Lori Avocato - Dead On Arrival

I heard shuffling and no more voices. Before I could turn and run, I noticed Sky and Buzz near a sand dune. Buzz had something that sparkled in his hand, and I ran toward them and screamed, “No!”

And while they scuffled, he plunged it into Sky’s back!

“Stop that!” I picked up a piece of driftwood and ran at him swinging it like a star baseball player. “Leave him alone! What is wrong with you, Buzz?”

When he turned, I knew.

It was clearly in his eyes. Hatred. Mental illness. A mind that had snapped.

The clumsy, lovable Buzz Lightyear had turned into a monster. The crisp, clean-cut guy who had looked as if he’d stepped out of a brand-new toy box had vanished, and now a villain stood holding a bloody knife-and Sky lay on the ground.

From here I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but the wound was in his shoulder, much higher than any vital organs. Hopefully he was just playing dead or had passed out from shock and pain.

Buzz was on me in seconds. He tackled me to the ground and held the knife at my throat before I could run for help.

I had this thing about anyone touching my throat.

I hated it.

Just as much as I hated knives.

And now I knew that I hated a knife at my throat.

“Buzz, hon, let me get up and help Sky. I’m sure it was just an accident. Like the ambulance yesterday. No one will blame you.” That is if I lived to tell them.

He looked at me and laughed. “You are one smart nurse, Sokol, but dumb as shit for a broad.”

I lifted my knee with as much force as I could, landing it in his groin, but he merely cursed and pulled the knife across my neck.

“Oh!” The pain wasn’t as bad as the fear. My first instinct was to reach up and touch the cut, which was merely a flesh wound. But I felt the warm blood and trembled. He could have cut deeper, but didn’t. Most likely to just scare me.

Buzz Lightyear was no one to take lightly.

And, yeah, I was scared out of my mind, but knew I had to keep in control of myself in order to live and save Sky.

“You killed Payne,” I said, learning from past cases that the murderer always liked to brag before he…finished off his victim.

Buzz laughed. “The asshole deserved it. He was never the father he should have been.”

Father. Father? “Payne was your father?”

“And Pansy, the sicko, my mother. She’ll rot in hell with him when I get done with her.”

He was so nervous at the hospital because he must have come there to finish her off. That’s why he’d stayed behind. When Lilla and I had made a noise, it scared him off and saved Pansy’s life.

“But the woman at your house-” I said, trying to distract him and get as much information out of him that I could. I only prayed that I’d be alive to tell someone.

“She’s my housekeeper. I pay her extra to play the role of mommy. She gets a kick out of it-if you know what I mean.” He grinned. An evil grin.

I swallowed hard despite my neck and thought that human behavior would never cease to amaze me.

Evil was pure evil.

“But Pansy and Payne were brother and sister.” As if that’d make it impossible to have a child. Well, in my Catholic conscience it did.

He looked at me. “Don’t be stupid, Sokol. Incest between those two crazies was a given. I mean, they were like shadows of each other. No wonder they produced a weirdo like me!” He laughed.

But I felt his pain. What a life it must have been for him growing up. The theory that siblings produce mentally challenged offspring was valid in my eyes, no matter what the studies said.

“But why kill them?”

“I didn’t kill Mommy…yet.” He pushed the knife into my neck a bit more.

“Did you make threatening phone calls to me?”

He laughed. “I used you as a guinea pig since you were new, but then I lost interest when the opportunity arose for me to complete my plan. I told Mommy you were bad and that you knew about the fraud. That’s why she didn’t trust you.”

When he leaned closer, I noticed the radio on his shoulder and started to scream. It might cost me another scratch but maybe save Sky and I in the end. I flailed my arms about and hit the button as I did.

Saint T was with me. Not noticing the microphone was on, Buzz kept shouting louder and louder. I heard the static and started to shout our location, that Buzz was the killer and to send help, but I said it all in a way as if repeating his words so he wouldn’t be suspicious and kill me right then.

The more I fought him, the angrier he grew, and suddenly I realized-it wasn’t aimed at me.

Buzz began to go on about his childhood, and how could I do that to him and why didn’t I abort him. And if he couldn’t have love, he’d have money. All of it.

He’d envisioned me now as Pansy, his mother, and began to confess how he set up all the fraud at TLC to make a fortune-but Daddy got greedy and was going to cut into Buzz’s profits, so he had to be taken care of.

Buzz was not immune to murder, I reminded myself.

I kept repeating our location, what was happening and that Sky was down. Buzz, now in his own world, didn’t pay me any attention. He merely remained above me.

Hope Valley was only a half-hour drive from the shoreline, so the local police could drive to the beach in minutes, and hopefully, Jagger and Lieutenant Shatley could fly down soon after. I knew Jagger would have everything under control when he realized how late we were in getting back and when dispatch heard my frantic, albeit confusing, radio calls.

I decided to use my nurturing nurse’s nature on Buzz although I would rather have kicked him where it hurt several times. I knew he had me in the weight and strength department, so I had to go with my brains, since, being injured, I wasn’t sure I had the strength to use my self-defense techniques. Especially since he had me pinned down and the knife still near my throat.

Sky was starting to stir. Once he looked at me in a very painful, groggy stare. I winked at him and motioned for him to stay put.

Hopefully he wouldn’t try to be a macho pilot.

I’m sure he wanted to get up and kick the shit out of Buzz, since Sky apparently did love Pansy and hopefully to help me.

Oh what a tangled web we weave…

I leaned back in the helicopter and Jagger put his arm around me. Sky lay on the stretcher and crazy, pathetic, handcuffed Buzz had been taken back to Hope Valley in the police cruiser. The helicopter was flown by one of the part-time pilots.

“How sad,” I muttered.

Jagger looked at me.

“I know. I know. I can’t do my job if I feel sorry for the criminals.”

“Yep. No matter how nice they appear, how interesting or sad their lives are or how beautiful they are, they are still criminals.”

My forehead wrinkled. “Beautiful?”

His hold tightened. “Oh, I wrapped up a case yesterday. Real looker. Real con artist.”

“He was?”

“She was. You saw us at dinner the other night. Remember?”

Airbrush Lady! Jagger hadn’t been on a date, but working another case. Oh, how Jaggerlike.

And apparently oh-how Pauline-like to suspect that a guy was bowled over by a pretty face.

Guess I’d forgotten this was Jagger I was talking about. Now it made sense that he wasn’t around as much as usual. He had been helping Shatley, but also working another case and keeping tabs on me trying to solve mine.

“Interesting. But, in Buzz’s case, I do feel sorry that a life was so wasted because two people made a mistake.”

Jagger made some kind of guttural sound. “A big mistake.”

It was disgusting to think about, yet sad too. Pansy and Payne were products of their environment. Sky had told us that the two grew up without any friends or other family around. They’d pretty much been ostracized by all the kids because they looked so much alike and were so weird to boot.