Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

“Barrio doc. Dirty Larry was”—she didn’t want to say “with me,” because it wasn’t precisely accurate and she didn’t want Morrie ragging on her like an overprotective dad about hanging out with a narc. They were known to be wild cards.

“Dirty Larry came along afterward. He realized I couldn’t go to a regular facility without answering questions neither of us wanted to answer.”

“Where’d he take you from?”

Actually, Alch had looked more like the trustworthy family doctor than a cop as he’d gingerly pulled the blood-sopped bandage off the wound. She hoped he’d follow through on that impression.

“From the scene of a B and E.”

“You the breaker and enterer?”

“Yeah. Ouch! You don’t have to pour half a bottle of rubbing alcohol on it.” She hissed in pain again.

“Yeah, I do. Those stitches aren’t pretty. You’re gonna have a really ragged scar, Carmen.”

“Like I care?”

“Wouldn’t want my daughter treated like that. Do a doting father a favor. Before you return from your flu absence, see a plastic surgeon. They don’t have to report anything to the police, and in your case, they’ll just think you got this in the line of duty. Looks like bad ER work.”

“What flu? I’ve never missed work for a cold or flu.”

“Flamingo flu! Bird flu. You know how to pull a con. You’re gonna need at least three days off.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

She glared at him as the alcohol sting ebbed.

“Easy.” Alch was looking as hard as Clint Eastwood in a Dirty Harry movie. Also like the Man Who Knew Too Much. “Yes, Daddy,” she conceded unhappily.

He resumed cutting lengths of white adhesive tape and attaching them to the edge of the bathroom sink.

“You need to be taped all around for a long knife wound like that. That doc was a total quack. Is Mariah able to take care of you if you’re in bed for a couple of days?”

“Don’t know. She’s not exactly at the ‘taking care of stage.”

“I’ll stop in when I can. Change your dressings. You order in. Watch TV. Keep down and as still as you can.”

“I’ll die of boredom.“Morrie pulled a huge roll of gauze out of the medicine cabinet. “You’ll kill your career if you don’t lay low for a while.”

“Oh … shoot.”

“Believe it or not, that would have been worse.”

“You don’t know what, why—”

He gave her a grave smile. “You’ll tell me, though. Eventually.”

“Aiii! ” The gauze was hitting the raw wound.

“Maybe now, huh?” he asked.

Morrie knelt to roll the gauze around and around her bared midriff. She wanted to sigh and protest. But any movement was like red hot lava rolling over her bare skin.

Morrie was, damn him, right. She needed to stay away from work and heal enough to function. She needed help. Someone between Mariah and her and Rafi Nadir. And maybe between her and Dirty Larry. Someone she could trust. Utterly.

“Stay there,” he said when her middle was wrapped like a mummy and starting to feel supported and better.

She buttoned her blouse when he left, feeling unexposed despite everything. The single father of a teenage daughter knew where not to look. She smiled. Morrie was a true sweetie of a guy. Wait! She must be sick. She didn’t think of any men that way.

He returned, bearing gifts. Two lowball glasses, a little smudgy, and a nice tall bottle of Johnnie Walker black.

“Now we use the good alcohol,” he said, sitting on the tub edge and pouring.

“Don’t make me laugh, Morrie. Don’t even make me chuckle. Please.”

“You got it.” He handed her the glass.

“I need to call in.”

“Nope. I called in on the way over here and said you had a real bad case of flu and I was taking you to the doctor.”

“You did! I didn’t hear—”

“You were way out of it, Carmen.”

“Oh. My papers—”

“I stashed ‘em in your desk drawer. I’ll get new forms and refill them out on your computer when I get back.”

She sipped a mouthwash-large bolt of scotch. Ran it over her teeth and gums, then swallowed that bracing fire.

“So.” Morrie sighed and relaxed for her. “Where, when, and why?”

“You don’t often have a chance to get your collars drunk before you interrogate them.”

“Nope.”

“This really isn’t fair, Morrie.”

“Nope.”

“I’m your superior officer.”

“Yup. But us privates sometimes have to look out for the looies for their own good.”

“We’re not in the army, Morrie. Just law enforcement.”

“It’s a war anyway.” He clicked glasses with her. “To iron maidens and good sense.”

“If I’d had good sense I wouldn’t be in this condition.”

“So tell me about it.”

She sipped the drink again, feeling the fire of the wound retreating before the inner fire of the straight scotch. That’s the way the firemen did it: set a fire to stop a fire.

“First, I have to say you have a really cute bathroom, Morrie. I never dreamed.”

He looked around at the seashell-patterned wallpaper, the sage-green and pink guest towels. “My daughter redid it when she was in college. Domestic phase. Then she went and got married and left me with this sea foam dream.”

“Don’t make me laugh, Morrie.”

“Tell me about it, and you won’t laugh.”

“No. I won’t laugh.”

So she told him about her stalker, which made him angry. He’d had a daughter to look after too. She told him about her suspicions about Max Kinsella being her nemesis. And he looked skeptical, as Matt did. Damn! That magician conned everyone around him, even grown men who should know better. Even when it looked like for all intents and purposes that he was dead and gone.

She described the last home invasion the stalker engineered, the trail of rose petals to Mariah’s bedroom, then hers.

Morrie stood up, tried to pace in the tidy little bathroom. “That should have been reported. You can’t do this all on your own.”

“I had no proof … until I got a print from Temple Barr’s place that matched the one print left on all that sick stuff the stalker planted at my place.”

“A print. Just one?”

“One is enough?”

“So Temple Barr’s your stalker?”

“Don’t. Make Me. Laugh.” Confession and scotch were making her edgy, confrontational.

“It wasn’t her fingerprint,” she admitted, “but you know whose prints would be all over her place, especially on those theatrical, egocentric Vangelis CDs in the bedroom.”

“Vangelis, huh?” Morrie chuckled. Was it admiringly? “Guy must have had some stamina.”

Molina felt her face burning almost as much as her side at the implication.

“So,” he said, “you have a set to match your one print with?”

“No. But when I catch him—”

The threat rang hollow even in her own ears. That house had been abandoned, ownerless. Certainly it had held only a shadow of the dark charisma of its likely resident. It was a ruin the snakes had come to take possession of. One particular resident snake with a fang that was eleven inches long.

So she told Morrie of her unauthorized entry. The invader she’d accidentally interrupted. Larry showing up. That part was touchy.

“What was Larry doing there?”

“He was following me.”

“Your stalker, maybe?”

“He’s one of us.”

“No, he’s not. He’s an undercover guy. They’re loners. They get freaky. Sometimes they turn.”

“I’m sure that wasn’t it.”

She eyed Alch. He was looking kinda blurry now, through a glass, smearily. She wasn’t used to anything stronger than a beer and an occasional social cocktail. She wasn’t used to a secret, pulsing pain that never backed off. Never had been plagued with menstrual cramps. Always had been strong. Hardy.