The Catcher in the Eye (America's Next Top Assistant Mystery Book 1) (24 page)

Slumped on the cold hard floor, I
saw him walking away from me. His back getting further and further from me had indicated
that my first and the last opportunity ever to make my dream come true was slipping
away from my fingertips.

 
“I
want my assistant back.”—
His words made a burning twinge in my heart. The
way he talked and his tone of voice when he talked about Kelly annoyed the hell
out of me. He spoke of her as if she was his possession or something. He had
the gall to demand her back, as if he had already owned her.

He turned the
corner, went out of my sight as I lolled there. I was miserable.

Hissing,
roaring through my gritted teeth, I managed to stand up. The mere thought of just
lying there, doing nothing but seeing that bastard ruin my plan, was unacceptable.
Kicking off my shoes to kill the sound of my footsteps, I sprang into action.

Having my hands
still tied behind my back made it difficult to execute my project, then again, I
had home advantage. I also knew the knife I’d left on the basement table can
cut me free in a second.

I knew what I
had to do: Disable the bastard, free myself from the stupid restraint, and then
reincarnate my mother using Kelly.

Reaching the
knife in the basement before the annoying P.I. was the key.

I shifted on
the corridor without making sounds. I reached the corner, caught the glimpse of
the P.I.’s back. He was about to open the door to the stairs to the basement
where I kept Kelly. It was now or never. I rushed to the door and opened it.

With a
desperate determination and a sharp aim, I jumped from the top of the stairs.

“What police raid?” I asked her. I
was clueless.

“I’m talking about
this
police raid which is taking a place right now. You heard the beeps,
didn’t you?” Karen crossed her arms.

“I heard that,
yeah.”

“So I assumed
you’ve arranged a police raid with something like a GPS device and all before
you got yourself dragged in here.” She tilted her head to the side, eyes
sparkling with hopes. “You’ve arranged the raid, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“But you called
Mr. Archangel, right?”

“No,” I shook my
head. “He called me, but it was just five seconds before I got zapped. And
guess what? You don’t get to communicate very well within five seconds.”

“Excuse me?” Her
eyebrows shot to north. “Why didn’t you call Mr. Archangel or the police?”

“You told me not
to tell anyone, especially not the police or Michael Archangel.”

“Come on, you’re
supposed to have at least called Mr. Archangel. Haven’t you learned that ‘Don’t
tell anyone’ is a code actually meaning ‘Do tell everybody’?” she snapped.

“Alright, so I
should have called my boss even though currently, Michael Archangel and the
police, much less the feds are not in their greatest terms on the account they
are accusing him of failing to save you and let Yves, the alleged serial killer
kill himself. Otherwise, I’d have noticed them and your mom. Especially, your
mom. The news of your possible death devastated her so much and she totally resents
that she thought of sending you to summer camp in the first place.”

I snapped back and
immediately wished to take my words back. For the first time, Karen seemed to
be in a real shock.

“I’m sorry,” I
said. “It’s not your fault. Probably, you just couldn’t tell me to call backup
when he was by your side, listening to every word you uttered.”

“It’s Okay, I’m peachy
and dandy. At least, I don’t need to go to that snobby summer camp.” She said
nonchalantly, lifting up her chin. “And it looks like we’re gonna make it out
of here unharmed.”

“So?” I said
expectedly.

“So, what?”

“How many police
officers do we have here right now?”

“I don’t know,”
she shrugged. “How could I know?”

“How about using
your psychic ability to get the idea?”

“For your
information, it’s not like I have much control over my visions. Come to think
of it, suppose I see visions nonstop 24/7, that’ll drive me crazy. Besides
that, if I had more control with my visions and I can see anything I want to
see, that’s not very good for my karma. Albeit that’ll save me lots of movie
money. Some things are better left unseen, you know.”

“In short, you
have no idea what caused the alarm started?” I clarified.

“Exactly.” She
nodded. I groaned.

Then came a sound
of big
thud!

I had the timing, the element of
surprise, and the narrow stairway had no place to get away from me falling on
top of him.

I jumped off
the top of the stairs. He looked back. Our eyes met for a brief moment. Quickly
he looked around for a space to escape but time ran out.

First, his hand
reached for the inside of the windbreaker, then he jumped to dodge me. But I
caught one of his legs. The ceiling was too low to successfully dodge me. He
tried to kick me aside but lost his balance. Gravity had kicked in, and the
rest of the things happened in a heartbeat.

Entangled, we
started a freefall down the stairs. The world stopped revolving and everything
moved in slow motion.

The two of us
fell at least ten steps onto the hard, concrete platform; I landed on top of him.
I heard a snap and wished I didn’t break anything. Then followed a deafening
silence.

Stunned by the
impact of the fall, for a second, my heart stopped beating. Taking a deep
breath and checking that nothing’s broken, I jumped up. The PI tried to get up
as well, but couldn’t stand up. I ambled to the door.

“Don’t move,”
he called to me. Then I heard a metallic click.

Facing the
door, I looked back. He was holding a gun—with .45 caliber.

“You can’t
shoot me,” I told him. “This wall is thin, you will shoot your assistant as
soon as you shoot me.” I used my elbow to entwine the doorjamb of the room. Behind
the door awaited my mother and the woman soon to host my mother’s soul.

“I can try.” He
said, but he didn’t fire a round.

I didn’t look
back. All I needed was cutting the damned plastic restraint so that I could get
rid of the P.I. before he recovered. Then I could relax and get what I deserved.

I opened the
door. Without looking back, I said. “You can’t shoot. Unless you want to kill
Kelly yourself.”

Then I hurried
inside.

“OHMIGOD!”

We gasped in
unison when we caught the
thud!

“Ohmigoditshim!”
Karen shriek-mumbled. “Or someone else. The probability of whoever opens the
door being Alan is 50% and being someone else such as a police officer is 50%. Talk
about a paradox. I wish it’s not him but— Ohmigod, what should we do if it’s
him?”

I looked around
the room in search of something…anything, with a potential to become a weapon.

The knife seemed
to make a perfect weapon except that this particular knife might have been
previously used to murder defenseless women. Just because the police had found
a bloody knife at Yves’s place didn’t mean that the knife in front of me was
brand new. I didn’t want to touch anything that might have been used to slash
human flesh. Not to mention that this particular knife might not be all that
useful, especially when Alan returned with a bigger knife…or a gun.

The wrought iron
chair I was being tied to had a potential to be a good weapon. Just swinging it
around and whacking the killer in the head seemed to do the job, but I wasn’t
all that sure of my aim. I had zero trust in myself when it comes to properly
hitting the target. The last time I swung a golf stick with an intention of
hitting the fixed ball, the five-iron I swung with all my might flew high in
the sky, and dived straight into the lake. As the iron stick sank into the
lake, a gator involved in the accident floated upside-down on the surface. All
the while, the ball had stayed on the tee. I had no idea how I could aim and
actually hit a moving target when I couldn’t even hit a sitting target very well.
 

I grabbed my
purse, and dumped the contents on the table. There was a towel hanky, a packet
of facial tissues, a lip gloss, a mascara, a bottled water, a bottle of Purell,
a mirror, tweezers, an overstuffed wallet, keys on a key fob, and the cell
phone from stone-age. I pushed the power button and got pretty much surprised when
the phone woke up. It was a nice surprise my phone had survived only with a
scar instead of getting demolished to bits and pieces. I had no idea why Alan
had bothered spare my phone.

Obviously, calling
911 wasn’t the best option.

My right hand
hovered over the knickknacks and grasped the little bottle of Purell.

I took a look at
the candles. The fire was burning. My mind was set. I had to do whatever I
could do.

“Hide somewhere far
from me and stay hiding and stay behind me,” I told Karen. “Don’t even think of
coming in front of me. You don’t want to get burnt, and I mean it literally.”

She looked at me
in the eyes briefly and muttered. “Do I want to know what you’re up to?” But
she went to the farthest corner of the room and skulked anyway. “I’m ready.” She
covered her face with her hands.

I removed the cap
of Purell. Holding the burning candles in one hand and the open Purell bottle
in another, I waited. Sitting on the metal chair I was previously tied up to, I
waited in silence.

My mind was calm
with Zen-like tranquility.

The door squeaked and
opened a slit. A brush of cold air caressed my cheeks. The door opened wider
and I saw Alan coming in. When I saw his face, I felt what little of hesitation
I had had disappear. He had a facial expression of a madman.

I sipped Purell, and
slid it over my tongue. 

Taking a couple of
steps into the room, he looked at the table, and then at me. “What are you
doing?”

The door closed
behind his back. He took one more step toward me. “What the hell has—?”

Before he had
finished the phrase, I squirted out Purell from my mouth at the candles I held.
Purell caught fire. Flying like a fire dragon with a vengeance, burning Purell
mercilessly assaulted him and caught the front of his fleece shirt.

It was true that
they say cooking while wearing fleece can be pretty dangerous. Once ignited,
the fire on the fleece shirt spread out so fast and before I said
meenie-eenie-minie-moo, he was covered in flame and burning like
kerosene-soaked toilet paper.

For a moment, he was
gawking at me as if he couldn’t believe what had happened to him. As his gaze
moved from me to his own burning self, his face froze in a shock. It took a
moment for him to open his mouth and start screaming like wet and dying Wicked Witch
of the West. Shrieking, he dove onto the concrete floor, and started rolling
like a squirming earthworm.

Running away from
burning Alan, I hurried to Karen. Eyes shut, we held on to each other, without
uttering a sound, as if that was the only way to survive. We kept on holding to
each other until the door reopened and the sound of irregular footsteps echoed.

I turned around
and saw Michael Archangel limping toward us. Actually, it took me a couple of
seconds to realize it was him, since he was dressed like a guy from SWAT team and
carrying a gun in hand.

“Hello ladies. Mind
if I crash your party?” He said, putting the gun back to the shoulder holster inside
the windbreaker. Not saying a word, Karen and I nodded like bobble-heads.

Then he took a
glance at the murderer now haplessly lying flat on the hard floor. The only
thing that indicated he was still alive was occasional heaping of his chest.

“What’s happened?”
Archangel said. “A spontaneous combustion?”

“Mr. Archangel,
you should have seen Kelly breathing fire. It was in self-defense, you know. She
saved me by burning the heck out of the murderer.” Karen spoke up. “She was
totally awesome!”

She also showed
him the glass of eyeballs on the table with the palm of her hand, “Will you
look at those eyeballs?” She said, and then pointed at Alan on the floor. “Meet
Eyeball Snatcher. He killed my BFF, along with many people.”

“I know.”
Archangel crossed his arms. With a hard-to-read facial expression, he glimpsed
at the eyeballs and the barely-breathing killer. Then his gaze moved and fixed
on me. “Kelly, I’m impressed,” he said.

I opened my mouth
in a vain attempt to say something clever, smart, or sassy.

“Kelly, are you
all right?” Archangel took a step toward me with something that looked like a concern
in his eyes. “Oh!” He backed off.

Words failed to
come out of me. Before I could say “Barf bag!” half-digested lunch started
coming out of my mouth. Abby Sciuto, I was not. Sassiness wasn’t my strongest
suit.

“Ohmigod, Kelly,
what did you eat for lunch?” Frowning and pinching her nose, Karen asked.

“Aaaarrrgh!” I doubled
up, shed tears, and retched like drunken Charlie Sheen. “Bwaaaaaayp!” Puking
uncontrollably, I comprehended the true meaning of projectile vomiting for the
first time.

Hell, I should
have resisted the cannoli temptation.

The night was young and the
crescent moon was silver. The street was relatively quiet on an account we went
out of the back door, which was free of media satellite vans and law
enforcement vehicles.

It was a good
residential area just five blocks from Alan’s shop. Also, it happened to be
less than two miles where Dr. Julia Stewart had lived. I was truly grateful Michael
Archangel didn’t head for West Virginia border, a falsely provided location by
the killer. By all means West Virginia is far from where I was being trapped.

When I was done
puking, Archangel made a call to Henderson, asking if the FBI wanted to see the
missing eyeballs taken out of victims. He also mentioned that he was with the
true culprit of Eyeball Snatcher cases, and unscathed Karen. He also requested
Henderson to arrange two ambulances; one for Karen and the other for the killer.

Henderson and a
bunch of law enforcement officers arrived, and many things had happened. And
everything happened fast. They didn’t seem to be very happy that I had burned Alan
Hamilton a.k.a. Eyeball Snatcher to near-death, or that I had spewed regurgitated
Italian food all over the crime scene. Still, they didn’t complain. Perhaps
because I had made it clear that if it was not for their premature closure of
Eyeball Snatcher cases, I would never have been abducted, or puked all over the
crime scene in the first place.

Also, they didn’t
want to mess with a woman who breathed fire and torched a serial murderer on
fire.

Karen was
immediately hauled into the ambulance and rushed straight to the hospital. She
was scheduled to receive an emergent checkup, and reunite with her mom.

Before Henderson
and the FBI had arrived the crime scene, Karen confided in with Archangel about
how she had stumbled upon the killer. She also came clean with her special
ability to see visions. While listening to her tale, Archangel didn’t deny her
story or get skeptical about it. He just asked if she wished to share her story
with the law enforcement. When Karen said that she was not sure about it, Archangel
told her that it would be best to keep this particular part of her tale from
the feds or the police. At least for the time being. Without arguing, she
accepted his suggestion.

Alan the serial
murderer was carried out of the house on a gurney, but I was positive his
ambulance ride wouldn’t have been fun. Partly because he had sustained serious
burns. Not to mention his ambulance came with guards who also happened to be skilled
martial artists. And the guards had big guns ready to kill.

Archangel and I spoke
to Henderson about what had happened. And I had to answer lots of questions
like how I had ended up coming face-to-face with the poked-out human eyeballs.

Two hours later,
we were free and walking to the corner of the block where Archangel had parked his
Camaro.

I followed my
employer towards the car. Neither of us spoke a word and just walked in
silence. As for Michael Archangel, limping seemed like a more appropriate term
than walking.

By the time we
left the crime scene, he had developed a killer limp. I asked him if he was all
right, and what he did to his leg, but his answer was a curt “I’m good” to both
questions. He gave exactly the same answer to Henderson when asked if he needed
another ambulance. Obviously, he wasn’t in a peachy mood.

“Mr. Archangel,” I
called out. “We need to talk.” We were just several feet to the car.

He stopped. “Yeah.
That’s what I was thinking about. What a coincidence. So, talk.”

I sensed a sarcasm.
Plenty of it.

“First of all,
thank you very much for coming at the right moment.”

“My pleasure.
And?” One of his eyebrows raised slightly. Reflecting the street light, his eyes
were hard icy blue.

“And I finally realized
that you’ve been right about Warren all the time. He’s a pathological liar and the
only person he’s ever cared for is himself. That he will only care for his own
self for the rest of his life. And there’s nothing I could have done or can do
to change that.” I confided in. “I was a pathetic loser clinging to the memory
of good times, totally turning blind eye to the reality.”

“How did you
realize the obvious?” He cocked his head. This time, his voice didn’t contain
sarcasm. At least, not much.

“When Alan the
serial killer came up on me with a knife, telling me that plucking the eyeballs
out of me was the only way to make me immortal, I realized that his gaze was identical
to that of my ex-husband’s. Every time he was at work with persuading potential
new clients that entrusting their money to his business was their best
interest, he had that gaze.”

“Good thing you
finally came to accept the reality. Slow learner. Still, better late than
never.” Archangel crossed his arms and let out a dry chuckle, but his face was
unreadable.

“Mr. Archangel, are
you angry?” I asked, feeling like an idiot asking the obvious. I could think of
many reasons that should have ticked him off. For starter, I withheld Karen
info to myself, and then I regurgitated my lunch all over the crime scene. Then
again, it was difficult to figure out what had angered him the most.

He gave an
exasperated sigh. “Angry is an understatement. Cluster-fucking-infuriated is
more like the word.”

Under the light of
street lamps, he looked pale. Indeed, much paler than usual.

“I’m sorry.” I
apologized. “It was the nerve and the disgusting aroma. I didn’t mean to ruin
the crime scene, but I took a sniff of his burned flesh and scorched clothes, and
then the eyeballs jumped into my view. I couldn’t hold it anymore.”

“No, forget about
the puking episode. I’m just annoyed with myself,” he replied.

“For what?” I was
confused.

“Misjudgment,
overlooking the situation, and withholding critical information from you,” he listed.

“I’m not quite
following.”

“A woman’s corpse
missing the eyeballs was discovered in London. It was a couple of months before
women’s corpses minus the eyeballs started turning up in D.C. neighborhood. I
knew about the incidence in London all along since visiting the city. Various
forensic evidences such as the shapes of the slashed nerve endings suggested
that this isolated incident in London was highly likely to be committed by the
same person who killed the women here in the U.S. So I got this theory that whoever
poked the eyeballs out of the cadaver in London should have something to do
with the cases here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My associate in
Scotland Yard had finally ID’ed the dead woman today. He e-mailed me the photo
of her that was taken decades ago. Finally, I realized that eyeball-plucking is
just a process in-between and the killer’s true intention was to obtain an
eyeless-body to host his mother’s eyeballs. In addition, I had overlooked the
fact that you share critical physical features with previously murdered
victims, such as hair and eye colors, and the shape of the face. Those clues
were enough to lock you up to avoid the risk of getting yourself dragged into
the sick ritual, but I completely missed the chances to share those info with
you. Until the photo of Kelly Dowson, Alan Hamilton’s biological mother, turned
up, I kept on turning the blind eye to the possibility that you were in danger.
And look what’s happened.” He gave out a sigh. “I know an apology wouldn’t make
it. But I’m sorry, I really am.”

Wow, I was
stunned. It’s not like he admitted his fault so often.

“You don’t need to
apologize. I guess we’re kind of even about withholding info.” I suggested.
“Actually, in retrospect, I should have called you when Karen gave me a call.
She told me not to tell anybody, especially you, but she was pretty much ticked
off when I told her I hadn’t called you. Guess what? I didn’t interpret her
code very well.”

“What? Karen
called and you didn’t tell me that?” Now he seemed positively annoyed. “Now I’m
not that sorry.”

“Anyway, let’s look
on the bright side. I’m here, alive and unscathed.” I said with the perkiness
of a cheerleader.

“OK, so I thought
there’s no way you could find the killer, completely ignoring the outside
chance that the killer would find you.” He commented. “And you scared me
shitless.”

“I’m glad that you
care so much about me.”

“I didn’t exactly
say that,” he snorted. “With your special skill and everything, I wasn’t
worried all that much but—”

“But—?”

“Hey, I need to
call my attorney to rewrite your contract,” he said abruptly.

I took a deep
breath to calm my nerve. I saw it all coming, and I hoped to keep my cool and
maintain what little dignity I still had with me.

I opened my mouth,
and I tried to smile. But instead of a calm voice, a Minnie Mouse shriek popped
out of me. “Ohmigod, you’re firing me!”

Forget coolness,
ditch the dignity, my freak-o-meter was indicating a gazillion out of 10, and I
was wailing like a hysterical toddler. “Okay, so I might not be the world’s most
perfect assistant, but isn’t it a little bit cruel to get rid of me just like
this? In case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m not a big chunk of kidney stone. I’m
a human and I have something called the feelings!” My voice reached the pitch
of a dog whistle. “On top of all that, can’t you see I’m shaken, traumatized,
and mentally scarred after all that fiasco? I can’t believe you’re…”

“Chill.” I felt
hands on my waist. He pulled me close. “Kelly, there’s a serious
misunderstanding.”

I looked up. Our
eyes met for ten seconds. I saw something that looked like a warmth and
gentleness in his baby blues. I almost thought he was going to kiss me… but he
didn’t. Of course, he didn’t kiss me. Go figure. So I used Listerine, but he
saw me puking. No, not just puking, but projectile vomiting.

Archangel said. “I’m
going to revise your contract because you’ve just earned a 20% base salary
raise.”  

“Did I?” I asked,
dumbfounded. 

“Yup, Sherlock, congratulations,”
he patted my back. “Anyway, you did a semi-descent job to nail the killer. I’m
sure that burn hurts more than any other penalty such as death.” With a
suppressed grin, he added somewhat teasingly but I didn’t miss the hidden
sincerity. “I’m proud of you.”

Instead of
muttering “Gosh, I should have asked for a 50% raise rather than a 20%,” I clung
onto him in a bear hug. “Mr. Archangel, it was a pure, dumb luck and you know
what, I should have been dead if it was not your B&E. Thank you again for coming!”
I said in a muffled voice.

“OK, you can hug
me for two more seconds. One, two. Now, time’s up.” He said, but I clung to him
for several more seconds. Just the heat and the feel of him, and the subtle
scent of Higher Energy reminded me I was alive. And feeling the aliveness
flashed back the very possibility I could have been dead already.

“Let’s go,” Archangel
said.

As I ripped myself
off from him with a good amount of restraint, he shook the left leg as if to
shed off the kinks. But as soon as he stepped on it, he lost the balance.

“Damn it,” he
groaned, trying to maintain the balance.

I scurried myself on
his way to prevent him from falling. “Mr. Archangel, you’re hurt!”

“I’m good. It’s
just the foot happens to be asleep.” He tried to keep walking, but as soon as
the left leg touched the ground, he gasped.

Slipping myself
underneath his arm, I helped him to the car and opened the passenger side door.
“Have a seat. You need to sit down.”

“Thanks,” he
groaned as he sat down on the passenger seat. “Okay, let’s go home.”  

“Hey, let me take
a look at your leg,” keeping the car door open, I crouched.

“I don’t think so,”
he tried to pull back but I took off the boot and the sock anyway. “Yow!” he
cringed. “Easy, that hurt!”

“Oh-oh.” I
muttered.

“What
oh-oh
?”
I could hear him grimacing without looking up.

“I think it’s
broken.” I mentioned, looking at his swollen ankle and then up at his face.  

“You’re joking.” He
gnawed on his lower lip. “And that’s not even funny. Where’s the punchline?”

“Seriously, look
at your ankle. I can’t believe you’ve been walking on this for hours.”  

Indeed, it was
unbelievable that such a huge ankle had been kept within the limited space of a
boot. The whole foot was swollen with a baseball-sized knot forming on the
outer side of the ankle. Besides that, his leg was turning reddish purple.

“It’s broken,” I
said again.

“Hey, it’s not as
bad as it looks,” Archangel insisted. “So I might have twisted it a teensy bit
in a funny way. But hey, it’s just a sprain and walking it off is the best
rehab for that.” Gasping through gritted teeth, he deliberately avoided seeing
the battered leg. Now reflecting the interior light, he was getting even paler.

“It’s as bad as it
looks, if nothing else, it might be worse than it looks. You can’t just walk it
off. Seriously, you need to see a doctor immediately.” I declared. “I’ve never
seen such clear textile patterns printed on a leg. Remember, Karen was telling
you to watch your step? She also told you don’t want a broken leg, gosh, she
saw it all coming in her vision. You know, that the girl sees visions, right?”

“Come on, so Karen
sees visions and she was right about the killer but that doesn’t mean her
visions are 100% accurate. And it’s not like I have a heart attack or anything serious.
Besides that, did you know the hospital’s full of sick people with lots of
germs and cooties? I don’t want to catch anything contagious.”

“Hello? You had no
problem visiting a hospital in London.” I pointed out, sprinkling the towel
handkerchief with the bottled water. “A broken leg is a serious injury.”

“Visiting a London
hospital was just work and…ouch!” He sucked in air when I put the cold compress
on his swollen ankle.