J. Wachowski - In Plain View

He nodded like I’d agreed. “Gina found that out how serious I can be. I tried to tell her to leave it alone but no, she’s on a mission.” His voice cracked. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Nobody wanted it to end like that.”

Conspiraces and madness, barely tinted by facts. “End like what?”

“Tom was good about it at first. He knew what it felt like to lose somebody. But when he found out-”

“What?”

“I didn’t want it to go that way. It really was an accident. But she was going to the police. I had to stop her.”

“You stopped her?”

“I had to!” He smashed his fist against the wall. All the family photos banged and tilted.

I felt just as off-balance. “You were driving the car that killed my sister?”

“Tom went totally insane when he found out. Said we’d both go to hell if I didn’t make a public confession. He would find a way to bring us into the light. Like I had anything to do with his family problems.” Pat put his back to the wall. Confessing drained the little bit of spine he had. “When I saw how he’d done himself, I knew. I knew he was going to try and take me down, too.

“And then you showed up!” He pointed at me with both hands and laughed. “What are the chances? I thought for sure Tom had set it up. I thought you were after me.”

My brain continued to process. The rest of me was numb. I think I slurred my next words.

“You saw me at the tree, the day Tom died.”

Pat waved his hands like a professor repeating the facts for the slow kid. “Sure. Standing there with your camera, I recognized you right away. Gina had pictures. But there’s a family resemblance, too.”

The word family hit me like a shot to the head. Could Jenny hear him? If she made any noise, Pat would know where she was.

“You’ve been following me. You ran me off the road.”

“Oh for God’s sake, I did not.” A hand on each knee, he pushed himself upright. “I was miles away when I passed you. You slipped on the gravel. You weren’t hurt.”

“Only twelve stitches.” Pat the fireman was the fucking Moriarty of the Western Wasteland. “Jenny got the pills from you-that’s what this bag business is all about.”

“I didn’t give that stuff to her.” He seemed appalled at the suggestion. “She stole them from my car. Jenny?” he called out to her. “Tell your aunt how you took that medicine without asking.”

“Don’t answer him,” I shouted. “Jenny ended up in the hospital. Same hospital Tom Jost’s father is in. The old man saw your flashlight and thought Rachel was still in the house. Went searching for her and the smoke got him. If he dies, that’ll make you a double murderer, won’t it?”

“Shut up!” he screamed. “Shut up, shut up!” He pounded his fists against his forehead, and then squeezed them into his eye sockets. When he raised his head, he looked at me with wide, wild eyes. “I never meant for anyone to get hurt. That’s why you’ve got to help me and Jenny get out of here, right away. Right now.”

“Jenny is not going with you,” I said slow and clear.

“She has to.” He stepped forward and I stepped back, synchronized like Fred and Ginger, until we both stood in the center of my bedroom. “Nobody would want to hurt Jenny. Jenny is just a kid. If something happened to her, there’d be a lot of fuss.”

He wanted Jenny as a shield.

“Who’s after you, Pat?”

To my left, a nightstand held a paperback, a travel alarm and a glass of water. The water was in a nice, heavy glass. It might do some damage if I dropped it on his head. Nothing else weapon-worthy.

Pat glanced left, right. Pulled the bedroom door out to see the pile of dirty clothes behind it. He moved one direction, I moved the other, circling.

“Jenny?” he called, leaning over to try and see under the bed.

There was a clear path to the door. I jumped forward, shoving his butt as I passed and enjoying the thud that followed. I jerked the door shut on my way out, dashed across the hall to my sister’s room, got that door closed and locked before he slammed against it. The hollow-core door buckled like tin.

“Jenny? Jen! Come out,” I whispered. I jerked a dresser toward me, while my butt braced the door. “Little help here.”

Her face appeared, peeking around the bottom of the closet door.

“Find the phone! Quick.”

“It’s dead.” She held it up. She must have carried it into the closet with her. Realizing I needed help, Jenny scrambled out of the closet, got behind the chest and pushed.

As soon as we had the door blocked, I grabbed her hand and dragged her to the “Window! Outside. Go!”

Pat hit the door from the outside, rattling the dresser. Knobs and hinges tinkled metal on metal. The wood trim around the door jamb cracked.

I cranked open the casement window with one hand and fumbled the latches that held the screen in place with the other.

“Hurry, hurry. Out you go. I’ll keep him busy in here. You get to a neighbor’s house and call Curzon-I mean, call 9-1-1. Run. Don’t stop.” I grabbed her by the waist and swung her up, feet first, over the window frame. It wasn’t hard. Most of my shoes weighed more than Jenny.

She dropped into the shadowy space between the foundation hedge and the house with hardly a sound. I watched her get her bearings and skitter off.

“Good girl,” I whispered. Like her momma in the emergency room, Jenny didn’t freeze under pressure.

The chest of drawers gave a final creaking lurch and Pat’s hand wrapped around the door, caught the jamb and shoved it wide enough to fit his shoulder sideways. His face appeared in the crack for less than half a second. He saw me by the window and poof! he was gone.

“Shit!” I leapt over the bed, squeezed around the chest and pinched my way through the opening.

I flung myself down the hall with one thought- time. Jenny needed time to get away.

Pat must have heard me coming. He’d grabbed the bat. But his expression, as he glanced over his shoulder, was something between confused and skeptical, when the one-hundred-and-fifty-pound woman in a housecoat did her best to drive her shoulder right through his rib cage.

I’ve seen people shot, crushed and run over. I’ve seen fist fights, bar fights and concert brawls. News flash: watching and doing-very different.

Pat’s head hit the tile floor right where the hall carpet ended. Sound effects: the muffled whump of his body, followed by the melon crack of his head.

I bounced off him and landed with the small of my back against the corner of the wall. Sound effects: the oof and aaiee from your typical chop-socky martial arts movie.

The slugger clattered to the floor on the far side of Pat, then rolled toward the front door.

Pat grunted and turned over slowly-elbows, to knees, then upright.

I clawed my fingertips into the back of his pants, the plan being either to pull him down or myself up. “She’s not going anywhere with you.”

Focus on me, I thought. With my head ducked tight against his back, I kept both arms wrapped around his waist and locked my fingers. Run, Jenny, run.

“Let go-you stupid,” he grunted, “cow.” He took two steps, dragging me toward the door with him, then chopped at my hands and arms with the side of his fist. When he dug his thumbs into my wrists and twisted, my grip broke. I couldn’t stop my eyes from welling up, the tip of my nose from burning.

He reached for the bat. I dropped back on my haunches, swiveled a one-eighty on the slick wood floor, and pictured my sister when I whip-kicked into the side of his knee. Sound effects: crunchy-snapping followed by a satisfyingly high scream.