Alison Kaine: Tell Me What You Like Part 9

"Dammit!" Stacy held up one finger and hustled back through the apartment. Alison seized the moment to stare at the exotic straps and harnesses.

"Got 'em!" Stacy clicked back in all too soon, waving her key chain. Alison turned to go. At the last minute, just before they opened the door, Stacy seized Alison's hand and pressed it up beneath her skirt. Alison caught her breath. The satin under her fingers was soaked. Before she could so much as run her fingers over the hot mound Stacy slipped away.

"Why don't you come over tomorrow?" she invited before pushing Alison out the door.

Alison stood for a moment on the landing. Had she just received another quilting invitation or.. .something else?

But as she made her way down the back stairs she was not wondering about this, but whether being with Dominique had been as safe for Tamara Garrity as Stacy had a.s.sumed it was.

When Alison got home there was a message from Robert on her answering machine, just saying 'hi' and asking if she had found out anything new on the case from her...here he hesitated, not quite sure of the appropriate phrase to use and settled finally for 'inside sources.' Returning the call while she heated a chunk of bean soup she had made the week before, she asked about the baby and they exchanged shop gossip, but hedged around her progress. She had nothing that she wanted to share, yet. Robert advised her to get out of town for at least the weekend, and she knew that it was not entirely because of the reason he gave-that he did not want her to return to work crabby and tired. He was frightened for her, and that meant the word around the station was that they still thought it was a slasher striking d.y.k.es at random.

As she finished her dinner Alison went through her mail, such as it was. The only thing of interest, unless she wanted to get her carpets cleaned, was a flier headlined Women Against Violence Against Women. It had been hand delivered. The graphic was a line of women walking arm in arm silhouetted against a street light. Alison had just started in on the text when there was a knock on the kitchen door.

"Hi." Tammyfaye, Janka's cat, shot past Janka and began sniffing around the bookshelves, which were one of KP's favorite hiding places. "We heard you come in, then we didn't hear you moving around...well?"

Alison waved the flier at her. "Yeah, I got one of these, too." That Janka had come alone could only mean that Mich.e.l.le was stewing again about Alison entering the leather kingdom.

"Makes you feel kind of paranoid, doesn't it?" Janka said.

"I'll say."

"We were here when they delivered the fliers, so we got one of these, as well." She showed Alison a larger poster printed on yellow paper. The women marched across it in black.

"What is it?"

"They're trying to put together a safe house/safe ride program. If you've got a car you can get a sticker for it. The poster goes in a lighted window-it makes you kind of a block parent for d.y.k.es on the street."

"Did you get one for me?"

"No, they wanted to talk to the women they gave them to, in person. They're trying to be really careful about giving them out. It's not like a ma.s.s mailing or anything. They want to be sure they're going to d.y.k.e houses. You can call, though." She indicated the two numbers that were listed for rides and information, "And they'll deliver one."

"This is a pretty big job they're taking on."

"Yeah. Well, you're probably busy, but we wanted to be sure you were okay. Oh, and don't forget your whistle." Janka tugged at a piece of yarn tied around her neck and brought up a ceramic whistle.

"Yeah, I've got one on my key chain."

Janka turned to go and then swung back. "If you go out," she said, "take your gun, okay?" She paused, and then laughed humorlessly. "Wow, I never thought I'd hear myself say that. Just be really careful, okay?"

"Yeah."

The Rubyfruit was not crowded, but there were enough women so Alison did not feel as if she stood out. She saw Liz with a group of women but did not go over. Janka's last comment had put the idea of visiting the bar into her head. She had showered and put on a bulky red cotton cardigan that disguised the outline of her holster.

She asked for a c.o.ke at the bar. As the very young bartender turned away she studied her hair, short and dark like her own but without touches of grey. Alison wondered if she could get away with spiking hers up in the front like that. The bartender turned back to her. Alison said casually, "I couldn't get away for the contest last week. How did it go?"

The bartender leaned on the bar with both arms, not at all averse to a little chit-chat. "Too bad. Were you going to be a contestant?"

Alison stammered, startled by the very idea. "Uh...um...no, I just wanted to watch, I...urn...."

"Oh, you should consider it next year. You'd look hot in a leather jacket, you know, instead of a sweater, one of those really tailored chic-chic ones. Asymmetrical." The woman leaned across the bar, pushing the cardigan open to trace the lines of the imagined jacket a quarter of an inch above Alison's chest. The nights were getting chilly, but she was wearing only a green tank top, and the move pushed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s together so that the double women's symbol she wore on a chain around her neck was totally lost in her cleavage. "Black would look so good with your hair."

Though she had not touched her, Alison felt as if the lines had been not unpleasantly burned on her chest, bisecting each nipple. It took her a moment to realize that the woman was flirting with her. She was fl.u.s.tered by the image that she suggested-herself on a makeshift: stage, all eyes on her approvingly, applause, encouraging calls. (Get real, girl, insisted the voice of reality, Mich.e.l.le would be picketing.) For a moment she knew what Tamara Garrity had meant when she had confided that she liked to be the center of attention, knew the hot flash of excitement that had sent her, if Alison's theory was right, to arrange a tryst with Dominique.

"And some nice big earrings. Silver, to bring this out." The bartender made a motion above Alison's head, and again it was as if she actually felt it, as if a warm wind had ruffled the strands of grey. The bartender formed a big loop on each side of Alison's head, and at the end of the second her fingers brushed her skin for the first time. Just a whisper on the neck that made Alison shiver.

"Hey, Carla!" The other bartender was motioning towards a small crowd that had built up at the other end of the bar.

Carla straightened slowly, obviously more interested in describing the rest of Alison's outfit than mixing drinks. "The contest went fine," she said as she turned. "Take a look at the pictures over there."

The photographs were nothing professional, just a bunch of snapshots mounted on a big piece of butcher paper and stuck to the bulletin board that usually advertised dance lessons and free kittens. There was a small crowd around them, laughing and pointing, and pa.s.sing a pen from hand to hand to write comments on the paper. Vickie bribes the judge, one printed beneath a picture of a woman with long blonde hair kissing another. Someone else s.n.a.t.c.hed the pen to write, Dommie takes a little time off. Dominique hadn't mentioned being in the contest, but the photo showed her standing on a table and posing. The photographer had cut off the top of her head.

"Hey, who is this?" asked one of the women, leaning forward and sloshing a little beer. "Give me the pen-I want to write down my phone number. She's hot!" There was an instant of uncomfortable silence. The woman was not so drunk that she couldn't tell she had said something wrong. "What? Who is she?" She tried to make a joke. "One of your exes?"

"Shut up, Roxanne," said someone in a soft voice.

Another woman said, "They shouldn't have put that up." They drifted back to their table, whispering.

Alison looked at the photograph of Tamara Garrity. She looked very different than she did in the one which the morgue had provided. She was, as everyone had told Alison, very handsome. The photographer had used a zoom lens to capture her head and shoulders. She was parodying the pose of a fashion model, one hand up to brush back her thick black hair, hair long enough so that she could pa.s.s easily at the straight bank job. She had turned her head towards that bare arm so she had been caught in profile, pouting, her eyelids lowered seductively. Alison was not sure what all the contest entailed, but if it was looks alone, Tamara should have walked away with first place.

Alison reached up and pulled the photograph off the wall. Who would care?

"Excuse me. Have you heard the scoop on these?" The stranger speaking to her was holding a stack of leaflets. Alison took one, thinking it was just an ad for another dance or concert, then realized that it was the same flier that had been left in her mailbox.

"I got one at home."

"Well, then you know about the two d.y.k.es who were murdered last week?"

"Yeah."

"Well, the police aren't really making much of an effort to do anything about them. d.y.k.es getting killed are a low priority." Here Alison had to shut her own mouth, insulted, but not sure how to argue since she knew the police hadn't made much progress. "We need to be sure we're taking care of ourselves and of one another. We need to make sure we're not alone at night, especially at the bars, since that's where we're being stalked. There're women here who will walk you to your car and make sure it's safe before you her in, or who will give you a ride home if you need it. We're urging women not to go home alone." She smiled. "That has been popular, at least. We're also handing out these." She pulled out a handful of referee's whistles, each with a shoelace threaded through the ring. "It would help us out a lot if you could give us a dollar, but it's fine if you can't. We want everyone to have one. Keep it in your hand or your mouth when you're out on the street."

Alison took her keys out of her pocket and showed her the whistle already on the chain. "What are we supposed to do if we hear one of these things?" she asked, curious to hear their strategy.

"Whatever makes sense. n.o.body expects you to run out in the street and stop a slasher by yourself. Unless you're in a large group the best thing to do is make lots of noise, try to scare him away. Scream, blow your own whistle." Alison thought of the loaded gun beneath her sweater.

They talked a moment longer, and before moving on, the woman gave her one of the larger posters for her window.

It was getting late. The young bartender to whom Alison had first spoken was slipping out from behind the bar. Alison hurried to catch up with her.

"Hi again." Her voice came out sultry to her surprise.

"Hi." The woman smiled a slow smile that took several seconds to reach her eyes.

"Could I talk to you a minute?"

"You bet. I need to go downstairs, and I'm not supposed to go alone anyway. Why don't you escort me?" She made it sound suggestive.

There were no direct stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt storeroom. They had to go out the back and around the side of the building. Two women were lounging by the door, and another three, one carrying a baseball bat, were returning from patrolling the lot.

"We got it," Carla told them. "We're just going to get some napkins."

It was cold out and Alison was glad for her sweater. Carla had pulled a bulky leather jacket out from behind the bar. She zipped it up and snapped the collar shut. "We're only going over there." She nodded towards the steps that led to the bas.e.m.e.nt door. They could have walked straight along the wall to the stairwell if the last two cars in the row hadn't been parked so close to the building that there was no room to squeeze between. They detoured around them.

Carla unlocked the door at the bottom of the stairs.

"Why don't you lock it behind you?" Alison suggested.

"I was planning to," said Carla as she turned on the dim overhead light. Again that slow smile. Alison realized that her safety suggestion had been taken differently.

"You'd look so hot in a leather jacket," Carla said, picking up the conversation as if there had been no pause. For a moment Alison thought that she would draw the hot lines above her b.r.e.a.s.t.s again. But instead, she slowly unsnapped and took off her own jacket. She reached over and began to pull Alison's sweater off. Alison took a step back, but Carla firmly pulled her closer. They both knew that the protest was token. Carla ran her hands around Alison's back.

"Oh!" She started. "You have a gun."

"I'm a cop," said Alison. "I have to wear it, even when I'm off duty." She wondered if it would repel or attract the other woman.

"So are you going to have to arrest me?"

"Not unless money changes hands. No." Not even then, because now Alison wanted to finish what she had started. She wanted to find out what kind of thrill women were experiencing when they left the dance floor for half an hour with a stranger.

"Okay." That was it for Carla; the gun was unimportant history. "Put this on," she said, holding out the jacket in one hand. "I want to see how hot you'd look."

"You'll be cold." It was the only protest Alison could force through her dry lips.

Carla laughed. "Don't worry." She slipped Alison's cardigan on and then stood watching. Slowly Alison pulled the jacket on, the zipper up. She snapped the snaps at the neck and wrist, trying to make each movement as s.e.xy and deliberate as she could. The dim light and the faraway sound of music from the dance floor made everything surreal and a part of her just watched, unable to believe that she was playing leather games in a bas.e.m.e.nt with a woman she had just met.

"Oh, yeah." Carla indicated a turn without touching her, moving her hand in a slow circle above her shoulder. Slowly Alison turned away. Carla stood behind her, put her hands around Alison's waist and pulled her back to front in their first real touch. Alison shivered and for a moment thought of breaking free. But she had gone too far and spun too many fantasies. Carla brought both hands up to her hair and for a moment Alison stood pa.s.sive. Then suddenly she was rubbing her a.s.s against Carla's front, grabbing her hands and pulling them down over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Hot, wanting, she was as hot as she had been at Stacy's when she had held her face in her hands and she flashed back on the wet satin feel of Stacy's panties beneath her fingers. Then Carla was fumbling with her belt and she was not objecting. Even though Alison had never done anything like this before, she was reaching down to help her, pushing her pants down around her ankles and stroking herself because she couldn't wait. Carla's hands were parting her thighs, entering her, playing with her a.s.s and Alison closed her eyes, letting her take control. Let her worry about being missed or walked in on. Carla was speaking in her ear, words she thought about before while making love but had never said. Hearing them aloud sent a shock through her body that went straight to her c.l.i.t.

"I want to f.u.c.k you," Carla was saying. "I really want to f.u.c.k you hard. Please."

Alison was saying yes, yes, urgently. She experimented with saying it herself aloud, "Yes, I want you to f.u.c.k me," and felt another hot rush. Carla thrust her fingers deeper insider her. She was hot enough to come immediately but deliberately she took a deep breath, wanting it to last more than a few seconds. She heard Carla unzipping her own jeans and she tried to turn, eager to thrust her fingers inside her, to stroke her as she was being stroked. But Carla gave her a push forward, a hard push that made her put her hands on a table to balance herself. She entered Alison from behind so that she gasped.

Then Carla pulled her fingers out and Alison could not bite back a moan of disappointment. She gasped again as she was entered by something much bigger, much smoother. At first, even as Carla began pumping her slowly, Alison did not quite get what was happening. Then, like a flash she thought, "Packing!" She had read about it in On Our Backs, but had thought that it was something that stomping butch women did in San-f.u.c.king-Francisco, for Christ's sake. She never would have suspected it of the sweet young thing who worked behind a Denver bar. A mult.i.tude of technical questions flashed through her, gone before they could even be put to words. She no longer cared how it worked, just that it was inside her and pulling out. Carla must have been thinking of this when she had first spoken to her; even while she was tracing the earring by her cheek, she must have been imagining pulling down her pants. Alison moaned as Carla grasped her by the hips and pulled her back so that her a.s.s slapped against Carla's pelvis, taking the d.i.l.d.o deeper inside than she would have thought possible. Alison's mind was so open now that images seemed to be pouring in and out. Like a runaway soundtrack, she heard her own and Mich.e.l.le's voices arguing on and on in her mind. Dozens of conversations over the years melted together: it's okay to use your fingers, she wants me to try something else, well maybe if it's natural, maybe if it doesn't look like a p.r.i.c.k or smell like rubber but boy, these sure are nice to clean and I really like the way it feels, do you think it's okay Ch.e.l.le? She felt herself lying on her back in Sandy's bed and Sandy, who had a very politically correct lavender d.i.l.d.o without a head, sliding it in just a little, teasing her until suddenly she was out of control, pumping as hard as she could and Alison was rising her hips up off the bed to meet her. Then she was back again in the dingy bas.e.m.e.nt, rubbing her own c.l.i.t frantically while Carla thrust from behind and told her take it, take it, come on, let me f.u.c.k you. Then she was coming, screaming silently, her knees buckling, saved from falling forward on her face only by Carla's arm around her waist.

She had no idea how long she had crouched on the floor on her hands and knees before she felt it was safe to stir again, and no idea if Carla had joined her in o.r.g.a.s.m or if hers were enough to satisfy. There were a mult.i.tude of questions which she wanted to ask, none about Tamara Garrity, but she could not form them with her mouth as she scrambled to her feet and pulled up her pants. Carla stroked her face gently. She had thought she would be embarra.s.sed but she was not. She was glowing.

"We probably ought to get upstairs," said Carla with a grin, "before the boss sends someone to look for me."

Then it did occur to Alison to wonder if this was something that Carla did all the time. Would the music on the dance floor shut down when they reappeared and the regulars, greeting them with cheers and applause, check Alison's walk for shakiness? Oh, well, there was nothing she could do about it now.

Now that the good time was over Carla was impatient. She was unlocking the door, a box of napkins under her arm, while Alison was still buckling her belt. She still had on Alison's sweater, a bit of advertising that Alison felt they could do without. She sprinted across the floor and caught the door just as it was closing. She also caught the heel of her boot in a crack where the concrete had settled unevenly. Her ankle twisted painfully, bringing her to her knees. It was an old injury, and for the first moment it was impossible to tell if it was just going to be that one shriekingly painful twinge or if she was going to end up on crutches again. She pushed the door open with her hands to call Carla.

Carla was already at the top of the stairs, wrestling with the awkward box. She stepped over the edge of the stairwell and between the closely parked cars.

"Hey!" Alison shouted, but there was a great surge of music from the bar that covered her call. Carla did not turn. Alison started to shout again, but at that moment the woman disappeared. She did not turn left to go back into the bar, she simply disappeared, first there, and then not, the box of napkins. .h.i.tting the asphalt with a dull thud. It took only a few seconds for Alison's mind to play back what her eyes had seen, but it felt like forever, as if she were a slow child putting together information that everyone else had figured out long, long before. Again she saw Carla stumble and fall hard to the right as if she had been jerked. As if, in fact, she were being pulled in behind the VW van. Only a few seconds, but Alison was already up the stairs, fumbling for her gun beneath the unfamiliar jacket, cursing the G.o.dd.a.m.n snaps that had seemed so s.e.xy not ten minutes before. Her ankle was pulsing with pain-she was going to pay for this!-but she ignored it. She had no doubt at all it was the killer who had grabbed Carla, and the only thing on her mind was getting to her in time. The short tape of memory played again, and this time she saw a glove-covered hand slap over the woman's surprised mouth as she was pulled sideways, the glint of moonlight off something upraised like a knife. She could not tell if these were things she had really seen, or touches provided by her adrenalin-fueled imagination. She was only a few seconds from them-she could actually hear the wordless scuffling on the other side of the car-but a few seconds was all that it would take for Carla to be turned into a drained corpse like the others. Bent over, Alison sprinted forward to round the tail of the car. Then she felt one giant stab of pain in her ankle, and it simply collapsed beneath her.

As she lay on her side in the parking lot litter it seemed as if everything had slowed down. She was part of some horror flick being shot in slow motion in order for the audience to get the full effect of suspense and bloodshed. She jerked her head to the side, sc.r.a.ping her face painfully on the rough surface. She could now see beneath the car that separated her from Carla. The light was very, very poor; she could locate their feet only by their desperate, dancing movements. Her eyes could not divide them into murderer and victim. Even as she was bringing her gun up she was thinking about screaming, about the whistle around her neck, about the warning time either might give the murderer, about how the scene would be confused by a gang of civilians, about the very little time it would take to plunge home the knife. Then, still in slow motion, she squeezed the trigger, aiming beneath the car, praying she would hit the murderer and not Carla, but knowing, even if her bullet did not strike at all, that this, more than any other, was the sound that would cause him or her drop Carla and flee. As the sparks flew from the barrel and the sound, magnified in the tunnel of cars, came back to her, a little part of her was aware, with some annoyance, that she was lying in a little puddle of oil and her good pants would be completely ruined.

Then, with a snap, as if the sound of the shot were the signal, everything seemed to go back into its own time. She saw a dark bundle drop to the ground on the other side of the car. Even as she was shouting futilely, "Stop, police!" at the top of her lungs, she could hear someone pounding away on the blacktop behind the building. Overlaying that was the sound of a whole crowd of women coming from the other direction-screaming, shouting, whistles blowing. Hands too excited to be gentle lifted her up. She jerked away, ignoring questions. Using the car as a handhold, she pulled herself to a position where she could scan the lot, though she already knew that the killer had escaped again.

The ice-pack which Alison had strapped to her ankle with an ace bandage had leaked during the night. The whole bottom of the bed was soaked with cold water. When the phone rang Alison woke from a dream about the North Pole, about how she and Perry had finally reached the top in triumph, but somehow without their shoes.

"h.e.l.lo?" She let the receiver fall down onto her chest.

"Alison?" She could just barely hear the voice, tiny and faraway as if a house pet or stuffed animal were on the other end. "Alison, I read in the paper that there was another attempt. It said that there was a policewoman on the scene of the crime. Was that you? Alison, are you okay?"

She managed to lift the receiver again with great effort and spoke into what she hoped was the right end. "I'll call you back," she said, although she had no idea who the person on the other end was. The phone fell onto the floor beside the bed, and after a moment the buzzing stopped. She drifted back into the dream, only now Perry had disappeared, taking her pack with him, and she had been left alone in the frozen waste to face a killer, someone so cloaked in furs and skins as to be totally unidentifiable. She could tell nothing about the person wielding a knife the size of a machete which for all her efforts, she could not manage to turn aside. She could feel it slicing through her clothing, cutting through another layer of fur each time it came down. Then she remembered she had her gun and she reached beneath her coat to get it. But it was lost beneath the bundle of furs and when she finally did get it out, it was frozen and wouldn't fire. The knife had come close now; the last swoop had laid a delicate scratch down her chest. The next would cut her open as if she were being dissected. The blood would run out and freeze on her clothes. It would never be known that a d.y.k.e had been on the first polar expedition; Perry would feed her body to the dogs because they were short on supplies and he would know that was the way she would have wanted it.

But then the murderer stopped, looking at the gun that was not only frozen, but now frozen to her hand, and began to laugh. And the laughing went on and on and on....

This time Alison woke totally and shot out of bed as if she had been catapulted. The bread sack on her ankle slipped beneath the bandages and fell to the floor with a smack, breaking open and spilling water all over the carpet. She didn't notice.

"Jesus, what a dream," she said aloud, though not even KP was there to hear her. "Jesus, what a night." She caught sight of herself in the mirror over the dresser. No wonder Jorgenson and Jones had treated her as if she were a madwoman. Her hair was spiked up with little streaks of oil, and there was still dirt and gravel embedded in the open wound on her cheek. Why hadn't anyone cleaned her up? She supposed it was because all energy had been focused on Carla, whose head had been bleeding as if it would never stop from a gash that went almost ear to ear across the back. Alison had told the bar's owner, who was one of the people freaking out the most, that scalp wounds always bled a lot-Carla would get some st.i.tches and be almost as good as new. But then she'd made the mistake of saying that Carla had been lucky that she'd ducked her head, receiving the slash to her scalp when it was obviously meant for her throat, and that had set the woman off again. She had invented a reality where Alison was an armed guard sent especially to the bar to guard her staff and wanted her to know that she had f.u.c.ked up royally. At the height of her tirade she had even threatened to withhold her paycheck. It might have been funny in other circ.u.mstances.

The detectives didn't think so-and they showed it. Or rather, Jorgenson showed it, and Jones mimicked his air. Groaning, she flashed back to their arrival the night before: "Oh. Officer Kaine." Again that inflection meant to remind her that officers were not detectives, should not make the mistake of thinking they were detectives, or even believe that detectives might be interested in what they had to say. Again that slow sweep of the crowd, the look of undisguised distaste on his face. "Here you are again. Do you need a hobby, Officer Kaine, or do you just need...." He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to, because like every out d.y.k.e in the world, she had heard it whispered behind her back, yelled on the streets, even offered up politely at parties as if it were a feasible piece of advice she didn't know about. Do you need a hobby, Officer Kaine, or do you just need a good hard f.u.c.k?

"This scene," she said, ignoring their comments, "is contaminated. There was a rush of people after I fired. But I took a statement from the woman who was attacked while she was fairly lucid, before she went to the hospital, and there were a number of women patrolling the lot-I thought-"

She stopped. Jorgenson was shaking his finger very slowly in front of her face, the way her second grade teacher used to do. She had hated that teacher.

"You thought?" he said, "You thought? You suggest?"

"Well..." began Alison, but he cut her off again.

"Don't think, Officer Kaine. Don't try to tell me how to do my job. You seem to think you're some kind of expert consultant here. Of course it would be wonderful if we could have h.o.m.os.e.xual officers on h.o.m.os.e.xual cases..." He put a broad look of disgust on his face which Jones was miming, just in case she was too stupid to get the sarcasm, "...but it just wasn't in the budget this year. Maybe you can have it put on the ballot next year. But for now, Alison, I'd think of myself more as...oh, Typhoid Mary. You know, she showed up and people died?"

"f.u.c.k you, Phil," she said without heat, as though it were as standard as 10-4.

"I'm writing that down, Officer Kaine."

"Actually, I'm writing it down." Suddenly Liz appeared at Jorgenson's elbow, and d.a.m.ned if she didn't have a notebook out.

Jorgenson considered ignoring her, but there was a courtroom presence about her that was hard to dismiss. He settled for being rude. "Who are you?"

"Well, that kind of depends on what starts happening within the next minute and a half. Right now I'm a very concerned tax-payer, wondering why the h.e.l.l you've spent ten minutes queer-baiting a police officer who undoubtedly saved someone's life here tonight, instead of getting down to procedure. That's good for a letter to the mayor, with a copy to your boss. I'm not, as yet, Ms. Kaine's attorney, but that can change rapidly." She tilted her head to look at him as though she were wearing bifocals. She said, "You choose."

Thank G.o.d for Liz.

Shaking her head, Alison staggered into the bathroom and turned on the shower as hot as it would go. She added the tiniest possible stream of cold and forced herself under the spray. She made no move to wash herself, but just stood and let the hot water beat down on her. She picked up the bottle of shampoo and set it down, picked it up and set it down, and picked it up again. The fourth time she poured some out into her hand. Black suds ran down over her shoulders as she soaped up her hair. She wondered if the people at the hospital had just gone ahead and shaved Carta's entire head. It wasn't just the major wound they needed to get at. Carla, who was so calm about the whole thing that Alison had suspected she was on the verge of shock, had told the detectives that she had smashed the back of her head into the face of her a.s.sailant. Because of the copious bleeding, they didn't know if she was possibly oozing blood from several places that might be teeth marks.

The police were impatient to see if there was a distinguishing pattern. They had to grab onto something, for it was the only information Carla had been able to give about the person. Carla had not seen anything but gloved hands and what might have been mechanic's overalls. Other than that, she had not even been able to say, big or little, black or white, male or female, young or old.

The door to the upstairs apartment was open, and the smell of fresh coffee floated down the stairs. Tammyfaye and KP were nestled together asleep in the center of the kitchen table, where neither one was ever allowed for any reason. Alison, who could not yet face kitty aerobics, let it slide. Instead, dressed in her robe with a towel wrapped around her head, she followed the smell upstairs. She took her newspaper with her.