Memory Lapse: A Slater Vance Novel by LR Potter

lips,
and pulled out his 9mm. Before slipping down into a crouch, he began inching
his way towards his office, and in the darkness, he stumbled over a body.
Pointing his light at the body, he saw it was the rent-a-cop. Slater placed two
fingers against his throat and felt a pulse. Clicking the penlight off, he
continued forward stealthily.
    He’d made it almost to
the door when he felt, not heard, a bullet whiz by his head and plant into the
wood panel next to him. Rolling down and landing on his stomach, he raised his
gun and fanned it out in front of him but didn’t see anyone. Inching forward on
his stomach, he rose up to his knees and shoved himself against the glass doors
of his office. He fell back to his stomach when the glass door shattered. The
tempered glass blew into big chunks, littering the carpet both inside and
outside his office doorway. Slater could feel the glass bite into his flesh as
he continued to inch forward on his stomach. Darkness surrounded him totally.
He’d almost made it to Bennie’s desk when he felt a small gush of air, and as
he flipped his body onto his back with his gun poised to fire, he felt
something hard and solid slam into his head. He managed to fire one shot before
the spots, which flooded his eyes upon impact, turned black and he passed out.
He flinched involuntarily at the swift kick in the ribs he received.
    He was sitting on top of
Bennie’s desk nursing a sore head, sore ribs, and a double-malt scotch when the
police arrived. The rent-a-cop was sitting in Bennie’s chair holding an
ice-filled glass (sans the scotch) against the knot on his forehead. Outside of
a big mess, there was nothing for the police to find. They wanted Slater to go
to the hospital to be checked out, but he’d spent enough time in hospitals. He
waited until the building’s maintenance department sent someone to board up his
door before dragging his body, along with an ice-pack, over to the office couch
to lie down.
    Slater groaned at the
disastrous mess left behind by his attacker. He wondered what they’d been
looking for. He would have shaken his head – if it wouldn’t have hurt so much –
in disbelief that anyone in this day and age would think everything wasn’t
stored electronically. He’d seen where they’d tried to get into his safe, but
the safe did what it was designed to do; withstand break-ins. Tomorrow, he’d
take a look at the security tapes to see if he could identify his attacker(s).
Slater groaned again when he thought about Bennie’s temper tomorrow when she
came into the office. That scared him much more than anybody with a gun.

 
    ◊◊◊

 
    “What the hell happened
in my office? What have you been up to?”
    Slater’s head seem to
throb with each word that passed through Bennie’s lips. Through very bleary
eyes, he spied Bennie at the door with what looked like a cotton-candy rinse in
her hair today. But his head really hurt, so he could be mistaken. But whatever
color it was, it clashed horribly with the magenta polka-dotted top.
    Wincing, Slater murmured,
“Big party; strippers; the works… sorry you missed it.”
    “I don’t have time for
your sass. Who’s going to clean up this mess? I’m not cleaning it up.” Bennie
ranted but stopped short when she saw his black, blue, and swollen eye.
    Covering up her concern
with bluster, she said, “Well what happened to your face? Forget to tip the
stripper?”
    Slater lifted a hand to
gently touch his face. “Yeah, something like that.”
    “Well, Slick, tell me
what really happened?” Bennie asked, which let Slater know she’d ripped the
Band-Aid off the situation, passing the knee-jerk blasting, and was now ready
to deal with it in her efficient and capable manner.
    “Someone broke in last
night and it set my alarm off at home. When I got here, they’d knocked out the
rent-a-cop, shot out my damn door, and then knocked me on the head for good
measure.”
    “The
bastards! Did
they get anything? Did