I didn’t get much cop business done. I had my own job, thank you very much. Until they pay me enough I’m not ignoring my own job.
"Okay. Wavy black hair. Dark blue eyes. Pale skin. Alone. Wavy Black hair. Dark blue eyes…" I kept repeating it to myself, hoping there was some connection. It kept sounding more like I was trying out to be a model over the phone rather than describing murder victims. These women were different heights, different religions, orientations, marital status, jobs, everything that could have been different from the model mantra was different. "Wavy—aah!" I screamed, causing three other cars to honk at me as a sudden noise went off. I think I got away with it because I didn’t cause an accident. Everyone’s an official psycho in New York.
I answered my cell phone once I realized it was the source of the noise. "Jesus Christ! You just made me run through a red light!" I yelled at the phone.
"Honey, please, can’t we talk this out?" Great. Just what I need to deal with in the middle of an enigmatic murder case: an ex-boyfriend.
"Tell me, what part of ‘If we ever have sex, I’ll either be on drugs and extremely pissed afterwards or you’ll be the last woman on earth’ didn’t you understand?" I yelled.
"I can’t live without you. Judi—"
"Then why aren’t you dead?" I asked and hung up.
That guy turns into a stalker and I’m going to take his legs off in self-defense.
"What the bloody fuck now?" I yelled when the cellphone rang three seconds later. "Look, you call me one more time and I’ll hurt you so bad the entire country of Iraq will cringe, got it?"
"Assaulting an officer is one helluva crime, you know," Joseph said.
"Oh, its just you."
"Only two of the women were every at lesbian bars, and three others dated Cain. While you were giving the Brady bunch their passport pictures, three others kicked the bucket. Neither dated Cain and none of went near a damn bar."
"Well that eliminates the one idea I had."
"Which was?"
"That I’m not in danger. You think I should get a hotel tonight?"
"I would but four victims were at hotels. Two in the same one.
"That’s not including the five unrelated murders in different hotels, the robberies, the assaults, rapes even. Parking violations, smuggling, drugs, disturbing the peace, indecent exposure"
"Look, this is New York—more or less. I don’t need five years statistics on cockroach hotels."
"Those were all the local hotels, even the snazy ones. And it wasn’t the last five years, all that happened in the last five days.
"Look, charge the cellphone, lock the doors, leave the lights and TV on, lock the bedroom, keep the gun of yours next to you and call us if even a dog howls out of order. I wouldn’t trust a hotel to keep my M&Ms safe. I’ll send a car to go around the neighborhood. I never thought I’d be scraping you off the ceiling because of one stupid stalker."
"Thanks," I said, cheered up a little.
He hung up.
I didn’t want to say it, even to Joseph, but I was scared. I was more worried, though. I’m no vigilante and I’ve got my own violent streak the size of the Louisiana purchase, but for half a second I was worried that whether I lived through this would mean a lot more lives lost.
Damnit, shut up conscience!
I turned the corner and found the street dark and empty. I sighed and took my foot off the gas, stopping in the middle of the road.
Damn, I was exhausted. I feel like my life just went down the U-bend, even if it really didn’t. I needed to get out soon, get some exercise, screw someone (maybe even myself), smash something or someone… I needed to get rid of all this emotional energy crap, it keeps getting in the way of thinking straight—gay—whatever.
I leaned back in the seat and fidgeted with the seatbelt. Okay, self, calm down, you’re thinking of too many things at once, that’s all. Go back to selfish bitch mode, that’s always gotten your through things before. You got rid of Cain’s stuff and he picked it up. Good. Murders, ignore it. That’s life, and this is New York. As long as you don’t lose your head, it’ll be fine. Self first.
It wasn’t working, damnit! I’m still nervous and on edge. Plan B: bang head on steering wheel for a while.
After about a minute of that, I gave up and just sat there with my head there, like a car accident victim whose airbag didn’t work.
That’s it. I give up. I can’t think or unthink my way out of this, so the obvious solution is to find something else that’ll totally eat up m concentration, like Tetris. It’s always helped me in the past. I once got a over a thousand points and two levels better than my best score when I was dealing with a bad break up (that had been before I decided I wanted to play as much of the field as there was to play).
Yeah, do something else. Lock myself up and go on a computer binge.
I was cut off in mid though as another one jumped in, telling me there was something huge bounding down the street, straight for me. Too big and wobbly to be a dog. Couldn’t be a raccoon. One hell of a rat. The most probable thing it could be was a very injured moose.
Moose or not, it was coming straight at me at one hell of a run. It looked big enough to take down a parked car and hungry enough to try and eat one.
Selfish bitch mode taking over, prepare for random destruction!
Okay, if this is someone’s dog, it’s a dam dangerous one. I heard about chasing cars, but parked ones? I revved the engine, hoping to scare him it away with the noise. Absolutely nothing. I doubt the damn thing blinked. I couldn’t really see much of it enough to tell since everything was extremely dark, despite the streetlamps and my headlights. Its skin—no fur, damn that’s a freaky dog!—was a mix between a frog’s and a big motherfucker of a shadow.
Okay, not scared. Fine, I’ll lie through my teeth. No stalker is going to get me and certainly no mad, rabid dog that should have been put down ages ago.
I turned on the high-beams. It didn’t flinch. Fine, have it your way rex, we’ll play a little chicken.
I was so tense, I had my hands on the steering wheel so tightly that if it were someone’s arm they’d be bleeding to death by now. I had my foot on the pedal. Come on, you’ve got a change to back out of this and live another day to chase another car, doggy.
No such luck (or possibly brains). It leapt up, and I waited. Everything was so fast and so slow at the same time. And ugly, twisted paw landed on the hood of the car.
I slammed my foot down. The car shot straight into the dog, knocking it off and sending it tumbling forward and underneath the car in an instant. I switch my foot to the brake, making a sound worse than a diva’s nails on a chalkboard.
My carnivorous, angry, violent instincts had been right. If I hadn’t done that, that thing would have tried to go through my windshield, and considering its speed and size, it very well could have succeeded.
It took a few minutes, but I managed to unglue my hands from the steering wheel and then made sure I was breathing again. I tried undoing my seatbelt, but all I could feel for a long time was the slowly waning adrenaline.
Eventually I got out of the car after grabbing the small pistol from the glove compartment. I take the pistol everywhere, even the restroom. I just can’t wear it usually. Armed driving doesn’t go over with the cops and I’ve got enough for them to worry about already. A holster and loaded weapon doesn’t sell much film either. I clicked the safety off and walked around to the front.
That was on dead doggy. I’m very rarely cruel to animals, but I will beat the shit out of anything that attacks me, be it person, animal, or appliance. The blood and overall inside-outness of it didn’t freak me out; I’d been photographing roadkill since I was a kid. It was my start on forensic science. I even got kicked out of a science fair for it once.
I reached toward what was left of Rex, hoping the collar wasn’t buried under a bunch of goo.
No, not now. I shook my head and brought my hand back. It was around midnight, if not after, and there was already a serial killer. My Tetris was waiting for me at home to replace the property damage I desperately felt like committing.
The owners could wait until tomorrow to know that I’d had a little ‘accident’ and ‘didn’t see him.’
I just hope my insurance covers Act of Dog.