Me, Myself and Why?

Her eyes narrowed. Her chopping sped up. Cucumber slices became airborne before plummeting into an empty bowl. “Us, BOFFO? Or us, you, Shiro, and Adrienne?”

  “The latter.” Yeesh. Just the thought made me want to crawl into a dark corner of my brain and hide the rest of the week.

  “What tipped you?”

  “The Three Tenors. The dates on the calendar pages. Variations on the number three. And I’m a triplet.”

  “A reach,” she commented. And she was right. But sometimes you just know. That might seem to make no sense to a layman. But now and again you get a tickle, which leads to a hunch. And the hunch—you know because it feels exactly right. It’s like solving a riddle you didn’t know you were thinking about.

  “Yes,” I admitted. “But I’m right. We’re right, I mean.”

  “So. Hmm. The idea frightened you, Shiro came forward to protect you and study the scene somewhat more dispassionately.”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “And then Nessman discussed integration with Shiro—”

  “He what?” I could feel the color leaving my face. “What’s the matter with him? Why would he do that?”

  “He was tackling the latest item on your agenda to mental health. He did this with my support and approval.”

  Well, darn. No wonder Adrienne had shot out of my brain and onto the scene. I couldn’t blame her. Nobody likes to hear that there really are people out to get them. And at work, no less.

  “As long as he’s okay.”

  “Indeed.” Michaela went to the pantry and extracted two French baguettes. She rinsed and dried the carving knife and put it away, then withdrew a bread knife and began methodically chopping the baguettes into slices. “As I was saying.” Chop. Chop. Slash. “Dr. Nessman brought this up during your session with my approval.” Cut. Slash. Slice. “And, although unpleasant for everyone, your reaction was expected.”

  “Oh, well then. Unpleasant for everyone? Gee, that’s too bad. Well, as long as no one was taken off guard. Except maybe . . . I dunno . . . me?!?”

  “Mmmm. And Shiro certainly came swinging to the rescue, didn’t she? Well, that’s her function. To help you. To save you. Except she’s been doing that too often, we think. Adrienne is showing up more often as well.”

  I didn’t care for the turn in our conversation one little bit. “So?”

  Sarcasm, like anything except hard cold data, was lost on my boss. “The other two are manifesting earlier and staying longer. And autumn has rolled around once again—always a bad time for you.”

  What was she talking about? “What are you talking about?”

  “Listen: things cannot go on as they have.”

  “Huh?” I was right to be puzzled. Can’t go on as they have? Autumn? What did back-to-school sales have to do with anything? I’d been this way as long as I could remember. Shiro and Adrienne had always been there. We were a family. A screwed-up murderously nutty family with government benefits and great parking spots.

  “You’re not a family, you know.”

  Have I mentioned that when she wasn’t julienning carrots, Michaela was a mind reader? At least that was how it seemed to a lot of us.

  “I think I know a little bit more about it than you do,” I said with more rudeness than was appropriate. Don’t judge me! I was shaken up. I can get shaken up and be a little rude once in a while, right?

  Right?

  “But how could you, Cadence? You’ve never had what could be called a typical family.”

  “Then I’m working in the right place, aren’t I?” I slumped over on one of the bar stools lining the marble butcher block. “No one at BOFFO could be called a typical anything.”

  “Your mother killed your father before your eyes when you were three,” Michaela went on with terrifying detachment as she hacked a carrot into a pile of orange toothpicks. But if she was trying to rattle me, it wouldn’t work—I’d always known that my parents had been, um, unusual.

  “You were born and raised on the grounds of the Minnesota Institute for Mental Health.”

  “Yes, I know all this.”

  “Most of the residents and half the staff raised you and considered you their own. Your idea of a happy family Thanksgiving is when only two people try to commit suicide before dessert.”

  “That was just one time,” I said hotly, “and who could blame them? They served instant mashed potatoes! You can’t expect anybody to suffer through that without consequences.”

  “And, as I said, Dr. Nessman and I have noted that your alternate personalities have been coming through without being coaxed through therapy. Cadence, do you even remember the last therapy session where you were yourself for the entire hour?”

  “Fifty minutes,” I mumbled, still steamed that those head-peeping brain-shrinking jerks could call fifty minutes an hour—and sleep at night, too! Not all the crazy people at BOFFO were the field agents.

  Look at my boss! Our fearless leader, the one who looked after us and kept us out of trouble and made sure our paychecks came on time and our therapy sessions didn’t run over. But she spent an awful lot of time julienning things. Nobody knew why. Not even Shiro! (I think.) But Michaela seemed chilly and well-adjusted only when you put her up against people like me. Or George. Or Opus.

  “You are no longer going forward,” my (possibly) insane boss continued. “If anything, you appear to be stepping backward. It’s unac-ceptable.” Whittle. Chop. Tears were now streaming down Michaela’s face, but they didn’t fool me—Michaela wouldn’t cry if someone dropped a bowling ball on her foot. No, the tears were for the Bermuda onion she was now hacking apart. “So what do you suppose we should do?”

  “ ‘We,’ you and I? Or ‘we,’ I, Adrienne, and Shiro?” Big surprise, Michaela didn’t answer. “I think you’re being pretty mean to them. You wouldn’t like it if you knew people really were after you.”

  “People are out to get me. . . . I work for the government. And I’m out to get people; that goes without saying.”

  “I wouldn’t say it around here, boss.”

  “Cadence, I think the three of you need to face the fact that integration will happen, no matter how many roadblocks you or the others throw up.”

  “I can’t—”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You cannot expect Cadence to face up to that. She never faces up to anything,” I said, eyeing the mounds of chopped vegetables with ill-concealed distaste. The woman was the poster child of wasted food. “Expecting her to face facts? What were you thinking?”

  “Ah, Shiro, right on schedule.” Michaela had made several stacks of bread slices, which she was now bundling into plastic bags and tucking away in the pantry. Her pathology was odd—even for BOFFO—and the irony of her lecturing Cadence about needing to face up to things was not lost on me.

  I respected her as I did few others. Yes, I was familiar with her background—I would not work for anyone who kept secrets from me. But, like all of us, she was an asset to BOFFO because of her pathology, not in spite of it. And I kept what I knew to myself—it was nobody’s business.

  “You’re not a moron, Shiro.”

  “Thank you, I know that.”

  “None of you are. So you must realize integration is inevitable.”

  “Of course I do. But expecting Cadence to face unpleasant facts is proof positive that neither you nor Dr. Nessman knows what you are up against.”

  “Maybe so, but our limits are up to us. Not you. Now run along, Shiro.”

  “Run along?” She did not. She would not dare. Did she just tell me to “run along”? Had I become a child she could dismiss at will?

  “I’m giving the three of you the rest of the day off.”

  “How perfectly splendid,” I retorted, then ducked as slices of cucumber got away from her and went sailing over my shoulder. “Never forget—”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What?”

  Michaela was looking at me expectantly. “Huh?” I asked.

  “Never
forget what?”

  “What?”

  She slashed the knife through the air with an impatient wave, which made me awfully glad I didn’t have male reproductive organs. The men in the office got really nervous when she decided to prep salads, or chop steaks into stew meat. “Never mind. Run home, Cadence. I’m giving you the rest of the day off.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t hide my delight. Today my best friend, Cathie, was (finally!) going to introduce me to her brother. “Okay, great! I’ll head out. Thanks.”

  “We are not finished discussing this.”

  “For today we are,” I said gleefully, crunching across cucumber slices as I headed for the door. Now when had Michaela lost control of the vegetables? And why hadn’t I noticed at the time? Oh, who cared. “Okay, see you!”

  The crack of the knife slamming through a plum tomato and hitting the cutting board was her good-bye.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I practically skipped to my cube, snatched up my phone, and punched Cathie’s number by memory. As I plopped into my chair I heard the click as she picked up on the second ring, and I launched, too excited for niceties like “Hello.”

  “You’ll never guess. You’ll never guess! I’ve got the rest of the day off, so I’m coming over.”

  “Okay.” Hmm. Sounded like Cathie had a heck of a sore throat. She sounded almost masculine. “Who’s this?”

  Oh. She was masculine. I mean, she was a he. “Who’s this?”

  “Oh no. You first.”

  “Who are you and why are you in my friend’s house?”

  “Who are you and why are you calling your friend’s house?”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “Quit that!”

  “Okay. I’m here because I lost a bet.”

  I sat there and tried to figure out if I should be alarmed, irritated, bored, or intrigued. As good gosh is my witness, I hadn’t a clue. Cathie was a bit of a loner; in all the time we’d been friends I’d never called her and had a strange man answer. “Um, are you supposed to be there? Is this Patrick?”

  “Nuh-uh. You first, I said.”

  “I’m a federal agent. And you’re in big big trouble if you’re not supposed to be there. Are you?”

  “Am I what?” the richly baritone voice asked, sounding equal parts amused and irritated. “Maybe I’m still asleep and this is an unbelievably odd dream. D’you think?”

  “I think—” George sauntered by and plopped what appeared to be a ninety-page file on my desk: more gory details from that morning’s crime scene. The pictures were prominent and yucky—stabbing victims always looked astonished in death; it was sad and creepy. Think of it: your last memory in life is shock and horror because a big yucky knife is swinging toward your chest. Or throat. Or belly.

  Those poor, poor ThreeFer victims, every one of them stabbed and dumped! With nothing in common except an obsessed serial killer who was trying to tell me

  (us?)

  something. It was so yucky and—and scary—to think that he—that the killer—the ThreeFer Killer—was

  (was?)

  was—

  Chapter Sixteen

  He/she was absolutely speaking to me—to us—through his/her victims. I could not say why I was so certain, save that I was and had learned to trust such instincts.

  Cadence was a fool—a fool with exquisitely sensitive hunches. Her hunches were a result of input received by all three of us. She could not consciously remember why a memory tugged at her, why a victim or perp seemed to speak to her, but she knew when it was happening, and knew to follow up.

  It had saved us on more than one occasion. Except, why was—

  “Uh, hello? Mysterious telemarketer?” An unfamiliar masculine voice was buzzing in my ear. “Did you go to lunch? Hello?”

  Oh. I was holding a telephone receiver. And, presumably, having a conversation. “Who is this?” I asked sharply.

  “Again with that routine? I’m not tellin’. Nope. Not until you do.”

  “I have no time for this,” I said, and disconnected. I grabbed for the topmost file, the one with all the crime-scene photos. It was here, I was certain. All I had to do was—

  Answer the phone, which had begun gently buzzing. I snatched the receiver. Perhaps the preliminary lab report had come back—the victims had been at the morgue for hours by now. “Agent Jones.”

  “Agent Jones? That’s pretty cool.”

  “Oh. You again.”

  “Me again,” the stranger replied with nauseating cheer. “I star-six-nined your ass, how about that? So who are you and why were you calling my sister?”

  “If you are not Patrick Flannery, you are in quite a lot of trouble.”

  “Even if I am, I’m in a lot of trouble. I forgot I couldn’t bring liquids on the plane, so I had to throw away my Gatorade after security made me take off my shoes.”

  It was entirely possible I was having a conversation with someone not in his right mind.

  “Not to mention,” he went on with aggravating cheer, “I forgot the charger for my phone, which is currently in my briefcase doing an impersonation of a rock.”

  “Ah. Well.” I could see Tina waving at me from across the room. Damn and damn again! She was likely still looking for that chicken salad recipe for her stupid party. And I, I was trapped like a bug pinned to a board, tethered by this stupid phone conversation.

  Never! I would flee, soonest. I needed to find a killer, not swap recipes like a fifties housewife.

  Oh, gad, she was coming closer. . . .

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Hello? Hello? Hello?”

  “Huh? Who is this?” I was on the phone, talking to . . . somebody. Oh! And here came Tina. I groped in my top drawer, found the index card with my chicken salad recipe (the secret was olive oil, not mayonnaise, and English cucumbers, not regular ones), and handed it to her as she passed.

  “We’ve been going on like this for a long time,” somebody was saying in my ear as I waved to Tina as she hurried away with my precious, precious salad recipe. “I can’t tell if I’m intrigued or bored.”

  “I was intrigued and bored,” I said, because apparently Shiro had popped out for a minute or two. “But I’ve got to go now. I’ve got the rest of the day—oh, right! Why I called.”

  “I can’t wait to hear this.”

  “Is Cathie there?”

  “So this is Cadence!”

  “If you know who I am, then you must be big brother Patrick.”

  “Guilty,” he said modestly, “but it’s just Patrick to you.”

  “It’s funny how we’ve never met before.”

  “It is?” he asked, then yawned in my ear. “I can think of a lot of things about this situation—”

  “What situation?”

  “—but funny isn’t one of them.”

  “Listen,” I said, striving for patience, “when you see Cathie, tell her I got the rest of the day off, so I’ll be over early.”

  “I’m actually out the door five minutes ago.”

  “Five minutes ago?”

  “I’ve been having a weird conversation with someone who may or may not be Cadence Jones, which is why I didn’t leave five minutes ago.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m still here instead of at my lunch meeting. Of course, if I have to choke down one more stale bagel over spreadsheets and P&L reports, I may begin gagging uncontrollably.”

  “So.” I was confused; I admit it. “So you stayed on the phone with me to avoid gagging?”

  “It sounds cold when you put it like that,” he admitted. “Also, I’m late. Anyway—I’ll be back in an hour or so. I’ll leave Cathie a note.”

  “Well. Thanks.”

  “It’s the least I can do. Actually that’s not true. I hate when people say that, don’t you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “The least I can do is nothing. So I’ll leave a note. The second-to-least thing I could do.”

 
“Great. Well. Bye.”

  “Bye, Agent Jones.”

  I hung up and wished I could say that was the oddest phone conversation I’d ever had. But that fight with the dry cleaner on Lake still had first place.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A word about Cathie, my best friend (but not about her mysterious brother, who is weirdly coy during telephone conversations).

  We met at my home, of course, the MIMH (rhymes with “NIMH,” as in the Rats of, which is ironic if you think of it) back when we were teenagers and Cathie got a little too carried away with her cutting. Her family thought it was a suicide attempt, so there she was, admitted against her will and forced into, among other unsavory things, group therapy and mass-produced meals (to this day, she can’t stand to so much as look at Jell-O). I had been at the institute for years when she arrived.

  She was as fascinated by my lifestyle (“You live here? You’ve always lived here? Who takes care of you?”) as I was by hers (“Your parents voted Republican? In 2004? How did you manage to hold your head up high, knowing that?”). She was fun and high-strung and creative and deeply moody. Within a year she’d met my two sisters . . . and stayed friends anyway! Once she had done that, I knew she was doomed to be my best friend.

  And finally, I was going to meet Patrick. He was ten years older than she was, so she almost never saw him when she was growing up. He was away at college when she started cutting, and only came back to visit a couple times a year, always when I was on the road for work (or seeking new and intriguing therapies). Her parents were both in early-stage Alzheimer’s, and Patrick paid for the luxe nursing home they’d been living in for the last six years, ditto Cathie’s rent when she couldn’t swing it.

  He loved his family, I figured, but he didn’t know them. Maybe he’d stick around awhile this time.

  I headed right to Cathie’s from work. She had a beautiful house in Hastings, a town on the Mississippi River. It had been built during the Civil War (the house, not the town), and sometimes I’d find myself looking at the wooden banister or the built-in shelves and think. This was being built while Lincoln was president, while Shiro would think, This built-in shelf was installed the same year Lincoln got shot in the head by a sorry-ass actor, and Adrienne would gouge divots out of the beautifully polished hardwood floor in the dining room. Neat.