In Plain View

only makes things worse. Don’t you get that?”

“No. I don’t believe that.”

“What’s it take to teach you? They both died! Leave it alone.”

“Both?” I said.

“Tom and Gina.”

“Gina?” You smell like her. Confusion was all that kept me calm. Once again, my lizard brain jumped ahead to a place where logic feared to go. “Angelina? Do you mean my sister?” My internal temperature dropped twenty degrees. It’s a miracle my next breath didn’t fog the air.

“You are making everything worse,” he said. “You have to stop.”

Resistance bubbled up, hot and sharp. I bucked and twisted. “Get off me.”

He was as mad as I was, but a whole lot bigger. He slammed himself against me again, smashing us into the wall. All the body parts you never see, never think about, suddenly appeared on my mental map, tracing a line of vulnerability from the top of my spine, down the slope of my back, to the curve of my ass.

Nobody moved for a heavy second.

He seemed to lose track of the moment, anger suspended by a surge of hormones, or confusion, or something else. His body took over. He inhaled deeply, chest swelling, and I felt the barest suggestion of motion forward and back with his pelvis, a reaching out. His cock was big enough to make an impression. I kept very still.

“Stop,” he repeated. “Just stop.”

Too slowly, he withdrew contact with his lower body. The pressure of his hand over mine increased. It hurt.

Before I realized what he meant to do, he grabbed the back of my collar and bent my arm behind my back. With a twist, he shoved me hard from the center of my back toward the middle of the room.

I flew forward and face-planted, hands too slow to catch myself. My head re-bounded off the industrial carpet.

Pat was already out the door.

Over the sound of my ears ringing, I heard the bad news, loud and clear.

He’d jammed a chair against the outside of the door. I was locked in.

“What took you so long? Where’d you go this time?” Tonya said, in the usual way. Then she took a good look at me. “Oh Lord, what now?”

I stood in the doorway of Jenny’s hospital room, not completely in my body, or my right mind. The urge to scream, hit something, throw something, had stiffened every muscle.

Jenny sat right up in the center of the bed with the rolling table pulled across her lap. There was a bunch of balloons tied to the water pitcher and a curly haired teddy bear leaning on her pillow. A “Get Well” card from some of the hospital people her mother had known was on the bedside table.

“Did you bring us food?” Jenny asked. She was concentrating hard, trying to bridge-shuffle a deck of playing cards.

“No food.”

“Darn.”

“What’s wrong?” Tonya leaned toward me, her body alert. She’d pulled her braids behind her back and tied them with a piece of silver curling ribbon cut from the balloon streamers. Jenny wore a head band of the same ribbon. It looked like they were having a little party.

“I got lost. And I stopped to talk to someone. Remember Dr. Graham? The one I interviewed the other day. She said she’ll come down and talk to Jenny later.”

“She a social worker?” Tonya asked.

“No. The other kind.”

Psychologist. Psychiatrist. Headshrinker. Whatever. At least I knew her somewhat. She seemed normal, given her profession and all. I’d certainly trust Jenny with her, better than a stranger.

“No wonder you look a little worse for the wear,” Tonya said.

It hadn’t taken long to attract someone’s attention and break out of the chapel lockup. It took longer to convince the guy we didn’t need to call security. Afterward, I’d wandered the halls in a daze of muddy thinking.

When I recognized Dr. Graham’s offices it seemed like fate. Here was a problem I could solve. I sat in her waiting area and gathered my thoughts until she was free. “How would you like to study the effect of small families on self-actualization?” I bantered as my lead. She waited for me to come clean with the real story. It wasn’t easy. She turned those shrewd eyes on me and saw the things I didn’t headline, like admitting I’d only been on the job with Jenny four months and I’d already crashed and burned.

Everywhere I turned, I was tanking on my own ignorance.

Pat-the-paramedic knew my sister. From the hospital maybe?

You smell like her.

More than just the hospital.

Part of me wanted to call Curzon and get the asshole arrested immediately. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t get me what I wanted even more. Information.

They both died?

Turn Pat in and the sheriff would lock him up where I couldn’t talk to him. End of story.

“Your boy called,” T said. “He’s going to stop in to see Jenny in a few minutes.” She did a slide of the eyes over the shuffling cards. “You giving that boy a hard time?”

College interviewed Pat yesterday at the firehouse. I couldn’t help salivating at the thought. What the hell did he say to my boy? I needed to see that interview.

Too bad I’d quit.

“Me?”

“I’m hungry,” Jenny said again. She bounced as she waited for Tonya to finish passing out the cards. “Really hungry.”

“How many people you planning on putting in the hospital today, Ms. Maddy?” Tonya asked. She turned over her first card and cackled.

“Keep it up. I’m sure they got room for one more,” I answered. The second bed looked good. I stretched out flat and could feel the ghost of Pat’s body behind me. Pressing. “Have I mentioned that I’m tired, really tired?”

Jenny’s tongue poked out in concentration. She took another card from the deck and discarded slowly.

“What do you know?” T mumbled.

The question sunk into my silence.

Not much.

My guess was Tom Jost killed himself because he discovered Mr. Vegas scheming and scamming something big-time. They fought about it. Tom couldn’t stop him and couldn’t keep the secret inside.

Pat tried to ensure no one would believe Tom if-or when-he spilled the beans, by setting Tom up with a trunk full of porno. And the men at station six turned on Tom.

When Tom reached out for the girl he’d hung the last of his dreams on, he found himself more alone than ever and raging with despair. He phoned his father, the fire station, and the fourth estate to witness his death. He went gunning for both Pat and his daddy, with his elaborate suicide set up-calls, binoculars, trust funds.

Tom wasn’t a suicide victim. He was a suicide vigilante. This was para-misery of the sacrificial type.

And Rachel? Maybe Tom meant to give her choices by leaving Rachel all his savings. Maybe he meant to say sorry for the episode in the car, or worse, split her from her father forever.

Bits and pieces of conversations tumbled around in my head.

Number no longer in service.

Old phone’s gone, I’d heard Pat say to the man behind the curtain.

Had Pat ditched his cell phone to try and cover for Tom’s suicide calls? The first time we met, Pat seemed genuinely unhappy about Tom’s death. Maybe he didn’t mean to hurt Tom as badly as he did. For an extroverted loose-screw like Pat, a trunkload of magazines was probably the kindest way he could imagine to ruin a man’s reputation. That weird scenario in the chapel was all the proof I needed-in the planning department, Pat was an idiot.