"He's a hired killer," I said.
"You know the story?"
"I can guess some of it."
"So what else can you guess, Sam?"
"He was hired by Ira Lang."
Sherbet raised his thick finger and shot me. The finger glistened stickily. "Bingo."
Chapter Forty-one
Detective Sherbet sat back and folded his hairy arms over his roundish stomach. I mostly wasn't attracted to roundish stomachs and hairy arms - or, for that matter, hairy anything. But on Sherbet, the longish arm hair and extra stomach padding seemed right. On him, oddly, both were attractive. If he had been single and I had been another twenty years older, there was a very good chance I would have had the hots for him.
He seemed to be noticing me looking at his stomach and unconsciously adjusted his shirt over, not realizing that his padded stomach was adding to his manliness. At least for me. I can't vouch for every woman.
I suspected I had daddy issues, whatever that meant.
"He also said something else," said Sherbet. As he spoke, he looked through the sliding glass door at Monica, who was sitting on the edge of the bed and wringing her hands and rocking slightly. I couldn't be sure, but I think she was mumbling something, or singing something. The woman was tormented beyond words, and my heart went out to her.
I looked back at Sherbet, "What else?"
"He told me that Ira Lang would never give up trying to kill her, that Lang had approached many, many people in prison, and that just because we caught him once, didn't mean we were going to catch the next killer that Ira hired, or the next, or the next."
"He's going to keep coming after her," I said. "Forever, until one or the other dies."
"Which, for him, is sooner rather than later, since he's on Death Row."
"Still a few years away, though."
"Or longer," said Sherbet. "Unless, of course, you visit him again, in which case he might not survive the meeting."
"He threatened the kids."
"You are a mama grizzly."
"I'm a mama something."
Sherbet looked at me, seemed about to say something, paused, then seemed to go a different direction. "Anyway, he's out of the hospital and back on Death Row."
"Where he belongs."
"I couldn't agree more."
We were silent. Sherbet's overtaxed digestive system moaned pitifully as it went to work on the greasy donuts.
"Which reminds me," said Sherbet, reaching down and opening his briefcase. He extracted a smallish electronic gizmo thingy. "I want to show you something."
"Your new DVD player?" I asked.
He grinned. "Sort of. It's a loaner from the department."
I watched with mild amusement as his sausage-like fingers tried to manipulate the small piece of electronic gadgetry. He picked it up and examined it from every angle.
"Everything's so damned small," he grumbled.
"Let me have a look, detective," I said. He gratefully handed it to me. I took it from him, and flipped a switch on the side and the player whirred to life.
"Should I press 'play'?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
I set the player on the table between us and pressed 'play', and a moment later I saw a sickening scene. It was footage from a security camera, looking down on two people conversing in a jail visiting room. Both were on the phone, speaking to each other through a thick, bulletproof glass window.
Sherbet was watching me closely as the video played on the little screen. I hate being watched closely. My first instinct was to turn the damn thing off and fling it over the balcony railing like I had with the donuts.
My next instinct was to make a joke or two about the video, perhaps something about the camera adding ten pounds. But there was no joking my way out of this.
I had been wrong: there was a camera in the jail's visiting room, perhaps hidden.
Besides, I felt too sick to joke, so instead I watched the tape with horror and curiosity. After all, it was a rare day that I actually got to see myself.
Of course, I had worn a lot of make-up that night, knowing there would security cameras everywhere, and wanting to make sure I didn't show up as partially invisible. In fact, anytime I was anywhere that had heightened video security, I made it a point to wear extra make-up.
Anyway, the video was grainy at best. No sound, either. On the tiny screen, I watched as I sat forward in the chair, speaking deliberately to Ira. Ira was leaning some of his weight on his elbows and didn't seem to blink. Ever. I hadn't noticed that before. Then again, that could have been a result of this grainy image. The camera had been filming from above, in the upper corner of the visitor's side of the room.
From this angle, I could see some of my profile, and I watched myself, fascinated, despite my mounting dread over what was about to come.
In the video, I looked leaner than I had ever looked in my life. A good thing, I guess. I also looked strong, vibrant. I didn't look like the stereotypical sickly vampire. But I knew that wasn't always the case. This was early evening. I always looked better in the early evening. Or so I was told.
And, if I do say so myself, I looked striking. Not beautiful. But striking.
As the video played out, I must have said something with some finality because I ducked my head slightly and reached for my purse. As I did so, Ira said something to me, and I immediately sat back down again. I leaned closer to the window. Ira did, too, grinning stupidly from behind the protective glass.
Now my face looked terrible. I suddenly didn't look like me. Truth be known, I didn't recognize the woman in the video clip at all. She seemed strange, otherworldly. Her mannerisms seemed a little off, too. She moved very little, if at all. Every movement controlled, planned, or rehearsed. In fact, the woman in the video seemed content sitting perfectly still.
But now I wasn't sitting still. Now I was motioning with my finger for Ira to come ever closer. And he did.
One moment I was sitting there, and the next I was reaching through the destroyed glass, grabbing Ira, slamming his face over and over into the glass. What I saw didn't make sense, either. A smallish woman reaching through the glass, manhandling a grown man, a convict, a killer. Slamming him repeatedly against the glass as if he were a rag doll.
None of it made sense; it defied explanation.
It defied normal explanation.
A moment later the guards burst into the room. The final clip was an image I had not seen since I was struggling under a sea of guards. It was an image of Ira's face, partially pulled through the glass, his skin having been peeled away from his forehead like a sardine can. Also, the glass was cutting deeply into his throat, and he was jerking violently, gagging on his own blood, which flowed freely down the glass, spilling over both sides of the counter, dripping, dripping. He would have surely died within minutes if he had not been given emergency help.