Yours, Mine, and Ours (5 page)

“That’s a big to-do list,” I said, and Agent Thyme grinned.

“Uh.” George cleared his throat. “Which murders?”

“Which do you think?” Michaela said irritably. “The June Boy Jobs.”

“Catchy,” Agent Thyme volunteered.

“Yes, it’s a rule,” I said. “All serial killers must be given a weird yet distinctive yet lame moniker. The Green River Killer. The I-5 Killer. The Cabbage Patch Doll Killer. The Smells Like Bacon Killer. The media loves it.”

“Go fight crime, and don’t do something silly like get killed in the line of duty,” Michaela commanded. “I have far too much paperwork as it is. Cadence, do not for a minute think you and I are
not
going to have a chat about dog shows and holding-cell fights and shaved poodles.”

“Wow,” Agent Thyme said, her big dark eyes widening. “Your Saturdays sound fascinating.”

“They’re not,” George and I said in unison, then glared at each other like a couple of kicked cats.

“I just can’t do it with you
now
,” Michaela finished, “being too busy begging Congress for more money, and dreaming about the day I can burn this building down.”

“That’s okay.” It sure was. Yes, indeed! Except for the part where Michaela needed kerosene, or explosives. “Maybe you could just send me a memo.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t hold your breath.” She stalked off. I stared at the trank gun. Sometimes I thought Michaela was more like a zookeeper than an FBI division head. She once told Shiro that was nonsense, that zookeepers were far more humane than she could ever be. Weirdly, that didn’t comfort any of us.

“What’s up, new girl?” George asked.

“Oh, all sorts of things.” I just noticed she had a Southern accent, so it came out “all sortsa thangs.”

She stuck out her hand. George and I both shook it, me first because I was just naturally better at social cues than he was.

“Wow, you sound
just
like Paula Deen,” he said. “Will you make me some mashed potatoes?”

“Everyone from the South sounds like Paula Deen to everyone in Minnesota.” She glanced at his ID and then got an odd look on her face … sort of wary puzzlement with a dash of interest and respect.

“George Pinkman? The same Pinkman who tracked down the skinhead gang who pulled a train on that little—”

“No,” he said abruptly. “Different Pinkman.”

It wasn’t.

We just sort of stood there and looked at him while he frantically searched for his coffee so he could leave.

He abruptly gave up the search and almost shouted, “I need coffee and drugs. And drugs!
You
bring the new girl up to speed. Argh. Now
I’m
saying it. ‘Up to speed.’ Jesus.” Then he scampered toward the break room.

I hadn’t noticed, but Karen, one of the admin staff, had stopped by my desk to drop off more forensic analysis for the JBJ case. She must have overheard, because just as George fled she asked, “Does ‘pulling a train’ mean what I’m pretty sure it means?”

“If you mean ‘gang rape,’ then yeah,” I said.

“That’s what I thought.” Karen looked at Agent Thyme. “It’s the same Pinkman. He saved three of the girls and killed all the bad guys. Um. Accidentally.”

“Accidentally?” Emma Jan asked, arching dark brows.

“They fell.”

“On
what
?”

“Three of George’s hollow points,” Karen admitted. “In a way that no one could possibly see coming. Because they all died of accidental deaths. Uh, death by misadventure. Tell her, Cadence.”

I shook my head. Like George Washington, I was terrible at telling lies. I usually left it to the pros. “You’ll have to ask the same Pinkman, Agent Thyme.”

“You suck at office gossip,” Karen told me, resplendent in her gray flannel penguin jammies. With feet! She looked like a giant baby with a corona of reddish-brown curls. A giant baby who could type 120 wpm. Then she turned to Agent Thyme. “It’s funny. Just when I think I can’t stand him and he should be gassed, he does something that makes me almost not hate him.”

“It’s an exclusive club,” I agreed, “and you and I are both in it.” As she left, I added, “He’s really okay, Agent Thyme. He had a rough morning. It’s not his fault.” It was mine, but there was only so much info I was willing to volunteer.

“Don’t worry about it; his rep precedes him. So does yours.” That was never good news. “And quit with the ‘Agent Thyme’ stuff already. I’m Emma Jan and I collect unusual deaths.”

I blinked. “Yeah, uh, nice to meet you. I’m Cadence Jones and I’m a little freaked out by what you just said.”

She laughed. She had a wonderful laugh, deep and rich, like good coffee. I think. I didn’t like good coffee. Specifically, I didn’t like hot coffee … but I would admit to a hard-core Frappuccino addiction.

Anyway. I didn’t like hot coffee. It made me

(
geese daddy don’t throw that don’t throw that at them
)

nervous, people could

(
too hot burns it burns
)

get hurt.

“Sounds like I’m gonna fit right in around here.”

Whenever anyone said that, it usually meant there was no way they were going to fit in. But I hung onto my smile. “That’s great.” She seemed friendly and genuine. And that accent! I could listen all day, if she said things that weren’t about unusual deaths. “Welcome to BOFFO.”

“Thanks. Want to hear my top three most unusual deaths?”

Gross. “No thank you.”

“Aw, come on,” she wheedled. “It’s wild, I promise.”

“I’m sure it is. Why would you collect them otherwise?” Gross. “No thank you.”

“Just one unusual death?”

“Not even the beginning part of one.” Yeesh. It was a stupid question, given BOFFO’s employment roster, but was she nuts? Who … who’d want to…? Gross.

“Are you suuuuure?”

“Gross. I mean, yes, I’m sure. Thanks anyway, though,” I added. “It was, um, nice of you to want to share.” Gross.

“Fine, fine.” She sighed. “Could you show me around? And I’d love to hit a vending machine. My greatest fear is waking up with a skinny butt like yours. My butt needs constant tending with potato chips and pie. And I’ve got to pee. I don’t think you’d like it if I went right here.”

“Nobody would, I’m pretty sure.” I had no comment on her butt. I had no comment on anything. She was sort of a weirdo. Not that I enjoy judging or anything. “Okay. Here comes the government-sanctioned tour. Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. First stop, the ladies’ room.”

She trotted after me (she was really short) and as little as I wanted to talk to her, I was glad I had to give the tour. I was in no rush to pick up the June Boy Jobs folder.

Agent Thyme wasn’t just a random transfer. She was supposed to help us catch the JBJ killer. And I prayed she’d be able to tip the balance in our favor, because so far we had diddly-iddly. Just a score of dead teenage boys. And paperwork.

chapter sixteen

I saw the
JBJ’s handiwork for the first time on the Fourth of July. And I think if I’d seen his handiwork on, say, Labor Day, or on an ordinary Tuesday, it wouldn’t have bothered me so much. It wouldn’t have been so hard to get those poor dead kids out of my head.

But July 4th? It wasn’t just an excuse to get off work and blow stuff up … it was a family holiday. Whoever heard of a Fourth of July barbecue … where everyone was a stranger?

No, the Fourth was about grilling hot dogs and teasing your dad because it took him forever to get the grill lit. It was about setting a picnic table with red, white, and blue paper plates, and loading the plates with Grandma’s homemade potato salad. It was lugging blankets and coolers over to the town golf course, setting up your family and friend’s little stretch of blanket territory and waiting, cans of pop and beer for everyone, for it to get dark enough for the fireworks. And afterward everyone went home dirty and full and tired, but everybody slept well because they were full of hot dogs and tired, and mosquito-bit to beat the band.

(I, um, sort of researched that whole bit. But I didn’t just read books; I interviewed people. All that, the stuff I just listed, that was all Fourth of July 101. But I think it’s fair to point out that, not having a family to grow up with, I probably romanticized family holidays. Which makes me a romantic, but not necessarily incorrect.)

On a day I should have been wolfing down hot dogs and worrying Adrienne would pop up when the fireworks came out—not to mention making out with my new boyfriend and trying my hand at making potato salad—I was instead standing over the dead body of a fourteen-year-old boy. And my pastry-chef boyfriend had alternately sulked and worried when I wouldn’t bring him.

Patrick Flannery had a view of me I loved (I think): he thought I was awesome yet vulnerable, yet awesome. We’d been going out for a few months and he took turns bragging to people about me and worrying about me.

“I’ll make you coconut custard,” he wheedled as I methodically dug out my ID and found my gun (Adrienne had used it last to express her displeasure over the new paint job in my living room). “With homemade whipped cream.”

“Back off, Baker Boy, I’ve got work to do. Come on, if I was a guy friend of yours, would you really want to tag along to a murder?”

“Sure.”

“Gross. I mean, ’bye.”

Patrick was stupidly handsome whether he was kissing or pouting or busily whipping up crepes with flour on his hands and nose. At least he didn’t know it. He was also my best friend’s brother. And the only man I’d ever met who wanted to date Adrienne, Shiro,
and
me. My therapist was endlessly interested in the whole weird thing. Possibly more than I was.

Sometimes I was thrilled to have such an understanding guy in my life. Someone I could come home to now and again, someone I could tell about my odd, odd days. I knew, even if I didn’t quite understand, that mine was an unusual life. That most people do not and cannot live like this. Patrick was my shot at normality. So, yes, absolutely, sometimes I was beyond thrilled he was in my life.

And sometimes I was jealous, and didn’t want to share him. Even with Shiro and Adrienne. Maybe especially with them.

As if a murder scene on the glorious Fourth wasn’t bad enough … wow. I’m complaining a little too much. I mean, sure, my Fourth had been derailed, but then, so had the victim’s. I should be counting my blessings.

Still, I couldn’t shake that first impression. Murder was dreadful in all its facets; I would never argue otherwise. But there was something particularly awful about knowing that every single Fourth of July holiday, from now until they died, would be ruined for every single member of this kid’s family.

Poor kid didn’t look more than twelve, which I knew wasn’t right. We later confirmed he was fourteen. They were all fourteen. They’d all been killed with the same signature weapon.

And we had no idea who or why or when.

And the file just kept getting thicker and thicker.

I remembered I could smell BBQs all over the neighborhood; could still smell them, even inside the house. It was a smell I would forever after associate with the JBJ killer.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen brutality before; I’d witnessed worse before I was five, for jeeper’s sake. But something about the boys, their childhood only a couple of years behind them but adulthood still a couple of years ahead … the sunny gorgeous days when they were found … the ones who weren’t found on or near July 4th were still found on gorgeous sunny days. Murder was dreadful in February and October and March and July, but there was always something about a gorgeous, cloudless sunny day. You
expected
bad things to happen in the middle of a blizzard. You
expected
bad things to happen when it was cloudy and had been raining for three days.

Their extreme youth was no fun, either … it made me feel worse to see them like that. It made the loss of their potential all the more sad and senseless and In Your Face. Give me a wife-beating mouth breather whose body was found in the middle of a hailstorm at midnight.

Anyway, it would have been a memorable unpleasant day anyway,
and
I had to meet up with the FBI guys who’d been told (told, mind you, not asked) they would now have to play nice with BOFFO. Past experience had taught me this would be trouble. Divisions tended to be territorial.

Which is why Special Agent Greer greeted me with, “Are you kidding me with this shit, or what?”

“It’s nice to meet you, too.” I was busily pulling on booties and gloves. “I’m Cadence Jones.”

“And I’m pretty damned annoyed they’re calling you weirdos in.”

I just looked at him. I hated confrontations. Why couldn’t everybody just be nice all the time? I sort of hoped Shiro would come out and smack him around. Okay, not really. Wait. Yes, really.

“Why are you staring at me?”

“Uh … sorry.” Stupid Shiro, who wouldn’t show up on command. “Listen, you get that it’s not my fault, right?” I heard my tone: anxious. Trying to soothe. Pathetic.
Shiro! Come out already! This guy can probably smell my wanting-to-please, like a dog smells fear, or Snausages.
“I mean, it wasn’t my decision or anything? You get that?”