Lethal People - John Locke

“Bullshit!” she had said. “You’re the guy from Homeland Security who called me yesterday. Don’t bother denying it; I recognize your voice.”

Nevertheless, Kathleen agreed to meet me after work at the burn center, where she volunteered two hours of her time every Tuesday. She escorted me through the lobby door and down a long hallway.

“What made you decide to work with burn victims?” I said.

“After my divorce, all I wanted was to get out of Charleston and make new friends, so I moved here and got a job. But I didn’t know anyone. Then one day my company offered tickets for a charity event, and I took one just to have someplace to go, thinking maybe I’d meet someone.”

“And?”

“And here you are!” She burst out laughing. “Well, you’re a liar, of course, but at least you’re good-looking. And everything about you screams ‘single guy!’”

We turned left and headed down another hallway. Several corridors ran off that one, and I tried to keep up with the route we’d taken in case I had to navigate back on my own. Doctors and nurses came and went, walking with purpose. A short, pudgy nurse in a light blue lab coat winked at Kathleen and made kissing sounds as she passed. We walked a few steps, and I cocked my head and said, “I bet there’s a story there!”

“Oh, hush, you!” she said.

I raised my eyebrows, and she started giggling.

“Don’t even,” she said.

I didn’t. “What makes you think I’m single?” I asked.

She laughed. “Oh, please!”

We passed a window. The sky was darkening outside, and the gusting wind made a light buzzing sound as it attacked the weaker portions of the window frame. Kathleen had entered the hospital wearing a heavy cloth overcoat that she now removed and hung on a wooden peg by the outer ward doors. She pushed a silver circle on the wall and the doors flew open.

“I didn’t meet anyone special at the fundraiser,” she said, “but I was touched by the video presentation. That night, I read the brochure from cover to cover and got hooked.”

“So you just showed up and they put you to work?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Until that point, my life had been in a downward spiral. I’d felt sorry for myself, victimized, after the whole Ken thing. Then I met the burn kids and I was humbled by their optimism and their passion to survive.”

“Sounds like you found a home.”

She smiled. “Yes, that’s it exactly. I made an instant decision that changed my life.”

“And now you come here every Tuesday?”

“Yup. Every Tuesday after work for two hours.”

Kathleen picked up a clipboard. While she studied it, I took the opportunity to study her face and figure. I had come here expecting to fi nd a timid, broken woman, but Kathleen’s divorce obviously agreed with her. She was attractive, with large eyes and honeycolored hair that stopped an inch above her shoulders. I took her for a natural blond because she wore her hair parted in the middle and I couldn’t detect any dark roots. High on her forehead, just beneath her hairline, I could make out a light dusting of freckles. She had a few more freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose as well. Her body was gym tight, and she had a friendly, easygoing manner that revealed nothing of the difficult past I had witnessed in the police photos. Her voice was unique. You could get caught up in it, especially when she spoke about her volunteer work. We were about to enter the burn center treatment area, and despite my concerns about what might lie beyond the next set of doors, I found myself hanging on her every word.

“The pain these children live with daily is something you and I will never encounter or comprehend,” she said. “And the toddlers, oh my God, you can’t help but burst into tears the first time you see them. It’s best to see them through a one-way mirror before you meet them because the worst thing you can do is let them see your pity. It erodes their self-confidence and reinforces the fear that they’re monsters, unfit for society.”

I admired her character, but the last thing I felt like doing was looking at severely burned children. Kathleen sensed it and said, “If you want to talk to me about Ken, you’ll have to participate.”

“Why is it so important to you that I do this?” I said.

“Because even though you look like a thug, who’s to say you won’t turn out to be the person who winds up making a difference?”

“Let’s assume I’m not that person. Then what?”

“If you really are with Homeland Security, I’m guessing you spend most of your time distrusting people. I can think of worse things than exposing you to some wonderful children who deserve compassion, friendship, and encouragement.”

“Friendship?” I said.

Kathleen smiled. “Could happen,” she said. “And if it does, it will change two lives: theirs and yours.”

“But …”

Just keep an open mind,” she said.

Kathleen escorted me through the double doors and into a viewing room that put me in mind of the ones in police stations—only instead of overlooking an interrogation room, the burn center viewing room overlooked a play area. She asked if I was ready. I took a deep breath and nodded, and she pulled the curtain open.

There were a half-dozen kids in the play area. We watched them interact with toys and each other for several minutes, and at some point, I turned and caught her staring at me. I don’t know what Kathleen Gray saw in my face that evening, but whatever it was, it seemed to delight her.

“Why, Donovan,” she said. “You’re a natural!”

I assumed she was referring to my casual reaction to the kids’ severe disfigurement. Of course, Kathleen had no way of knowing that my profession had a lot to do with it, not to mention my close friendship with Augustus Quinn, a man whose face was singularly horrific and far more frightening than anything going on in the playroom.

Kathleen took me by the wrist and said, “All righty then. Let’s meet them.”

I have a soft spot for children and rarely find it necessary to kill them. That being said, in general I’m uncomfortable around kids and expect I come across rather stiff and imposing.

These kids were different. They were happy to see me. Or maybe they were just happy to see anyone new. They giggled more than I would have expected, and they seemed fascinated by my face, especially the angry scar that runs from the side of my cheek to the middle of my neck. All six of them traced it with their fingers. They were truly amazing, all of them.

But of course, there was one in particular.

Addie was six years old. She was covered in bandages and glossy material the color of lemon rind. She smelled not of Jolly Ranchers or bubblegum but soured hydrocolloid.

I knew what I was seeing.

According to something I’d read in the waiting room, fourth-degree burns affect the tissues beneath the deepest layers of skin, including muscles, tendons, and bones. This, then, was Addie.

Except for the eyes. Her eyes were unharmed, huge and expressive.

Though relatives were told that Addie and her twin sister Maddie would not survive the initial treatment, amazingly they did. They were ordinary kids who should have been running around in a yard somewhere, playing chase or tag, but sometimes life deals you a shit hand. Around noon the second day, while Addie stabilized, Maddie took a turn for the worse. She alternately faltered and rallied all afternoon as a team of heroes worked on her, refusing to let her die. Kathleen wasn’t there but she heard about it, what a special, brave child Maddie was.

In the end, her fragile body failed her. A nurse said it was the first time she’d seen a particular doctor cry, and when he began bawling, it caused the rest of the team to lose it. They were all touched and personally affected by the fight in these little twins, these tiny angels. They said they’d never seen anyone quite like them and didn’t expect to ever again.

“Want to see the picture I drawed?” Addie asked.

I looked at Kathleen. She nodded.

“I’d like that,” I said.

Before showing it to me, Addie wanted to say something. “All the camera pictures of me and Maddie got rooned in the fire, so I drawed a picture of Maddie so all my new friends could see what we looked like before we got burned up.”

She handed me a crayon drawing of a girl’s face.

“That’s Maddie,” she said. “Wasn’t she beautiful?”

I couldn’t trust myself to speak so I just nodded.

When we left the burn unit, Kathleen said, “I love them all, but Addie’s the one who got me praying.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

Kathleen took a deep breath before speaking. “About two weeks ago, Addie’s house caught on fire. Her parents, Greg and Melanie, died in the fire while trying to save the girls’ lives.”

“Addie was able to talk about it?”

Kathleen nodded. “There was also the 911 call Melanie made.

Apparently she got trapped downstairs. Greg made it to the girls’ room and put wet towels over their faces to keep them alive until the firefighters arrived.”

“Smart guy to think about the towels,” I said.

“Addie originally thought the wet towels flew into the room by themselves. When they explained her mom threw them, her face lit up. Until that moment, she thought her mom had run away.”

We were both silent awhile.

“There was a lot of love in that marriage,” I said.

Kathleen said, “I haven’t experienced it personally, but I’ve always believed that during the course of a good marriage, especially when children are involved, husbands and wives often perform random acts of heroism that go largely unnoticed by the general public.”

“And in a great marriage,” I said, “when one spouse goes down, the other takes up the slack.”

Kathleen gave me a look that might have been curiosity, might have been affection.

“You surprise me, Creed.”

CHAPTER 5

“These little bombs weigh in at 490 calories,” Kathleen Gray said.

I glanced at the paltry square.

“That number seems high,” I said.

“Trust me,” she said. “I used to work at the one in Charleston.”

It was 7:45 pm and we were in Starbucks on Third and East Sixty-Sixth. Neither of us had much of an appetite, but Kathleen said she always treated herself to a raspberry scone after spending time at the burn center. She took a bite.

“Yum,” she said. “Technically, it’s a raspberry apricot thumbprint scone.” She cocked her head and appraised me.

“You sure you don’t want to try one?”

I didn’t and told her so. “Plus there’s the other thing,” I said.

“What other thing?”

“The acronym for it is RATS,” I said.

She studied me a moment, a faint smile playing about her lips. I saw them move ever-so-slightly as she performed the mental calculation.

“You’re an odd duck,” she said. “You know that, right?”

I sipped my coffee and made a note of the fact that I had now met three of Ken Chapman’s women, and two of them had commented on my strangeness on successive days. The third of Chapman’s women was my ex-wife, Janet, and her opinion of me was beyond repair.

Someone pushed open the front door, and a rush of wind blew some rain in, lowering the temperature by ten degrees. Or so it seemed. Something behind us caught Kathleen’s eye and she giggled.

“The barista was talking to someone and pointing at you,” she said. “I think it has something to do with the venti.”

I frowned and shook my head in disgust. “Barista,” I said.

Kathleen giggled harder. She scrunched her face into a pout.

“You’re such a grump!” she said.

“Well, it’s ridiculous,” I said.

She broke into a bubbly laugh. I continued my rant.

“These trendy restaurants, they’re all so pretentious! Just yesterday I saw a guy nearly die from eating some kind of exotic Japanese dish. And here,” I gestured toward the coffee-making apparatus, “you have to learn a whole new friggin’ language in order to justify spending four bucks for a cup of Joe.”

She laughed harder. “Joe? Oh, my God, did you just say Joe? Tell me you just climbed out of a forties time machine.”

I think she liked saying the word “Joe,” because she said it two more times while laughing uncontrollably.

The other customers glanced at us, but I wasn’t finished yet.

“Grande,” I said. “Solo. Venti. Doppio. What the hell is doppio, anyway—one of the seven dwarfs?”

“No,” she squealed. “But Grumpy is!” Kathleen’s laughter had passed the point of no return. Her cheeks were puffy, and her eyes had become slits.

I frowned again and recited the conversation for her. “All I said was, ‘I’ll have a coffee.’ ‘What size?’ she says. ‘A regular,’ I said. ‘We have grande, venti, solo, doppio, short, and tall,’ she says. ‘Four hundred ninety calories,’ you say. It’s a flippin’ two-inch square!”

Kathleen gripped the sides of the table. “Stop it!” she said. “You’re going to make me pee!”

When her last bubble of laughter died down, she told me it felt good to laugh after two hours with the kids. I understood what she meant. Bad as her life had been with Ken, she still managed to feel guilty that she had it so good by comparison.

I said, “I hate to end the party, but I need to ask you a few questions about Ken Chapman.”

She frowned. “Just when we were having such a good time.”

“I know.”

“I really hate to talk about it,” she said.

“I know.”

She looked at me and sighed. “Okay, Homeland. You put in your time. What would you like to know?”

For the better part of an hour, we talked about her marriage to Ken Chapman. It was hard on her, and by the time she dropped me off at my hotel, I could see she was emotionally drained. I didn’t ask her to join me for a nightcap, and she didn’t offer to, though she asked if I wanted to get together the next day.

“Tomorrow’s Valentine’s, you know,” she said.

I told her I had to meet someone, which was true. In fact, I said, I had to pack my overnight bag and head back to the airport that very night—also true. She nodded in an absentminded way as though this were something she’d heard before, something she expected me to say.

What I didn’t tell her: I had contracted to kill someone the next morning. What I did tell her: “I’m flying back tomorrow after my meeting to take you someplace special for dinner.” When I said that, her face lit up like a kid at Christmas and she gave me a big hug.

Then I said, “I’ll call you at work tomorrow just before noon and we can work out the details.”

An hour and change later, I was settling into my seat on the Citation. Ten minutes after that, I was sleeping soundly. But just before falling asleep, I thought Kathleen Gray had to be the nicest human being I’d ever met.

CHAPTER 6

Monica Childers didn’t want to die.

It was just past daybreak, Valentine’s Day, and we were north of Jacksonville, Florida, at the Amelia Island Plantation resort. Callie had positioned herself near the ninth tee box, where the main road intersected the cart path.