Outburst (32 page)

“Bradley, I think I need to have that tape. Do you mind?”

“Hell, no,” he replied, popping it out of his Betacam and handing it over.

“Thanks,” said Todd, most definitely wanting to be in control of it. “I've got to talk to Rawlins, so I'll meet you back at the station.”

God, he thought as he headed into City Hall, sometimes he really hated this job. And himself.

Preoccupied with what had
just transpired in Government Center and at City Hall—Jesus, was she going to give it to Todd when she next saw him!—Janice sped out of downtown Minneapolis. Driving her new maroon Honda Accord south on 35W, the air-conditioning began to cool her brow but not her temper. Why the hell had the judge refused to sign the complaint? Why the hell had Todd been lurking on the street? And why the hell had she ever gotten involved in this?

“That jail sucked,” said Kris, in the passenger seat next to her. “I was really afraid, you know.”

“Well, you should have been.”

“I suppose I should say thank you.”

Janice shook her head as she reached to the dashboard for her sunglasses, which she slipped on. “I didn't do anything.”

“You got me out.”

“No, I didn't.”

“But—”

“Listen,” instructed Janice, as she switched lanes and shifted into fifth gear, “it doesn't happen very often, but for some reason the judge refused to sign the complaint against you. That means the only reason you were released was because your thirty-six hours were up and they couldn't legally hold you any longer.” Janice shook her head. “But that doesn't mean this is over, not by any means. The cops are going to continue working big time on this, of course. And you're still the primary suspect, you realize.

That means they could still come get you, particularly if they get something incriminating from those DNA tests.”

Kris shrugged. “They won't.”

Janice glanced over at her. “How do you know that?”

“Because I didn't do it,” she said rather casually. “I didn't kill this Forrest guy. Like I told you, I never even met him.”

“Can I be sure of that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, just realize they might come get you for more questioning. Or they might show up with an arrest warrant.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Beats me.”

Janice hated to think it. Hated to assign this sense of uneasiness she'd had all along to something like a woman's intuition. But ever since she'd met Kris she'd felt something was screwy here. Maybe Janice simply didn't know enough about the case, which she certainly didn't. Or maybe Janice just didn't know Kris well enough, which was also true.

“Kris, I don't want to say you've been lying to me, but there's a hell of a lot I don't know about either you or this case, not to mention the trouble you were in in California. And I'm not so sure if—”

“You don't like me, do you?”

Shit, and Janice thought she was up-front?

“Kris, I don't even know you.”

“That's what everyone says, that they don't know me. But that's bullshit, total bullshit. You say you're a tranny ally, but the reason you don't think you know me is that you don't know how to. You're just like everyone else. I mean, you can't put a label on me. That's why no one believes me—because no one can believe their eyes when they look at me. People look at me and see a young woman, but then they think, wait a minute, that's a guy, that's a trick, this is deceitful, that person's a lie.”

“Kris, please—”

“I'm the only one telling the truth around here. I'm the only one expressing how I truly feel.”

“Watch it,” warned Janice, “you're talking to a woman who's living life just the way she wants to.”

“But I confuse you, don't I? And I probably scare you, right? I mean, I bet you don't know whether to ignore me because I've got a penis, be attracted to me because of my feminine body, or—”

“Okay, okay.”

Kris took a deep breath, then said, “Judge Hawkins was the guy who refused to sign that piece of paper, right?”

“The complaint? Yeah, that was him.” As Janice steered toward the Forty-sixth Street exit, she eyed her passenger. “So?”

Kris sat there grinning as she said, “So nothing.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means … nothing.”

Janice took the exit, steering up the ramp, then turning right and heading west. “What the hell are you saying?”

“Too much, I suppose,” Kris said with a shrug. “I mean, people always talk about me behind my back, but I don't talk about them. I never—”

“Kris—”

“Forget it. I already said too much. I just want you to know there are other people around who aren't being honest.”

“I don't like this.”

She certainly didn't. There was more here, that much was obvious. Perhaps an entire dimension that Janice hadn't even been aware of. Perhaps a dynamic she hadn't even imagined or considered possible.

“Oh, my God, don't tell me you know Judge Hawkins?” demanded Janice.

“Nothing. Just forget it.”

“Absolutely not.”

“That was stupid of me. I shouldn't have brought it up.”

“Oh, yes, you should have. If you're talking about something that involves a judge who's active in your case, then this is absolutely something I need to know.”

“I don't want to rat on anyone. It's not cool.”

Janice stopped at a red light, looked over at her young client, and in a loud voice said, “Jesus Christ, Kris, do you realize what you're saying? If Hawkins is gay or something like that and if he refused to sign the complaint because of some connection between you two, then this whole thing could explode so big you won't even know what hit you. I want to know—I need to know—every little detail about what—”

“Okay, okay. Just back off, would you? Maybe it is something I'm going to have to tell. I don't know. But I don't really want to talk about it now. I'm exhausted, okay? Really wiped out, you know. And besides, I'm not sure how relevant it is.” She put a hand to her forehead. “Just take me home, would you?”

The light popped green, and Janice stomped on the gas. “With pleasure.”

Driving her small red car much too quickly, Janice sped down Forty-sixth, continuing all the way up to Lyndale, where she turned left. There was a lot Janice wanted to say, an entire diatribe. Instead, she took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down.

Finally she said, “Look, maybe we need to back up a bit. Maybe I need to get to know you better—and you me.” She glanced at Kris through her dark glasses. “And maybe you need to tell me everything you know about Judge Hawkins.”

“Perhaps.”

Janice passed a public library on her right, the Boulevard Theatre on her left, then turned right into a small parking lot attached to a café.

Pulling into a space, she said, “Come on, let's get a cup of coffee and start over.”

Not budging, Kris stared at her and replied, “Well, you're not making a very good start. If you would've asked I would've told you: I don't drink coffee.”

“Then … then you can get some tea. Or juice. Or a pop. Shit, I don't care. They have sandwiches—you can get whatever you want. Come on, I'm buying.”

“Uh-uh.”

Janice closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and leaned forward in the driver's seat. “Kris, please. I'm trying.”

“No, I'm not going anywhere public. In case you haven't noticed, I look like shit. I've been in jail for two nights, I haven't had a shower, and I look like a drag queen just off a pig farm. Sorry, girlfriend, I'm not going in there. This isn't about you. It's about vanity.”

“Oh, shit.”

Janice didn't say anything more. She nearly left the key in the ignition, thought better of it, and plucked it out. She then got out of the car, slammed the door, and walked up the side of the building, a long brick structure morphed from a hair salon into a coffee shop.

From behind, Kris hollered, “Hey, I'll take a mineral water, lemon if they got it.”

Nodding as she walked, Janice felt as if her head was going to split. How the hell was she supposed to handle this? As if Kris's case weren't strange enough, this stuff about Hawkins—whatever it was—was more than a tad disturbing.

As she pulled open the door, she glanced at her watch. She had an enormous pile of work back at the office. Sure, this was a big case, but why, why, why hadn't she given Kris ten bucks and sent her packing in a cab? Given Janice's hourly fee, this was surely going to be the most expensive ride Kris would ever take. Then again, they hadn't discussed Janice's fees and just what Kris might be able to afford, if anything.

About half of the ten or fifteen tables were filled with people sipping coffee and reading newspapers or gabbing. Who were these people that could hang out like this in the middle of the day, she wondered, and why wasn't she one of them? Perplexed yet again, Janice turned to the right and went up to the glass case holding muffins and random pastries.

“What can I get you?” said the guy, a small man in his twenties with birdlike arms and legs.

Janice looked up at the menu board and said, “I'll have … I'll have a cappuccino.”

“Short or tall?”

“Short.”

“For here or to go?”

“To go.”

He glanced over the countertop toward her right hand. “Do you have your own travel mug?”

“No,” she said, lifting up her keys.

“Oh, okay.”

Bemoaning the days of a simple cup of black coffee, she was almost loath to ask, “Can you make it with skim?”

“Ah … sure.”

“Oh, and a lemon mineral water too.”

So did she really trust Kris?

Janice usually had excellent instincts, but for some reason she was lost here. Kris Kenney could be speaking the gospel. Then again, she could be full of shit, a compulsive liar from the start. She did believe her, though, when she said she didn't kill Mark Forrest. But if Kris hadn't killed him or that cop out in California, then what the hell was going on? Why had someone reported her Olds down near the Stone Arch Bridge, and why had a yellow raincoat been found in the trunk—with blood on it, no less? Coincidences, though, always made Janice uneasy. Particularly—especially—double-coincidences.

Janice paid up and took the drinks. This was going to take time to sort out, no doubt about that. It was going to take hours of conversation with Kris and with others as well. Kris had been released from jail today, but the cops would be back, of that Janice was sure. In most eyes, to be a suspect in not one but two cop-killings was tantamount to being guilty, but if Kris really wasn't, then Janice would have to do more than merely provide reasonable doubt. No, to secure Kris's release yet another time Janice would have to do her best to locate the real killer.

Pushing open the door, Janice stepped out into the hot sun, coffee in one hand, her car keys and the bottle of mineral water in the other. She gazed up at the sky, saw less blue than before and more clouds, these ones huge, billowing things that looked like exploded marshmallows. You could always sense a storm in Minnesota, and she was sure one was going to hit, just as predicted. Oh, well, her tomatoes needed the rain, didn't they?

Looking ahead, she saw a dark blue van parked so that it blocked her car from view. As she walked on, Janice pondered whether the two of them should just sit here in the parking lot and have it out, or whether Kris and she should go back downtown to Janice's office and hash things out in a more formal environment. No, the second wouldn't work, realized Janice, because Kris wouldn't go anywhere, not until she had her shower. What a princess.

As Janice made her way around the rear of the blue van, some of her cappuccino sloshed out. She paused, licked the back of her hand. As she did so, she glanced at the rear of her Honda. No Kris, at least not that Janice could see. Must be asleep, thought Janice. Kris was probably exhausted from the stress—God only knew she should be—and had put down the back of her seat. Probably out like a light too.

A grumbling in the sky caused Janice to look up. Was the storm here already? No, most of the sky was still clear, and she took another quick sip of her drink, then moved around the rear of the Accord. Without realizing it until just about then, it struck her that she was going to have to see this one through, that she couldn't bail on Kris, not now.

“Here's your water,” called Janice, coming up on the passenger side of the car. “And, yes, they had lemon.”

Reaching the passenger door, however, Janice looked in. The window was up. And the seat was empty. Oh, crap. Had Kris decided to walk the rest of the way home?

Hearing the fleeting sound of shoes sliding over gravel, Janice began to turn around, saying, “Kris?”

But Janice, not suspecting, was much too slow. She caught a glimmer of a figure, someone racing up behind her. And the next instant she felt it—the brutal strike against the back of her head.

As the day fell dark and she collapsed to the ground, all she could think was, Don't spill the coffee.