Deaths of Jocasta (54 page)

All that remained of the building was a few jagged walls and a pile of bricks and boards.

“No, it’s not,” I said as I stood up. “But we are.”

I extended a hand to help her up.

“Yes, we are. The others?”

“Everyone got out. You were the last.”

“And you came back for me,” she said, taking my hand.

“I was in the neighborhood,” I remarked offhandedly.

Sister Ann slowly got up, with my help. She put an arm around my waist, leaning heavily on me for support.

“Not that I’m ungrateful, but it was a foolish thing to do.”

“I won’t ever do it again,” I promised.

We started carefully making our way through the scattered building pieces littering the side street.

“Why?” she asked. “Why come back for me?”

“To prove Aunt Greta wrong,” I said, not even knowing I was going to say it until I did. “Besides,” I hastily covered, “us promiscuous dykes need all the help we can get, to get into heaven.”

“But you have, you know. At least on the outside.”

I didn’t think she was talking about getting to heaven.

We slowly picked a path down the far sidewalk, covered and cracked as it was with the detritus of the building.

“The outside?”

“Outside yourself. I think you’re the only person left to convince,” she answered.

“Except for Aunt Greta, Bayard…”

“The only one that matters,” Sister Ann said quietly.

I didn’t reply, just a bare nod of my head.

The main avenue was crowded, people jockeying for the best view of the destruction. I heard sirens in the distance. The TV cameras were madly filming away. One lone policeman was trying to string up a barricade between the crowd and the remains of the building. I couldn’t spot anyone from the clinic. For a moment I panicked, afraid they hadn’t made it. They’re okay. You saw them leave, I told myself.

I could see a group of nuns through the crowd, their blue habits singling them out. I pushed through the onlookers, taking Sister Ann to them.

“Sister!” one of them exclaimed and about three or four nuns relieved me of Sister Ann.

“I’ll talk to you later,” were her parting words.

I nodded and went in search of my friends.

The crowd shifted and I spotted Cordelia, surrounded by Elly and Millie. She was back on the building side of the avenue.

As I got closer, I realized that Millie and Elly were holding Cordelia, almost as if struggling with her.

“There’s nothing you can do,” I heard Elly said.

“Except get yourself killed, too,” Millie added.

Bernie? I thought wildly, then I noticed her down the road, leaning into an oak tree and crying.

What the hell? Who?

Millie saw me. And looked like she had seen a ghost.

Me?

“Micky!” she screamed. “She’s alive!”

“Hi, ladies,” I said nonchalantly.

“Micky,” Cordelia said, wheeling around to look at me.

Then her arms were around me, holding me very tightly, picking me up off the ground.

“Thank God you’re alive,” she whispered in my ear.

“Hey, Bernie,” I heard Elly call. “Micky’s okay.”

“Sorry about your building,” I told Cordelia.

“The hell with my building. I’m so glad you’re all right,” she replied, putting me down, but still holding me tightly. “You have blood on your back,” she said suddenly, letting go of me and gently turning me around to look at me back.

“Matching shoulder wounds,” I said as she pulled up my jacket and T-shirt to examine my cut. “Careful, I’m not wearing a bra.”

Elly put her arms around me, low enough to keep out of Cordelia’s way.

“I hate it when you’re right. About bombs,” she said.

“Yeah, me too,” I agreed.

Millie squeezed my hand and brushed some of the dust out of my hair.

“You’ll live,” Cordelia said, finishing her examination of my back. Her voice broke.

I started to turn to her, but Bernie edged between Elly and Millie.

“Hi, Bern,” I said, picking her up and hugging her. “Hug back, but either low on the waist or high on the neck,” I cautioned.

She threw her arms around my neck.

“Micky,” she sniffed. “We thought you were dead.”

“Me? No way.” I gave her an extra squeeze, then set her back down. “Us tomcats have nine lives.”

Then I turned to Cordelia. Her eyes were red. Had she been crying for me?

“Everyone okay?” I asked.

“Yes. Now,” she replied.

She took my face between her hands, gently brushing dirt off my cheek. I tentatively put my hands on her waist, wanting to pull her to me, but shy in front of the too numerous onlookers, from camera crews to nuns to nineteen-year-olds.

Cordelia leaned toward me, as if she was going to kiss me anyway. And for that split second, nothing hurt.

But one of the nuns rushed up to us, asking worriedly, “Has anyone seen Sister Fatima?”

Cordelia and I broke off, backing away.

“No,” I said. “Not since before the bomb.”

And no one else had seen her after the explosion.

The look on the nun’s face told us that we were their last hope, the last unchecked group.

“She was a little hard of hearing,” the nun said slowly, turning from us.

“Oh, no,” Millie said for us. “I thought we had all…”

“I had hoped,” Cordelia added, her expression drawn and tight.

“She was so nice,” Bernie said helplessly. “Why?”

Elly put her arms around Bernie, the only possible answer.

“You might go look at Sister Ann,” I told Cordelia, to give her something useful to do. “She hurt her ankle rather badly.”

“Yeah, let me go do that,” she said grimly, “although…” with a look back at the ruins of her clinic, “I haven’t much to work with.”

She walked over to the nuns.

“Damn whoever did this,” Millie cursed. “Damn them.” Then she followed Cordelia.

The one lone cop had gotten reinforcements and they were hustling us back to the far side of the street. Elly kept a protective arm around Bernie.

I started looking for O’Connor, to scream and curse at him, but he wasn’t here. Then I saw another face in the crowd. Odd that he should be here. I kept expecting Frankenstein to show up. It appeared that he had decided to run away and fight the devil another day.

“I’ll be back,” I told Elly, as I started threading my way through the throng.

He was at the far edge of the onlookers, by himself. I stalked him slowly, not wanting him to see the intensity of my hunt. For a moment, I placed a tree between us, hastily brushing myself off, trying to make it look like I was just some curious bystander. I patted my gun, reassured irrationally by its warm metallic presence.

I circled the tree. He was still where he had been. I slowly ambled up to him. It was him, I made sure as I got close, the same scrubbed innocent face I had glimpsed running down my stairs and at Betty’s cottage. Had he helped Frankenstein murder her? But this time Choirboy wasn’t in a hurry. He stood, rocking slightly back on his heels, trying not to smile, but he couldn’t really prevent the corners of his mouth from twitching in satisfaction.

“Howdy,” he said to me, not recognizing me.

Always learn the face of your murder victims, so they can’t sneak up on you if you miss.

“Hi,” I replied as calmly as I could. “What happened here?”

“An abortion clinic got what it deserved,” he said smugly.

“Oh? I thought that was a neighborhood clinic and a Catholic community center,” I answered.

“No. No, it was an abortion house,” he corrected me. “A beautiful sight going up.”

“I think we’ve met before,” I said. “Isn’t your name Bill?”

“Yes, yes, it is.” He smiled, trying to place me.

I reached out to shake his hand.

“Bill?” I asked as he took my hand.

“Bill Dolton.”

I tightened my grasp on his hand.

“Micky Knight. You left a bomb at my door.”

His expression started to change from smug gleefulness to worry and perhaps even fear, but he didn’t have time. I punched him in the nose. He went down, blood streaming onto his lower lip.

“And congratulations, Bill,” I remarked acidly. “You’ve just murdered a seventy-year-old nun. She was hard of hearing and didn’t get out of the building in time.”

He started to get up, but I put a foot on his shoulder and pushed him back down.

“Wha…?” he started in disbelief.

“Your friend Sarry had other plans,” I told him, grabbing him by the shirt. “He never made any of the warning calls. He wanted to murder the people in that building, and he lied to you. It wasn’t an abortion clinic.”

“No, you’re lying,” he sniffed.

“Where’s Will?” I demanded. I didn’t ever want to be surprised by him again.

“Will?” Choirboy echoed stupidly.

“Yeah, Will. The big, tall, ugly guy who jerks off with prayer. You know who I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know where he is,” he answered hastily, seeing that I had little patience. “I was supposed to meet him here.”

“When?”

“Uh…now, I guess. He was supposed to be here,” Choirboy replied, looking around, obviously hoping for an ally.

Keeping a tight grip on him, I scanned the crowd. I couldn’t see Frankenstein anywhere. Choirboy would have to do.

“He said he’d be here,” Choirboy sniveled.

“Where are the rest of the bombs?” I demanded, shaking him.

“I don’t have to tell you,” he said, like a petulant child.

“No, you don’t. But I don’t have to stop hitting you, either,” I informed him.

He looked scared. No one had ever really hit him before. That was obvious. He lived in a world where God was on his side and being wrong and being hurt weren’t possibilities for him. I gave him a quick kick in the groin to prove my point.

“And that was gentle,” I said as he sputtered a protest. It was, compared to how hard I wanted to hit him.

“Police brutality,” he finally spat out through the blood on his lips.

“I’m not the police. And this isn’t brutal. Not compared to the ton of brick and board that you let crush the life out of Sister Fatima. Did you kill Betty Peterson?”

“No, I swear. I had nothing to do with that. She was my girlfriend.”

I stared at him. He could have said, “She was my second grade guppy,” for all the remorse in his voice. “Your girlfriend?” I shot back incredulously. “Did you plant her in the clinic?”

“No, she worked there all on her own. She wanted to be that kind of nurse. I just asked her to do me a few favors.”

“Did you get the women’s names from her?”

“What names?”

“Beverly Morris. Alice Tresoe. Faye Zimmer.” I wondered if I would ever stop remembering their names.

“Yeah, I guess. We were just supposed to send them stuff. To keep them from killing their kids. She got their names off some list, women who were going to have abortions.”

“Faye Zimmer wasn’t going to have an abortion. She was fifteen years old,” I hissed at him.

“Oh,” he said. “I guess that was a mistake. I must have read the codes wrong,” he muttered.

“You read the codes?”

“It was an accident. I was picking up Betty one day and I just happened to see that secret file. Faye Zimmer had an A by her name. A for abortion.”

“How about A for adolescent?”

“I didn’t think of that,” he replied slowly.

“You stupid shit. You didn’t think.”

“Betty wouldn’t give me any more names. I thought she was on our side. I don’t know what went wrong,” he complained.

I roughly pulled him up. “I’ll tell you what went wrong. Betty really was pro-life. She started asking questions. And she realized your answers weren’t her answers.”

“She just didn’t understand.” It was almost a whine.

“And you murdered her,” I spat at him.

“No, no I didn’t. All I did was tell Will what she was going to do. He said he wanted to talk to her. I didn’t think he would—”

You unctuous little shit, I thought as I stared at him, you didn’t think. Betty was a problem and you handed her over to Will to solve. Will, who got his jollies out of ramming sharp, unsterile things up women’s vaginas and probing around until he found a major artery. You didn’t think because if you had thought for half a second you would have known you were handing Betty off to her death. How damned convenient to never let a thought enter your head.

“Like Pontius Pilate, you washed your hands of her and let someone else do your dirty work,” I hissed at him. Then I hit him as hard as I could, in a very soft place. He gave a strangled groan and crumpled to his knees.