Killer Karma

21

Lamper was clearly visible between the vertical blinds of the office window, pausing frequently as he typed. Irah must see him, too, but she still tried the French doors opening onto the patio. Standing close behind, Cole heard her heart racing. When the handle failed to turn, she pulled a mini flashlight from her fanny pack and shone it around the door casing. Either that revealed something or she believed the security system notice on the door, because she backed away. She also ignored an unlighted window that probably opened into the kitchen. Instead, she moved along the house in the other direction, crouching to pass below the office window.

Her target had to be a small horizontal window high up near the eaves, the only other one on this side of the house. Experience had taught Cole that because of the height and size, homeowners with such windows could be careless about locking them. She must know that, too. The problem was reaching the window.

Irah bent her knees, then leaped upward in a spring equal to an NBA player going for a slam dunk. The fingers of one hand hooked on the sill. The slope and narrowness of the sill made it look impossible to grip, but Irah hung on. Cole remembered the photo of her rock climbing. With toes braced against the side of the house, she even raised up enough to push at the window with her other hand. Playing the odds worked. The window pivoted inward. She reached over the sill to clamp that hand on the inside, followed it with the other, and worked both sideways until they were hard against the vertical jamb. Spider-like, she walked her feet sideways up the house until she slid a leg over the sill. The other leg quickly followed and she eeled her way backward through the window.

Cole ducked under her through the wall and watched her drop soundlessly into the tiled shower stall. From jump to landing, breaking in had taken less than a minute. He wondered whether she took up rock climbing to train for burglary or just discovered other applications for those skills.

The bathroom door stood open. A click of computer keys came up the hallway. After pausing to peer out before leaving the bathroom, she padded silently toward the livingroom. The sound of the computer stopped. Just short of the door, Irah crouched with her head nearly to the carpet. Fishing a dental mirror from the fanny pack, she extended it past the door jamb. Inside the room, Lamper sat staring thoughtfully at the ceiling.

How did she plan to pass the door? No matter how deep in thought, motion in his peripheral vision was going to attract Lamper’s attention.

Irah made no attempt to pass, however…just continued crouching, watching the mirror. When, eventually, Lamper turned his back to the door for a moment, she exploded into action. In a second she had rolled past the opening. Using momentum to carry her onto her feet again, she slipped on to the livingroom. Behind her, typing resumed.

The mirror went back in the fanny pack as she glanced around. Cole guessed that the light coming in through the front window from the porch and up the hall from the study, faint as it was, let her see well enough. The etagere caught her attention immediately. She headed straight for it. A mini light came out of the fanny pack and its pinpoint beam moved from one trophy inscription to another.

All right…time to spoil all Irah’s stealth. Now he was happy for her ghost blindness. He pulled in room heat and coughed loudly.

The click of computer keys stopped. Irah’s heart rate jumped and she held her breath. But she also kept reading trophy inscriptions. Computer keys resumed clicking…stopped again…resumed once more. Irah let out her breath, though her heart rate remained high. Cole trotted to the study door to see if there were any indication Lamper had heard him.

Lamper had. He stared at the door. He tapped a few keys, then broke off and sat with his head tilted, listening…tapped a few more keys…listened again.

Cole stepped over to him and leaned down to his ear. “Did I hear something? I ought to get up and take a look.”

If Lamper heard, he disregarded the “thought.” He resumed typing.

Cole returned to the livingroom. He found Irah taking trophies off the shelf and setting them on the floor. Moving quickly. She had the trophy shelf almost cleared. What did they have here, one of Old Spice’s signature displays? Proof she was Old Spice. Sweet. Don’t forget to take a souvenir.

He coughed again…as loud as he could this time. Then he raced to the study to see Lamper’s reaction, and prod him some more if necessary.

The door slammed in Cole’s face. Passing through it, he also found himself passing through Lamper, who stood inside pressing the lock on the doorknob with one hand while punching 911 on the phone in his other hand…so tense he did not even react to the walk-through.

Cole snarled at him. “No, damn it! Don’t call the police! I want a confrontation between you and Irah.”

Lamper said into the phone, “There’s someone in my house. I hear him in my livingroom.”

This might still work if he acted fast. Cole dived back through the door and willed his voice into Irah’s. “Don’t have a cow, Earl,” he called. “I’m just making a little social call.”

The door jerked open. As it did, however, Cole saw that Irah had disappeared from the livingroom. Damn. He ran up the hall, reaching the bathroom in time to see her feet disappear out the window. Ducking through the wall, he found her somersaulting, catlike, in mid-air, and landing on her feet. She sprinted for back fence. In seconds she was through the adjoining yard and between houses, back on the street where she parked.

There, between one stride and the next, she pulled off the watch cap and went from a dead run to strolling. Irah sauntered to the Mustang, started it, and drove away at a decorous speed.

Cole raced back to the house. Lamper had the livingroom lights on now and stood staring at the trophies on the carpet. He still held the phone. “No, it won’t be necessary to send an officer. Whoever it was is gone.”

Lamper began returning the trophies to their shelf. As he did, Cole saw that one had lost the chess piece topping it. Only bare threads remained, where the figure screwed on. Lamper saw, too. Dropping to his knees, he peered under the etagere and nearby furniture.

Cole leaned down to him. “It isn’t here. Irah took it.”

Lamper sat up on his knees. He reached for the vandalized trophy, frowning. “Damn her,” he muttered.

For future reference, Cole wanted to see exactly what Irah took, and where she put it. He left Lamper fingering the bare threads and called up the image of Irah’s place, feeling its relationship to Spreckles Lake. Lamper’s front room morphed into Irah’s bedroom.

Now he had to wait for her, hoping she came straight home. He used the time to double check the evidence in the armoire and makeup table, then look over the contents of the curio cabinet again. Where he still found nothing on the shelves identifiable as his or Sara’s.

He drummed his fingers on the glass. “Come on, Irah. Get home.”

Finally he heard a garage door rumble up, then down. An interior door opened. A minute later near-soundless footsteps raced up the stairs and Irah whirled into the room, flushed, eyes glittering. She saluted the shrine wall. “I wish you could have been there, lover. Whooo!” She grinned. “What a squeaker…out by the skin of my teeth!”

Cole bared his teeth. “What a rush, right?”

She unclipped the fanny pack and toed off her shoes. “But I didn’t leave empty-handed. I found an interesting fact for Donald to chew over in the morning and of course…” She dug in the fanny pack and held up the metal figure of a rook. “…a new keepsake.”

Hefting it in her hand, she crossed to her desk and rolled open the top. From a drawer at the back, she took a key and unlocked the curio cabinet. Humming, she stood at the open door rolling the rook back and forth in her hand while she contemplated the shelves. Presently she leaned down to a lower shelf and set the rook next to the jumping horse figure.

After giving the rook a pat on its crenellated top, she straightened, skipping her fingers up the shelves as she did so…and pausing occasionally to fondle an object. Her hum gave way to a dreamy smile.

Anger flared in Cole. “Remembering the fun we had collecting those, are we?” Each of those objects represented people left feeling violated…never able to feel safe at home again.

With his anger, though, came a spark of hope. Killing Sara and him had to rank tops on her “fun” scale. Would she go to the objects that let her relive the experience?

She took a small carved red lacquered box from the top shelf and stood turning it over in her hands, her fingers tracing the carving. Could it be Sara’s?

Probably not, he decided as he realized she was pressing on parts of the carving. It was a puzzle box and must be hers if she knew how to open it. Puzzle boxes, he reflected, made good hiding places. Certainly for items she might prefer not to leave in plain sight. Hope jumping in him, Cole watched her hands intently, memorizing the movements.

After another minute of pressing here and sliding a piece of carving there, a drawer slid out the side. Irah pulled out a cloisonne butterfly pendant. A pendant that he remembered from Bon Vivre, dangling into Sara’s cleavage.

Cole bared his teeth. “Gotcha!” Triumph that quickly gave way to anger and revulsion at her smile, the glowing satisfaction of someone sated with sex. “You got off shoving Sara’s head into that toilet, didn’t you. Or are you remembering the really big fun…the terror in her eyes down in the garage, when she was fighting to breathe but realized she was going to die!”

Though he had never been a hothead, Cole wanted to kill her…to reach in and grab her heart…short circuit it. Except killing was, as the cliche went, too good for her. To give Sara justice, Irah had to be booked, jailed, tried, and convicted…with every twisted detail laid out in the newspapers and court for public viewing. And for whatever comfort his and Sara’s families could take from it.

After letting the butterfly swing on its chain for a minute, Irah hung the chain on the top of cabinet door and pulled the drawer out farther. A feeling like a deep sigh of contentment spread through Cole. Oh, yes…this was definitely a gotcha! Inside lay an inspector’s star with his number on it.

Razor had to know about this!

He shot back to the Central Station. Only to find Razor gone.

Rather than try to locate him, Cole waited for the chance to use a computer. In this division, the machines in the holding cell area never stayed idle for long, he knew, so he tried to work fast, keeping the message short: razor…sis has a souvenir from me. specter.

He barely finished before an officer headed toward him. Hopefully the officer passed the message on to Razor, but rather than wait through where-did-this-come-from-what’s-it-about to see, he went back to work. He had suspicion, paranoia, and nightmares to create.

First stop, a quick jog to the Columbus/Broadway intersection to suck up heat, then a ziptrip to Lamper’s place again.

He found Lamper at the microwave in his kitchen, removing a large mug with the tag of a tea bag hanging over the side. Cole waited while he discarded the tea bag and carried the mug out to the livingroom. A book lay open on the ottoman of the Eames chair. Lamper sat down but did not pick up the book. Nor did he more than sip the tea before setting the mug on a side table. He glanced at front door, then at the front windows — which had the drapes closed now — and past his table and chairs to the French doors. Clearly on edge.

Cole smiled. Good. Opportunity knocked.

He backed into the hallway and visualized himself as Irah. Then stepped into the livingroom.

Lamper’s start lifted him almost out of the chair. Continuing the motion, he stood the rest of the way. “I don’t know how you got in here this time since I locked the bathroom window, but you could have come to the front door.”

Cole shook his head. “That would have been too easy.”

Lamper’s mouth thinned. “At least you got my message.”

Message? Cole remembered the phone ringing while he waited for Irah. Her machine answered it somewhere downstairs, but he had not bothered trying to hear the message the caller left.

“I don’t know why you took that piece of my trophy, but I’ll thank you to return it.” Lamper held out his hand.

Cole kept smiling. “I prefer to keep it.”

Lamper’s lips thinned still more. “I’d hoped to straighten this out without going to Donald.”

“Good idea.” Cole put knife edges on the words. “He’s already annoyed about you whining to him about me. You don’t want to piss me off, too. I’ve already warned you that’s a bad idea. That’s why I’m keeping your trophy piece, to remind you not to screw with me.”

Lamper flushed. “Don’t threaten me. Donald won’t stand for it. And since you’re not going to return the rook, I don’t know why you bothered coming back. Get out.”

He had more nerve that Cole expected. Too angry to be intimidated, or that much belief in Flaxx?

Belief in Flaxx, Cole decided. Changing that was going to take some work. Or maybe, it occurred to him, change it was the last thing he wanted. His mind raced. He could use the loyalty against them.

Was it possible to change shapes in the middle of a materialization? How much energy would that use? Only one way to find out.

“Irah didn’t come back,” he said. “You fell asleep there in your chair and this is a dream.” He visualized himself…and with downward vision watched himself morph.

Lamper’s jaw dropped.

Cole said, “Why don’t you have a seat and make yourself comfortable. Because I have things to say. This is a cautionary dream.”

Questions leaped in his eyes, but Lamper seemed unable to make his voice work. He dropped into the chair.

Cole sat on a virtual chair facing him. The morph used a chunk of energy. He needed to move as little as possible now. “Yes, cautionary dream. Today was very upsetting, so your subconscious has cooked up this dream to sort things out. Because Dunavan’s a cop, he’s being used as the voice of order and warnings. Irah represents disorder. You’re on the money there. She’s lethal.”

Lamper blinked. “Lethal!”

“Yes.” Cole leaned toward Lamper. “Burglaries and setting fires aren’t enough of a thrill for her anymore. She’s moved on to murder.”

“Murder?” Lamper’s expression went skeptical. “That’s- ”

“Ridiculous? No. Your subconscious wouldn’t be talking like this if you didn’t suspect something like that.” He paused. “She killed that firefighter.”

He stiffened. “That was terrible, but…it was an accident.”

“In the eyes of the law it’s murder. And you know there’s more. The remarks she’s made about people disappearing have you worried that there’s a connection to Sara dropping out of sight. That’s what made you call Hamada, even though you wouldn’t tell him. Or maybe you don’t realize it consciously. Listen. You need to pay attention to your gut feeling. For some reason she wants Donald to mistrust you. She could have been the outside the washroom. You know what a good mimic she is. What if her plan is working?”

Lamper came up stiffly in the chair. “No. Donald wouldn’t- ”

“Can’t you sense the danger?” Cole pulled in room heat. “Aren’t you feeling a little cold?”

For answer, Lamper shivered.

“Don’t forget that despite the years you and Donald have been buddies, Irah is family. She has influence. She talked him into the burglaries and arson, remember.”

Cole debated saying something to the effect of Flaxx being less a buddy than Lamper thought, and revealing the truth about the “rescue” in high school. No, he needed to wrap this up quickly and save that news for a better time.

“He should never have listened to her.” Lamper huddled in the chair. “We were doing just fine without her ideas…and it wasn’t illegal. At least he listened to me and stopped the fires.”

“But he does listen to her, and she’s whispering poison in his ears about you.” Cole let go of the materialization except for his voice. “From now on, watch your back.”