Mean Woman Blues

Rosemarie threw the gasoline, you gave the order to get out of there, right?”
    Skip nodded.
    “Good police work. And know what those law-abiding citizens did? Ran for their pitiful little lives.”
    “Oh, hell.”
    “Yeah.”
    The adrenaline high was over, and even Shellmire’s coffee had worn off. “You guys gonna charge me with anything?”
    The special agent in charge spoke up. “I’d sure like to,” Hargett said. “But looks like you’ve got friends…”
    “Also, she did a damn good job,” the Dallas cop said. Skip hadn’t caught her name, but evidently she didn’t care much for Hargett.
    “Yeah. You did,” Shellmire said. So maybe she had.
    “I appreciate the vote of confidence. Could I get out of here now? I need to go and sleep for about a day and a half.”
    Shellmire took her to her hotel, where she tossed and turned, and intermittently cried, and talked on the phone to Steve and Jimmy Dee and Adam Abasolo, and occasionally did sleep until the next morning, when she caught a plane home.
    The crying still puzzled her. She should have been dancing in the streets. But she put it down to the fact that it’s a horrible sight to see a flaming man jump from a second-story window— and even more horrible that both Karen and Rosemarie were probably going to wiggle out from under their crimes.
    Then, too, there was the question of what she was going back to. There was still a big hurdle to get over. She might have just captured America’s Most Wanted, but she was still in semi-disgrace in her hometown— at least till she could prove Jacomine had set her up.
    There was one note of hope, though. When she phoned him, Abasolo had offered to meet her at the airport. She’d kind of had in mind a reunion with Steve, but it could wait. She sensed that whatever Adam had to say couldn’t.
    The first thing he said was, “You look like hell.”
    Skip winced.
    “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think you were that sensitive.”
    “It isn’t that. I was all set to say, ‘You should have seen the other guy,’ and then I remembered how he actually looked.” She shuddered. “You shouldn’t see him. Nobody should.”
    “I hear they don’t think he’ll live out the week.”
    “He lost a whole lot of skin. Blood too, from the gunshot wound. It was something to see, Adam, those two women hell bent on killing him. You hear what really happened?”
    “One threw the gasoline, the other threw a book of matches at him.”
    “Cold.”
    They were talking as they walked to his car. They paused to get in, and Skip said, “Why’d you want to see me, Adam?”
    “It’s not me,” he said. “It’s Isaac.”
    “Isaac? I need an escort to go see Isaac?”
    “I think he’s got something, Skip.”
    It took Skip a moment to recognize the young woman with the worried expression in Isaac’s hospital room, but close inspection revealed that it was only another version of Terri. “Hi, Terri. Nice hair.” It was short, spiky, and orange.
    “Thanks, I’m trying to cheer Isaac up.”
    Skip turned her attention to the patient, afraid of what she might see. But Isaac looked surprisingly like himself; his head was bandaged, but he wasn’t bruised and swollen. He had a bit of tension around the eyes, and Skip remembered what she knew about head injuries. Probably he wouldn’t be out of pain for quite awhile.
    “Hey, hardhead.”
    “Hey, Skip.” He gave her such a sweet smile that she couldn’t resist trying to hug him. A hug is always awkward when one party has an IV, and this was no exception. But she needed it.
    “You look pretty good,” she said.
    “So do you.”
    “Not according to my partner here. You guys know Sergeant Abasolo?”
    Terri rolled her eyes. “He’s been hanging out with us.”
    “He says you’ve got something for me.” She was expecting to hear that Isaac had seen the shooter— hoping for it anyhow— but what he said was, “Daniel called.”
    “Daniel? Daniel Jacomine called you?” There was a serious rift between the brothers.
    Isaac’s sweet pale face scrunched a little, as if he were trying not to cry. “It was so sad to talk to him, Skip. He wanted to believe in something, and he bought into the wrong thing.”
    In spades,
Skip thought.
    “He told me about something really bad our dad did to him…”
    “When he was a kid?”
    “No, uh-uh. The last night he saw him. He thought it was his fault. Errol told him he deserved it, and Daniel believed him.