“What did you just inject me with?” I demanded.
“Succinylcholine.”
“Succo-what?”
“Succinylcholine,” she repeated. “It’s an agent that will paralyze your muscles. In a few minutes, you won’t be able to speak. Ironic, don’t you think, for a podcast detective?”
I hated to be the one to break it to her that I wasn’t one anymore. But I couldn’t because I was already starting to feel the agent working on my nervous system. I was having a hard time holding my crutches. I dropped one and took a clumsy swing at Tammy. She easily dodged it. “Pretty soon, you won’t be able to walk, and then you won’t be able to talk, and then you won’t be able to breathe. Succinylcholine is what they use during surgery to make sure you don’t breathe or move.” Tammy pulled out a Sorrento lemon from her pocket with a stem and leaf attached. “You’ll be another fruit I had to cut from the vine.” She held the lemon up and it caught the sunlight; then she made a little snipping gesture with her fingers.
My throat felt like it was closing up. I tried to open my mouth to yell for help, but it came out as a soft grunt.
“Why?” I groaned, my voice already a whisper, as I backed away from her, leaning heavily on the one crutch. I was losing feeling in my feet.
Tammy made a disapproving sound in her throat. “Did you ask Russo why? Or did you just assume he had a good reason?Of courseyou’d ask me why. And you call yourself a feminist.”
Barry yipped and growled at me. I felt dizzy. My vision blurred.
“Help!” I tried, but it came out a croak. “Someone help me.”
“You won’t be able to scream,” she said. “Your muscles are already relaxing.”
She was right. I was quickly losing control of my body. Breathing felt hard.
“You love lecturing me about how I belittle the fairer sex, but you thought the killer was a man this whole time.” Tammy clucked her tongue. “What does that say about you, Miss Hypocrite?” Tammy sneered. “I listened to your podcast. Too much potty mouth for my taste.” She wrinkled her nose. “But you always referred to the killer ashe.”
“Most… serial killers are men…”
“Sexist, though, isn’t it? Nobody in the US cares about middle-aged women. I might as well have been invisible to you and everyone else in the world. I was always there. I waved at you from my minivan when I had Gordon Allen drugged in the back on the floorboards, but I don’t think you even saw me.” Tammy seemed to love lording this detail over me. “And Russo—that two-bit hack—throwing in his sloppy work and trying to make me take the fall for it. And the mayor was such a nice boy. It was all the loose women throwing themselves at him that were the real problem. Whores like you.”
Even if I could make my voice box work, it would be useless to tell Tammy about the evils of slut-shaming.
I tried to get my foot to move toward the footbridge and the koi pond. A stone lantern stood in my way, but if I could just get around it and get to the patio, maybe I could get help.
“I don’t know what the mayor or Russo ever saw in you. But girls like you just waste the attention. You know if you’d just paid attention to the man, he probably wouldn’t have gone off the deep end, poor sap. Girls like you turn even good men bad.”
I realized now with brutal clarity that Russo was simply a crazed stalker, nothing more. He’d been telling the truth. He really wasn’t the Canceled Killer.
“Yet, stupid women like you get all the attention and all the praise, and women, respectable women, like me, society doesn’t value us. We’re barely noticed. That’s why we’re always sneaking onto planes. Did you hear about that woman who kept sneaking right through security? That’s because no one notices us. Men only care if you’re young and beautiful, and women only care if you’re competition.” She shrugged. “I’m neither, so I’m invisible. I have this vest in three different neon colors, but still people miss me.” She shook her head in disapproval. “I’d say I fly under the radar, but as a fifty-five-year-old woman in America, I’m not even near the radar.”
I got the distinct feeling she had a manifesto hidden in her knitting basket. A koi fish splashed water onto the path. Barry strained at his leash, growling at the fish that was at least twice his size.
“You… sound… like… a feminist,” I managed, my voice getting weaker.
Tammy looked deeply offended. “I’m not one of those ugly bra burners! Heavens, no. That’s what’s wrong with you. Sleeping around with any boy who wants to. Refusing to get married, give your mother grandchildren, and take your place in society. This iswhat happens when you give young women too many freedoms. They abuse them.”
I desperately needed to get help. Each second my limbs felt heavier. My throat was thicker. My diaphragm didn’t want to work.
“You’re a degenerate, a fruit who needs to be cut from the vine, just like that horrible Olga Duncan. Coming into beautiful Lake Sanguis with herfilth? Tempting men to sin? Just like you. Just like that terrible president of that fake university. Did you know she had anopen marriage? Honestly. People thought I killed her because she stole all that money, but it was really because she wasn’t honoring her vows to God.”
I coughed as I tried to suck in a breath.
“Killing… not… very… Christian,” I felt the need to point out.
“I’m doingthe Lord’s work,” she added for good measure. “The Lord works with imperfect vessels all the time. Like King David.”
The Church Lady was the Canceled Killer. This would not go over well online.
“Jared?” I asked.
