“Consider that one a gift,” she said, nodding her head down the hall to Latisha still writhing on the floor of the kitchen.
Then she vanished. I heard her car start as the sirens reached two blocks, then one block away. A glimmer of more humanity. Or maybe the desire for self-preservation taking precedence over another kill. Either way Latisha would live.
Time for the real Johnny Law.
I’d said Randolph’s name at the DA’s office. They must have called the police. I wanted to run, to join my twin in fleeing the scene. I couldn’t. I’d become sick and tired of what I couldn’t do.
WAIT HERE, SOMEONE WILL TAKE YOUR STATEMENT
Two hours later and I huddled on the porch trying not to cry again.
The police had burst in through the open door. Randolph’s body and the dead security guard made a corpse sandwich anyone could spot, even a city beat cop. I stayed put, hunched over and wiping tears. I pointed the cops to Latisha in the kitchen. I guess I seemed helpful because no one pinned me and cuffed me as the suspect. Once the four cops on the scene took in what happened, they started in with the questions.
“She just left,” I said.
“Who? Do you know her?”
“I think I used to,” I said. Figuring out a way around lying got a little easier each time. Could have been some change in my new body or it could have been experience.
I gave them my name and the officer in charge looked me up on a tablet computer. My photo, fingerprints and DEA record came on the screen. What a brave new world. At least it saved me from having to wait in a holding cell until I could dig up another I.D.
They worked over the scene and put me on ice. I gave my vague-on-details-but-vivid-on-gore statement, leaving out her name or how I knew where to be.
“I received intel,” I said. Intel from my brain looking through her eyeballs that are really my own eyes. They didn’t need to know that.
A second officer came over to join us. They whispered something between them—never a good sign.
“You say you work for the DEA?” the new guy said to me.
“Yeah.” Keep it simple and quiet. I could pull rank on him if I needed to. One thing I couldn’t do was lie if he asked me a direct question.
“Did you know about the…incident there today?”
“Yes.” Not a lie, but keep it short and sweet.
The two cops traded a look, clearly wanting to put together pieces but not knowing what they had. I was already a persons of interest at a murder scene. Now I must have been looking really interesting to them.
A car pulled into the driveway. Randolph’s wife got out, haggard and limp. She had to know what went on after she ducked out the back door. Surely they told her about her husband being already dead. It didn’t help her when she saw it up close. At least they covered his body, though the sheet was liberally stained with blood.
The cops around me turned their attention to her and left me on the porch.
I sat and watched Mrs. Randolph look, slack-jawed, from the trio of police cars to the coroner’s van to her open front door and the covered body in the hallway beyond. No one needed to tell her what went on there, but an officer came and led her away, explaining in the vaguest of details about her husband’s death.
A few stray tears leaked down my face and I felt antsy about getting away from there. It was only a matter of time before some call came in over the cop’s radio to look for me. It would be the shortest chase in fugitive history from the hallway to the front porch. Done.
An occasional radio squawk or murmured exchange between officers floated out to the porch, otherwise I sat alone with only the occasional neighbor out on a sudden and off-schedule dog walk they used as an excuse to peer into the open door like the mouth of a freshly dug grave.
Dead tired. There had been no activity on the wire in my brain for a long time. I wondered if we both felt tired at the same time. Could we sleep at different times or if one of us nodded off would the other immediately follow, even if behind the wheel of a car?
I shut my eyes and leaned against a pillar holding the small overhang above the porch. With any luck Blake would be getting closer to Lucas by now and he could explain. As much as I hated the idea of Lucas knowing my crooked ways, I knew he would be able to put an end to this. He could take the fight to Calder and Rizzo like he always wanted to.
A flash of static and the roar of feedback. Flashes popped and colors blobbed out like fireworks made of mud. I heard Blake’s voice. Because I’d been thinking of him? What new mechanism had my brain come up with now?
Then my own voice. Memories coming back in pixelated bursts? No. Her voice. Talking to Blake. Everything sounded like a broken radio in a rusted out Nova, but this time I recognized a phone conversation.
“I’ve got to meet you,” I/She said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Not over the phone. They might be listening. Your place.” The words came out distorted, too loud. A blown pair of speakers blasting punk rock in basement apartment.
“Are you in danger?”
“I can make it there, but hurry.”
“A half hour.”
“No, less. Right away.”
“Okay. I can make it in fifteen. I’ll drop everything.”
“And Blake…”
“Yeah?”
“Just don’t play that Springsteen album. You know how I hate him.”
“Right. See you soon.”
Our code. Of course she knew it. It was hers too. She’d set a trap.
A BETTER MOUSETRAP
I stood up too quickly, felt a head rush come on and had to grab the front porch pillar to keep from tipping over. I needed sleep, I needed food. I needed to help Blake.
I started walking down the path, well trimmed rose bushes lined the walkway. An officer leaned against his cruiser in the driveway.
“A colleague of mine needs assistance. I have to go.”
He acknowledged me with a wave. Another easy truth coupled with a tiny lie by omission. It seemed to fit the rule book.
I climbed into the Smart car. I saw Mrs. Randolph waiting in the back of a squad car. Sitting there all this time, not allowed to go inside, to see her husband. I thought keeping her away, but so close, might be more cruel than letting her look into that blood-filled eye.
I saw one of the cops with the questions from before step out of the house. He saw me in the car. I didn’t want him to say stop or I feared I’d have to. Maybe if I drove away fast so I couldn’t hear him. He watched me pull away from the curb, still not knowing what he had in me and not wanting to piss off the DEA enough to detain me to find out. Score one for a nervous beat cop.
I started toward Blake’s.
I realized I had no idea where she called from. She could have been right around the corner from his place. She could have been inside it. If Blake thought he was a half hour away that meant something, but he also said he would get there quicker. From Randolph’s place I would be at least twenty minutes.