Deja Who (21 page)

“Y
ou're horrible and I could almost regret meeting you and I'm probably not the only guy out there who wants to strangle you—I'm literally not the only guy out there who wants to strangle you—but I'm not gonna just slink off into the sunset and let you get fatally stabbed a lot.”

“Huh.”

“That's it.” Archer nodded so hard he almost gave himself a headache. “That's what I'll say to her when I see her again.”

“Might work,” Cat conceded. She and Archer were walking toward the downtown area. Archer had called Cat with updates, she gave him an earful, then orders, and he'd met her to walk her to the hotel. The day was too gorgeous, and they were both too keyed up, for a taxi. “Or you could just kiss her a whole bunch.”

“Plan B. Also Plan C through ZZZ.”

“Good to know. So you figured out her incredibly transparent ploy, eh?”

“Please, God, let it be a ploy.” He shoved his hands in his jeans and hunched while they trudged, Cat because she was loaded down with Target bags of just-purchased travel toiletries, he because he was dead like a dodo inside. Thanks to Leah, his heart was extinct.
I need to remember to never say that out loud because, even to me, it sounds lame.
“Pretty please? God probably owes me a favor, right? I do all sorts of stuff for Him.” Part-time job number five: bookstore clerk at St. Peter's.

“Trust me, she was as awful as she could be, but not to be awful. Not to just be awful,” Cat amended. “You always, always have to remember what you're dealing with.”

“Who.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you correcting my grammar, boy?”

“Yeah, it helps me feel closer to the Leah who corrected my grammar and forget the Leah who talked to me like she hates me.”

“First off, it's ‘whom,' you doorknob, so you gotta turn in your Grammar Police badge.”

“It is not! It's ‘who,' and I don't have a Gra—”

“Second, she doesn't hate you. Opposite, in fact. This is a woman who operates almost entirely out of fear while refusing to acknowledge she's scared shitless pretty much all the time.” Anticipating his question, Cat elaborated. “Scared of putting herself out there, scared of opening up to you, scared of making a friend who doesn't put ‘feed pigeons chunks of Big Macs' on her weekly to-do list, scared the world's gonna drown in aluminum cans because not enough assholes recycle.” She paused. “No. That last one's something I'm scared of. Leah doesn't worry much about the planet, just the people who live on it. Scratch the last.”

He shrugged, feeling bitchy. “I dunno. She had a couple of good points.”

“Shut up, don't buy into that shit,” the mayor ordered. “Depending on my schedule that day I'll either cut you or smack you upside the head with my platinum Amex.”

She must have been terrifying in office.
“So, what? She drove me off like a dog at a picnic for what? Leah's just gonna just put herself out there? Make herself bait? Write ‘please come stab me, big boy' on her forehead?”

“Dog at a picnic, heh.” Catching his scowl, Cat shrugged. “Sorry, hilarious mental image. But listen, I think that might be pretty close to the plan. It might even work. Her whole deal is that she's always passive, always on the sidelines, right? She's never tried getting in the killer's face before.”

“She's never lost her goddamned mind before, either,” he muttered. “I'm pretty sure.”

“I don't think the killer's gonna hang around long after doing her mom. He's gonna have to make his move real soon.”

“Guessing.” He slashed his hand through the air, dismissing the argument. “It's all just guessing.”

“Yep. But I think Leah's an accurate judge of his methods. She might not always know who he is, but she remembers enough things to be careful.”

“Except she's not being careful. Is she?”

“No.”

It's unreal that we're even discussing this. Only three weirdos: a shark-eyed Insighter, the rich homeless former mayor of Boston, and . . . well . . . me . . . could have problems like this. Does that make us lucky, or fucked?

They walked in silence for a few moments. “You know what
I can't figure out? Besides almost everything? How someone who thinks she's a terrible person would go out of her way to protect you and me.”

“She's her own worst critic,” Cat agreed, “and she's still terrible. Just not as terrible as she thinks.”

“This whole thing is making me ill. I don't know dick about serial killers—any kind of killer, since my dad didn't
really
kill my uncle—”

“What the frig, Archer! Minor detail I'm only just hearing about!”

“It's not relevant to this month,” he argued, “so I want to stay on topic. And the topic, horribly, is the guy who wants to kill my shark-eyed sweetie.”

“It's maybe not relevant, but it adds to the Mystery of Archer. You're older than her but look younger—”

“I have a really good moisturizer.”

“—you're a private eye with only one client, now deceased—”

“I needed a vacation anyway.”

“—who lives in a tower with a landlord who's never there—”

“The economy's tough and she's job hunting in California.”

Cat snorted and swung her Target bags. Archer jerked back, saving his nose from getting clipped. “What the hell do you do all day, Archer?”

“Asked the bag lady.”

“Please,” Cat huffed, annoyed, “we prefer the term ‘home-impaired.'”

“I do lots of things,” he replied cheerfully. “After my dad went to prison I helped out my mom by taking on some part-time jobs, blew off college, and decided I liked being a permanent self-appointed temp worker. So I do some Pee Eye stuff and
sometimes I dog-sit and sometimes I pick up a few shifts at the diner around the corner from the tower—”

“Waiter?”

“Cook. I dunno how to explain it; those little tiny jobs are all nice but they don't move me.”

“Be thankful it's not a career that doesn't move you. You know how many lawyers I know who hate their jobs? College
and
law school and they just about cry every morning when their alarm goes off.”

Was there a lawyer anywhere who doesn't hate being a lawyer? Someone should do a study.
“Yeah, and the little jobs are fun until they're not and then I quit and do something else. I think I'm sort of testing everything out. I'm like a compass with the needle spinning all the time.”

“So you're a professional bum. Bum as in goof-off, not a politically incorrect term for the home-impaired.”

“Pretty much. Good thing Leah can't see all the jobs from my past lives, since I've had a million just in this life. Her brain would implode.”

Cat was giving him the oddest look, which was unsettling to say the least. (Okay, technically saying nothing was saying the least, but he was a slave to cliché.) “Have you thought maybe you're not life-blind at all?”

“Huh?” He nearly tripped over a parking meter, and a bike messenger nearly clipped him, and they resumed walking. “Where'd that come from?”

“Something Leah said a few months ago. A theory about the life-blind. I thought she was bullshitting out of boredom, but now I wonder.”

“It's a myth, Cat. It's the fairy tale nobody actually buys.
Believe me, I used to play that card when people were feeding me overdoses of patented ‘you poor blind idiot, you'll never get it' crap. It's like the things orphans tell themselves: my
real
parents are rich but I was stolen from them. I'm not supposed to be here.”

“Whereas the
tabula rasa
have never been here at all.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I'm not that. I was disabused of it pretty early on. And for the zillionth time, being life-blind is no handicap.”

“Can we even say ‘handicap' these days?” Cat fretted. “I'm a little behind on my PC jargon.”

“Focus! Listen, I
like
not having the weight of a dozen lives smashing me down with everything I do. Most people don't get that. And besides, Leah's my proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“That I'm not a true
rasa.
If she doesn't know, then I'm not.”

Cat laughed. “Your faith in her is adorable. And not misplaced,” she added as Archer frowned. “She's among the best in the world at what she does, no question. But you're acting like Insighters are infallible, and you gotta know they aren't. Just because Insighters all over the world want to refer patients to her doesn't mean she doesn't ever get it wrong. Besides, what's it all for?”

“What?”

“This. Us. Life.” Cat gestured vaguely at the air, the people around them, the traffic. “Everything we go through, all our past mistakes. Our attempts to fix things in
this
life . . . what's it all for, if there's never a chance to be born with a clean slate? Well, a clean slate until you fuck something up severely. Then it's back to the end of the line, pal.”

“Kid stuff,” he replied, feeling uncomfortable. He didn't like
thinking about this, and not just because their focus should be on Leah. It brought back painful memories. Because there
had
been a time he thought he was different because he was a clean slate. Not a cripple, not someone so stupid in all their lives they could never see them. “Like I said. Fairy tales for grown-ups.”

“I don't think so,” was Cat's only response, and to his relief she appeared to get back on track when she added, “And I don't think you're a bum. And d'you know how often Leah takes to a guy under the best of circumstances?”

“I have no—”

“Years. Okay? As in, she
never
takes to a guy right away. Never mind one working for her mom. Never mind one who's been stalking her while he works for her mom. But she didn't chuck you out the back door, which I think is interesting. Just stabbed you.”

“‘Just,' huh?”

“And then forgave you. My point, get it?”

“Yeah, she took to me right away but chucked me out the back door in under a month, so it's
not
interesting. And speaking of her mom, getting back to what I said earlier, why'd the killer decide to kill her mom first? He would have known he was killing the wrong woman, right? All he or she did was bring attention to himself or herself. The cops know something's up, Leah knows he's close now. Pretty dumb. Pretty obvious and dumb.” It was strange to be discussing such things while walking down a beautiful street in sunny Chicago, where almost everyone was smiling and enjoying the day.

Sad and scary how much bad shit went on when everything else looked great.

“What happened? What'd Ms. Nazir do to make him lose
his shit and kill her? Not just kill her. He didn't shoot her, didn't stab her, choke her . . . he or she picked up Leah's Emmy and whack-whack-whack.”

“I get it, I get it, stop drawing that mental picture.” Cat paused and swallowed. “If you knew that, you'd probably know who did it. And maybe it wasn't anything. Because, you know. Psycho killer. That's for the cops to figure out. They're checking alibis, all that behind-the-scenes stuff, right? Canvassing the neighborhood, and even B-list celeb deaths make the news, so people are talking about it, thinking about it . . . Again, he's exposed. He's gotta kill Leah quick and get out.”

“Yeah. Not that there are many alibis to check. Leah and I are each other's alibis, so I'm not sure how that works. And Leah's old agent, what's-his-face. You should have seen this guy, Cat. He looks like he's always on the verge of hay fever, or sobbing uncontrollably. Big watery eyes, runny nose.”

“Yeah? Why's he even a suspect?”

“He was there when Leah blew off her mom for the tenth time. At the McMansion.”

“Huh. Doesn't make sense for an agent to kill his client, though. Much easier to just drop 'em. Like there's a shortage of B-list actresses in Hollywood?”

“Right. Anyway, he was on a plane to L.A. when Ms. Nazir got iced with Leah's Emmy.”

“Oh.” A short pause, then: “How d'you know?”

“Leah figured it out, and the cops were gonna follow up. They've probably verified by now.” Archer shuddered, recalling the crime scene (the McMansion had never seemed more bleak, or more sinister) and Leah's white face and tight, clipped voice as she explained how she could have killed It while knowing
damned well she didn't kill It. “Beaten to death with Leah's Emmy. I didn't know Leah even had an Emmy. But then, you know. Known her less than a month.”

“Yeah, Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy.” At Archer's stare, Cat shrugged. “Okay, I was a fan. I loved the stuff she did in the nineties. Recognized her straight off when one of her clients chased her through my park.” He was still staring, so she elaborated. “Her eyes are the same. It's why they always cast her as the smart-ass kid who acts tough but is a big sweetie inside. And don't worry. Leah knows I was a fan. She decided we'd be pals anyway.”

“Okay, well, when this blows over and Leah's pregnant with my twins—”

“Whoa!”

“—I'll need to borrow some of your DVDs.”

“Okay, I can't think about your weird twins right now, or the fact that you think I have a DVD collection stashed somewhere. So how did you know her agent was in L.A.?”

“Leah's mom told Leah.”

“Leah's mom.”

“Uh. Yeah. Problem?”

Cat was walking faster, a frown spreading across her broad face. Archer knew there were two kinds of people in the world: the ones who slow down when they're thinking hard, and the ones who speed up. Almost jogging, he tried to match her pace. “Told Leah when? Over the phone?”