Kitty Goes to War

Chapter 7

I CALLED BEN to let him know I was on the way home, and an hour or so later stumbled through the door around suppertime. I felt mostly numb—zombieish, even. Like someone else was guiding my body via remote control. What exactly had I agreed to again?

Ben was in the kitchen, making something that smelled like food. My nerves started to melt, which was both a good and a bad thing. I wasn’t sure I was ready for self-reflection quite yet.

“You look terrible,” he said. Not the best greeting ever, but it was nice that he noticed.

“I had a rough afternoon.” I wandered over, wanting to investigate the scents my nose was taking in. Fresh meat. He was doing something with steak and red wine. I wanted to tear into it.

“How’s the werewolf Dirty Dozen? Quarter dozen, I suppose.” he said, meeting me halfway and gathering me into his arms. I leaned against him, pressing my face to his shoulder, wrapping myself in his embrace—the good, solid, protective weight of his arms across my back. I turned my nose to his hairline and took in his scent, mildly sweaty, musky, the hint of fur, of his wolf under the skin.

I was definitely home. I took his face in my hands and kissed him to seal the deal. Ben enthusiastically reciprocated, which helped banish lingering tension. I was eager to continue the trend. My hands crawled down his sides, tugging at the hem of his shirt until they found access, then slipped up his back, pressing against his warm skin. He made a sound and pulled me closer, so that I had to hitch a leg around his. His heart was pounding against my chest. We fit together snugly.

Then he said, murmuring into my cheek, “Um. I have to go check the steaks.”

“Not really.”

“’Fraid so. Unless you want them overdone.”

We both liked our steaks rare. Reluctantly, I let him go. Flushed and smiling, I stayed in the kitchen, leaning against the wall and watching him work.

“What’s going to happen to them?” he asked.

“They’re giving up on Vanderman. Court-martial and locked up for life, probably.”

“Rough.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know what else to do. He isn’t stable. He’d barely talk to me. And he is guilty of murder.”

“It’s not like you to give up on anyone.”

“I’m going to try to help Tyler and Walters. They’ll be transferred to a VA hospital up here and I’m going to help . . . socialize them, I guess.”

“You think it’ll work?”

“I know Cormac would say it’s too late. But I guess I want to prove someone can come back from that.” My same old line: I wanted to believe our human sides were stronger. Or at least just as strong.

Ben turned a wry smile. “It’s not your job, you know. You don’t have to try to save everyone.”

I frowned and looked away. I couldn’t save everyone; I’d had that demonstrated to me all too clearly. But if you didn’t try, you might end up not saving anyone. I had to try.

“Who else is going to do it?” I said. “Besides, I don’t think of it as a job so much as a . . . a vocation.”

“Sometimes you can’t fix everything. You can argue your best case in front of the most sympathetic judge and jury in the world—and sometimes you still won’t win.”

“I’m not sure this is about winning,” I said. “It’s about proving that we’re human. That we deserve a chance.”

“The life you save may be your own?” he said.

I gave him a grim smile.

THE NEXT day at work, I waited for Dr. Shumacher’s call. I wanted to hear that Tyler and Walters had arrived safely and happily in Denver, and that they were eager to embark on bright, happy, well-adjusted lives. I was afraid I would find out there’d been another breakout, and that the trio was again rampaging across the countryside. I was afraid Shumacher would tell me that Colonel Stafford had decided a few silver bullets were the only solution after all.

My phone kept ringing, as usual, but none of the calls came from Dr. Shumacher. It was making me cranky.

I answered yet another call from my desk phone to hear Lisa at reception say, “Hi . . . um, Kitty?”

“What?” I just about snarled that time.

Lisa sounded a little shaky. “There’s someone here to see you. He doesn’t have an appointment, says his name is Harold Franklin.

Harold Franklin, president of Speedy Mart. Here? “Really?”

“He says he wants to talk to you. Should I send him up?”

“No, that’s okay, I’ll meet him downstairs,” I said, scrambling to gather my thoughts. Why would he be here? He ought to be talking to me through our lawyers. That was the whole point of having lawyers, so you didn’t have to talk to people you were officially mad at. My paranoia got the better of me and I decided I wanted to meet him in the open, with people watching, in case he’d decided on more direct and nefarious action.

I was supposed to be a big, scary monster, so why did I spend so much time worrying about people killing me?

I ran down the stairs and emerged into the KNOB lobby.

He was alone, standing near the reception desk and gazing around the lobby with the abstract interest of someone killing time. He was tall, older—in his early sixties, maybe—his short cropped hair gone to white. He wore a gray suit and overcoat that were probably expensive, and held himself with a lifetime’s worth of confidence and authority. Here was a man used to running empires—corporate empires. The only kind that mattered these days.

“Ah, Ms. Norville,” he said, turning his attention to me.

And why did he make me think of vampires? He wasn’t one. He had a living, beating heart, not to mention it was full daylight outside. It was probably the “I could own you all” attitude.

“Mr. Franklin,” I said, and approached him with my hand politely offered for shaking, which he did in standard corporate fashion. Nothing suspicious here. “Would it be a cliché to say that this is a surprise?”

He chuckled politely. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

There was really no nice way to make the next conversational gambit. “Um . . . why exactly are you here?” Here in Denver, here in my building, talking to me . . .

“Is there someplace we can talk privately?” he said, glancing around to indicate the public nature of the lobby, including Lisa, who was failing to pretend to ignore us.

I winced in false apology. “Actually, you know what? I think we’d better talk right here.”

He smiled as if he’d scored a point. Like he’d proven that I was too insecure to talk in private, that I was actually worried, or something. Oh yeah? Well, I scored a point by not caring about that. He shouldn’t even be here while he was suing me. Not without our lawyers. I wanted witnesses.

“All right, then,” he said. “I want to make you an offer.”

“Maybe you should have made me an offer before filing a lawsuit.”

“You might not have taken me seriously, then.”

We’d expected some kind of offer—but certainly not delivered in person. I almost pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and called Ben right there. This guy was playing a game that I didn’t have a copy of the rules for.

“You want to make me an offer, why not call my lawyer? Aren’t you jeopardizing your suit just by being here?” I asked the question knowing he’d have a rehearsed answer, that he probably had an answer for everything.

“Lawyers have their place, but I like to take the measure of my opponents in person. Look them in the eye.”

This smacked of corporate backroom dealing. So not my milieu. Maybe I should have taken him to KNOB’s college-chic conference room to throw him off his game. Not that anything would throw this guy off his game.

His left hand hung at his side, closed in a fist, as if he was holding something. A cell phone maybe. Whatever it was was hidden, and my gaze kept dropping to his hand, hoping for a glimpse. I had to mentally shake myself, bringing my focus back to him.

I crossed my arms and stared him down. “All right. I may regret this, but what’s your offer?”

“I’ll drop the case. All I need is a public apology during your show.”

I was almost surprised that the offer wasn’t more . . . surprising. “Oh, is that all?”

“It’s reasonable. Neither of us shells out for a court case, neither of us wastes the time, and no harm’s done.”

Except maybe to my reputation. I couldn’t remember—had I ever apologized to anyone on my show, ever?

“But for me to apologize—that would assume I was wrong. So. Am I wrong?”

He chuckled again, sounding even more condescending. “Ms. Norville, is anything you say on your show the truth? When you tell everyone you’re a werewolf, are you telling the truth?”

“Come on, I went over all that years ago. I’m on film, for crying out loud.” This was starting to piss me off. “Here’s the thing, Mr. Franklin. Everything I talked about on my show regarding you and Speedy Mart was pure speculation. I can’t prove if it’s the truth or not. I said that. But your overreaction to the whole thing makes me wonder if I’m on to something. Well? Am I on to something?”

He studied me a moment; I couldn’t guess what he was thinking. Then he smiled broadly. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. My difficulty is that a lot of people out there believe. They’re your bread and butter. They listen to you, whether or not you’re telling the truth.”

I bet he practiced that speech. I bet he worked real hard to make it sound ominous. I glared. “Did you really think you could come here and make threats and that I’d just roll over and show you my belly?”

His eyes narrowed, a hint of anger. Like he really had expected that to happen.

“I’m not making any threats. I’ll be in touch, Ms. Norville.” He left, his Italian leather shoes squeaking on the tile.

What a jerk.

“Who the heck was that?” Lisa asked.

I had a feeling there were a couple of answers to that. Harold Franklin, corporate bigwig. Confident businessman. Supernatural conspirator? “That,” I said, “was a giant headache.”

I CALLED the lawyer who was handling the lawsuit, to let her know what had happened. She seemed to think the visit might be a basis for throwing out the case, which made Franklin’s visit even stranger. It made me think, again, that the lawsuit was a smoke screen for something else entirely. Which begged the obvious question—smoke screen for what? Then I called Ben and told him what had happened, and he responded with a detached-sounding, “Huh.” And then he said, again, how his specialty was criminal defense rather than civil law and he couldn’t give a professional opinion, but it was a fascinating case all the same. So nice that someone was enjoying this.

I MADE another call. Digging through the log for the last show, I found the phone number for Charles from Shreveport, the guy who claimed that Franklin caused Hurricane Katrina, and who seemed to have a personal grudge against the guy.

The phone rang, until someone answered—a man, but not Charles’s voice. “Hello?”

“Hi, I’m looking for Charles?” I said, scribbling on the margins of my notebook paper. I was hoping to have some notes to take.

“Charles Beauregard?” the voice said.

“I think so.”

“You’re not a friend or relative?”

I stopped doodling and straightened. That didn’t sound good. “No—has something happened?”

“May I ask who you are and why you’re calling?” The formal, official tone to the voice made sense now—this wasn’t a roommate or friend. This was someone with authority who just happened to pick up the phone.

Since I couldn’t come up with a slick and plausible story fast enough, I had only one alternative. “My name is Kitty Norville, and I host a talk radio show. Charles called in to the show last week with a pretty wild story and I wanted to follow up.”

“Ms. Norville, I’m a medical examiner here. Charles Beauregard was killed at his home over the weekend.”

Coincidence, right? Because if you ruled out coincidence, the world became a tangled web of conspiracy. I spoke carefully. “I’m really sorry to hear that. May I ask how he died?”

“He was struck by lightning.”

That seemed pretty clear cut. Weird, but clear cut. Except for the panic tapping in the back of my brain.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” the medical examiner asked.

“No. I guess not. Thanks for your help.”

So much for Charles from Shreveport. I wondered if I should add a mark to my map—this would have fit right in with the story he’d told me.

Next I called Cormac. It might have been to simply revel in the fact that I could call him, to get his advice when something weird happened. For the last couple of years, if I wanted to get his advice I had to drive a hundred-plus miles to Cañon City, sit in a sparse, stinking concrete visiting room, and talk to him through glass.

His phone rang and rang, which was normal. Or at least, had been normal. At last, he answered.

“Hey,” he said, sounding rushed, like he’d just come in from outside or had been boiling water on the stove.

“Hey,” I said. “Is this a bad time?”

“No. What’s going on?”

“I’ve got some new info on the Speedy Mart case—Harold Franklin’s in town.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“Coming to see me and offer a deal to drop the lawsuit.”

He made a noise of surprise. “Can he do that? What kind of deal?”

“He wants me to apologize on the air,” I said. “I didn’t go for it; lawsuit’s still on. He may have been trying to bait me.”

“Look you in the eye, laugh in your face, that kind of thing?” he said.

“Almost his exact words.”

“Classy,” he said with a grunt. “We gotta be able to find something on this guy. There’s more to this than a libel suit.”

“That’s what I keep thinking. There’s something else—I tried to call the guy who called in to the show. The one who blamed Katrina on Franklin? To find out where he got his info.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing—he was struck by lightning and killed over the weekend.”

“That’s a hell of a coincidence.”

“Either that or Franklin can summon lightning strikes to kill people.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he said. “I’ve got a lot more stones to turn before we start admitting that this guy can control the weather.”

“So Charles from Shreveport was right?” I said, a little too shrilly.

“I didn’t say that,” Cormac said.

“And what does he want with me? I’d probably never have mentioned him on the show again if he hadn’t sued me.”

“That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Cormac said. He sounded so calm, like this was the plot of a movie we were discussing, rather than my very-real legal troubles. If he’d been standing in front of me, I’d want to shake him. And he’d stand there and take it, calmly.

He continued, “Any idea where Franklin is staying?”

“No. He came to the KNOB offices.”

“Okay. I’ll track him down.”

“Thanks. And don’t get in any trouble, okay?”

He’d already hung up. But Cormac didn’t need me to tell him not to get in trouble, right?