Posted by Derby on August 06, 2000 at 19:15:57:
In Reply to: Operation New Prometheus, cont'd posted by Derby on August 06, 2000 at 19:12:24:
OPERATION NEW PROMETHEUS
by Derby
Part 4: Deirdre
At her office in the Department, Deirdre Sims completed the PGP encryption and sent the names and addresses she had found to Gina's new Hotmail account. Then she deleted Gina's e-mail from her own Hotmail account (office_dyke@hotmail.com) and purged the recycle bin. Closing the program, she leaned back in her swivel chair, folding her hands behind her head and exhaling through pursed lips. That had been quite a story Gina had sent her. If Deirdre hadn't known Gina to be about as firmly nailed-down a woman as there was in the world, she would have doubted Gina's mental stability. Mysterious e-mailers who signed themselves "Sargon," truck-driving assassins impaled on hay balers, catsuit-wearing gunwomen who murder families of murderers? In a way, the absurdity of what Gina told her made Dierdre more inclined to believe her. Who would deliberately fabricate such an incredible story? A story that didn't even offer a convient fall guy? Indeed, a story that clearly implicated Gina in at least two felonies, albeit with some mitigating circumstances?
Deirdre picked up the photo on her desk that showed herself and Gina at their graduation from the Academy, each with one arm thrown around the other's shoulder. The black policewoman dwarfed her rosy-skinned friend by a full head. Then as now, Deirdre wore her auburn hair close-cropped, nowhere longer than two or three inches, carefully styled with gel. Her narrow face had sharp, foxlike features dominated by bright, mischievous blue eyes. Her body was thin and wiry; Gina outweighed her by more than thirty pounds (most of it bone and muscle, Deirdre thought enviously). Perky, tapering breasts thrust aggressively against the black fabric of Deirdre's uniform. The frame obscured everything below her chest.
Gina had been Deirdre's best friend in the Academy. As she had with many of her friends, Deirdre had developed a burning crush on Gina. As with many of her friends, she had eventually made a pass at Gina, and Gina had unequivocally informed Deirdre that her door didn't swing that way. But unlike any other friend who had rejected Deirdre's lesbian overtures, Gina had not put an end to their friendship then and there. Instead, they had grown closer than ever before. They bowled together, shopped for clothes together, shot target practice together, and talked out the failings and virtues of Gina's boyfriends and Deirdre's girlfriends. And once or twice a year, when Deirdre emerged bleeding from the wreckage of another romantic smashup with one of her lovers, Gina was always there to give her sympathy and a quiet ear to vent into. Gina would even hug her and kiss her cheek when Deirdre cried, where most other straight women would have recoiled in fear and disgust from such intimate contact with a lesbian.
In fact, Gina had been a better friend to Deirdre than any of Deirdre's many lovers had ever been, a truth that caused Deirdre very mixed feelings. Deirdre still had that crush on Gina, as hot and urgent as ever, and sometimes she remarked jokingly that Gina would "come around someday." Deirdre knew that was nonsense, of course. Straight women did not "come around" to being lesbians, any more than all the pleas, threats, and guilt trips Deirdre's mother had thrown at her could make her "come around" to being hetero. In its unfair way, life had made the one woman who Deirdre cared about most sexually inaccessible to her.
Deirdre raised the photo to her lips and softly kissed the image of Gina's face.
Replacing the photo, she checked her watch and yawned. Carol would be home by now. Deirdre punched the clock and set out to the bus stop. A shower and a good roll in the hay with Carol would do her good right now.
Carol was an actress-cum-model-cum-data-entry clerk; mostly the latter. Twenty-six years old, pretty as the Devil's cute daughter-in-law, with wavy lustrous black hair, a healthy tan, a full bosom, and a curvy waistline, Carol stood a modest five foot two. This had obstructed her career due to idiot directors and photographers who could not see past her stature to her obvious physical charms. Carol's adamant refusal to sleep with male photographers and directors had not done her any good either. Of more concern to Deirdre was Carol's shy, self-effacing demeanor that made her an irresistible person to mother, and the fact that the little actress/model/clerk made love like a lynx with its tail on fire. The sex was so good that Deirdre did not find herself fantasizing that she was making love to Gina instead of Carol. Well, not often, anyway.
Deirdre idly wondered whether Carol's insatiable lust for marijuana would land her in jail before her insatiable lust for liquor landed her in the mortuary. Either way, Carol would soon be gone just like all the others. Deirdre had tried to help, tried to turn the little woman around, encouraged her to seek help. But no matter what Deirdre tried, Carol always found something at the bottom of a tequila bottle that Deirdre couldn't replace for her. Deirdre had resigned herself to enjoying the affair while it lasted.
After a twenty-minute ride, Deirdre got out of the bus and let herself into her apartment building. Bounding up the stairs two at a time as she always did, she unlocked the door on the fifth floor. The kitchen was empty.
"I'm home!" Deirdre called to Carol. "Come on, I expect supper on the table!" she added with a wicked grin. It was their private joke. Carol was quite possibly the world's worst cook. Deirdre always made dinner, or else they ate out.
Carol didn't answer. Deirdre peeked through the door of the darkened bedroom and realized her lover was in bed, fast asleep. Deirdre could dimly see her silhouette in the darkness, lying on her back in her short nightgown, one shapely leg tucked under the other, hands folded over her belly. Walking on tiptoe into the room, holding her breath, Deirdre bowed her head and gently nibbled the lower lobe of Carol's ear. Then she kissed Carol's neck just below her ear.
Carol's neck was soaked with fresh, warm blood.
Deirdre frantically scrabbled for the bedside lamp switch. The light poured over the grisly scene, transforming the blue-black darkness of the bedroom into brilliant scarlet. Carol's throat had been slashed open just above her shoulder blades, by a stroke so savage it had cut through almost to the bone. She had passed out before dying, as her closed eyes attested. Her lips were parted, as if in supplication for one last kiss.
"Carol!" Deirdre screamed, falling to her knees beside the bed, clutching her lover's bloody frame to her chest. "Oh God no! Oh Carol, oh my baby, my baby!" She buried her face between Carol's slick, red-coated breasts, sobbing uncontrollably. For what seemed an hour, she rocked back and forth, trying to squeeze life back into the limp body in her arms, only interrupting her cries to draw breath and to utter an inconsolable "my baby" into Carol's flesh. Her fingers clawed through Carol's shining black hair. It had never felt so silky.
The bathroom door opened. Deirdre slowly looked up, still clutching Carol's corpse.
Framed in the doorway was a tall, brown-eyed brunette in thigh length black leather boots, a sleeveless, legless black leather bodysuit, and gloves, ditto. The clothes, the sunglasses pushed back over her forehead, and the twisting, interlocking curls of tattoos running down both her arms all screamed, "Biker!" At her side, in her right hand, she held a long, brown Auto-Ord .45. She was raising it to point at Deirdre.
Deirdre stared at the stranger in slack-jawed incomprehension. Somewhere in the back of her mind it occurred to her that she should do something, but she was too overwhelmed to respond. Maybe she should stand up. She started to rise to her feet.
The .45 roared twice, the muzzle flash blinding in the soft lamplight, and Deirdre doubled over, dropping Carol's body, as two slugs slammed into her belly. The short-haired cop stumbled backward into the wall, straightening against it with a groan. The assassin fired twice more, sending one bullet into Deirdre's right breast a half inch below her nipple and another square into the middle of her chest. Deirdre gasped, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she keeled over with a thud.
The woman in black leather blew into the .45's muzzle, holstered the weapon, and checked to be sure the butterfly knife she'd used on Carol was snug in its pocket. There was no need to check the cop's body. The assassin knew a perfect heart shot when she saw one, and she knew she had drilled Deirdre right through the left ventricle. The two in Deirdre's gut had been for fun, not due to any lack of marksmanship. Whistling casually, the female assassin headed toward the window and the fire escape, as planned.
As the leatherclad woman passed by Deirdre's body, Deirdre drew the Beretta nine hidden in the small of her back and shot the murderer twice. Both rounds hit her in the left side; one in the bare skin between boot and bodysuit, shattering both of the woman's hips, the other hitting in the side of her belly and passing right through her guts about two inches under the skin, producing an agonizing but nonfatal wound.
Deirdre rose from the floor, groaning in pain from the bruises the .45 slugs had inflicted through the Kevlar vest. Gina had warned her to watch her ass, and so she had. The assassin, rolling on the floor, had cleared her holster and was trying, with shaking hands, to aim at Deirdre. She got off one shot, missing Deirdre's shoulder by two inches, and then the cop kicked the Auto-Ord out of her hand.
Deirdre was a hideous sight. An obscene, mindless smile split her face, and with Carol's gore smeared across her features she resembled some nightmare distaff Pagliaccio bent on murdering the Harlequin who had robbed her of her Columbine.
"This is for Carol," said Deirdre, and stamped the heel of her shoe into the woman's mouth, breaking out her front teeth with a horrible crunch. "And this. And this. And this . . ."
* * *
After that night, Deirdre was never able to remember exactly what she had done to the woman in leather after that first, brutal blow. Pain and horror drew a black veil over her memory. But every night thereafter, she woke up screaming, and knew she had been doing it all over again in her dreams.