“Freelance for a variety of papers? Work as an independent contractor for various companies in the hopes none of them tumbles to the fact that you’re a multiple?”
It was said with such matter-of-fact dryness that I did not bother to muster a protest. It was unlikely to be a random guess; there were only some forty thousand diagnosed multiples on the planet. “How do you know that?”
“The study you and your ‘sisters’ participated in last year, the one testing the new drug for multiples.”
“Hailmaridol,” I remembered. “Like the Hail Mary pass. The doctors described it as the long bomb made in desperation.” I managed a thin smile. “That amused us enough to sign up. But we ended up with the placebos.”
“Yes. My husband and I funded the study. He was … a complicated man.”
“Was?” Complicated? Is that code for multiple? That would be interesting.
“I’m a widow now.” She made a gesture with her cuffed hands as if sweeping her dead spouse off the table. “And onto a new project. Have you ever heard of BOFFO?”
“No.”
“Good. We’re supposed to be a secret.” She smiled at me. “You’re a black belt, yes? And a certified sniper, and a designated markswoman? You’re fluent in Mandarin as well as—”
“If you’ve seen all our paperwork from the study, you know I am.”
“Meaning Cadence is the one with the near-perfect test scores—”
“She reads a lot,” I conceded.
“—and high empathy quotient, and Adrienne is the one with the genius for getting you two out of trouble.”
“Almost as often as she gets us into trouble.” Was I really discussing my other selves with a stranger? I was!
“We could use you. In fact, we need you. Do you know how many FBI agents there are in the country?”
“If I did, I have forgotten.” This was the oddest interview I’d ever conducted.
“About thirty-five thousand. Do you know how many of those are special agents? About fourteen thousand. Do you know how many violent crimes are committed each year?”
That I did know, thanks to some journalism classes and my part-time job. “It averages to one and a half million. But the FBI isn’t a national police force. It’s more of a national security org.”
“Yes. And they’re still wildly outnumbered. My late husband and I had an idea about that. You joined our research study, so you’ve got a taste for adventure. I think we can help each other.”
“You’re saying that as if you will have your freedom sooner rather than later.”
She just smiled.
“Why did you kill him?”
“Whom? Oh.” She raised her hands again, displaying the cuffs. “Mr. Lavik.”
“Yes. You do not deny the killing. Why did you become a vigilante?”
She threw back her head and gurgled laughter. In all other respects she was a dignified, chilly, polished older woman, but she had the giggle of a toddler who has successfully swiped a cookie. “Don’t pretty it up, Ms. Jones! I shot him because he revolted me.”
“Surely you should have left it to law enforcement. You were alone in the house—your neighbor’s house, the paper said. You could have been hurt.”
“Yes. Well. That will teach me to knock on someone’s door for the clichéd cup of sugar.” She shrugged. “I was craving homemade fudge.”
It was almost a minute before I realized that was the last she would say about any possible danger to herself. Questions crowded my mind and I tried not to show my excitement. I had not met her before; I would have remembered. She had called me for an interview, ostensibly about her trust’s new shelter. Then she had been arrested. Then she had declined to reschedule. Was she using the failed research study as a way to find people with particular psychiatric “quirks”? To form some … some elite police force peopled by the clinically insane?
Is this really happening?
“Why didn’t you call the police? Before you killed him,” I corrected myself. Because she had called them, after. “So they could come s—” Save you, I had been about to blurt, then reconsidered. “Help you.”
“I didn’t trust them to get it done.” She made another shooing motion, as if there were a fly in the room. “You’re appalled, of course. I did a Bad Thing. Man’s inhumanity to man and all that. I wasn’t happy about having to do it, and in a perfect world he and I would never have met. But it’s not a perfect world, and we did meet. I recognized him, of course. Even if I hadn’t walked in on what he was doing to that poor child, may she rest in peace, I would have recognized him.
“I saw him, I knew him … and I recalled that the DA in Los Angeles had to suspend the grand jury because of contaminated evidence. I recalled the judge two years later in New York who threw the case out because of an illegal search, and then I stuck a screwdriver in Mr. Lavik’s ear.” She glanced at her watch and smiled at me. “But I was terribly conflicted the whole time. I could barely choke down that four-course meal later.”
This is really happening.
There was more, of course. Not just that day, not just that year. But that was the moment I decided to follow Michaela to BOFFO.
chapter thirty-six
“Oh, look at this.” Dr. Gallo looked up when we walked into the blood bank. He had been examining charts at the receptionist’s desk, his long body slouching into a question mark as he read and made notes, and she was flirting with him in a way that made me want to run her blond braid through the electric pencil sharpener. “You’ve either got an arrest warrant, or there’s a break in the case. Since you’re almost smiling, it’s … I guess that means it could be either. Do you know who the perp is?”
“Stop watching SVU reruns. We don’t actually talk like that … helloooooo,” George cooed to the receptionist, who, given her slutty tendencies, would likely be receptive. “George Pinkman, FBI. We’ve gotta ask your boss some official questions about an official case we’re officially working on. Because we’re totally real FBI agents and not really working for SD-6.”
I swallowed a sigh. “A word, please, Dr. Gallo?”
“Sure.”
I left George chatting up the slut while Dr. Gallo escorted me to a small conference room. “I’m glad to see you.”
I could not imagine why, and was annoyed to feel my pulse soar at his words.
“I wanted to apologize about last night.”
“No need.”
“If I said anything to upset or scare—”
“I was not afraid!”
He didn’t blink. A man used to screeching, was Dr. Gallo. Was it his turbulent childhood or his profession? “I’m glad. I can’t take back any of what I said, since it all happens to be true, but I get that you’re in a relationship and I’ve got too much respect for you—”
“Please.”
“—to ever want to—”
“Shut.”
“—make you feel uncomfort—”
“Up! I am uncomfortable right now!”
“Oh.” He closed his mouth so hard I heard his teeth click and then, to my astonishment, his narrow, pale face slowly filled with color. “Of course. You’re here about the murders, not about anything else. I apologize again.”
“No—I—” Ah, yes, of course that was why I had shrilled at him like a fishwife and then, when he acted the perfect gent, told him to shut up. Because I was such a professional. Yes indeed! “I mean you—I—we’re here—I’m here—and we do need to talk about the—the murders—and about you—but not the way you—you—”
His hand closed around my bicep and he leaned in protectively. “Are you all right? You’re losing all your color. Trust me, I know the look when someone’s knees are about to go.” He gently forced me back a step, and the back of my knees hit the chair; I abruptly sat. “Put your head down.”
I did. For a long, long time.
chapter thirty-seven
I popped upright so fast I must have come off like a jack-in-the-box because Max
jerked back a step with a startled, “Gah!”
“Ha! That’s a switch.”
“Sag, are you all right? Even for you, this is strange.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Maxie!” I crowed. Shiro couldn’t handle talking to Max! So she ran like a rabbit and left him to me. Ha! And again, I say ha! “It’s been a weird day! Which is why I’m shouting! Because I have a weird job! This is a normal reaction to what’s happening in my life right now!”
“Good God.” George came in and shut the door, rubbing his (good) ear. “I could hear you screeching out in the lobby.” He showed me a business card, like I ever cared when he scored. “She wants me to text her! You’re not trying anything with Awesome Mouth, are you, doc?”
“Her name,” George said, as his eyebrow went up and the corner of his mouth turned down, “is Maureen. And no, I’m single.” He glanced at
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
me. “Painfully.”
“Perfect. Because she’s hot, and I need a wingman, so your blood clinic is gonna solve both those problems.”
“Delighted to help, and if you harm her in any way, I’ll beat you to fucking death.” He gave George a pleasant smile. “Right in the middle of my blood clinic.”
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
It is very, very wrong that that turned me on.
Even George, normally irrepressible, seemed taken aback. “Oh. Okay. I’ll keep it in mind. Listen, sorry to burst in on you like this—”
“No you’re not.”
“Guilty. Listen, here’s what we think happened with your guy Wayne, and Rita and Cindy.”
“Carrie,” I corrected.
“Right.” George shrugged off the pesky details like the victim’s name. “So here it is.”
When he finished explaining, Max’s mouth had gone thin, and the blush Shiro had started was gone. He’d gone so pale with anger, his eyes seemed to burn. It was like the doctor had drained out of him and left someone else. “That’s a goddamned abomination.”
“Welcome to the wonderful world of crime.” George had straightened to his full height. He didn’t take a step back—you never, ever did that—but he was making himself as tall as possible in the face of Max’s fury, and I’m not even sure he was aware he was doing it. “Doncha love it?”
“This—this—” The doctor fought the damaged child for a few seconds; it ended up being a draw. “This parasitical fuckhead is trolling my group for victims?”
“Prob’ly. You just got a lot more interesting, Doc. As a person, I mean. Not just as someone who can potentially help me get laid more.”
“Whoa,” I said respectfully. Those were not words George uttered lightly.
“And yes, we can get a warrant, but if you could take us through your last several meetings and who was there and who was new and who wasn’t—”
“Fuck a bunch of warrants. I’m not their doctor and the group isn’t covered by privilege and trust me, these guys would want me to help you get this prick. If I could tell them—”
George and I shook our heads. “You can’t.”
“Right, but if I could, they’d help. Barring that, I’ll help. Right now. But that’s gonna be tough because, like I said, it’s not an official group. I don’t have charts.”
“Anything you can do,” George said, and as it turned out, Max Gallo was able to do a lot, though it took a couple of days to pull it all together. But I’m positive he didn’t intend for me to get hurt the way I did.
Pretty positive.
chapter thirty-eight
“Pearl’s fine,” Patrick assured me over the phone. “She only stealth-pooped once, and it’s almost suppertime.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall, thinking it was amazing how much work I got done waiting in lines, thanks to my cell phone/ball and chain. Emma Jan liked to wonder aloud what we all did before the Internet and laptops and cell phones and texting and Twitter. “Lived our lives,” Shiro told her sourly. (Not a fan of Twitter, my Shiro.)
“That’s great.”
“And she really likes that blanket in the kitchen. Which is just unbelievable to me.”
“We’ve been over th—”
“I bought her this amazing dog-recliner thing from L.L. Bean and she wants the ratty blanket you’ve had so long you don’t remember when you bought it.”
I’m not entirely sure I’m the one who bought it. “It’s all part of her plan to mess with you.”
It was a Premium Dog Couch, “preferred by dogs everywhere!” per the online catalogue (I guess “loathed and despised by dogs everywhere!” wasn’t as big a selling point). The thing was two and a half feet long and three feet wide; the Premium Dog Couch was almost as big as our Not-so-Premium People Couch. It was “designed with bolsters on three sides for cushioning and support,” and when Pearl laid down in it, it didn’t so much support her as swallow her. I was not surprised she preferred the blanket, but it would do no good to explain all that to Patrick, who was something of a label baby.
“Listen, I’m sorry to disappear on you again. But we’re really close to getting this guy.” Also, I’m not sure I ever really loved you, but thanks for uprooting your life and buying a house for me to live in. Owe ya one, big guy! “Really close,” I added, relieved that that, at least, was true.
“That’s great! Listen, come home for a snack.”
“I can’t.” I guiltily looked at the guy behind the counter. It was almost my turn. I couldn’t just walk away. It’d be rude. When you went to the trouble to get into a line, you were making a commitment to buy whatever it was you were getting in line for. Also I badly wanted a Blizzard.
“You’re in line at the Creamery, aren’t you?”
“No,” I said with all the dignity I could muster. “It’s a Dairy Queen, Mr. Smartypants.”
He laughed. “Get your Blizzard—”
“I’m not ordering a Blizzard!”
“—and come home and eat it. I want you to see where I put all the living room furniture.”
“Is it in the living room?”
“Come home and see,” he wheedled.
“I will.” We’d needed another break, and I’d left Max to George’s tender care. Emma Jan was going to relieve me, but I knew we were close, and I didn’t want to be home asleep when they figured out who it was. At this stage, we were just cross-checking names. His was there. Count on it. “See you in half an hour.”
I sighed and looked up and, as it was my turn, had a brief conversation with the freckled kid behind the counter, then went back to my thoughts.
I wanted to see Patrick and I didn’t. I was afraid guilt was my biggest motivator, which showed how pathetic I was since I hadn’t done anything yet.
But you will.
Yes. I was very much afraid I would. And soon. Shiro was me and I was Shiro, and I was disappearing and letting her come forward and vice versa. Once it was like dropping through a trapdoor and coming out the other side days or hours later, with no idea of what had transpired while I was down in the dark. These days it was more like stepping back from a microphone and letting the other person talk, hearing and understanding everything and, when it was my turn for the mike again, knowing just what to say.
My baker. My house. My dog. My wonderful perfect house to go to with my wonderful perfect baker and my wonderful perfect dog. Olive was Pearl and Dawg … she was adapting to us. We had a multiple dog! Okay, yes, I’d read somewhere that dogs were incredibly adaptable, but this was pretty great. Olive/Pearl/Dawg never got confused about who was driving the body. She knew that the rules were different with each of us. Pooping outside was so far beyond her, but not understanding that sometimes it was okay to get on the couch and sometimes it wasn’t. If I had to choose … okay, I’d choose that she pooped outside. But not getting confused about what rules were in effect at what time was big number two.
She wasn’t afraid of any of us, either. That alone was worth loving her for, and I was pretty sure it ranked high on Adrienn
e’s and Shiro’s lists, too.
Donating blood is normal, and shacking up is normal, and Patrick is normal. Is moving in with him the relationship equivalent of donating blood? Because that would be wrong, right?
“Miss, all’s I asked is do you want extra bananas in your Blizzard.”
“Oh. Yes, please. Extra bananas. And extra chocolate, please.”
My hip shook, which was startling until I realized I’d clipped the phone to my hip while thinking about Patrick, so automatically I’d forgotten about it. I pulled it, glanced at the ID, and answered. “Hi, George. What’s up? You haven’t got him already?”
“You realize you’re asking strangers to give you advice because people who know you won’t tell you what you want to hear, dumbass?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said primly. Why, the Dairy Queen employee and I were like that. I’d been getting my banana split Blizzards here (minus strawberries and pineapple, with extra bananas and chocolate) for almost six months. We had a relationship based on mutual respect and our love of dairy and, barring those, Dairy Queen products. I glared behind me. Was that treacherous bastard sneaking up behind me? Spying on me? “How’d you know what I was doing?”
“Because I’m God. I know everything. Okay, it was a lucky guess. Also I know you, and I wish to Christ I didn’t. One thing all of you have in common is you ask strangers for personal advice.”
“This is why you’re calling me? Have you driven Emma Jan away so soon?”
“No, Paul called. Normally I’d laugh and let him listen to VM Number Two, but I’ve decided to use him and his software to ruthlessly further my career.” George could send callers to one of two voice-mail messages: Voice Mail Number One was his standard “Hello, you’ve reached George Pinkman, leave a message,” etc. Voice Mail Number Two was a thirty-second rape-whistle blast. “He said he’s got HOAP.2 up and running and caught a guy who killed a couple of pros.”