A Carnival of Killing (21 page)

“I’ll talk to you guys later,” I said while I carefully slid the coat off my wounded shoulder. “Now I need to write. Scat!”

They scatted, and I wrote cautiously, leaving out such mundane minutiae as Kitty displaying the artwork on her crotch and my being forced to remove my pants. By the time I had finished and forwarded the story to Fred, the newsroom was almost empty. While Fred was reading the story, Al came to my desk and said he was heading for home. Fred asked me a couple of questions, said it was a fabulous story, sent it to composing and bade me goodnight.

I shut down my computer, struggled into my coat again, picked up my blazer and started toward the door, ready for the drive home. Then reality hit me. My car was still in the restaurant parking lot, two miles away.

Playing Pickup

Looking around the newsroom, I saw that the only other people in residence were an assistant editor and a reporter who were standing watch through the night in case of a fire, major accident or freakish storm. I couldn’t ask either of them for a ride home.

A bus was out of the question. It was a few minutes before midnight and I had no idea what the late night/early morning transit schedule might be.

My options were to call a taxi or call Martha. I walked back to my desk, took a deep breath and punched in the number for the phone beside our bed.

“I need a pick-me-up,” I said when Martha answered.

“Where the hell are you?” Martha said just below a scream. “Al said you were at work, but when I called there you didn’t answer your phone, and the desk said they hadn’t seen you or heard from you.”

“You called too early. I’ve been in the office for a little over an hour. My problem is that my car isn’t here. Could you please come and get me?”

“What happened to your car?” The decibel level and tone were still far above normal. “Did you have an accident?”

“The car is fine. No accident. It’s just parked a long way away and it’s too long a story to tell on the phone. Please just come and get me and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Okay,” Martha said in a calmer voice. “I’ll have to get dressed, so it’ll be a few minutes.”

“I’ll be watching for you from inside the front door,” I said.

Nine minutes later, Martha’s Toyota rolled to a stop in front of the
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and I scurried out of the lobby and slid into the passenger seat. Martha leaned over and kissed me on the lips before stepping on the gas pedal.

“That was quick,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting you for another five minutes or so.”

“I didn’t bother with underwear,” she said. “Just threw on my running suit and a jacket.”

This was good news. When we got home, she could take off her minimal garments as quickly as she’d put them on. But, just as I was fantasizing her slipping out of the running pants, the pressure from the car’s shoulder harness reminded me that maybe this wouldn’t be a good night for reckless passion.

Martha was sniffing. “You smell like perfume. You’ve been with a woman.”

“Oh, God, have I ever,” I said. “Just take me home, feed me some chicken soup and I’ll tell you the whole story before you read it in the paper.” Well, almost the whole story.

She nodded. “You’re carrying your sport coat. Why aren’t you wearing it?”

“That’s part of the story. I got nicked a tiny bit by a bullet.”

“A bullet!” she yelled. “Why the hell aren’t you in the hospital?”

“It’s just a little-bitty flesh wound and the EMT took care of it. Let’s go get that chicken soup.”

In the dark interior of the car, I could sense, rather than see, that she was frowning. “Sorry,” she said. “Hospital first, then chicken soup and true confessions.” She turned right at the next corner and we were on our way to Regions.

While we sat in the emergency room waiting for me to be examined, I asked Martha why she was home so early. She said the parties to the lawsuit had used the delayed starting time to settle the case without going to trial. “We were on the road home within an hour,” she said. “Sara was missing her kids and, like I said, I was lonesome for Sherlock Holmes.”

“But not for me?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you how lonesome I was for you after I hear about the woman you were with and why you were with her.”

“It was all in the line of duty. You’ll hear all about it right after the chicken soup.” At that point, a nurse named Jackie summoned me into a cubicle, where she removed the EMT’s blood-stained bandage and told me how lucky I was that the bullet had grazed my shoulder blade and hadn’t gone deeper. She swabbed on another layer of liquid fire and applied a fresh bandage.

“Check with your primary care physician in a couple of days,” Nurse Jackie said. “We want to make sure that nasty thing doesn’t get infected, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do,” I said. I wanted to tell her that I’d check with my doctor immediately after that heavy nether world frost I mentioned earlier, but I didn’t have time for the discussion that such a statement would precipitate.

The chicken soup came out of a can, but it warmed the belly and comforted the brain. Martha watched in silence while I emptied the bowl and polished off half a stack of saltines. It’s amazing what running after a gun-toting brunette in red boots will do for your appetite. When I finished, I put the bowl on the floor for Sherlock’s perusal. He sniffed the residue and walked away without giving it so much as one lick.

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” I said, watching the cat’s rear end disappear into the living room.

“He only eats homemade leftovers,” Martha said. “We’re spoiling him.”

“What do you mean we? There weren’t any homemade leftovers in this apartment until you moved in.”

“Maybe I’m spoiling both of you. Anyway, it’s now storytelling time, and it had better not spoil my feelings of sympathy.”

To make sure that it didn’t, I recited almost verbatim what I’d written for the paper. I stuck unswervingly to the main story line, taking care not to wander off into such unimportant side bars as Kitty’s dropped pantaloons, the pussycat paintings in her pubic curls, or poor Mitch’s pulled off pants.

“Amazing,” Martha said when I’d finished. “What you haven’t told me is how you happened to be in that fancy hotel room with that woman.”

I’d been working on an answer to that question while slurping my soup because I didn’t want Martha to know about my original plan to lure Kitty into my—our—bedroom. “She talked about this fabulous room during dinner, and I thought it would be the perfect place to confront her about the boots,” I said. “You know, quizzing her in private as opposed to maybe making a scene in the restaurant. So I asked her to take me up to see it.”

“It never occurred to you that she might be the one who killed that Klondike Kate?”

“That had occurred to me. What hadn’t was that she might be packing a gun. Her previous weapon of choice was a garrote.”

“You never learn, do you? How many times have you been shot now?”

I counted on my fingers. “I think this makes three.”

“Plus a stabbing, a solid whack on your thick skull and a couple of kicks down there,” Martha said, pointing at my crotch.

“All in day’s work.”

“Oh, right. And how many other reporters at the
Daily
Dispatch
have gotten themselves shot, stabbed and nearly emasculated?”

“Hey, I was hurt but I was never nearly emasculated.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“Okay, so maybe I’m not as careful as some people,” I said. “But Al’s been stabbed and whacked a couple of times, too.”

“Which puts him in the same loony tunes league as you,” Martha said. “And that reminds me, Al was coming out of this apartment when I got home. What was he doing here at that time of the night?”

Oops! I shouldn’t have mentioned Al. My creative mind went into high gear. “He came here to give me the picture I showed to Kitty,” I said. “And he stayed here waiting for me to call in case I needed him after I talked to Kitty. I did in fact call him right after the shooting, and he got to the hotel in time to take some shots of Angela bending over that Carlson character.”

“That should make Don happy.”

“I hope so. I’m going to be late into the office tomorrow, or I should say today, because I’ve been ordered to see Brownie first thing in the morning.”

“Then we’d better put you to bed right now so you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the interview,” Martha said.

“I thought you’d never get to that,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. This sent a streak of lightning through my right shoulder and I quickly lowered that arm.

“I see we’re also putting you right to sleep,” she said. “Come on, wounded warrior, it’s almost two o’clock.”

Seeing Red

Next morning Martha drove me to the restaurant parking lot so I could retrieve my car. Holding the scraper in my left hand, I cleaned a thick layer of frost off all the windows, coaxed the engine to life and drove to the police station. On the way, I called Don O’Rourke on my cell phone and told him I’d be late because of a hot date with Detective Brown. Don said he was expecting a hot story as soon as I finished talking to Brownie. I agreed that we needed something hot because the temperature had dipped below zero again. Nine degrees below, to be exact.

I found something extremely hot in the police station. Its name was Detective Curtis Brown. I was ushered into his office by a sergeant and hadn’t even said good morning when Brownie pointed to a straight-backed wooden chair and spat out the word, “Sit.” His face, which was always tinted with red, glowed with a rosier than normal hue.

I sat and said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning, my ass,” Brownie said. “You’ve done it again, haven’t you?”

“Done what again?” I asked.

“Turned a murder suspect loose.”

“I wasn’t sure she was a suspect until she pulled a gun on me.”

“But you must have thought she might be or you wouldn’t have had your tape recorder running.”

“True.”

“Did it ever occur to you to discuss your suspicions with me before going off on another one of your wild-ass goose chases?” Brownie asked.

“Actually, no,” I said. “I was chasing a story, not a wild-ass goose. And I was going to pass on whatever I found out.”

“How generous of you. And now, because all you ever think of is your goddamn story, we have an armed murder suspect on the run to God knows where.”

“How far can she run? Last seen she was wearing nothing but pantaloons and a bra, which would seem to draw attention anywhere she stopped. Also, she left her purse in the hotel room so she doesn’t have her money or her credit cards. When she runs out of gas, you’ve got her.”

Brownie’s face turned a deeper red. “Oh, it’s that simple is it? Well, she must have had a Visa card stashed in her car because she bought gas with it at a self-service station at 1:15 a.m. today.”

“Where’d she buy it?” I asked.

“No comment on that.”

“Was she still wearing the bra and pantaloons?”

“How the hell would I know? I told you it was self-service. Nobody saw her.”

“Must have been cold, pumping gas in her undies.”

“I’ll give her my sympathy the minute we bring her in. Which leads to my next question. Did she say anything to you that would give us a clue to where she might go?”

“All I know is that she came here from Madison, Wisconsin. She might go where she’s got family.”

“Makes sense,” Brownie said. “We’ll alert police in that area. Now how about giving me that tape you showed to Reilly?”

“Promise to give it back?”

“I promise to subpoena it and throw your ass in jail for concealing evidence if you don’t hand it to me right this fucking minute.”

Brownie’s face had turned from scarlet to burgundy. Not wishing to be the cause of a cerebral hemorrhage, I fished the tape out of my coat pocket and handed it to him. As he put it on his desk, the redness began to fade.

“You can go now,” he said.

“Thanks, but I’ve got a question for you,” I said.

“You’ve got a hell of a nerve to even suggest that I answer a question.”

“I’m a reporter, remember? I want to know if you’ve found out what kind of an affair Lee-Ann was carrying on with Carlson.”

Brownie folded his arms across his chest and stared at me. I stared back. We held each other’s gaze for a good thirty seconds before he sighed and said, “We haven’t talked to him yet, but you’ll probably wish you wrote for a tabloid instead of a family newspaper after you hear the story.”

“Lee-Ann had a very active love life,” I said. “I guess Kitty was right when she said she’d screw anything that wore pants.”

“Including red ones, but she got more than a screwing from those.”

“Will you be talking to Carlson today?”

“Probably. Depends on his condition. Now get the hell out of here.” He waved toward the door and I accepted his gracious invitation.

“She had what painted where?” This was Al’s reaction to my description of Kitty Catalano’s lower body art work. My follow story was in and we were eating ham-and-Swiss sandwiches in the
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lunchroom.

“You heard me,” I said. “She had a pussy painted on her pussy. Like I told her, I envy the artist.”

“God, I wish I’d been there to get a shot of that.”

“Maybe she’ll pose for you in the city jail.”

“Oh, baby, I’d lock onto that.”

“What if cameras were barred?”

“I could take pictures with a cell phone.”

We finished lunch and I returned to my desk to find a message from Toni Erickson. I punched in the number. “I read in the paper that you got shot,” she said when she heard my voice. “I was wondering if you’re okay.”

“The bullet just nicked my shoulder,” I said. “I’m fine. Ted Carlson got hit worse than I did, but he’s going to be okay, too.” I’d checked with the hospital earlier and learned that his condition was “good.”

“I was shocked when I read that Kitty told you she killed Lee-Ann and tried to kill me,” Toni said. “I thought for sure that it was Ted.”