"No," he whispered. "I'll meet you later, I promise. We'll talk. We'll go to bed. We'll make love."
"I don't believe you," she whispered back.
She levered his penis out of his shorts and in spite of his annoyance it began to stiffen. She rubbed it slowly up and down, digging her square-tipped artificial fingernails into it, and kept on kissing his nose and his eyes and his lips.
"You cannot do this," he hissed, but she wouldn't stop.
Acting Deputy Chief Prescott let out a grunting noise, as if he were shaking himself. "The real problem we're facing is recruitment. We're still getting plenty of applications but sixty-five percent of them we can't accept. They can hardly read, some of them, and they have no idea of public service. I saw one application last week that said 'I want to be a cop because I can't afford my own car."
Decker heard the faucets running. Mayzie slowly went
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down on her knees, even though he struggled to stop her. She took the plum-colored head of his penis into her mouth, and licked it around and around. Then she lowered her head and took it deep down into her throat. He gripped her shoulders and it took all his self-control not to groan.
Mayzie sucked and sucked, and as she did so she reached around with one hand and unclipped the tortoiseshell barrette that held her French pleat in place. She gave a quick shake of her head and her blond hair tumbled free. She started to suck even more forcefully, and to bite him with every suck.
"Mayzie—" he hissed, but she was determined to prove that he wanted her. Determined.
Major Bruscow started washing his hands, too. "I need to go over our vacation arrangements. It looks as if we're going to have to do some juggling, what with these latest two homicides."
"Who have you got on those?"
"Martin."
"Too many hunches and not enough homework, that's what I always think about him."
"I don't know . . . he's a lateral thinker, and that's what we need on cases like these."
"Lateral, huh! More like prone."
Mayzie struggled one hand into Decker's pants and started to tug at his scrotum. Once or twice she made him wince, and he was forced to bite his lip. How much longer were Bruscow and Prescott going to spend preening themselves? Mayzie was probing the opening in his penis with the stiffened tip of her tongue and he wasn't far away from a climax.
"Mayzie, please—"
Mayzie lifted her head up and swept the hair away from her face.
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Only it wasn't Mayzie. It was Cathy, with her eyes closed. Decker jerked back in shock, so that he was jabbed in the shoulder blade by the cistern handle.
Cathy opened her eyes and gave him a wide, slow smile, the same languid smile that she always used to give him when she opened her eyes in the morning. She continued to massage his glistening penis, but it was diminishing already. Decker opened and closed his mouth, unable to say anything coherent, and his heart was banging so hard that it hurt.
"You're not—no, no—tell me you're not."
Cathy kept on smiling and kept on massaging him. She looked the same as she always had, but her skin was the color of a clouded sky, and her irises were pale yellow, like a snake. Her fingers felt as cold as ice, which made his penis shrink even more.
"Listen, I have to " Decker blurted, and made a clumsy attempt to struggle to his feet.
"Hey, everything all right in there?" Major Bruscow called out.
Decker took hold of Cathy's chilly wrists, trying to force her to stand up, so that he could stand up too, but as he did so the top of her head exploded and the stall was plastered in brains and blood and fragments of bone. Immediately, there was a second explosion, which made her bloody blond hair flap up, and blew away her left eye and half of her cheek. Decker screamed out, "No! No!" and twisted around on the toilet seat. His shirtfront was drenched in blood and a jellyish lump of Cathy's brain was sliding down the lens of his glasses.
"Cathy! For Christ's sake! We've got to—"
But Cathy fiercely gripped his hands and wouldn't let go. And even though most of the top of her head was missing,
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she kept on smiling, and her yellow right eye kept on staring at him, unblinking, as if she still trusted him to save her.
There was a third explosion and the whole of her head burst apart. A blizzard of bone and flesh flew into Decker's face, knocking off his spectacles and blinding him. He wrenched his hands free from her and threw himself sideways off the toilet seat onto the floor.
Major Bruscow shouted, "Okay! Okay! I'm going to kick the door down! Stand clear!"
Mayzie shouted back, "No! It's all right! I can open it! Everything's all right!"
Decker picked up his glasses and put them back on. When he looked up, he saw that it was Mayzie, not Cathy, and that there was no blood anywhere, nor lumps of flesh. He grabbed hold of the toilet-roll holder and heaved himself onto his feet, while Mayzie drew back the bolt and opened the door. Major Bruscow and Acting Deputy Chief Prescott were standing outside, both of them looking baffled and angry.
"What the hell is all this yelling about, Martin? And what are you doing in here, Officer Shifflett? This is the men's facility."
Mayzie tossed back her hair and shot Decker a look of total exasperation. Decker said, "I, ah—I wasn't feeling too good. Something I ate. Officer Shiflett saw me out in the corridor and she—ah—offered to give me a hand."
Major Bruscow looked down at Decker's open zipper. "She gave you a hand, huh? I hope you realize this is a serious disciplinary matter."
"I ate sashimi at Yamamoto. I guess the tuna must've been off."
"Very well. But I don't want anything like this happening again, and you, Shiftlett, stay out of the men's room in the future."
"Yes, sir," Mayzie said, and left.
7S
Decker went to the washbasin and splashed his face with cold water. Then he combed his hair and straightened his bright red necktie. He felt as shocked as if Mayzie really had turned into Cathy, and her head really had exploded.
Acting Deputy Chief Prescott left the men's room, but Major Bruscow stayed. "You okay, Martin? You're not having another of those stress-related things you went through last year?"
"I'm fine. Really."
"All right. I'll go along with that. But we can't afford to have a single detective in this division who can't give me 110 percent."
"I know that, Major. I'm okay. I shouldn't eat sashimi, that's all."
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hicks came back just after five o'clock. His forehead was beaded in sweat, his coat was slung over his shoulder, and he was carrying a can of Diet 7-Up.
"Anything?" Decker asked.
"Nobody saw nothing. Nobody heard nothing. Nobody knows nothing." Hicks popped open the soda and took four thirsty swallows, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Decker swung his feet off the desk. "Can't blame people for seeing nothing if there was nothing there to see."
"I don't know, Lieutenant. I just can't figure it. It's the lack of footprints and fingerprints and fiber evidence that bugs me the most."
"The perpetrator is a human being, Hicks. No human being can walk through life without leaving some kind of a trail behind him. We'll get him, believe me."
Hicks looked at his watch. "I need to be going."
"How's that list of military memorabilia stores?"
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"Seven, so far, and seventeen online, although only one of the Internet stores is in the Richmond area."