Chance of a Lifetime (Chances Are #1)

  Jake knelt over the man; his hands pressed something into those of the dead man. "Christ, Jake, what happened?"

  "Son of a bitch came at me. Had to put him down."

  I looked down at the dead man. There was a pistol in his hand. Just one problem: I'd seen that gun on the kitchen table when we came in. I knew Jake had shot the man on sight. But I nodded and said, "Right. You didn't have any choice."

  That's how we wrote it up too. If anyone had run any tests on the weapon they might have noticed the dead man hadn't fired it. No one goes to that much trouble with a dead child murderer, so Jake got away with it and I never mentioned it until this moment.

  His eyes narrow so much that they about disappear from his face. He reaches across the table to grab my arm. His grip is like iron; I can't shake him loose. "He tell you that at the bar last night, you little shit? Or maybe in bed?"

  "Jake, stop it! It's me!"

  "You the one who burned down his apartment?"

  "No! One of Luther's men did it. He's the one who gave me this shiner." He twists my arm until tears come to my eyes. I squeal, "You're hurting me!"

  Jake's a tough cop, but he's got a soft heart. That's why he always plays the good cop for interrogations. He lets me go, and settles back into his seat. "Sorry, kid. Steve's my partner. My best friend. Tell me what happened to him or so help me I'm going to put your pretty face through this window."

  "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm Steve."

  "Stop that bullshit right now. I don't believe in fairy tales."

  "You pigheaded son of a bitch. Listen: I was at the bar getting skunked like usual when I saw the Worm. He looked nervous, more so than usual. I collared him and he said something was going down at Lennox Pharmaceuticals. Something big enough that Lex himself would be there.

  "I didn't want to tip anyone off, so I went alone to give it a look. He had his whole crew there: Blades, Tall Man, and Bruiser. The Tall Man said Lex wanted a drug they made there to sell it to someone. He didn't know who. I caught up to Lex, we struggled, and then he stabbed me with a syringe.

  "I'm not sure what was in the damned thing, some kind of pink stuff. Soon as he pushed down on the plunger I went limp. Lex shot me and then dumped me in the harbor with an anchor around my leg."

  "So Steve's at the bottom of the harbor?"

  "No, you idiot! I was at the bottom of the harbor. Then the hole he put in me closed up. I started changing. I became, you know, a girl. When I woke up I was on the docks. I made my way back home, where one of Luther's guys was ransacking the place. He knocked me out and then burned the place down. I got out just in time.

  "Once I got some clothes and stuff, I called you. I thought you might believe me." I hate myself when I begin to sob. It's the female hormones I bet. "You're the only one I can talk to about this. You have to believe me."

  Jake shakes his head. "That's the dumbest story I've ever heard. You got anything to back it up before I take you to the psych ward?"

  "There was a scientist there, a Dr. Nath. Talk to her."

  "Great idea, except we found her with two slit wrists this morning."

  "Well isn't that convenient?" Neither of us says anything for about a minute. "Look, Jake, you're not a dummy. Someone raids Lennox, Dr. Nath winds up dead, I go missing, and my apartment burns down-you really want to tell me it's not connected?"

  "It's a long way from that being connected to some mystery drug turning my partner into a little girl."

  "Damn it, I'm not a little girl!" I shriek this loud enough that everyone turns to look. If I could see my face I'm sure it would be beet red-except my bruised eye.

  Jake reaches across the table to grab my hand, although this time he's not so rough. "Come on, kid. Let's go talk somewhere private."

  Chapter 12

  Jake's '57 Fairlane 500 is his pride and joy. I never cared about cars, but Jake is different. Jake came here from suburban Detroit; his father worked on the assembly line at Ford for thirty years. That gave Jake a much different perspective on automobiles, so that he spent most of his off time in the garage with the car. It's pretty much his second kid-his only kid now.

  He guides me roughly onto the passenger seat; he just about bangs my head on the doorframe in the process. I've spent plenty of time in the car during stakeouts and whatnot; it always felt so cramped before, as if my head would pop through the roof or my legs start to cramp at any minute. Now my head has a few inches to spare and I can stretch my legs out if I want.

  Jake gets behind the wheel, but he doesn't put his keys in the ignition. He reaches into his jacket for a cigarette. It's still legal to light up in your own car, so he does. "You smoke?" he asks.

  "I quit," I say.

  "There's strike one, kid. Steve smokes two packs a day."

  "Yeah, well, this Steve quit this morning."

  He blows a little smoke my way on purpose. I cough at it; I don't miss the stuff in the slightest. After a couple of drags, he says, "You like game shows?"

  "You know I don't watch those."

  "That's a point for you. Let's see how much else you know about Steve. Where did he go to college?"

  "Trick question. I didn't go to college."

  "Right. Where did we first meet?"

  "The 17th Precinct. Back when it was still in the old colonial building. I'd been there two months already when you showed up. Our lockers were next to each other."

  "Right again. What's my wife's name?"

  "She goes by Tess, but her real name is Teresa Marie Madigan nee Nagel."

  "The judges will accept that." I can see the vein on his forehead start to pulse. He's going to start asking some harder ones. Bring it on. "All right, kid, time for the lightning round. What was the stripper's name at my bachelor party?"

  "Carlita. She had a little surprise hiding in her pi?ata too."

  "Which was?"

  "Her real name was Carlos." It's no surprise Jake would think of that after the story I told him. But where Carlita was just a man in drag, I'm all woman, except in my brain.

  "Who found that out?"

  "Captain Kinsey. He got a little more than he bargained for with his lap dance."

  The vein on Jake's forehead beats like crazy now. "Where does my daughter go to school?"

  "Another trick question. She doesn't go to school anymore."

  "Why not?"

  "She's dead."

  "How?"

  "Leukemia. She died two years ago-August 19. The doctors gave her six months, but she fought like a little hellcat. She lasted three years."

  Jake's eyes begin to water as I'm sure he thinks of those awful days, when his daughter, once a talented softball player and gymnast, became little more than a pale sack of bones. "What were her last words?"

  "Jake, stop this-"

  "If you really are Steve then you'll know."

  "She asked you to close the window because she was cold." But the window wasn't open and she had three blankets and a quilt on her. I had slipped out of the room then; I knew she was leaving us and unlike the other times she wouldn't come back.

  Jake wipes at his eyes. "You're good. Real good. But he could have told you all that."

  "I'd never tell anyone about Jenny, no matter how drunk I got. You know that." I put a hand on Jake's shoulder; he doesn't brush it away. "Look, I'll be the first to admit it's a crazy ass story. If things were reversed I wouldn't believe it either. But it is happening."

  Jake stares at me for a moment. Then he nods. "Yeah, that or you've done a hell of a lot of homework on the bastard." Jake snuffs out his cigarette. He reaches for another one, to buy time while he thinks. "What I don't get is why you look so young. Shouldn't you have changed into a woman the same age?"

  "I don't get it either. Maybe someone at Lennox does."

  "I already told you Nath is dead."

  "So? She must have assistants, or at least s
ome notes that might help explain what that stuff was Lex put in me. There has to be something there we can use."

  "Maybe not. The captain's got Woods and Jefferson down there with the forensics people. They've probably pulled the place apart by now. Even if they haven't, I can't bring a civilian in there, especially not a kid."

  "I'm not a kid!" I give Jake a punch in the arm, like we used to do in the locker room. We took pride in giving each other bruises. I doubt he would get a bruise from that punch.

  "You're a kid to me." He lights up his cigarette. "You look about the same age Jenny would be now."

  "About the same age as Maddy too," I say. Unwelcome thoughts creep into my head about what to tell my daughter and ex-wife about this situation. "Have you told her or Debbie anything yet?"

  "Not yet. They're bound to hear about it eventually."

  "Unless we can figure out how to get me back to normal."

  "Yeah." Jake sticks his key into the ignition. "Better buckle up, kid."

  Chapter 13

  Lennox Pharmaceuticals looks a lot different in the daylight. Mostly because it's surrounded by police vehicles. There's a uniformed officer at the gate who waves us through once Jake shows his badge. I look around for my car, but it's probably already in the river or scattered around a dozen chop shops.

  Terry Woods stands outside to smoke a cigarette and talk on his cell phone. In a black suit with a silk purple shirt he looks like he just got out of a nightclub. He holds up a hand to stop us before we can sneak inside the building. "Nothing so far, Captain. Place has been wiped clean. We'll keep looking." Woods lowers his hand once he turns off the phone. "We got this under control Madigan. What's with the kid?"

  "My niece St-Stacey," Jake says and just like that I've got a new name. "She's studying criminology in college so I thought she might like to see how real cops do business."

  "Yeah, well, the first lesson for her is we don't allow civilians on crime scenes."

  "Come on, she's not going to touch anything."

  "This is my scene and I say who sees it and who doesn't."

  Any other time I'd rear up to my full height like a grizzly bear and then intimidate Woods until the little prick backs down. I can't do that in this body and Jake doesn't have the heart to back down a fellow detective.

  Or usually he doesn't. This time, maybe sensing the gravity of the situation, he gets so close to Woods that their noses almost touch. He pokes Woods in the chest with an index finger. "I'm the senior detective here and I'm saying she can go inside." He pulls his finger back and adds in a friendlier voice, "I'll take responsibility for her with the captain."

  I worry that Woods will hold out, but he's never liked the rough stuff. He wouldn't know what to do with a snitch like the Worm unless it were written in some fancy journal. "Fine, but if she contaminates anything it's your ass."

  "You've probably contaminated everything already," Jake grumbles as we walk away. He puts a protective arm around my shoulder to steer me past the other cops around the building.

  "Stacey?" I whisper to him.

  "I used to have an aunt named Stacey. You got something better in mind?"

  I catch my reflection in the elevator doors as we approach them. Do I look like a Stacey? I sure as hell don't look like a Steve. "No, I guess not."

  ***

  We start on the third floor, in Dr. Nath's office. Most everything has been taken already, the file cabinets and drawers emptied of papers that might prove useful. The chair where I tied up the Tall Man lies in one corner, along with the slashed remains of the electrical cord I tied him up with. There are cards left on the carpet and desk to mark the spots of the Tall Man's blood.

  "Doesn't look like much left here," Jake says.

  "There might still be something that would help," I say. I'm about to go over to the desk when Jake puts out a hand; he inadvertently cops a feel of my right breast. Our faces turn red at the same time.

  "Sorry," he says, "but you can't touch anything. We don't want your prints getting all over."

  "My prints are already all over." As soon as I say this, I get an idea of how I can prove to Jake I am who I say I am. All I need to do is to find some of my old prints so I can compare them to my new ones.

  I see the perfect device for this on the floor, next to a potted plant. It's the book I clubbed the Tall Man with, some of his blood still on the gilded edges. Before Jake can stop me, I bend down and pick it up by the sides. I leave it on the desk for later.

  There's a box in the corner with the mundane office supplies from Dr. Nath's desk. This includes her tape dispenser. I roll out a few pieces to use for my test. The first one I press against my left index finger. The next three I press against the cover of the book.

  The third piece of tape is the charm. I hold it up triumphantly to Jake. "Here's the proof."

  "A piece of tape?"

  "No, my fingerprints. Look." I lay the strip with my old print on the desk, next to the one I took off my hand. Since my finger is smaller and skinnier, they aren't the same size. The whorls of the print are the same, though. "You see?"

  Jake studies both pieces of tape. After a long moment of deliberation, he nods and then sighs. "Yeah, I see it," he says.

  "Now do you believe me?"

  "Not yet."

  "Why not? You think I could fake that? You were standing right here the whole time."

  "They might look the same to me, but I'm not one of those forensics nerds with a microscope," Jake says.

  I shake my head. What's it going to take to convince him? "Can I look around here now?"

  "Knock yourself out," he says.

  We search the office, but there's nothing of value, just like I thought. I can feel the tears start to come back, but I manage to repress them. There's still plenty of building left to search. "Come on," I say. "Let's go upstairs."

  ***

  There's no one in the lab on the fifth floor where Bruiser used me to play squash. The doorway is barred by yellow tape that we duck under. No one's cleaned up the broken glass yet, so we have to watch our steps.

  I tell Jake about what happened in here. "He shoved me along that counter, into that wall," I say.

  "Jesus," Jake says. He bends down to study the counter. "Is that your blood?"

  "Probably."

  He picks up a piece of glass not stained with my blood. "Hold out your finger."

  "Why?"

  "Just do it."

  I hold out my right index finger to him. A moment later, Jake slashes the glass across the end of it. "What the hell did you do that for?" I shout at him as drops of blood trickle onto the counter.

  "Watch this," Jake says. He dips a piece of glass into the blood. Meanwhile I stick my finger in my mouth. Girl blood tastes the same as boy blood as far as I'm concerned. So much for that rhyme about sugar and spice. "Looks like we found some evidence."

  I smile at this and see what Jake's doing. To ask the forensics people to take a sample of my blood would raise a lot of questions. This way forensics will think it's part of the crime scene. If my blood is the same as both Steve and Stacey then there won't be any note. If my girl blood is different from my boy blood, then forensics will make a note of an unidentified person at the scene.

  "Let's hope you're who you say you are," Jake says.

  "Yeah, let's hope."

  ***

  Our last stop is Dr. Nath's lab, where Lex used her as a human shield. Jefferson munches on a donut in there-there's a reason for that old clich?. With his other hand he checks something on his phone. He must have been woken up for this; the buttons of his shirt are misaligned, so that I can see some of the pale flab of his stomach through the gaps.

  "Woods said you were coming up here with someone." His beady eyes narrow as he stares at me. "I didn't realize it was Take Your Niece to Work Day."

  "Yeah, well, I thought it'd be nice to have someone with br
ains at the crime scene," Jake says.

  When Jefferson snorts, it makes him seem more piggish than he already is. "Brains, huh? She even out of diapers yet?"

  "I'm twenty-one, asshole," I snap.

  "She's got a real mouth on her."

  "She gets that from her uncle," Jake says. "You mind if we have a look around?"

  "Yeah, I mind. This is my scene."

  "We're just borrowing it for a couple of minutes."

  "Why? You and Nancy Drew planning to crack the case?"

  "There might be something you missed," Jake says.

  Jefferson sneers at this. "I forgot you and Steve are the real hotshots around here. Or were, I should say. Looks like Steve finally got in too far over his head."

  "Listen you son of a bitch, that's my partner you're talking about," Jake says. The vein on his forehead begins to pulse while his fists clench.

  I put a hand on his midsection. Much as I'd like to see him clean Jefferson's clock, I don't need Jake getting suspended right now. "Don't fight, Uncle Jake. Please?" I say in my sweetest girl voice.

  He puts an arm around my shoulder. "We're not going to fight, honey. Are we?"

  Jefferson stares back at Jake for a moment. "Yeah, that's right, kid. We aren't going to fight. I was just going to make a call anyway."

  "Probably to call for a pizza, the fat bastard," Jake growls after Jefferson's gone. He lets go of me so I can look around Nath's lab.

  Like her office, there isn't much to find. The stuff Jefferson's deemed important has already been taken. What little remains is written with so much jargon that it might as well be in Chinese. I toss a few pages to the floor. The tears finally start to flow. "It's hopeless," I say. "There isn't anything here. Even if there is, I can't understand it."

  Jake pats me on the back in fatherly fashion. "Don't give up yet. Nath had to have some people working for her, some assistants. One of them might be able to help us."

  "Maybe," I say with a sniffle.

  "We'll check out the files. OK?"

  "OK."

  Jefferson waits in the hallway for us. "So you crack the case?"

  "Not yet," Jake says. "What happened to all the files?"

  "They're down in the truck."

  "Great. See you around, Stu."

  Before I can leave, Jefferson holds out a business card smeared with chocolate frosting from his donut. "You think of anything else, kid, you call me."