Addicted In Cold Blood (44 page)

He looked around and didn’t see anything unusual, until something in the trashcan caught his attention. A vast amount of unused toilet paper lay atop the old floss, soiled Kleenex and discarded air freshener bottle. He overturned the canister. His jaw dropped in disbelief when he spotted the opened pregnancy kit box. Picking it up, he removed the contents. The stick was still in its original white plastic covering, unused, but the package was opened and a small testing cup, still wet from her urine, was hidden away inside of it.

She hasn’t had a chance to test; she doesn’t know. I must’ve interrupted her. And, she has been looking sickly lately; I even told her she didn’t look well...

Oh my God, Jayme...

*
***

Jayme pushed further back into the driver’s seat. The city lights blurring as she navigated traffic. She’d passed the place several times. After parking off to the side, she tried to muster her nerve as she gripped the same can of 7-Up until it had lost its fizz. Soon, the damned thing was half its size, crunched pathetically as if it had been squeezed in a vise and hot in her hand. Mangled...

It’s now or never, girl...

She people watched a bit longer and turned the car off, then closed her eyes and leaned back in the seat of her brother’s Lincoln. Tapping the steering wheel, she drifted into peaceful thoughts...

Xzion kissing the bridge of her nose and laughing in her ear, his deep voice with that strange accent she mistook for Latin...

Wow...it wasn’t Colombian...

****

One hour later...

“Would you please stop saying that?” Xzion rolled his eyes as he hovered over Jayson, whose nervous, downright frightened gaze made him feel like a gargoyle. The man’s eyes now resembled golf balls as he seized the dark chocolate colored sheets, covering his mouth. He planked his long, lean body like a wooden board as each fiber of his petrified being was apparently clutched with fear.

“Jesus Christ!” the man yelled again, gripping the sheets tighter.

Xzion smiled and sat beside him on the bed.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Jayson. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Xzion contemplated how to best approach the situation. “Look, I think you know why I’m here. I’m looking for your sister; I thought she’d be here. I don’t know what she’s told you, if anything, but if I don’t find her soon, her life could be in danger. I just hope I’m not too late.”

Jayson seemed to slowly calm down. He sat up and cautiously studied Xzion, as if he were an expensive, antique painting.

“...I know why you’re here. But Xzion, I don’t know exactly where she is. I swear. I’ve been calling her all day. I tried to talk her out of this.”

“Out of what?” Xzion felt his heart start to race.

What have you done, Jayme?

“She is meeting with the FBI agents somewhere, the ones responsible for all this trouble... Look, do you mind?” Jayson said with slight annoyance in his voice.

Xzion looked around in confusion.

“What?”

“Man, you’re sitting on my damn leg! You must weigh a ton and the damned thing is falling asleep!”

Xzion shot up and smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were just scared.”

“I am, but I was more in pain than anything else. Look,” Jayson sighed as he gingerly got up. “Let’s go in the kitchen and talk. You crawled through my bedroom window, broke in my damn apartment and nudged me out of a sound sleep, expecting me to be happy to see a stranger by my side, the ‘XXX’ killer at that. I’d be much more comfortable in there,” he pointed out his bedroom doorway, “next to my knives, just in case. Then, at least, I can die with dignity.” He grinned, but it was tinged with sincere fright.

Xzion followed the man into his kitchen and watched him put on a pot of coffee.

“Normally, I would have tried to defend myself, like I was saying...but my sister told me all about you.” He started the coffee maker. “I know who you are, and know that, well, you have no problem offing someone, so I won’t tempt you.”

Xzion slumped down in a chair and crossed his arms. “It’s not like that. Look, your sister doesn’t even have the entire story either. I need to tell her.”

“Well, she damn sure knows
something
, but she wouldn’t tell me.” Jayson turned toward the coffee maker and moved about the tight, modern kitchen.

“What do you think she is hiding?”

“Well, she started acting really strange after she met with some older gentleman, some retired astronaut that was famous back in the 1960s and ’70s. His name escapes me right now. I could find out if you need it but,” he shrugged, “whatever he told her, Jayme’s behavior has been inconsistent. She is acting really strange.”

Xzion felt his heart drop to his feet. He felt like the wind had been knocked clear out of him.

She knows...

“May I have some ice please?”

Jayson looked at him strangely, hesitated, then turned toward the refrigerator, opened the freezer and removed the plastic blue ice tray. He set it before him.

“Take as many cubes as you want.” He then set a glass beside the tray. Xzion knew how the next maneuver would look, but he didn’t care—he needed fast relief. Picking up the tray, he pounded it from beneath and let the frozen blocks fall onto the black and white speckled faux-granite counter, clattering loudly, and some splintering. In one swoop, he gathered them up and ate them whole, crunching through the frozen bits until the relief he needed arrived.

“Okay.” He swallowed the last slither of ice and got his bearing. “When was this and what did they discuss?”

“Not too long ago, and what they talked about?” He shook his head. “Of that, I’m not sure.” Sitting across from him, Jayson gripping his coffee mug with both hands. He seemed to relax a bit as they continued to talk.

Xzion took notice of a cube that had gotten away. Grabbing it, he popped it into his mouth, crunching it harshly then swallowing it in a few seconds, leaving Jayson standing there with an expression of utter bafflement.

“The ice...um, never mind.” The man took a sip from his coffee cup and turned silent.

Jayson’s hand shook while he held the hot beverage. He hated that Jayson feared him. After all, they loved the same woman and he’d never do her harm. He supposed that if he were the guy, he’d be afraid as well...

I wonder what she told him about me. If it was bad, he won’t tell me shit, won’t tell me where she is, nothing. Is he lying to me? This is serious. No time for lies.

Xzion wiped his nose and made a face. He stared at the plastic, magnetic alphabet letters on the man’s refrigerator and drifted into a daydream. Suddenly, he could see as clear as day, in his own kitchen. He fed her fruit, kissed her nose, and they chased each other, naked...free. He would give his right arm to relive that one moment in time, and he hoped he wasn’t too late.

“I’ve got to find her, Jayson.” Xzion looked up at him as he traced a tiny puddle on the counter with his fingertip.

“I know.”

Xzion sat quietly and deliberated for several minutes...then it hit him. He recalled the story Jayme told him of her grandmother, and the one time she visited Jayme’s family for the holidays. Their grandmother took them to an abandoned building, said she used to work there as a police secretary before she moved back down to
Georgia, where she’d grown up as a child. She told them they had been some of the best years of her life, and the only thing she’d miss about Baltimore. Jayme said she felt safe there, in all that filth and debris, because she knew her grandmother had loved the place—and felt like she’d always be there, at least, a piece of her.

I wonder if the building is still there. Has it been turned into something else? Is it demolished? But she said she still went there from time to time...

“That’s it...I think I know where she might be, Jayson.”

“Please do tell!” He slammed his coffee mug down, his expression serious.

“Tell me where your grandmother used to work, the old precinct she took you and your sister to when you were kids.”

Jayson’s lips curved upward in an all-knowing smile.

“With pleasure...”

A couple of minutes later, Xzion started to rush out the apartment.

“Oh, you’re not using the fire escape to leave?” Jayson taunted as he grabbed his remote control and turned on the living room television, more than likely too spooked and worried to fall back asleep.

“Nah, I prefer the traditional steps actually.” Xzion laughed and gripped the doorknob.

“Oh, Xzion, before you leave...” Jayson sighed, a look of worry his face. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, because at this point, it’s like spreading unforeseen gossip, but...”

“No, please, tell me—any additional information helps.” Xzion spoke with desperation in his voice.

“I think she’s pregnant...are you ready to be called, ‘daddy’?”

Xzion couldn’t see himself, but he was certain he’d paled ten complexions lighter at that very moment. He rocked backwards on his heels and stumbled, as if intoxicated, and barely held himself from falling onto the floor, face forward.

“Easy now, cowboy! Do you need to sit down?” Jayson leapt out of his seat and grabbed Xzion’s shoulder. The two men stood, man to man, eye to eye.

This can’t be happening...

I didn’t think that was possible.Could I do that to her? How so? We aren’t the same. Her reproduction is... well, yes, it is similar...but, our birthing is different, the copulation and conception works the same, but the inner mechanisms are vastly dissimilar...but...I suppose it is still possible. Oh my God...Jayme...

“Okay, I’m fine.” Xzion quickly pulled himself together and exhaled through his nostrils, rubbed his forehead and stared at Jayson in disbelief.  From his part, the man seemed to be trying to read his mind.

“Now, she didn’t tell me, okay? I might be wrong, but...I saw evidence in the bathroom. She was trying to take a pregnancy test but I came home early and I guess,” he shrugged, “she just bolted.”

“Has she looked okay? Is she sick or anything?” Xzion asked weakly.

“That was the first clue, for me anyway. She seemed to be in denial but she has been sick more than she has been well and that was soon after she left your house and came to me. Jayme doesn’t get sick, man. I think the woman only used one sick day her entire time on the police force, to my knowledge, and in school, forget about it!” He shook his head. “Her attendance records showed that her immune system must be hooked up to a generator. She was a trooper.”

Xzion made it to the door and gripped the knob, swallowing down his shock. Soon, the initial reaction was replaced with an odd sense of elation, and a dash of trepidation.

“Thank you, Jayson. Thanks for everything.”

The man smiled, a smile filled with unbelievable hurt and steeped worry that had been brewed in hot water and never allowed to cool. Xzion didn’t have time to delve deeper, but he could see the pain on her brother’s face. Life had not been easy for him, and the one person in the entire world that loved him—his best friend and sister—was in dire need and in trouble. He couldn’t protect the little girl inside of her—she was a grown woman, out in the world, trying to take down a huge Goliath with only a tiny pebble and rubber band slingshot. No, there was no saving Jayme, as he’d done in the past. This time, her big brother couldn’t make it right. He understood that Jayson was devastated, although he kept a brave face, so he offered him what he could, to make the hurt sting a bit less painful.

“Before I walk out this door,” Xzion pointed to the front door, “I want you to know – you have my word that if I find her, and believe me, Jayson, I’m confident I will, I will bring her back safe and out of harm’s way. Do you understand me?” His tone was serious, and he needed the man to believe him.

Jayson stared down at his coffee table, slowly lit a cigarette then looked back up at Xzion through the thick fog of white swirls and glowing ember at the tip. The smoke moved over his dark, smooth skin, the contrast like cookies ’n cream...

“Oh, I understand you,” he said coolly as he flicked hot ashes into a brown and gold ashtray. His inky eyes narrowed and he smiled, showcasing sparkling white teeth. “I just need you to not only say it, I need you to
do
it.”

****

Jayme tossed the cheap cell phone down onto the rotted wooden floor. Parts of the laminate still showed through, and the walls, once showcasing gorgeous murals from a local artist, were now ashen and dismal. The building had been for sale several times, but the renovation expenditures were just too costly. After all these years, it just sat there, abandoned, taking up an entire block while buildings around it were going through their own home-made version of urban decay. Everything on the East Side, particularly on N. Gay Street, was dead, except for her will to live.

Regardless, she had a sense of peace about her. She stood near a ribbed pillar and imagined where her grandmother used to sit in the room after she’d clock in and hang up her long, tan coat with the white fur around the collar and sleeve cuffs. She bet it was somewhere nearby; her desk would be covered in stacks of off-white papers, green hanging files with manila ones crammed inside and her typewriter. The keys would clack loudly under the tall knock-out’s honey brown fingers…