Mind Games - Part Five
#5 of Mind Games
The following is a work of fiction. The story deals with adult themes and content, and as such should not be red by anyone under the age of 18.
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MIND GAMES - pt. 5
Saul slowly opened his eyes. He was lying in bed, but it wasn't his room or his bed. Everything around him had a clean, almost antiseptic smell and feel to it. He felt groggy and his chest was uncomfortably sore. Worse, his mouth felt like it was full of cotton. He could see a small cup of water on a stand next to his bed, but he was simply too tired to reach for it. He grunted softly in frustration. Something moved to his left. He turned his head and came face to face with a pair of emerald green eyes.
Pepper smiled and brushed some stray hair away from his massive forehead. "How are you feeling, big guy?"
The detective tried shrugging, but found that both his shoulders hurt like the devil, so he simply wrinkled his nose. "Been better," he mumbled. His eyes traced a path over to the cup of water, then back. The vixen immediately understood. She walked around to the opposite side of the bed, plopped a straw in the cup then held it as Saul took a few sips. He suddenly noticed she was wearing a pink hospital gown and a stiff, plastic neck brace that kept her from turning her head even a little.
"R hue okay?" he asked groggily.
"Yes... thanks to you. Doctor says I tore a few ligaments and pulled some muscles, but all things considered I didn't get hurt too bad." She tapped a couple of fingers on the hard plastic collar. "I'm going to be wearing this for a few days, then it'll be turtlenecks until my fur grows back and the bruising disappears."
"We gotta be a hell o' a sight. You wit yur plastic doohickey, an me wit a coupla new dimples." He tried laughing, but only succeeded in grunting softly. He looked up at his partner and saw her eyes were misting. "Wadd's wrong fuzz ball?"
"Oh, God! Saul I am so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you, but I couldn't stop... I couldn't..."
The human gently reached up and took Pepper hand, laying it flat between his own massive hands and patted it softly. "S'okay... S'okay... Wasn't you... Wasn't you. Find 'em. Gonna catch bastard responsible... We catch him. Right?"
Saul closed his eyes and gently faded off to sleep
"Damn straight partner! We'll catch 'em!"
A soft knock at the hospital room door drew her attention upward. A human doctor entered carrying a clipboard.
"Miss Fields? What are you doing in here? You should be in bed in your own room."
"I just wanted to make sure my partner was doing alright."
The doctor smiled understandingly. "Considering the circumstances, he's doing better than alright." The doctor gently lifted a bandage to make sure the wound was draining properly then skillfully replaced it with a new dressing. "Severely dislocated shoulder, two gunshot wounds... It's absolutely amazing. His physical structure is so large and well developed it actually slowed the impact force of the bullets. At such a short range, both wounds should have been through and through. As it was, one penetrated only as far as the inner lung sac and the other was deflected by a rib and lodged itself in the upper pectoral muscle."
"Just one more reason they nicknamed him the Caveman," Pepper said.
The doctor's eyes arched slightly. "Caveman? Not the Colorado Caveman."
"The very same."
"I use to follow every game the Buffalos played when I was in pre-med. I stopped watching football altogether when he opted out of the Pros." He looked down at Saul with more than a hint of hero-worship in his eyes. "You think he'd give me an autograph?"
"Tell you what," she said pointing to the empty bed next to Blackthorne. "If you move me in here where I can keep an eye on him, I'll guarantee it."
* * * *
Saul woke up again about ten hours later. Both the grogginess and pain had faded somewhat, replaced by an intense hunger. He looked around and spotted the vixen sitting up in the bed next to him reading the paper. "Morning fuzz-ball. How are you feeling?"
"Better," Pepper responded, "and you?"
"Not bad, all things considering, though I am a bit peckish."
The vixen glanced up at the clock in their room. "The nurse should be by in about ten minutes with dinner. Looks like you woke up just in time."
"Anything interesting in the news?"
"No much," she grinned, "Aside from the fact we're dead."
"WHAT?"
Pepper rose carefully from her bed and brought the paper over to Saul. There it was; a front-page, two column story. "What the hell do they mean, murder/suicide? Who's responsible for this?"
"Your new friend at the DIA... Who else?" The vixen wrinkled her nose playfully. "I leave you alone for one day and look at the crowd you fall in with."
"I take it you've been talking with them?"
"Major Kaplan came by about noon to find out how we were and fill me in. The guy's a major league hunk. Naturally I meet someone like that when I'm having a Category Five bad hair day," she muttered, pulling regretfully on what was left of her head fur.
"I wouldn't worry about it too much. It makes you look cute, in a butch sort of way." The vixen stuck out her tongue at him then carefully scrambled back into her bed as a knock gently rattled the door. Saul got a pleasant view of her tush and tail since the hospital gown, as tradition demanded, had no back.
"Nice ass, too!" he whispered.
"Pervert!" she chuckled.
The door opened to reveal Major Kaplan. The canine pulled up a seat at the foot of their beds and opened his briefcase, revealing a rather advanced and expensive looking laptop. "I hope you don't mind," he said looking over at Saul, "but we went ahead and did that case comparison you had planned just before everything went south."
"I thought the station's computer had been hacked," Saul said.
The DIA agent nodded. "It was. Lieutenant Cooper was able to perform a successful recovery on most of your data. What he couldn't get from you own system, he restored using the download he'd made earlier yesterday."
"You mean when he 'forgot his wallet,'" Blackthorne said
"Yes," Kaplan agreed. He pressed a button and the backside of the cover became a display itself that both detectives could see. "I've added a comparison of the time factors between when we believe each victim had their plug activated, and when each committed suicide. The longest was five days, and the shortest, which was yours Sergeant Fields, was twenty-four hours. The average was about three days."
"Why was mine the shortest?"
"Probably because our puppet master knew you were on his tail and wanted to use you to flush any evidence you'd collected."
"It would explain why Pepper was forced to hack our system," Saul speculated, "And why he made you write that note to me."
"So you'd show up and I'd..." She couldn't quite finish.
"So she'd get rid of any loose ends for him," Kaplan said.
"What I don't understand is why Pepper still tried to hang herself once I'd smashed the computer. Wouldn't that have broken his control?"
"No," Kaplan said, "not if she were operating on a pre-programmed set of instructions. Destroying the computer was a smart move, but by that point we believe he was only using the comcam on it to watch the action."
Pepper sat silently for a few moments then looked over at the canine. "So what's this thing he has with hanging his victims?"
"Combination of things, we think. Hatred of both women and anthrops; a sadistic urge to watch them suffer; there are few kinds of death that are as prolonged or agonizing as slow strangulation." The vixen involuntarily raised her hand to the neck brace. "Then there's his obvious desire for power and easy money, and the statement he's making."
"Statement?" asked Pepper.
"Puppet on a string," the human grumbled. "Though he didn't get that satisfaction last night, did he?"
"No," Kaplan admitted. "Not after the forward pass you threw. But that can work to our advantage."
Saul grunted. "Let me guess, the phony newspaper story is to keep our puppeteer from bolting."
"It gives us some breathing room," the canine said. "He won't cut and run if he
thinks he's safe.. Our biggest worry is we can't keep the cover story going more than a few days. You were too much of a sports celebrity in your younger days," he said, looking at Blackthorne. Sooner or later, the cat will get out of the bag."
"What did you find out about Jigsaw Jim's?" Saul asked.
"You're instincts were good. There are a fair number of computer users who hang out there regularly. We've narrowed the list down to about ten potential targets and I've got my people working up profiles on them. Timing is critical. We move either too soon or too slow, he may slip away and we're back to square one."
"How soon will you move?" Pepper asked.
"Forty-eight hours, tops," the agent replied.
"And we fit in...where?" asked Saul.
"For now, you two keep a low profile and use the time to recuperate. Only three shift nurses and two doctors know what's up and they've agreed to cooperate. Cooper's still on the inside at your station. He'll feed us what we need from your files, with the help of Captain Harris. He's the only one in your department who knows you're not dead."
"Jeeze..." muttered the human. "Everyone is probably wearing black armbands by now. How are we supposed to explain this away and still keep our reps?"
"You let me worry about that," Kaplan assured them. "Just get yourselves fit and when we move in, you'll be there." He handed Pepper a cell phone. "If you have any questions, or you think of anything important, use this. It will automatically ring through to Cooper and he'll pass it along." The canine closed his laptop and stood.
There was a gentle knock on the door and the nurse came in, bearing a couple of large trays. "Sorry to interrupted," the Hispanic woman apologized, "but it's time to feed our patients."
Kaplan smiled, nodded and excused himself as the nurse busied herself distributing the food and propping both patients up so they could eat. "Let me know if you need anything," she said as she wheeled the food cart out of the room and closed the door.
Pepper dug her fork into her meal and tried to enjoy it as much as possible, though it was a far cry from Rosie's. She heard Saul grunt and looked over to see her partner struggling to lift a spoonful of soup to his mouth. "Here... let me do that," the vixen offered.
"Thanks," he muttered miserably. "Can't seem to raise my arms higher than my chest for some reason."
"That's because you dislocated both your shoulders saving me," she chided gently.
Saul grinned. "Well, if it allows me to be spoon-fed by a beautiful vixen, I'll do it more often."
"Flatterer."
Pepper quietly helped her partner eat, stealing an occasional bite from her own tray so it wouldn't grow too cold. "Saul? What do you suppose Kaplan will do once he catches our puppet master, or puppeteer, or whatever they're calling him."
"Personally, I don't care, just as long as they get the son of a bitch out of circulation."
"And if they don't catch him?"
"He'd better pray the Feds do get him. If I get there first..." Saul left the threat unfinished.
Pepper continued feeding him in silence, and in those moments she thought she could feel something unspoken pass between them. Whatever happened, this case was changing their lives. The question was... how?
To be concluded...