Sydney Ryan - High-Heeled Alibi

The short cop snorted. “I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on. They didn’t want to send a car to claim the body. I say we FedEx this poor bum’s ashes right to the commissioner.”

“A fugitive?” Bitsy’s skepticism echoed off the dark-paneled walls. “Possibly armed and dangerous?”

The older cop huffed another disgusted breath. “Not any longer.”

Bitsy studied the two men. She slowly smiled. “You guys are good. For a moment, you almost had me believing you’re real cops.”

Hector looked down at her. “Ma’am,” he said, pointing to the patch on his shirtsleeve. “We’re members of the Canaan City Police Department.”

Bitsy stared at the colored patch, her smile dissolving. At one of the courses she’d taken on self-defense, she’d learned crimes were often committed by assailants posing as policemen. Uniforms, security badges and guns were easy to obtain. There was one way, however, to determine if someone was really a legitimate member of the police force: their uniforms would have departmental-issued patches on the upper sleeve. These patches could not be duplicated. Her gaze met Hector’s.

“You guys are real cops?”

“Ma’am, that’s what we’ve been trying to tell you.”

She didn’t wait to hear more. She turned and ran down the stairs, past the chrome and linoleum rooms, ignoring the policemen’s shouts to stop until she came to the room where the “corpse” had been. She stopped in the entryway, panting.

The room was empty.

She spun around and faced the police right behind her. “He’s gone!”

“Yes.” The short one nodded. “Dearly departed.”

She shook her head. “He’s not dead.”

Again a long, puzzled look passed between the partners. “Ma’am,” Hector began.

“Shh! Did you hear that?” Bitsy looked to the stairs. Above them was the sound of footsteps crossing the oak floor.

“Inside.” Hector pushed Bitsy into the room as both policemen drew their guns.

The footsteps continued to the stairs, down the steps, into the hall at the bottom, periodically pausing as if stopping at each room’s entrance, checking inside. The older policeman flattened himself unseen at the right side of the door, his handgun aimed at the entrance. The tall one positioned himself at the other side, pushing Bitsy behind him. Shielded by his back, she sensed his trained tautness. Her own muscles clutched with terror. The footsteps had stopped at the room next door. They started again, slow, hesitant. The policeman’s shoulders and spine were rigid, his body ready. Bitsy held her breath.

Gwen appeared in the doorway, tiny in the tall jamb. She gasped, her hand flying to the hollow of her throat. “Bitsy?”

Relief seemed to melt Bitsy’s very marrow. She started to step out from behind Hector. “Gwen, thank goodness, it’s—”

Hector pulled her roughly back behind him.

“Hey, let go!” She tried to shake his hand off her arm.

Hector’s partner stepped out from the wall. Gwen, her features frozen with fear, looked from one pointed gun to the other.

“Bitsy?” Her voice was thin, wavering. “What’s going on?”

Bitsy tried to sidestep Hector once more, but his grip only tightened on her forearm.

“At ease, big boy,” she snapped at him. “Put your gun back where it belongs,” she ordered the other cop. “Can’t you see the poor child is terrified?”

“What’s your name?” Hector barked.

Gwen stared at the gun pointed at her heart. Her throat worked but no sound came out.

“Gwen Rinkert,” Bitsy supplied. “She works here.”

The policemen didn’t lower their weapons.

“Go ahead,” Bitsy encouraged. “Tell them all about the ‘corpse’ that came in earlier today.”

Gwen looked from the gun to Bitsy to the police. Trying to avoid looking at the aimed guns, she said, “I came on about nine tonight. The corpse was already here.”

“Was it dead?” Hector demanded.

Gwen’s incredulousness momentarily eclipsed her fear. “Officers, with all due respect, that is the definition of a corpse.”

“He wasn’t dead,” Bitsy contradicted. “Less than twenty minutes ago, he sat up right here.” She pointed at the gurney. “And said, ‘Something tells me this isn’t the Pearly Gates.’ He was blond, blue-eyed, tall. I’d say six-two, like the report. He was well built. He obviously worked out.” She stared at the empty metal bed. “He had a good smile.”

“He couldn’t have gotten too far,” Hector said to his partner. “Get on the radio and see if there’s immediate backup in the area. Call the station and tell them we’re going to need more men. He could be to the border by the time we get done checking every masked person out there.”

By the time Hector had ushered the women upstairs, Bitsy heard the wail of an approaching siren. When the other cop came back from the squad car, Hector pointed at Gwen and said, “I’ll stay here with her until back-up arrives.” His finger swung to Bitsy. “You take her downtown for further questioning.”

“What for?” Bitsy demanded as the older cop grasped her upper arm. “Am I being charged with something?”

“We just want to ask you a few more questions,” the older cop reassured her, steering her toward the front door.

Bitsy glanced over her shoulder as she was ushered out the door. She called to Gwen, “Get ahold of Grey.”

The cop opened the car’s door and she slid into the back of the cruiser with its unique odor of heavy, desperate sweats.

Costumed children came around the far corner, headed to the first house at the end of the street. In the split second before the car door slammed closed, Bitsy heard the night’s calling card.

“Trick or treat.”

“An APB, Arthur?” Mick asked. His last identity had been Michael James, but he had quickly become known as Mick and preferred it. Only Arthur insisted on the more formal name he’d last christened the man.

Arthur opened the white van’s side panel. The metallic sign on the driver’s door said Frieda’s House of Flora and Fauna. Arthur was a spare man, elegant in body and movement. Forbearance in his stance and natural expression, he stood by the openmouthed van and waited.

Mick’s gaze shifted from the black insides of the van to the tempered features of his mentor. “I need an explanation.”

“An explanation?” The older man employed the same economy of speech as he did in physical appearance.

“I wake up, not at the arranged location with instructions for my next assignment, but—” he gestured at the building behind them “—at a funeral fun house greeted by the beautiful Bitsy of the mortuary business and her glad bag of embalming tools.”

“Bitsy.” Arthur tested the name.

“You descend from Mount Olympus or whatever lofty peak Central occupies these days, complete with a chariot. Not to mention, thanks to San Francisco’s boys in blue, my identity has been compromised up and down the California coast.”

A siren wailed through the night.

Arthur looked at Mick. He smiled pleasantly. “Shall we go?”

“What’s going on, Arthur?”

The other man had rounded the front of the van and was climbing into the driver’s seat. He buckled and adjusted his seat belt, smoothed his pants’ creases and started the engine. He turned in the seat, and with genteel features and a civil smile, he looked at Mick. “Get in, Michael.”

Something was very wrong.

Mick climbed inside the back of the van, slamming the side door shut behind him. The van was dark, no overhead light, no seats in the back. Arthur waited until Mick arranged himself on the cool metal floor, then eased the van out from behind the funeral home’s storage shed.

Mick’s questions started immediately. “Did last night’s operation go down as planned?”

“Shh.” Arthur raised a tapered finger. “Let me have my Mel Gibson getaway moment here.”

Mick shook his head, a smile starting as the van smoothly accelerated to thirty miles per hour and held steady. “Yeah, you’re one big bad ass, Arthur.”

“Yes,” was all the other man would concede.

They drove in silence, away from the sirens. It was futile to ask any more questions. Arthur would give him the answers when he was ready. Mick saw Arthur touch the pearl-gray streak at his temple. Beneath that rakish silver wave, there was a scar. Beneath that a metal plate.

“Congressman Kittredge was shot this evening,” Arthur said.

Mick listened and waited. The old man had never uttered an unnecessary word in his life.

“He was leaving a late dinner at a Bay Area restaurant when a man wearing a Halloween mask approached. The valet saw the gun and pushed Kittredge out of the way. The bullet hit the congressman’s shoulder instead of his heart. The valet’s a hero. The assassin got away.”

The sheet was loosening about Mick’s body. He pulled it tighter. He could feel the texture of the road through the van’s bare floor.

“They’re going to say you did it,” Arthur told him.

Mick closed his eyes. There was a rolling, soothing movement to the blackness.

“I issued the APB, tipped off the locals about the location of the funeral home.”

Mick’s eyes opened.

“If the local police had found you sooner, it could’ve provided an alibi. At the very least, protection. Until I could get to you, you were safer in the company of the police than our own men.” The old man’s hands were steady on the wheel, his gaze aimed straight into the night.

“I didn’t mean to involve the woman. Bitsy.”

The name sounded across the empty van. Mick saw the woman in stilettos stomping around the room, brandishing a scalpel, spouting indignation.

“She’s an alibi for you. A liability for the Agency.”

Mick’s hand fisted, ached to slam against the floor. He resisted. The gesture was ineffectual. Unvented rage was not.

“I erased your identity,” Arthur continued.

“If the Agency is trying to get me killed, they won’t be too happy about that.”

“It’s to protect the Agency as much as you. When the feds or the locals look, they’ll find nothing, a man who never existed. Still they’ll have your name. Others will know it. Grainy photos, a crude sketch or two will follow. It’s out of my control now, Michael.”

Mick waited for Arthur to tell him more, to give him a rationale. The darkness and the silence became too much, so finally he asked, “Why?”

The other man’s eyes looked into the night. “There’s not always an explanation, Michael. Life is random. Hit or miss. You stepped into its path.”

“What about the raid on the arms smugglers last night?”

“They got seven arrests, little fish, some AK-47s.” Arthur’s voice was flat. “The operation was compromised. There was a leak. The key figures had got out of the U.S. and escaped back to the Far East by last night.”

Mick’s fingers remained furled into a tight ball. Since the first death, he’d held fast to his rage. “The operation was deliberately sabotaged.” His voice was as level as his mentor’s.

“An investigation on the incident will be conducted through the traditional channels,” Arthur said.

“It should’ve gone down as planned.”

“Life,” Arthur said. “Hit or miss.” He touched his temple.

Mick knew he wouldn’t get much more information. The Agency’s M.O. was maximum secrecy equated maximum security and efficiency. Agents reported to an assigned contact. They were given only the necessary information to carry out their assignments. Each agent knew if their cover was blown, they’d be abandoned. It was the sacrifice of one for the survival of many. If nothing went wrong, the system worked.