Beating Heart Cadavers (19 page)

Caine stared at it for a long moment, still not understanding. Ratsel's curved mouth twisted into a leer.

“There's your fucking son.”

Ch. 26

Merdow paused outside of his workplace and peeled back a wet leaf that had gotten stuck to the bottom of his shoe. Flicking it aside, he shook off his hand and straightened his jacket before entering the office.

As he passed through the room, his secretary paused midway through a call and flagged him over. She tucked her hair behind her ears as he approached the desk.

“Mr. Merdow,” she said breathlessly, her nervousness getting the better of her before the conversation had even begun, “I'm sorry to bother you –”

“That's quite alright, Martha,” Merdow replied, giving her a smile as he perched himself on the edge of her desk. “It's never a bother.”

She smiled, though she still wasn't at ease. Looking at her frumpy frock and undone nails, he didn't have to remember why he had hired her. There was a certain satisfaction that he found in being around people of her type: the ugly and less fortunate always had a way of appreciating him that those on a higher level too often took for granted. And there was less competition, as well. Not that there was ever any competition anyhow, though, he reminded himself.

“What can I do for you?” Merdow asked.

“Well, it's just that you've had a visitor,” the secretary replied. “I know you like them to wait out here if you're not in the office, and that's exactly what I said, but –”

“That's alright, that's alright, Martha,” Merdow said, waving away her concern. “Who is it?”

“I couldn't get a name, just that it's a childhood friend of yours –”

“Ah.”

Merdow nodded to himself and slid off the desk. He should have known that the albino would return sooner or later. He had looked so ill the last time that Merdow had seen him that he wouldn't have been surprised if it was the last time they met: poor Jasper wouldn't be alive much longer, he was afraid. He smiled to himself as he thought about it.

“Thank you for informing me,” Merdow told his secretary, and he crossed the room to his office.

The large wing-back chair was turned away from the door when he entered the room, and Merdow felt his face twitch a bit at the thought that the Spöke had decided to make himself at home. Merdow didn't care if he was moments from death or not: no one sat in his chair.

“Back so soon?” he asked, coming into the room and shutting the door. “Did you think up some more witty comebacks on your way here?”

The chair slowly turned around, and a very separate voice from Jasper's answered him.

“I don't need a comeback, Merdow,” Fields said dryly, her hands folded in front of her as she spoke to him. “I always get the last word.”

Merdow's hands flung out to either side and he pressed himself against the wall, certain that he must have been seeing things. His face was as white as plaster and his expression was as motionless as if he was made of it, and he wasn't certain if his fear was more out of shock that she was still alive or simply because there was a boning knife clasped in her hand.

“F-Fields?”

“Are you having trouble recognizing me?” she asked, kicking her feet up to rest on his desk. “It's only been a week or so.”

“I – no, no, no – you're not here,” Merdow said determinedly, as though the sheer resoluteness in his voice could make it true. “I shot you.”

“Did you? Now that you mention it, I
have
had a bit of a soreness in my back – here I was thinking that I needed a new mattress.”

Merdow shook his head in disbelief, and a feeling of positive illness crept up his esophagus.

“No, no, no – I killed you,” he said. “I – I'm positive: I killed you.”

“Evidently not. A word of advice: if you want to kill someone, shoot them in a vital organ.” She observed the knife-handle that was still pressed between her palm and fingers. “Another word of advice, bury the fucking body when you're done.”

“You can't be here,” Merdow said weakly, finally grasping at the wall and pushing himself upright. “How can you –? How did you –? Martha let you in?”

“I wasn't in the mood to climb through the window.”

“You –? And did you threaten her with that?” he asked, nodding to the knife that was glistening in the light from his desk lamp.

“There was no need: I just told her how you and I used to date. Women are very understanding of one another when it comes to men fucking them over.”

Fields tossed the knife down against the desk; the blade stuck into the surface and quivered back and forth. Paying it little mind, she lazily lifted her eyes back to him.

“I suppose I shouldn't be surprised,” he said, forcing his voice to be smooth despite how it protested. “Cats have nine lives, after all.”

“Funny that you mention that,” Fields returned, her eyebrows lifting slightly. “Do you know what I was thinking about when I was lying face-down in swamp water, Merdow?”

“Ladeline,” Merdow said lowly, “That … you have to understand – that – there's not need to be upset –”

“I was thinking about you,” she continued as though he wasn't stammering for excuses. “Not remarkably fondly, mind you, but I'm sure that that's no surprise. Do you want to know which memory it was?”

“Ladeline,” Merdow said again, still seemingly trying to think of a way out of the inevitable. “I – it wasn't me who shot you, actually. Jasper was the one – he pulled the trigger. I – I was as surprised as you –”

“It was the one where you took me down to the bridge by your house, remember? We'd been having a disagreement. I must have used the phrase that there's 'more than one way to skin a cat,' and you took the reference far too literally. Remember?”

“I –”

“You kept obsessing over it and saying that you wanted to see how many ways there were, and kept asking me to give you a number, but I wouldn't. You knew that there was a litter of them living under the bridge, though, so you thought you'd find out, right?”

“I ...”

“I said that I'd take your word for it, but you insisted on drowning them all in front of me anyhow and laying them out to give it a try – remember that? And when you'd run out of ideas you offered one to me so that I could try to think of another way to do it, but I refused, so you took that as a cue that you had figured it out.”

Fields plucked the knife back up from the table; Merdow shuddered.

“That's … an interesting thing to think of before you die,” he said. “And this was the memory that came to mind because …?”

“Because there
is
another way to skin a cat, Merdow, only I had no interest in demonstrating it or telling you so that you could find another family of kittens to torture. But it bothered me – as I bled out, that is – that you would never know.”

“You always did have an annoying need to be right,” he said weakly.

“Don't you want to know what the other way is, Merdow?” Fields asked. “I thought that you'd be …
dying
... to hear.”

She plucked the knife back up so that it was firmly held in her hand and approached the spot where he stood, pointing the blade directly at the base of his throat. He swallowed.

“Ladeline, killing me is not in your best interest,” he said. “I can be useful to you – I can help you cross the border, or – or get Jasper for you, or – or –”

“I don't need your help, Merdow. And I don't need Jasper.”

“What do you need, then? There has to be something. I have connections – I can get you anything or anyone –”

The blade shifted in her hand as she twitched against the words. Merdow peered at her openly, sensing a weak spot.

“No, you can't,” she said deadly.

“I can,” he persisted. “Anyone at all. Just say the name and I'll give you a dozen people affiliated with them that owe me favors.”

He watched her closely, sensing that there was an answer waiting on the tip of her tongue.

“Come, now, Lina,” he said, using the childhood nickname that she would have thought he'd long-forgotten. He said it in a way that more than feigned affection, and had she still been seventeen, she might have thought that he was capable of anything remotely comparable. “We both know that you're not really going to kill me. You don't want me dead, you want something else – and I can give it to you. Just give me the name. I'll get them for you.”

Fields lifted her chin.

“Matthias Mason.”

The doll-like man paused, suddenly uncertain. The sweat dripping down the back of his neck was hidden by his smoothed dark hair and collar, but Fields could still smell it on him.

“Mason?” he asked. “I – well, I'd have thought you'd know where he is better than me. He's not still at the university?”

“He's lying on his kitchen floor with a bullet through his skull,” Fields said. “The Spöke who did it said he got his name and the reason to shoot him from you.”

Merdow's breath shuddered as it fell from his mouth.

“Ladeline … that's a mistake,” he breathed. “That … that was Jasper, too. I don't speak with the Spöken. I'm – I'm not qualified to –”

“Stop talking, Merdow. I need to find your cricothyroid membrane.”

“Lina – please. Let's not end things like this. We – we both know that you're not a killer.”

“I killed Andor, didn't I?”

“I never really believed that that was true,” Merdow whispered. “I saw the look in your eyes when I told you to kill one of the cats – you couldn't do it. You can't do this, either. You're – you're not like me, Lina.”

Fields moved the tip of the knife further down his neck so that it rested straight between his clavicle bones. The further hastened that his breathing became, the more the blade dug into his skin; the drizzle of blood scurried behind the front of his neatly pressed uniform.

He gave her a look of utmost imploration, but there was still a note of ridicule in his tone when he spoke.

“If you couldn't kill a cat, why would you think you could kill a person?”

She leaned forward towards him.

“Because I have nothing against cats.”

She moved the knife in her hand to adjust the angle of her grip. As her fingers wrapped more firmly around the handle, the tang and rivets were cold against her skin, but the weight felt right as though it was an extension of her arm. As Merdow watched her, his eyes glimmered as they darted between Fields' face and hand, and there was almost a look of fervor on his face as though a part of him didn't want to stop her solely to see if she could actually do it.

He licked his lips.

“I thought you said that there was another way to skin a cat,” he breathed, his eyes watching hers hungrily. “You wouldn't kill me without telling me, would you, Lina?”

She paused momentarily, debating whether or not to tell him; her hand was poised so closely to his neck that she could feel the vibrations in his trachea, and yet her own breathing was more regular than it had ever been before.

She gave him a smile.

“You do it while they're alive.”

His eyes widened in horror as the statement struck him, and he had only just regained his senses when her hand moved back in preparation to slit him open from his neck to his waist –

“Wait!”

The exclamation pierced the air, ringing out into the calm silence that she had forced into the room from her overly-reserved being. His mouth quivered as he waited to see if she would comply.

“Wait,” he repeated breathlessly his eyes blinking rapidly as he tried to stare simultaneously at the knife and her face. “Wait – Ladeline – don't do this –”

“Stop stuttering, Merdow. I want to make a clean cut.”

“I have something that you want,” he hurriedly spat out. “Something – something that no one else can give to you.”

Fields' eyes were cold.

“You have nothing that I want,” she hissed. “You made sure of that.”

“I didn't think they'd kill Mason,” Merdow hurried on. “The Spöken have – admittedly – been going a little overboard as of late. In fact I – I spoke to your brother about it.”

“Keep your conversation with Jasper to yourself. I'm not interested in his life anymore.”

“But are you interested in someone else's life?” Merdow asked. “You couldn't have helped Mason, but there's someone else you can still save.”

Fields narrowed her eyes at him and didn't lower the knife.

“You're tricking me, Merdow, and it won't buy you time.”

“No, I – I just want you to hear me out,” he said. “Just hear me out, and then you can decide.”

“I don't need to. There's no one else I care about anymore.”

Merdow looked at her closely, and he didn't have to wonder if she was telling the truth. The expression etched into her skin had gone beyond her usual indifference, and it was clear that all the time she had wasted being cold and untouchable had been in vain: Mason's death had shaken her beyond repair. He only hoped it hadn't also taken with it her need to fix things.

“What about Simon Caine?”