Night Work

Kate was not aware of sliding her gun out of its holster, but somehow it was in her hand as she moved briskly down the concrete drive and rounded the corner of the house, and then the world blew up in her face.

Twin shrieks of pain and terror soared above the breathy whump of exploding gasoline. Without thought Kate hit the hard ground rolling, and felt more than saw the expanding cloud flash over her head and puff out, leaving at its source a dancing pond of flames from which two figures trailed streams of fire. Mehta’s arm was alight to his elbow, but he was already pulling off his dressing gown and beating at the flames with it. At his feet, wavering in the heat, lay a compact black shape that a part of Kate’s mind registered as a taser.

Mehta was up and out of danger, but not Roz. She was lying with her legs deep in the very hottest part of the flames, writhing feebly and trying with a clear lack of coordination to pull herself away. Her trousers were burning and her cries of terror and pain seemed to fill the air. Kate’s gun went into its holster as she ran to grab Roz under the arms to drag her back from the worst of the flames, but the fire followed them, loath to let its prey go, and Roz still burned. Casting around desperately for something to smother the flames, Kate spotted the mildewy cushions of the lawn furniture; she snatched them up and threw them over Roz; the stubborn flames hesitated, then billowed up again around the thick pads. It was a nightmare, this heaving tangle of flowered cushions and squirting blue fire and flailing limbs, and as Kate jerked off her jacket to beat at the fire, an exquisite pain wrapped around her left arm, and she beat on until at last the fire on Roz flared and died out.

Roz’s high-pitched mewls of agony were audible even over the dying roar of the flames, but then Mehta’s voice came shouting, taut with pain and what might have been rage but Kate knew was in truth fear.

“What are you doing? That madwoman attacked me, she tried to burn down my sleeping house, let her burn, she ought to—”

His voice strangled at the sight of Kate’s drawn gun. “What are you doing?” he said again, openly afraid now.

“You brought her here to kill her, you bastard. Set her on fire like you did Pramilla, knocked her helpless first like you did with Laxman. You thought we’d count your brother’s murder as just one more of the series. Was it a million dollars your father left him, or was it maybe a little more? Peter Mehta, you are under arrest for the murder—”

That was as far as Kate got before the back door of the house crashed open on its hinges and Rani Mehta charged out, as vengeful as Kali and every bit as bent on destruction. She ran full tilt across the brick patio at them, oblivious of the gun, heedless of any official warnings, intent only on the rescue of her husband. She threw herself at Kate, shrieking and clawing, and Kate, in an agony of conflict, simply could not bring herself to shoot the woman at point-blank range. Instead, she curled over to protect her face from those fearsome nails, switched the gun into her left hand, and then rose up and drove her right fist directly up into the woman’s plump chin with all the strength in her arm.

Rani sagged, and in that instant Kate yanked her handcuffs out and slapped one end around Rani’s waving wrist, and then she felt Mehta beginning to move toward her and she let go of Rani to turn the gun on the husband. Unlike his wife, Mehta was very aware of the threat in Kate’s hand, but it was Rani whom Kate had to neutralize, a recovering Rani about to launch a second attack. Kate shouted at her, “I’ll shoot your husband.”

Rani caught herself, and looked down at the gun, seeing it for the first time. She followed its aim, and in that moment of hesitation, Kate reached out with foot and hand to trip the big woman onto the hard knobs of the heavy cast-iron chaise lounge; Rani’s sharp cry of pain overrode the click of the cuffs over the metal frame. Gulping to catch her breath, aware of her own complete dishevelment and three of the Mehta children with the old servant Lali staring at her aghast from the doorway of the house, Kate panted her way through the arrest procedures. Even if she had carried a second set of cuffs, she could not have brought herself to clamp a handcuff over the raw and blackened skin of Mehta’s right arm, but she did pat him down and kept an eye on him, as well as on the house behind him, until the sirens drew near, cutting off on the residential street, and the doors of several cars slammed in the street. She made Mehta go with her to the gate and unlatch it, and there she turned him over to a pair of uniforms to await the paramedics. She would meet up with him later, when a doctor had cleared him for interrogation.

She ignored Rani and the rest of the family, going to kneel at last by Roz’s side. Roz was wearing her clerical collar; her face was as white as the plastic strip. She was conscious but shivering, crying and tight-faced with shock. When the paramedics arrived, Kate insisted that they take Roz first, leaving Mehta for the next ambulance.

On their way to the burn center, Kate sat holding Roz’s unscathed hand with her own. Roz’s pain came in waves, indicated by a clenching of her grip. At the height of one spasm, she turned her head and gasped, “Talk to me.”

“About what, Roz?”

“Anything. Take my mind off this.”

Kate seriously doubted that words alone would make much progress in pain management, but if words Roz wanted, then words she would have. And, Kate figured, the stronger the better.

“We caught Carla Lomax,” she told her, and waited for Roz to ask what Carla had been caught for. Roz did not ask, which confirmed a number of Kate’s suspicions. “And Phoebe Weatherman is on the run. Did you actually know, Roz? Or just suspect?”

The searing agony from Roz’s legs was clearly battering at the woman, on the edge of overwhelming her. It was, Kate tried to reassure herself, a far better sign than lack of feeling—the fire had not gone deeply enough into Roz’s skin to destroy the nerves. Roz held herself rigid and spoke in short gasps, but her words and thoughts were clear, as if willpower and grammatical precision were enough to keep the pain at bay.

“I told you. I did not know. I suppose. I did not want to. If I had. I would. Have told you. I said I wouldn’t. That was a lie. I do not condone. Murder. As a way of solving problems.”

Oddly enough, Kate believed her.

“Phoebe’s gone. Underground. You won’t… catch her.” The last phrase coincided with a sudden buildup of pain, and Roz panted and groaned in the back of her throat until the wave had passed. When her eyes came open again, they were commanding Kate to continue, and Kate realized that words were indeed an effective analgesic; they’d certainly taken her mind off her own pain for a moment or two. And from a more selfish point of view, taking into account Roz’s temporary dependence on rigid order, questions put to her were likely to be answered before Roz stopped to consider what she was doing. Reluctantly, then, Kate continued.

“You don’t have any idea where Phoebe has gone?”

Roz shook her head.

“Roz, she’s killed three people.”

“Kate. I do not. Know.”

Kate decided that was all she was going to get at the moment, and she sat looking at Roz and thinking about going underground, and about choosing invisibility as a way of life, as a form of self-defense. At the thought, and at her growing awareness of the community of invisible women out there, waiting to enfold Phoebe Weatherman, she had to smile in spite of the pain shooting up her arm. With a glance at the paramedic, she leaned over to speak quietly in Roz’s ear.

“And what about the LOPD? That’s Maj, isn’t it?”

In Roz’s pinched features, alarm mingled with the pain, and Kate hastened to explain herself.

“I figured it out when I realized that the reason we didn’t focus on Phoebe Weatherman was because she was just a secretary. Of course, she wasn’t ‘just’ anything, but she was invisible—like the Web site said. And like Maj always seems to be. Roz, I promise you, anything you say to me in the current circumstances will be completely inadmissible. There’s not a judge in the country would allow it as testimony. So you’re safe to tell me: I know Maj has had nothing to do with the murders, but she is behind the actions of the Ladies, isn’t she? She’s written all over it, her kind of humor.” I can’t…

“Roz, I swear to you, on anything I hold precious. On Lee’s head, if you like: Even if I could, I will not do anything with what you tell me.”

The injured woman said nothing, but eventually, her eyes holding Kate’s, she nodded, and the faint twist of a smile, affectionate and admiring, came across her mouth. Yes, it was Maj.

“Roz, I love the two of you. I owe you both one hell of a lot. So I’m not even going to ask for the names of the women who did the actual assaults—which I assume that Maj had nothing to do with, considering the shape she’s in at the moment.” The image of Maj Freiling, seven months’ pregnant and dressed as a ninja assault warrior armed with a roll of duct tape, danced through Kate’s mind, nowhere near as impossible as she would have wished. She pushed the image away, but she knew it would return at unlikely moments. “I want you to tell Maj that if she stops now, if she closes down the Ladies and doesn’t attack any more men, I won’t go any further with it. But she’s got to stop. Now.”

Roz held her eyes, and nodded again. Kate sat back, palm still clasped to palm, satisfied.

Roz’s eyes drooped and then shut, which Kate hoped meant that she had drifted off, but after a minute Roz said, “Still, it was a great Campaign while it lasted, wasn’t it?”

Kate struggled to keep her face straight, and failed. “I hope—” she began, and then snorted loudly, startling the ambulance attendant. “I hope you guys bought stock in duct tape before you started.” The alarmed paramedic stared at the two injured women with the tears starting down their faces, and fumbled hastily for his bag.

At the hospital, Roz was whisked away, and Kate put off treatment of her own burns to phone Lee. She told her to bring Maj to the hospital, reassured Lee that her own burns were minor, put down the receiver, and looked up to see Al Hawkin furiously shouldering his way through uniforms and nurses alike. He stopped when he saw her standing there— half her hair burnt to a frazzle, her shirtsleeves scorched and covered with ash, stinking to high heaven, her left forearm wrapped in the paramedic’s gauze—and most of the storm clouds left his face.

“God damn it, Martinelli, don’t do that to me. Lee would wrap those crutches of hers around my neck if I let anything else happen to you.”

She tried to stir up some resentment at his protectiveness, but failed. She did manage a stir of feeble humor, however.

“Oh, you know me, Al. I like my cases to end with a bang.”

And on the other side of town, in a pool of blood on the wall of the shelter for battered women, dark Kali smiled.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

laurie R. king lives with her family in the hills above Monterey Bay in northern California. Her background includes such diverse interests as Old Testament theology and construction work, and she has been writing crime fiction since 1987. The winner of both the Edgar and the John Creasey Awards for Best First Novel for A Grave Talent, the debut of the Kate Martinelli series, she is also the author of five mysteries in the Mary Russell series, including The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and most recently, O Jerusalem, as well as a thriller, A Darker Place. She is at work on her eleventh novel, Folly.