Fat Cat Takes The Cake

THIRTY-FIVE

There was no time to panic. She had to stay alive. First she tried screaming.

“Shut up.” His voice was soft and menacing. “There’s nobody to hear you.”

“You let me go, Bart Fender! What do you think you’re doing? I haven’t done anything to you.”

She tried to step back onto his toes, but he must have been wearing steel-toed boots. So she tried to kick higher, aiming her heel for his family jewels. He was too tall.

“You figured out I killed that weasel, Ron North. I can’t have you telling anyone else.”

Think, she told herself, think!

“After you pass out, you know what I’m gonna do with you?”

She couldn’t bite his arm. Couldn’t reach it. Anyway, they were both wearing bulky, warm clothing. And gloves. She began trying to shake the glove off her left hand.

“Let me go,” she kept screaming. “Let go of me!” At least he wasn’t cutting off her wind and she could breathe fairly well. Although he was pressing so hard on the left side of her neck that she was starting to see stars. She drove behind her with her left elbow as hard as she could and met with a solid mass of hard muscle.

He raised his voice a bit. “I said be quiet. You’re annoying me. North deserved to die. He’s the one who killed Dillon. He drove her around the bend. She couldn’t stand to be alive anymore, even with me by her side. It’s all his fault she committed suicide.”

“She’s still alive, Bart.”

“Not for long. Everyone says she’s brain damaged, she won’t ever recover. She would be all right if they would be patient and wait, but they’re gonna pull the plug and then she’ll be . . . gone . . . forever.”

She shook back and forth, trying to send them both tumbling onto the icy pavement that lay beneath the snow.

“Okay,” she yelled as loudly as she could. “Tell me what you’re going to do.” Dare she hope that someone was within range to hear them? “You can’t kill me. Other people know everything I know and—”

“Yeah, your friend Julie. She’ll be next.”

“Next for what?” she screamed, lunging sideways with as much force as she could, trying to dislodge the solid Bart, who must outweigh her by at least a hundred pounds, she thought. Maybe two hundred. How could she get him off his feet? She kept rubbing her gloved hand on her stomach, trying to dislodge the glove.

Tires crunched on the ice. Was a car coming? She couldn’t tell if it was in the parking lot or passing by, out on the street, and she certainly couldn’t look around for it from her position.

“I’m gonna put you under the same bush where I put North. Can’t stand meddlers!” Now he was shouting, too.

Her glove fell to the ground. At last. She reached behind her and scratched.

Bart yowled, but kept his grip.

She reached again. This time she got an eye. She dug in and he let go.

Bart fell to his knees. Chase heard them crack on the icy pavement.

With one last, desperate lunge, he reached up and ripped her scarf off her neck.

She knew he wanted to strangle her with it. She shoved, pushed him over, kicked his head, and ran.

When she reached her door, she knew she would have to stop and unlock it. But when she glanced back, she saw a welcome sight.

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Ronald North,” Detective Olson said in his steeliest tone as he snapped handcuffs onto Bart’s hands behind his back. “You have the right to remain silent.”

“My eye! I need a hospital,” Bart whined.

Olson ignored him and kept speaking. The rest of the Miranda warning was music to Chase’s ears and she wanted to kiss Niles Olson on the lips right there.

“We’ll have the doc at lockup look you over,” Detective Olson said, shoving Bart into the rear seat of his car.

The ride to the station in the front seat of the policeman’s car was warm, but they had to endure a constant barrage from Bart in the backseat. After Detective Olson called a couple of people, including someone about Bart’s injured eye, he told someone else to impound Bart’s car, then he turned to her.

“When you said you were onto another suspect, I got pretty worried about you,” Niles said. “I had no idea where you were and you weren’t answering your cell phone.”

Maybe she shouldn’t have turned the sound off. “The suspect I thought I was after wasn’t Bart. The guy I questioned, I mean talked to, is harmless. Unless you’re harmed by health food and too much exercise.”

As they drove, the storm started to let up. The flakes slowed to a few dozen at a time and they fell straight down. The wind had vanished.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on Fender for a few months,” said the detective. “So when I followed him to your place, it raised about a dozen red flags.”

“A few months? What for?”

“I’m sure the chief will make a public statement now that he’s in custody. I’m ninety-nine percent certain we’ll find what we need to nail him for both crimes in his trunk tonight.”

“For Ron’s murder?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He’s been selling steroids to his high school athletes. We were able to get three of them to flip two days ago. Before his shift at the pizza place, he picked up a new shipment. I was going to try to catch him in the act of distribution, but now we have him for murder. I’m sure North’s DNA will be in his car somewhere. I heard Fender mention putting him under the bush just now.”

Bart was howling so loudly behind them that Chase was certain he couldn’t hear anything they said.

“So Julie is free. Right?” She cut her eyes sideways.

His smile made the warm car even warmer. “Right. Chief is getting hold of the judge. Someone will call her and her lawyer and let them know the charges will be dropped in the morning.”

She slumped in the seat, suddenly so limp she could barely hold up her head.