Me, Myself and Why? (20 page)

3.
The murderer used large spikes to keep the bodies standing against the wall . . . but as you will see from these edited photographs, he did not nail the bodies there, but rather propped them up. Strange, given that they were already dead, that he would not simply mutilate them further to get the proper pose. He risked having them fall off the spikes, rather than hurt the bodies further.

I took some time with this information before reading further. Shiro was surprised by not just the artistry and care, but something approaching tenderness. Tenderness implied familiarity. Familiarity implied . . . acquaintance, or worse.

Barf.

You will also notice I have left morning editions of the local papers for you. They include some real-estate offers, and I have followed up with some deals on the Internet. See the attached printouts—in particular, the one highlighted in blue.

It took time to find this one, and I am afraid I needed George’s assistance to contact the local police from some out-of-state locales. Apparently, Michaela feels his phone manner is better than mine. I did monitor his calls to ensure he would ask the correct questions.

These calls confirmed that one of our very few witnesses, the gentleman from the Pierre scene, has since moved to Minneapolis. You will recall Mr. Scherzo was the man who found the Pierre bodies and called the local police. He is here now, a strong coincidence. I suggest you alert Michaela and then interview this witness once more. Only you have the skills necessary to conduct the interview properly, so that his suspicions are not too quickly aroused. His current address, as you will find in the 297B file, is 369 Tarragon Way.

By now you may have come to the same conclusions I have

Thanks, Shiro; usually you assume I’m still foundering in ignorance.

but in case you have not,

Oh, great. Guess I got ahead of myself.

I shall say it simply: If this man is not the killer, he knows the killer. And the killer, whoever he is, knows us.

Good gosh, she really thought I was an imbecile!

I looked at the clock and gasped.
No time to waste!
I ran out of the apartment so quickly, I was all the way to my car before I realized I was barefoot, and in a T-shirt and panties.

It must be Tuesday.

Chapter Sixty-six

The house was in a somewhat rough neighborhood in North Minneapolis—the type that looked better by day than by night, despite the peeling paint on every aging house and broken machinery on every unkempt lawn. Scherzo’s was a bit neater than average: pale green with a high chain-link fence surrounding the carefully mowed crabgrass.

There was a BEWARE OF DOGS sign at the front gate, but a quick visual check down either side of the house revealed nothing. Same with a rattling of the gate and a loud “Hello.” Dogs were probably inside.

I unlatched the gate and stepped up the cobblestone path to the door, taking in the low-maintenance pebble-and-bush garden and three-season porch that fronted the house.

Just as my hand touched the latch to the porch door, three Dobermans came whipping around the corner.

They weren’t inside,
I told myself, freezing in terror at their size and speed.
They were hiding in back. They were quiet. And they were well trained. Now they’re going to have me for a

Chapter Sixty-seven

SNACK ON THIS, BITCHES!

BAM!

KA-POW!

BAM-BLOOIE!

Just like in the old
Batman
television show! Holy hot dogs, Batman! Batgirl saves the day!

Damn.

Puppies can take a hit.

Okay fine

Get up

You too

You three

Growl growl growl

(honk honk honk)

Let’s go again

This time

Animal

To

Animal

Chapter Sixty-eight

That was fun.

Not even close

To bored yet.

What was I doing here?
Besides killing dogs.
Who cares.
Let’s go

Have some

FUN

Lessee
Lots of houses

But no bars

Where can a girl get a guy to buy her a drink?
Need wheels.
Need to go round and round.
Need to fly.
Need to flap my wings.
Need to . . . dance!
Dancing in the street till it ain’t no thing,
Can I get a “what-what” from the dead doggie section!
WHAT-bark!

WHAT-yip!

WHAT-crack!

Thank you, hound-homies!
Give a ghost-puppy snack to the spines that went

CRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAACK

(This is almost boring)

Whom does a girl have to FUCK

To get a drink around here?

WOOOT THERE IT IS
ON THE CORNER

Tell me do you have

A beer

A lonely, lovely beer

Something I can wrap my lips around and kill

FUCK!

Who closes their goddamn liquor store first thing in the morning? Not me. Not my liquor store. No, when I have a liquor store I’m gonna run it MY way. I’m gonna SMASH the window when I want to get in, CLIMB through and apparently KNOCK OVER a display or two on my way in, RUN down the aisle

WHEEEEEE FREE AS A GOOSE

   And then SMASH the door to the refrigerator unit in the back, REACH in, and GRAB. THAT. BEER.

Yep. It’s gonna be just like this. Except I’m not going to have that fucking alarm going off.

Damn it. Alarm. I didn’t pay for my drink.

And why

Should I?

Should a girl like me pay for her own drinks?

NO.

Not a damn decent man around here who’ll do it.

I need to call a man.

I need

To call

PILLSBURY!

Chapter Sixty-nine

I woke up in Patrick’s SUV, which smelled rudely of alcohol and vomit.

Judging from the bites and scratches on my arms, not to mention the split skin and shards of glass all over my fists and wrists, I assumed I had a much more serious wound somewhere I could not feel.
I’m in shock,
I told myself.
Great. Dead by Doberman at twenty-seven. Life is too rich.

But wait. Why was I in Patrick’s SUV instead of an ambulance? What was he even—

“You okay back there?” He turned briefly to verify I was awake. “Cripes, Adrienne. You could have told me you needed to yark. I would’ve stopped.”

My blood froze. “Adrienne was here?”

“Adrienne was everywhere.”

“How did you find her . . . I mean, me?”

“She called me. Gave me the address: 369 Tarragon Way. I went there, found some dead dogs, heard the alarm blasting down the street, followed the sound, and saw a bit of a crowd gathering around the liquor store.”

I closed my eyes and prayed for death.

“No one wanted to go in, and they figured the police would take another good forty or fifty minutes to show, since you weren’t moving and no one was in imminent danger. I slipped in through the window you busted, found you unconscious at the back with a dead case of Sam Adams and a half-empty bottle of Grey Goose vodka, and dragged you out the fire door . . . which, no doubt, would have triggered the alarm, had one not already been blaring. Brought you back to the car and drove away. Um, Cadence . . . someone may have taken down my license plate.”

God, as usual, was ignoring my prayers. “Don’t worry about it. Michaela will make sure this disappears.”
After she pulls my left boob into a phallic shape and cuts it off. Good golly, Adrienne! Could you have left me in a bigger mess? And I’ll bet you didn’t even check inside the house after you killed those dogs. Not that it would have been any better if you had.

“We need to go back,” I told Patrick.

“You need to go to a hospital first.”

I looked over my wrists and started picking out the glass. It hurt. Also, there was probably some rabies protocol I would be wise to follow. “Fine. Hospital first. But then we need to go back.”

“Mmm.”

“Thanks for the flowers,” I remembered.

Patrick smiled at me. “Adrienne thanked me first. I had no idea she liked irises. I mean, literally liked them. She likes to eat them.”

“No, she likes to turn virtually anything she can into a straw, through which she sips vodka. That’s what she likes.” And here came the hangover I didn’t deserve, right on cue.

“Uh, no offense, hon—”

I braced myself.

“Is your boss really going to cover this up? A federal agent breaking and entering? Destruction of property, public drunkenness?”

“Mm-hmm.” Was that—it was! I spat out a purple iris petal. “The government needs us.”

“Because you’re really good at your job?”

“Because we do what most people can’t. And we keep doing it. We keep showing up, and wading through blood and guts, we keep chasing the
really
crazy people, the ones who really would just as soon kill you—or a nurse, or a child, or a father, or a waitress—as look at you.”

“Your incredibly stressful and dangerous government work can’t drive you crazy,” Patrick guessed, “because you already are.”

“Well. Yes.”

Patrick chuckled and accelerated. “It makes as much sense as anything the government does, I suppose.” He peeked at me, a glance full of warmth and teasing affection. “Certainly hiring you makes more sense than trying to rewrite the tax code for the zillionth time.”

I spit out another blossom and laughed; I couldn’t help it.

Chapter Seventy

The hospital visit was routine, in that I went from curtained area to curtained area without any information or courtesy until they were done poking and prodding and bandaging me. They kept Patrick confined to the waiting area, so we didn’t even get to talk. Instead, I used the time to check in with Michaela, advise her of what had happened, listen to her urge Opus out of her office, since “this was no time to be emptying wastebaskets when my best agent’s hurt,” make her call Opus back in so the poor man could do his job, assure her I was okay, assure her a man hadn’t done this to me, plead with her not to go castrate someone anyway, hush the nurses who tried to tell me not to use cell phones in this area, apologize profusely to the nearby patients whose heart monitors chose that moment to go berserk from cell interference, turn the cell phone off, apologize to the nurses for not listening, ask them for a landline, suffer their silent treatment for a while, plead with them for a landline, call Michaela again, apologize for cutting her off earlier, get her to agree to clear Patrick’s license plate with the authorities, refuse Michaela’s offer of assistance for my return visit to Scherzo’s house, and apologize one last time to the nursing staff.

With all that activity, after which Patrick insisted we get lunch (drive-through Arby’s), it wasn’t until that afternoon that we got back to the house. I insisted Patrick stay in the SUV—frankly, I would have liked to see him go home, since my own car was still parked on the street. But it being a free country and all, the most I could do was get him to promise to stay in his vehicle and keep a cell phone handy. (No heart monitors in the neighborhood, I supposed.)