Caught

Caught

by Patricia Rose

The organization had found me. Again.

I remained flat against the old brick wall, motionless in the darkness, breathing as softly as death while my pulse throbbed in my ears. I could see his shadow from the corner of my eye, the curved knife he held so casually, his posture the epitome of nonchalance. I waited for him to lunge, to move in any way at all that would release me from my paralysis, shock my body into breaking free and get me running. After all, I had sworn to myself only ten days ago that I would not go gentle.

My killer did nothing, remaining as still as I. Only the soft sighing of his breaths and the occasional breath vapor gave away the fact he was there. He was wearing a scarf, or possibly a balaclava because I only occasionally caught a glimpse of vapor. I had my own scarf wrapped around my neck and mouth for the same reason; I was also being careful not to reveal frosty breaths in the cold Autumn air.

There was his shadow, of course. He had to be so pleased with himself, so certain that I couldn’t tell he was behind me because the street light was too far back. He was right; I couldn’t see him. But I could see his shadow just fine, bucko.

I had known they would find me. From the moment I stepped into Mr. Vogel’s office ten nights ago, my soft cotton rag liberally saturated with Old English lemon oil in one hand and my cleaning supplies bucket in the other, I knew I had made a fatal mistake, and they would not – could not – let it go. In that moment, I had seen what I should not have seen, and although the assistant director’s smile was friendly and warm, his eyes were cold, dead snake.

“Come in, dear, come in,” Mr. Vogel beamed, sweeping the green ledger book closed and sliding it beneath the blue one while he gestured me forward. “Dr. Sutton, I’d like to introduce you to Miss Sandy. She’s been keeping our offices shipshape for … well, now, how long has it been, Sandy?”

I do “deer in the headlights” well; several people have complimented me on the expression over the years.

“Forty-three years, Mr. Vogel,” I replied, being certain to enunciate the words. Being a middle-aged cleaning woman in the corporate world guarantees you instant dismissal from thought. Being a silent, middle-aged cleaning woman guarantees you invisibility … until you see two ledger books, side by side.

I sternly told myself to not look at them. I ordered my eyes to meet Mr. Vogel’s snake eyes, or even Dr. Sutton’s dull, uninterested shark eyes. I looked at the ledger.

Mr. Vogel saw my glance, of course. All sharks know their victims' tell. That’s why my daddy stuck to Blackjack, or so he said. At least, the House would steal your money slow and honest, he told me a few days after my eighth birthday party. That was fifty years ago, almost to the day. The leftover birthday cake we had eaten then was just this side of stale; mama would toss it out that night for all of the little Templetons that lived in the back alley. That always made me smile.

“I’ll … clean the other offices first,” I told Mr. Vogel, keeping my eyes away from his desk. “That will give you plenty of time to finish your meeting.”

“Excellent, Sandy. As always, thank you for your wonderful work. I don’t know what we’d do without you.” He smiled, and for an instant – less than the time for a heartbeat – I saw the forked tongue slither back inside his mouth.

My cleaning bucket and I got out of that office as fast as we could. As soon as I closed the door, I walked away, not-quite stomping. After several feet, I returned to the door, my footsteps silent, and then I knelt low, listening to the quiet murmurs of the assistant director and the stranger, Sutton. I heard his voice first, the question in his tone. “Benjamin?”

There was a moment of soft paper shuffling as if Vogel had already forgotten me. His voice was distant, his mind on something else. “What? Oh, Sandy? She’s harmless, Walt. She likes to clean the administrative floor at night. It gives her something to do, I guess … and she’s been here forever – before my predecessor, even – so no one has the heart to take the job away from her.”

My heart had gone cold at his words to the stranger. They “gave me something to do?” As if they were doing me a favor! As if I liked cleaning their filth? How dare he?

The only thing that stopped me from barging back into the office and tendering my resignation – effective immediately, which I had never done in my life – was Mr. Vogel’s next two sentences. “And truth be told, she does a much better job than the cleaning service the hospital pays. Their work is shit.”

I hesitated, mollified and conflicted. Did I really want to resign? I liked my job, and at my age it would not be easy to find another. Had what I'd seen really been so fatal? Could we just … maybe … go on like nothing had happened? No. I had not imagined Vogel’s snake eyes and lying tongue. This wouldn’t be something he’d just let go. Maybe I could buy a few days to find a new job … but this gig was up.

I heard the men chuckle and then realized they were moving toward the office door. I grabbed my bucket and ran, not even bothering to wipe down the anteroom. I was well out of sight, on the opposite side of the floor, back in the smallest cubicles, when the men finished their last-minute socializing and headed to the elevators together.

I usually save the smallest cubicles for last because that’s when I’m most tired from my shift. The cubicle workers wouldn’t complain if I missed a night wiping their work surfaces down; as long as I emptied their trash bins, they didn’t notice my work at all. It was only professionalism and my mama’s work ethic that made me clean the cubicles as thoroughly as I did. Because my work was not “shit.” I allowed myself a pleased grin and got to it, wiping down surfaces with renewed vim.

On normal nights, I started with the big shots’ offices. They rarely stayed past hours, and their desks held the juiciest tidbits in the entire company. They had dirt on everyone, and they were careless about leaving personnel files and FMLA documentation out in the open – or sometimes the not-quite-open, but accessible. Dr. Singer was the most irresponsible of all the board members, and her desk was a treasure trove. Huge chunks of gold among an ocean of iron pyrite.

I admit it.

I am a snoop.

Since I was a little girl and fell in with bad company like Harriet the Spy, I’ve been snoopy. I never meant any harm by it, I swear; I just wanted to know what was there. Nothing was as exciting to me as a closed cabinet door or a locked box. Derrick, my cousin, told me I’d never win on Let’s Make a Deal because I could never resist something new and shiny, no matter how magnificent what I held in my hand was. He was right, although I never told him so. The smug expression on his face every time I got a Zonk! enraged me – even worse, though, he somehow knew, every single time, what I would have chosen when Monty Hall came calling, and he teased me mercilessly about it.

I got my revenge, though. The look on his face the day I surprised him …! It still made me chuckle, although that was many years ago and Derrick himself was long dead. That thought froze the chuckle in my throat. My mama had been superstitious of the dead and she would have hissed at me to not laugh at him, even though that had been years before, in our childhood times. I didn’t personally see the harm in remembering some of the funny or happy before-times I’d had with Derrick, but it upset Mama, so I’d gotten out of the habit.

She never could break my habit of peeping, though. My mama must have told me a thousand times that it’s an ugly thing to snoop in other people’s business, and that if I kept doing it, the good Lord himself was going to smack my hand a sharp one, sharper than Sister Anne Marie’s ruler.

That would have been a challenge, even for Him. Sister Anne Marie was infamous in the junior/senior high school. She had some eye-popping wrist action; the senior class swore she could slice a child’s hand right off, filet it without even trying. I never saw that happen, of course, but I did see when Tatianna MacShowan went to the nurse’s office, sobbing pitifully, her hand bleeding through the rough brown paper towels Sister had wrapped it in after whacking her a good one. Sister never liked Tat, never cut her any slack at all. I turned right around in the hallway and went with her to the nurse’s office. I was her friend, and third-period class was almost over. I wouldn’t have to see Sister again until last period, and by then she’d have forgotten I hadn’t come back from the girls’ room. I knew before anyone else in the school that Tatianna had gotten four stitches.

I might have gotten my own whack on the hand for that one; I can’t remember.

I wondered if the man behind me, staying so dead-still quiet, knew yet that I was on to him, that I was, in fact, just waiting for him to move. He couldn’t know that I, also, had a weapon. What would his face look like, I wondered, when I finally put an end to his misery … or he mine? It almost didn’t matter anymore. I was so tired of running, of staying one dark alley in front of the killers, of sleeping only where I felt safe, which was most often with the Templetons in spite of the cold.

So. One of us would die tonight. If it were the goon, perhaps Mr. Vogel would realize that, middle-aged or not, I was still capable of self-defense. Maybe he wouldn’t send another guy after me.

Yeah. And unicorns would fly Santa’s sleigh and fill my crappy studio apartment with sparkly, sweet-smelling, bejeweled rainbow farts. Right.

Back in the real world, Vogel would keep sending them, one by one, as many as it took. They meant nothing to him; he had an infinite supply. I had only one me, though, and one night I would slip, lower my guard just a centimeter, and they would slither in, corner me, and end me.

I would not be an easy target. The bronze letter opener with the horse head pommel weighed cold and heavy in my hand. Never intended to be a blade, the heavy metal item tapered to a fine, deadly point just the same. It would be best as a surprise melee weapon, plunged up under the ribcage with a sharp, upward thrust to, hopefully, puncture the heart and let the killer die quickly, albeit unlikely quietly.

Was that movement?

I wanted to jerk my head around to see, but I knew better. Moving only my eyes, I stared at the shadow. He had moved. The curved blade was now raised, in a position to strike.

A witless neighbor on the other side of the alley turned on a porch light, killing my night vision. It had to be now because he was moving now.

I whirled around, hoping to plunge my makeshift blade into soft, abdominal fat, but he had outsmarted me. He wasn’t there. I cried out in rage, and in a desperate Hail Mary, I threw the blade at my attacker.

I got lucky.

The letter opener hit something solid, and – best of all – the killer’s blade, long, wicked, and curved, dropped from his hand. I was exultant! For the moment, at least, I was alive, and I had never felt so invigorated.

Another porchlight came on, and then the spotlight. Damn that spotlight. Mr. Vogel stepped into view, gesturing with his hand, and the spotlight no longer shone directly into my eyes. He stood there, smiling calmly, trying to cajole me into cooperation. Dr. Sutton stood beside him. There were four attendants, not counting the nurse who held the hypodermic of midazolam.

Was I going to fight them this time? They were prepared for that.

I turned my back on them. I wanted to see what I had done to the man who had snuck up behind me, the one whose shadow had given him away. I looked carefully, the spotlight making reconstruction of the scene easy. There was no man. The plastic skeleton with its plastic reaper’s scythe had been knocked from the light pole near the gate, where it and myriad other quasi-decorations welcomed families and children to the upcoming ‘trick-or-treat meet-and-greet’ to be held on the hospital grounds Saturday afternoon. It hadn’t been a killer. It had been a stupid Halloween decoration.

I turned back to them with a disgusted snort and held out my wrists as if waiting for handcuffs.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Dr. Sutton said, his voice, as always, soothing and kind. “Sandy, do you think some time in the quiet room will help you?”

I nodded mutely.

“Let’s go there, then,” he said, crooking his arm as if escorting me to the prom.

I accepted it, looking once again at Mr. Vogel. His flat, snake eyes blinked, and I saw his tongue flicker in and out. He wasn’t even attempting to hide anymore.

We walked toward the hospital entrance, the one with the sign. “Welcome to Kirkbride Psychiatric Hospital. This is a non-smoking facility. Please wear a mask until you have been given permission to remove it.”

I said nothing as we walked. Mr. Vogel was laughing at me now, just like Derrick had laughed when we were kids, but he wouldn’t laugh for long. I had been brought to this place when I was fifteen, labelled “criminally insane” by the court and other bureaucrats who knew nothing about me.

They had been wrong, of course. I am perfectly sane, but I am also nobody’s fool. I smiled, remembering the glimpse of the bronze horse’s head I’d caught in the grass when I had looked for my attacker. I knew where it was.

I would get it when I needed it.