Gotta Catch The Pretty Ones

© 2011-2014 by Mr. David R. Dorrycott

Chapter Forty-Five

“You are certain that he is dead?” the once Pokehunter Patricia O’Donnel asked the much older man sitting across from her in the towers main room.

Constable Hendricks nodded yes. “Between tha bullet tha Sara put in his chest, ahn tha Kurosawa’s cold lily pond it was morin even tha madman Waterman could stand.”

Patricia shivered at the name Waterman, he had put a fear into her soul that probably nothing would ever wash out. It helped that she could feel the call of her pokeball, it was currently sitting in Sara’s workshop in the basement below, to far to threaten her yet she had felt its siren call since returning to Stonehome. Wandering the forest alone last night helped her cover story even though she saw Waterman in ever dark shadow, but until she had returned to Stonehome Patricia hadn’t realized how seductive the balls call could be. It was something that she would have to report, as soon as this interview was over.

“Ahn where ave yah been these years” the Constable asked gently. He was writing in a booklet, more than likely to make his report.

“Until recently I honestly don’t know” the pokehunter answered. Sara was at her counter dealing with customers while Penny hovered around with hot tea, cookies and just well, hovered. Patricia kept finding herself glancing towards the shop door. Sara was there, Sara was her Mistress and she was the most important thing in the captured womans life now, Penny being a very close second. “A week or so ago I seemed to come out of a cloud, I found myself wearing this clothing and close to Stonehome. I guess I have been hiding from Waterman’s ghost, when I saw the Stonehome sign I remembered how nice Sara and Penny had been after the trial, that maybe they could protect me from him until I could find a better place to hide. It was my first real conscious decision I think since escaping him. “

“There’ah been cases like yers” Constable Hendricks admitted. “Read about ‘em in my youth. Yer gonna contact yer family?”

Patricia gave the man a thin smile, that of one fearing the future. “I will post a letter in the mail tomorrow sir telling them everything and my need to stay hidden.”

He nodded, still writing in his notebook. “Ahn are yea gonna stay, Stonehome or go home sometime?”

Here was the important part Patricia knew. It would explain her remaining and being at the tower home for a long time. “Sara and Penny have gracefully offered me a job sir. The agreed upon pay is good, added that added are food, a place to stay and time to pull myself together are wonderful. Plus Penny says that she is going to start a family as soon as Sara gets her new hand, oh that was horrible news. I can be a baby sitter too, I may even start hunting again but only locally and with a very trusted partner. Perhaps Penny herself, at least I can be certain that she will never try to shove me into a pokeball.” ‘Because she already has’ Patricia finished in her mind.

Hendricks nodded yes. “Gettin yer life back tagether, good idea. You have any problem these two can’t help, come tah my wife ahn I unnerstand?”

“Yes sir.” Patricia watched as the big man got up, walking with Penny to the kitchen door. That door she had fallen through with Waterman only seconds behind her. She well remembered the sound of Sara’s gun, Sara who had saved her, who owned her pokeball. Her body felt the tug of the ball, she wondered how long she could hold out before asking Sara to let her stay within it for an hour or so.

Penny escorted Constable Hendricks out the kitchen door, stopping outside to talk to the man. “She’s a mess” Penny admitted, glancing back at the heavy kitchen door. “But at least she’s alive.”

Looking down at Penny then to the door himself Hendricks rubbed his chin. “You two gonna be okay with this?’ he asked gently.

“We know her Sir, we just have to help her. It’s what I would want for Sara and she for I. Besides, a secure home with a warm bed and friends around should help her more than some institution with sterile white walls and emotionless Doctors.”

Hendricks nodded to himself, Penny did have it right. A home environment was almost always better than a crisp starched bed while locked in a sterile white room. He made his decision, “You need anything, call” he told the worried woman in front of him. “And let me know when you start that family you hear?”

“I will sir, be careful on our way home, I hear that there are Jigglypuff’s wandering around. They can be very precocious you know, those songs of theirs.”

Hendricks laughed, a deep full laugh as he turned away from the sometime Librarian. To worry about a Jigglypuff he thought as he headed for his home and office. Well Penny was known as the most helpless pokehunter in Stonehome after all. He headed home, delighted that a supposed dead woman had returned to life and chuckling over Penny’s fears of Jigglypuffs.