Final Disposition (28 page)

      “We’re not?”

      “No, we are definitely not.”

      “Oh.”

*     *     *

       “Okay,
now
are we done?” Cellars gasped, trying to catch his breath.

      “For the moment,” Lisa Marcini replied in what some stupidly-analytical portion of Cellars dazed mind announced was a really life-like rendition of feline satisfaction.  “Cuddling can be nice, too.”

      “Really?”

      “Uh huh.  You don’t remember how to cuddle either?”

      “Don’t think so, but you seem to be pretty good at the ‘explaining’ part.  How does it go?”

      “It usually starts out something like this.”

      “Oh … yeah, that’s nice too,” Cellars agreed, making slight adjustments of his arms and legs as the pulsing harmonics of ‘Candle in the Wind’ began to fill the room … and his mind.  “Just one suggestion — to make this whole cuddling thing perfect — if it’s not too much to ask?”

      “Yeah, what’s that?”

      “Tell me a story.”

*     *     *

       “Okay, that’s it,” Lisa Marcini said as she suddenly sat up in the bed, allowing the single silk sheet to flow off her glistening nude body, “your turn.”

      “To do what?” Cellars gasped, thinking it was a damned good thing she was a nurse because he wasn’t sure how long his heart was going to last.

      
Christ, I might have been better off spending the afternoon facing up to MacGregor and Harthburn
, he thought … and then immediately rejected the idea as being irrefutable proof that he was totally insane.

      “Talk — loud enough so that I can hear — while I get us something to eat and drink.”

      “Thank god,” Cellars whispered hoarsely as he watched Marcini walk out of the bedroom without bothering to cover her nakedness.

      
Hey, what happened to our music?

      “What do you want me to tell you?” he called out as he looked around for his boxer shorts and t-shirt, found them and slid them on, did the same with his jeans, and then walked over to the nearby dresser and began fiddling with the menu on his now-silent j-Connector that Marcini had plugged into her bedroom stereo system less than an hour ago.

      Moments later, the soothing rhythms of
Symphonic Rock
were echoing through the bedroom again.

      
That’s better.

      Cellars returned to the bed and then settled back into the pile of quasi-soft pillows with a contented sigh.

      “Tell me how the little guy is doing.”

      “As best I can recall, I think I saw him crawling away with a glassy-eyed grin and smoke pouring out of his ears.”

      He heard Marcini’s throaty laugh, thought it came out just about exactly as he’d planned it to sound … and then heard her emit a startled curse, followed by a muffled thump.

      “Hey, you okay out there?” he called out.

      “I’m fine, just dropped the damn wine bottle.  Good thing it wasn’t open yet.”

      There was an edge to her voice now that sounded eerily familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

      
She sounds really pissed
, he thought, trying to remember when and where he’d heard her voice sound like that.

      When she’d called MacGregor a Neanderthal?

      No, that wasn’t it.

      When Dr. Vargas had come into the room and interrupted us?

      No.

      When he’d ordered her to go tell ‘them’ that I’d regained consciousness?

      That was a lot closer, but still not it, he told himself, trying to force his limbic system to
think
as he heard the sound of a cork being popped out of a bottle.

      And then he stopped thinking at all, his eyes widening as he saw her step into the doorway …

      
God, she just can’t be real. 

      … with the opened bottle in one hand, and a pair of crystalline glasses in the other that glistened exactly like the pair of huge diamond earrings now dangling from her ears, and the even bigger diamond that hung from a gold chain around her neck and was nestled between her bare breasts.

      Cellars forced himself to sit up again — nearly groaning with the effort — because he sensed her theatric entrance was going to be too good of a show to miss.

      And it was.

      Her dimpled grin and flashing eyes seemed to be drawing him upwards as she walked — if that was the right word — over to the dresser, set the wine bottle and glasses down ….

      “You got dressed?”

      
Definitely not happy about that
, he thought, wincing as the harsh edge to her voice clashed with the opening notes of The Beatle’s famously romantic song.

      “Thought we were going to go take a little time out to sit down and have something to eat and drink?”

      “Not necessarily,” she rasped …

      “Ah.”

      … and then grimaced as the j-Connector began to play the glorious harmonics of ‘Let it Be’ through the four room speakers.

      “We won’t need that,” she growled as she quickly reached out and shut off the stereo.

      Instantly, the three-dimensional melody of enticingly harmonic instrumentation that had been flowing throughout the room — and throughout Cellars’ mind — went silent.

      “We won’t?” he responded in a stunned and stricken voice … at the very moment another voice — deep within the analytical portion of his brain that had been busily multi-tasking with the auditory cortex — suddenly yelled out.

      
Taser!

      “Oh, no, absolutely not … I’ve got something even better for that obsessed mind of yours,” she whispered enticingly.  “Something you’ll never forget as long as you live.”

      
Oh, shit, listen to her … really pissed now!  The Taser — where is it?!

      “Really?” Cellars said skeptically, equally annoyed now because he was hearing his inner alarms deep in the back of his mind again.

      
Thought you guys had stopped doing that about an hour ago.  What’s the matter now, afraid we’re going to actually have that coronary?

      “So tell me, Colin, do you like me like this?” she asked saucily as she held out her arms and twisted her brazenly naked body around, showing off ... everything.

      
Colin?

      
Where the hell is it?!

      “Or … do you like me better like this?”

      In a flash —
of what?
— that happened too fast for Cellars’ mind to comprehend, the erotic features of Lisa Marcini changed … to something else.  The glistening diamond earrings and pendant were still there … but Lisa wasn’t.

      In her place: an equivalently feminine creature, in terms of erotically poised naked body and deeply dimpled smile; but her eyes and her hair were … different?

      “Who are you?” he whispered hoarsely — as he instinctively lunged out of bed, backed up against the near wall and dropped into a defensive stance — and then immediately thought:
no, that’s not right
.

      
What are you?

      “I’m Allesandra.  Don’t you remember me, Colin?”

      
Oh, Christ, that shape-shifting creature in my CSI report … she’s real?!

      “No, I don’t remember you at all.”  He shook his head slowly, feeling his heart beating loudly … almost as loud as the internal alarms that were screaming for him to do something.

      
Anything … but do it now!

      She laughed.  “No, of course you don’t remember me.  How could you?  But you will … at least for a while … and then you’ll forget me again, forever,” she said in a voice that almost overwhelmed Cellars with its raspy discordant mix of passion and evil.  “But, first, you have to tell me something … and then you have to give me something.”

      “What?”  He could barely get the word out though his throat that seemed to be constricting with — what?

      
Fear … if you’ve been paying any goddamned attention!

      “You know.”

      “I don’t.”

      “Where is he?”

      “’He’ who?”

      “Bobby Dawson — your boyhood friend — the cunning one who tricked me with his ancient rifle.  Where is he?  I have to know where he’s hiding.”

       “I don’t know where he is,” Cellars said insistently, his fevered mind racing.  “I haven’t seen him since I woke up in the Army clinic.”

      “You’re lying.”

      “No, I’m not.  He called me a few hours ago, on that radio show, but I haven’t seen him.  Hell, I don’t even know what he looks like.”

      “You’ll remember where he is, and what he looks like … soon … but first you’re going to give it to me.”

      “Give you what?”

      Allesandra’s exotic face broke into a devilish grin, her purplish eyes flashing with amusement.

      “You know … something you picked up.”

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “Of course you do.  How can you not remember, last night, when you gave in to your fears and shot one of my friends?”

      
Shot who?  That Slogaan follower idiot, or —?

      
That shadow?

      
Oh, shit.

      “You know what I want, don’t you?”

      
Not the Taser … the gun!

      
I
know
, I shot it with —

      
No, not what …
where
!  The gun — where is it?!

      “You
are
going to tell me, Colin — I
will
know everything, eventually — but it so much more fun this way.”

      
On the chair, by the door … crap, too far, and she’s in the way, can’t get there.

      He tried not to look in the direction of the chair.  But then he realized he must have, because she suddenly laughed, turned around and walked over to the chair.

      “Is this what you were thinking about, Colin?” she asked, turning back around to him, her purplish eyes shining with amusement as she drew the 40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol out of its holster.  “You want it, don’t you?  Of course you do.  But you can’t have it, because —”

      Allesandra suddenly screamed, her voice a raging current of malevolence that seemed to sear at the very circuitry of Cellars’ mind, driving him back and away.  But he fought against the repulse, forcing himself to lunge forward and go for her with his bare hands.

      Then, a second later, he staggered to a halt as the limp naked form of Allesandra crumpled to the floor with a syringe sticking out of the back of her neck.

      Behind her, naked herself, but holding the Mini Stun Baton® in her shaking left hand, stood Lisa Marcini — her black hair wild and disheveled, and blood streaming down the side of her face — looking stunned and outraged.

      “What … what happened to your head?” Cellars rasped, his eyes still blinking in shock.

      “That
bitch
hit me with the goddamned wine bottle, and then …
what
the
hell
is she?” Lisa Marcini demanded, her paled face a panorama of rage and fear and disbelief.

      “You don’t want to know … you really don’t,” he whispered as he stared down at the crumpled figure.  “How much did you give her?”

      “Three cc’s … every drop I could get into that damned syringe.  Why, do you have a problem with that?!”

      Cellars shook his head slowly as he looked back up into Lisa Marcini’s fear- and shock-widened eyes.

      “No, I’m just wondering if that’s going to be enough … and, if it is, for how long?”

      Blinking in sudden awareness, Lisa Marcini quickly dropped down to her knees, cautiously felt for Allesandra’s carotid pulse, and then looked up at Cellars.

      “I guess it was more than enough,” she said solemnly.  “Either that, or I hit a big vein … because she’s dead.”

CHAPTER 20

      
It took Cellars and Marcini a little less than twenty minutes to get dressed, roll the limp body of Allesandra into the silk sheet from Marcini’s bed, and then — watching all the while for any sign of a curious neighbor — haul her out to the driveway and into the back of the white SUV.

      Marcini sat silently in the front passenger seat for a good ten minutes as Cellars slowly and carefully drove through downtown Jasper Springs, trying very hard not to attract the attention of any patrolling police officers, MPs or rabid fruitcakes as he worked his way toward a road that was becoming more and more familiar.  Then, finally, she couldn’t hold it back any longer.

      “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” she asked, staring at Cellars.

      “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘right thing’?” Cellars replied, keeping his eyes on the road.

      “Okay, for example, weren’t we supposed to have left the body right where it was, and then called the police?”

      “Under what might be called normal circumstances, yes, that’s exactly what we should have done,” Cellars agreed.

      “But we didn’t,” Marcini pointed out.

      “No, we did not; but these are not what we — in the law enforcement profession — would call ‘normal circumstances’.”

      “How the hell would you know what’s normal at a homicide crime scene?” Marcini demanded.  “You’ve only been conscious for a little less than twenty-four hours, and you can’t remember anything you did or said before that.”

      “True, again,” Cellars said calmly, “but I do remember — in a general sense — how to function as a police officer and as a crime scene investigator; which is presumably why I also know that the general procedure you described applies to situations in which a homicide may or may not have been committed —”