Yours, Mine, and Ours (15 page)

“Always a pleasure, Michaela!” I called after her, panting only a little. At least I wasn’t late for the briefing. That was something, right?

“Gulp.”

I turned to Emma Jan, who’d been standing by our desks for who knew how long. “Did you just say ‘gulp’? Instead of actually gulping? Why would you do that?” Unspoken:
You are very weird, and I’m just not warming up to you. Also, Shiro only likes you because you can give her a challenge. Also: I’m just not warming up to you.

“What the hell was
that
all about?” Emma Jan was staring after our boss with a combination of wariness and interest. “Does she just … just walk around up here carrying huge knives?”

“No,” I said, stung into defending Michaela. “Sometimes she carries paring knives.”

“And you don’t find that extremely weird?”

“Look where you are, Emma Jan,” I said patiently. I watched her glance around the large cubicle-filled room. A room that looked like any office in any city, except …

Brian was acting out his last T-group session, which appeared to have gotten violent, due to the stabbing motions he was making, and the
Psycho
squeal: “Ree-ree-ree! Ree-ree-ree! So then she said, ‘Stop bleeding all over my linen placemats!’ And I said, ‘You’re the one who hit me in the first place,’ and she said—”

Sara was working on her laptop from underneath her desk. She occasionally thought the fluorescent lighting was shooting rays into her brain.

Don’t judge: sometimes I wondered about that, too, with all the weird things that happened at work. She offered to make me a tinfoil hat, but Shiro and Adrienne would never have let me live it down. I won’t deny being tempted, though … nope. Never knock the healing power of shiny hats.

Karen was handing out paperwork, resplendent in her flannel pajamas (pink background, with poodles).

And let’s not forget George’s tie
du jour
: a tasteful piece with broken-winged birds against a lime green background.

Taken separately, maybe not so unusual (okay, except for Sara), but as a whole … yeah.

“Why would Michaela bring a knife to a meeting?”

“Depends on the meeting. I know she’s been working on the budget with a bunch of the suits.”

“Why would Michaela bring a knife to a budget meeting?” Emma Jan was like a dog with a bone. Let it go, woman! Don’t question; it takes longer.

“Why
wouldn’t
she bring a knife to a budget meeting?”

Emma Jan giggled.

“Hi, Emma Jan. Hi, Cadence. How’s it going?”

Pam Weinberg, my boss’s administrative assistant, was handing out the mail. That wasn’t her usual job; someone must have called in sick, or been carted off for a Thorazine injection.

“Good, Pam. How’s by you?”

“SSDD.” She handed out a small pile of mail. Emma Jan was trying, and failing, not to stare. I knew what the problem was. So did Pam.

“You’re wondering how old I am,” she said, handing Emma Jan some memos.

“Well … it’s just … you look…”

“Seventeen.”

Her eyes widened. “Our boss’s right-hand woman isn’t a legal adult? How does
that
work? Aren’t there child labor laws in this state? Did you come as an intern and they just never let you leave?”

“Long story, and I come off really emancipated in it. You know about the briefing in…” She glanced at the clock on the wall in front of us. “… three minutes?”

“Yeah, thanks, Pam.”

We watched her walk off. I understood Emma Jan’s confusion. In a building filled with mysterious government operatives, Eyes Only/Classified documents, and doctor/patient privilege, the biggest puzzle was how seventeen-year-old Pam Weinberg not only worked sixty hours a week, but no one ever heard a peep from family members or the foster care system (most of us didn’t even know if she had family or not, though, of course, Michaela did). I didn’t know if it was a good thing that no one seemed to notice she was missing, or a bad thing.

I didn’t even want to
think
about the circumstances that landed her in the middle of the FBI’s very own cuckoo’s nest.

Pam knew everything, too. It was uncanny and scary. She always knew who was in, who was sick, who was faking sick, who was foaming at the mouth, who was late, who was early, who was behind on their payroll sheets, who blew off their weekly shrink session, and who had moved into the waiting room and secretly brushed their teeth in Michaela’s private bathroom.

I only had to live there for a few days, so don’t judge. It was Adrienne’s fault, anyway.

So anyway, Pam almost never left the office. Which suited her fine … and us, too. She also typed 140 wpm, never had to be told something twice, kept Michaela’s staggering schedule updated, knew who’d been naughty and who’d been nice, and only needed about four hours of sleep a night (I was soooo jealous of that one). In other words, she was the perfect palace guard. The fact that she wasn’t yet a legal adult was the least important thing about her.

“Just think, in a couple of months this will all seem totally normal to you.”

Emma Jan didn’t look especially soothed. “Then God help me.”

“God’s out sick.”

I looked down at my mail. Memo, memo, sale at Staples (why was I on their mailing list at all?), and a plain white #10 business envelope. It had a number three where the return address should have been. And it was addressed to me.

And Shiro.

And Adrienne.

chapter thirty-eight

Cadence had, quite
rightly, left this mess for me.

Could it be a hoax? Or was it a missive, doubtless stuffed with anthrax, from the remaining members of the ThreeFer triplets? Since they had nearly killed us, I did not blame Cadence for fleeing the premises.

“George,” I said.

“Busy,” he replied. “I gotta bid on this or eBay’s gonna let somebody else have it.”

I did not want to know what had George so enchanted he’d barely spoken. “George!”

“Whaaaat?” He looked up and saw I was pulling on a pair of evidence-handling gloves (we kept several pairs in our desks). “Wow. That’s never a good sign with you, Shiro. Unless you’re up for some really sick sexual shenanigans. Or, wait. Is that dumb dog Adrienne kidnapped on her way? If that animal drops
one load
near my workspace, I’ll—”

“Take a look,” I invited, snapping first the right, then the left glove in place.

He ambled around to my desk and looked down at the envelope. “Baaaad shit,” was his very accurate comment. “You think it’s from them?”

“Them” being Tracy Carr and Jeremy Scherzo, two-thirds of the ThreeFer Killer, triplet serial killers who had used the Cities as their own private killing pen. Opus, the third one, had been fatally shot by Michaela. They left their slow-witted brother to certain death while they fled to save their unworthy hides. They were quite high on the FBI’s Most Wanted list—spots one and two, respectively.

And on my list, too.

I spent too much of my time irritated with Adrienne and Cadence, there was no doubt.

But I would
never
abandon them.

That made me think of Dr. Gallo, oddly. I knew what he had told Cadence. I could understand the rage he was keeping locked down. I will not deny it made me even more curious. There was something compelling about the new physician in town; he seemed to walk around with his own internal temperature gauge always on simmer and, now and again, on boil. Ummm. It might be something to see if he truly let go, if he …

For shame. Thinking about a man when I had work to do. So: enough with the distracted musings about Dr. Max Gallo. Back to business.

Great name. Max Gallo. Like something out of an Ian Fleming novel.

I picked up the letter, felt it carefully—no watch battery lumps, no gritty powder—and then noticed Agent Thyme for the first time. “Good morning.” It
was
morning, correct? “Nice to see you again.”

“Whoa,” George said. To Thyme: “She never does small talk.”

“You owe me money.”

“See?” he cried triumphantly, pointing at me.

Emma Jan glared. “Best two out of three, you said. We can settle it at the range, you said.”

“And we will.” I felt the envelope around the edges. Still good. “We absolutely will. And you will owe me still more money. Fret not. I take personal checks.”

“Cadence thought the killers sent that letter?” Emma Jan was looking from me to George to me, not nearly as interested in her debts as in our mail. “So she … disappeared?”

“But luckily, Shiro is here to save the day.” He could not finish the sentence without rolling his eyes.

“But how’d you know it was Shiro?”

“Shiro stands tall and her babbling tends to be more clipped. And she doesn’t use near as many contractions. Cadence slouches, like she’s trying to hide in her own skin. Which I guess she does.”

“That was almost profound,” I said. It was precisely times like these that made it impossible to simply dismiss George as a sociopath. I would almost prefer it if he was an ass 100 percent of the time.

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“You’re not opening that,” Thyme protested, seeing me prepare to do so.

“The probability of it being safe for me to handle is quite high. It is too small and thin for any kind of charge. No C-4 sheet. And every piece of mail that comes into this building is routinely scanned. You may also recall that the post office irradiates all mail addressed to government offices, and has since the anthrax scare.

“Finally, these people are smart. They will have left no DNA or prints. They would not make the mistake of licking the envelope flap or mailing it from a city they were anywhere near. They’re likely using a mail service. We won’t find anything, and what they’ve written for us could be of critical import.”

“In other words,” George said with a grin, “she knows she’s not supposed to, but she’s gonna anyway.” His green eyes sparkled. George loved trouble, especially when someone else was going to get into it. “Here we go, ladies! Yee-haw!”

“Well put.”

“Can I have your gun after Michaela fires you?”

“Be quiet.” I carefully slit the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

Dearest Cadence, Shiro, and Adrienne,

How we have missed you! Life is simply not the same. We apologize for having to leave the party so soon this past summer; terribly rude.

You may recall that through your actions, you created a vacancy in our family. After giving it some thought, we have decided you are responsible for filling it. Any one of you will do. Or all of you! My. Wouldn’t that be an embarrassment of riches?

We are thrilled to see you working the June Boys Jobs; you do have experience in these matters … need we remind you just what kind? But we disapprove of JBK’s agenda; our murders were puzzle pieces you eventually put together. JBK’s murders are simply fuel for a blood-hungry malcontent.

We want only your happiness, ladies, and thus would like you to keep in mind that the trite clichés about the racial demographics of serial killers are not always cold truth.

If you don’t believe us, then look at the three of us! Oh. Excuse us. The two of us.

Stay in touch, won’t you, dears?

Because we intend to.

With all our love and respect,

Two of the ThreeFer

chapter thirty-nine

“We have a
break, I think.” Agent Thyme, George, and I had reported to her other office for the JBJ briefing.

“This is her other office?” Agent Thyme seemed bewildered to see we were all assembled in the department kitchen. We were perched on bar stools in front of the sizable granite-covered kitchen island, while on the other side Michaela was chopping a peeled banana.

“Fruit salad,” she said, though no one asked. “I see it’s Shiro and not Cadence, which can only mean something’s happened.” She scraped banana bits off her knife and into a large red bowl big enough to hold a chicken. “What break?”

I held up the letter for her to read. No use getting banana smeared on it.

“It doesn’t
look
like it’s been to the lab and back,” was her first comment. I almost smiled. I admired our boss quite a bit; she was the epitome of cool control. Most supervisors would have gone the “Holy shit!” route.