Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6) (25 page)

And they did.

Or at least they tried to.

It was not easy making one’s way through Bay St. Lucy, where all traffic had been banned, and where people of all sizes and shapes and colors and degrees of sobriety were packed together like grains of sand on a flooded beach, if grains of sand on a flooded beach could ever be imagined planning a sand/sex strike if denied sand/gender equity.

They moved slowly.

They could, of course, call any of the two hundred or so agents scattered through the town.

But what would they tell them?

That Nina had a
feeling
?

Nina herself did not know much more than that.

And so they made the Stink Shoppe and Crafts by Laura, where people were buying everything in sight, and where store owner after store owner were saying quietly and to themselves THANK YOU NINA THANK YOU NINA THANK YOU NINA! for making me rich.

And, yes, they did make their way along, glancing also upward at the nearest huge screen where the play had progressed mightily, so that overhead cameras carried by a bright red helicopter were now picturing the Chorus of Old Men being routed by the Chorus of Young Women, a confrontation that took place in Gerard Park, and that ended with the victorious women taking from the men and throwing away, the rotted logs which had served as scatological imagery, being held dragging in front of them as the chorus men had been trained to do.

VICTORY FOR THE WOMEN!

Shouts everywhere, and arms upraised, and HAIL TO THE LISSIES being sung all over town.

And still they made their way along.

Finally, it loomed before them.

The stadium, lights glowing as if this were Friday night and Hattiesburg was in town to take on the Mariners.

“What are we looking for, Nina?”

“I don’t know exactly. I don’t know how he would do it, but…”

See the whole picture, Nina.

See the…

“Yes! Yes, that’s how he would do it!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m a principal. We have to go to my office. But not my office. The new principal’s office!”

“Are you crazy?”

But Nina simply pointed.

Up.

At the new high rise building that was Bay St. Lucy High School.

That had just opened a month ago.

And that towered over the football stadium.

The building she had toured yesterday, shortly upon her arrival.

The building that had seemed completely safe to her.

Then.

Sylvia saw it too, saw all of the windows, and said, quietly:

“I’m making the same mistake. A rookie’s mistake. That’s the high ground. It’s just like the office building that guy shot you from.”

“Yes, it is.”

“But that guy is dead!”

“No he isn’t.
A
guy is dead. But not
that
guy! Not
our
guy! Listen, Sylvia, can you call Moon Rivard?”

‘Sure. I can call anybody!”

“Do it, call them all! Tell as many men as possible to meet us at the main door of the high school! But we’ve got to be sure Moon’s there, because he’ll have a key to get us in!”

Sylvia made the calls.

It took them almost five minutes to reach the building.

Just before they did so:

“Look!” said Sylvia, pointing upward.

“Damn!”

A helicopter was circling the stadium.

The same bus-like cream-colored helicopter that had taken Nina to the Aquatica

The helicopter that was carrying Laurencia,

Moon stepped forward:

“Nina Bannister! The most famous woman we got, or ever had!”

“Moon, open the door!”

“What’s the trouble?”

“I think that…I’m sorry I can’t explain right now. Somebody said something he couldn’t know. And Laurencia’s landing now, and…dammit, just open the door!”

He did so, and Nina was the first one through it..

“Nina!” several voices echoed behind her, “stop! Don’t go up there!”

But she was already in the stairwell.

It was the library in reverse.

Then she was being chased down stairs.

The prey.

Now she was racing upstairs.

The hunter.

Even through the thick walls of the building she could hear massive cheering.

The helicopter must have landed.

Laurencia must be getting out of it.

Walking toward the stage.

“Don’t let me be too late!” she hissed to herself.

And, as she was doing so, all of the choruses that had now made their way to the Acropolis/Stadium were singing as one—for Lysistrata the Athenian and Lampito the Spartan and Kalonike the Dorian and Myrrihna the Corinthian—had ended the war, the ruinous war, the cataclysmic war—

––and they were now chanting in exultation:

ALAILAI!

BOUND AND LEAP HIGH! ALAILAI!

CRY AS FOR VICTORY!

ALAILAI!

With the last ALAILAI, Nina had opened the door into the fourth floor corridor.

The principal’s office…

…to the right!

Don’t let me be too late, don’t let me be too late, don’t let me be too late…

She hurtled down the hall with Moon, Sylvia and the others now close behind…

There was the door…

She reached forward and shoved with all her might.

It swung open.

And there he was, on the other side of the room, his deer rifle propped on the window sill.

Just as he had planned to do the previous day, when he had visited this office with Nina.

And had seen the perfect view of the stage that had been constructed.

He turned.

There was complete silence for an instant.

Then Nina:

“Dicken! Dicken, don’t!”

He shook his head:

“I have no choice. The voice…”

“There is no voice, Dicken. It’s all in your head. It always has been.”

“I’ve got to kill her. She’s evil.”

“No, she isn’t, Dicken. No one is evil. You have to get help now.”

He shook his head:

“There is no help for me. There can never be. But how did you know?”

“It didn’t fit. I kept going over the whole Thornbloom horror in my mind. And something wasn’t right. Don’t you remember, Dicken? That night in my office after they had grilled you all day. You asked me if I had caught even a glimpse of Thornbloom in the library.”

“And you hadn’t.”

“No, because of the stacks. But Dicken, you couldn’t have known anything about the library. That was held in the strictest confidence. Only a few campus security people and the Secret Service knew about it. Nobody else, not even Laurencia. The only way you could have known about it, is if you had been there.”

“I see. How clever. How very clever of you, Congresswoman. I underestimated you. Everyone is always underestimating you.”

The others had arrived now, and she could feel them standing behind her.

And though she could not see, she could feel the guns pointed directly at Dicken Proctor, who said quietly:

“And I suppose you have figured out how I––well, how the voice told me to manage the other thing.”

“Yes. It was coffee. The coffee you always loved to make. The two thermoses of coffee you gave to Thornbloom on the morning of that fatal flight. One for him, one for the pilot. So that they would be sure to drink enough of whatever you put in it.”

“It wasn’t much. Just…something to make them both sleep. Whenever the crash happened, I’m sure they were unaware of it. No pain. I owed old Thornbloom that much, even though he had allowed himself to become an instrument of evil.”

“And the body we found…”

“A nobody. A nothing. Possessed of only one quality that killed him, but that also made him useful to me.”

“He looked like Thornbloom.”

“Yes, remarkably so. I remember being almost thunderstruck by it as I saw him, through the window of that hovel, stumbling out of whatever bar he had come from and going toward the alley he would sleep in. I befriended him, offered him a dry place to sleep…”

“And gave him an overdose of heroin.”

“Yes. It all worked well. And, you must admit, it gave all of you such a sense of relief.”

“Too much of a sense of
 
relief. We let our guard down, just like you must have wanted us to.”

“But it won’t work now, will it? Those people behind you—they don’t hear the voice.”

“No, Dicken, they don’t.”

“Mister,” Moon was saying, “Move away from that window!”

“Oh, I can’t do that!”

“Move away!”

He looked at Nina and smiled:

“The voice wouldn’t allow me to do that!”

“If you touch that rifle, Dicken, they’ll kill you.”

“I know. I know. But if I don’t, the voice will not allow me to live. And so…do you know the Auden poem?
Musée des Beaux Arts?
All the people…”

He gestured out toward the stadium, where the crowd was cheering madly and Laurencia was mounting the platform.

“…all the people going about their business, not noticing that a little boy had fallen out of the sky..”

So saying, he lurched forward.

He was halfway out the window when Sylvia, as quick as she had been when she dove on Nina and saved her life, reached him, wrapped her strong arms around his upper legs, and pulled him back in

So that only the rifle fell out of the window.

And so that, just as Laurencia Dalrymple was proudly announcing:

“Sisters and Brothers, we did it! Two of the three women candidates running in referenda today WON THEIR RACES!”

Jubilation in the crowd.

“And tonight, NO STRIKE! Go home to your husbands, women! And, as you have learned from Helen Reddington’s magnificent rendering of Lysistrata—let the tips of your shoes point toward the ceiling, wiggle all you want—and even assume the position of the hungry lion! Just remember—women are coming to power—and the power of war is going away!”