Meter Maids Eat Their Young (21 page)

“Footprint?”

“Evidence that someone was trying to peek. We could breach the firewall protecting their internal data, but if they're on the ball, they'd know someone was trying to get at it from the outside.”

I considered this. Their knowing, whoever they were, might not be a bad thing. After all, if my editorial didn't shake something loose, perhaps that would. “You could do this? Break their fire-whatever?”

“Breach it, yeah. Heather could do it. She's the best hacker I've got.”

I chewed on my pencil some more. “Okay,” I said. “Do it. But wait two days. And only if I give you the go-ahead.”

“Not a problem,” she said, rising from her chair.

I sat in my office for a long time after she left, staring out at the newsroom, trying to wrap my thoughts around what she had told me. But I couldn't focus on it. A Counting Crows song started spinning in my head. I laughed a bitter laugh. Though it was a Tuesday, it wasn't near 3:00 a.m. but it might as well have been the way my thoughts were turning.

An empty newsroom is a spooky place, full of whispers and shuffling noises. The countless stories played out there, defined and redefined; the drama, the angst, the joy, and sorrow; it all seeps into the woodwork over time, coats it like varnish.

The Essex family has owned and operated the Call Register since the newspaper was a single hand-crank press in the barn of Hiram Walker Essex, sometime before the southernmost states of this country decided to move off on their own. Old Hiram lost his youngest son, a budding reporter, in the disastrous war that followed that action.

A hundred and ten years later, Henry Louis, named for Henry Louis Mencken, lost his eldest son, a photojournalist, in a war a lot farther away and infinitely more senseless.

Lawrence, HL's youngest son, had withered under the old man's solitary gaze. There was a time when I felt sorry for Larry. He'd had a big set of loafers to swim around in and he was drowning in the tsunami of his older brother's fame. Eventually he ran from the weight of his father's loss and pity, ventured out on his own, and even managed a certain amount of success.

 To be sure, he had succeeded with Robyn. Something I couldn't claim for myself. But whose fault was that, anyway?

I stared across the room to where Lawrence had once had his office. The enclosure was long gone now, dismantled to make room for more desks. Back then, after he'd had it built, he'd had ceiling to floor curtains installed, blocking the light that had poured through the south-facing windows.

This building is old. High ceilings, dark wood panels, poor overhead lighting. Those windows, and the light that shone through them, were the only things that kept the newsroom from becoming dungeon-like. In a fit of pique, I had torn those curtains down one day. I was angry with Lawrence. Angry over his insecure bullying. Angry over the fact that he had Robyn. Just angry, I suppose.

I couldn't blame Robyn for that anger. I had known the score shortly after meeting her. She and Lawrence were engaged. They stayed engaged throughout our five-year affair. One powerful family wedding another powerful family, she would explain, lying in bed beside me after a night of sweaty, unreal sex. It was just the way things were when you lived life at the top of the social food chain.

In those early, orgiastic days, I was too busy falling to give thought to what I was falling into. I had never met a woman like Robyn, one who had so quickly, and completely, dismantled my long-held shields. Ten years my junior, her twenty-one spent sheltered from a world she longed to explore, meeting me had thrown open the locked gates and like a frisky mare suddenly free, she had rushed headlong through them, carrying me in her wake.

For Robyn, our affair was never an issue. In her mind, marriage between royalty was one thing. Good sex on the other hand, was everything, and good sex wasn't so easy to find. Having felt she'd found it in me, she couldn't fathom why she couldn't have both. She was a WASP princess, after all. As the only child of a rich and powerful man, she had always had whatever she wanted.

Once I found out who she was, who her father was, I tried to keep the affair a secret. But Robyn had a lot of friends her own age. Very visible friends who loved to party and who accepted me without question. Some of our exploits in this town are still whispered of to this day.

No. Keeping our affair a secret didn't work from day one. There might as well have been billboards strung along the main thoroughfare of town proclaiming ‘Robyn Loves Cat.'

Lawrence was furious, of course. He tried his best to make my life miserable in the newsroom but he was caught in that awkward social stigma of being the cuckold, so there was only so far he was willing to go.

Her father was enraged, as well, and even more so when she threatened to break off her engagement with Lawrence and marry me, in a nude wedding no less, if he didn't act as my lawyer when I was accused of a murder. I thought the man was going to have a stroke when he walked into the interrogation room and arranged my bail.

But in the end, both men won. Lawrence and Robyn were married shortly after she and I broke up. And, they're still together, according to the society pages I pretend never to read. And her father had the satisfaction of knowing he hadn't lost his daughter to a commoner.

Somewhere in those five years with her, cracks appeared, doubts forming like mold in dark places. And in the end those doubts destroyed me; destroyed what I had with Robyn. How I had let them grow to jealousy is a question I've asked myself, and tried to drown, since leaving this town. I've never found an answer to why I had pushed her away so violently, while trying so hard to cling to her.

It hadn't been that way in the beginning. No green monster. No insecurities. Lying in bed, going over the details of her wedding plans, or discussing Lawrence's sexual foibles and inadequacies, planning the conquest of the men she wanted to bed, or the women I wanted to, none of this caused me the least amount of angst.

So what changed? Who changed? Me? Robyn? Or had it all been there from the beginning, hiding in the shadows of ‘being in love'?

I threw the pencil into the darkness. This was getting me nowhere. The Robyn Zone was circles within circles and I knew from long experience that thinking wouldn't lead me from the maze, only deeper into it. And in that maze there be dragons. It was time to go home, call it a day.

I was starting to feel paranoid about the tickets, checking them twice on the slow ride down to the parking garage. I considered putting them back in my car but rejected the idea. The tickets were better off there than somewhere near me.

As I pulled out the parking garage, Joni started reminiscing about how she hadn't seen Richard since Detroit in '68. Cynical and drunk and no doubt boring, that had been me for more years than I cared to think about. At least I wasn't drunk anymore. I wasn't sure about the cynical and boring part.

It was late and downtown was all but deserted. It didn't take long to get home. I pulled into the driveway, noticing that Jaz's car wasn't parked in its usual spot out front. Another late night for her. I wondered if she had another girl friend. She hadn't mentioned one, but then she wouldn't.

I stepped out the car, stretched and looked up at the heavens. The sky was bright with stars. I turned toward the house and stopped in my tracks. The Doubtful Guest was turning right-hand circles through the lilac bushes at the front of the house. I looked around. No way she could be out. No way Jaz would have let her out. The Guest was too brain damaged to let her run loose anywhere but in the house. Or the backyard and then only if I was out there with her. So oblivious and in her own world was she, that she'd have right-hand circled herself into roadkill.

I ran over, scooped her up and stepped as quietly as I could past the screen door and onto the porch. She started to squirm so I set her down on the chair and tip-toed to the front door of the house, putting my ear to it. I couldn't hear anything. I peeked through the window. All the lights were off. Not a good sign. I always leave the kitchen light on for the cats.

I tried the door. It was locked. What to do? Call the cops? That would be the smart move. Let them handle it. I backed away from the door, crossed the porch, picked up Doubtful and went outside again. I patted my pockets but no cell phone. Screw the cops. I headed around the side of the house to the backyard.

He, I assumed it was my friend from earlier in the day, had forced the utility room door. It was hanging ajar, which explained how the Guest had escaped. She is fascinated by open doors and will spend hours going in and out of them. I widened the gap and slunk into the utility room, set Doubtful down and quietly closed the door behind me. As I crossed the room, a cat brushed my leg and I nearly squealed. It was Booth. He opened his mouth and squeaked at me. Hungry. I waved him away and tip-toed toward the kitchen. He followed.

Crossing the kitchen, I heard something and froze. Another cat? Sounded too heavy for that. It was pitch black in the house and I couldn't see a thing. I ran my hand over the counter, looking for any kind of weapon I could find. Stacks of bills; cat food cans I'd forgotten to throw away; last night's dinner dishes; nothing worthy of weapon status. A piece of silverware fell into the sink with a loud clatter and I all but swore aloud. Finally my groping found what felt like a flashlight. It would have to do. If it worked, maybe I could blind the guy.

As I rounded the corner out the kitchen and into the dining room, several things happened at once. Spook yowled. Mooch flew from the darkness and banged into my legs mid-step. I lost my balance and started to pitch forward. At the same moment the kitchen light blazed on and a crashing blow landed across my shoulders.

One of the dining room chairs broke my fall, overturning and dumping me onto the floor. I rolled, narrowly avoiding a kick to the head. The kicker smacked his ankle against the chair instead. It was a heavy chair and I heard him bellow in pain. I tried to rise but he lashed out again, this time catching me in the shoulder. It felt like he was swinging a baseball bat at me.

I managed to roll onto my hands and knees and started scooting away. He caught me with a kick in the ass that flattened me. I rolled over in time to see another kick coming but had no time to duck out the way. It caught me above the ear, lights exploding in my head like fireworks.

The room swam. Everything solid began to melt. I looked up at my assailant. Three Nixons stood towering over me. Then two. Then just one. A mask, I told myself, the asshole is wearing a Nixon mask. He turned and lifted the heavy oak chair as if it were made of Styrofoam.

“You know why I'm here,” he said with no attempt to disguise his voice. This was not a good thing. “Give me what I came for and I promise I won't let you suffer. For long.” He laughed. Definitely
not
a good thing. I always knew Nixon would be the death of me one day.

“No more Mr. Nice Guy, huh, Dick?” I said.

He raised the chair high over his head, and that's when the weirdest thing I'd ever witnessed occurred. A flash of black and white flew across the room and landed on his shoulder. A black flash raced up one leg while a streak of white swept up the other. The Doubtful Guest appeared and began weaving right-hand circles at his feet.

Feral, Spook and Booth converged at his head and began clawing viciously at his face, tearing the Nixon mask to shreds. He roared, turned, and there on his back were Puss Cat and Beast, gouging his neck, with Mooch raking his leg. The chair tumbled from his hand, catching Doubtful on the tail. Screeching, she scampered away and tried to crawl beneath my shoulder.

He pulled Spook from the side of his face and flung him across the room. Booth and Feral, joined now by Puss Cat and Beast, tore off what was left of the mask and began shredding his ear and face. Blood and cat fur flew everywhere.

Stumbling forward, he tripped over Mooch and fell to the floor, scattering cats. They jumped on his back and began ripping at his shirt as he frantically began crawling away.