Three Times a Lady

PART I

CLEANING UP AFTER THE STORM

‘If this is “normal”, we have a serious problem in this country. The federal government ought to be embarrassed about what is happening. If local government tried to run things this way, we’d be run out of town.’

Benny Rousselle, president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana, commenting on the cleanup efforts following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.





CHAPTER 1

Los Angeles International Airport – 12 May – 2 p.m.

The muscles lining Dana Whitestone’s slender ribcage stretched nearly to the point of snapping as she extended her body a full four inches past her natural height of five-foot-three in a clumsy attempt to stow her carry-on bag in the overhead compartment located above her seat on Continental Flight 942, nonstop LA to Cleveland. Balancing on her tiptoes, Dana nearly had the bag tucked away when a sharp elbow smacked directly into the back of her skull.

‘Ouch!’ Dana hissed, losing her balance and almost collapsing beneath the weight of the bag. The muscles in her overworked arms trembled like high-tension wires strung between skyscrapers, letting her know they’d given her their best shot but also that they were done working for the day.

Dana whirled around and narrowed her pale blue eyes. A businessman wearing a rumpled gray suit stood across the aisle from her stowing his own bag, paisley-patterned tie hanging loosely around his unbuttoned collar. The man looked down and sideways at Dana over his right shoulder and mumbled an insincere, ‘Sorry ‘bout that.’

Dana glared up at him. For one long, satisfying moment, she fantasized about sliding her Glock out of the shoulder holster tucked inside her blazer and giving him a good pistol-whipping right then and there on the plane. Teach him some manners that he obviously hadn’t learned through good old-fashioned home training. Maybe if he knew that Dana was legally entitled to carry a firearm on this flight – not to mention every other domestic flight in the United States – he’d try a little harder to sound a tad more sincere with his apologies the next time.

Then again, probably not.

‘Here, let me get that for you,’ the man said, wrestling the bag out of Dana’s arms before she had a chance to protest or stop him. Leaning over the top of her head, he stored her bag in the overhead bin with ease before snapping shut the compartment and cleaning his hands of imaginary dust. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That ought to do it, wouldn’t you say?’

Dana smiled up at the man through clenched teeth, caught in a strange no-man’s land somewhere between rage and relief. Rage that the presumptuous bastard would dare to touch her bag without her permission and relief that she wouldn’t need to stow the stupid thing herself. In any event, the task was accomplished – which meant there was one less thing she needed to worry about now. And the simple truth of the matter was that Dana could use all the help she could get these days, even from a jerk like this. Life was that bad for her right now. ‘Thanks,’ she said, still putting her veneers in mortal danger of chipping. ‘’Preciate it.

The businessman paused and gave her the once-over, lingering at her breasts, of course. Smooth operator all the way, this one. ‘No problem, sweetheart. Let me know if I can buy you a screwdriver when the drinks cart comes around, ‘K? I plan on throwing back a few myself on this flight. Five hours is a bitch of a trip.’

Dana continued fake-smiling until her cheeks began to ache, at the same time resisting the urge to rub at the back of her head, where she could already feel a golf ball-sized knot welling up. She didn’t want to give the moron the satisfaction. Unbelievably, she also resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the casually dropped ‘sweetheart’. Instead, she simply responded in kind. When in doubt, go passive-aggressive. Irritated Woman 101. Worked every time. ‘Will do, cowboy,’ Dana said, putting enough sugar in her voice to ensure a mouthful of cavities that would no doubt keep her pricey dentist busy for at least a year, enabling each one of his six children’s eventual attendance at private universities of their choosing.

That particularly witty comeback tucked safely away under her belt, Dana turned and scooched past the matronly woman sitting in seat 32a who was knitting a scarf apparently meant for a giraffe. Settling down into her own seat next to a scuffed-up window near the wing, Dana imagined downing an entire cartful of drinks – not that she had any intention of letting the clumsy fool across the aisle buy any of them for her. Still, she deserved that much, didn’t she? Goddamn right, she did. A little something to take the edge off. A little something to dull the pain. And not just the pain of the fresh knot that was throbbing at the back of her skull, either.

Dana pulled on her seatbelt and turned to stare out the scratched-up window. Sadly, drinking was out of the question for her. Had been for quite some time now. Still, that didn’t mean the temptation had gone away. Far from it, actually.

Dana sighed and did her best to get comfortable in her cramped seat. Wasn’t easy. Economy class was worse than a goddamn straitjacket sometimes, but she could never quite bring herself to pony up the extra cash for more luxurious accommodations. And if nothing else, a screwdriver or two probably would’ve helped with that, loosened her up a bit. But Dana and the sauce had been in on-again, off-again, on-again relationship for the past fifteen years now, and when they were off-again – like they were right now – the alcohol seemed to call her more frequently than an ex-boyfriend who’d suddenly realised that he’d made the biggest mistake of his entire life when he’d announced his intention to start seeing other people before finally figuring out that his once-legendary appeal at the bar wasn’t what it had once been. Still, at least the voice was a familiar one to Dana, and the plain truth of the matter was that she didn’t have all that many people left in her life these days with whom she could consort. They were all gone now. Then again, she supposed that’s what you got when you had a disturbing habit of always letting those closest to you die unimaginably horrific deaths.

Dana closed her eyes at the unwelcome thought and fought back the sudden urge to cry. Luckily, it worked. Because not only did she not want anyone on the plane to see her crying, she highly doubted that enough moisture remained in her overworked tear ducts to support another crying jag, anyway. She’d already had enough crying jags in the past few hours alone to last her a lifetime. Several lifetimes, even. So instead of letting the waterworks flow once again, Dana simply opened up her eyes and watched through the small window as the ear-muffed ground crew loaded bags onto the plane. Predictably, though, this excruciatingly mind-numbing activity grew hopelessly boring after about three seconds or so and Dana finally stopped fighting the urge to let her gaze drift down to the soiled knees of her blue jeans. Like it or not, it was time to confront the evidence of her failures.

Matching dirt stains stared back at her. Mocked her, more like it. And why not? The dirt stains had come courtesy of her dead partner’s gravesite, at which she’d been kneeling just a few hours earlier. Still, that marked par for the course for her lately, didn’t it? Damn right, it did. After all, Jeremy Brown’s blood wasn’t the only blood Dana had on her hands; it was just the freshest. And now it was mixed in with the blood of her parents, the blood of her mentor, Crawford Bell, and the blood of her best friend, Eric Carlton. Not to mention the blood of the countless other innocent people she’d let die over the course of her supposedly ‘sterling’ fourteen-year career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Dana rubbed at the dirt stain on her right knee and cursed her wretched life for what seemed to be the billionth time already that day. Between Nathan Stiedowe – the sadistic serial killer who’d turned out to be her very own half-brother – and a pair of mentally unhinged billionaires who’d transformed the streets of Manhattan into a gigantic, bloody chessboard just for shits and giggles, over the past year and a half she’d lost just about everybody in her life who’d ever mattered to her. So no matter how hard she scrubbed or what new soap she tried, Dana knew that her hands would never come clean. Not really. Not in any meaningful sense, at least. Not in a million f*cking years. And the real kicker about the whole thing was that her work was something for which the FBI routinely presented her awards. Life was funny like that sometimes, though, wasn’t it?

Sure as hell was. Goddamn shame there was no humour in it most of the time.

‘Are you crying?’

Dana gave a sudden start and looked up to see a tiny face peeking out over the seatback in front of her. Tousled brown hair rife with cowlicks sat atop unlined features. Big blue eyes glistened with doe-like innocence. Thin lips produced Rs that sounded like Ws – turning the little boy’s unexpected question into Aw you cwying? Suddenly, Dana became painfully aware of the fact that a single tear had somehow managed to escape her left eye and slip down her cheek.

Dana straightened in her seat and wiped quickly at her face with the back of her right hand, feeling stupider than she had in years. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got allergies, that’s all.’ Nothing quite like lying to a four-year-old to cap off yet another red-letter day.

Another face peeked out over the seatback next to the little boy’s a moment later. Heavily made-up features couldn’t hide the lines of exhaustion carved deep around the eyes – eyes that appeared practically identical to the bright blue eyes into which Dana had just been looking. ‘Bradley Thomas Taylor,’ the woman scolded, ‘leave this poor lady alone. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a million times before, you don’t have to talk to everybody you see.’

The woman Dana assumed to be Bradley’s mother cut her gaze back to Dana and rolled her tired eyes. ‘Sorry about that. This kid, I swear. He’s got no off-switch. Not one I can find, at least.’

Dana smiled at the woman and hoped against hope that the allergy lie had actually worked. Because getting caught crying by a child was one thing, but getting caught by a fellow adult was a completely different matter altogether. ‘Oh, it’s no bother,’ Dana said, cringing mentally at what her mascara must look like right now. No doubt both Rocky Raccoon and Tammy Faye Baker would’ve been proud – and justifiably so. ‘He’s just being friendly, that’s all. I don’t mind one little bit. Honest.’

The woman laughed. ‘Oh, is that what you call it? Being friendly? Last week he asked some heavyset woman in the Wal-Mart parking lot why she’d left her house wearing her butt on the front of her body.’

Dana burst out laughing before she could stop herself – the first genuine laugh she’d enjoyed in weeks. Thankfully, some of the mental tension frying her brain escaped right along with it. The relief felt exquisite. ‘Kids say the darndest things, right?’

The woman pursed her thin lips, crinkling up the pale skin around her mouth. ‘You can say that again. And his enunciation isn’t the best, either. After we got into the Wal-Mart he was playing with his Buzz Lightyear doll in the front of the shopping cart and hollering, “White Power! White Power!” for all the world to hear.’

Dana scrunched up her face. To say the least, casual racism wasn’t her first choice of conversation topic with a stranger on a plane. Or with anybody else, for that matter.

The woman read the unspoken disapproval in Dana’s eyes at once. Shaking her head, she waved her left hand breezily in the air, showcasing the four-karat boulder weighing down her ring finger. ‘Instead of “Light Power!”, I mean. His Ls sound like Ws. Anyway, I just about died of embarrassment.’

Dana lifted the corners of her mouth into the semblance of a smile, happy the woman wasn’t stowing a KKK hood somewhere in her carry-on luggage but still not quite comfortable with the exchange. Then again, where was the big surprise in that? Dana might have been a world-class investigator whenever she managed to bring her ‘A’ game to the ball field – according to the media, at least – but she still didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to read between the lines during innocent conversations. To put it mildly, social interactions weren’t her forte. Never had been and never would be.

Thankfully, though, the other woman took off some of the pressure then by pausing and looking around uncertainly. When it became apparent there was no flight attendant nearby, she motioned to her son and asked, ‘Anyway, I’m really sorry to put you on the spot like this, but is there any way you could keep an eye on him for a quick minute while I go to the bathroom? I need to pee like you wouldn’t believe and there’s never enough room in those bathrooms for both of us. I swear to God I’ll be right back.’

Dana waved her own hand in the air, thankful to be taken off the hook and painfully aware of just how bare her own ring finger looked in comparison. Not so much as a faded tan line there testifying to a failed engagement. ‘Absolutely,’ Dana said, trying her best to not think about the fact that Jeremy Brown had been carrying around an engagement ring in his pocket with him when he’d died. ‘Go. It’s no problem at all. Besides, Bradley and I are good friends now, anyway. We’ll be just fine.’

The woman let out a quick breath and reached across the seatback to touch Dana’s shoulder. ‘Thank you so much. You’re a real lifesaver, you know that? And I mean that from the very bottom of my cold and blackened heart.’

Dana winced a little at that, but was pretty sure she was able to stop the emotion from reaching her face. Still, lifesaver hadn’t been a very accurate description of her lately. Quite the opposite, unfortunately. Just ask poor Jeremy about that much. ‘We’ll be fine,’ Dana repeated.

The woman nodded and leaned down to kiss her son on the top of his head. Cupping his chin in her palm, she lifted his tiny face to hers and held his gaze. ‘You be a good boy for this nice lady while I’m gone, OK, Bradley? Mama will be right back and you know what happens if you misbehave.’

Bradley grinned mischievously at his mother. ‘You’ll throw me out the window over the Grand Canyon, right?’

The woman nodded again. ‘That’s absolutely right, buddy boy. And that’s a heck of a long drop, so be good.’

Bradley giggled as his mother scooted out of their row and into the aisle before heading for the restrooms in the rear of the plane. When she was out of sight, the little boy reestablished eye contact with Dana. ‘You’re really pretty, you know that? Almost as pretty as my mama. I like your yellow hair a lot. You sort of look like Goldilocks, only way shorter. And you’ve got eyes just like mine.’

Dana sucked in a sharp breath at the unexpected pang of regret that stabbed her deep in the gut at the boy’s words. From the look of things, though, she hadn’t done a very good job of locking away her desire to have children of her own one day. No big surprise there, however. But at nearly forty years old now that particular window seemed pretty much nailed shut for good. ‘And you’re a very handsome little guy,’ Dana answered, clenching her stomach muscles tightly together in a futile effort to strangle the sad feelings in her belly. ‘Come to think of it, you’re just about the handsomest little guy I’ve ever seen in my whole life. A regular GQ model if ever there’s been one.’

Bradley chewed playfully on his lower lip and cranked up the cuteness factor at that. Apparently, he wasn’t interested in playing fair here. ‘That’s what my mama always tells me.’

‘Well, your mama’s absolutely right. You’re the handsomest little guy in the whole wide world.’

Bradley widened his smile ear-to-ear, showing off world-class dimples in both cheeks. If he could be any more adorable, Dana couldn’t possibly imagine how. ‘Well, we can get married someday if you want,’ the little boy said. ‘When I get bigger than I am right now.’

Dana lifted up her eyebrows on her forehead in surprise. If she were to be perfectly honest about the whole thing, she’d have to admit that it was the first reasonable marriage proposal she’d ever received in her life. Jeremy hadn’t quite had the chance to pop the question before he’d died…

Dana chased away the gut-punch thought with a quick shake of her head, cursing her brain’s remarkable ability to undermine her mental stability at the worst possible time. Everything that had happened with Jeremy was still just too fresh for her to handle right now, too painful; too hard to sort out. Probably would be for a very long time to come – if not for ever. ‘Hmmn,’ Dana said, clamping her stomach muscles together again and managing to keep her overwhelming grief at bay, at least for now. ‘We can get married someday, huh?’

Bradley nodded. ‘Yep. And after we get married we can live in a castle on the beach and ride horses and pick flowers all day long and go swimming whenever we want to.’

Though she’d never been very big on physical contact with her fellow human beings – especially not with one she’d just met – Dana surprised herself by reaching out a hand and touching the boy’s smooth cheek. He didn’t pull away. ‘OK, handsome. You’re on. Consider it a date.’

From there, the conversation drifted amiably from Bradley telling Dana the difference between fledglings and real vampires (fledglings hadn’t yet tasted human blood) to the main reason he didn’t especially care for broccoli. ‘Cuz it tastes gross,’ was his concise explanation. ‘Sometimes I feed it to our dog underneath the table when mama’s not looking, though. Don’t tell her, OK?’

Dana shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. Your secret is safe with me.’

Bradley held Dana’s gaze. From the look in his eye, she could tell that he was deadly serious about this. ‘Cross your heart and hope to die?’

Dana nodded. ‘And stick a needle in my eye.’

The little boy nodded back, apparently satisfied by Dana’s eye-sticking promise. After all, only a complete lunatic would ever agree to such a horrible thing if they weren’t one hundred per cent reliable. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘And since we’ve got a secret now that makes us best friends forever, right?’

Dana reached out and touched the boy’s smooth cheek again. This time the physical contact didn’t seem so difficult for her to initiate. Didn’t seem so difficult, at all. ‘You bet it does, handsome.’

From there, the five minutes alone with Bradley seemed to pass in the blink of an eye for Dana. As he continued talking about everything under the sun (including his slow-but-steady progress on learning how to tie his own shoes), she wondered how long an entire lifetime with him would take. Probably two eye-blinks; max. If that long. The little boy was in the middle of describing to her what he wanted for his next birthday (a DVD of Aladdin, an oversized beanbag and a new puppy dog would do for starters – just so long as the new dog also enjoyed the taste of broccoli) when his mother finally returned from her hasty trip to the bathroom. ‘Thank you so, so much,’ the woman said, smiling in relief and wiping away an imaginary layer of sweat from her brow as she slid back into her row. ‘A million times thank you. I can’t tell you how much I needed that. He talk your ear off while I was gone?’

Dana smiled – a real smile this time. She felt happy to find that she still retained the ability. She’d begun having her doubts lately. ‘Yep,’ Dana said, ‘but in a good way. That’s quite the little conversationalist you’ve got there.’

The woman shook her head in bemusement and reached down to tousle her son’s hair again. Obviously, hair-tousling marked one of her favourite ways of showing affection to her son, and despite Dana’s very best efforts to cut off the ugly emotion at the pass, she couldn’t help feeling a stab of jealousy. She wondered briefly if her blue eyes had turned green in their sockets yet. If that had been the case, she wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. ‘And such a hopeless flirt, too,’ the other woman said, still smiling down at her boy as only a mother could smile down at her son. ‘Always has been and always will be. Oh well, at least he always picks the pretty ones. Say what you will about him, but the boy’s got great taste in women.’

Dana widened her smile as Bradley and his mother settled back down into their seats before falling into a lengthy discussion about what the Tooth Fairy did with all the teeth she took and why in the heck she needed so many of them in the first place. Ten minutes of this passed before the flight attendants took their positions at various sections of the plane and ran everyone through the standard preflight instructions. Exaggerated arm movements pantomimed the placing of oxygen masks over faces while a prerecorded message droned on in the background imploring everyone onboard to secure their own masks before attempting to assist their fellow passengers. Ten minutes after that, the plane finally streaked down the runway and lifted off, shooting sharp little thrills of excitement through Dana’s stomach and eliciting a delighted whoop of glee from little Bradley in the seat in front of her.

Dana sighed and looked out her window again, watching Los Angeles disappear behind them in a swirling fog of gray-and-white jet exhaust. Like it or not – and she still wasn’t quite sure which one it was for her yet – it was time to get back home to Cleveland, back to her old life in Ohio after six solid months of traipsing around the country chasing deranged serial killers.

Dana sighed again, even more deeply this time. At least, what was still left of her old life. Because not counting Oreo – her beloved black-and-white cat who she’d left under the care of her kindly old landlords at a price and security level she never would’ve been able to find at a kennel – there wasn’t much left of her old life back in Cleveland to speak of.

Wasn’t much left to speak of, at all.