Stalking the Phoenix.

by Karen S. Woods.

*Chapter 1*

'Alicia'

I parked my lovingly restored white and black 1955 Chevrolet Bel-Aire in the small parking lot adjacent to the concrete block building. Literally shaking with fear, I walked across the slick, wet, green asphalt on this stormy noon hour on the eighth day of April.

Thankfully, the rain that had come down so forcefully only minutes before was now nothing more than drizzle. But, looking at the sky, it was obvious that there was another storm coming. I thought that it was ironic that the sky so perfectly matched my situation: dark, stormy, and with threats on both horizons.

I would have, gleefully, given anything, everything, that I owned not to be facing the next few minutes. Yet, there was no help for it. I didn't see any other course of action open to me, not if I wanted to survive. Strangely enough, survival has always been important to me.

Only a few steps separated me from the side door of the white stucco covered concrete block building which housed the greater portion of the munic.i.p.al government and services for this small Midwest town which the residents laughingly thought of as a City. Yet, those few steps from my car to the door seemed as though they took an eternity to accomplish.

My reflection in the gla.s.s door looked reasonably normal. Isn't it funny how appearances can be misleading? Well, maybe 'funny' is the wrong word. 'Strange' might be more appropriate. No, that doesn't quite cover it, either, does it?

As I briefly examined my imperfect reflection, I knew that any casual observer would not be able to tell that anything was in any way different with me than it had been yesterday or last week. Long dark hair wound into a secure knot on the back of my head, violet eyes, medium height, athletic figure, dressed in a dark-blue silk business suit, and carrying a briefcase: I appeared the quintessential businesswoman. The picture of cool efficiency would have been complete, if I could have only stopped the slight trembling which had been nearly constant since midnight. Looking on the outside, there was no indication that my whole world had come crashing down about my shoulders overnight.

Once inside the building, ten paces and a left turn took me into the police department. I stopped in front of a badly painted wallboard-and-gla.s.s cubicle.

A local Boy Scout troop had painted the interior of the building a year before as a volunteer effort. Frankly, I had always thought that the free labor had been worth precisely what the munic.i.p.ality had paid for it, if not a little less. But, I had never heard anyone voice dissatisfaction with the job that the boys had done. And I wasn't about to be the first to criticize the boys' effort.

Inside the cubicle sat Delores Kennedy, the police dispatcher, who was monitoring a myriad of considerably less-than-state-of-the-art electronic devices. Delores looked up at me, smiled, and asked kindly, "Yes, how can I help you, Alicia?"

Delores and I are both members of the Parish choir. Delores sings alto. I sing mezzo-soprano. But, I had never seen her in the blues of the munic.i.p.al department's uniform.

"I..." I swallowed hard. I felt that my voice was shaking as badly as my body was. "Are either Phil Mallory or Chuck Edmunds in, Delores?"

Not that I wanted to speak with anyone about this, but, since I really had no choice, it would be far better to talk with someone whom I knew. Not that I was exactly bosom buddies with either of the officers, you understand.

Frankly, I had a difficult time envisioning a circ.u.mstance in which I could be bosom buddies with any policeman, let alone a fairly high ranking officer ... especially a high ranking police officer. There were just too many old scars from my previous dealings with the police.

Yet, I had worked with both of the officers on various social service projects over the past few years since I had relocated to Fieldsburg. Both of the men, I had found, to my great surprise, were honest and honorable. And both men were close friends of my fiancee. Phil was to be the Best Man at my upcoming wedding, and Chuck was going to be a groomsman.

I knew that I could trust either or both of them to keep the matter as confidential as possible and to protect me as much as I could be protected. The only question was whether anyone could protect me. Personally, I doubted it.

Delores Kennedy smiled at me. "I guess that you are all excited about the wedding. It's only two months away, now, right?"

"Seven weeks." Then my tone became urgent, "I really do need to talk with either Phil or Chuck. Are either of them in, please?"

The dispatcher took one long, a.s.sessing, look at me before she picked up the telephone and rapidly punched in an extension number. "Chief Mallory? Doctor Jenkins from the college is up here asking for you. She's awfully upset ... yes, sir." Delores returned her attention to me. "He'll be right out. Take a seat."

"Thanks."

It was a matter of only two or three minutes before Phil Mallory strolled into the small lobby area. Philip Andrew Mallory is an impressive man by anyone's standards. Yet, in the dress blues of the city police, he was positively intimidating. Tall, muscular, dark hair with more than just a touch of gray at the temple, a scar --apparently a legacy from a knife wound -- graced the left side of his face; this was the way that I a.s.sessed him. I would not particularly want to meet him in a dark alley, especially if he were angry and I was unarmed.

Although he often covered his rugged harshness with a cloak of kindness, Phil Mallory was one truly tough customer. I knew for a fact that he was not a man who suffered fools gladly. Yet, I had seen how kind and gentle he could be in his volunteer work with Big Brothers/Big Sisters and in the volunteer work that I did as a victim's advocate with the local Crisis Center. And he was Geoff's best friend. So, I hoped that I wasn't making too big of a mistake bringing this to him.

A major mistake at this point could cost my life; I knew that only too well. Doing nothing would cost my life. Surely, this couldn't be worse than doing nothing. Could it? I hoped that it couldn't. But, just then though, I wouldn't have sworn to it.

"h.e.l.lo, Al. Missed you at the funeral ... but, you had cla.s.ses this morning, didn't you?" Phil's voice was one of the better tenors ever to grace the Community Chorus. His voice, the gentleness and warmth contained there, covered me like a soothing balm.

I sighed. I had totally forgotten about the funeral of the State's Attorney who had been killed in a car accident only days earlier. Naturally, that would be a reason for Phil to be in dress blues. I felt badly for having forgotten the funeral. But, considering the morning that I had been having, I suppose that was to be expected.

"Yeah, I had cla.s.ses to teach," I said, suddenly reluctant to open the matter up, yet knowing that I had no choice.

"Geoff not with you?" he asked.

I forced a smile. "Ah ... you see, that's why they promoted you, Phil ... your fine powers of observation and deduction."

"Real funny, Al. I was just going to lunch, would you like to join me?"

"It wasn't intended to be funny, Philip. This is not a social call."

"It's not?" he asked with a raised eyebrow, as he suppressed a grin. "I had hoped that you had just stopped in to say 'h.e.l.lo'. It's not often that gorgeous women stop in to see me."

"No, Phil. I really wish it were that simple. This is purely business -- your business. I've got a problem. Could we go somewhere less public and discuss it, please?"

He looked at me with sharp a.s.sessment in his eyes before he nodded once. "Sure thing, Al. Why don't you step on back to my office?"

*Chapter 2*

'Phil'

I felt the tension radiating from her from the moment that I stepped into the lobby. There was something definitely wrong with Geoff's lady. Although I was mostly behind a desk these days, I hadn't entirely lost my knack for reading people. Somehow, the thought of self-sufficient Al Jenkins needing help floored me even as the thought that she had come to me for help sent an odd thrill through me.

I didn't want to explore the reasons for that thrill too carefully. At forty-nine, I'm more than slightly familiar with chemistry. I just never thought that I would be feeling it with my best friend's fiancee.

Al sat in a chair next to the battered metal desk in the small office in which I spent the greater part of my working time. "So, Al," I asked in a forced business-like tone, "what can I do for you?"

"You can help to keep me alive, Phil. You can help keep me alive."

There was no sarcasm in her voice. The set of her jaw and the fear in her eyes told me clearly that she was seriously, almost mortally, afraid. I had dealt with fearful people before, many more times than I wanted to think about, but the look of fear on Al's face made my stomach twist oddly.

It wasn't more than a short moment before she continued, in a tone absolutely devoid of emotion, "I need your help, Phil. I need you to help keep me alive."

"What makes you think that you need police help for that?"

She removed a small tape recorder/player from her briefcase. "You're about to hear what is probably an illegal wiretap. I don't know what the law is about such things. And frankly, at this point, I don't care."

"Alicia!"

"Just listen to this and tell me what you think, but don't say anything until you've listened to the entire tape of the phone calls that I've been getting."

Al's hands trembled as she placed the machine on my desk and pressed the play b.u.t.ton.

A heavily accented, deep ba.s.s, Hispanic, voice said, "Seester ... I know where you are, Seester. Make your peace with G.o.d. You'll be meeting him soon, seester." The words were followed by a click as though the caller had hung up. There were eight similar calls recorded on the tape. Each time the message was short, so that the time of the connection was less than twenty seconds per call.

I watched her reactions as the tape played. I stood convinced she was completely terrified. Personally, the tapes raised more questions in my mind than they answered. When I reached over and turned off the player, Alicia began to answer my questions without my needing to ask them.

"The calls started again last night. This is all of them, except for the first one. I was so shaken on the first one that I didn't think to record it. There's no pattern to the timing of the calls, so far. I've had three within an hour and as little as one in a two-hour period. I've kept a log of the time at which the calls came in."

I took the small wire bound notebook from her shaking fingers. I flipped through it. "Only you would have the discipline to log the calls."

"Discipline? Phil, this isn't discipline. It's fighting for my life. This man is serious. He wants to kill me."

"Most crank calls are just that ... cranks. Mostly they are harmless," I a.s.sured her. "I know that they are disturbing, but there really isn't a thing that I can do about them."

"This one isn't a crank. I know who is calling. Believe me, if he says that he is going to kill me, he will try to do so. He's tried before. He almost succeeded the last time. Trust me, he wants me dead."

Tears flowed slowly down her face, leaving a streak of brown mascara on each cheek.

"You've got to stop him, Phil ... please, I don't want to die. Especially not at the hands of that animal..." Her voice bordered on the hysterical. "I've suffered enough at his hands, I will not allow him to hurt me further. Help me, Phil. Please."

'Hysterical' is one word I would have never previously thought to apply to the cool, collected, and profoundly logical, local businesswoman and college professor, Al Jenkins. From the top of her raven hair, to her violet eyes, down the five-foot, six-inches of her spare, athletic, frame, to the soles of her expensively shod, delicate feet, this was one woman who was always extremely in control of herself and of the situation surrounding her. This frightened woman who sat now at my desk was so different from the Al whom I knew that I found it hard to believe that they were one and the same.

I handed her my handkerchief. "Just calm down, Al. We're not going to get anywhere without your being calm."

She waved the square of cotton cloth away. "You'd never get the mascara stains out of it," she answered as I watched her remove her own, delicate lace edged, embroidered linen, handkerchief from her suit jacket pocket.

Al was the only woman whom I knew who still used linen handkerchiefs. Most of the women whom I knew had long ago switched to packets of disposable tissues. A few, for ecological reasons, had resumed using cloth. But no other woman in my circle used those delicate lace edged linen squares. It was one of the many little things which made Al unique; one of the traits which branded her as old-fashioned, as being a step or so away from the modern world.

"Take a couple of deep breaths and calm yourself," I urged.

"I'm okay. I'm just more shaken by the calls than I wanted to admit, even to myself."

She was obviously embarra.s.sed by having cried in front of anyone.

"You're convinced that these are not just crank calls? That someone is actually intending to go through with the threats?"

"I wouldn't be opening this up, otherwise, Phil. It's all too painful. Personally, I had hoped that this would all stay buried in the past where it belonged. But..." She shrugged and sighed. "I don't know how he tracked me down. I thought that I'd made it next to impossible to find me."

"Back up. Slow down. And tell me this from the beginning."

"From the beginning? Frankly, I'd rather not," she said. Then she sighed. "But, I suppose that you are going to have to know. Soon, everyone will know..."

I waited for her to continue.

She looked up at me. "Do you have any idea how difficult this is? Of course you don't. Forget that I asked." She sighed again. "Until twelve years ago, I lived in Los Angeles and worked in a shelter for runaway teenagers. We tried to take young girls and boys off the streets, put them in rehab programs to shake their drug addictions, get them medical treatment, and when possible reconcile them with their parents ... although that wasn't always possible. And when we couldn't place the children back within their homes, we tried to find foster homes for them as far removed from working the streets as possible."

She shook her head as to dismiss the memories. "Certainly, it was greatly different work than I'm doing now."

I nodded in agreement. Yes, working with runaways was quite a bit different from the quite profitable hardware and software house she ran, or from the role of Computer Science professor at the local college. I filed that information away. It would bear some thinking about. But, I could see her in that position. There was something of the social worker in her make up.

"I don't want to explain all of this. I don't think that I can." Her voice was perilously close to cracking. The strain was written on her face. "But, I have to .... Please just bear with me. This is difficult."

"This ties in with the calls?"

"Yes. I wouldn't be bringing it up otherwise." She closed her eyes and took a several deep breaths. She opened her eyes, sat up straight, and looked me directly in the eye. It was obvious that she had steeled herself for the trauma.

"Phil, there is no good way of saying this. So, I'll just distill it down. The man who is making these threats is the brother of the men whom I killed in Los Angeles."

"Al, if this is a confession, I have to inform you that you have the rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present for this conversation. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law."

The last thing that I needed was to have to extradite her to California. Geoff simply wouldn't like that at all. And neither would I.

*Chapter 3*

'Alicia'

Now, I could feel the tension coming from him. Suddenly, he was no longer just Phil. Now, he was once more all policeman, a peculiar subspecies of h.o.m.o Sapiens Sapiens with whom I had one too many dealings in the past.

I shook my head negatively. "It's not a confession. I've been through all that legal mess in California, Phil. The deaths were ruled justifiable homicides. I acted in self-defense. There are no charges pending against me in any court ... so, you can stop worrying about having to slap me in irons."

Phil laughed nervously. The look in his eye told me that I had gauged his thoughts fairly accurately. "That would have been difficult to explain to Geoff."

"Wouldn't it have just?" I asked.

"Does Geoff know about this?" Phil asked.

"Of course, Geoff knows all about my notorious past. I wouldn't have agreed to marry him without telling him. That simply wouldn't have been fair to him. He needed to know what he might have been getting into with this relationship."

"Deaths?"

How he could put so much restrained curiosity into one word, I would never know.

"Two men ... I killed two men. Twelve years ago."

I could almost see the wheels turning in his head.