Any Given Doomsday (3 page)

Jimmy would fight for Ruthie. He’d die for her. So then why was he here and she wasn’t?

“Lizzy.” He sighed. “There are things going down you don’t understand.”

There always were. Despite having “the sight,” as Ruthie said, I was a bit slow on the uptake when it came to people. I’d certainly been a dimwit when it came to Jimmy.

I’d believed in him, in us; then I’d seen him screwing someone else only hours after he’d screwed me. At the time, I’d thought we’d been making love. At the time, I’d thought what we had was love. But when I touched him, I’d learned differently.

“I don’t trust you,” I said.

“You believe I’d kill someone?”

“You have been known to stick sharp implements into people who annoy you.”

He scowled. “I haven’t stuck one into you yet.”

“No, but I’m sure you’ve dreamed about it.”

His lips turned upward. “When I dream of you, I don’t dream of knives. More like whips, chains, some rope, a little whipped cream.”

“Funny, when I dream of you I
do
dream of knives.”

His half-smile faded. “The cops told you Ruthie died from a knife wound?”

“I thought you were listening at the door.”

“I only heard snatches. Good door.”

“They said they found a knife and from the description, it’s yours. Combined with your fingerprints on everything and the screaming match you had with Ruthie, you’ve landed at the top of their most-wanted list.”

“I hope you didn’t tell them about my childhood fascination with sharp, shiny things.”

“They seemed to already know.”

He muttered several curses that would have singed the ears off most people, but not me. I’d heard every one of them before my fifth birthday.

“Maybe you should turn yourself in—” I began.

“No.”

The word was clipped and just a little desperate. Jimmy never had gotten over the time he’d spent in jail as a kid. I couldn’t really blame him. Still—

“If you didn’t do it—”

“I’m going to have a hard time proving that, considering the knife.” His head tilted, as if he’d heard something far away. Before I knew what he meant to do, he crossed the room and slipped out.

I followed, reaching the door only seconds after it closed. But when I opened it, the hall was deserted.

“How does he
do
that?” I muttered.

The guy should be in covert operations the way he went Houdini at the drop- of a hat. I suspect being raised the way we were—basically raising ourselves until Rurhie—had made both Jimmy and 1 adept at disappearing.

Even in a crowd, I knew how to become invisible. And while Jimmy had made an art out of garnering attention for himself and his work, I doubted he’d ever lost the talent for avoiding attention when such avoidance was the best course of action.

“What are you doing out of bed?”

A nurse had appeared almost as mysteriously as Jimmy had disappeared. She shooed me inside and tried to hustle me back to bed.

“Did you see anyone leave my room just now?” I asked.

“The detectives.”

“After that?”

She shook her head, distracted by a call button dinging down the hall. I couldn’t take what she’d seen or not seen as gospel. She had other things to worry about be-sides me and my visitors. Although she didn’t have me for long.

The doctors could find nothing wrong with me, and though they weren’t wild about my leaving, they couldn’t stop me.

Within the hour, I’d checked out and headed for home.

Chapter 4

Friedenberg was a yuppie paradise. Located directly north of Milwaukee, the village had once been the oldest German community in the county, which was why we were overrun with Lutheran churches built of stone.

For centuries the area surrounding the place held nothing but cows; then the city got dangerous and those with money went north.

They discovered a quaint town with a main street that ran parallel to the Milwaukee River, making the real estate prime for any business that might profit from water flowing past an eastern exposure.

But what really made Friedenberg grow was the vast amount of farmland that surrounded it. Once the bottom fell out of milk and cheese, the farmers sold what they had left—the land—and a subdivision was born. A very wealthy subdivision. Houses around Friedenberg started at half a million dollars.

However, the town proper—where I lived—was jokingly referred to by locals as the ghetto. I didn’t find it funny, but at least my building didn’t boast property taxes that equaled the gross national product of a small African nation.

The cab let me out in front my place—a two-story, business-residential combo I’d purchased after leaving the force. I’d wanted to get as far away from my previous life as I could without being too far from Ruthie to visit.

I rented out the first floor to a small retail establishment that sold useless knickknacks to the wealthy haus-fraus in the area.

These women made a career out of raising spoiled children and spending wads of their doctor, banker, lawyer husbands’ money. They hired full-time nannies so they could shop, order salad at the ridiculously expensive local lunch spot, then work out until they were as slim and hard as their French-manicured nails. It was a weird, weird world.

I lived in the efficiency apartment on the second floor, which worked out well since the store opened at ten and closed at five. The rest of the time, which conveniently encompassed the hours I was home, the place remained dark and silent.

Like now, thank goodness. All I wanted to do was sleep. My earlier burst of energy had faded into the exhaustion that follows an adrenaline rush.

The ground was covered with snow. According to the radio, tomorrow had a predicted high of sixty-four degrees. Welcome to Wisconsin. By tomorrow night, everything would be a sea of mud.

The moon had come out from behind the clouds, bright and eerily silver, casting cool blue shadows across the pristine white carpet.

I stumbled upstairs and locked the door behind me. The place already smelled closed in, musty. Didn’t take long.

I left the mail in the mailbox—one more night wouldn’t hurt—and ignored the blinking red light on my message machine. I was certain at least one if not more of the messages was from Megan. According to the nurse, she’d been a frequent visitor while I was unconscious.

She’d left a
Get Well Now
card. At the bottom she’d scrawled:
Come back as soon as you’re up to it
. 1 planned to be up to it by tomorrow.

My apartment was sparse. The kitchen lay to the left, my bed to the right, a bathroom in the far corner next to the only window. I didn’t need much; I spent most of my life at Murphy’s anyway.

I didn’t bother with a light, just dropped my clothes in a trail that led to the bed. Then I crawled in, pulled the covers over my head, and dreamed.

I was at Ruthie’s, but in the way of dreams the house was different—white with green trim and a picket fence. Too hokey for Ruthie, but nevertheless I still knew it was hers.

A rugrat in ringlets opened the door. I’d never seen her before, though I’d seen a thousand just like her. The eyes were far older than the childish face and doll-baby hair.

Had I looked like that? I knew damn well I had, even without Jimmy’s never-quite-amateur photography to remind me.

“Who you?” the child asked.

“Elizabeth,” I said. “1 need to see—”

“Lizbeth?” The door opened wider and there she was, her appearance exactly the same as it had been for as long as I could remember.

Ruthie Kane was sharp—from her all-seeing dark eyes, past her razorlike elbows, to her spiky hips and knobby knees. The only soft things about Ruthie were her steadily graying Afro and her great big heart.

“Run along,” she said to the girl. “Others are out back playin’ at somethin’.”

As the woman-child turned away, Ruthie ran her weathered hand over the youngster’s head. “Sweet baby,” she murmured.

The kid left skipping.

Ruthie headed for the kitchen. “I figured you’d be by.”

I followed, uncertain. My conscious mind knew Ruthie was dead, knew I was dreaming, yet this all seemed so real, and Ruthie very much alive.

“Figured?” I echoed as I stepped into the sun-bright room.

“I know I’m dead, honey.”

I’d always wondered if Ruthie were a bit psychic herself. She’d been the first to talk to me about my “special gift.” And while most people as religious as Ruthie might have taken me for an exorcism, or at least laid on the hands to rid me of my whispering demon, she had introduced me to someone who understood. Someone who had helped me learn how to deal with what I was.

I fingered the tiny piece of turquoise I’d worn around my neck since I was fifteen.

Someone who had scared the living hell out of me, but that was another story.

“Is this heaven?” I wondered.

“Sure enough.”

Why had I asked? Where else would Ruthie be?

“Why are you still taking care of kids?”

I heard a bunch of them through the open window, laughing, running, being kids.

“How could I be happy without little ones to care for? These here had their lives ended too soon. They need somethin’ extra.”

Trust Ruthie to find lost souls to mother even in the afterlife.

“Ah, Ruthie,” I whispered. “What am I gonna do without you?”

“Go on. That’s what everyone does.”

“Not sure I can.”

“You have to. Jimmy needs you.”

My head, which had been sagging with grief, jerked up. “Jimmy’s never needed anyone but himself.” And a little sugar on the side.

“That’s not true. He’s always needed more than any of the others. He just refuses to say so. Doesn’t think he deserves happiness. Anything that might be good in his life, he makes sure he ruins, because he hates himself more than anyone else ever could.”

“I doubt that,” I muttered.

Her eyes narrowed. “You
will
help him, Elizabeth.”

She’d put the
E
in my name. I didn’t have much choice.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She nodded, satisfied. “I gave you all that I had.”

I remembered what Hammond and Landsdown had said about Ruthie and Jimmy arguing. Had she really left me her house, her bank account, her everything?

“What about the kids?” I blurted. “They should get something.”

She smiled softly. “You probably won’t want this gift, but I’ve known it would be yours from the moment I met you.”

Not want it? Whatever
it
was, if it came from Ruthie, I definitely wanted it.

“You’ll hate me for this—” she began.

“Never.”

“You don’t know yet what I’ve done to you.”

Tome?

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You will.” She looked up, and then past me, as if someone had called her name. Fear crossed her face and I spun around, but nothing was there.

“They saw you,” she whispered. “They know who you are.”

“Who’s they?” I asked, but suddenly I understood. “Who killed you, Ruthie?”

She shook her head, still gazing past me. “Doesn’t work like that. I can guide you, but the truth is something you must discover for yourself.”

“Great,” I muttered, although it would have been too much to hope for to have Ruthie’s ghost—or whatever she was—tell me her murderer’s name so I could tie this all up neatly by sundown.

“You have to go,” Ruthie insisted. “They’re coming.”

“The people who killed you?”

Her gaze met mine, and what I saw there scared me.

“They aren’t people,” she said.

Chapter 5

My eyes snapped open. I was in my room, my bed. The covers were still pulled over my head, and there was someone moving around in here besides me.

My Glock resided in a small gun safe beneath the kitchen sink. I left the weapon there unless I had a damn good reason to take it out. In retrospect, not the best decision I’d ever made. Right now, I wished I kept the thing in my nightstand.

If I chose to believe dream-Ruthie, the people who’d killed her had come after me. Except they weren’t people.

What in hell did that mean?

And what did they want? I hadn’t seen them. I had no idea who they were. Unless they thought Ruthie had told me something before dying.

Shit.

I was starting to get twitchy. They could shoot me, stab me, pretty much anything me, and I wouldn’t know about it until too late. I could feel the bull’s-eye on my back already.

Slowly, trying not to rustle the covers, I crooked a finger in the sheet and drew it downward.

A man knelt by my bed, or at least I thought he knelt. Either he was extremely short and standing, or freakishly tall and kneeling. From the breadth of his shoulders, which blotted out most of my room, I figured the latter was a better bet.

He was also naked, at least from the waist up, and that piece of info disturbed me almost as much as his being here in the first place.

Despite the shadows, his hair shone eerily white, a towhead at an age when most had darkened to muddy blond. His eyes were spooky too, seeming to reflect the silver light of the moon when the moon had already risen past the apex and started to descend on the win-dowless side of my building.

In other words, no possibility of a reflection. His eyes appeared to glow from within.

The cops were not going to believe any of this—if I lived long enough to tell them.

The intruder grinned, and I saw something else the police wouldn’t believe. His teeth had been filed to spiky points. What a nut.

I erupted from the covers, reaching for the lamp on the bedside table, a book, a paperweight, anything to bonk him over the head with.

He grabbed my wrist, moving quicker than anyone I’d ever known. I froze as images tumbled through my mind—what he’d done to people, what he was.

A monster.

And not the Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer type of monster, not even Hannibal Lector; he was a…

Berserker.

The word whispered through the air in Ruthie’s voice. I was so surprised I almost didn’t duck when he swung a hamlike fist at my head.