“Never mind,” I say, and climb out to the sidewalk. I’m already thinking about pulling the file on Gemini Harris and laying low at his place of residence when a horn double-taps, grabbing my attention. I spin and see an unmarked with a face I recognize behind the wheel, waving at me to hurry up already.
“I LIKE YOU BETTER WITHOUT the snowman suit.”
Rose rolls her eyes. “What are we doing? I saw you bounce in and out of that taxi like you meant business. So, I pulled over….”
I hold up a hand, stemming the flow. “I appreciate it. Hang a right and use both feet on the pedal. I got a runner in a green cab heading east on Cantos.”
Rose takes my instructions to heart and we tear away from the curb. A few minutes later we spot the runner half a block ahead.
“You want me to call it in, pull him over? What?”
I smile at her. “I didn’t know forensics had that kind of authority.”
Her eyes narrow so I make my next words count. “Just stay on him. Let’s see where he’s taking us.”
She nods and does a good job of keeping her distance. We share a few turns with our friend, the autocab making it easy by not breaking any speed laws.
“I was coming to give you my report,” she says, making a left and cutting off a couple irate drivers in the process. “Heard you were checking out Maytime, thought I’d come find you.”
“Yeah?” I say, impressed. “Were you gonna take me to lunch, too?”
Rose smiles and my belly gets warm. “Maybe. You want to hear it or not?”
“Can you talk and trail at the same time?”
Rose’s smile takes a nap. “Yeah, us women cops can do all sorts of neat stuff.”
“All right, all right, I’m teasing. What’s the score?”
She tells me. One DNA at the scene. Meaning no one else was in that room over the last few days, and definitely not the day of the murder. “The organs were liquified, the blood boiled, causing him to, well….”
“Pop.”
“Yeah. Like he was put inside a microwave.”
“I’m not following.”
“Okay, you know how the military use sound to disrupt an enemy? Certain frequencies that cause a human to lose track of time or, I don’t know, shit themselves.”
“Like we did to those poor bastards in the desert.”
Rose nods. “Right. Except there’s speculation that the right frequency or electromagnetic wave, or a combination of the two, delivered within a certain radius, could potentially kill a person.”
“Wait, you saying this guy heard a trumpet blast and exploded like a stomped cherry?”
I expect her to laugh, or at least scowl at my stupidity. Instead, she looks at me evenly, her eyes worried. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” She sighs, changes lanes. “But it’d have to be a hell of a trumpet. Something we’ve never seen before.”
I find all this interesting but need to think on it. Meanwhile, our friend has pulled over in front of a dilapidated row of buildings. Rose tucks in behind a moving truck, the unmarked doing us all sorts of favors. Exiting the autocab, Harris glances our way, but his eyes don’t flicker with recognition. The autocab pulls away and he turns toward a small storefront, the sign overhead aged and hard to read from a distance.
When it’s clear, Rose gets us close and finds the curb. I give the sign above the storefront another study and my skin goes cold. My nuts take a holiday up north.
Oh, Christ.
“Dixie? What is it? You look sick.”
I look at her, praying I’m not gonna hurl on a beautiful woman.
“The sign.”
Rose reads it through the windshield, looking cutely perplexed. “Yeah, weird, so what?”
So, what is I have one phobia. One. But it’s a doozie.
The technical name is Pediophobia. And I wasn’t born with it. It was given to me, like a dark gift, by a chunk of wood with a painted-on bowtie name Charlie.
Cue the flashback.
I’M EIGHT YEARS OLD. MY parents and me take a trip. It’s their anniversary, I think, but that part’s fuzzy and I never cared about clarification. Regardless, after a day of driving we stop at our first destination. A theme hotel.
By theme I mean each room has its own shtick. Jungle. Space. Cave. Whatever.
My folks, being romantic, get the Valentine room. Heart-shaped tub. Plush carpet. Mirror over the bed. You get it.
Me? I’m in the room adjacent. All on my own. Thought that was pretty cool for about five minutes. See, my folks thought it’d be a gas to set me up with what the proprietor alarmingly referred to as the Puppet Room.
