Me, Myself and Why? by MaryJanice Davidson

her hat, and ran her fingers through her short brunet hair. “She won’t say.”
    “Oh. Okay, thanks.” Yes, you’ve been loads of help, Officer; don’t know what I’d have done without you. I better not say it out loud, though. Being surrounded by death and blood and misery (not to mention Dr. Gottlieb’s perfume) was no excuse for being mean.
    I rapped on the pantry door while around me the hustle and bustle of crime-scene processing went on. “Ma’am? My name is Special Agent Jones; I’m with the FBI. Can I speak with you?”
    “Go away!”
    “I can’t, ma’am.” My partner wrecked our car and our cab left two minutes ago. Hmm. Prob’ly should keep that to myself. “Are you hurt?”
    “What if he comes back?”
    “Then my partner will shoot him in the face,” I promised. It wasn’t a lie, either. George considered a day without a civil rights violation the worst sort of lost opportunity.
    Silence. Then, “ You come in. By yourself.”
    “Sure. D’you have any crackers in there? I skipped lunch.”
    Another pause, broken by the snick of the lock being disengaged.
    I stepped inside and prepared myself to meet the first live victim after more than a dozen attacks.
    Date? What date? Now I was glad Shiro had canceled for us. Maybe I’d leave her a thank-you note somewhere.
    Or not.

Chapter Twenty-eight
    The pantry was cool and dry and well lit, with shelves of dry goods going back at least eight feet. The as-yet unnamed victim was crammed as far away from the door as she could get—understandably.
    I flashed what I hoped was a friendly and sympathetic (but professional—mustn’t forget that) smile. “Hi. I’m Cadence Jones. You’re having an awful day, aren’t you?”
    The victim, a dark-haired, brown-eyed woman of average weight and (I was pretty sure) height, made a sound halfway between a bark and a giggle. She looked like she was in her late forties, but my estimate could be off by as much as ten years, depending on what the stress of the day had done to her face. “You could say that.”
    “D’you mind if I sit?”
    She shook her head, further messing up her hair, which had probably been pinned back in a neat bun when she left her home that morning. Now it fell around her face in dark straggles.
    I sat cross-legged across from her. My gun dug into my hip and I grimaced and moved it over an inch.
    “D’you want to tell me . . .” Everything? What happened? What did he look like? Why did you survive? Did you know the other two victims? Tell me tell me tell me every single thing.
    Whoa. Calm down, Cadence. I tried to get a grip on myself. The last thing I needed was Shiro thinking I needed rescuing. She was a disaster at interpersonal relations, and would scare this poor woman worse than she already was.
    I took a deep, steadying breath and asked, “Can you tell me your name?”
    “Tracy. Tracy C-Carr.”
    “And how did you come to be here tonight, Ms. Carr?”
    “Dinner. I was supposed to meet a blind date.” She laughed, the sound not unlike breaking glass. “Everybody knows blind dates aren’t any fun, but I never dreamed—I never thought—”
    “Sure, sure. Prob’ly would have been a good night to watch reruns, or empty out your TiVo account.”
    A ghost of a smile, gone so quickly I wondered if I’d imagined it.
    “So you came here to meet a date . . . ,” I prompted, already needing to find out who set her up, whom she was supposed to meet—a thread which might turn into nothing. Or everything. Puzzle pieces, puzzle pieces . . .
    It was so great to have a live victim. I vastly preferred chitchat to meetings in the morgue. We needed to find out everything about her—who she was, where she lived. Her job. Her friends, her family, her boss. Her blind date. Her family physician, her minister, her book club. Her dry cleaner, her car wash, her Jiffy Lube. Her grocery store, her vacation plans, her pets. Same old, same old—but we were getting there. I knew it. I