance speech, and then Carrie went off to find Spider.

  She hadn't seen her much at all the entire evening. Or the last few weeks for that matter. Spider was still very uncomfortable being "out" in front of anyone, and now she had instantly become one of the most celebrated lesbians in the city. Carrie found Spider in the corner talking to Tommy and Laura. They were all talking and laughing and swilling champagne. She wished she had found Spider talking to some total stranger—as long as it wasn't a beautiful woman stranger. Spider really seemed to have a hard time making friends, and it was mostly because she didn't try.

  People moved out of Carrie's way to let her through without being asked. It was then that it really sank in. She had just won the election. From now on people were going to be treating her differently, and she wasn't sure that she liked that idea. Wasn't sure that she liked it at all.

  Suddenly there were too many people in the room. The walls seemed to be closing in. From now on, like it or not, she was a public figure. Mikes in her face whenever she turned around, very little personal time, no fucking privacy. What the hell had she been thinking?

  Spider pushed her way through the crowd. Carrie felt Spider's hand at her elbow, steadying her.

  "It will be OK, Carrie." Spider whispered in her ear. "It's nothing that you haven't been doing all along. Next week the campaign, the election, and everything else will be old news, and you can get back to being DA."

  Carrie nodded, took a deep breath and found that she could breath again. Just having Spider there made her feel better. "I'm exhausted. I really just want to go home."

  "Then that's what we're doing," Spider said.

  They started out of the building, and the press was all over them. Carrie answered as well as her tired brain would let her . . . Yes, she was thrilled about the election . . . No, she would not be taking the congratulations call from Barns because she had never been as phony as he was and didn't plan to start now . . . No, she didn't plan to run for any other public office in the future, she was a prosecuting attorney, and she was very happy being DA.

  Spider found a mike in her face.

  "Detective Webb! What roll will you play now that your partner is DA?"

  Spider sta
red at the mike for a minute, but realized it wouldn't look good for Carrie if she took the mike and shoved it up the reporter's ass. "Well," she stammered, "I guess I'll support her like we support each other in everything. As far as playing any roll in the DA's office . . . decisions or stuff . . . the answer is none. She's the DA; I'm a cop. There's no reason for our paths to cross anymore at work than they ever have. The people voted for her, not me. And I would appreciate it if everyone would just leave me out of the politics." With that said, she physically pulled Carrie through the crowd and out of the building.

  "That's big trouble," Jason said through a mouthful of sandwich as he watched the TV screen.