THREE TIMES A LADY (3 page)

  Benny Rousselle, president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana, commenting on the cleanup efforts following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Los Angeles International Airport – 12 May – 2 p.m.

The muscles lining Dana Whitestone’s slender ribcage stretched nearly to the point of snapping as she extended her body a full four inches past her natural height of five-foot-three in a clumsy attempt to stow her carry-on bag in the overhead compartment located above her seat on Continental Flight 942, nonstop LA to Cleveland.  Balancing on her tiptoes, Dana nearly had the bag tucked away when a sharp elbow smacked directly into the back of her skull.

‘Ouch!’ Dana hissed, losing her balance and almost collapsing beneath the weight of the bag.  The muscles in her overworked arms trembled like high-tension wires strung between skyscrapers, letting her know they’d given her their best shot but also that they were done working for the day. 

Dana whirled around and narrowed her pale blue eyes.  A businessman wearing a rumpled gray suit stood across the aisle from her stowing his own bag, paisley-patterned tie hanging loosely around his unbuttoned collar.  The man looked down and sideways at Dana over his right shoulder and mumbled an insincere, ‘Sorry ‘bout that.’

Dana glared up at him.  For one long, satisfying moment, she fantasized about sliding her Glock out of the shoulder holster tucked inside her blazer and giving him a good pistol-whipping right then and there on the plane.  Teach him some manners that he obviously hadn’t learned through good old-fashioned home training.  Maybe if he knew that Dana was legally entitled to carry a firearm on this flight – not to mention every other domestic flight in the United States – he’d try a little harder to sound a tad more sincere with his apologies the next time. 

Then again, probably not.

‘Here, let me get that for you,’ the man said, wrestling the bag out of Dana’s arms before she had a chance to protest or stop him.  Leaning over the top of her head, he stored her bag in the overhead bin with ease before snapping shut the compartment and cleaning his hands of imaginary dust.  ‘There,’ he said.  ‘That ought to do it, wouldn’t you say?’

Dana smiled up at the man through clenched teeth, caught in a strange no-man’s land somewhere between rage and relief.  Rage that the presumptuous bastard would dare to touch her bag without her permission and relief that she wouldn’t need to stow the stupid thing herself.  In any event, the task was accomplished – which meant there was one less thing she needed to worry about now.  And the simple truth of the matter was that Dana could use all the help she could get these days, even from a jerk like this.  Life was
that
bad for her right now.  ‘Thanks,’ she said, still putting her veneers in mortal danger of chipping.  ‘’Preciate it.

The businessman paused and gave her the once-over, lingering at her breasts, of course.  Smooth operator all the way, this one.  ‘No problem, sweetheart.  Let me know if I can buy you a screwdriver when the drinks cart comes around, ‘K?  I plan on throwing back a few myself on this flight.  Five hours is a bitch of a trip.’

Dana continued fake-smiling until her cheeks began to ache, at the same time resisting the urge to rub at the back of her head, where she could already feel a golf ball-sized knot welling up.  She didn’t want to give the moron the satisfaction.  Unbelievably, she also resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the casually dropped ‘sweetheart’.  Instead, she simply responded in kind.  When in doubt, go passive-aggressive.  Irritated Woman 101.  Worked every time.  ‘Will do, cowboy,’ Dana said, putting enough sugar in her voice to ensure a mouthful of cavities that would no doubt keep her pricey dentist busy for at least a year, enabling each one of his six children’s eventual attendance at private universities of their choosing. 

That particularly witty comeback tucked safely away under her belt, Dana turned and scooched past the matronly woman sitting in seat 32a who was knitting a scarf apparently meant for a giraffe.  Settling down into her own seat next to a scuffed-up window near the wing, Dana imagined downing an entire
cartful
of drinks – not that she had any intention of letting the clumsy fool across the aisle buy any of them for her.  Still, she
deserved
that much, didn’t she?  Goddamn right, she did.  A little something to take the edge off.  A little something to dull the pain.  And not just the pain of the fresh knot that was throbbing at the back of her skull, either.

Dana pulled on her seatbelt and turned to stare out the scratched-up window.  Sadly, drinking was out of the question for her.  Had been for quite some time now.  Still, that didn’t mean the
temptation
had gone away.  Far from it, actually.

Dana sighed and did her best to get comfortable in her cramped seat.  Wasn’t easy.  Economy class was worse than a goddamn straitjacket sometimes, but she could never quite bring herself to pony up the extra cash for more luxurious accommodations.  And if nothing else, a screwdriver or two probably would’ve helped with that, loosened her up a bit.  But Dana and the sauce had been in on-again, off-again, on-again relationship for the past fifteen years now, and when they were off-again – like they were right now – the alcohol seemed to call her more frequently than an ex-boyfriend who’d suddenly realised that he’d made the biggest mistake of his entire life when he’d announced his intention to start seeing other people before finally figuring out that his once-legendary appeal at the bar wasn’t what it had once been.  Still, at least the voice was a
familiar
one to Dana, and the plain truth of the matter was that she didn’t have all that many people left in her life these days with whom she could consort.  They were all gone now.  Then again, she supposed that’s what you got when you had a disturbing habit of always letting those closest to you die unimaginably horrific deaths.

Dana closed her eyes at the unwelcome thought and fought back the sudden urge to cry.  Luckily, it worked.  Because not only did she not want anyone on the plane to see her crying, she highly doubted that enough moisture remained in her overworked tear ducts to support another crying jag, anyway.  She’d already had enough crying jags in the past few hours alone to last her a lifetime. 
Several
lifetimes, even.  So instead of letting the waterworks flow once again, Dana simply opened up her eyes and watched through the small window as the ear-muffed ground crew loaded bags onto the plane.  Predictably, though, this excruciatingly mind-numbing activity grew hopelessly boring after about three seconds or so and Dana finally stopped fighting the urge to let her gaze drift down to the soiled knees of her blue jeans.  Like it or not, it was time to confront the evidence of her failures.

Matching dirt stains stared back at her. 
Mocked
her, more like it.  And why not?  The dirt stains had come courtesy of her dead partner’s gravesite, at which she’d been kneeling just a few hours earlier.  Still, that marked par for the course for her lately, didn’t it?  Damn right, it did.  After all, Jeremy Brown’s blood wasn’t the
only
blood Dana had on her hands; it was just the freshest.  And now it was mixed in with the blood of her parents, the blood of her mentor, Crawford Bell, and the blood of her best friend, Eric Carlton.  Not to mention the blood of the countless other innocent people she’d let die over the course of her supposedly ‘sterling’ fourteen-year career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Dana rubbed at the dirt stain on her right knee and cursed her wretched life for what seemed to be the billionth time already that day.  Between Nathan Stiedowe – the sadistic serial killer who’d turned out to be her very own half-brother – and a pair of mentally unhinged billionaires who’d transformed the streets of Manhattan into a gigantic, bloody chessboard just for shits and giggles, over the past year and a half she’d lost just about everybody in her life who’d ever mattered to her.  So no matter how hard she scrubbed or what new soap she tried, Dana knew that her hands would never come clean.  Not really.  Not in any meaningful sense, at least.  Not in a million fucking years.  And the real kicker about the whole thing was that her work was something for which the FBI routinely presented her awards.  Life was funny like that sometimes, though, wasn’t it?

Sure as hell was.  Goddamn shame there was no humour in it most of the time.

‘Are you crying?’

Dana gave a sudden start and looked up to see a tiny face peeking out over the seatback in front of her.  Tousled brown hair rife with cowlicks sat atop unlined features.  Big blue eyes glistened with doe-like innocence.  Thin lips produced
R
s that sounded like
W
s – turning the little boy’s unexpected question into
Aw you cwying?
  Suddenly, Dana became painfully aware of the fact that a single tear had somehow managed to escape her left eye and slip down her cheek.

Dana straightened in her seat and wiped quickly at her face with the back of her right hand, feeling stupider than she had in years.  ‘No, no,’ she said.  ‘I’ve just got allergies, that’s all.’ 
Nothing quite like lying to a four-year-old to cap off yet another red-letter day.

Another face peeked out over the seatback next to the little boy’s a moment later.  Heavily made-up features couldn’t hide the lines of exhaustion carved deep around the eyes – eyes that appeared practically identical to the bright blue eyes into which Dana had just been looking.  ‘Bradley Thomas Taylor,’ the woman scolded, ‘leave this poor lady alone.  If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times before, you don’t have to talk to
everybody
you see.’ 

The woman Dana assumed to be Bradley’s mother cut her gaze back to Dana and rolled her tired eyes.  ‘Sorry about that.  This kid, I swear.  He’s got no off-switch.  Not one I can find, at least.’

Dana smiled at the woman and hoped against hope that the allergy lie had actually worked.  Because getting caught crying by a child was one thing, but getting caught by a fellow adult was a completely different matter altogether.  ‘Oh, it’s no bother,’ Dana said, cringing mentally at what her mascara must look like right now.  No doubt both Rocky Raccoon and Tammy Faye Baker would’ve been proud – and justifiably so.  ‘He’s just being friendly, that’s all.  I don’t mind one little bit.  Honest.’

The woman laughed.  ‘Oh, is that what you call it?  Being friendly?  Last week he asked some heavyset woman in the Wal-Mart parking lot why she’d left her house wearing her butt on the
front
of her body.’

Dana burst out laughing before she could stop herself – the first genuine laugh she’d enjoyed in weeks.  Thankfully, some of the mental tension frying her brain escaped right along with it.  The relief felt
exquisite
.  ‘Kids say the darndest things, right?’

The woman pursed her thin lips, crinkling up the pale skin around her mouth.  ‘You can say that again.  And his enunciation isn’t the best, either.  After we got
into
the Wal-Mart he was playing with his Buzz Lightyear doll in the front of the shopping cart and hollering, “White Power!  White Power!” for all the world to hear.’

Dana scrunched up her face.  To say the least, casual racism wasn’t her first choice of conversation topic with a stranger on a plane.  Or with anybody else, for that matter.

The woman read the unspoken disapproval in Dana’s eyes at once.  Shaking her head, she waved her left hand breezily in the air, showcasing the four-karat boulder weighing down her ring finger.  ‘Instead of “Light Power!”, I mean.  His
L
s sound like
W
s.  Anyway, I just about died of embarrassment.’ 

Dana lifted the corners of her mouth into the semblance of a smile, happy the woman wasn’t stowing a KKK hood somewhere in her carry-on luggage but still not quite comfortable with the exchange.  Then again, where was the big surprise in that?  Dana might have been a world-class investigator whenever she managed to bring her ‘A’ game to the ball field – according to the media, at least – but she still didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to read between the lines during innocent conversations.  To put it mildly, social interactions weren’t her forte.  Never had been and never would be. 

Thankfully, though, the other woman took off some of the pressure then by pausing and looking around uncertainly.  When it became apparent there was no flight attendant nearby, she motioned to her son and asked, ‘Anyway, I’m really sorry to put you on the spot like this, but is there any way you could keep an eye on him for a quick minute while I go to the bathroom?  I need to pee like you wouldn’t believe and there’s never enough room in those bathrooms for both of us.  I swear to God I’ll be right back.’

Dana waved her own hand in the air, thankful to be taken off the hook and painfully aware of just how bare her
own
ring finger looked in comparison.  Not so much as a faded tan line there testifying to a failed engagement.  ‘Absolutely,’ Dana said, trying her best to not think about the fact that Jeremy Brown had been carrying around an engagement ring in his pocket with him when he’d died.  ‘Go.  It’s no problem at all.  Besides, Bradley and I are good friends now, anyway.  We’ll be just fine.’

The woman let out a quick breath and reached across the seatback to touch Dana’s shoulder.  ‘Thank you so much.  You’re a real lifesaver, you know that?  And I mean that from the very bottom of my cold and blackened heart.’