Whistleblower

Sarah leaned toward her. “Do they know what happened? Has he said anything?”

“He just got out of surgery.” She turned and glanced at the telephone. “I should call the hospital again—”

“No. You shouldn’t. You’ve done everything you possibly can.” Sarah gently touched her arm. “And your tea’s getting cold.”

With a shaking hand, Cathy brushed back a strand of damp hair and settled uneasily in her chair. A bullet in his shoulder, she thought. Why? Had it been a random attack, a highway gunslinger blasting out the car window at a total stranger? She’d read about it in the newspapers, the stories of freeway arguments settled by the pulling of a trigger.

Or had it been a deliberate attack? Had Victor Holland been targeted for death?

Outside, something rattled and clanged against the house. Cathy sat up sharply. “What was that?”

“Believe me, it’s not the bogeyman,” said Sarah, laughing. She went to the kitchen door and reached for the bolt.

“Sarah!” Cathy called in panic as the bold slid open. “Wait!”

“Take a look for yourself.” Sarah opened the door. The kitchen light swung across a cluster of trash cans sitting in the carport. A shadow slid to the ground and scurried away, trailing food wrappers across the driveway. “Raccoons,” said Sarah. “If I don’t tie the lids down, those pests’ll scatter trash all over the yard.” Another shadow popped its head out of a can and stared at her, its eyes glowing in the darkness. Sarah clapped her hands and yelled, “Go on, get lost!” The raccoon didn’t budge. “Don’t you have a home to go to?” At last, the raccoon dropped to the ground and ambled off into the trees. “They get bolder every year,” Sarah sighed, closing the door. She turned and winked at Cathy. “So take it easy. This isn’t the big city.”

“Keep reminding me.” Cathy took a slice of banana bread and began to spread it with sweet butter. “You know, Sarah, I think it’ll be a lot nicer spending Christmas with you than it ever was with old Jack.”

“Uh-oh. Since we’re now speaking of ex-husbands—” Sarah shuffled over to a cabinet “—we might as well get in the right frame of mind. And tea just won’t cut it.” She grinned and waved a bottle of brandy.

“Sarah, you’re not drinking alcohol, are you?”

“It’s not for me.” Sarah set the bottle and a single wine glass in front of Cathy. “But I think you could use a nip. After all, it’s been a cold, traumatic night. And here we are, talking about turkeys of the male variety.”

“Well, since you put it that way…” Cathy poured out a generous shot of brandy. “To the turkeys of the world,” she declared and took a sip. It felt just right going down.

“So how is old Jack?” asked Sarah.

“Same as always.”

“Blondes?”

“He’s moved on to brunettes.”

“It took him only a year to go through the world’s supply of blondes?”

Cathy shrugged. “He might have missed a few.”

They both laughed then, light and easy laughter that told them their wounds were well on the way to healing, that men were now creatures to be discussed without pain, without sorrow.

Cathy regarded her glass of brandy. “Do you suppose there are any good men left in the world? I mean, shouldn’t there be one floating around somewhere? Maybe a mutation or something? One measly decent guy?”

“Sure. Somewhere in Siberia. But he’s a hundred-and-twenty years old.”

“I’ve always liked older men.”

They laughed again, but this time the sound wasn’t as lighthearted. So many years had passed since their college days together, the days when they had known, had never doubted, that Prince Charmings abounded in the world.

Cathy drained her glass of brandy and set it down. “What a lousy friend I am. Keeping a pregnant lady up all night! What time is it, anyway?”

“Only two-thirty in the morning.”

“Oh, Sarah! Go to bed!” Cathy went to the sink and began wetting a handful of paper towels.

“And what are you going to do?” Sarah asked.

“I just want to clean up the car. I didn’t get all the blood off the seat.”

“I already did it.”

“What? When?”

“While you were taking a bath.”

“Sarah, you idiot.”

“Hey, I didn’t have a miscarriage or anything. Oh, I almost forgot.” Sarah pointed to a tiny film canister on the counter. “I found that on the floor of your car.”

Cathy shook her head and sighed. “It’s Hickey’s.”

“Hickey! Now there’s a waste of a man.”

‘He’s also a good friend of mine.”

“That’s all Hickey will ever be to a woman. A friend. So what’s on the roll of film? Naked women, as usual?”

“I don’t even want to know. When I dropped him off at the airport, he handed me a half-dozen rolls and told me he’d pick them up when he got back. Guess he didn’t want to lug ’em all the way to Nairobi.”

“Is that where he went? Nairobi?”

“He’s shooting ‘gorgeous ladies of Africa’ or something.” Cathy slipped the film canister into her bathrobe pocket. “This must’ve dropped out of the glove compartment. Gee. I hope it’s not pornographic.”

“Knowing Hickey, it probably is.”

They both laughed at the irony of it all. Hickman Von Trapp, whose only job it was to photograph naked females in erotic poses, had absolutely no interest in the opposite sex, with the possible exception of his mother.

“A guy like Hickey only goes to prove my point,” Sarah said over her shoulder as she headed up the hall to bed.

“What point is that?”

“There really are no good men left in the world!”

IT WAS the light that dragged Victor up from the depths of unconsciousness, a light brighter than a dozen suns, beating against his closed eyelids. He didn’t want to wake up; he knew, in some dim, scarcely functioning part of his brain, that if he continued to struggle against this blessed oblivion he would feel pain and nausea and something else, something much, much worse: terror. Of what, he couldn’t remember. Of death? No, no, this was death, or as close as one could come to it, and it was warm and black and comfortable. But he had something important to do, something that he couldn’t allow himself to forget. He tried to think, but all he could remember was a hand, gentle but somehow strong, brushing his forehead, and a voice, reaching to him softly in the darkness.

My name is Catherine….

As her touch, her voice, flooded his memory, so too did the fear. Not for himself (he was dead, wasn’t he?) but for her. Strong, gentle Catherine. He’d seen her face only briefly, could scarcely remember it, but somehow he knew she was beautiful, the way a blind man knows, without benefit of vision, that a rainbow or the sky or his own dear child’s face is beautiful. And now he was afraid for her.