Authors: Jamie Quaid
Sarah’s eyelids flickered. For a moment, I thought I saw black irises instead of Sarah’s blue. I held my breath in anticipation, and then Sarah morphed entirely to monkey form right before my eyes.
I fell backward, knocking the stool over in my haste to escape.
Sarah was faster. Emitting a chimpanzee cry, she leaped for my neck.
Did I mention the chimp had strangled two strong men?
She wrapped her long arms around my head and her legs around my waist. I was strangling simply from the stench of unwashed chimp when Cora returned, waving her fancy phone at me.
“I believe this one’s for you,” Cora cried, before screeching to a halt inside the door, her eyes widening. “Rather you than me,” was her helpful comment.
Apparently regaining some of what passes for her sense, Sarah loosened her grip but continued to cling.
Eyeing her warily, Cora held up the phone so I could see it past Sarah’s hairy head. “If the Zone has spread all the way up here, Andre’s gonna shit bombs.”
Since Andre was probably sitting at the police station, that was an attractive image. I studied the text on her screen.
Sarah’s mind is intact, what there is of it. Sad girl. Themis
Shit
. I reached around Sarah’s furry body to grab the phone. I hastily texted a reply asking where Themis was but all I got was a Wikipedia page showing
aziz—
Persian for
dear
.
“I’m moving to Seattle,” I told Cora, attempting to pry Sarah’s legs loose from my waist, but she clung like a terrified Muppet.
“Yeah, that’s what we all say,” Cora said with a shrug. “But we never do. Reality sucks, y’know?”
Since Cora just assumed the Zone was messing with us, I didn’t even begin to try to explain that Themis might exist. No way could I explain that she
might
be my grandmother and might have used Sarah as a vehicle to communicate—even I hadn’t worked out all the ramifications. Didn’t want to, to be frank, especially with the result clinging to my neck.
If I’d translated Themis’s visualization message correctly, it meant that all I was going to get out of this Saturn gig was grief. If I conjured up a pot of gold, I’d end up paying for it one way or another.
Shit
. Still, she hadn’t said I’d go to hell if I visualized bad guys pushing strollers. There was no harm or profit in that.
I left the tunnel carrying Sarah around my neck. I supposed I should take comfort that one of the zombies had wakened, and that it had been dangerous Sarah. That was one less burden to haul around, in a manner of speaking, since I now had to carry her physically. Except now I had to wonder if Themis could wake all the zombies or only daughters of Saturn. I suspected the latter.
With a sense of relief, I carried poor Sarah back to my apartment while debating justice and my place in the scheme of things.
That Nancy Rose and the others were growing healthier by the minute didn’t exactly justify gassing a rich old lady in hopes she’d improve, too. I didn’t know for certain that Gloria was some kind of demon. I didn’t even believe in demons. But she’d certainly been dangerous. Did that justify Paddy’s offing her? Or letting Andre gas her?
“Really, Saturn?” I muttered as I climbed the stairs. “Do I have to get involved now that Gloria’s dead and
the world is a better place? Can’t I just say, ‘Amen, and so it goes’?”
Sarah bobbed her head in agreement, which made me uneasy. I didn’t really want to agree with a serial murderer on this one.
The message I’d left on my door was gone. I didn’t think Schwartz had been here to take it, but maybe Paddy had. Or maybe Themis had made it disappear in a puff of smoke. I set Sarah on the floor and let her toddle off to explore. Her chimp shape embarrassed her, but it was just us girls here. She knew where to find the bananas, the only food of mine she’d ever consented to eat.
I mulled over what I’d learned and what I should do as I stir-fried veggies. I didn’t see Gloria’s face in the gas flames of my stove, thank goodness. I didn’t hear from Max, either. I’d tried calling Schwartz to find out what was going down, but he didn’t have time to talk to me.
Sarah reappeared as Sarah while I was opening the tortilla package. She’d helped herself to one of my sundresses and a cardigan I never wore. Her missile-shaped breasts strained at the cotton that would have covered my more modest assets.
“Welcome back,” I said cautiously.
She looked at my vegetables with disinterest and opened the refrigerator. “I had the strangest dream,” she said as she rummaged. “I was down at Chesty’s, sitting at the bar with Bill and a lot of ugly old men and a woman who said she was a florist. I was wondering where the regulars were. Then this strange
Gypsy woman showed up talking gibberish. And then I woke up in your arms.”
“Don’t make too much of it,” I said warily, pondering a dream including our unconscious patients. Could Sarah have known Bill and Nancy Rose were gassed before she clocked out? “You got gassed and were out for a few days.” How much should I tell her?
“Gassed?” She emerged from behind the refrigerator door holding peanut butter and apples.
I didn’t precisely trust a woman who would kill her mama in return for prettier legs, but she was the only Saturn’s daughter I knew. I kept hoping she might impart a few secrets. So I dumped my veggies into a tortilla, added some feta, and gave her a brief, expurgated version of events.
“Paddy and Julius clammed up after I told them how Gloria died,” I finished up. “I didn’t tell them she turned into a demon before she departed.” I waited for any insight Sarah might offer.
She ate her apple, core and all, and licked peanut butter off her fingers. “Mama said the devil’s demons walk the earth,” she offered, shrugging. “And that we’d join them one day. But she didn’t do anything cool like turn black when she died.”
So very not useful—unless I wanted confirmation that Sarah had killed her mother. “Have you ever visualized punishing someone who does bad things?” I asked, hoping for a real discussion.
She studied me as if I were queer in the head. “Why? Isn’t it easier just to wish them dead?”
Well, no, but maybe that was my legal training.
And now I had to worry that I could just
wish
someone out of existence.
“I don’t think killing people is our purpose,” I gently pointed out, not wanting to get on her wrong side. “If it was, after a while there wouldn’t be any more people in the world.”
She frowned a little, as if she were really thinking about it. “I don’t think I’ll ever go any farther than Baltimore,” she concluded. “I don’t think anyone will complain too much if I eliminate a few jerks. It will be a nicer place to live.”
“Save it for the real bad guys, at least,” I admonished. “Where would we be without Ernesto?”
She nodded as if she’d taken my point. “Thanks for lunch. I’d better get back to work.”
I didn’t think Chesty’s would be open on a Sunday afternoon, but heck if I meant to stop her. Maybe, if the world was really lucky, the pink particles had improved her morals, if not her brains. Milo and I watched her go. I think even my cat sighed in relief. Maybe we should let her loose in Acme—our very own neutron bomb.
I needed someone to help me through the murky maze of right and wrong so I’d know what to do next.
Julius had been a judge and Paddy a research scientist at Acme when the last chemical flood occurred. Paddy, at least, had to have known Gloria’s going berserk if gassed was a possible reaction.
He’d probably expected her to go comatose, like the others. Point to ponder, if I were judge and jury. A real jury wouldn’t know enough about weirdness to
believe the argument—a point Andre had made previously. I might be the only person capable of judging Zonies.
Thinking I might have to adjudicate friends as well as enemies made me itchy. If I refused the duty, would I get punished?
“If you don’t give me the rulebook, you old bastard,” I told my invisible daddy, “then you have no right to judge me!”
While I waited to hear from Andre and Max, I kept my ears open. No more helicopters broke the Sunday silence. I kept hoping for another stroller sighting, but I’d probably have to go further inland, where there were real neighborhoods. I had an aching need to know I was making things better instead of worse.
I needed to ask Julius if he’d found Tim and the canister. That thing was a dangerous time bomb waiting to explode.
Finishing my tortilla, I settled down with my new toy computer. The tablet would be lousy for word processing, but it had built-in Internet access, which I assumed Acme was paying for. And it was fast, far faster than my cheap netbook. The tablet still had power, and Boris had left a message saying he was delivering a charger to Chesty’s.
I could probably go over and usurp Andre’s computers now that I knew how to get into them, but I liked keeping my mail and Facebook private. My page is under Mary Clancy, so people who don’t know me really well can’t find it.
I opened my e-mail, hoping to find answers to my
requests regarding body dumping. One of my correspondents was a doctor who worked with a hospital in Massachusetts. He said he could admit a comatose patient for a limited time, but after that they’d go to a state-run nursing home.
As if to exacerbate my worries, I thought I felt the ground shake. I froze, but I didn’t feel it again. Someone really needed to get back inside Acme and find that damned machinery and turn it off. I was a lawyer, not a rocket scientist. I had limits.
I needed to talk to Andre. The Zone
needed
his leadership. Things went seriously wrong when I took up the reins, as I’d learned the hard way. I was a loner, not a leader. Besides, I had to go to work in the morning.
Could we drop Nancy Rose off at a local hospital and have someone ship one of the old guys to Massachusetts? Would it be safe now that Gloria was out of the picture? Could I believe she was the only force of evil at Acme?
I glanced at my computer clock, but the digits weren’t changing any faster. Antsy and worried, I called Jane the reporter to see if she’d learned anything interesting about the gas.
“No story,” she told me with disappointment. “I earned brownie points for breaking the news, but Acme’s press release merely says a worker cleaning a tank accidentally released some chlorine, causing a few residents with asthma to go to the hospital. I haven’t located any of those residents, so I assume they’ve all gone home.”
“Hogwash,” I said wearily. “They didn’t have asthma, it wasn’t chlorine, and Acme hid anyone who keeled over at the plant, not the hospital.” I didn’t mention the ones we’d rescued. Jane has an overdeveloped sense of curiosity. “But none of it probably matters now. Gloria Vanderventer died today. I assume new management will be stepping in.”
At the back of my mind, I’d been wondering who that new management would be. Paddy? He was her son, so that would make sense, except everyone thought he was crazy.
“Gloria Vanderventer?” Jane asked, obviously taking notes. “The senator’s mother?”
“I’m sure it’s all over the news by now. I’ll let you know what I can, but I’m still waiting for calls.”
I signed off. Jane and her son weren’t Zonies, so I needed to keep them outside the information loop. The
Baltimore Edition
was one of those cheap online deals, but if I wanted to work the media, she was eager.
I’d resisted as long as I could. After hanging up on Jane, I dialed Andre’s cell.
He actually answered. I guessed that meant he hadn’t been locked up yet.
“Just checking to see if you need a lawyer,” I said carelessly.
“Not yet, but soon,” he agreed. “The goons have decided to take me down rather than take the blame.”
No surprise there. I’d had enough experience to see that coming. Always being the new kid in school, I’d dealt with my share of bullies over the years. They always
threw the blame elsewhere. “Well, you have to admit, you squirted her,” I said without sympathy. “They’re only guilty of getting in her face and letting her have a gun. Where are you? If I need to swing bail, where do I get it?”
His voice, when he answered, sounded relieved. He probably hadn’t been certain that I could actually be a friend when needed. “Checkbook in my office at Bill’s. I’m at the Towson precinct. Ask my father to call one of his lawyer pals to try to keep costs down.”
Andre had given me a car when I needed it, then fixed it up when he’d seen what a junker it was. He’d helped me in so many ways lately that I had to pay back some of what I owed. “I’ll call Judge Snooty-pants. That’s his bailiwick. I’ll tell him I’m your lawyer. He’ll get a snort out of that.”
“Not if you call him ‘Snootypants,’ ” Andre said with half a laugh. “Thanks, Clancy.”
Andre suspected I could send the lying goons to another planet if I wanted. But he wasn’t nagging me to do so. He respected my choices. I liked that in a man. We hung up, and I cranked the whirling gears of my mind.
I suspected Dane/Max as Senator Vanderventer was the reason Snotty Snootypants had hired me. I wasn’t exactly the Ivy League sort the judge obviously preferred. Despite my joking promise to Andre, I couldn’t persuade Judge Snodgrass to so much as answer a phone for a lowly clerk, even if he could be reached on a Sunday. It wasn’t as if I had his cell phone number.
I didn’t think Max would help me out once he learned Andre had killed Granny Gloria. Max had a serious self-righteous streak to balance Dane’s evil, and he disliked Andre. Maybe Julius should talk to the judge, persuade him that Andre wasn’t dangerous so he could bond out if charged.
No, it really needed to be Max the Senator. The whole world thought Gloria was his grandmother. If Gloria’s grandson spoke up for Andre, whoever ended up with Andre’s arraignment would listen.
I didn’t think I could make that argument with a telephone call.
It was Sunday evening. Bill’s bar would be closed. I called the bartender who was working in Bill’s place and asked him if he could open up so I could get at Andre’s checkbook. He’d been listening to the news and agreed with alacrity.