Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

Dimly, I heard the sound of a car racing to a stop nearby, then running footsteps crunching across the shell.

A man’s voice shouted, “It is finished! Let her go!”

Lena screamed, “Fool, she has the list!”

I felt a struggle above me, and then Lena’s arm slipped away from my throat and my face fell forward into the shell. A second later, Lena’s weight left my back, and I scrambled to a sitting position with bits of shell sticking into my flesh. My heart was racing, my ankle was pouring blood, and my nose was leaking.

Lena crouched a few feet away, her face twisted into a grimace of pure hatred. Peter held a gun to Lena’s temple. He looked resolute and devastated.

Peter said, “It’s over, Lena. Too many people have been destroyed.”

Lena said, “You are a fool, Peter. You have always been a fool.”

They both spoke English, as if they were speaking to each other through me.

Through my ruined lips, I said, “I gave the list to the FBI.”

Lena inclined her head toward my stairs. “ She said you made copies of it. I want those copies.”

“I lied when I told her that. There are no copies. The FBI agent has the only copy that existed.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Call the FBI and ask. I have the agent’s number on my phone. Would you like to call him?”

Peter made a slashing motion with his hand. “I said it’s over !”

Lena said, “You do not decide what is over and what is not over! That is for me to decide!”

I struggled into a more comfortable position against the carport wall and looked toward Briana’s body. I wondered if the blood came from a vein or an artery.

I said, “Is Briana dead?”

Lena nodded with no more emotion than she would have shown if I’d asked if a plant needed watering.

“You killed her?”

“She ruined my business.”

“The counterfeit business was yours ?”

She raised her head proudly. “The company that manufactures the merchandise is mine. You think that stupid woman could have run a company like mine? No brains, no business mind, no sense! Who takes a pair of shoes and leaves them on a man’s bed? I ask you, who? A crazy, stupid woman bringing down the police on our heads, that’s who! And who breaks into a house when she knows the police are watching her? If I had not saved the fool, we would all have been caught!”

I said, “You killed the FBI agent, too. You injected a muscle paralyzer into her and then slit her throat.”

“Who else? I could not trust my weak husband to do it. Like everything else, I had to do it myself. Men are fools! Soft, stupid fools like pretty women!”

Peter made a soft sound, as if he swallowed a sob.

I tried to remember what I’d been taught in the police academy about talking to irrational people.

“It must have been very difficult to kill that agent and get away so quickly.”

She looked proud. “I didn’t make a sound. I’m good at that. I slipped in the door the fool had left unlocked, and I moved through the house. But you had already come and spoiled it all. After you left, she ran to put on clothes. She was like a chicken, no brains. I waited to guide her to the car where Peter waited like a faithful dog. But the other woman came in the same way I had, through the back, her badge and guns ready to arrest Briana, arrest me, ruin our work and our lives. She was a fool, too, to come alone. She was arrogant, wanted the glory of the arrest without assistance from her colleagues. She never saw me before I killed her.”

“So Briana lied when she said she didn’t know who killed the woman.”

Lena smiled grimly but didn’t answer.

As if he had to give Lena deserved credit, Peter said, “Briana’s only talent is dishonesty.”

Lena said, “I stripped the agent of all identifying evidence and fled—but stupid Briana had let the list fall from her handbag. Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

His voice heavy with sadness, Peter said, “Lena, I don’t know the woman you have become. You have lost sight of our reason for being. You have become the thing we always hated, the greedy, dishonest, murderous people we’ve fought all our lives.”

Lena gave him a withering look that held an ambitious woman’s scorn for a less ambitious man. With no warning, he fired his gun. Lena’s head flew apart, her torso snapped backward, one arm flying up, her knees crumpling. Odd how the body reacts before the first drop of blood has time to leave the body, as if it feels the shock of death even before its spirit has left. As her body hit the ground, I felt a stab of pity.

Wailing, Peter fell on her body, cupping himself around her like a lover. His gun had fallen. I scrabbled to my knees and crawled to the branch. I broke off a sturdy twig, crawled to the gun, and slipped the twig through the trigger ring so I could lift it without touching it. Like a three-legged cat, I crawled to the Bronco with Peter’s gun hanging from one hand. At the Bronco, I managed to hoist myself up on one leg and reach to the glove box and get my own gun.

The red haze had returned in front of my eyes, and my fingers trembled when I got my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 911.

I gave my name and address and said, “I want to report two murders. Both killers are on the scene. One is dead.”

“Are you in danger, ma’am?”

I looked at Peter’s quivering form holding Lena as if she were his lifeline.

“No, but I have a deep cut on my leg and I’m losing a lot of blood.”

“Help is on the way.”

I ended the call and everything went black.

I woke up to the sound of sirens and the feel of hands lifting me onto a stretcher. I couldn’t get my eyelids open, so I didn’t see the people who were lifting me, but I thought I might be hallucinating anyway because I heard Guidry’s voice saying, “I don’t know what happened! I just got here!”

The next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed and a nurse was standing beside me adjusting a bag of fluid on an IV stand.

She saw me looking at her and said, “Hi. Everything’s fine. You’re back from surgery and your leg’s going to be just fine.”

Michael’s worried face swam into view. Paco was beside him trying to smile but failing. There was Guidry again, too, and he didn’t seem to be a hallucination.

Steven was also there, all ramrod straight and embarrassed. The other men stood on the opposite side of my bed from him, as if they had consigned him to the outer fringes of decency.

The nurse said, “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the pain in your leg right now?”

My leg hurt like a mother-effer.

I said, “Ten.”

She put a call button in my hand. “Push this button whenever you feel pain, and it will release some morphine. Don’t be stoic. Pain is not good. Don’t be afraid you’ll get too much morphine, either. The amount you can get in any given time is controlled, so make sure you stay ahead of the pain.”

I pushed the button. In seconds, the pain lessened to a tolerable level.

I said, “I love you.”

She laughed. “Okay, gentlemen, you can have a few minutes with her, but only a few minutes.”

She left the room, and Steven spoke.

“Ms. Hemingway, I apologize for this, but I have to ask you what happened.”

“Lena ran at me when I got out of my car. She had a hypodermic needle in one hand and a knife in the other.”

Suddenly alarmed, I looked at Michael and Paco. “Be careful around the driveway. That needle is on the ground. It probably has curare in it. Don’t walk around barefoot until it’s removed.”

Paco said, “Dixie, the crime-scene people are there. They’ll cover every inch of the place. They’ll find it.”