Or that I stayed alive to give him one.
Peeing would have to wait. It did make me think though. After I’d been able to dig out some memories I wondered how far I could reach across the airwaves and into her.
I let my mind wander with my eyes open until I got flashes of her vision playing across the windshield of my stupid little car. A windshield I was too damn close to, by the way. Damn car is a death trap. I tried more of the deep focus that got me into her memory bank. I figured she could feel me invading her brain, but I kept working in deeper. I really should have taken up yoga or transcendental meditation so I could really tap into some deep subconscious and take her mind over like a brain ninja. Instead I nearly ran a red light while trying to look more through her eyes than my own.
I took the respite of the light to burrow deeper, an insect in her brain, laying eggs. When the light turned green I went for it. I turned a sharp right and I saw her hands move on the wheel. She swerved back immediately, but I’d made it in. I could make her move.
I turned another hard right at the next block and her car swerved, narrowly missing a line of parked cars. I heard tin can sounds of horns honking. I felt her pushing me out of her brain. I was a tick, trying like hell to cling on to the vein while someone pulled at my bloated body with tweezers. I gave it my last shot. I swerved left and aimed into a driveway.
Her car cut across traffic. I braced myself for a head-on collision and realized how stupid this idea had been. She jerked the wheel back and I shut my eyes, her sight coming clearer now. In front of her/us was a man crossing the street sucking on a soda through a straw. His eyes went wide as he noticed the car. Instinctively I pushed harder on my brake. She pulled me out of her head by then.
I underestimated her. A pedestrian in her way turned out to be no big deal. I heard the engine accelerate. The man bounced onto the hood, rolled to his side and slapped the strip of metal by the windshield with his temple before flinging off into traffic. He left a small smear of blood behind, but she never looked back.
Okay, bad idea. Leave control of the car alone. It didn’t seem like I even gained much time. Then I heard sirens. I shut my eyes again quickly in time to see her steal a glance at her rearview mirror. A police car must have been right near the accident because it sped up behind her only a few car lengths away. She took off. I had my chance. With her detoured on a police chase I could keep my trajectory straight on to Randolph’s house and hopefully beat her there, depending on how good her evasive driving was. Oh right, I knew how good her evasive driving was. Same as mine. That is to say—damn good. And with no qualms about sprinting away from the cops and knocking over anyone who got in her way, I knew my little advantage remained a small one.
The electric car wouldn’t go fast, even if I could have. It moved nimbly, I’ll give it that. Small enough to weave through traffic enough to get me to the Judge’s house first. His car sat in the driveway of his expansive tudor style house. The kind they love to renovate on those HGTV shows I love and Lucas hates. I am always down for a little house porn.
The neighborhood was all wide lawns and houses done up in classic styles of the English countryside or French wine regions. Grass up and down the street was trimmed short and the flowers and bushes well maintained, but not by anyone who lived in the houses.
I got out and ran up the walk, trying hard to think of what I would say to him. Before I reached the front step, she turned the corner.
DON’T LISTEN TO THAT ME, LISTEN TO THIS ME
I pounded on the door like a sorority girl in a horror movie. Sam half-assedly parked at the curb and got out quickly.
Judge Randolph answered the door. “Yes?” he said politely considering he spoke to a girl trying to break down his door.
“Judge, you have to listen to me. This woman is here to kill you.”
“What?” he said as he turned to Sam coming up the walk.
She shoved past me, knocking me against the door frame, and grabbed the judge by his shirt and shoved him inside. I ricocheted off and followed them in.
The judge staggered, stunned like he’d entered a boxing match he wasn’t expecting. She shoved him to the tile floor of his entryway and he stayed down. I heard his head smack as he fell and thought maybe I heard a bone break. He had to be in his seventies, it wouldn’t have taken much to snap every bone in his body. I didn’t want to give her any ideas though.
With him safely down she turned to me. Her level stare scared the crap out of me. Is this what I looked like when Lucas and I fought? He mentioned my “evil side” before. Christ, he had no idea.
“Cute trick with the car back there.” I had no answer for her. “Why don’t you quit trying to fuck up my plans? I know you don’t know where Lucas is, but you know I’ll find him. And when I do, I’ll kill him, like I killed all those other people.”
“You didn’t get everyone at the DA’s office.”
“Everyone that mattered.”
“Or the DEA.”
“What, you mean Blake?” She stepped forward and I automatically retreated. “He can’t help you. All he wants to do is fuck us. That’s all he’s ever wanted to do. He’ll say he will help you but all he’s doing is trying to get a sloppy blowjob from a woman in distress.” She glanced down at the judge to make sure he was still out of it. He writhed around and clutched at his bruised head. “If you ask me, I think we should do it. I’d fuck Blake. At the very least he’d be really grateful and that means he’d be eager and attentive. I know you never would, but maybe I will.”
The thought of her doing things with our body I stood very much opposed to made me cringe somehow more than the killing. Made things much more tangible. The dead bodies were abstract, a movie I saw and quickly forgot about. Sex with Blake is a reality in my life I live with day in and day out.
“You have to stop this. You can’t go around killing everyone. Calder and Rizzo are going to get caught eventually. Are you going to kill the next team that takes up the case? And the one after that?”
“Fuck no. I’ll be on a beach somewhere counting my twenty million.”
“Who’s at the door, dear?” A sweet old lady voice came from the kitchen at the end of the hall. Randolph’s wife. I remember her from the party making the rounds like a First Lady in her color coordinated holiday pantsuit. I’d thought she was a stuck up bitch then, but now I feared for her life.
Sam and I both turned to see her poke her head around the doorway from the kitchen. She saw us, the twins, and then her husband splayed out on the floor. It took a second to register, but she caught on. I bet she lived with the specter of some ex-con coming for revenge on the judge who put him away every day of her life.
Neither Sam or I moved, waiting for her to take the first step. From the floor Randolph groaned and the sound spurred Mrs. Randolph into action. She spun on her creaky hips and went for the door at the back of the kitchen that led, presumably, to the back yard. As she passed by she reached up and hit a code on the tiny alarm panel by the back door. No sirens blared, no electronic whoop-whoop-whoop. We both knew she’d sent the emergency code though.