Lynne Heitman - First Class Killing

“Surprised to see me, weren’t you, doll?” She had to stop for a few breaths. “Old Sluggo, he’s not much of a liar.”

I stared down at her. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I couldn’t get close to her. The gun.Turn on the light, and find the gun. But then I started to feel sick.

“You should see yourself, sugar.” She let her head roll from side to side as if she were enjoying the feel of a feather pillow beneath her. She could barely talk, but she could still smile. “The way you’re looking at me.”

The poker felt slick in my hand. I looked down and saw the blood running down my arm and dripping into a pool at my feet. I didn’t know where I was bleeding from or why. I could feel myself getting lighter, as if I were pumped full of helium, ready to take off. My face burned. The room began to spiral. I thought I might just let go and flow with it. It would be easier than fighting it to stand up. I felt so hot.

“You want to kill me. I know you do.”

Her voice was hypnotic, the only thing that made sense. The sound of it, the tone and the texture were familiar. The way she said certain words. She had been the center of my world, the first thing I’d thought of in the morning and the last before I closed my eyes to sleep. Now her voice was the only thing I recognized, the only thing to hold on to as I started to disappear.

“You’d better kill me, too, because I swear to almighty God, after you pass out, you will pass from this world, because I will take that poker from you and run it straight through your heart. Then I’ll sit down and smoke a cigarette over your body.”

I backed away from her. I felt as if I were backing up a mountain. Why was it so hot? I had to sit down. Couldn’t sit down. She was coming. Why was I so…heavy? She’d rolled over and started to pull herself across the floor on her belly. A sick, twisted cry pushed out every time she moved. She was looking up at me, saying something. She was reaching toward me…she had it. She had the poker in her hand. Had I left it…it was supposed to be…it had been in my hand.

I staggered back and fell into the couch. I sank into…glass. There was glass on the couch. Huge, heavy chunks of it. It was under my feet. It was under her. I heard her moving over it. Everything was slowing down.

I had to get up. She couldn’t walk. If I could get up, all I had to do was get far enough away from her and…and what? Lie down and wait for someone to find me and save me? My feet wouldn’t move. She was in front of me now, using a chair to pull herself up. I heard the effort. I saw the way her body shook, every muscle engaged, every shred of her will lasered in on getting in position to kill me. I knew she would do it.

When she was up, she was towering again, her head swimming high above me. She tried to set her feet but could barely stay upright. She held the chair with one hand and raised the poker with the other. She held it like a dagger, aimed at my chest.

“Wait.”

“For what, darlin’?”

“Kiss me.”

Her right hand, the one that held the poker, dropped slightly. I looked at her face.

“Kiss me once. Please, Angel.” Every word felt like a lead weight that I had to lift, one at a time, to form into a sentence. “You said…”Breath. “You said…you wanted to. I wanted it, too. Please.”

“Oh, baby. You’re telling me a lie now, aren’t you?”

“No. What difference…anyway?” I reached out to her. “I don’t want to die alone.”

It seemed like forever we stayed that way. My arm reaching out, Angel staring in. She took a long, deep breath and held it. As she breathed out, she tipped her head back and looked down at me with half-closed eyes. She let the tip of her tongue glide across her upper lip. Her face contorted with pain as she inched slowly toward me, shortening the grip on her poker so she could keep it aimed at my throat. But her eyes were wild, as if she were on fire, burning from the inside. She could love me or kill me. To her it was the same.

I thought I would smell her perfume as she came closer, but all I could smell was blood, hers and mine. When she was close enough, I lifted my damaged arm and reached behind her head to pull her closer. Her hair was stiff and brittle, not soft the way it looked. My arm began to quiver when I touched her hair. It shook up to my shoulder as I twisted my fingers in it and pulled it taut. Her head slammed back, presenting her throat to me. I flashed on the image of Robin and that pale stretch of undamaged skin, the only part of her that still looked like her. The difference was the artery. Angel’s was pumping as hard as it could, especially after I kicked her in the knee.

She screeched, thrust the poker at my chest, and missed. She tried to twist out of my grip but had no leverage on a broken leg and fell instead into my chest. I held her head all the way back, took the heavy glass shard from the couch, and, with my strong hand, shoved it into that throbbing vein.

Someone floated over me. I heard a voice. I tried to open my eyes, but my lids were too heavy, and it just didn’t seem worth it. I was moving, or being moved. I didn’t have the strength to do anything. I was in a car. Something tight around my arm. It hurt. It was too tight. I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let go. I managed to get my eyes barely open and saw the big face under the car’s dome light. This time, he was wearing a mint green sport coat, and my blood was all over it. I put my head back down and went to sleep.

I CLOSED MY EYES AND TRIED TO FEEL THE STILLNESS in the early-morning air, to pull it inside of me and hold it there. Each time I breathed out, I tried to let go of a little more tension in my shoulders and my neck and my back. I let my arms hang at my sides. And then I tried to do the same with my mind, to let it relax and open up to whatever impulse I wanted to send its way. I wanted to empty it of all the events of the past few weeks, all the emotions save one. I held on to the anger. I let my mind go blank except for a bright, burning red stain that drew my complete focus. I took that stain and projected it out, across the distance from me to the target, and onto the bull’s-eye. The rest of the target fell away.

I picked up the gun. It felt comfortable in my hand. My fingers found their place around the grip, my index finger extended to the trigger. Everything felt right, and all I could see was the bright red target in front of me. As I raised my arm, the target grew larger. They say athletes who get in a zone see the basket or the cup or the baseball grow so big they can’t miss it. That’s how I felt. I was locked in on a target that looked to me as big as the entire wall. I knew I couldn’t miss it. I knew I wouldn’t.

I went through the checklist in my mind, the one Tristan and I had worked on. Arms raised, elbows slightly bent. Feet shoulder-width apart. Headgear and protective glasses in place. I adjusted my sleeve so that it didn’t make the stitches on my arm so uncomfortable. My wounds were almost completely healed.

The legal issues would take longer to sort out, but it looked as though self-defense would hold up. The cops had found enough in the cabin to support my story. What they hadn’t found was the archive. Bo had taken it. He had replaced it in the floorboard hideout with the brick that had killed Robin Sevitch. He had pulled it from the desk, exactly where Monica had told him it would be. The police had considered that a most interesting discovery.

Jamie was working through his issues. When he asked me if I thought he should tell Gina, I remembered the way I had felt the first moment I had seen his face on the screen. I told him I didn’t think she should pay the price for something he had done. We had done. I would keep his secret. I knew he would keep my secrets, too, if ever I had the courage to tell them to him. To anyone. I needed someone to tell my secrets to.