When Rebecca returned with Lassiter's steel knife, she was not in the least surprised to see that, despite McNab's chants of "Beetlejuice," the Chief was still an irritable tiger.
"Okay, I got the knife," Rebecca said, locking the door behind her. "Buzz, I need you to throw it over her head."
Chief Vick forced back a kittenish yowl. "No! I have seen the results of McNab's assessments from the shooting range. I am not letting him throw anything anywhere near me!"
"But the only other alternative is me," said Rebecca, "and you know how bad my coordination is."
The Chief couldn't argue with that, but she thought the matter over anyway, lashing her tail as she deliberated. "All right. Go ahead, Officer McNab. Just don't hit me."
Buzz's brown eyes got wide like a puppy dog's. "What if I hit you?"
"Buzz," Rebecca said, touching his shoulder. "Nothing will happen, okay? Weretigers have vast healing powers. If you do hit her, it won't hurt her. There's no pressure, okay? Here." She grabbed a thumbtack and a sheet of blank paper from the Chief's desk and made a lopsided target for Buzz to hit in black Sharpie marker, which she attached to the wall just behind Chief Vick. "Just do your best to hit the paper, okay? You'll do fine. No pressure, okay?"
"No pressure?" Buzz echoed.
"None at all," Rebecca said in her most comforting voice.
Buzz smiled. "Okay. I'll be happy to try. I've always wanted to know how to throw a knife."
Chief Vick pressed herself against the ground and closed her eyes. Unlike McNab, she could tell when Rebecca was lying.
Her rounded ears stood straight up and swiveled around involuntarily when a rush of air flew above her head. Feeling no pain, she opened first one eye and then the other, then sat upright to check herself for damage. Then she looked over her shoulder. "McNab! You actually hit the target."
Buzz grinned. "I did!" But the grin evaporated almost as soon as it came. "But you're still a tiger..."
"It's okay," said Rebecca. "Nobody panic yet. We still have a couple more methods to try. Next, we can try tapping her on the head with the knife."
Pushing back a growl of annoyance, Chief Vick said, "You couldn't have suggested the least dangerous method first?"
Rebecca's face took on a Buzz-like expression of a lightbulb being turned from "off" to "dim" to "too bright, too late." She slowly said, "Oh. Oops."
The Chief couldn't suppress the growl this time. "McNab, hit me in the head." This time, she didn't care whether or not she got brain damage.
McNab took the knife from the wall and tapped her striped head with as much gentleness as he had. Considering his bulk, that wasn't much, but the Chief came from the light blows unscathed...and untransformed.
"Ms. Williams, I am still a cat!" She hissed. "What am I going to do now?!"
"Well, we still have one more shot," Rebecca said.
"The tea thing?"
"Yes."
"Where are you possibly going to find tiger claws in this country?"
Rebecca sighed. "I don't know. My best idea is an extreme long shot."
"You have an idea?"
Rebecca nodded. "Yes."
"Then go check it out! A long shot is better than nothing!"
Buzz nodded. "Shawn lives off of long shots." He smiled. "I'd like to do that someday. Not the psychic stuff. I'm not that talented. But I'd like to solve a case Ike that someday."
Rebecca smiled. "You'll get there, Buzz."
Chief Vick flicked her tail as Rebecca left to track down the last lead, surprised that that time, she hadn't been lying.
Rebecca, having run out of all other options, walked down the long hallway to meet the one person she knew she could depend on to produce something freaky out of thin air, hoping for a little Deus Ex Machina to solve her feline problem.
She knocked on the door of the morgue and called, "Woody?"
"Come in! I was just finishing up this last dead guy here," Woody said.
Rebecca peeked in, keeping as much distance as possible between herself and the autopsy table. She blinked in surprise when she noticed a small, colorful machine on the counter behind him. "...Woody? ... Is that a snow cone maker?"
"Yes, it is! I just got it a few hours ago from the guys down in the evidence locker. Would you like cherry or blue raspberry?"
"No, thank you, but do you happen to have any tiger claws?"
"Third cabinet on the left, top right shelf, behind the animal crackers," Woody replied as he made an incision along the cadaver's carotid artery. "You're not a PETA representative, an Italian mobster, or a Chinese government official, are you?"
"No," Rebecca said. "I just need them for.....something. But it's important, I promise."
"Okey-dokey," said Woody, still focused on examining the remains. "But if anyone asks, I got it at an antique shop. I didn't know that the teapot had a tiger claw inside. I actually didn't find that out until I got home and tried to use the teapot as a receptacle for my gauze collection."
Rebecca retrieved a tiny plastic bag holding one four-inch-long tiger claw from the cabinet and quickly shoved it into her jacket pocket. "Oh, okay, that's good to know. Um, Woody? You might not get it back."
"Oh, that's okay. I wasn't planning to use it for anything anyway. I just kept it as an icebreaker for parties."
"...Right. Um, I'm going now," Rebecca said, and slipped back out the door, away from the overpowering smell of formaldehyde and other assorted chemicals.
"I wonder if the evidence guys found any snow cone stuff in lime flavor," Woody said to the dead man. "I'm feeling a little bit green today."
Rebecca returned to the Chief's office and held up the claw for her boss to see.
"That was quick," Buzz said.
"We're very lucky that---" Rebecca stopped herself from mentioning Woody, realizing that owning body parts of an endangered species (probably poached) was likely illegal. "That I could find one around here."
"So, what do we do? We just crush it into the tea?" Buzz asked.
Rebecca nodded. "Yes. I'll go get the tea. You work on crushing the claw."
"Two questions," the Chief said. "How are you going to crush it, and what if this doesn't work?"
Buzz looked around for a tool to use on the claw. "I don't know."
"Try using the butt of your gun," Rebecca said. "Cat claws are hollow, like bamboo. It should work. If it doesn't work, I'll see if I can find something else. It'll make a lot of noise, but... I don't think it's safe to take the claw outside and risk someone else seeing. The fewer questions we get, the better."
"We should get our story straight," said Chief Vick. "If anyone asks McNab is here fixing the desk. The front left leg came loose and it needed some work. The whole thing toppled over and I'm trying to get my paperwork back in order."
Rebecca nodded. "Right. And since he's enough of a distraction, you don't want to be disturbed anymore than you already are."
"Right!" The Chief said. "That's our cover story."
Committing the details of the story to memory, Rebecca snuck into the break room to get a cup of green tea.
An hour and a borrowed hammer later, Buzz tipped the coarsely crushed claw dust into the Styrofoam cup of tea and set it on the floor. Chief Vick stared into it as if she were peering into the abyss of Hades itself.
"Am I really supposed to drink this?" The Chief said. "Are we even sure it's a real claw? Are we even sure it came from a tiger?"
"It looked real enough to me," said Rebecca. "The length and size were right."
"Will one be enough?"
"I don't know. Only one way to find out."
The Chief flashed Rebecca a glare with a sarcastic comment to match. "That's very comforting, Ms. Williams."
Rebecca just shrugged.
Chief Vick sighed. "All right. I'm all out of other options, so...here goes nothing."
Her wide, pink tiger tongue delicately lapped up the unusual contents of the cup.
The cup was empty in a matter of seconds, and immediately after she finished, the Chief yawned and stretched out on the floor.
"Chief?" said Buzz.
His only answer was a snore.
"Is this good or bad?" he asked.
"I'm not sure," said Rebecca. "If she's snoring, then she's still breathing, so we haven't poisoned her or anything, I don't think. When this whole thing started, she had problems with falling asleep. Maybe it'll end the way it started." She paused a second to think. "I guess it makes sense that a radical body change would happen while sleeping, because at that time, less energy would be used up in the body's other systems, and it could safely diverted to changing shape and metabolism."
"Right," Buzz said.
"Listen, I'm going to get back to work and keep people away from the office. You stay here and keep an eye on her, okay? Make sure you let me know if something goes wrong. Does that sound good?"
"Yeah, I can handle that," Buzz said with a smile. "Do you think I'll get a promotion out of this?"
Rebecca grinned at him. "I don't know. Maybe. You've probably earned it!"
As she got back the usual work of her shift---delivering messages, answering telephones, and being a gofer in general---Rebecca began to get twitchy. What would she and Buzz do if the Chief was still asleep when it was time for them to go home? What if the Chief's family came looking for her? How would they explain?
Yet after just half an hour had passed by, Buzz peeked out of the Chief's office, caught Rebecca's eye, and motioned frantically for her to come over.
As soon as she saw Buzz opening the door, Rebecca went inside the office and shut the door behind them. "What is it? Is everything okay?"
Buzz pointed to the spot where Chief Vick had fallen asleep, eyes as wide as dinner plates and shining with all the innocence of a puppy dog. Leaning forward, he whispered, "She's naked."
Rebecca blinked, trying to make sense of that statement, and glanced at where Buzz was pointing.
"She's human again!" Rebecca said, looking away quickly. "Okay, you should go. I'll drape some clothes over her and wake her up."
Buzz gave her a grateful nod and got out of the office as fast as his long legs could take him.
Chief Vick was having a very pleasant dream about a field full of clovers and cherry blossoms when something that looked like a fuzzy yellow duck began to shake her and honk, "Wake up! Chief! Wake up!"
She bolted upright with a gasp as she reentered the real world. "Where am I? Why do I feel so strange?"
"You're in your office," said Rebecca, (politely) shielding her eyes with a hand. "Chief, look!"
The Chief looked. "I'm naked!"
"You're human!"
"Get out!"
"Okay!"
"Let's never speak of this again!"
"Sounds great!"
"And thank you for helping me!"
"No problem!"
"Go now!"
"Okay!"
Rebecca made a beeline for the door, but paused for a second, with her back still turned to the Chief. "Wait, one last thing. I did some research on your bracelet. I think I have a pretty good idea of what the symbol means."
"Really? What is it?"
"Well, it's a Chinese character."
"Let me guess: it means tiger."
"No, but you're close. It means king."
"King? Why king?"
Rebecca smiled even though the Chief couldn't see her face. "The shape of the character for 'king' looks a lot like the markings on a tiger's forehead."
The Chief smiled, even though Rebecca couldn't see. "Go figure." The smile evaporated. "Now get out!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Author's Chapter Notes:
Since I'm running out of time to finish this ridiculous story, I decided to take this entire chapter and devote it to finishing up our subplot. The next (and last) little bit will wrap up our main plot.
I think that this is okay, given that, in case you hadn't noticed, the two plots don't quite match up chronologically anyway. :-D
I think that this is okay, given that, in case you hadn't noticed, the two plots don't quite match up chronologically anyway. :-D
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