Page 95 of Identity Unknown
Getting out my keys, I climb the front steps of the quaint white brick guest cottage, a cat flap in the lower part of the door I unlock. I flip on the lights inside, taking off my slicker so it doesn’t drip everywhere, hanging it on the coat rack. The wide board pumpkin pine flooring, the exposed brick walls are the same as the house, and I call out to Lucy’s cat.
“Merlin? Hello? Time for breakfast!”
Beyond the front door is the small kitchen, and I place the containers of food inside the refrigerator while calling out to Lucy’s capricious and elusive pet rescued from a parking lot. It’s unusual that he’s not slinking in to greet me. Lucy jokes about him being a watch cat, and to some extent he is. When he’s here and the front door opens, he flies in to see who it is.
“Merlin?” I drop my keys on the kitchen counter. “Please don’t tell me you’re outside somewhere!”
“He’s in here with me,” a familiar voice answers from the sitting room, and my heart slams against my chest.
No. Please God, no.
“Sitting right here next to me purring,” the voice adds, and I didn’t bring my gun.
“We’re looking each other in the eye, friends now. Aren’t we, Merlin…?”
Frantically opening drawers, I find the Sig Sauer pistol Lucy usually keeps in here. Holding it in both hands, the barrel pointed up, I quietly leave the kitchen. The next room is the living area where tables are arranged with laptops, arrays of video screens and spectrum analyzers with blinking lights.
“Hello, Kay, it’s been a while,” the voice says, and it’s not Janet talking through Lucy’s computer.
I walk to the desk, and Merlin is sitting on top of it staring at the curved computer monitor.
“What do you want?” I ask Carrie Grethen.
“I see you’re armed and dangerous, but it’s not like you can shoot me.” Her scarred face smiles at me remotely, her hair dyed the same color as Lucy’s and cut similarly.
She’s seated on a green leather couch inside a room with fine art on the walls. In the background are antiques, arrangements of fresh flowers, a window overlooking the skyline of an old city.
“Let me adjust this a bit.” Carrie moves her computer monitor, making sure I don’t miss the wicker gift basket, the bottle of red wine uncorked on the glass coffee table.
The focaccia bread I baked has been torn into pieces she’s dipping into a saucer of the olive oil I gave Sal for his birthday. For an instant, I can see Carrie’s left hand, mangled bythe drone that flew into her years earlier. The propellers sliced open her face, and severed the tips from two of her fingers. She’s wearing Sal’s inexpensive beaded bracelets, the ones he always wore, my rage so intense I almost can’t bear it.
“The Tignanello has hints of violets and strawberries. It’s quite nice and travels well.” She takes another sip, savoring it like a sommelier.
Holding the glass of Tuscany red in her mangled fingers, she makes sure I never forget the damage I inflicted when she showed up on my property. This was before I moved back to Virginia and my sister inadvertently led the wolf to the door in Cambridge, Massachusetts. All I did then was finish what Carrie started. She makes her own choices. They always turn out catastrophically for someone.
“Not a bad year.” She sets down the wineglass with a sharp clink as I set down the Sig Sauer on top of the desk.
“What do you want, Carrie?”
“I have a few things to share with you, Kay.”
I pet Merlin’s head, and he’s purring. But it’s not his normal purring. It’s the sound he makes when threatened, a mixture of a purr and a growl with the hint of a yowl. As if he’s gargling unsettledness and about to bare his claws.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I tell him, and he twitches his tail, staring at Carrie’s face on the monitor. “What did you do with Janet?” I ask.
“Oh, she’s here somewhere.” Carrie’s gaze is like looking into chaos. “Janet, oh Janet? Where are you?” Carrie laughs. “Oh, there we go, come here, baby.” She switches to baby talk, smiling lovingly on a curved monitor big enough for gamers.
She holds out her damaged hand, and I again notice the bracelets. Around her neck is Sal’s fossilized shark’s tooth on a gold chain, my fury smoldering.
“Come, Choo Choo.” She pats the sofa, and the big spotted cat jumps up next to her.
The male cheetah I saw in the Oz theme park. Or I’m assuming it’s the same one, purring so loudly I can hear it, and no wonder Merlin is growling and ready to pounce.
“You remember Choo Choo from Somewhere Over the Rainbow, don’t you, Kay? That was him you heard moving around while you were borrowing the ladies’ room in the Witch’s Castle. Well, both of us were right above your head at one point,” Carrie says, rubbing his ears. “Until I zipped away into the fog.”
“Where did you steal him from?” I envision the location of every camera Lucy installed in here, enabling Janet the AI avatar to engage in a meaningful way.
“Not steal but liberate. He did surprisingly well on the plane. Put him in a dog carrier, which he didn’t love,” Carrie is saying. “I admit it’s helpful flying private.”