But he forced his mind to ignore that for a moment. He worked on the events some more, thinking things through. He supposed it was possible, though not probable, that there had been police officers that close simply by chance, but he doubted it. And one of them had called out a name.
“Katie,” he breathed.
If they knew her name, then they knew who she was. So that meant she was with the police. Or she was police. Probably a decoy.
Yes, he decided. That was it. He’d fallen for a decoy.
The idea made him grind his teeth. Still, even with all their planning, his unplanned actions had won out. He’d escaped, leaving behind a limp body. Not a dead body, granted. But a limp one was pretty good for the time he’d had to work with.
So now their little ploy had failed. He knew their game. He could stop what he was doing. Maybe even move to a different city and start over.
The thought caused his jaw to clench even tighter. He didn’t want to be dictated to by the police. He’d never considered them as rivals before because he’d been so focused on his work, but now he knew that was exactly what they were. Rivals. Enemies. And there was no way he was going to allow them to beat him. Especially not some bitch cop who thought she could trick him.
No. He’d stay. He’d just have to be more careful.
The first thing he needed to do was get them to stop with the decoys. After that, he needed to finish the job with this Katie the Cop bitch. The prospect of that made his whole body tingle.
Still, first things first. How to get rid of the decoys?
He stared down at his uneaten blob of scrambled eggs. Next to the plate was the River City Herald, still folded and unread. His mind drifted to the letter V. had written-
Was it really Victoria, he wondered. He thought so.
— the day before. He recalled how good the letter made him feel when he realized that at any given time, Victoria or some other bitch like her was walking around afraid of him.
He reached out and touched the newspaper. A thought struck him. He considered it for a few moments, liking the idea better and better the more he thought about it. Finally, he smiled.
It would work, he decided. He lifted his fork and scooped up his lukewarm eggs into his mouth, gobbling down his breakfast. Then he rose from the table, found a coat and left the house in order to find a payphone.
0707 hours
Katie MacLeod stared up at the ceiling. The faraway beep of medical monitors seemed to echo down the quiet hallway. She imagined a four-foot bunny rabbit stepping lightly along on the red balls that each beeping sound created.
Beep.
Out her door.
Beep.
Down the hallway.
Beep.
Past the nurse’s station.
She blinked. She took a deep breath. The sound of the air sucking into her lungs sounded like a hurricane.
A small voice in the back of her mind screamed out, “You’re loopy, MacLeod. You’re doped up!” but she brushed the voice away with a giant light blue feather. The effort made her exhale, then swallow. That seemed to take five minutes. And it created another hurricane, followed by a waterfall.
A stocky nurse bustled into the room. “How are we this morning?” she asked in a blasting, cheery voice that seemed harsh against all of the softness in Katie’s world.
“Gooooood,” Katie managed to reply. She’d wanted to tell this loud, happy woman all of the secrets of the world that she’d discovered, but she didn’t know how to put those colors and sounds into words.
The nurse glanced at her chart. “Mmm-hmmm. I’ll bet. Well, just so you’re aware, the doctor has ordered us to taper off your magic juice by noon.”
Magic juice? Katie flashed to the women’s locker room at the police station. Chisolm’s rough hands digging into the little jar. The heat on her leg.
Was Chisolm a doctor? Was he her doctor?
Of course he was. That made sense. Chisolm took care of things.
Chisolm was always there.
Chisolm was a four foot bunny who could dance on red balls down any hallway.
“The doctor will be in himself once your test results are in,” the nurse said. “Until then, you just rest, okay? We’ll check in with you every so often, all right?”
She wanted to tell her that Chisolm could just make more magic juice if she needed it. He had plenty of beeps. And besides that, she had just figured out where God really came from. She couldn’t wait to explain it to Chaplain Marshall, who would be disappointed that Captain Jean-Luc Picard wasn’t somehow involved.
“Goooooood,” Katie said.
0714 hours
Pam Lincoln rubbed her tired eyes. Being the crime beat reporter meant a lot of late nights. Most police action that was newsworthy took place in the evening hours, so she was up monitoring her scanner. She kept her pager and cell phone at her bedside even after she turned in, just in case she got a call. Not only did she have a few officers who were willing to tip her to the events that might make the cops look good, there were a couple of disgruntled ones who let her in on the more scandalous occurrences as well. Plus she had half a dozen stalwart citizens from both sides of the pro-police/anti-police fence who also monitored the scanner frequencies. Not much occurred without her getting at least a whisper of it.
Despite the need for late nights, her editor required her to be at her desk every day at seven sharp. He didn’t seem to care that her work carried her until at least midnight every night or that she was frequently woken up in the middle of the night to cover something big. He was an old school journalist who idolized two things: Walter Cronkite and a seven A.M. start time.
Pam sipped her triple-shot vanilla latte through two skinny straws. She thanked the coffee gods for caffeine and the fact that there was a drive-through latte stand approximately every fifty yards in River City. Seattle may have been the birthplace of the 1990s coffee craze, but River City certainly embraced the notion.
As she got her oral caffeine infusion, she reviewed her notes. There wasn’t much from the previous night.
There’d been a violent domestic dispute in Browne’s Addition, but she’d already written up the brief paragraph on that story. Except for the names and the address, it could fit any dozen other domestic violence assaults she’d reported in the past three years.
On the north side, officers were briefly in foot pursuit of a rape suspect, but that petered out before she’d been able to get to her car. The only real interesting aspect of that call was that an ambulance had responded. She wondered if the Rainy Day Rapist had struck again, but she doubted it. Captain Reott had assured her that she’d get a call any hour if there were any developments on that case.
That left a vehicle pursuit which occurred out in the County. The suspect had been a four-wheel drive truck that simply went off road and lost the Deputy Sheriff, who couldn’t follow in his Chevy Caprice. That might make for a mildly humorous piece, but Pam didn’t think it was worth embarrassing the Deputy. It never was, in her mind. Unlike some of her colleagues, she knew that cops were people, too, just like everyone else — not simply convenient targets.
So all in all, she had a puny paragraph about a DV to hand into Mr. Seven O’Clock.
Her phone rang. She glanced down at the caller ID, but didn’t recognize the number. She lifted the receiver.
“Pam Lincoln, River City Herald.”
There was a pause. She could hear the flow of traffic in the background and guessed immediately that her caller was on a payphone.
She squinted. Now, why would someone call her on a payphone? Leaning forward, flipping open her notepad and fished around in her drawer for a pen.