Deadly Beloved

I was busy screaming: “911! 911! Now! Now!”

Then I was kneeling at Mike’s side, bending to him, holding him in my arms and soothing him and cradling him, unaware of the blood I was getting all over myself, praying he could hear me, knowing he could not.

He was dead. My husband was dead. No question. No getting around it.

“Bad for you, baby,” I said to him softly. “Bad for you.”

Time passed. How much I couldn’t say, but all sorts of vehicles were angled into the motel lot now—two police cars, flashers painting the night blue and red; and an unmarked police car had its flasher pulsing, too.

Over in the middle of things, an ambulance was being loaded up by a pair of EMTs, a white guy and a black guy, putting Mike’s sheet-covered body on its gurney.

Chic Steele took off his trenchcoat and slung it gently around my shoulders, over the blood-spattered pajama top. Rafe Valer was there as well, not standing with Chic and me, rather over by Hazen’s corpse. But Rafe’s eyes were on Mike as the EMTs loaded the body up and in.

Somewhere a crime scene photographer was taking flash pics of the dead killer, strobing the night, making it seem even more unreal to me than it already did. I was staring into nothing when the EMTs started removing another gurney from the back of the ambulance, and I came alive.

I don’t remember going over there, leaving a startled Chic behind, but suddenly I was in the black EMT’s face.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

He swallowed and blinked. “Uh...we’re...the other...”

I pointed at him; more than pointed, I thumped his chest. “No. You won’t take my husband and his murderer away on the same trip. You come back and pick up the garbage.”

The white EMT, who looked bored as hell, came over and leaned in closer than was wise. “Lady, no disrespect, we’re just following procedure. Two gurneys, one trip.”

I took the prick by the front of his uniform and slammed him down onto the gurney—both the gurney and the EMT made surprised squeals.

No longer bored, the EMT, on his back on the thing, looked up at me, startled and scared shitless. But I didn’t pay any attention to him. I was nose to nose with his partner again.

“Now,” I said, “you got a full load.”

The other EMT scrambled off the gurney and he and his partner hauled the empty stretcher up and in, and the white one climbed up in back as the black guy shut him in, and headed around front.

Then Rafe was on one side of me and Chic on the other, and they were guiding me from the parking lot to the sidewalk. Dazed as I was, I knew they were concerned about me, and were shaken themselves by their friend’s killing.

The ambulance rolled out just as another Jag pulled in, a white one that had Dan Green behind the wheel with a good-looking, slightly disarrayed young blonde woman, both still dressed for the wedding.

Rafe was back over by the dead perp and Dan rushed over to him, getting filled in, the young woman staying in the car.

“Wondered who Dan would wind up with,” I said, amused in some detached way.

Chic asked, gently, “Michael, are you...are you up to a few questions?”

“Plenty of contenders at the reception....What?”

His eyes were tight but his voice stayed gentle. “Do you know who it is you killed?”

“Son of a bitch who killed Mike.”

“Yes, but—”

I frowned. “Hazen is his name. Isn’t it?”

“Yes. Randall Hazen. So you know who he is? Was?”

“Got drunk...beat up a stripper, didn’t he? Killed her in a parking lot...with a wrench? Or was it a piece of pipe?”

Rafe had heard this, approaching. Suddenly I was bookended by the two plainclothes cops.

“No,” Rafe said, “that was his brother, Matthew. Matthew’s on death row.”

“Wrench,” I said. “It was a wrench.”

Chic said, “Awaiting his much-deserved lethal injection. Randall got ten years for hiding his brother out.... Got sprung two days ago.”

Dan came over, quickly. He was on the verge of tears but too angry to let them out. “Why didn’t anybody tell us Hazen was out? Good-the-fuck behavior, I suppose.”

Chic said, “Parole.”

Dan shook his head. “Both brothers at their trials pointed right at Mike and swore to kill him....If I’d known, if Mike had known....”

“Dan,” Chic said, “Mike knew. I told him. He said he wasn’t about to postpone his wedding over some ‘lameass dirtbag.’ I offered to put the bastard under surveillance, but Mike said it was just...hot air. Buncha ...hot air.”

“Cold,” I said.

Rafe put a hand on my shoulder. “Michael?”

“Cold,” I said. “I’m cold. Could somebody...take me home?”

Dan covered his face with a hand and the tears came.

That young woman from the wedding reception was at Dan’s side now, slipping an arm around him, comforting him, but clearly this pick-up was getting more tonight than she’d bargained for. I knew the feeling.

Rafe and Chic exchanged glances, and Rafe nodded, and Chic took the honors, escorting me away.

We were in Chic’s unmarked car when he asked, “Where, Michael? Mike’s place or yours?”

“We...we moved my things to his place last week. His place, Chic. Mine and his, I mean. I want to sleep in his bed tonight. Our bed tonight.”

“I’ll stay on the couch.”

He did.

I had some sleeping pills and took a double dose, and in the morning Chic had breakfast ready for me. He waited on me at the table in Mike’s little kitchenette and finally asked me, “What are you going to do?”

“What is there to do?” I sipped coffee. “I already killed the bastard who took Mike from me.”

“I know. I mean...about the business? The Tree Agency? If you want to come back to the PD, I’m sure I can make a few calls and—”

“No,” I said, a little too sharply.

He just looked at me curiously.

“We’ll keep it open,” I said. “We’ll keep it going, Dan and Roger and me.”

“Can the Tree Agency survive without...” But he couldn’t get it out; his eyes were everywhere but on me.

“What, Chic? Say it.”

“Can the Tree Agency survive without Michael Tree?”

“Chic—you’re looking at Michael Tree.”

He just sat there, not knowing what else to say. What was there to say, anyway? I felt better. Not a lot better, but enough so to eat. Enough to go on.

SIX

The sunlight around the edges of the window curtains was fading into early evening. Honking horns said the city was still out there.

“That was a Friday,” I said. “Monday I took over the Tree Agency. Hell...we didn’t even have to change the name on the door.”

Leather whined as the doctor shifted in his chair. “Why not take time to grieve? To process your husband’s death?”

“I ‘processed’ my husband’s death, Doctor. Every newspaper covered it. We were news. Our