Mean Woman Blues

all she knew he was as ugly as Jacomine before the doctors.
    She gave him her number, rang off, and waited— but not for long. Karen called back almost immediately.
    “Officer Langdon! I…”
    “Call me Skip.”
    “Skip. I’m dying to talk to you. I think you know things— about me.”
    “You mean about what you’ve been through?”
    “What I’m going through.”
    “Look, can I see you?”
    “Please. Yes. Please. I’m at my uncle’s house. Just get me a pack of cigarettes on the way. Ultralights.”
    “What brand?”
    “Any brand.” She gave Skip the address. “I feel so… I don’t know. Like I’m running on empty.”
    Skip was about to reholster her phone when it rang. It was Shellmire: “Bad news, Skip. They found a body at Owens’s house. No sign of either Jacomine or Owens. We’re trying to figure out if any of her cars are missing.”
    “Whose body, for Christ’s sake?”
    “Young white male, shot in the chest. No I.D. yet.”
    “He’ll go after Karen next.”
    “Yeah, I know. I’ll lean on Hargett.”
    “Fat lot of good that’ll do.”
    “Skip, for what it’s worth, he made a big mistake dumping you. You’re getting a rotten deal all around.”
    “Yeah, well, it’s not my day, but at least I’m doing better than that poor bastard at Owens’s house.”
    But not a hell of a lot better
, she thought.
    * * *
    Karen hated that throw-your-weight-around thing the McLeans always did. Until today, that is. Until today.
    When they tell you your husband’s America’s Most Wanted and threaten to lock you up, you’ll do what you have to. Even form an alliance with a fat, pink-faced, perspiring fool like Scottie Frentz.
He must be happy now
, she thought.
    He’d been trying to date her for years. Now he’d had the chance to be her rescuing knight.
    Still, she had to give him his due. He’d made short work of the overbearing, asshole feds who wouldn’t even let her talk to a cop in the same room with them! What the hell was up with that? Was it some kind of sexism? It seemed to her like the worst form of petty bureaucratism.
    Of course, even that couldn’t keep her out of jail. Being processed was the most humiliating thing she’d ever experienced— and she’d gotten the short form. Scottie said they could have drawn it out for hours.
    She was unexpectedly angry. It felt good. Actually, it felt great. And she had David Wright to thank for it. She was getting her second wind now, thinking things through, and there was a hell of a lot to think about. She wouldn’t have felt like this before she went on his show and got a new life and married him and learned by his fine example— learned to be strong, to care about people who needed caring for. She would have just been some scared little tangle of raw ganglia, afraid to open her mouth, afraid of the feds, afraid of the McLeans, afraid of her ex-husband, just plain scared of everything. And hopeless.
    Right now she had hope— hope that her life as she knew it wasn’t over, that David Wright wasn’t Public Enemy Number One, that there was all some big mistake, and that she could untangle the whole thing— with the use of McLean clout if she needed it. So far it was standing her in good stead.
    Her uncle must have made some high-level phone call— maybe to the governor or something— because she really didn’t think that fat fool Scottie Frentz was capable of getting her out of that place by himself. He’d also made her agree to stay with him and Carol Ann, to keep an eye on her, maybe. She’d insisted on going home to get clothes, however, and for more than one reason.
    Scottie sat happily on her sofa, reading magazines and drinking coffee, while she packed a suitcase. That left her all the leeway in the world to include the emergency cell phone her husband had given her when they were first married. “
If anything ever happens, turn it on
.”
    “Anything like what?”
    “If we get separated.”
    “You mean like a terrorist attack or something?”
    “Baby, don’t even think about that! But take the phone, will you? I’ll feel better.”
    So what did that mean? That he was Errol Jacomine and he foresaw this? In that case, what did he expect from her? That she was going to go running into the arms of a serial killer? Or whatever he was. Not exactly a serial killer, she was pretty sure, if that was the sort of person who tortured women before filleting them. But he’d killed people. Jacomine had killed