Page 36 of Never Flinch

On the night of Kate’s Omaha gig, Chrissy Stewart is staying at the Sunset Motel on the outskirts of Omaha. It’s a pit. Such fly-by-night businesses still take cash, and sometimes rent rooms by the hour. Chrissy will stay the night, but be up bright and early the next day. She wants to beat the baby-killing bitches to their next stop.

Or not, if the anthrax has done its job.

In Room 6, Chrissy takes off the gray pants, white shirt, and blue blazer that served her as an usher’s uniform—probably wasted effort, the stupid rent-a-cop hardly looked up from his book. She takes off the wig and the bathing cap she wears beneath it. She goes into the plastic-walled closet that serves as a bathroom, and washes the light makeup from her face. Tomorrow she’ll throw the usher clothes, plus the wig and bathing cap, in a rest area dumpster miles from here.

Chrissy can’t murderallthe women who want to regain the right to kill the next generation, but she and her brother can get the one who makes the most noise, who stands so stridently and shamelessly against God’s law. Although childless herself, Chrissy knows what the equally childless Kate McKay doesn’t: the loss of a child is like the loss of heaven.

“Don’t think about it,” she mutters. “You know what will happen if you do.”

She certainly does. Thinking about the loss of the child will bring memories. A limp hand for instance, fingernails sparkling in the morning sun. It will bring on a headache, one of the bad ones. As if her brain is trying to rip itself in two.

She travels with two suitcases. From one she takes a shorty nightgown, then lies down and turns off the light. Outside, to the west, an endless freight train is thundering by.Maybe Kate’s dead already. Kate and the bitch she runs with. Maybe my work is done.

So thinking, Chrissy drifts off to sleep.

6

Corrie has asked for all the pictures the sheriff showed them to be forwarded to her email, and the sheriff agreed. The next morning, Kate comes into Corrie’s room. Kate looks both younger and more vulnerable in her pajamas.

“Had enough?”

Corrie shakes her head.

Kate flashes a grin. “Screw that bitch if she can’t take a joke, right?”

“Right. FIDO.”

Kate frowns. “What?”

“FIDO. Marine saying. It stands for ‘fuck it, drive on.’?”

“Good one,” Kate says, “but we’ve got some time off before we have to FIDO to Des Moines. Thank God. There’s a sports bar down the street, we could watch the Yankees play Cleveland. Day game. Split a pitcher of suds. Interested?”

“Sure,” Corrie says.

“Hey, wait—are you old enough to drink?”

Corrie gives her a look.

Kate bursts out laughing.

7

Kate and Corrie watch the Yankees play the Guardians at DJ’s Dugout Sports Bar in Omaha. In Buckeye City, Dean Miter is watching the game in Happy, the bar where John Ackerly works most days. Dean is an eighteen-year veteran of the Buckeye City police force and hasbeen slated by Lew Warwick to be the starting pitcher for the police team in the Guns and Hoses softball game at the end of the month. Why not? Dean hurled three shutout innings last year before the FD broke through and scored six runs against two relief pitchers.

Dean is off-duty today. He’s drinking his second beer-and-a-shot, watching the game, bothering nobody. Someone sits down next to him at the bar, giving his shoulder a hard bump. Beer sloshes on the bar top.

“Oh, pawdonme,” the newcomer says.

Dean looks around and sees, glory be, the fireman he struck out to end his stint in last year’s game. Before that game, this fellow had yelled across the field that he’d never seen such a bunch of blue pussies. After Dean struck him out, Dean had called, “Who’s the pussy now, Bush League?”

“Watch yourself,” Dean says now.

The fireman, a burly fellow with a big head, gives Dean a look of exaggerated distress. “Didn’t I say pawdon me? Why so touchy? Could it be because we’re going to light you up again this year?”

“Pipe down, fool. I’m trying to watch the game.”

The bartender—not John Ackerly, it’s John’s day off, but just as adept at seeing when trouble may be brewing—ambles over. “All friends here, right?”

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