The story so far: Detective Rocky Stone has been hired by Wanda Marcellus, aide of Congressional candidate George Wilson, for the purposes of discovering financial improprieties by the incumbent, Congressman Howard Dixon. While investigating the unusual amounts of telephone poles and booths on the streets of town, Rocky discovers connections between a spiritualist guide named Inglehoff, Candidate Geroge Wilson and his wife Martha, and Clarissa King, the wife of prominent businessman and philanthropist Gilbert King. Rocky shadows Martha Wilson in a meeting with Clarissa King at Van Meter's Restaurant. In the last episode, Rocky follows Clarissa to a sporting goods store named Barney's, where she unxpectedly draws a gun on him:
It comes with the territory. You spend enough time looking into things that turn strong men's stomachs and sooner or later you get a gun shoved in your nose. It wasn't even my first time staring a pair of soft eyes down from the wrong side of the barrel, so I wasn't fazed by it. The clerk on the other side of the counter didn't see it that way, though, but that may have been the fact that he had handed her the gun in the first place. He hit the floor flat and disappeared from my view. Barney, the proprietor, remained steadfast.
“Who do you think you are?” he roared.
Clarissa King did not answer. Maybe she couldn't answer. She didn't have quite the glassy expression that Franklin or even Martha Wilson had exhibited, but it was close enough. Her eyes were manic, drilled into my forehead with unholy fervor.
I remained calm. “Mrs. King,” I said, my voice hitting the air like salve on a wounded duck, “my name is Rocky Stone. I'm a detective.”
“I know who you are,” she hissed. “You're a danger. You're a danger to me and my family, everyone I know. You caused Mr. Franklin to die.”
I remembered that painful moment and it bored into my side and let the sap run out. I could see the poor guy in that chair, the look of absolute dumb bliss just before he realized I had followed him there and the abject horror that replaced it as soon as he saw me. Even though I knew it wasn't my fault it still felt like it.
Barney shoved his oar in: “Say, what's this all about?”
“Just a misunderstanding,” I replied. “I busted in on a friend of hers the other day in an office. A man named Inglehoff.”
I hoped that name would make her think and sure enough, it did. Her eyes softened just slightly, and those words of Inglehoff's secretary came back to me. His clients were young, female, attractive, and Clarissa King had all three items checked off on her ledger. Up close I could see how slim and attractive her form was, how quietly brilliant her blue eyes were, how perfectly shaped and soft the line of her strong jaw. A man like Inglehoff, whose intentions were suspect to begin with, would find it hard to resist a woman like her.
“Inglehoff,” I continued, “told you that. He said I was a danger to you and your family, didn't he?”
“He did,” Clarissa said, her eyes returning to steel. “He's a beautiful man and a strong man.”
Of course, he is. I could see him twirling the watch in front of her eyes, teaching her to parrot those words over and over again until even he began to believe them. I was going to break that little man in three pieces the next time I saw him.
It was time I put an end to this little farce. “Does your husband know about him?”
Her finger acted before her face curled up in anger, clicking away at the trigger with reckless abandon three, four, five, six times. She would have shot me in the head with at least three of them had she any bullets loaded in it. I swiped it out of her hand and she turned to bolt. With my other hand I caught her wrist and pulled her in, breaking the heel off her shoe in the process. It skidded along the floor and landed against the counter with a dull thump.
I felt Barney's heavy tread on the floor as he swept past. The girl continued to struggle and I tossed the gun to him to keep my other hand free. Barney caught it and said “I'll call the police,” to no one in particular.
“Don't,” I said.
The clerk's face appeared from behind the counter. Even Clarissa King was taken aback by it, and stopped her struggling for a moment. She soon remembered her self and tried to fight her way out, throwing her free hand into a fist and flinging it at me from strange angles. I caught it and pulled her into me, and we danced a curious little waltz.
“Did you think about it, kid?” I asked. “Did you see the headlines before you drew that gun? How long do you think it would take your husband to leave you flat once the police take you in? Maybe the papers would find out about Inglehoff. Once the scribes get their hooks into you, no telling what might happen.”
“What do you want from me?” she whispered conspiratorially.
“Maybe you don't believe it, kid, but Inglehoff is your worst nightmare. Give me Inglehoff and no one needs to know about this.”
She thought. So did I, and the thought was a crazy one. In the pictures, when a hypnotist wakes up the mug he put under, he always snaps his fingers a few times to bring him out of it. I figured it was worth a shot so I snapped away. The first two did nothing, but the third dropped her to the floor in a dead faint. I didn't know whether I had killed her or cured her. One way or the other, she was out of Inglehoff's clutches for good.
Will Clarissa King recover? And will this all lead to the door of the sinister Inglehoff? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone!
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