by p q laertes

Their ankles had been tied together and their toes turned out, four girls between twelve and fifteen. Their hair had been bleached after death to a color that shaded from yellow to green.

The flash, when it came to Sam in the morgue -- where the chlorine smell was almost overwhelmed by the formalin and the antiseptic and the brutal under-smell of putrefaction -- was brief and total. He was making mermaids.

It took more than that, of course; faces tiled the computer screen and winked out one by one, eliminated by lack of opportunity, lack of ability. It was good solid police work that did it, until there were just three faces, two, one.

One man in a nice two-bedroom apartment with a terrace, who paid for premium cable and the full package at his health club. One man with secrets so heavy he needed mermaids to whisper them to, mermaids to carry them away into the deep.

Sam was on the street that ran behind the building, well outside the net, just waiting for Bailey to call her with the all-clear. Cold. Wondering whether Chloe had outgrown that green dress with the rosebud buttons.

Something happened; she felt it as if a taut string anchored in her gut had been plucked. The net was broken. She stepped into the street, saw him coming, forced their paths into intersection. The net was broken. Where the hell was her backup? Where the hell was Bailey?

He swerved behind a Pontiac held together with duct tape. Sam kept her gun hand braced, watching, ready.

She shot him in the shoulder as he jumped out from under the car, but his momentum carried him into her, bore her down. He wrenched her gun arm out with both hands and brought it down over his knee like kindling. Sam shrieked. She kicked, catching him in the neck with her boot.

Then he had her head in his hands and he was hitting it against the ground, twice, three times.

Gone. Where? Streetlights. Hundreds of lights.

Chloe! Chloe?

"Shh."

Someone was lifting her, carrying her out of the street. Sam opened her eyes and saw, discrete images in sequence: a feather of hair under narrow lips, a blunt nose, the most beautiful brown eyes. The eyes of an angel.

Then he was laying her down on the sidewalk, propped a little against a brick wall. His face was too close to focus on, and his hands were pressing something, a cloth, between the back of her head and the wall.

He breathed out and she breathed in and she breathed out and he breathed in.

He touched her arm and pain leapt up from her wrist to her shoulder like an arc of electricity. Sam cried out, tears standing in her eyes. "Call . . . call 911, please?"

"Don't worry, Samantha. I'm taking care of everything." His hand slipped inside her coat. She felt his thumb brush the underside of her breast as he pulled out the cell phone. A confusion of beeps, not 911, but something familiar. Something on her speed-dial. #2 was Bailey, #1 was home.

His lips moved, half-shadowed by the phone, shaping her name like a secret.

She was sinking into black waters.

His hand, gloved, folded around hers. "It isn't time yet, Samantha. Not yet. Not here. But soon. I promise."

An old man once saw Death in the street. Death saw him, and looked surprised. The old man ran away, ran all night into the next day, until he reached Samara, where he was sure Death would never find him. But as he reached the main street, gasping, feeling his heart clutch, he found that Death was there, waiting. "Good," said Death, "I was surprised when I saw you in your home town yesterday, because I knew we were to meet here today." And Death took him.

Sam woke up in an umbra; everything was shadowed, everything was luminous. Painkillers. She watched the ceiling until Bailey pushed the curtain aside and smiled at her. The whiteness of a bandage stood out against the skin of his forehead like a flare.

"You were lucky," he told her, and, "good Samaritan," and, "didn't leave his name," and "gone when we got there."

Bailey looked at her with a tenderness so complete it almost hurt. It came to her that Bailey also was an angel.

The killer had made it only a block further before they caught him. Chloe would visit in the afternoon, and then she could go home. The three officers who had let the net be broken would survive to be reprimanded. She had been helped by a good Samaritan. Samara, where the old man had his appointment with the Angel of Death.

Soon, I promise.

"The Kindess of Strangers" 1998 by p q laertes
pqlaertes yahoo com
The Fake Book
Dedicated to the Skewed Believers.
Profiler created by Cynthia Saunders