Chapter Fifteen: Sex, Lies and Videotape
Mary hated the Irish.
She hated their stinking green paddys, hated the way they talked, hated their stupid little clan, and hated the fact that she was forced to listen to the orders of a mentally unstable ex-con with shockingly good looks ruined by a really bad haircut.
"I'm stuck here, Seamus," she clipped into her cell phone. Her cigarette break had becoming something of an impromptu meeting, as her ridiculously dangerously stupid devil of a boss shouted and cursed at her and generally accused her of foiling a plan that was too ridiculous to begin with. "Your fullproof boy screwed up, your little protégé fucked it up, and he also had the distinction of fucking her, which means she's probably got it all figured out by now and is headed your way. I had nothing to do with this."
"You better pray ya've got a better excuse than that when I see ya again, Mary," he spit into her ear. "Find them and bring him to me," he snapped, slamming the phone down so hard she jerked it from her ear to avoid the clash of the receiver against the dingy metal she knew existed in his office.
Great. So now she was a delivery girl, too.
This was seriously getting out of control.
Mary had been on a lot of shit-lists before, but this time, the load of bull was piling up so high, she wondered if she'd ever get the stink off of her.
Her world was a blistering blur of murders, assassins, death incarnates and Angels - ruled by a devil with a thick brogue accent who felt nothing but hate, had no loyalty but his own emotions.
Not that Mary could really fault him for that.
She wasn't exactly the picture of stalwart and true.
But this was seriously going to get her into problems.
Mary was in over her head, and the minute she let officers into that room - with that actor - her career was as good as gone.
It was stupid, and she should have said no when Seamus proposed it, cut him off when he finally let her in on his killer. Who would have known?
Who would have known that the celebrity sniper would have been HIM?
Such a stupid, insignificant little-
Mary dropped the cigarette on the ground, smooshing the flame out with the tip of her shoe, before she took a breath, walked into the hospital, and wondered how the hell she could make all of it - all the angels and devils and snipers and actors just go away.
--
For one minute, her whole world teetered on the edge of a cliff.
Alex's words didn't make sense at first, with everything swinging this way and that. Dylan's grip on the rail of the Tugboat was so tight, the sting and burn of the ropes barely registered with her.
All Dylan saw was Natalie's eyes, bluer than the dirty sea, wide and round, face blank with shock as she focused completely on her.
Alex's pronouncement burned into her. With a drop of her stomach, her world tipped and slid over, dragging her down with it.
"Dylan!"
The anxious tone, so loud from the speaker it snapped against her eardrum painfully, was harried, as if Alex had been repeating her name for some time now. Natalie, eyebrow arched, squeezed her shoulder.
Trying to think at the moment was like navigating through heavy fog. Her mouth was sewn shut, but her mind was moving, struggling to free itself from the sluggishness that came with the implications of Alex's statement.
"What?"
"You said Anthony told you who the killer was - what did he say?"
She was so exhausted. Tingles of pain shot up her feet, her stomach had filled immediately with molten lead, her shoulders weighted down by some sort of heaviness that made it almost impossible to keep upright.
Her fingers dug into the ropes, sliding against them harshly as she pressed against the side.
"Uh..." Tone raspy and breathless, Dylan tried again, tongue darting out to lick her lips, pushing out the word much like Anthony himself as he said it, harsh and raw. "Death. He said 'death'."
Natalie, a first hand witness to what Alex's news was doing to her red-headed wreck of a friend, slipped a hand about her waist in a gentle caress. Pulling her into her side, her voice was harder than usual as she snapped, "Alex, you better explain this right now-"
"I'm going to! Just hold on!"
Alex Munday dug through her briefcase, lapping water, a guy far off yodeling and the sound of waves crashing her only indication that her friends were still on the other line. Her briefcase lay open, and tapes, scattered about Jason's bed, were messily and desperately sorted.
Pete, Jason, and an uncharacteristically behaved Spike all remained quiet, listening as Alex explained hurriedly. "The Thin Man wasn't here to kill Jason," she began. "He was here to protect him."
Dylan shook her head, bewildered and beseeching as she glanced helplessly at Natalie.
Natalie's lips pursed. "Alex-"
"About two minutes before the attack there was a call for all security and personal to go to room 410 - some security breach in the lunatics ward. The staff was on a skeleton crew as it was, and that left it open. The Sniper came in through Jason's door with the gun." Fumbling, Alex dropped a tape, scanning the label of a second before shoving it into the VCR. "He had the Luger and he was about to shoot when the Thin Man came in from the window, and stabbed him."
"Stabbed him-"
"There's blood all over the place," Alex interrupted, pushing the fast forward, irises dilating as the images began to move jerkily forward. "Thank God we didn't go digital."
The picture Alex was painting was erratic, full of holes and it made no sense. Dylan's eyes closed in involuntary frustration.
"I don't understand how..."
"I'm getting there," Alex piped up, lost in the images on screen before she grimaced with a heartfelt pound of her chest, pushing at the eject button so forcefully she nearly sprained her index finger.
"Pete said he heard two shots and then ran into the room, where he saw the Thin Man holding a bloody sword and nothing else. Then he looks at Pete, flings a chair, misses him, and crashes through the window." Alex took in a deeper breath. "The two shots hit into the wall. The Thin Man stabbed our sniper, who in turn bled his way to the corner of the room, when Pete ran in-"
Natalie's eyes closed, Alex's words ruminating through her as the scene with the killer, face darkened in obscurity, began to take place before her, marked in slow motion, haunting in its rhythm.
"- The Thin Man saw the guy was hurt, but not out. He flung the chair at the sniper, over Pete, and hit him. He scooted out the door and The Thin Man left through the window."
"Why would he save them?" Dylan snapped. Her voice had returned to her, but emotion colored it harsh and defensive, darkened eyes almost flashing, as she glared at Natalie, as if, by extension, she could reach Alex's chocolate gaze.
"Good question, Dylan," the girl answered easily, pressing play on a second tape and reaching for the third. "Why don't you tell me?"
The direct question stung her somehow, and Dylan's eyes closed, jerking away from Natalie, a hardened lump in her throat sticking her words in her esophagus.
"Wait... if The Sniper was using the Thin Man's luger, why wouldn't he use it for the funeral-"
"Because the Sniper didn't shoot Jason in the funeral," Alex answered Natalie crisply. "If he did Jason would be dead."
She was so engrossed in the sequences of events unfolding on the screen, she missed Jason's audible whimper.
"Then who shot-"
"It was him..." Dylan breathed. Her eyes widened, and she whirled, body jerking toward Natalie, arranging thoughts, and slamming them into their place, like the last number of a combination lock. "That's why Jason was different! That's why he didn't die! Because Anthony shot him!"
"Why would Anthony-" Alex began, distracted from the television to listen intently.
"He was protecting him," Natalie whispered, catching on with an involuntary smile coming to her face. "He knew who the Sniper was going for so he shot Jason-"
"-to get him out of the way-," Alex jumped in, eyes widening as her hand fell into her lap.
"-before the Sniper could," Dylan finished, shaking her head in amazement. Her heart was pounding furiously in her chest, moving so erratically, "He saved his life."
"Why does the Creepy Thin Guy always know more than we do?" Alex snapped, rubbing at her head. It didn't seem fair somehow. "Is there like a magical creepy guy psychic hotline that we don't know about?"
Pete and Jason, now completely lost, as they were only hearing snatches of Alex's conversation, shot each other confused glances. "Who's the Creepy Thin Guy?" Jason asked.
"Guy who saved your life by trying to kill you," Pete answered methodically.
Jason blinked. "Oh."
"Then if our Sniper isn't the Creep-" Upon a glance to Dylan, Natalie suddenly paused, mouth framing another word as she tangled fingers in her friend's grip. "-Anthony," she corrected. "Then who is it?"
"My votes on the butler," Dylan managed, exhaustion littering her face, more than likely from the emotional roller coaster that was riding her even now.
"No..." Alex held her breath, fingers tapping at the fast forward button as the murder played out before her eyes. "Keep going..."
Natalie closed her eyes, fingers closing around Dylan's shoulder as she began a brainstorm. "Someone with connections to Mary-"
"-And Seamus," Dylan added, nodding quickly. "Someone who could fade into a crowd-"
"-Who knew just enough about medicine to kill a person without a direct shot to the head-" Alex put in, eyes narrowing in on an image. She pressed pause.
"Someone very good with a scalpel-"
"Someone who's Death," Dylan finished. The word hung in the air, stagnant in it's meaning, and suddenly, making everything clearer than ever before. Eyes growing wide, Dylan slapped at Natalie's forearm, wrapping digits around the limb as the answer suddenly came into her head. "Oh my God... it was right there-"
"Jason," Alex snapped, heart jumping into her throat uncomfortably as she whirled and pointed at the screen. "That the guy you saw?"
Jason swallowed, rubbing at the back of his head at the memory and scooting forward, squinting to get a better look. "Yeah," he said finally. "That's him. That's the guy-"
"Alex, what are you doing?" Natalie asked, vibrating the speaker in her ear.
"Making sure," Alex said, staring hard at the figure almost hidden among the stars, only ten feet away from where the Thin Man stood at the premiere, "that the Thin Man wasn't lying for once..."
"Wouldn't be the first time I had sex with a liar," Dylan muttered. The words, however bitter, were an almost welcome attempt at humor from the wounded Angel, and it made Natalie almost smile. At least Dylan was back to making sarcastic bad jokes. Without a word, she reached forward, drawing her friend in with a kiss on the forehead, calmly soothing even as her thoughts threatened to drown her.
Alex, palms resting on her thighs, glanced apprehensively at the closed door, then at her watch.
"The sniper is exactly who the Thin Man said it was," she said slowly. "Death."
"Death," Dylan repeated, mouth dropping as she sounded out the word.
Natalie gasped, an almost laugh at the revelation that just seemed so obvious now. "The coroner."
--
He was an expert in death.
He did not know how to save a life. Not even his own.
Marlin toppled forward, upsetting a box of cardboard that could have been a drifter's makeshift home, breaking the cardboard as it blocked his fall.
He breathed in, sharp and erratic in his gasps. The blood was everything. Dripping down from his forehead, flowing into a stinging mess into his eyes. It seeped, warm against his increasingly cold abdomen, and stick against his palm.
He remembered enough to press against the open wound, little Merlin, staggering through the dark, dingy alley - like Harrison Ford in the fugitive.
And even now, he laughed, short choking sounds that hurt each time he tried to speak.
They were extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary.
They had changed things, and hurt him, and not one of them had had to lift a finger to do it.
It was amazing, extraord-
He moved sluggishly, foot catching against a trashcan, slamming into the dank pavement, chin crashing against the cement.
The gun... he had lost the gun...
His present... his reason...
He had lost his gun...
A small chirp coincided with a vibration in his pants.
Marlin, face plastered painfully around a pebble on the concrete, had a massive headache, but bloody fingers reached into the dark pans, closing around the cellphone that continued to vibrate and beat.
Curling to his side, he placed the phone on his ear with effort.
"Hello."
"Where the hell are you?"
His eyes closed as he hitched in a heavy sigh, feeling the puncture give with a stab of pain.
"Wilshire and... fifth?"
"Did he kill you?"
His eyes snapped open. "Yes," he began in a wheeze. "He killed me. You're talking to my ghost. And I'm going to haunt you."
Mary's silence indicated she was not amused.
"You fucked up, idiot. I haven't been up there because I'm hoping that my some damned miracle all that blood is going to up and evaporate on my ass- that better not be yours."
"It's not."
"Oh? Then why is Anthony curiously intact?"
Marlin closed his eyes, the throbbing break in his skin above his forehead pounding inside his skull, threatening to burst through the bone.
He was openly rasping now, hiccupping as he choked through blood bubbles to get his words out.
"You were never extraordinary - you wouldn't understand. You're like me. Ordinary. She made him do it-"
"Yeah, no shit Sherlock! She made them do it all - her and her little friends are the reason why I'm in this god-damned mess and I'm tired of it. If I go in there and find that blood I'm going to fry your ass, Marlin-"
"I pity you," he whispered. "You'll never know what it's like to be extraordinary. You'll never be more than what you are."
She fell curiously silent, breath hitching in her tone before she snapped, "Fuck off, Marlin-"
"Wait," he rasped, coughing as he pushed himself up to sit upright. Falling back against the brick wall, he closed his eyes, took a moment to stave the pain, and began heavily, "Tell me where they are... and they'll be ordinary just like you."
She laughed, a hollow dry laugh. "They'll be dead, Marlin."
"They'll be ordinary, just like me."
She quieted.
He closed his eyes, curling the phone to him when the line clicked, and his ordinary Mary, left him alone.
After wasting a precious minute breathing, he staggered to his feet, and continued his way down the alley.
--
"Oh my God," Natalie whispered, rubbing her fingers through her hair, tangling locks in exasperation. Walking in a circle around the little stern of the tugboat, she glanced helplessly at Dylan. "How did we not see it? I was in his office. The movie posters - Mary showing up JUST as I was about to go through the reports-"
"He's got the connection," Alex replied, nodding as if they could see her. "But what's the motive?"
Dylan, still muddled in shock, and throbbing for a pain in her ribs that just wouldn't go away, snapped her jaw tight. Anthony's furious face as she held the knife to his throat seemed to fill her senses, the rapid heartbeat underneath her fingertips she didn't remember feeling until now battering her ears. "Seamus isn't enough?" she snorted.
"No," Natalie agreed, eyes hooded as she thought grimly. "No... this guy wasn't killing for a job - the money would be a perk-"
"It was personal," Alex reminded them.
Personal...
Dylan froze, suddenly swept backwards into a flashback where she was a reporter with whorish librarian glasses, having an amiable conversation with a man in black boots who stroked a body that used to be Annabeth Torres.
"Weird," he said, "How dead people seem so... ordinary-"
"He's ordinary." Dylan's tone was so flat, so dead that Natalie's gave her a questioning gaze. "I talked to him before, back when I got the casing of the bullet from Annabeth's body. He said that she was extraordinary in real life, and that in death, she was ordinary." With a click of her tongue, she shook her head. "The way he said it... like he hated her."
"Why didn't we see it before?" Alex whispered, fingers still on the tape. Pate and Jason were so still behind her they might as well have been statues.
Dylan was quiet beside Natalie, more than likely lost in the implications of the truth, the questions brought on by the revelation of what was true. That Anthony hadn't lied. That Anthony had been protecting Jason.
That she nearly killed and hated a man who she had given up everything to fight for.
But Natalie knew the answer, as she gripped at the ropes of the railing with both hands, leaning into them so they pressed against the small of her back.
"Because we didn't want to," she began quietly. "Everything that's happened since the moment that Annabeth was shot was skewed to play off our instincts. Our motivations."
Dylan jerked her head to meet her glance, taking in the resigned sadness of Natalie's features. "Oh my God," she whispered. "The clues - Anthony's gun, and the saber... Jason - they did it all to mess with our heads. To break us up."
Sneaking a glance to her boyfriend, who at the moment was absorbed in petting the puppy, Alex had an uncharacteristic moment of emotion, as she blinked against tears, and answered quietly, "Well, it worked."
"God," Natalie said, voice now more even, somewhat disbelieving. "Don't you just love it when it's all about us?"
Dylan's mind was whirling, now a tick in her mind created a whirlwind and she was between the Thin Man's legs, impatiently holding onto a piece of paper with the words 'You are extraordinary' on it.
"And that's what he was trying to say," Dylan whispered. Slapping her hands against her thighs she came forward, speaking urgently to Natalie. "He did something back at the bungalow - he was trying to tell me that I was the victim - that I was extraordinary!"
"That he was coming after us," Alex confirmed. "You know, not that I'm trying to pass the blame here, but this would have been a lot easier on all of us if the evil guy would have just come right out and said that."
"Would he have believed him?" Natalie inserted quietly. "We didn't even believe Dylan."
The green in Dylan's eyes darkened somewhat as she met her glance. Natalie smiled sadly, and the lump in Dylan's throat bobbed.
Alex blanched, a slightly guilty expression roving onto her features as she shrugged helplessly. "Okay, fine. But what was with the Obiwan-Yoda signs? I mean, 'death'? Why couldn't he just, I don't know, say, 'it was the coroner. At least then would have had another lead."
Dylan, a bitter twinge in her breath, shrugged. "Because he's a spoiled brat psycho raised by a bunch of doting nuns who let him yank off their hair and taught him very badly how to tweeze."
Alex stayed quiet on the other line, but Dylan was sure that her expression mimicked Natalie's blank stare.
"What?" she said defensively. "Just because I have a thing for him doesn't mean I can't see his flaws."
Natalie, perhaps in an attempt to be somewhat supportive of this whirlwind excuse for a quasi romance, smiled a little sympathetically. "I know what you mean. Pete leaves the toilet seat up."
In the dead quiet of the hotel room, her loyal boyfriend managed to catch the sentence from the loudness of Alex's speaker. "Just that one time, Nat."
But the ridiculousness of the conversation was not something that Alex wanted to dwell on. "Uh... ANYWAY - I don't have much time, and we solved that mystery. How do we bring this guy down? Now that we all single-handedly managed to insult and piss off our only witness and lead-"
"Yeah, thanks for that," Dylan muttered, massaging at her temples lightly.
"Hey! He shot my boyfriend!"
"Boyfriend? Does that mean we're back together?!"
Pete gently nudged at Jason's shoulder, shaking his head at his excited friend. "You have to pick your moments, man. Not now." Jason pouted, and shuffled lower onto his bed.
"You tried to kill mine!"
"Because he tried to kill me!" Alex answered in defense.
"GUYS! Enough!" Natalie's chirpy voice was loud and authoritative, and it succeeded in shutting both women up. "We still have a problem. It's not like we're out of the clear yet."
"Yeah," Dylan answered. Not in the slightest. In the distance, the Merkin stood, a sweltering boat with a nightmare inside of her. For a second she felt ridiculously like Captain Nemo glaring at Moby Dick. God... Seamus... The butt of her gun rested temptingly on the small of her back. Her senses filled with his face, her ears echoed with his words.
//Ya think ya hate me, Helen, but ya don't. You won't know the meaning of the word until you've been betrayed by everything you love and end up alone. Then you'll hate me.//
She closed her eyes, shutting out the image of his face with a ragged drawn in breath, as suddenly she was brought to another moment, as a thinner, sharper featured man held her roughly by the hips, making intelligible, gutting groans as he pushed deeper into her, lips clamping just under her jaw to lave at the skin-
Her eyes jolted open.
//Ya think ya hate me, Helen, but ya don't. You won't know the meaning of the word until you've been betrayed by everything you love and end up alone. Then you'll hate me.//
No matter what - Anthony had been a part of this.
"I'm going to kill him," she whispered. At Natalie's questioning glance, she said, louder, "We have to find the Coronor, deal with Seamus-"
"And the fact that the Thin Man's still working for Seamus," Natalie said, lost as her hands flew up in confusion. "I mean, how else would he have known? How are we supposed to take that?"
"We don't," Dylan said easily. "He's still the bad guy." The shocked look that Natalie threw her shook her slightly, and she rubbed at her elbow, shrugging helplessly. "Tell me he isn't still working for him. Tell me he's not still a killer. Tell me he didn't try to kill you guys. Sure. He's not our sniper - but he's still a hell of a bastard."
"Yeah," Alex agreed, voice low and distant. "He's a bastard. But he's a bastard in love."
Dylan's face was strangely passive as Natalie's gaze bore into hers meaningfully. As the red-head glanced away, Natalie felt strangely choked. "And that makes all the difference."
--
Alex would have given anything to have been on that boat. Stranded in a hospital room, knees on the floor, surrounded by blood and tapes, she understood the reason why they had gone through this, had been torn apart, played perfectly into Seamus' hands and still managed to come through it together.
What she had with Dylan and Natalie, the ache she felt even as she ached for Jason sitting only ten feet away, nothing could ever replace.
They were a team, always together, always the Angels, even without sweet Bosley, even without the stalwart support of Charlie.
A sting in her heart made her wonder if they were going to be fired after this.
"Stay with the boat," she said into the silence. "I'll meet you there."
She couldn't afford to waste anymore time.
"Hurry," Natalie said quickly.
"I'll be there."
The door swung open, breaking her words, and startling Alex, frozen in place as she closed her hands over her back.
Mary Briggs, hands on her hips, registered shock on her features for about two seconds.
Then the smile edged forward, the gun was unclipped, and she shook her head, laughing, though what she found funny about all this, Alex had no idea.
"God is good," Mary said, smile widening on her face as the gun swung easily to point to Alex's heart. "He sent me my own guardian Angel."
"Alex... what's going on?" Dylan's voice was flat, urgent.
Alex's face was passive, body carefully fluid as she moved straight up, hands ready at her side, taking care that Pete, Jason and Spike, all watching with frozen expressions, were out of the shot range.
"Nothing important," she said easily. "I'll call you back."
With a click, she hung up the phone.
end chapter