Chapter 12 – Out of the Shadows
Laura blew out her breath as she tossed the latest stack of paperwork to the outbox on the corner of her desk. It had been yet another report on the jewelry store heist she’d had to sign off on. The last three days had felt like she’d done nothing but paperwork from sunup to sundown. She leaned back in her chair, turning it to look at the whiteboard and pegboard that adorned the wall nearest her and Walsh’s desk. Everything they had about Pink Pussy’s robberies was on display as they tried to make sense out of the whole mess.
The theft of the diamonds had bumped up Pink Pussy’s total stolen quite a bit, though it didn’t really track with what she’d stolen before: electronic components from a local manufacturing company and some kind of glass cutting machines and lens materials that were primarily used by camera lens manufacturers or optometrists, and the ceramic and rubber compounds that could be used in any number of things. Laura wasn’t exactly sure why Pink Pussy was going after that kind of technology, but the diamonds seemed out of place, at least according to the tech guys, who had assumed some kind of transmitter or receiver.
Then again, with the appearance of the two mysterious vigilantes at the store, especially the one wearing the tank-like armor, maybe there was some kind of mad scientist at work on a death ray or something.
Wouldn’t exactly be out of the question these days…
“Conway! Hey, check this out!”
Laura spun her chair around at the excited voice, shooting an annoyed look at Walsh. “What is it? I was halfway to thinking up something useful just now…probably.”
“Shadow Lynx just posted a vid on her page!” Walsh replied, tossing his phone atop the next stack of papers Laura had intended to go over. “She’s talking about Pink Pussy, like stuff about the robbery she shouldn’t know!” he added, answering Laura’s unspoken question as to why she should waste time with the stuck up vigilante.
Catherine had a general dislike of Shadow Lynx; they’d come on the scene at about the same time, and each had pretty dedicated fans, but they’d always been at each other’s’ throats, claiming that one was ripping off the other, stealing fans, trying to get the other in trouble with various gangs they’d fought, that kind of thing. The territorial nature of big cats and the fiery personalities of the two Latina women were not conducive to friendly behavior, and Laura had been privy to plenty of angry rants from Catherine about Shadow Lynx’s antics.
It was no secret that they trashed each other on their respective sites and in several news interviews, and since Pink Pussy had dropped out of the limelight and started her life of crime, Shadow Lynx had capitalized on it, and had seen a surge of new fans, started a new line of anti-Pink Pussy merch, and been generally smug about the whole situation. It made her angry to think of her making money off her friend’s misfortune, but she couldn’t exactly go public with what she knew about Catherine and her other persona.
Taking up the phone, Laura saw that the video had the replay button on screen, and quickly tapped it. After the regular, cutesy animated intro, a darkly colored lynx appearing from a swirl of shadows, slashing at the screen to create her logo, then vanishing just as quickly as it appeared, Shadow Lynx herself was waiting on screen, wearing a smug grin that caused Laura to grind her teeth. If there was ever a face Laura had wanted to slap, it was that one.
“Hola, mi amigos!” Shadow Lynx said with a cheery tone that didn’t seem to fit her off-camera attitude, at least not from her own experiences with the woman. “Hope that all my little Lynxlings are having a wonderful day! I’ll get right to it, amigos! I have news about that nefarious wildcat that’s been causing so much headache, and it’s not good!”
The camera zoomed out from her face and showed Shadow Lynx rolling upon a pile of red and purple pillows, coming to a rest on her belly, stretching sensually before playfully kicking her booted feet behind her and pawing at her face with her leather-gloved hands. Her outfit put Laura more in the mind of something a dominatrix would wear, so the playful cat act didn’t gel well with the outfit.
Besides, Catherine did it a lot better, but she did have a big advantage over Shadow Lynx what with her full transformation and all.
“It looks like our naughty little Pilfering Pink Pussy has struck again! And this time, amigos, she has stolen a bunch of jewelry! Diamonds, in fact, rare ones! I know, it’s so terrible! I’d always respected her as a hero before…”
“Right…” Laura muttered. Everyone in the department had been privy to one or two arguments between her and Pink Pussy from the early days. There was no love lost between the two. Even their fans knew that was a lie.
“…but as a criminal, I have nothing for the puta but righteous anger! Before, you see, I had hoped she might be in some kind of trouble, and just couldn’t come out and say it, cause all she stole was some glass and tools to cut it, a few little circuit thingies, some glass components, some ceramic compounds and some kind of liquid rubber stuff; I’m not electronics specialist or anything, but you could make some kind of cellular repeater or transmitter with that stuff, so say my experts. Maybe she was trying to call for help? But now that she’s taken to making herself rich, I just can’t let her criminal behavior continue any longer! I’m taking it upon myself to bring her to justice, amigos!” She had shifted her demeanor from playful to a righteous anger in moments, raising and arching her back like a cat on the prowl.
Laura’s mouth opened for a moment, quickly replaced with a deeper frown and a low, angry sound from her throat. The list of stolen goods hadn’t been fully released to the public; a general idea of what had been taken was known, but the specifics shouldn’t have been. And that idea about using the components to build a cellular device had come from one of the techie guys in the crime scene unit, and only after several hours of trying to puzzle out what Pink Pussy’s goal was. The theft of the diamonds had thrown that train of thought clear of the tracks, though.
Shadow Lynx hissed, raising one hand, her suit’s claws popping out of her fingernails, slashing quickly at the camera. “I’m calling you out, Pink Pussy! Make it easier on all of us and turn yourself in! To me or the police! I promise I’ll go easy on you if you do it in the next 24 hours. If not, well, you can expect una patada enorme en el culo! 24 hours, chica! Then Shadow Lynx is on the hunt! And I will not be merciful!”
Laura’s frown remained on her face as the video ended and she handed the phone back to Walsh. “Well, that’s trouble…who’s been blabbing? And to her of all people”
“Well, it’s not you or me,” Walsh replied easily, tapping at his phone to clear the video.
The briefest moment of consideration that Walsh could be lying slipped into her mind, and then was gone. Laura knew it was just her skeptical detective’s mindset at work; there were no prior reasons that she had to mistrust or suspect Walsh. “There’s all the crime scene people, and secrets don’t exactly stay that way long around here,” Laura said at last, rubbing her temple. “Could be someone on the cleaning crew even, or one of the maintenance people.”
“You know,” Walsh said, rubbing his chin, “it’s perfectly within our purview to speak to Shadow Lynx and question her on how she got that information. She’s got a PR contact, and a few hints about her being considered suspect would probably get her to show up for us. Though if she’s on the hunt for Pink Pussy, then we’re bound to run into her eventually anyway.”
“Hmmm…” Laura considered Walsh’s idea a moment, then stood. “No, you have to stroke her ego if we want to draw her out. Get in contact with whoever you can, and let them know that we want to ask her about that information, and maybe work together, you know, for the public interest and making a good show for the fans. It’d make her look even better if the police supported her; people love it when heroines work together with law enforcement, even ones like Shadow Lynx.”
“Good point. I’ll work up something and see what I can manage. What are you going to do?” Walsh asked, tucking his phone in his pocket.
“I’m going to go think on a few things, clear my head,” she replied, glancing at the clock, seeing that it was nearly four in the afternoon; the range was probably empty at this hour. She opened the drawer of her desk and pulled out her gun in its holster, attaching them to her belt, then grabbed a double magazine holder and attached it to her opposite side. “Text me if something comes up before I get back.”
Walsh nodded and Laura walked quickly from their office. The larger room beyond was mostly empty, though she nodded to a couple of other detectives who had just come on duty as she passed. Beyond, the general clatter of the police station was quite a bit louder, phones ringing almost constantly, orders getting shouted, criminals protesting their arrests, everything she had grown used to over the years on the force. Though unlike their big arrest the other night, the halls weren’t lined with maids.
As she had guessed, the range was empty, so it didn’t take her long to get to her thinking spot after she grabbed a pair of noise-dampening earmuffs and range glasses, and signed in with the rangemaster, taking another box of .357 SIG along with her. They didn’t have a huge supply of it on hand, but she was one of only a handful of officers who used their option to carry the more powerful round over the standard nine-millimeter; all the others were on the SWAT team, in fact. Her range time was already higher than anyone else, and she’d had to endure a discussion with her boss about the extra ammunition costs, but they had come to an agreement that she get one box a week; anything else came out of her own pocket.
Once the earmuffs were in place, Laura stepped through the door to the range and already felt some of the weight lifting from her mind at the smell of burned gunpowder that lingered in the cavernous space. Taking up her favorite spot at the far end of the line, she set her target up on the hanger and sent it down range, further than the standard qualifying range of about twenty five yards, all the way to the end of the track, making the distance closer to a hundred and fifty yards. Laura set the box of ammo on the bench in front of her, drew her two magazines and sat them beside it, and finally drew her M&P pistol.
Pulling back the slide just a bit, double checking that there was a round chambered, more out of habit than mistrust of the visual indicator, Laura grasped the gun in a two-handed grip and pointed it down range. She slowed her breathing and focused on center-mass of the man-shaped target, specifically the target zone over the heart, letting everything else leave her mind. That range was a bit further than what the round could handle with a straight shot, so she adjusted her aim upward to account for the extra distance.
She squeezed the trigger, the gun responded with a muffled explosion, bucking in her hands, but her experience with the weapon already had it back on target once the slide action had finished loading the next round.
A fresh hole in the center of the heart of the target was just barely visible from the backlighting at the far end of the range.
Not for the first time, as Laura began firing off more rounds, she thought about Catherine, and what kind of trouble she’d gotten herself into. Cat was always one to trust her instincts instead of thinking things through, but she’d never gotten herself into a situation like this. True, they’d had their close calls in school while growing up and doing the ‘teenage detective’ thing on a few occasions, but nothing like this.
“If only she’d told me what she was working on!” Laura thought angrily, emptying her magazine, ejecting it to the bench and slapping another one home, releasing the slide in the course of a couple seconds. She brought her sights back to the target, this time to the zone at the center of the head, adjusting for the distance. “She should have said something about it. Left me some clue to what villain she had been hunting, something more than a trail of thefts.”
Laura kept her shots slow for now, one every couple seconds. “And now she’s got Shadow Lynx stirred up; this isn’t going to end well for one of them, maybe not for either of them. Pink Pussy’s rising fast on the most wanted list; that’s going to be a hard reputation to recover from, even if she’s being coerced into it. Damn it, Cat! Why didn’t you tell me anything?!”
The pistol ran dry, the magazine was dropped, and another slapped in, the slide released quickly. Laura held the pistol low for a moment, focusing on the target. She breathed deeply, then blew it out slowly.
All those electronic components, and now jewelry, and diamonds at that. And from what the owner had told them, not just any diamonds. Of course, that’s usually how most people described a high-dollar piece of jewelry when it was stolen. Apparently these had some kind of history to them, had been purchased at great expense, and were meant for their most important customers, the really rich types.
And now she was going to have to deal with Shadow Lynx, and try to keep her dislike of the woman under control while she did it. It was untelling what kind of mess was coming now, once the two feline-themed heroines met. Fur would fly, and probably blood, too.
Feeling a sudden anger welling up at the headache Cat had made for her, Laura snapped the pistol up and fired two quick shots at the head, then dropped to a low hold, snapped it up again, fired two more at the heart. She continued the drill until the magazine ran dry, then dropped the magazine and set the pistol on the bench, and started reloading. As her fingers plucked the rounds from the box and quickly transferred them to the magazine, Laura began having other thoughts, not exactly pertaining to the case.
“Cat’s going to get it when she finally gets back home,” she decided as she finished up the first magazine. “Assuming Pink Pussy can wiggle herself out of a prison sentence, anyway.” Thinking of her friend stuck in a jail cell didn’t sit right with her, certainly, but…a cage, in their living room, or maybe in Laura’s bedroom, at the foot of the bed.
Laura felt her lips curling into a smirk as she started on the third magazine. Cat had always had the louder, in your face kind of personality, while Laura had maintained a more reserved, quiet and contemplative air to her, but she had a dominant streak inside her. It came out from time to time, usually when she questioned suspects, but sometimes when she and Cat fooled around, too. “Maybe it’s time I start embracing that side of myself more often. Cat really needs a firm hand to keep her in line after this debacle. She’s not leaving the apartment for at least a month after she gets back!”
Laura picked up her gun and slapped the freshly reloaded magazine into it, pulled the slide back and let it slam forward, then aimed at the target, firing as quickly as she could, snapping her aim from chest to head and back. As the rounds tore down range into the quickly dwindling paper target, Laura couldn’t help but imagine each pull of the trigger as the crack of a whip against a certain pink-furred catgirl, who was begging for her mistress to show her mercy.
It suddenly clicked in her brain as the slide locked back on the empty magazine that maybe that was why she really disliked Shadow Lynx so much. They were both dominants, Laura maybe not as open about the fact, and the idea of her using that whip of hers on Cat, of her showing that kind of dominance over either of Catherine’s identities, just flew right in Laura’s face. Dropping the magazine from her gun, Laura loaded the next one, aiming down range once she had released the slide. A frown made her lips curl as she sighted in on the smaller bullseye-like targets at the corners of the target, meant for precision work.
What if Shadow Lynx was secretly in love with Pink Pussy? It was a twisted love, but what if… “No, that’s just stupid…” she thought, shaking her head before she started squeezing rounds off at the smaller target zones. They hated each other, plain and simple. Two big, territorial cats fighting over the same area is all it was.
Right?
Snapping the pistol from the upper left corner to the lower right, Laura popped off a few more rounds. Why was she suddenly thinking of stuff like that? Sure, she and Cat had fooled around plenty of times. Growing up, Laura had usually been the one in charge to some extent, whenever she could convince Cat not to go running off on some impassioned urge, anyway. Once they’d hit high school and then college, Laura had a reputation for being the brains and Catherine the brawn of the pair, but it hadn’t really been anything more than that…had it?
Maybe it had. As she switched to the next of the corner targets, Laura had another thought cross her mind. Suddenly the image of Cat on a short leash slipped into her brain, a leash held in her hand. It’d be the only way she’d be allowed out of the apartment at all. There was no way she was going to let her out of her sight again after this mess. Once she was back home, they were going to make some changes, and again, the thought of installing a cage somewhere flitted through her mind’s eye.
Shadow Lynx wouldn’t be getting her claws on Pink Pussy, one way or the other. She was already Laura’s, whatever the case may be.
Frown finally turning into a smirk, Laura emptied the magazine into the last of the corner targets, dropped it, and replaced it with the last fresh one. She blew out her breath, and after sending the slide home, and quickly dropped the mag back out, topping it off with one of the final five rounds in the box before loading it back into the pistol. The last four she stuffed into one of the spare mags before she replaced them in her belt holster. She’d finish reloading them once she was back in her office, where she could wipe the gun down and make sure it was properly clean.
“After lunch, though,” she said as her stomach rumbled lightly. She hit the switch, and recalled the target carrier, waiting for it to reach her. She could already see the damage she had done to it, but took a moment to look it over up close anyway. The chest and head target zones were eaten out completely in the center, as were all of the corner targets; she had to start picking off a wider circle around the center of the head and chest as she had gone through the rounds, leaving about a two-inch wide ragged circle in both areas. There were no flyers to be seen, not that she’d suspected she’d see any.
Grabbing up the empty ammo box, Laura turned, coming to an immediate stop. In the observation area behind the range were no less than half a dozen men watching her, all of them wearing SWAT team jumpsuits. The tall one in the back, Frank Hansen, wore a wide grin while his subordinates just looked at her with disbelief. She didn’t recognize them. Rolling her eyes, Laura started out of the range, and as expected, once she was through the door, Hansen was waiting on her. “Just can’t get enough of me, can you, Hansen?” she asked, plucking the earmuffs off her head after tossing the empty carton in the trash.
The big guy laughed, thumbing a hand over his shoulder. “Had to show the newbies that I wasn’t bullshitting them about you, Conway. Every one of them swears they’re the best shot on the squad. You mind?”
Seeing that he was holding his hand toward her paper target, Laura shrugged and handed it over, finally removing her range glasses, looking at Hansen’s expression as he unfolded the target and looked it over. She suspected what was coming next, so wasn’t surprised when it happened.
Hansen whistled, shaking his head. “Son of a bitch, Conway. You never fail to disappoint, and I think you might’ve gotten a little tighter.” Hansen looked out of the corner of his eyes at her, his gaze drifting downward for a moment, then back to the target. “I’m telling you, you’d be a lot better off on my sniper team. You’d be paid a lot more, and wouldn’t have to deal with all those freaks up close and personal. Come on, try it out for a month and see what you think, at least.”
Laura shook her head, a grin curling her lips. Always he tried to recruit her when they met up on the range. “Sorry, Hansen. I’ve got a mind that is much better utilized solving all these mysteries, you know. Besides, seems a bit too much of a boys club if you ask me,” she said, looking past him to the new guys, who wore looks ranging from awe to hurt pride to anger.
“Well, we’ve got Kim and Hernandez…” Hansen started, but Laura cut him off with another shake of her head, raising her hand to him to cut him off.
“Not interested, Frank!” Laura turned and started walking away, heading toward the rangemaster to turn in her borrowed gear. “Better get your guys out on the line, though. They’ve got a lot of practice time ahead of them, right?”
She heard a few mumbled comments behind her from the new guys, and then Hansen called after her. “Any tips for the recruits, deadeye?”
Laura paused, turning to look over her shoulder, shrugging. “Eat lots of carrots, I guess. And practice, practice, practice.”
“Gee, thanks, Conway,” Hansen muttered, calling out suddenly to his recruits to gear up for practice.
She continued to grin once she had started away again, and her stomach made its hunger known once more. She quickly signed out of the range and replaced the earmuffs and range glasses, and headed back upstairs. On the one hand it did make her feel pretty good to show up the elite SWAT officers, but it wasn’t something she spent a lot of time thinking about. Friendly competition wasn’t a bad thing, and if it motivated his men to do better, what was the harm in that? She had never really made a big deal about her talents with guns; it had always just been something that she was good at, a natural affinity, even having grown up in the suburbs and having very little shooting experience until she’d joined a shooting club in college.
But, her thoughts were soon back to Cat and the Pink Pussy conundrum as she headed out of the station to the little cafe across the street. Nothing there was especially healthy or filling, but it would at least get her through until later that evening. Cat always tried to convince her to just pack a lunch, but she never seemed to have time for it.
Another image slipped into her brain, and Laura tapped her chin thoughtfully. Maybe while Cat was on house arrest, she could get her a maid outfit, and she could handle packing the lunch. “Not a bad idea at all…” Laura said to herself. Not a bad idea, but one that required her to find her missing friend first, and try to figure out a way to get her out of the legal mess she was in. That was going to be the real challenge, that and keeping Shadow Lynx from getting her claws on Pink Pussy first. Again, the thought of something going on between the two of them rankled her, but that couldn’t be the case, it just couldn’t be. It was silly. Right?
Bit late on the post today, but I finally got to go out and do a little hiking this morning around the local lakes. Got out before sunrise for some photography, then explored a new spot…and promptly crashed out for a few hours when I got home. Winter has me so out of shape…
Anyway, here we have some introspection from Laura, and some rather revealing personality traits that will certainly play into future events. And I’m pretty sure those shooting skills won’t be forgotten either. Also, forgive my perhaps gratuitous use of Spanish here; I’m relying on Google Translate; I really should get over my social anxieties one of these days and make friends with someone who knows the language…
Hope you’re all still enjoying the story! Would love to hear from you, positive or negative, if you’d be so kind as to offer some comments on what you’ve thought so far.
Stay tuned for more!
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