Hidden River (Five Star Paperback) (28 page)

“Amber? Oh, don’t worry about her, she can look after herself. She’s a b-brown belt in one of those martial arts.”

“Yeah, well, not if the guy has a gun. The guy who hassled me the other night. He thought he was James Bond, he was carrying a Walther PPK.”

“Oh, well, I know Charles gave Amber a p-pistol when she moved to Colorado, the gun laws are very liberal here, not like Boston, both Charles and m-myself own rifles, although neither of us were any good. Papa tried to take us hunting once, dreadful, we both cried. They drummed us out of the ROTC, you know—”

“Yeah, so you said. So Amber carries a pistol?”

“I don’t know if she carries it, she should, a .22-caliber revolver.”

“She owns a .22?”

“Oh, yes. Charles had it handmade in Italy. Gold inlay. Work of art, really. His and her initials. Beretta, I think. Anyway, I d-don’t know much about that; Charles and I both learned how to shoot rifles. Totally different thing. We’re both NRA members, have to be if you’re going to run with the big boys in the GOP. Keep that under your h-hat, by the way, August sixth, Alex. Just a few weeks away, hush hush.”

I smiled, talked about the NRA and hunting, changed the subject back to the weather….

So had Charles killed Victoria with Amber’s .22? Had Amber told him to toss it in the nearest river—Cherry Creek? If so, by now it was nudged halfway down the goddamn Mississippi River for all I bloody knew.

I chatted with Robert about politics and CAW and other things, but he was done with his revelations.

We met the others, stopped for pizza, drove the long ride home.

Colfax Avenue. My building. On the third floor I was so exhausted I had to stop for a breather.

With heavy legs I made it up two more flights.

I opened the apartment door, went in. All I wanted to do now was sleep, but I could hear John and Areea, in my room, screwing. That shit, what did he think he was doing? I was going to go in and kick the bastard out, but I stopped myself. Why should I interfere, what business was it of mine? They couldn’t do it in her place because of her folks, they could hardly do it in the pullout bed in the middle of the living room. John had every right to be in the bedroom. I sighed. But if I gave in tonight, I would be giving him the room with its cooling cross breezes for the whole rest of the summer. I eased myself onto the sofa and listened to them. They weren’t talking, they weren’t being dramatic, they were just having good, beautiful sex. Slow and wonderful lovemaking between two people who were very fond of each other. When was the last time I did that? Last night? I wasn’t sure.

I sat there and wondered what to do. Was Areea going to stay there all night? It seemed unlikely, sooner or later she’d probably slip back down to her apartment.

I felt I had intruded and it made me uncomfortable. The apartment had only limited space and you could hear everything. I backed out of the living room and walked down the hall, closing the door quietly behind me.

I looked at my watch. It was twelve-fifteen. I walked all the way along the corridor and around the bend to Pat’s place.

I knocked gently on the door in case he was asleep.

“Yeah,” he said, almost immediately.

“Pat, you’re up,” I said.

“Alex, is that you? What’s up?”

“John-Areea-fucking-my-place.”

Pat opened the door. He was wearing his day clothes, but he had wrapped a huge duvet about him. It wasn’t cold, I felt the chill more than most and it wasn’t bad, so Pat must have been really feeling under the weather.

“Drink?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“What?”

“What are you having?”

“I’m drinking rum and coke, it’s a nostalgia thing,” he said.

He poured me a glass, and I sat on the sofa in front of the TV.

“What’s on?” I asked him.

“You ever see the
Tonight
show?”

“Yeah, once or twice, I think,” I said.

“Used to be good, now they got those Dancing Judge Itos on all the time,” Pat said.

I had no idea what Pat was talking about, but he switched over to Letterman anyway

“What was that?” Pat asked during a commercial.

“A beer ad,” I said.

“No, I heard something,” Pat said.

I listened, but I couldn’t hear anything. Letterman came back on. A few minutes later we both heard a girl’s scream.

“What the hell was that?” I said, getting up.

“You better check it out, tell John to keep his woman under control, and if it’s a bad scene come back,” Pat said calmly.

* * *

A bad scene. I trudged down the corridor, got my key, but the apartment door was already open. Even in the ambient light coming through the windows I knew that it felt wrong. Something smelled bad. There was something the roaches liked.

I hit the light switch. Blood on the doormat and floor tiles and a smeared blood trail that led from the front door and down the hall. Someone had been stabbed or shot, had fallen, had lain there for a moment, had dragged himself backward down the hall.

“John,” I said. I ran in.

The blood pooled in the living room in an ugly, confused mess that led to the bedroom.

“John,” I called out.

I heard movement.

I skidded into and opened the bedroom door. It smelled like a butcher’s yard. I turned on the light. Blood everywhere, on the bed, on the floor, on the walls. John, leaning halfway out the window of the fire escape. He was naked, there was a hunting knife sticking out of his chest, sticking out of his heart. John had tried to pull it out, but it was a six-inch serrated blade.

Incredibly, he was still breathing.

Tiny, impossible, desperate breaths.

Blood on his tongue, forming bubbles. Blood in his eyes, hair, everywhere.

Suddenly I couldn’t stand.

I sat on the floor, next to him, my jeans soaking up John’s blood. I took his cold, naked, gore-coated hand.

“John,” I said.

His head turned to look at me. He was trying to speak. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. He was in pain, shock. His mouth moved, blood trickled out of it, his teeth coated, his lips dyed.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I tried to pull out the knife. But the pain writhed through him. He thrashed, gasped. I took his hand again. I wanted to run away. I couldn’t look at him.

I had seen crime scenes before. I had watched my mother die. But I had never seen anything like this. Not the murder of a friend, his body warmth still leaving him. I pulled him close. I held him.

“Pat,” I screamed down the hall, “Pat.”

John’s eyes glazed. He started to convulse.

“John, I’m going to call for help, I’m going to go get help,” I told him.

“Sssssstay,” he managed, heroically, to say, and his dead man’s hands held me tight.

I looked at the knife. No, no sense trying to remove it. Wouldn’t help. The blood from his chest wound was a trickle now. I pulled him closer. I held him. Oh, God, John, I am so sorry. I got you into this. I got you into this. His body shook, shuddered, he reached for what? The window, the closet, something.

“What is it?”

He pointed.

“What is it?”

His arm reached out and fell, his head slumped forward onto the window ledge.

He was dead.

I looked at him. The knife, his white face. I closed his eyes.

A whimper.

And I turned to look at the closet.

Areea.

I opened the closet door. Crouching there. Naked. Covered in his blood. She was terrified. She screamed when she saw me. Stood, pushed past me, I tried to grab her.

“Wait, what happened? Tell me what happened!” I yelled at her.

Her breasts, her long arms and legs, all soaked red. It looked like she’d just given birth. She slid past, dry-heaved when she stepped over John, ran naked across the living room and down the hall. I went after her, slipped on John’s blood, skidded, fell heavily on my side.

“Wait,” I called after her, “what the fuck happened? Wait.”

She didn’t come back. I got up and ran down the hall and then halted. No point. No fucking point. I stopped there and looked at the footprints in the blood. Hers, mine. No one else’s. The murderer had not followed John into the apartment. Not even a hint of an extra footprint in the fresh blood trail into the apartment.

And I saw how it was done.

The murderer had knocked at the door, John had got up, walked naked down the hall, opened the door, been stabbed once, immediately, in the dark of the landing. The killer, of course, didn’t know that I lived with a roommate and assumed that the figure at the door was me. One massive puncture wound, right in the heart. John had had no chance. He’d fallen backward into the apartment. The killer had bolted down the stairs, run out of the building as fast as he could. Not a professional hit. A professional would have stepped into the apartment to confirm the identity, removed the knife, cut John’s throat, and taken the murder weapon with him.

An amateur, who not only killed the wrong person but had run away so quickly he couldn’t even be sure that that person was dead. Maybe someone who had only one hour’s sleep in the last forty-eight. Maybe someone who was exhausted, had just driven back from Aspen and was told by his wife that I had to be gotten rid of.

So I
had
fucked it up with Amber.

I had said something. Given myself away.

But what, what had I said? Not the time. Think about it later.

“John,” I moaned, and found that I was weeping.

I went back into that terrible room.

His head was resting on the window ledge. He looked so uncomfortable I lifted him and put him on the bed. I was utterly drenched with blood now. His eyes, horrifically, had opened again.

I closed them a second time. Sat there. Stunned. Frozen. Minutes went by, perhaps hours.

“Poor Areea,” I said.

They had stabbed John at the door and he had crawled down the hall and Areea had screamed and we had heard her. She had held him and as he gasped for air, she had opened the window and then she’d heard me coming in.

She’d been frightened, thought it was the killer coming back. Hid.

It had all happened in a couple of minutes. Even if she hadn’t been panicked, frozen by fear, and managed to call 911 immediately they couldn’t have helped him. A puncture wound in the heart.

Where was she now? Downstairs, cowering in her apartment, showering, composing a story that she had been there all night.

What to do? I was dripping blood, making everything worse.

Pat.

I went to the bedroom, stared at John, sat down again. I kicked off my bloody shoes, grabbed a pair of sneakers and put them on. I carefully made my way across the bedroom and skirted the blood trail. I walked to Pat’s and knocked on his door.

He opened it. He took a look at me, staggered back into the apartment, dropped the remote control.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said. “What the fuck happened?”

“They murdered John,” I said.

“Oh my God.”

“They killed him,” I said.

“Fuck. Who? Who murdered him? Are you ok?”

“I’m ok.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pat said.

“Areea was in there, she’s downstairs, hiding, I don’t think she saw anything,” I said automatically.

“Alex, who killed him?” Pat asked.

“Charles,” I said.

“Who’s that?”

“The guy I’m after,” I said.

“You better tell me everything,” Pat said, “but first we’ll go down and see if he’s really dead. You civilians don’t know shit.”

Pat followed me along the corridor. John was really dead.

“You should never have moved him,” Pat said. “The cops will book you for sure.”

“I didn’t do it, Pat,” I said.

“I know. Charles did. Whoever the fuck that is. Ok, ok, what are we going to do? Ok. First things first. Are we calling the cops? We’re not calling the cops, is that right?”

“I don’t know, Pat,” I said.

“They’ll book you, Sonny Jim, better tell me who Charles is, what you got on him.”

I took a breath and told Pat everything. Everything. From the very beginning. Me, the peelers, the ketch, Commander Douglas, Victoria Patawasti, Klimmer, the lacrosse team, Maggie Prestwick, Charles and Amber Mulholland. I was good at giving a précis, it only took five minutes.

“You’ve no proof of any kind?” Pat asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s my fault, Pat,” I said.

“It’s not your fault. It’s ok,” Pat said, trying to digest all the information I had thrown at him, trying to think. His face was alert now. He held himself upright.

“Jesus, Pat, it’s a nightmare,” I said.

“So you’re an ex-cop, huh. I knew you were something. And John’s dead and Areea’s terrified, right, ok. Ok, what do we do?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Ok, ok, this is what we do. You get up and go to my apartment, go straight to the shower, don’t touch anything, get in, take a shower, take your clothes off in the shower, leave them there. Shower and get the blood out and when you’re really clean, do it all again. Use a towel to dry off and leave it in the bath with the bloody clothes. When you’re done, pour yourself two fingers of gin. Ok? You did good not getting any blood down the corridor.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going downstairs to talk to Areea, she’s bound to be messed up. Talk to her, talk to her family. Tell them it was a burglar but if we want to keep the cops out of it, we gotta take care of this ourselves. They don’t want the cops as much as we don’t want the cops. They’ll get questioned, passed on to INS, deported. We gotta take care of this in-house. Tonight.”

“What do you mean, Pat?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about a thing, we’ll take care of this, no one else involved,” Pat reassured me, suddenly becoming stronger before my eyes, taking on something of the old DFD lead paramedic, someone with responsibility for other things than himself. But even so, I wasn’t convinced.

“I just assumed we’d call the cops,” I said.

“Alex, listen to me, they will arrest you, they’ll say you were jealous of John and Areea, you’re covered in his blood, you have motive, opportunity, I swear to you, there’s a very good chance you’ll go to prison.”