Dragonfly Vs Monarch. Charley Brindley

Katrina said. “Ballet?”

      For the first time, Rigger saw the tiniest smile soften her face.

      Rachel dressed Henry as Rigger gathered up the flatware. He pulled down his mask as he got up, leaving it to hang around his neck. He walked toward the kitchen.

      Katrina followed. “I’m finished, except for that one room upstairs. You’ll have to unlock the door if you want it cleaned.”

      “No, it’s fine.” He dropped the silverware into the sink and thought about the Dragonfly behind that locked door.

      “Guess you wanna inspect everything.”

      Rigger faced her. “No, but I need your phone number.”

      “Why?”

      “You do such good work, I may want you again.”

      As they walked back to the living room, he jotted down the phone number she gave him.

      “Come on, Rach, we’ve got to go now.”

      As soon as Rigger saw them out, he picked up the phone to make a call. When someone answered on the other end, he said, “Hi, Pugsley.” He listened for a moment. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He pulled the mask from around his neck to daub at his forehead, while the other man talked. “Listen,” Rigger interrupted him and glanced down at the notepad with Katrina’s phone number. “I’ve got a job for you.”

      Chapter Four

      Rigger didn’t die on that night, almost a year before, but something went wrong inside his body. In that bloody parking lot, he picked up some dreadful disease, perhaps something those two deviants left on the ground or in the air. Some alien pathogen that crept into him as he stood looking down at what was left of his life. A timed-release murder, relentlessly gnawing at his insides, destroying him from within.

      He didn’t actually know where the disease came from, but in his seething rage at what those two had done to his life, he imagined they were killing him as well.

      Ten months passed before he realized or even cared that something was wrong with him. His doctor put him through an exhaustive battery of tests, taking almost a week. The day he met Katrina and Rachel on the street was the day he’d received his death sentence. On previous visits to Dr. Ruth Macintyre’s clinic, her nurses had drawn blood and taken other samples from him. They sent them off to some laboratory for analysis. They ran EKGs, EEGs, CAT scans, stress tests—the works. Later came more blood and urine analysis. Then on that fateful day, his doctor delivered the dreaded news.

      “Spongiform encephalopathy,” she told him.

      After a half-hour of sitting beside him on her Sears couch, holding his hand, and going into great detail about current research, online support groups, and hope for patients in the future, she told him the hard truth.

      “Rigger, in all my years of practice, I’ve never had to tell a patient there’s no hope. There’s always been an array of drugs, surgeries, and other treatments, radiation, chemotherapy for me to choose from. But this time, there’s nothing for me to cut out, there’s no tumor to bombard with radiation, and no infection to fight with drugs.” Dr. Macintyre let go of his hand and stood up to pace the floor before him. “It’s an insidious disease that worms its way into the cerebellum and bores tentacles into every corner of the brain. I’m sorry, Rigger; it’s inoperable, incurable. Go home and make peace with your God or get roaring drunk, it’s your choice.”

      She gave him a yellow plastic bag filled with sample vials of Buprenorphine, a narcotic analgesic and powerful painkiller. She also wrote a prescription for morphine, refillable without limit, an anti-depressant, and Nexium and Tagamet to combat the side effects of the other medications.

      Yes, he said in answer to her suggestion, he would get a second opinion, and a third. But he knew his days were numbered. He’d be dead in less than a year, according to Dr. Macintyre.

* * * * *

      The ringing of the phone jolted Rigger from his soft recliner. The sun was up, but the room cowered in darkness, as if fearful of the new day.

      “Hey, Rig.” Pugsley’s voice came from the receiver. “That phone number you gave me to check on? It’s a home for battered women.”

      “What?”

      “Yeah, but you can’t talk to anyone. They have a series of voicemail boxes where you leave a message. If the woman wants to talk to you, she’ll call you back.”

      “Pugsley, that’s all you got?”

      “There ain’t nothing to get; it’s a dead end.”

      “Even a dove leaves a trail through the mist, if one has the eye to see it.”

      “Yeah, well, that may have worked for Longfellow and Hiawatha, but I gotta have feathers. You got Caller ID, right?”

      “Yes.”

      “Then call that place, leave a message for her, and my bet is, she’ll call back from a different number. That’s the trail of your little bird I need to see.”

* * * * *

      Rigger called Pugsley the next day. He’d dialed the number Katrina gave him and left a message, saying he wanted her to come back the following week to clean his apartment. She’d called back an hour later and told him she’d be there on Tuesday.

      “Anonymous,” he told Pugsley over the phone as he looked at the display on his Caller ID.

      “Great!”

      “Great?” Rigger said. “What’s so great about anonymous?”

      “Have you received any other calls?”

      “No, she called just a minute ago.”

      “Then pull the plug on your phone line. I’ll be right over.”

      Ten minutes later when Pugsley knocked, Wolf beat Rigger to the door, yipping with puppy excitement. As soon as Pugsley stepped inside, Wolf attacked and gnawed a shoestring on a shiny cordovan Oxford.

      Pugsley picked up the dog. “Now, this,” he said as he ruffled the blond and tan hair on the puppy’s head, “is a good idea.” The little dog squirmed and licked his hand. “You need something lively in this place.”

      “I guess so.” Rigger smiled. “Too bad he can’t learn to use a litter box.”

      “How you feeling these days?”

      “Better, thanks.”

      “Yeah,” Pugsley said softly. His face hardened into a severe expression. “I can see that.”

      Rigger brought Pugsley a cup of coffee as he wired a homemade electronic device between Rigger’s Caller ID and phone line.

      “Two creams, two sugars.” Rigger placed the cup on the end table, by the phone. “Right?”

      “Yeah, Rig. Thanks.” He took a sip, smacked his lips. “Perfect. Sweet and smooth.” He set down the cup. “Now,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “first we set your phone to ‘Anonymous.’” He pushed some buttons on his device. “Then we page back on your Caller ID.” Pressing the back button on Rigger’s Caller ID brought up the Anonymous entry from Katrina’s call. “Now we do magic.”

      He pressed a button, but nothing happened. Pugsley checked the connections on his box, then on the phone. He laughed when he found the phone was still unplugged from the wall.

      Slipping the phone cable into the wall plug, he pressed a button on his device, and they heard the rapid tones of a number being dialed. After a few seconds, they heard sounds of relay clicks at the phone company’s substation, and a second number was dialed. As soon as it rang one time, a phone number popped up on the red digital display of Pugsley’s device. He flipped a switch to disconnect the call.

      “If she has Caller ID,” he said, “all she’ll see is ‘Anonymous’ on her end.” He took out a small notepad and his pen. “That’s a different number, right?”

      Rigger