time to be alone, just the two of them, at least until he could regain his perspective. He knew that was why her mouth dropped open in fear and her eyes darted back at him when they found Janet Ingersoll slumped into his doorway. Hannibal stared at her for a moment, as if he spotted a booby trap set between himself and his long delayed dinner.
“What are you doing here?” he asked between tightened lips.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Janet said. Hannibal was about to tell her, but Cindy spoke first.
“We’re about to have a late supper. Some sandwiches and maybe some soup. Why don’t you come inside and join us?”
The trio entered Hannibal’s railroad apartment and he led them down its length toward the kitchen. At his bedroom, he stopped to lose his suit coat, tie and shoulder holster. In the kitchen, he dropped into a chair and began rolling up his sleeves. Janet sat opposite him but Cindy went straight for the coffeepot. Hannibal’s shoulders lowered a bit at the sound of grinding beans. He smiled when she handed him a steaming mug, the first sign that he might soon return to normal. But knowing the job was only half done, Cindy loaded bread, mayonnaise and lettuce onto the table, then pulled out the half ham she knew was in the refrigerator.
After taking a long slow sip of coffee, Hannibal turned his attention to Janet for the first time. Her short- cropped hair was recently dyed a slightly darker blonde than before, a color that always looked dirty to him.
“What brought you here?”
“He’s been following me,” Janet said, her body vibrating the way a Chihuahua’s does. “Day and night, just won’t leave me alone. I need some peace. I knew Nicky would be safe at Monty’s so I left him there and took off. Ended up here.”
“Well you’ll be safe here,” Cindy said, carving thin slices off the ham with a butcher knife, “but you can’t keep running forever. You need to get a restraining order against that big lug.”
Hannibal spread just the right amount of stone-ground mustard on a slice of dark rye bread, positioned two slices of the honey baked ham on it, covered them with a slice of extra sharp cheddar cheese and covered it all with a second slice of bread. His mouth began to water in anticipation as his nose reacted to the sharp scent of the mustard mingled with the sweet aroma of the ham. This was going to be good.
“That’s a legal issue,” he said, not looking up from his sandwich, “which we can deal with tomorrow.” Then he wrapped his mouth around a big bite of the sandwich. His eyes half closed as he chewed. Cindy smiled.
“He’ll be okay now,” she said. “And I’m betting he’ll be fine with you staying over in his office tonight if it will make you feel better.”
“Yes,” Janet said. “That would be nice. Sometimes I just get so scared. I guess it’s the memories. It’s like I carry in my head every time he’s hit me with those big ugly hands of his.”
Janet jumped like a bee-stung child at the thump on the door. Two more heavy blows followed. Hannibal muttered an obscenity under his breath, put down his sandwich and stood. The pounding was coming from his front door. After one more sip of coffee he walked back through his apartment to open it. He knew who he would find on his doorstep, he just didn’t have the patience for it right now.
Standing just inside the door, Hannibal said, “It’s late. What do you want?”
“I can’t find Janet,” Isaac Ingersoll said from the other side of the door.
Hannibal unlocked the door and opened it as far as its safety chain would allow, to stare up into Isaac’s watery blue eyes.
“I am not the missing person’s bureau. Besides, if you can’t find her it probably means she doesn’t want to be found. I don’t think she wants to see you.”
“I don’t care,” Isaac said, and the beer cloud drifted down into Hannibal’s face. “I need her.”
“You see, that’s your problem,” Hannibal said. “You don’t care what she wants, but you know, she has the right to do whatever she wants. Now, I think it’s time you went home and got some sleep, don’t you?”
Hannibal thought he had the situation under control and his mind wandered for just a second to honey-baked ham and coffee. That’s when Isaac’s eyes left Hannibal’s and turned to the darkness behind him and to his left. Hannibal turned his head in time to catch a quick glimpse of Janet’s terror-stricken face before she darted back into the darkness.
Before he could turn his head back, the edge of the door slammed into his face. Pain lanced out from his temple to fill his head as he staggered back. Darkness flowed in around him, but a missile shot through that darkness to smash into his chest hard enough to drive all breath from his body. Even as he dropped to his knees, Hannibal knew that missile was Isaac’s fist. He felt more than heard heavy footfalls moving away toward the kitchen.
Damn. How could he have been so stupid? To trust that monster to behave rationally was a huge mistake. Self-loathing rose like bile into Hannibal’s throat. He was the reason Janet was now in danger. And worse, Cindy was in that same room standing in the path of onrushing destruction..
Hannibal forced himself to his feet and staggered forward through a cloud of floating blue dots. His apartment had never seemed so long, but he pressed on toward the light at the end of the tunnel and the human locomotive standing there.
Hannibal was still out of focus when he reached the kitchen. He stepped to the right, moving around Isaac’s huge frame to a point where he could lean on the table. Now Isaac stood on his left, with Cindy on the other side of the room facing him, and Janet to his right with her back against the sink. While the husband and wife ignored him, Hannibal gathered his strength to try to deal with Isaac when he finally made his move. Too late he realized he should have stopped on his way through the apartment to pick up his gun. It would have made everything so much easier.
Isaac looked down at his wife cowering against the sink and said, “I need you home. Let’s go. Now!”
Hannibal crouched slightly, preparing to leap. He knew Isaac would reach out at any second to grab Janet and drag her out of the room or maybe to slap her a couple of times first to make her more cooperative. Cindy was frozen next to the refrigerator, and he could understand that. Until you share a room with one, you don’t realize just how big a professional football lineman is. But Hannibal thought once Isaac took a step he would be off balance enough that a diving man, even one Hannibal’s size, might be enough to bowl him over.
Then Isaac’s head moved back slightly, his brows lowered in surprise. Something had changed. The air in the room was charged with a different electricity. A glance to his right showed that Janet was standing just a bit straighter. Something had snapped inside her, something wound so tight it had to spring back hard. Her jaw was thrust forward just a little. And her right hand had curled around the handle of his carving knife.
“No,” she whispered, but then repeated more loudly, “No! That’s enough. I don’t need to take any more of this.” Her arm eased around to the side with the knife’s blade rising out of the top of her fist. Her breathing deepened, the way a person’s does when they’re working themselves up for something. Hannibal wondered how many years of rage and frustration she was focusing.
It was obvious to Hannibal that Isaac didn’t get it. “What are you going to do now?” he asked with a derisive grin. “Going to cut me?”
His arms opened wide as if in invitation. Shock showed on his face when Janet emitted a low coarse growl, raised the heavy knife overhead and dived toward him. Her rage drove her into the air so that for a brief speck of time her eyes were actually above his. Isaac’s mouth dropped open but he didn’t move, didn’t even raise an arm in defense as the edge of the blade arced downward toward his neck.
Hannibal leaped a split second behind Janet. She was slashing at a forty-five degree angle down and across her body. The blade would lay the right side of Isaac’s neck and throat open. Except that Hannibal’s back slammed into Isaac’s chest and her right wrist smacked into the space between Hannibal’s crossed wrists.
They fell to the floor together, Hannibal on his left side, Janet lying on her right. The knife rolled free from her fingers and she lay still. Janet’s eyes were glazed over and she gazed at Hannibal as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened. He was feeling very vulnerable as he turned to face Isaac, but his concerns appeared groundless. Isaac stared at his wife for a few seconds, and then flopped into one of the kitchen chairs. His mouth had not closed in that time.
“You would have cut me. You would have cut me bad. How could you?”
“Oh my God!” Janet screamed. She worked her way to her knees and again lunged for her husband, but this time she held her arms wide. She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her face in the space between his head and his right shoulder. In her loud sobs, Hannibal could hear hate, fear, anger, frustration, all of the negative emotions pouring out at once. A tiny light appeared in Isaac’s eyes, perhaps a light of understanding. He raised his
