When her knee got sore, Eddi got up from Tashjian, stood over him.
She said: "It's my day off. I've got nothing but time and desire. We can talk about you handling Soledad, or we can, well, not talk."
"… lost your mind…"
"I lost my friend. And if I'd just lost her going against a freak… that's what happens. But this wasn't about some freak. It wasn't only about that. She was into something, and you put her there."
"I ca-I can't…"
"Yeah. You can. 'I put Soledad at DMI because The thing about pain-and Eddi was thinking from personal experience-quick, sharp pain you can deal with. It's already dissipating by the time your receptors even register its peak. A lower grade of hurt that's prolonged over time… that's when real agony begins.
She wanted to give Tashjian some agony.
What Eddi did was guttural. Straight National Geographic animal. But Eddi was in an animal state of mind. Instinct, base emotion, had more claim to her than higher thought. She'd come to talk, not torture. Talking, as little as she allowed for, was proving futile. So, yeah, she got animal.
She got on her knees.
She bit, and bit, and bit, and she bit at Tashjian's earlobe.
More screaming.
No lights. No sirens. No cops. Nobody cared.
In forty-eight minutes Eddi would look at herself in a mirror in the bathroom of her duplex, see blood on her sweatshirt, caked at the corner of her mouth. Her mouth? She would wonder what the hell she had done. What the hell had she let herself do, let herself… her mouth? And she enforced the law? She was given governance? She would look at herself and she would see that her professed obedience to order was a suit she labored herself into daily. Ill tailored and convenient, and the moment she didn't need it anymore…
Her fucking mouth?
In just short of an hour's time Eddi would consider all that as she rinsed herself. The water in the basin tinged red.
Now…
She wiped the blood from her face with one hand, threatened toward Tashjian with her gun in the other. "I'll hurt you any way I… Tashjian. Tashjian!"
He held down his whimpers. Listened.
"Any way I have to, I will hurt you. You understand?"
A nod from him. Blood seeping from the hand that clutched his torn ear. A dam of digits useless against the tide. But it made Tashjian forget about the blood from his mouth.
"There… there are, there're… " A bad motor sputtering itself started. "There are cops in DMI, we believe they've, we believe they're a hit squad targeting muh-metanormals. The media, the liberals find out before we can clean it up It'd make us all look like killers, not cops."
"Why Soledad? She wasn't IA."
"That's the point!" Pain made Tashjian impatient. "They never would've seen her coming. Nuh-never should have."
"But they did?"
"You knew her, knew what she was like. I'll never believe sub-some freak got the best of her."
Like a riptide. Concepts coming so strong Eddi could hardly think against them. Had to force herself not to just accept them.
"What aren't you telling me?"
"That's all there is."
It was like her gun jumped out, jumped at Tashjian, at his head, and her hand just went along for the ride.
From Tashjian, a corresponding scream to the blow.
From Eddi: "What else?"
"There is nothing else! I sent her inside DMI, she didn't come back."
"What's 'the end of fear'?"
"The end of fear is when we get every freak there is off the streets of every city in America. Be they live, or hub-be they dead. That doesn't happen if the bleeding hearts… if they can turn things against us."
Heavy breathing. From Tashjian, yeah. But Eddi, chest working hard, was just then realizing how much labor was required to make even a weak man submit.
From where she stood, she said: "I know you think when I'm gone, a couple of hours from now, tomorrow at worst, you're going to crush me. You're going to get IA all over me, if you don't just go ahead and swear out a warrant, I know you're thinking that."
Heavy breathing from Tashjian. Just the breathing.
"Nothing's going to happen to me, okay? Nothing. Something happens to me, I don't get a chance to find out what happened to Soledad, I swear to Christ, swear on my father's grave…
you hearing me, Tashjian? I swear I will put a bullet in you. I have to do five to fifteen for taking a piece of your ear, I might as well do twenty-five to life for killing you. Got that?"
Just the breathing from Tashjian.
Eddi bolstered up. She made her way from the house, to the street, to her car.
Traffic was bad.
The nine miles to her place took thirty-four minutes to drive.
A little bit later Eddi was looking at herself in her bathroom mirror, looking at the blood on her sweatshirt. Her mouth.
She took up a spot on the bathroom floor. Her head dropped between her legs.
It'd been forty-nine minutes since she'd taken a bite out of Tashjian.
The shower had been pointless. The kind of cleaning Eddi needed wasn't going to come from tap water. Standing on the balcony of her duplex, letting the sun and the air do work on her hair, the thing Eddi recalled most about the last few days-trying to give condolences to Soledad's parents, spending time with a boozed-up Vin, talking to Tashjian. Attacking Tashjian- the thing she recalled from all that was being told time and again by people connected as well as could be with Soledad was that Soledad didn't have any friends.
So why did Eddi care what happened to Soledad? Why travel the road that'd started with a pistol whipped against Tashjian's head and a hunk of meat pulled from his ear?
Because, she answered herself, someone somewhere ought to give a fuck about Soledad's passing same as when her time came-and Eddi knew sooner or later her time was going to come-she'd hope to God someone somewhere'd give a fuck about her. But giving a fuck-
Blocks away, a siren. Moving in Eddi's direction. She could tell by the pulse it was a cop's, not fire or EMS. The feeling teeming just under Eddi's flesh: It was coming for her. She swore at Tashjian for being ballsy enough to call her bluff, put the heat on her. Five to fifteen for losing herself, for losing control. Doing battery on a cop. The only thing-the siren seconds away-that was killing Eddi was that now probably she'd never know what really happened to…
The siren passed. Diminished. Faded.
The balcony railing. Eddi consciously loosened her grip that had tightened without her being aware.
So she had been thinking…
"Giving a fuck" about Soledad meant getting even closer to the whys of the situation. Getting closer to DMI.
And getting closer to DMI…
Getting inside DMI.
What Tashjian had said: They'd see an IA cop corning a mile away. They'd smell a rogue before he got planted. And, anyway, Eddi didn't have the authority, was never going to get the authority to do a job against DMI.
On her own, how was she going to get close? Get inside?
And then she had the answer, the answer being absolutely ridiculous. But the ridiculousness of it was immediately shoved aside by the very logic of the irrationality. No one would know. No one would suspect. No one could contest. No one could stop her. Except Tashjian. If he was going to, she'd be in cuffs already.
Then it was too late for debate. It was too late for trying to figure another, better way to do things. Eddi was already over the edge of her balcony and sailing for the ground a couple of stories below.
I've never done anything like this before. Actually, I'm doing a lot of stuff I've never done before. In particular I've never previously expressed myself to myself in writing. And I'm not doing this because Soledad did it. I'm only doing this because it seems like a good idea, a good way to keep track of things. Seemed like a good idea until I realized the first thing I had to document is that I'm losing my mind. To jump from the balcony of my place? for a while, in the hospital while I was getting X-rayed I tried to sell myself that by dumb luck I'd stumbled off the balcony right when I'd come up with the idea of taking a header. But the self-denials just made me think I was all the crazier. So just admit it. I'm losing my mind. At least, I've lost direction. Direction, previously, had been easy and obvious. Straight ahead. Don't think about anything else, don't look around for some other road to travel. Just keep straight on because dead ahead for me was MTac. Ahead for me was a chance to pay hack the freak community for killing my dad on the first day of May all those years ago.