Chapter 14 - Manson
After the fiasco with Zed and Captain Mahoney, Harris and I lie side by side in his bed, the only sound to be heard being our breathing. For once, I didn't know what to say. Not that we'd slept together a lot, but this time it felt so different, so almost uncomfortably vulnerable, that it rendered me speechless. For the first time, I saw right through what everyone else saw about him—his grouchy, unapproachable exterior—and see the vulnerability underneath. I looked over at him, at the way the sweat made his more-salt-than-pepper hair totally askew, the stubble on his chin, the heaving of his hairless chest as his panting got quieter and quieter than altogether stopped. I felt the need to make myself vulnerable right back, because it seemed like he was opening himself up to me every time he looked at me.
"Am I a black sheep?" I suddenly blurted.
"You look like a white woman to me," he replied. "What are you talkin' about?"
"My sister—she's engaged to some hotshot. My other siblings—all upstanding citizens. Me—I've been arrested three times now. You know, if you'd arrested me the other day, my parents wouldn't have bailed me out for a couple of months, I'm sure."
"Why's that?"
"There's a party this weekend for my sister's engagement. They don't want any bad press, so they'd leave me in jail to rot. They don't give a shit about me."
"They visited you in the hospital," Harris said, trying to be comforting. "You're a big girl now; guess they figure you can take care of yourself."
"But I can't," I shot back, gesturing helplessly. "Look at me. I had to take a handout to get in this academy, and then what? How am I gonna get a job as a cop with the other members of my class and their flawless records?"
"Good connections," he said, nudging me.
I hadn't expected that, and let out a little laugh.
"But what would happen if you break up with—"
"As of right now, I don't see that happening," he muttered. "Actually, if I remember correctly, it was you who tried to end it with me the other day."
"I was stupid," I said. "I misread you. You're a good guy; you really are."
He seemed amused by the comment.
"That right?"
"Yeah."
Now the look on his face was thoughtful.
"You know, that may be the very first time anyone has ever said that to me." He chuckled to himself. "I must say, Carnegie, you're real good at pillow talk. Real good."
I don't know how it happened or who fell asleep first, but Harris and I woke up in the morning, still at his house.
"Holy shit!" he exclaimed, poking me in the ribs. "Get up—we gotta get back to the academy. Oh, God, I'm done for sure."
He ripped the covers back and threw them on the floor at the foot of the bed, revealing our unclothed bodies to the rather cool air of his bedroom. I immediately turned onto my side and felt around with my hand on the floor to scoop up the clothes that had been flung there.
We headed out the door, realizing that the morning lineup was in about ten minutes or so.
"Maybe we should pretend that we're sick," I said. "You know, stay in our dorm rooms all morning and then magically feel better after breakfast."
"I have never taken a day off sick—not even a minute," he replied. "That's about as unlike me as—"
"—As this is," I replied matter-of-factly. "And less frowned upon."
Harris and I had talked about when our arrivals would be to the shooting range after breakfast. I'd be first, and he'd arrive five to ten minutes later so as not to show up together. When I reached the shooting range, I was shocked by what I found.
"C'mon, Manson! Let 'em go!" Callahan yelled out. "You don't want to do this!"
"Everyone here knows that you and Bordeaux are screwing, so don't gimme that!" Manson shrieked back. Callahan flushed bright red at the accusation. Suddenly I wished that Harris was with me—I was walking into what looked like a hostage situation. Manson had Beaner and Bordeaux against a wall and was aiming a pistol at them. There looked to be a swastika drawn on her forehead. What the hell? The other students stood in their shooting stalls, totally silent as they watched the action unfold.
Captain Callahan stood between Manson and the cadets, yelling at her to put down the gun. However, the fact that she was sleeping with one of the hostages didn't help her case at all.
Would Manson listen to me?
"Connie!" I yelled as I walked towards her from behind the shooting range. She glanced over at me, confused as to how I managed to come from that direction. "What's going on?" I asked.
"That's the last time these assholes will ever make fun of me!" she snarled, holding the gun steady on Beaner and Bordeaux as she spoke. "They're gonna pay!"
"They look terrified," I said, continuing to walk towards her. "I'll bet you made them crap their pants. I think they definitely learned their lesson."
I saw Captain Callahan out of the corner of my eye, and she looked both confused and a bit afraid. For as tough as she was during the academy, she sure had nothing to say now. I guess she never expected to be called out for her affairs with cadets.
"That's not enough," Manson said. My eyes went wide as she swung the gun towards me. Yep. That was definitely a swastika on her face, on her forehead and drawn rather crudely in what looked like magic marker. "Stop coming towards me," she warned. "Go over to the shooting stalls. This is something I've gotta do."
"You don't have to do—"
"Be QUIET!" she screamed. Now the gun was back on Beaner and Bordeaux. I backed up until I was next to Mullers. Well, that hadn't worked at all.
"In case you're wondering, one of those two morons drew that on her face while she was sleeping, and they also wrote something on her dorm room door," Mullers whispered to me. "She didn't come to morning exercises or breakfast because of it—it won't come off her face. I really wish that she could shoot them without getting in trouble, but of course it doesn't work that way. I tried to talk her down too, and she made me come back here, so don't feel bad."
I could see Beaner and Bordeaux's mouths moving, but couldn't hear them because of how quietly they were speaking to Manson.
"I want you to beg for your lives!" Manson snarled at them. "That or I'll blow your heads off. Think that'll start helter skelter, assholes?"
"We're sorry," Beaner mumbled, looking pitiful as hell.
"Don't you apologize for him!" Manson screamed. "This is all your fault, anyway!" It was then that she cocked the pistol and took a step closer to him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Manson?"
Suddenly Connie's pistol was aimed at Harris, who had appeared and was steadily approaching the shooting range. Instead of stopping him in his tracks, however, he kept walking.
"You gonna live up to your name?" he said teasingly. He pointed at Beaner and Bordeaux with his baton. "Cause that's what they want you to do. They do that to your face?"
"You're the one to get them started on all this!" she yelled, temporarily forgetting about the two cadets she'd taken hostage. She took several steps away from them, aiming the gun instead squarely at Lieutenant Harris.
"I know," he said, continuing to approach her with his good hand up as if surrendering. As he distracted her, I saw Beaner and Bordeaux move away from the wall and run for cover as fast as their legs could carry them. Was it Harris's mission to help the guys to escape? If so, it had definitely worked. Unfortunately, Manson now had him in her sights.
Suddenly, Manson turned around to see that Beaner and Bordeaux were gone.
"You did that on purpose," she snarled at Harris.
"Let everyone else leave," Harris replied coolly. "I'm the one who's responsible for this. I was the first one to bring up your last name. Let 'em go."
"They'll bring someone else here to gun me down in a hail of bullets," she replied. "No one's going anywhere."
This was a dangerous game that Harris was playing, and I wasn't sure how he was going to get out of it. It almost seemed like he was digging himself in deeper with Manson, if anything.
"Stop right where you are!" Manson shrieked, causing Harris to abruptly stop. Within a second, however, he continued toward her.
"Stop, or I will shoot you!" she yelled. I could only watch helplessly as Harris continued to walk towards the definitely homicidal cadet, acting less afraid of this than he had been in the Crown Victoria only last night.
"You don't have to be what people expect you to be," he said quietly. "Me, I'm the meanest instructor in this entire academy." He said it as if he were proud of the fact. "But I'm choosing to be nice to you right now." I could only stare at the side of his face as he approached her, attempting to read what he was doing.
"So what!" she cried. I saw her glance over at me but I couldn't read her expression. Was she preparing to shoot him? Was she trying to get me to say something aloud about him? I wasn't sure.
"Anyway," he replied, seeming to shrug her off. "With my being the meanest around these parts, I got just the stuff to take off marker. Just put the gun down and we can clean that—"
"You deserve this more than they do, because you started it!" she yelled shrilly. "Get on your knees! Now!" I glanced up over the hill, but no one was coming. Was she going to kill Harris right in front of us? Not if I could help it. Harris sighed and went to his knees in front of Manson and I was reminded of what had happened last night with Zed and Mahoney.
Now Callahan stepped forward, her hands on her hips.
"Cadet Manson, put down the gun this instant!"
"No!"
"That's an order!"
Manson pulled the trigger and shot the gun at a near vertical angle into the air, and automatically, all the cadets and even Captain Callahan jerked at the gunshot.
"That was a bullshit coward move, Manson," Harris remarked. Manson immediately spun around and aimed the gun right between his eyes, scowling at him with total hatred.
"Run!" Callahan yelled, as the cadets quickly scattered. I didn't run away because I was too busy staring nervously at Lieutenant Harris, who remained kneeling on the ground.
Several seconds passed, as the class scattered across the shooting range and into the weeds and hills behind it. I looked up over the hill behind the shooting range. Why wasn't anyone coming? Right—it was a damn shooting range. Gunshots were expected. I guess Beaner and Bordeaux weren't fetching someone to help us, either. Ugh.
"Goodbye, Lieutenant Harris," Manson deadpanned, cocking the weapon once again.
This time I stepped forward.
"You better not shoot him, Connie!" I yelled out, trotting towards her. I no longer cared what anyone else in the squadron thought. Harris was my boyfriend and I wasn't going to allow anyone to hurt him.
"Would you like it if I shot your boyfriend?" I asked her.
"I don't have a boyfriend," she replied, not moving her gun. "So I don't care."
"Well, doesn't our friendship mean anything to you? I defended you against those assholes when they teased you about your name. Harris did too yesterday when I wasn't here, remember?"
"He started it," Manson said accusingly. "If he hadn't said something that first day—"
"Your last name is Manson," I remarked, gesturing with my hands as I spoke. "It's easy for anyone to link that to Marilyn Manson or Charles Manson or whatever. You're giving him way too much credit. You scared the crap out of everyone today—isn't that enough?"
"They're gonna make fun of me again; I just know it. I'm gonna end up with another swastika drawn on my head and then I'll end up using a razor blade to slit my—"
"I can guarantee you that they won't make fun of you ever again," Harris cut in matter-of-factly from his kneeling position. Now Manson was intrigued.
"How can you guarantee that?"
"Let's just say, you won't be seeing them ever again," he replied, lifting an eyebrow as he explained. I understood his words to mean that she'd be gone from the academy, and I hoped that she wasn't smart enough to pick up on that implication. Even though Harris was still on his knees in front of Manson, he seemed much taller by the way he spoke to her. "And that's already definitely gonna be the case, so why do something you'll regret?"
Manson allowed the hand with the gun to drop at her side, and sighed loudly.
"That's right," Harris said. "Now, just give me the gun and we can put this behind us."
She hesitated, looking at him suspiciously.
"You promise?"
He nodded solemnly, and touched his chest for emphasis. "On my honor." The tension remained high for several seconds that seemed to pass by like minutes.
Frowning, Manson handed him the gun. I almost collapsed with relief when she did so, very surprised when she came up to me and hugged me. Wow. Harris had really put himself on the line for this, and in the process, had saved our squadron.
"So, you two are… dating?" Lassard asked us, as Harris and I stood in his office an hour or so after the situation with Connie Manson. She'd since been taken to the local psychiatric hospital for an evaluation, and we were left to explain what all had gone on. Of course, others had given their statements as well, and so it was already known by Lassard that I'd called Lieutenant Thaddeus Harris my boyfriend.
Now Harris looked pale, and I held my breath, wondering what he'd say. I wasn't going to be the one to get him in trouble now. I knew that he was already on thin ice with Commandant Lassard. The silence, though not lasting very long, was deafening.
"Yes, Sir," Harris admitted, hooking the fingers of his good hand to the back of his pants as he spoke.
"Right, because I certainly do recall the pictures that Officer Zed showed me earlier today," he said with a chuckle. "And here I took it to be a joke, a very good one indeed."
Oh my God. What a prick Zed was! I saw Harris's face go beet red at Lassard's comment, and I didn't blame him. What would Harris even say to that?
"So you were caught—ahem, enjoying the company of this cadet in a public place, am I correct?" Lassard asked him, his smile now faded away.
Harris's head dropped. He looked mentally and physically exhausted.
"Yes, Sir."
"And you killed Birdie, correct?"
I heard Harris swallow. His eyes left the floor for only a moment, meeting Lassard's eyes as he answered the question.
"Yes, Sir," Harris answered, his voice barely above a whisper. I could see the axe coming down.
