Edge of the Heat 5 (2 page)

And he did work. He started staying after his appointments to work on the therapy equipment by himself. He didn’t overtly watch her with her next patients, but instead tried to
absorb
her likes and dislikes. He saw her drinking watermelon sparkling water a few times and then began buying them and bringing them to her. He noticed she always got her lunch from the same deli on the corner so one time he stopped in beforehand and asked them to give her a pink rose with her lunch, from a secret admirer. The next day he saw it on her desk in a vase. He tried to do something sweet for her at least twice a week, and made sure to never cross the line into creepy territory.

Then the day came. “Jerry, you don’t need to come 5 days a week anymore. In fact, I think you are almost well enough to go back to work early, if you want to do that.”

Jerry’s heart leapt when she said
back to work
. And she was right. He’d recovered 85% function in his leg. Certainly good enough to go back to work as a paramedic, but not a firefighter. Cautiously he’d asked. “How many times a week do you recommend now?”

“I think once a week will be plenty. You can continue your exercises at a regular gym and I’ll check your progress for the next 6 months. After that, you probably will only need to come once a month for a few months. After that ...” She trailed off.
After that,
n
ot at all,
he read in the silence.

Jerry sat quietly, a tens unit stimulating his thigh muscles.
Once a week? Once a month? Not at all?
He felt almost physically sick at the prospect. He’d gotten to know her well enough to know that she was upset too. Or at least he thought she was. Her movements at her desk  were erratic and seemed to have no purpose other than to keep her from looking at him. When she did speak she didn’t look directly at him, but instead at his leg. Her mouth was tight and drawn. He could see stress in her cheeks.
She’s conflicted
, he thought.
She knows I’m going to ask her out again and she doesn’t know what she’s going to say
.

Well let’s get it over with.

“So I am going to be the Maid of Honor at my best friend’s wedding next week -” he said. She snorted laughter, cutting him off.

“Don’t you mean you are going to be the Best Man?” she asked, still laughing, but looking in his eyes again.

“Oh no, my best friend is the bride, and she specifically said Maid of Honor,” he said, smiling, thinking that this was a good sign that she found it so funny.

“Your best friend is a woman?” Sara asked, her eyebrows raised and new warmth in her eyes.

“Yes, Emma, I’ve told you about her. In fact she drove me here a few times. The strawberry blond?”

“Oh yes, your partner. She’s your best friend?”

“Yep. Well, maybe she doesn’t think of me as her
best
friend anymore, now that she is getting married, but she’s certainly the best friend I’ve ever had. She’s no nonsense, no bullshit, you know?”

Sara just looked at him, and he thought maybe she didn’t know.

“I don’t have a date,” he said, dropping his eyes. “And honestly, I can’t think of anyone I want to take except for one person. And if she won’t go with me I’m afraid everyone there will think I’m a total loser because I’m a male Maid of Honor and I can’t even get a date.”

He’d peeked at her, weighing her reaction. She had stopped laughing.
Not good
. He pressed on, knowing if this didn’t work, nothing would and too soon she would be completely out of his life for good. His stomach flip-flopped once and lay still. “I know you don’t date clients, but I’d really love to take you. I won’t be your client anymore soon, and if you want, I’ll find someone else to assess me for the rest of the time I need physical therapy.”

He’d stopped talking. The question sat between them like a lead weight, dulling the air in the room. Finally she smiled and said “Sure, I’ll go, but can you pick me up here? I have to work that day.”

Later, he’d thought that she hadn’t even known what day it was when she said that. But he’d shrugged his shoulders and thought that he didn’t care, because she had said
yes
.
Yes
!

Jerry drove on autopilot and thought hard about that. She could have told him she’d meet him at the wedding, rather than having him pick her up at work. And why was she so closed off, so hard to get to know? She’d never shared anything personal with him, and they’d worked together 5 days a week for almost a year. Better yet, if she was just going to ditch him, why did she agree to go with him in the first place? Why not just turn him down cold?
Because she wasn’t
planning
on ditching you. Something happened at the wedding that made her think she had to,
his mind whispered coldly at him, in a voice that implied he was a complete idiot if he couldn’t see that.

What if someone said something to her
? He didn’t know what type of thing triggered her, since she’d never shared anything with him, but everyone has their triggers. What if some drunk asshole had groped her or something like that?

A light bloomed in Jerry’s mind. He knew he was grasping at straws, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t ready to just give up on her yet. He set his lips in a grim line and spun the steering wheel left, doing a U-turn to the opposite lane.

He was determined to get some answers.

J
erry parked his car in front of the Mariana Day apartments and turned off his engine. His heart hammered in his chest hard enough that he could feel it beating in his neck. He took a deep breath and willed himself to calm down. He wouldn’t accuse her of anything. He would just ask her
Why
? And see what she had to say.

He scanned the parking lot and spotted her car, a blue Ford Taurus, parked near the far end. Jerry walked toward it, trying to remember exactly which apartment belonged to Sara. He jogged up the stairs to the second floor, feeling a sudden fluttering in his gut. He focused on it, trying to figure out what it was telling him.
Hurry up
?
Danger
? He’d learned over the many years he’d been a paramedic to pay attention to feelings like these. Every time, when the symptoms told him the patient was fine, but his gut told him the patient was dying and he better move faster, his gut was right.

He stopped at the top of the stairs and gazed down the open-at-both-ends, red-brick hallway, thinking back in his mind to the ambulance call that brought him here over two years before. His chest pain patient had been in 2F, on the left side of hallway. Sara had been there, holding the old woman’s hand and telling her everything would be OK. Sara had only spared Jerry a glance before looking back at  her hurting neighbor. Jerry had been head over heels taken with her with that one glance, but professionalism never let him do anything about it. Until he saw her again under different circumstances.

Jerry started down the hallway, passing 2F. He stopped in front of 2H, remembering how Sara had rushed in here for a moment to get her keys and follow the ambulance to the hospital. The feeling in his gut was still there, pinging louder and stronger than ever. He took a deep breath and knocked on the door, ready for anything.

The door swung open just enough to let a sliver of light out into the hallway. Silence beat at his temples, churning his feelings of unease.

Jerry frowned, and considered pulling the door shut, but instead knocked again closer to the hinges. “Sara?” he called.

The door swung open a little more, and a metallic smell drifted out of the opening. Jerry knew what it was in a flash. He was a paramedic after all.

He pushed the door open quickly and took a step inside. “Sara! It’s Jerry!”

The door bounced off the back wall and back into him, and then stood open, revealing a foyer that connected the kitchen off to the right, and the living room straight ahead.

He could feel he wasn’t alone. She must be here.

The kitchen stood dark and empty so he moved into the living room and immediately saw where the smell was coming from. Red liquid that looked like blood, and probably was blood considering how it smelled, was splashed everywhere. Her couch was drenched with it. A pile of  clothes in the middle of the floor were splashed in it and then kicked around, as if to be sure every item was touched. The lamps had bright spatters that looked like art. But the foot-high words scrawled on the walls in blood chilled his heart the worst.

Conniving Abandoning
BITCH

Do your job you CUNT

Your blood lesson is coming

“Sara?” he whispered, his mind unable to process what he was seeing. Every step he took further into the room felt like it was through quicksand. His legs shook and tried to buckle. He’d never seen anything like this, even with all his years as a paramedic. Jerry didn’t think evil was something lurked in the hearts of men, or anything cliche like that. In fact, he thought the hurt that people usually caused each other was more from misunderstanding, and broken-ness, and love-seeking. But this was evil. Done by an evil person. He had no doubt about that.

He broke to his left and ran down the hallway, his neat, black shoes thudding heavily in the confined space. He slowed at the bathroom, but didn’t stop. It seemed empty at a glance. The bedroom light was on and he entered at a run, slamming the door into the wall as he pushed it open.

Empty.

He whirled to the closet and ripped it open.

Also empty except for plastic hangers hung askew with more littering the floor.

He fought an insane urge to check under the bed like a scared child, and then thought better of it. Of course he should check under the bed. This was a crime scene and he wanted to be careful.

Jerry dropped soundlessly to the floor, but there was nothing under the bed. He pushed up to his feet and walked slowly back down the hallway, his heartbeat echoing in his ears. The apartment was quiet. And it felt different.

He turned on the light in the bathroom and looked inside, but there were no hiding places.

The kitchen
.

Cautiously, he made his way past the closed front door into the kitchen. He turned on the light and scanned the room. The dining area opened up past the big refrigerator and there was a dead space behind it that he couldn’t see.

His heartbeat sped up, beating so loudly it was all he could hear. He looked around for a weapon, but saw nothing, not even a broom. He fished his phone out of his pocket and dialed 911. He flexed his knees slightly, ready to react if someone sprang at him.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“I’m at Mariana Day apartments. My friend’s apartment has been broken into and someone ... someone ruined it.”

“What is your name?”

“Jerry Mansko.”

“Jerry, it’s Miranda. Are you OK?”

“Yeah Miranda, I’m OK, but my friend doesn’t seem to be here and I don’t know what happened to her. Her place is destroyed. Someone poured blood all over everything.”

The dispatcher’s quick intake of breath told Jerry that she understood how bad things were.

As he talked Jerry walked forward, eyes wide and scanning the whole dining room at once. Empty as far as he could see.

Miranda clicked off for a second to start dispatching police and Jerry took some deep breaths, trying to calm down.

Suddenly he knew what felt different about the apartment. It felt empty.

He turned in a slow circle, phone still to his ear, and looked at the foyer where the door should be standing open like he left it. He couldn’t see it. Which meant it was closed.

Shoving his phone in his pocket, he took three large steps and ripped the door open. Raking his head left, then right, he determined the hallway was empty. In a split second he decided whoever had been in the apartment was more likely to have left via the back stairs, so he sprinted that way. Visions tore through his skull of Sara being dragged down the steps, a hand over her mouth and a gun to her temple.

He skidded to a stop at the back wall and looked over the grass behind the building. Nothing was moving. He ran to the steps and took them two at a time to the bottom. Nobody was around. Nothing was moving.

Breath tearing in and out of his lungs, he ran for the parking lot.

It was late. Probably close to midnight. And this was a quiet, small apartment building. If he found a car pulling out of a stall, he gave it better than 50% odds it would be who he was looking for. But he didn’t see anything moving. No taillights flashed. No car doors banged. Everything was quite.

Damn!
He almost kicked the closest car in frustration. He
had
left the door to the apartment open, he was sure of it. So that meant someone had been in there when he got there. How could they have gotten away so quickly, quietly, and cleanly?

Unless
...

A scary idea bloomed in Jerry’s mind.
What if it had been a neighbor
? Suddenly it seemed as if his heart had stopped beating.
But why?

Why not?

Jerry racked his brain, trying to think of what to do now. He wasn’t a cop. But what if what he did in the next few minutes meant the difference between life and death for Sara? He turned in a circle, feeling completely helpless. Should he look in all the cars to see if anyone was hiding in one? Should he knock on the neighbor’s doors? Should he look for tracks on the back lawn? A dozen possibilities occurred to him, all of which seemed to be equally important. He whipped his phone out of his pocket and punched in Craig’s number. It would take a few minutes to explain to Craig what was going on, but Craig could then tell him what was the best thing for him to do next. While he talked he could walk up and down the rows of cars and peek inside them.

As he dialed, lights splashed on the street in front of him and the sound of a car filled his ears. It was a police car, pulling into the parking lot. Relief bloomed in his belly, making him feel shaky. He pressed end on his phone and slipped it back in his pocket. The cops were here and they would know what to do. At least that’s what he thought at the time.