No way was I getting into the truck. The gun was scary. The truck was death. I rolled out and jerked away from him. He fired off a shot and I felt the bullet bite into my arm. I turned and ran and he ran after me, snagging the back of my shirt, throwing me off balance. I went down to one knee, pulling him down with me, and the gun dropped out of his hand.
And that's when I snapped. I was suddenly really pissed off. I whacked him with my purse, a good solid whump on the side of his head that jarred his mouth open and had his vision unfocused. I probably should have hit him with my bag again, but I wanted to get my hands on him. I wanted to gouge his stupid eyes out. This little creep killed people for a game. And one of them was a cop. My sister was in the hospital having a baby and this jerk-?off was trying to kill me. How tacky is that?
I grabbed him by his ridiculous green hair and banged his head into the truck a couple times. He was flailing out with his arms, kicking at my legs. We both went down to the ground and rolled around, locked together like a couple squirrels, scratching and clawing and hissing. We weren't bitch slapping, trying to make a statement like Lula and Mrs. Apusenja. This was real life-?or-?death combat. Luckily, while we were rolling around, my knee connected with Fisher Cat's crotch and I shoved his gonads halfway up his throat.
Fisher Cat went dead still and, almost in slow motion, somebody's fist smashed Fisher Cat's nose. Looking back on it, I suppose it was my fist. At the time, the fist didn't seem to be connected to my brain. The nose gave with a sickening crunch and blood spurted out, killing my outrage.
“Oh crap!” I said. “I'm really sorry.” I don't know why I said it because I wasn't all that sorry. It was one of those female reflex things.
His right hand blindly struck out at me, he made contact with my arm, and lights exploded behind my eyes.
Whin I came around I was on my back on the sidewalk. The misting rain felt good on my face. It was dark, but there were lights everywhere. Red and blue and white. The lights were haloed in the rain, giving them a surreal quality. The fog cleared from my head. I blinked and Ranger and Morelli swam into my field of vision. There were a lot of other people behind them. A lot of noise. Cops. Yellow crime scene tape, slick with rain.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It looks like you took a few volts,” Morelli said. His lips were tight and his eyes were hard.
It took a beat for me to remember . . . Fisher Cat's arm reaching out to me. “Stun gun,” I said. “I didn't see it until it was too late.”
Morelli and Ranger each got a hand under an armpit and hauled me up to my feet. The first thing I saw was Fisher Cat motionless on the grass beside his truck. A couple cops were in the process of setting lights to illuminate the body.
“Holy cow,” I said. “He looks dead.” I had a moment of panic that I'd killed him. Now that he'd zapped me, it was sort of satisfying to know I'd broken his nose, but I wasn't crazy about the idea that I might have beat him to death. I looked closer and saw the two bullet holes in his forehead. I let out a whoosh of relief. I was almost certain I didn't shoot him.
“Those aren't my bullet holes, are they?” I asked Morelli.
“No. We checked your gun. It hasn't been fired.”
Ranger was grinning. “Somebody beat the shit out of this guy before he got shot.”
“That would be me,” I said.
“Babe,” Ranger said, the grin widening.
My arm felt like it was on fire. The entire upper half was wrapped in gauze and a fine line of blood had begun to seep through the gauze. “I'm missing a chunk of time,” I said. “What happened after I went lights out?”
“Ranger and I pulled in minutes apart and we got worried when we couldn't find you,” Morelli said. “We knew you went outside to make some calls, so we went looking for you.”
“And you found me laying here unconscious and the green-?haired guy dead?”
“Yeah.” Again, the tight lips and flat voice.
Morelli didn't like finding me unconscious. Morelli loved me. Ranger loved me, too, but Ranger was programmed differently.
“Your turn,” Morelli said.
I told them everything I knew. I told them about the game. About Fisher Cat. About the webmaster. About the cop.
“We need to do this downtown,” Morelli said. “We need to get this recorded.”
It was raining harder. My hair was soaked. The bandage on my arm was soaked. I was streaked with mud and blood, my legs and arms were scratched from the scuffle. “How's Valerie?” I asked. “Is she okay? Did she have the baby?”
“I don't know,” Morelli said. “We haven't checked on her.”
r />
The ME angled his truck into the curb just in front of the blue pickup. He got out and walked toward the body. He looked over and nodded to Morelli.
“I need to talk to him,” Morelli said to me. “And you need to go inside and get your arm looked at. Its not serious. The bullet just grazed you, but it probably needs stitches.” He looked over at Ranger. “If anyone in her family sees her like this, they'll freak.”