You and I, Me and You (6 page)

“Sue Suicide struck again.”

“Darnitall!”

“Ooh, do you kiss your shrink with that mouth? Yeah, this time he nicked the guy's femoral.”

“Bled out? The poor, poor man!”

“No. According to Shiro, he died of a salt imbalance.”

“Oh. That hypo thing. Hyper thing? You bleed enough to freak out your system and that's what ends up killing you? I dunno. Sounds made up.”

“I know, right? But it looks like that's what ended up killing him. Gallo was there and he backed—”

“Max Gallo? The doc who runs the blood bank? What, did he lose the coin toss for Musical MEs?”

(Some counties were small enough or understaffed enough that local doctors took shifts to cover duties required by a medical examiner's office, rotating on a month-by-month or year-by-year basis.)

“No, check this—the vic was his patient.”

“What?” I made no effort to hide how appalled I was. This wasn't the first time Max Gallo had been found lurking near a crime scene. It wasn't even the first time this month. “Tell me you're kidding.”

“Nuh-uh. He went over to check on the guy, found him, called us. Then Greer showed up—”

“I am so glad I missed all this,” I said, appalled.

“Chickenshit. Anyway, Greer huffed and he puffed but he didn't blow us down. In fact, he was the least of our problems over there.”

“Why do I have the feeling that's not good news?”

“You'll get the crime-scene photos, but check this—the killer laid the guy out on a shower curtain in the middle of an immaculate living room. Not much of a mess. Shiro said it was too neat and she didn't like what Greer had to say—”

“I mentioned I was glad to miss that, right? Yeesh. He's not too keen on us.”

“Didn't notice. Also, when I called him fat he got less keen.”

“You didn't.” Even as I gasped that, I couldn't believe I couldn't believe it. “You did.”

“Yeah. But Shiro smoothed it over. Except I'm calling her Sag now.”

“That sounds like a terrible plan.” Maybe it only felt like I missed an hour or so. Perhaps it had been a month, or exactly one year. Much happened in not much time, darn it. Sag?
Sag?
How long was that going to go on? Was he
trying
to get beaten to death? And if he thought Shiro was saggy, did that mean he thought I was? And why did I care?

“Don't bother me with details. Now we're heading back to talk to Michaela.” He was silent for several minutes and I let him think. His earlobe sure looked like it stung. Heh. “Shiro's right,” George said at last. “The apartments are too neat. And I don't think the killer's fixing these places up before he leaves. Or when he gets there. How's he getting his victims to cooperate in their murders after they bust out the Swiffer and do the housework?”

“If we knew how, we'd know why.”

“Yeah, yeah.” George didn't say much the rest of the way back to the office. I let him think. Truth be told, I sort of enjoyed the contemplative silence.

 

chapter thirteen

BOFFO's offices were
in downtown Minneapolis, a logically planned grid I'd always loved. Tough not to: you could get a Cinnabon the size of your head on your way to picking up a breakfast bagel. And if it was ten below outside, who cared? There were skyways, miles of them. Knowing how to navigate the entire downtown area without once going outside made me feel

(like a rat scurrying after cheese)

safe.

BOFFO's shiny blue glass-and-steel skyscraper wasn't the tallest building downtown; that honor belonged to the IDS center. (It being the tallest could have something to do with why people liked to jump off of it and plummet to their deaths:
I jumped off the IDS and all I got was this lousy T-shirt and accompanying fatal head injury.)

(Oh my God that was so
mean
!)

It wasn't the oddest-looking building, either—that'd be the Capella Tower, which rose straight and tall until the architect got bored and plunked a big cylinder on top, and then got really bored and stuck a big wire halo on top of that. It wasn't the oldest—that was the Lumber Exchange Building, proudly slouching over the landscape since 1885. It wasn't especially beautiful, either—that'd be the Wells Fargo Center. The BOFFO building wasn't known for a gorgeous upper-floor light show (Target Plaza South) or looking like a smart kid had built it out of shiny, uneven Legos (AT&T Tower). It didn't look like someone had plunked a big black crown on it (Qwest Building) or like it was sponsored by the letter
H
(Hennepin County Government Center) or like a two-dimensional triangle (Marriott City Center). It also didn't boast a clock wider than Big Ben (Minneapolis City Hall).

(Sorry—I would have been a tour guide, but I wasn't up to the stress. Federal law enforcement was much more relaxing.)

What our small, shiny building had instead of all those things was us: claustrophobes, agoraphobes, paranoids, sociopaths, kleptomaniacs, DIDs, depressives, manics, manic-depressives, schizophrenics, obsessive-compulsives, somniphobes, psychotics, neurotics, and Republicans. Not to mention a platoon of psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists to tend to our many and weird needs, as well as a kitchen, therapy rooms, offices, cubicles, pop machines, printers—everything we needed to rule the world. Uh, fight crime.

Maybe I'm projecting, or maybe it's just me, but we were more than a collection of medicated, armed individuals. For some of us, BOFFO was the first place we were ever made to feel welcome, and we were proud of our unofficial motto:
No matter how crazy you are, we need you!
And our other unofficial motto:
BOFFO: We do more while heavily medicated than most people do all day.

It was downright humbling, when you thought about it.

Anyway, our small, shiny skyscraper wasn't the FBI field office; it only housed BOFFO. The field office wasn't even on the same block; it was over on Washington Street, and thank goodness. We of BOFFO should be kept away from … well … everyone. But especially other people with guns. Besides, it wouldn't be fair to contaminate the field office. Some breeds of insanity are like viruses: people who hang too close can catch it.

That was also humbling, but in an entirely different way.

George parked in the underground garage, and we used our IDs to get into the elevators and up to the second floor, where our cubes were, along with our colleagues, our boss, and our kitchen. The fridge was full of containers that had threatening notes taped to them:
Touch this yogurt and die, DIE, DIE!!!!!!!!
and
I'm watching you and I'll know if you take my sandwich
and
Fuck you, don't touch!
Ignoring those notes had proved, um, perilous.

It was warm enough in the garage that we could no longer see our breath, which made me sad. When I was little, I thought cold breath hid words, like the word balloons in comic books. Even when I knew better (so, as of two years ago), I still liked to pretend.

We stepped out of the elevator and saw that BOFFO was bustling with the usual suspects, both literally and figuratively. We were staffed 24/7 and the place was always humming.

“Oh! Cadence! I thought…” The small dark-haired woman behind the receptionist desk paused as her jaws cracked wide in a yawn. She shook herself and finished. “… it was your day off?”

I shrugged. “Got called in. And now we've got to see Michaela—is she in?” Foolish question. Michaela spent more time in the building than the ones who slept here did.

“Oh yes. She's…” Leah pointed vaguely and yawned again. She was part-time and allowed to work no more than four hours a day, and sometimes that was pushing it. At twenty-three, Leah was an administrative assistant and a somniphobe: terrified of sleep. Since she was perfectly healthy in all other ways, that was a problem, because her body needed to do something her mind was scared to death of.

“It's just that it happened at night, you know. When I sleep I see her killing them over and over,” she'd explained to me once from a restroom stall. Me, I like to pee without hearing about the grisly murders of drunken clowns, but that didn't mean it was okay to be impolite. So I listened while wondering at what point it'd be acceptable to flush. “The severed clown noses … the way their shoes squeaked when they tried to run from the knife … the blood soaking their fake green hair…” So, during none of that. At no time in that conversation would flushing have been appropriate. I ended up waiting until she left.

“You look awful, babe.” George sounded genuinely sympathetic, so I assumed I was losing my mind or my hearing (and I wouldn't rule out both). He could be strangely understanding when he wanted, a good trick for a sociopath. “Hypnosis not working?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. Leah was spindly and short, with big dark eyes, a mop of curly dark hair, and pale skin: she could have sold matches on a street corner. She was wearing a button-down denim shirt two sizes too big, and dark blue leggings (casual Friday). She floated in the shirt; her legs were so thin that the leggings were baggy. “Oh, you know, good days and bad,” she mumbled, giving off “I don't want to discuss it” vibes.

George couldn't read vibes any more than he could read Sumerian. “Look, hypnosis is a scam and doesn't really work, and therapists who think it's great are stupid, but it helped you before so you gotta let it help you again.
You
gotta. If you let it in once, you can do it again. You just tell yourself, ‘This is asinine and my therapist is a deluded asshole, but my subconscious needs to get on the stick' and it'll work again.”

She nodded, then thanked him shyly and asked if any of us wanted lunch. Since we knew where we'd find our boss, there was no need to eat.

“Why can't you be that nice to me?” I complained as we trailed past cubicles toward the boss's office.

“Because being nice to you makes me feel like I'm swimming through puke.”

“Or could you at least treat us all consistently? I don't think that's too much to ask.”

“Through
puke
,” he said again. I'd be tempted to go into a snit and huffily stop talking to him for a few hours, except he'd probably hug me out of sheer relief. Why should I give him the satisfaction? No more inane chatter with his partner: that'll teach him a hard lesson!

Or not. But who cared?

 

chapter fourteen

On the way
to Michaela's kitchen, we ran into Emma Jan Thyme, a newbie who'd been with BOFFO less than a month. She seemed tense, and was avoiding looking at any one thing that might cast a reflection, however wavy and indistinct. I knew why she was doing the last, but not the first. Emma Jan had a monster living inside her head. She had to watch for it constantly.

“Hey,” she said when she spotted us. “I've gotta see the boss. Something weird is going on.” Seeing our expressions, she clarified: “Okay, but something weird even for us.”

“Uh-oh.” I was impressed, and scared. Emma Jan wouldn't have said that lightly.

“I don't think you should talk unless you're handing me a plate of mashed potatoes.”

Emma Jan snorted. “George, I don't think you should talk at all. Repeat after me: not everyone with a southern accent can cook comfort food on demand.”

“I'm standing here two minutes already and no potatoes!”

She caught my glance and rolled her eyes. I liked Emma Jan, but I was adjusting to the fact that she was Shiro's good friend and not mine. They hung out at the shooting range together, had lunch together … like that. It's not that I was jealous

(I was. I was jealous.)

I just needed to adjust. Usually people who knew our secret were my friends and tolerated Shiro. I couldn't remember the last time that had gone the other way.

“Stop confusing me with Paula Deen,” she ordered George, and we laughed.

Though they both had accents, the resemblance ended there. Emma Jan had a broad, lovely face and a severe, militarily-short haircut that was so stark it emphasized her prettiness. Her skin was a gorgeous brown with red undertones, and she was neatly dressed in a reddish-brown blouse and a navy pantsuit. She'd had the jacket tailored to hide the bulge from her sidearm.

If you hadn't seen her shoot, or witnessed one of her screaming breakdowns, you might confuse her with a prosperous bank manager. “And d'you want to hear my new unusual death?”

“No,” I said at the exact moment George nodded. That was another thing. Emma Jan collected unusual deaths, and had even updated Wikipedia on a few. She and Shiro would spend hours debating them—Shiro was a harsh taskmistress regarding what was and wasn't unusual.

“It involves kayaks and swans,” she wheedled.

“No,” I almost snapped, then felt bad. “Sorry. Weird day.”

“That's right, it's Moving Day! What are you doing here?”

Excellent question.

“Hey, it could be worse. You could have had a day like Anthony Hensley.”

“No.”

“He drowned when his kayak—”

“Don't.” A headache had popped up out of nowhere. Our suicide killer, unusual deaths, confusion over whether we should have gone to the scene, Greer showing and having a middle-aged tantrum in front of half the CSI team, Dr. Gallo being at the scene and now maybe a suspect—dang it to heck, why couldn't people just be nice? Was that so darn much to—

 

chapter fifteen

“Anthony Henley,” I
said. “Kayak. Continue.”

Emma Jan brightened. “Oh, good, you're here.” She fell into step beside me. “Okay, Henley's kayak was capsized by a swan. And the swan blocked him from getting to shore and he drowned!”