Chapter 3 #2
What was probably totally bizarre for everyone else was normal for us. I would bet you’re thinking that if my dad and his buddies were so connected or whatever, why didn’t I call them about the whole being stalked thing?
The answer to that was a fairly simple one… they were all either old or infirm.
I meant that too.
My dad was a heavy smoker his entire life and had emphysema.
There were only three other brothers left alive in his club.
Rowdy wasn’t so very rowdy anymore after losing both his feet to unchecked and rampant diabetes.
Dork was just as bad, being legally blind to the point he couldn’t ride anymore, let alone drive.
Then there was Jerky, who was on his fifth or sixth surgery for skin cancer.
He’d gotten his road name from the leathery appearance of his tanned hide and how wrinkled he’d been at nineteen.
Now he was in his late sixties, maybe early seventies, and just a mess.
I was kind of amazed he kept going after so many lesion removals and skin grafts.
So, no, calling on my dad or his old club was out of the question.
I let myself into the back door of my tiny and overpriced row house, and dropped my tote by the back door, kicking off my sneakers onto the rack for them, but only after ensuring my door was shut and locked tight against the outside world and my alarm system was reengaged on the at-home setting.
I sighed and popped my neck, pulling my lunch containers from my bag and taking them into my little kitchen to put in the dishwasher after a quick rinse at the sink.
I poured myself a glass of wine from the fridge. A nice, sweet, white I’d found at the grocery. I shamelessly admit that I’d bought it based on the pretty label.
I was hungry and tired. I stood for a minute, debating whether to order in, but decided against it. I opened the refrigerator back up to see what I had on hand that would be quick.
“Ooo!” I quietly declared, pulling a box of Boursin cheese out of the cheese drawer. “That’d be quick,” I muttered.
I set about putting the cheese, a drizzle of olive oil, a handful of cherry tomatoes, another handful of raw spinach, and a few cloves of peeled garlic in a dish. At the last moment, I threw in some capers from the jar of them that I kept in my fridge for a little extra something.
While the oven was preheating, I set a pot of water onto the stovetop to boil and tried to decide if I wanted any protein to go with my meal or if the slightly vegetarian option was good enough.
I caved and took an individually wrapped piece of frozen salmon out of the freezer.
I ran it under some hot water to somewhat defrost it and peeled it out of its plastic vacuum-sealed prison.
“Charlie!” I called out. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!” He didn’t come, which wasn’t unusual. I went to the front door of the house and used the panel there to suspend the alarm.
I opened up and called out again, “Charlie! Kitty, kitty, kiiii-ty!” and was met with the familiar jangle of his collar’s bell and tags. He leaped over the flowerpot on one side of the porch and trotted into the house. I shut the door, locked up, and keyed the alarm back to life again.
“Bro, you almost missed out on a salmon treat with your dinner,” I told him. He meowed at me like I was a fucking liar, which, okay, fair.
“Point to you, Mr. Kitty – you spoiled thing.” I went back to the kitchen, tripping over the tabby and white cat the whole way because he insisted on getting in front of me and twining around my legs.
He knew what time it was, even if it wasn’t all that consistent with my wildly varying schedule.
“Yeah, yeah, I got you,” I told him and set my electric kettle on to boil while I served him up his stinky wet food.
He’d get his salmon treat after it was done cooking.
The water I’d put on to boil for the pasta on the stove had barely started to collect the teeny tiny bubbles at the bottom of it, so it was nowhere near ready to go.
I put the still semi-frozen piece of fish face down, skin side up, on a plate at the bottom of my sink.
When the kettle clicked off, I poured the boiling water over the skin, and it peeled right off the fish while also defrosting it pretty much the rest of the way, and yeah, sorta started to cook it around the edges.
I patted it dry with a paper towel and put it on the third of the pan that wasn’t taken up by the spinach and tomatoes, before it went into the oven.
It went into the oven for twenty minutes at four hundred. You could also do it with chicken cutlets or pounded thin chicken breast, but I liked to get the omega-3 and fatty acids from the fish at least once a week, and this was fast .
About halfway through the pan’s cooking cycle, the water was at a rolling boil. I measured out a couple of portions of fettuccine noodles, enough for dinner tonight and some lunch tomorrow, and stirred the pasta into the water.
The pan came out of the oven, and I portioned out Charlie’s share of the fish, then smooshed everything together. I drained the pasta and dumped the colander into the pan, mixed it, and dinner was served.
It was twenty minutes tops from freezer to plate when everything was preheated and the water was ready to go. That was the longest part, really – waiting for the water to boil.
I put some on a plate, the rest into a container for lunch tomorrow, and felt bad that, yes, I would be microwaving it and heating it up to eat at work the next day.
Tough.
Everyone else did their crawfish etouffee, so I could do my pasta.
I left Charlie to make himself fat and happy at his feeding station and took my wine and pasta into the living room to curl up on the couch.
I turned on the nightly news, and let it drone while I ate and considered the flowers and note I’d gotten.
It wasn’t the first, it might not be the last, but it was certainly tormenting me, though.
I didn’t know what to do about it. I felt pretty isolated at the moment.
River was somewhere in Asia or Europe doing his thing.
Reigel was only seventeen, and with Mom having him as late as she did in life, damn near when I was twenty and already in the college trenches – well, it wasn’t like we were close.
Part of working so hard to become a physician meant there were sacrifices.
Most of the time, those sacrifices made were those of your social calendar.
As soon as you graduated, most of the time your knot of fellow residents and colleagues loosened and unraveled.
You didn’t always stay at the same hospital.
I’d been lucky and had stayed put, but I was the only one.
Everyone else took positions at hospitals far and wide to make a name for themselves elsewhere in the medical field.
I got up with a harsh sigh and went back to the kitchen.
I felt like I was in trouble – very real present and physical danger with Lucas Levi Belmar on the loose. Despite what the NOPD said, I didn’t really feel like they were looking for him very hard, and I honestly didn’t trust the cops much anyway.
Partially because of the lifestyle I’d grown up in, but mostly because of what I saw on a daily when it came to my ER rotations.
I rinsed my plate, the pot and pan I’d used to fix my dinner, and loaded the dishwasher. I ran it, despite it not being full, to ensure that if I came home dog-ass tired the next night, I wouldn’t have to hand-wash anything to be able to cook for myself.
I stood in the kitchen after pouring myself a second glass of wine and, with a bit of trepidation, opened my kitchen junk drawer.
I found it, caught between the folds of a takeout menu.
A card, torn at the corner, with nothing but a phone number in block numbers on its front.
I remembered the case like it was yesterday. Multiple gunshot wounds, one to the upper right chest, one to the left hip, and a third to the left leg.
I didn’t think I would have held onto the card or the memory for this long had it not been for the fact that he’d been a biker. A big man, overweight – sure; but solid, and the look in his eyes as he’d handed the card to me?
I’d seen the look before. In my father’s brother’s eyes as they’d handed my mother a wad of cash, demanding she take it. Demanding she use it to take care of us – because we were theirs as much as hers, as much as my dad’s.
I tapped the edge of the card against my kitchen counter, holding it between my index and middle fingers.
There was no telling if it was even connected to the biker that’d come through my trauma bay that night.
He could have changed numbers. He could be in prison.
He could have died sometime in the intervening years.
But he’d told me, if I ever needed someone taken care of, to call this number.
Honestly, I was less concerned about taking care of myself than I was about any other vulnerable person crossing L.L. Belmar’s path at the wrong moment.
I picked up my cellphone from where it was charging on the kitchen counter opposite where I stood, and took a deep breath, holding it and letting it out slowly.
This was crazy.
There was no way.
I set the card on the counter, but didn’t put it back in the drawer. Downing the rest of my wine, I put the glass in the sink and took myself to bed.
I was letting him get to me. Letting him live rent-free in my head, which is likely what he wanted. Lord, this had been happening for weeks – and he hadn’t done anything yet.
The police would catch him. They had to.
I was making a mountain out of a mole hill…
Except it really didn’t feel that way.
Something in my gut told me to make the call, but it wouldn’t hurt to sleep on it before I did – would it?