The Emerald Cat Killer (27 page)

She heard two voices, both of them sounding young, a young girl, a teenaged boy. Muttering and something that sounded like, “All right, all right, hold your water, fuck, damn, coming.”

A sound that might have been a drawer opening and closing. Shuffling. The two voices again, rising in volume, still unclear, a sound that might have been a blow.

The door swung open. Marvia's Tac Light filled the room with a cold glare. Two figures, both of them naked, a boy and girl, and in the boy's hand something black, and there was a flash and an impact, two impacts in rapid succession, and Marvia was flung backward and off her feet, landing hard, her head crashing into something, a wall, hearing gunfire, seeing flashes, and then not seeing flashes. Not seeing anything.

*   *   *

Carolyn Horton saw the door marked 414 swing open, brightness illuminate it, two figures coming toward the doorway. Two naked figures, a boy and girl. Naked, skinny, filthy. The boy held something black in his hand. A gun.

Two flashes, two booms. The black police officer facing the two crashed backward, bounced once, fell to the carpeted floor. More flashes and booms.

The boy was holding a gun in one hand, clutching the girl with the other.

Carolyn shrieked, “Rebi, Rebi, come to Mother, Rebi!”

The girl escaped from the boy. She stumbled through the doorway. More booms. Behind the girl, a single flashing scene, blood blossoming from the boy's chest, spurting outward, the boy crashing backward into the room, disappearing from Carolyn's view.

Rebi stumbled across the body of the black officer into the arms of a uniformed policeman. He lifted her and pushed his way down the hall, away from the blood and the stench of gunpowder and filth, the girl squirming in his arms like a three-year-old having a tantrum. She managed somehow to struggle free, work her way through the figures in the hallway, back to the room.

Carolyn reached for her, screeching her name.

Rebi kept going, screaming something that sounded like, “Never, fucker-bitch, never.” She plunged back into the room with the bleeding boy in it, leaped over his body, onto the unmade bed, pulled the window up, and climbed onto the fire escape.

More sounds of struggle, and a male voice coming from the darkness outside, something like, “I've got her, I've got her, I've got her.”

*   *   *

She woke to a sense of pain but it was distant pain. Her mind was strangely clear. She tried to move but at the first effort the pain leaped the distance and seized her and she moaned and lay back.

She was in a hospital room, she could tell that. She even recognized the doctor, she'd seen her before, Pollyam Mukerji, the soft-spoken little Indian woman. Marvia said, “My baby. Is my baby all right? My Jamie. My little Jamie.”

Dr. Mukerji said, “Marvia, you are all right. You will be all right.”

“My baby.”

She could move her eyes without turning her head, at least that didn't hurt. She could see—there were all these people in the room. Some black people, and that Japanese-looking woman, and a middle-aged white man, and the white-coated woman, the little doctor.

Dr. Mukerji turned to the others. “This is much too great a congregation. Please go to the waiting room. One of you may stay.”

Jamie Wilkerson said, “I'll stay.” Everyone else started leaving. So he stayed, too. Dr. Mukerji did not protest. Then Marvia Plum reached for Lindsey's hand and clutched it.

When there were only the three of them with Marvia, Dr. Mukerji said, “You are Mr. Lindsey, are you not?”

Lindsey said, “Yes.”

“Mr. Lindsey, she has experienced a great insult, two bullets to the body. One smashed a rib and settled in her lung. The other went through her shoulder and exited.”

“How bad is it?”

“It is not good but she is a strong woman. The shoulder wound, I would not say it is trivial, but it is not extremely serious. The other wound, to her lung … we removed the bullet and she will heal, but this is a very serious insult. She may lose the lung. But what about this baby? This Jamie?”

Jamie Wilkerson said, “I'm her son. I'm Jamie. She must be … she must think she's just given birth.”

Dr. Mukerji nodded sharply, the room's fluorescent lights glinting off her glasses. “Yes. Thank you. I am sure that is it. Under the circumstance, quite understandable.”

Lindsey and Jamie Wilkerson stood watch in shifts throughout the night. By noon the next day Marvia's expression indicated that her mind was clear, or as clear as it could reasonably be with her body pumped full of nutrients and antibiotics and painkillers.

Marvia was holding Lindsey's hand. She did not speak, but her eyes indicated that she heard and followed the conversation. She pulled Lindsey's hand toward her and held it to her face. He pressed his cheek against her forehead. He placed his free hand carefully, lightly, on the hospital sheet covering her, trying mightily to send strength from his body into hers.

It would not be an easy recovery, he knew, but she would recover.

He wept with joy.

NINETEEN

Six months later

How lame could you get? The more they tried the less it worked. Okay, so there were no bars on the windows, at least not in the would-be living rooms. Only double-thick shatterproof glass. There was a carpet on the floor that looked like it was a discard from the Bates Motel, and furniture that a bus-terminal waiting room would turn down.

Magazines on the coffee table—last month's
Vogue,
a couple of old
Sports Illustrated
s,
Seventeen
for God's sake, a dog-eared
People
. She wanted to throw up. A TV in the corner, and they'd tweaked it so it only got crappy channels that nobody would ever want to look at.

Red stood gazing out the window, peering at the distant freeway, wishing she could be standing on the shoulder, thumb in the air, waiting for some trucker looking for a quicky right there in the cab or, better yet, some hot hunk just looking for a party girl or—

She heard the door open and turned from the window to see Kyoko Takakura come in.

“Rebi, how are you today?”

“Oh, wonderful, Dr. Takakura. Just great. I'm ready to get out of here and go back to school.”

“We have classes right here, Rebi.”

“I know.”

“You've been attending them pretty regularly. That's good. Here, won't you come away from the window and sit down and talk with me?”

“What do we have to talk about? Thank you, Dr. Takakura, is that what you want to hear? I want to thank the staff here sincerely for helping me to clean up my act, for getting my teeth fixed, for helping me to see the error of my ways so I can go forth and become a productive member of society.”

“That's good to hear, Rebi. I wish I could believe you were sincere.”

“Oh, I am, Doctor, I am very sincere.”

“Your mother was here again this morning.”

“Was she really?”

“You wouldn't see her. Again.”

“Last time she was here I saw her.”

“You attacked her, Rebi. You became violent. You didn't recover for two days. Why were you so angry? Don't you think you could reach an accommodation with her?”

Bobby, Bobby, I'm still here. I'm still your girl, Bobby.

“No, I don't think so.”

“But she wants very much to reconcile with you. And since your father's death you're all she has in the world. Won't you even let her try?”

Bobby, help me, Bobby. I don't know how much of this bitch I can take!

“Rebi? Rebi? Are you still here?”

“I'd see my father if he came to visit. I love the old fool, I guess.”

“But, Rebi, your father—”

“He loves me, too. I can tell. Poor guy doesn't have a clue, the way that bitch leads him around by the nose, but he loves me. He does. She doesn't love anybody except herself.”

“But, Rebi, you know that your father is dead. You're all that your mother has and she's all that you have. If you would reconcile with her I really think it would help you make progress. You want to go home, don't you? Back to your home and back to your school? If you tested clean for thirty days I would be able to sign you out for a visit with your mother. Eventually, release you to her custody. I'm sure you'd want that, Rebi.”

“I need some meds, Doctor. I'd be all right if I had some meds. I know I would.”

“No, you wouldn't, Rebi. It was meds that got you in trouble. Do you remember what your life was like before you came to us?”

“I was having fun. I was married, do you know that? I had a good husband and he loved me. I want to get back with him. You can't keep me here. I'm not a criminal.”

“No, you're not, Rebi. You're not a criminal and you're not married. You're a young girl who's been very, very sick. I'm trying to help you, Rebi, but I can't help if you won't let me.”

“How about a couple of jelly beans?”

“No jelly beans, Rebi. You know how much harm those pills cause.”

Bobby would give me jelly beans.

“Rebi, I have to show you something.”

Dr. Takakura produced a file folder from someplace; Red couldn't tell where it came from. Dr. Takakura opened the folder and took a sheet of paper from it and laid it on the table between them. She pointed at a line of figures on the paper.

“Do you see those numbers, Rebi? Those are the results of your latest urine test.”

“Yeah, right. Don't you have enough piss of your own? What do you need mine for?”

“You know why we need your urine, Rebi. It tells us whether you've been using again. And you have.”

“Sorry 'bout that.”

“How do you get them, Rebi? How do you get drugs, here of all places?”

“Oh, Doctor, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't use drugs anymore. You and your fine staff have shown me the error of my ways.” She held up her fingers in a mock Girl Scout salute. “How does the saying go? No, wait, don't tell me, I've got it memorized. I learned it in one of those stupid schools they sent me to.” She stood up and closed her eyes and recited, “
Mens sana in corpore sano.
There, I got it right, didn't I?”

“All right, Rebi. I'm sorry. The deputy will be here in a few minutes to take you back to your room. We'll try again in a couple of days.”

Dr. Takakura left the faux living room. From Rebi's side the door looked like an ordinary room door with an ordinary doorknob but she could hear the click as Dr. Takakura left. She knew that the door could only be opened with a key, and she didn't have one. She didn't have one yet.

Red walked over to the window and stood watching the traffic passing on the distant freeway. She took her hair in her two fists. Her hair was growing in once more, actually getting pretty long again. She pulled it with both hands. It made her head feel funny when she did that. It wasn't quite a jolt but it helped. And she knew, she knew, she knew she could get something. You can always get something. Anywhere. There was that deputy who liked girls, especially young, skinny girls.

Red smiled to herself. Yes. You could always get something.

Isn't that so, Bobby? Isn't that so?

Also by Richard A. Lupoff

LINDSEY AND PLUM

The Comic Book Killer
(1988)

The Classic Car Killer
(1992)

The Bessie Blue Killer
(1994)

The Sepia Siren Killer
(1994)

The Cover Girl Killer
(1995)

The Silver Chariot Killer
(1996)

The Radio Red Killer
(1997)

The Emerald Cat Killer
(2010)

One Murder at a Time: The Casebook of Lindsey & Plum
(2001)

OTHERS

Death in the Ditch
(as “Del Marston”)
(1995)

Marblehead: A Novel of H. P. Lovecraft
(2006)

The Universal Holmes
(2007)

Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix
(2009)

Killer's Dozen
(2010)

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE EMERALD CAT KILLER
. Copyright © 2010 by Richard A. Lupoff. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lupoff, Richard A., 1935–

The emerald cat killer / Richard A. Lupoff.—1st ed.

   p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-64813-8

1. Lindsey, Hobart (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Insurance investigators—Fiction. 3. Plum, Marvia (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 4. Women detectives—California—San Francisco—Fiction. 5. Murder—Investigation—California—San Francisco Bay Area—Fiction. 6. Novelists—Crimes against—Fiction. 7. Publishers and publishing—Fiction. 8. San Francisco Bay Area (Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3562.U6E44 2010

813'.54—dc22

2010022128

First Edition: September 2010

eISBN 9781429957212

First eBook edition: September 2013