You and I, Me and You (5 page)

So we stepped into the hall, and then around the corner by a soda machine, and the time needed to do that was necessary because, as I mentioned, Greer and I had not met. But Cadence had had a memorable encounter with him. I could not recall something that had not happened to me. But I could see it through Cadence's eyes, and I had just enough time to do so.

*   *   *

It would have been a memorably 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. Cops 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 bootees 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?”

“BOFFO? Friggin' False Flag Ops? They're handing this unbelievably tragic mess over to the nuthouse inmates?”

Was he asking me or telling me? “Um. Yes?” That seemed safe enough.

Shiro? Hellooooo? Anybody home?

Darnitall! Therapy was starting to work a little too well. It had been focused, of course, on fewer blackouts, and fewer kidnappings of my body by my sisters. But according to my doctors and, more important, my boss, Michaela (who had no investment in stroking me), I had created Shiro and Adrienne to help me in stressful situations. I created them when I was little, when I watched my father run over a Canada goose with a riding lawn mower and then get murdered by my mother. So where the gosh heck fiddly darn were they?

“This really hurts.” Greer was still bitching. I reminded myself that I could be in a worse situation: I could be standing over that poor boy's body. I could
be
that boy.
Count your blessings; count your blessings.
So I just stood there. “First off, you guys are more like some sick urban legend than an actual department, okay? Most of the Bureau thinks you don't exist. You're the Area 51 of the FBI.”

Good.

“But to find out you
do
exist … and to find out you're all…”

“Heavily medicated?” I suggested. “Emotionally disturbed?”

“No.
I'm
heavily medicated and emotionally disturbed; I'm in the middle of my third divorce. You guys are all certified crazies.”

“That's true,” I admitted. “We are.” And we had the charts to back it up.

But Greer wasn't interested in a conversation; he wanted a rant. So he groaned and moaned and made yanking motions in his hair—which would explain his monk's fringe—and shook his head and rolled his eyes. I expected him to burst into flames at any moment, and/or collapse into a seizure.

And his suit was dreadful: shiny at the elbows, frayed at the cuffs. His paunch was emphasized by the coffee stain between his third and fourth shirt buttons. I might be crazy, but I'd been able to drink without spilling since I was four.

He smiled, and it completely changed his face. He instantly looked younger and much less testy. He almost looked friendly. It was like a magic trick! A really good one with lots of mirrors and a pretty girl in an indecently short sequined costume. I wondered why he didn't smile more often.

“Do you feel better now?”

He thought about it. “Yeah. I kinda do. Sorry. Thanks. Uh, I know you're just following orders.”

“That's true,” I teased. “I am.”

“I hate today. I'm supposed to be at my daughter's baseball game right now.”

I nodded. “Fourth of July stuff.”

“Yeah! I'm the Number One Guy on the Grill.” That's just how he said it, too. You could hear the capital letters. “I got all this hamburger meat at a huge discount—my cousin works for Lorentz Meats.”

“Oh, yum,” I replied, impressed.

He nodded. “I know! And about fifty kinds of brats, and now my wife's gonna cook and she'd burn water. You should have heard all the bitching when my pager went off. And not just from me. My wife was pretty mad, too. Instead I gotta…”

“It's unbelievable! Crazy people wearing sidearms?” He scraped at his shirt with a fingernail. “It's like a bad joke.”

“Or a genius idea,” I suggested. “Set a thief to catch a thief, and all that.”

“No, it's a joke. Did Congress approve this? Where's your budget coming from? Are you telling me somebody looked at the proposal for BOFFO and said, ‘Yup, sounds like a plan. Here's a check, and don't worry, we'll keep 'em coming year after year. Now let's be careful out there'? I don't believe it!”

I blinked. He didn't? That was strange. How was this a puzzle? “It's the government.”

A short pause. “Okay, well. That actually makes sense.” A fellow government employee, and thus tortured by the same payroll/health benefits/administration personnel, he had to admit the truth, even if he didn't like it. “But come on. You've got kleptomaniacs pilfering at crime scenes—”

“He eventually bags anything he can't help grabbing.”

“—agents who are convinced their reflections are out to get them—”

“How do you know they aren't?”

“—agoraphobes who
live
in your office—”

“Yeah, but think of all the money's she's saving on commuting costs. And rent.”

“—claustrophobes in tents on the roof of your office building—”

“It's cheap 24/7 security.”

“—a phallically obsessed department head—”

I didn't really have an argument for that one.

“—and agents who … well…” He gestured vaguely at me.

“Who have multiple personality disorder, now more commonly known as dissociative identity disorder,” I supplied helpfully. “Sybil Syndrome. Please don't ever call it that.”

“Yeah, that. And don't even get me started on Pinkman.”

“Nobody wants you to get started on anyone.”
Especially
George Pinkman. I paused. “Since you know about us anyway, I figure there's no harm in explaining.”

“Oh, goody.”

“What civilians and the occasional Fed don't understand is, I'm effective
because of
my psychological quirks. Though
quirks
may not be the strongest word, to be fair.

“A sociopath thinks nothing of bending a few rules to get his man. And a kleptomaniac knows how to take things away from a bad guy right under his nose. A histrionic can turn in an Oscar-worthy performance in any undercover situation. Like that.”

“Mmmm, sure.
Just
like that. Uh-huh.”

“So, are we at all helpful?”

“You're being rhetorical, I guess.”

I answered myself. “Sure we are. Are we a pain in the tuchus? Yes. Worth the hassle to get the job done? Well, we have an eight-figure budget that sails through congressional budget justification every single year. What does that tell you?”

“That I should have voted for the other guy.”

I giggled. “Do you have anything else to get off your chest?”

He gave me an odd look. “What are you, my therapist?”

“No. Just someone who wants to catch this guy. Like you.”

“Catch him.” He nodded slowly. “Yeah, well. I don't want to catch him. I want to hang him by his testicles until they fall off.”

“It's good you've got goals.” In this instance, he had my sister's goals.

“I'm sorry you had to leave your family on a family holiday.”

“You, too.”

I didn't volunteer anything, and when I didn't say anything he sighed, then opened the front door for me. “Come on. Kid's in the basement.”

Thus making the basement the place I didn't want to go. But I had work to do. We all did, thanks to the killer.

 

chapter eleven

“You know what
we can do,” I told Greer politely when we had the illusion of privacy. “You know we succeed—perhaps in spite of ourselves. No one wants to hoard leads. My partner and I do not care about the credit.” George opened his mouth, but I pressed my thumb and index nails together and he closed it so fast I heard his teeth click. “Our bosses want the win for their own reasons”—budget, budget, and budget—“but
we
want the killer caught and stopped. So let the bosses fret the paperwork and the numbers, while the field agents do what they do. What we do.”

“Yeah.” Greer rubbed his chin, which was wide and blue with stubble. He looked like a cartoon character. “Yeah, caught and stopped is good. Lettin' somebody else fret the paperwork is also good.” He squinted at me. “You're different from before.”

No doubt.

George snorted. “You've got no idea. Sag here is what we call the woman with many faces.”

I was impressed that he had been restraining himself with only a mild threat of violence, but occasionally George could see the big picture: an interdepartmental squabble made us all look bad, left unsightly marks on our records, and inadvertently aided the killer. Agent George Pinkman would not be able to achieve his dream of beating a suspect to death if we could not play nicely long enough to find said suspect.

“Are you doin' that thing where you're different people?”

“All the time,” I assured him.

“Yeah, okay.” Anyone in law enforcement dealt with the odd and unusual. You adapted—quickly—or found a new line of work. Greer had been at this a long time. “You made some good points when we talked last. And you got that JBJ freak.”

JBJ freak
=
the June Boy Job killer. Small wonder it kept coming up. The Twin Cities wasn't known for its plethora of serial killers, and JBJ had been active up until a few weeks ago. A family's legacy of racism and murder led to the serial killings of blameless teenage boys over the course of decades. Catching the killer had not been as satisfying as I'd hoped. In the end, only the wrong people got hurt. As they often do. In the end, I was only tired. Oh, and shot. That was when I realized how much I wanted Dr. Gallo … and how much Cadence did not.

(We have the baker; Dr. Gallo is a fantasy. A fantasy getting entirely too cozy with Officer Rivers, I suspect. Why did I insist we have this insipid chat by the soda machine?)

Greer was looking from me to George, and from George to me. “Okay. I shouldn't have mouthed off like that. But I was surprised to see you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, ‘oh.' Come on, don't bullshit a bullshitter.”

What is going on here?
“I have never subscribed to the notion of bullshitting a bullshitter.”

“C'mon. You know. My boss sent me down here because you guys weren't supposed to get the squeal.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Greer looked around as if making sure a tech wasn't sneaking up on us, ears cocked to eavesdrop. “I don't blame you for coming down—there've been times I showed up places I wasn't supposed to be. But you better check with your boss.”

“Sound advice. We shall obey. Thank you”—I held out my hand, and saw it swallowed by Greer's paw—“for your time and courtesy.”

“
Real
different,” Greer added, and shambled back toward the scene.

George and I looked at each other.

“Okay, what the fuck? We're only here because Gallo called me? Michaela didn't send us?”

“Excellent questions.”

“Paperwork fuckup?”

“Such things happen. And the apartment was too neat. And it's strange having Dr. Gallo there.”

“Uh, okay, at least you're making perfect sense. You heard my subtle sarcasm, right? You picked up on that?”

“I have to think about this,” I told him.

 

chapter twelve

I blinked. I'd
gone from the new driveway of our perfect house to George's awful car in half a blink. “What happened?”

George took that as a cue to piss and moan for the next few minutes, pulling the car over (“See, see? I'm lucky I didn't need stitches or a lobe transplant. You know I've got a rare blood type! Cross-matching for a transplant could have taken months!”) twice (“You're not looking. Look. Look! Looooooooook!”) to show me the hideous damage Shiro had inflicted on his unsuspecting earlobe with two fingernails. Ha!

“What?” he demanded.

“What?”

“You laughed!”

“That was out loud?”
Hmm. I should probably start keeping an eye on that.
“Sorry.”

“There was a time you never would have laughed at my pain.”

Not out loud, anyway. But George was right. (He'd never know how much pain it caused me to even think that; if I had to say it to his face, my throat would constrict enough to suffocate me.) Once I would have been so bound by courtesy, so imprisoned in my “Can't we all get along” mind-set that I couldn't have laughed. But now—

“Bwah-hah-hah!”

George glared, then put his blinker on and pulled back into traffic. “Fucking unreal,” he muttered while I chortled in the next seat.

Did this mean I was getting better, or worse? I'd have to ask my shrink.

“Other than your poor mangled earlobe, what'd I miss?”