Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6)

by T'Gracie Reese

  “Telling him what?”

  “To kill Laurencia Dalrymple. And to kill you.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: A PHONE CALL AT MIDNIGHT

  At first, she did not know what had awakened her.

  It might have been the incessant pounding of rain on the window across the bedroom; for the storm had hit shortly before twelve (there had been flashes of lightning and rumblings of thunder at ten thirty, when she had gone to bed.)

  “Laurencia!”

  She propped herself up in the bed.

  “Laurencia!”

  No answer.

  She got out of bed, got into her slippers and robe, and wandered dazedly into the kitchen.

  “Laurencia?”

  Carefully she opened the door to Laurencia’s bedroom.

  Empty bed.

  She was, as she had sensed, alone in the apartment.

  “Where the hell…”

  She returned to her own bedroom and was aware of it for the first time.

  Her cell phone was buzzing.

  She had set it carefully on the nightstand before she got into bed. Now it glowed blue, buzzed like an adder, and vibrated its way toward the edge of the stand, as though it were trying to escape and get under the bed before it could be captured.

  She flipped it open, put it to her cheek, and breathed into it:

  “Hello?”

  A pause.

  Simply the sound of breathing at the other end.

  “Hello?”

  Then:

  “Nina?”

  It was…

  “Nina?”

  “Laurencia!”

  “Nina?”

  “Where are you? Are you all right?”

  Then merely the same pause, the same sound of breathing.

  Followed by a low, raspy:

  “Hello, Nina. It’s nice to talk to you.”

  She caught her breath.

  A flash of lightning illuminated the room.

  BAM said the thunder.

  FLASH answered more lightning.

  “I so enjoyed our time in the library. Didn’t you?”

  She could not speak.

  “Can’t you answer me? I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to reach you.”

  And, finally, she could answer.

  “Who are you?”

  Pause.

  Wheezing of breath.

  And:

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “What do you want?”

  Wheeze.

  Wheeze.

  Then, quietly:

  “Nothing. Any more.”

  “What are you talking about? How did you get this number?”

  “I have access to a great many things. Most of them, as I now realize, useless.”

  “What have you done with Laurencia?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If you’ve hurt her…”

  “I have not. But it is over now.”

  “What do you mean? What are you planning to do?”

  “End it. The voice tells me to end it. Tonight.”

  “Listen, you have to…”

  “I have to end it. That is all. I obey only the voice. Only the one voice and no other. I have done my best. And now it is time to go.”

  “Let me talk to Laurencia!”

  “Of course. Laurencia is, I’m certain, quite eager to speak with you.”

  “Then put her on! I want to be sure she’s all right!”

  “No. You must come here.”

  The sentence hit her like a blow in the stomach.

  For a time she could not speak.

  Then:

  “What? What did you say?”

  “I said that you must come here.”

  “I…I can’t do that.”

  “And why ever not?”

  “I don’t know where you are.”

  “Six eleven Clifford St. It’s a lovely garden apartment. Clifford Street is a mile or so about the U Street neighborhood. You’ll love it here, Nina. It’s a side of Washington that Laurencia and her friends have never shown you. Perhaps, to tell the truth, they’ve never seen it themselves. And that’s such a shame. For this neighborhood never rests. Laurencia and I, as we speak, are watching through the window, and looking at the sidewalk. Only the spattering of rain is to be seen, for the people who live and visit here are all warm and cozy inside the bars and the brothels. But the rain will stop sometime. And then they will be out again. The lovely ladies with their high heels and their red dresses and the long cigarettes that they smoke. All of this world you shall visit tonight. How exciting.”

  “This apartment is ringed by security people. I can’t just get out and go where I want to.”

  A pause and then the voice became deeper, more menacing:

  “Then find a way, dammit! Sneak out in the rain! Whoever’s watching that damned place is dozing in the back seat or playing pinochle. And, by the way, aren’t you supposed to be the great Nina Bannister? Hell, you and this woman sitting here with me are supposed to be the next leaders of the free world! And you can’t get out of your own apartment? Don’t make me laugh!”

  Another pause, and then the voice regained its earlier icy calmness.

  “You’re biggest problem, Nina, might be finding a cab that will come here. Most of them won’t do so after midnight. Such cowards they all are!”

  “Look, if you just…”

  “And do be aware: you must come alone.”

  “I’m just not certain that I…”

  “Because if you don’t—if you try to bring your beautiful Hispanic Secret Service friend—or any stray policemen you may have picked up—if you do either of those things, I will immediately cut the throat of Ms.—sorry, Senator—Dalrymple here.”

  “Please, please just…”

  “Good night, Nina.”

  And he hung up.

  For a time, she simply sat on the side of the bed, thinking, hearing the bellowing of the storm and having no idea what to do.

  Was this Jarrod Thornbloom, having ultimately gone mad?

  Dicken had been certain.

  Dicken had worked with Thornbloom for ten years. And Dicken was certain.

  And as for Laurencia—how had he managed to abduct her? What had happened to her security?

  And yet she could not forget the voice.

  “Nina?”

  “Nina?”

  Exactly how Laurencia always sounded on the phone.

  ‘You have to come.’

  ‘Six eleven Clifford St.’

  She sat and thought.

  The security people were down there.

  She could call them immediately.

  She could call Sylvia Morales.

  And, oh, how she wanted to do that!

  Within ten minutes, perhaps less, there would be policemen and women swarming all over this lunatic’s garden apartment (if such a place even existed).

  They would go in and find him and capture him.

  And it would all be over.

  She paused.

  And, her thought continued on its own, like a runaway train…and Laurencia would be found lying in the bed with her throat cut.

  No.

  No, she had to go.

  Dr. King’s words came back to her:

  “The ultimate measure of a––woman––is not where––she––stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where she stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

  Well.

  A little controversy here.

  And a little challenge.

  She got off the bed and began to get dressed.

  Doing this took some time and also took her into Laurencia’s bedroom, where she found in one of the closets, a massive dark green rain slicker––her own was still in Bay St. Lucy—and equally formidable galoshes. In ten minutes time, she was outfitted like a forest ranger with everything but hatchet and hose…

  …and in twelve minutes’ time, she was furtively shoving open the back porch door, much a
s Furl had learned to nose open her front porch door when he sensed food on the landing.

  The rain was pouring harder than ever now, rattling on the paving stones beneath, and falling in sheets so thick that nothing could be seen from more than ten feet away except for the faint blue of street lights, which looked like stars twinkling oh so faintly in a water sky.

  She made her way down the rickety back stairway, feeling like a burglar in reverse.

  She reached the bottom stair and turned right, up the sidewalk, heading East.

  Were those cars parked a few feet away, or just inert blobs of metal with streams of water running off their useless hoods?

  Hard to tell.

  At any rate, she realized that, if she could see nothing, than neither could she be seen.

  She splashed her way on, up the street.

  One of the finest law enforcement agencies in the world was now attempting to protect her.

  And she was doing her best to escape from it.

  In five minutes she had escaped from it.

  And in ten minutes, feeling surprisingly warm due to the quality of Laurencia’s rain gear—she felt as though she were standing in a diving bell—she was standing at the northwest corner of Mt. Vernon Square.

  “Taxi!”

  There were several, even at midnight, even in this storm.

  One of them pulled over and stopped.

  She bent down and shouted through a crack in the open window:

  “Six eleven Clifford Street! It’s…”

  “I know where it is,” said the driver, and pulled away.

  This happened twice more.

  Finally, she found a driver who would take her.

  She clambered into the cab, feeling like a nutria.

  “Sorry,” she panted, wiping rainwater out of her eye and giving up on the prospect of ever drying her hair, “about getting your backseat wet.”

  The driver pulled into the street, but looked at her through the mirror:

  “You sure you give me the right address?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know somebody up there?”

  Pause.

  “Yes,” she lied.

  “It’s good you know somebody up there, cause’—well, when I let you out, I’d like to see you meet somebody you know.”

  “It will be okay.”

  “Lot of guys won’t go up there. Lot of robberies happen up there.”

  “If you want more money…”

  A shake of the driver’s head:

  “Naw. I just want to be sure you’re safe. Want to be certain you know somebody up in that neighborhood.”

  “I do,” she said for the third time.

  Then she simply pressed her nose against the window, and watched Washington flow past.

  Leaving Mr. Vernon Square, they drove north on 7th St., through a neighborhood where the two Starbucks on each block had just closed; through a seedier neighborhood that housed only one Starbucks per block (that one having closed hours earlier in the evening), into a neighborhood with only nondescript coffee shops, into a neighborhood of taverns, into a neighborhood of bars, and finally into a neighborhood of brothels.

  The rain continued to pour down.

  Through garishly open windows she could see people drinking and playing pool; outside, between the drinking establishments and below seedy hotel windows, women dressed in colored underwear and foot-tall high heels were huddled back into alleys, points of fire designating the middle of their lips.

  Nina paid the driver, opened the door, and got out, putting her rain boot squarely in a six-inch puddle.

  “Who you know up here?” asked the driver.

  She had to shout to make herself heard over the rattling of the rain on the cab, and over the sounds of music wailing, pool balls clicking, big men cursing, and bigger men replying, that were oozing out into the street around her.

  “My aunt.”

  “Your what?”

  “My aunt lives up here.”

  The driver shook his head:

  “You’ve got some aunt.”

  Nina nodded:

  “Yes. She’s a tough old bird.”

  “Good luck to her. And good luck to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Six eleven is right over there.”

  And so saying, the cab driver pulled away.

  Leaving her in the middle of the toughest neighborhood she had ever seen, except when she visited Tom Broussard.

  She breathed deeply, and the rain pelted her.

  This was insane.

  Nothing was to keep this man from killing her; from killing both of them.

  But if she turned now and ran away, simply ran until she had covered the five or ten or fifteen blocks where Starbucks again thrived and cabs still prowled—if she did this, she could be back home under her own sheets within an hour.

  And Laurencia would almost certainly be dead, lying in a seedy apartment bed with her throat cut.

  So she turned and walked toward a metal railing on the sidewalk, beyond which was a lighted window, beside which was a darkened five-foot flight of descending stairs.

  Ending in a doorway.

  Above which had been nailed the dingy gray numbers six eleven.

  The window glowed yellow, but it was so dirty that she could make out nothing inside.

  “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

  She walked down the stairs.

  The heavy wooden door confronted her.

  There was a button of some kind on the wall just beside the handle.

  She pressed it; a buzzing sound could be heard from within.

  But nothing seemed to move.

  She knocked on the door.

  Again, nothing.

  Summoning all her courage, she found that she was able to shout:

  “Laurencia!”

  The thunder rumbled in answer and the lightning flashed and the rain deluged and a rat ran across the ground between her feet and the door stop.

  But nothing else.

  So she turned the door knob and pressed.

  The door swung open.

  Before her loomed a lighted, narrow hallway, with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling, held up by a frayed cord.

  “Laurencia?”

  She stepped forward.

  No reply.

  She walked on.

  Then she looked left.

  The apartment, she could see, consisted only of one room, with a bathroom tucked into one corner and the semblance of a kitchen tucked into another.

  On the far side, through the window, she could see rain pellets spattering off the sidewalk.

  Then she looked at the walls.

  They were covered with signs, made out of butcher paper and carrying messages scrawled in red, blue, or black markers:

  GOD IS COMING!

  HOMOSEXUALITY IS BESTIAL!

  ABORTIONISTS WILL FRY IN HELL!

  WOMEN—KNOW YOUR MASTERS!

  There, just to her left, in the center of the room, was a stack of envelopes, and beside it a few sheets of stationery.

  Cream colored.

  And just beyond that was the single bed.

  And on it, lay a body.

  Despite herself, and knowing somehow, seeing the lifeless blue eyes fixed unseeingly on a spot in the ceiling, the hand hanging never again to be moved over the bedside, the fingertips reaching almost to faded carpet—knowing of course that she had nothing to fear from this figure, she made her way across the room and peered down into the corpse’s face.

  Straggled white hair, still ruddy complexion…

  Baggy, formless slacks, white shirt, now stained…

  …those eyes, staring upward.

  “That,” she whispered to herself, the words floating down to ears that could not hear, “is Jarrod Thornbloom.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: WHERE ONE GOES IN OUR NATION’S CAPITAL WHEN IT IS VERY LATE AT NIGHT AND ALL OF THE STARBUCKS ARE CLOSED

  They all went to
the headquarters of the Secret Service.

  Sylvia was there.

  Laurencia had been brought there.

  Dicken Proctor had been brought there.

  Jeb Maxwell, the House Majority Whip had been brought there.

  Nina was there.

  And Stockmeyer, Head of the Secret Service, had just strode into the room.

  He looked around the table where they all were sitting and said:

  “It’s not Thornbloom.”

  No one spoke.

  Stockbridge continued:

  “It’s a dead ringer for the man. Six foot two, white beard, blue eyes, same facial structure…but it’s not Thornbloom.”

  Silence.

  Finally, Nina:

  “I’m sorry that I said it was. I had never seen Jarrod Thornbloom. Only pictures of him, and, of course, only on TV.”

  Stockbridge merely nodded:

  “That’s all right. The resemblance is remarkable.”

  Dicken Proctor:

  “You’re sure it’s not him?”

  “We’re sure. Fingerprints.”

  “Well. Now that I think back upon that morning in the office. The sun had not come up. The lights were dimmed.”

  “You made a mistake. It happens. And you, Congresswoman Bannister, made an even bigger mistake.”

  Nina nodded, knowing what was sure to come.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You went up there by yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  “What in God’s name were you thinking?”

  “He had Laurencia. He said he was going to kill her.”

  But Laurencia merely leaned forward and said:

  “I was on the Hill, dear. We had an emergency meeting in response to a bill that is to come up tomorrow. These things happen frequently.”

  “I heard you. I heard your voice on the phone.”

  No one spoke.

  Finally Stockmeyer:

  “I’m not sure how that is possible. I’m also not sure how this man was able to get your number.”

  “But who,” asked Nina, “is the man, anyway?”

  A shrug of Stockmeyer’s shoulders:

  “We were able to identify him a little over an hour ago. I could give you a name, but it wouldn’t matter. He’s a small time crook and drug dealer. The city’s full of them. Quite a few arrests.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Drug overdose. Heroin.”

  “He said,” Nina said quietly, “that the voices had told him to end it.”