Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“Indirectly? Good God, Matt. You’re on the brink of an insanely great career and marrying a woman you’ve been lucky enough to find and love later in your life than most men. Don’t mess it up with some crusade to save a nut job.”

Matt recoiled as Frank went on.

“‘Love the little children,’ but a psychotic abuse survivor is no one for an amateur to deal with. We have FBI profilers who’ve plumbed the depths of human misbehavior, and even they don’t personally interact with the damned.”

Matt nodded as Frank sat back, relieved, taking the nod for a concession.

Matt had been nodding to himself. Yes, he’d have to continue going this alone. Bucek wouldn’t be any help.

Matt just had to be something more than Kathleen O’Connor was. Something smarter. Something more determined. Something more stable. And fast.

Chapter 41

Northern Exposure

“Hmm.” Kathleen cooed at Matt, trying to circle him in the narrow hotel room entry hall. “I smell expensive booze and steak sauce and cigar smoke on you.”

Had she been tailing him?

“What a high-end nose you have.”

He moved to keep her face-to-face while he checked out her clothes. The filmy skirt was short in front and long in back, the way women (other than Temple) were wearing them today. And she wore some hip-length floaty top.

Maybe he could see through the back of it if he positioned her correctly against the bedside lampshades, which were about at back level.

“Oh, you want to tango tonight,” she said.

He gently avoided her clinging ways. “I guess you did a lot of that in Rio and Buenos Aires, Lima and Santiago when you were courting South American money for the IRA.”

He watched for a reaction on the word “Santiago.”

She backed away. “And what have you done to support a cause besides simper from a pulpit?”

“Nothing,” he said. “What made you fall in with the IRA at such a young age?”

“I escaped the Magdalene ‘school.’ None did, you know.”

“I do know. I’ve looked all that up.”

“So you can divine my entire life story from the Internet?”

He took his customary chair without turning his back on her, yet making the movement look natural, not defensive. He’d studied marital arts, but was finding the philosophy more helpful than the fighting part.

She tossed herself on the bed, reminding him that she’d made her political point on her back the world over and that she still struck him in some ways as a rebellious teenager. “How do you know how young I was?” she asked with a bit of a preen in her voice.

If Max was at his mid-thirties, his teenage “older woman” must be pushing forty, like Molina. Vamping it up might not get the instant results it once had. Besides, peace had made her cause moot.

“Max thought of you as an older woman.”

That had her sitting up, indignant. “Only six years!”

“Double that in the emotional age between you. And then there’s your vast sexual experience edge, no matter how wrongfully you came by it.”

“Max was an infant. A baby. He knew nothing of the world but being a privileged American and underage drinking and having fun and wanting to go far from home to seduce and screw his first girl.”

“That sure didn’t work out for him, thanks to you. He thinks the only reason you went off to the park with him was to have his cousin Sean killed in that IRA bombing. Divide and destroy.”

She shook her long black hair and wriggled to expose more leg in the front high-rise of the bipolar skirt. Nearing forty or not, she was a world-class beauty, born of abuse and compelled to think sexual power ran the world. “I thought we were here to talk about me. About how you’re Father Pureheart and want to save me.”

Her mockery held some pulse of hope she’d deny, Matt thought. Unfortunately, at the moment, Father Pureheart was not only no longer a “father,” but he had to figure out a nonsexual way to check out her back for cat-scar marks, as well.

“Tell me about it all,” Matt said.

“How much ‘all’ do you want?” She crossed her legs high up, legs in sheer black nylons visibly supported by a black garter belt. Matt was not susceptible, but he allowed her to see him glancing at her thighs, looking for marks. Nothing to see at this distance. The back would be the telling section.

“Tell me,” Matt said, hoping to overwhelm her, “about your mother and father, about your daughter. Then tell me about you and Max.”

“You don’t want much, do you?” She picked up the razor from the marble-topped bedside table. “One strike across the eyelid, and you’re blind.”

He couldn’t deter the chill of fear.

“My mother was a whore. Sounds Victorian music hall, doesn’t it?” She’d veered off the threat. Maybe she’d always craved an audience for her wrongs.

“So far,” Matt said, “I’m getting that she was unmarried and pregnant, like mine.”

“Don’t try to ‘identify’ with me.”

“How do you know she was a sex worker?”

“Because in the orphanage they called me a bastard child of a whore. Are you too holy to say the word ‘whore’?”