Always (65 page)

“You fucked me up.”

“Yes.” I thought of not being able to move, not being able to see, of doubting my own senses. He’d done that to me. “I’d do it again.”

I threw the crowbar into the bushes and turned to Kick. She was real. “Shall we?”

We walked back to the set. I put my arm around her waist.

“So that’s how you hit people,” she said.

“Pretty much.” For no reason, we both laughed, and then there was traffic again on Highway 99, and the world seemed almost ordinary.

“So, what were you going to say, before? When we’d just crossed the road?”

It seemed like a lifetime ago on a planet far, far away, a place where I wasn’t sure and didn’t know. Her waist under my arm was intensely alive. The body knows; I knew. “When you nearly walked up to the light, even though the road was deserted, I was thinking, in some ways you’re more Scandinavian than I am.” I had no idea whether she knew what I was talking about, but neither of us wanted to talk. She leaned into me as we walked and I adjusted my stride so we moved hip to hip. My left thigh hurt.

I still had my arm around her waist when we got to the warehouse. “Get Turtledove,” I said to Janski. “And Rusen or Finkel.”

“I’m not supposed to—”

“Get them now.”

Kick and I stood forehead to forehead, breathing each other’s scent. Someone cleared their throat. Deverell.

“I found Mackie, or rather he found me. Us.” Rusen stepped out of the warehouse, blinking in the dark. “We hurt them. Two of them. Call the police,” I said to Rusen. “Tell them they’ll need an ambulance.”

“You should tell them.”

“Just tell them. Tell them we’ll be . . .” I looked at Kick, who nodded.

“We’ll be at Kick’s house if they need us. Persuade them not to need us for a while.”

“What—”

“Just do it, Rusen.”

He got out his phone. He looked at my leg. “You’re hurt.”

I looked at the rust mark on my trousers where the crowbar had thumped into my quadriceps. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about anything. It’ll be fine.” It was all going to be fine.

SHE DIDN’T
shake me awake, she simply held me tighter. "I’m here,” she said. “It’s a dream.”

“It came up behind me in the alley,” I said. “In the dark.”

“It’s a dream,” she said.

“No,” I said. “It’s still there.”

I STEPPED OUT OF BOREALIS, DORNAN’S COFFEE SHOP A LITTLE AFTER SUNSET
. The seventy-degree dusk smelled of blackened fish from the Bridgetown Grill and water, caught in magnolia blossom cups, evaporating after a long day in sunshine.

I had just told Dornan my news: my mother was getting married and wanted to see me. I didn’t want her in Atlanta, in my life, but she was visiting Seattle. If Dornan wanted a working holiday in the land of coffee, I would cover flight and hotel.

I was fairly sure that the offer to pay would clinch the deal.

My phone rang. I recognized the number but couldn’t place it. I answered.

“Hello.”

“Aud?”

“Who is this?”

“Aud, this is Therese. Aud, it’s . . . Oh, God. She’s . . .” Shuddering breath. “Look”—suddenly brisker, almost impersonal, as though she had stepped out of the messy, hyperventilating body and become all frontal cortex—“I’m at Sandra’s house. It’s a terrible thing. I didn’t know who to call. You have to come. There’s blood everywhere. It’s . . . There’s blood.”

IMAGINE A FULL
cup of coffee. Imagine tripping over the rug and flinging it across your white wall and new pale green sofa. That’s a lot of liquid—and a coffee mug is usually less than twelve ounces, less than a third of a liter. The average human body contains 5.6 liters of blood, fifteen or twenty times as much as that cup of coffee. And blood is brilliant red.

Sandra’s house was a neat four-bedroom mock Tudor in one of the developments that had gone up fifteen years ago on the edge of Druid Hills, the kind of place where the kitchen should have been white and blond oak, with mediocre can lights in the ceiling, a tidy little breakfast nook, and children’s pictures tacked brightly to the fridge with animal magnets.

Two of the ceiling lights at the far end of the kitchen, over the counter near the stove, had been hit with arterial blood spray. The end of the room dripped and glowed an eerie vampire-cavern red. Blood dripped onto the body below, thickly, silently, the drops absorbed by its clothes. A pool was spreading from its upper arm. Brachial artery. The boning knife was lying next to the gleaming, slow-moving pool. Henckel. Dishwasher safe.

The purple-green glisten of intestines protruded beneath it. Belly, too. Like a pig.

“Thank God, thank God,” Therese said from the column by the dining room entrance. She clamped a hand on my left arm and tried to pull me into the dining room.

“Stop,” I said, “stop. Don’t move, not even an inch.” I was reading the pool of blood on the floor, the smears and spatters, the little lake on the counter, already dripping off the edge, the streak along the kitchen wall to the dining room, sorting story lines, angles of arc, possibilities. “You mustn’t move anymore,” I said absently.

“But Sandra—”

“Can wait thirty seconds. If we’re to save her, I need to think.”

After a moment, I nodded. “Sandra,” I said, “come here.”

“She can’t—”

“Therese, be quiet now. Get Sandra from the dining room, bring her here. Right now, Therese.”

Sandra’s skin was pale, paler than I’d ever seen it, but apart from the blood there were no marks on her face and hands that had not been there at the last class.

“His blood’s still coming out!” Therese said. “He’s alive. He’s—”

“Not really,” I said. No medical facility on earth could save this man: this was simple hydrostatic draining, not the vivid spurt of a pumping heart. His blood levels had already fallen below the crucial forty-percent level. Even without the gaping belly wound, he was dead. “Have you called the police?”

“No,” Therese said. “No, I suppose I should. I just didn’t . . .” She trailed off and looked at me.

She just didn’t want it to be real.

“Where are the children?”

“I don’t—”

“Sandra, where are the children?”

“Sunday school.” She sounded quite composed.

“When will they be back?”

“At seven-twenty.” It was a little after six now. One less thing to worry about.

“Your husband—”

“That’s not my husband.”

I breathed out slowly, deliberately. “This man on the floor is not your husband?”

“My husband is dead.”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s dead, and we have to do something about that.”

“That’s not my husband,” she said again. “That’s George.”

In. Out. “This man on the floor, with all the blood, is not your husband. He’s someone called George.”

“That’s right.”

“But you killed him.”

“He’s dead?”

“He is.”

“Then, yes, I guess I did.”

Therese was giving me urgent signals. “Sandra, you sit down again in the dining room for just a minute. Don’t touch anything.”

“I don’t have to do what you say. I don’t have to do what anyone says anymore.”

“Just for the next five minutes. Five minutes.”

She nodded and sat. I looked at Therese. “Please tell me you know what’s going on.”

“Her husband’s been dead two years. That’s George, her sister’s husband. ”

“He’s the one who beats her?”

“And more.”

“Her brother-in-law.”

She nodded.

“This is going to make it harder.” I turned back to where Sandra was sitting patiently at the dining room table. Pale wood, ash. Never liked ash. Back to Therese. “She called you?”

Nod. “She said, ‘You better come, I need you to be my friend.’ I knew by the way she said it that it was something terrible, that she, that she meant . . .”

We both knew what she meant. I’d given them the idea: a good friend’s number on your cell phone, help out the truth a little.

“Was anyone with you when you got the call?”

“No.”

“Good.” Back to Sandra. “Sandra, do you want to go to prison?”

“No.”

“Then you’re going to have to do exactly as I say, even though some of it will be unpleasant. Do you agree?”

“All right.”

That was the closest I was going to come to informed consent. “Come here. Stop when you get to the edge of the carpet. Now, see the knife?” Nod. “I want you to take one step in, one careful step, and pick up the knife, then turn to the sink and rinse the knife.” She moved like a sock puppet. “Good. Now give it to me.”

She held it out. “You’re wearing gloves!”

“Yes. Now where were you when he, when you slashed him?”

“Right here, by the sink, washing the knife.”

Perfect. “Tell me what happened.”

“He came in, said he didn’t have long, that Betts thought he was stuck in traffic on I-20, that what the fuck had I done with the front hedge, he’d told me not to hire a yard boy, they always fuck up, then he pushed me against the sink, here”—she touched her midriff—“so I couldn’t breathe and it was going to be like last week, last week when the children saw some of it, and I don’t know, I’d been practicing, you see, the way you taught us, so I turned around and cut him, on his arm, and he looked all pissed, like he was going to hit me, so I slashed him again. He always made me keep the knives sharp. Nothing ticks a man off more than he should fumble at his meat like a goddamn pussy in front of his family, he used to say, he didn’t keep food on the table and a roof over his wife’s nephews and nieces to be treated . . .” Her eyes were dry. “Well, that won’t be happening anymore. ”

“No. And then what?”

“And then . . .” She frowned. “I don’t remember.”

“You called Therese.”

“Yes, yes, I guess I did.”

That was her story, I couldn’t see superficial evidence to contradict it, and there wasn’t time to dig deeper.

“Stand here. Yes. Very good. Did George have any diseases?”

“Diseases?”

“HIV, syphilis, that kind of thing.”

“No.”

I nodded. “You’ll want to make sure you get antibiotic and tetanus shots anyway.” I hefted the knife. The edge glittered like a ruby scalpel under the weird light. Sharp, as she’d said. I laid it against her forehead and traced a thin line. Therese gasped. I ignored her. “You’re right-handed, yes?” I asked Sandra.

“Right-handed. Yes.”

“Put your left hand on the counter.”

Blood was beginning to well from the slit on her forehead. She didn’t seem to feel it. She did as she was told.

I took her little finger, imagined the fifth interpharyngeal joint, made sure I had it firmly, and then jerked. I felt the metacarpal snap cleanly.

She gasped. Blood ran in a thick sheet down her face.

“Therese, call nine-one-one. Tell them two people are badly hurt. That’s all. Hurt. Blood everywhere. They’ll want you to stay on the phone, but just pretend to panic and put the phone down. Go.”

“But her hand, her face.”

“Go.”

Now Sandra’s white skin was tinged with the grey of shock and her breathing was harsh. Exactly what I needed. A woman demonstrably in shock, covered in blood, hand swelling. Documented abuse. Clearly self-defense.

She swayed. “Don’t faint, Sandra. Take this.” I gave her the knife with her blood on it. “Touch it to George’s arm, where you cut it before. You can tread in the blood, it’s all right. Just try not to splash. Touch the blade to the cut in his arm if you can. Now, while you’re bending down, put the knife in his hand. He’s left-handed?” Therese was talking and crying on the phone: blood, hurt, hurry. Her voice shook and it sounded as though her nose was running. Shock was taking her, too. “Wrap his hand around the handle, get his prints on it. Now you take it again and drop it where it was on the floor earlier. No, no, leave it there. It’s close enough. Now step out to the dining room. Yes, don’t worry about the footprints.” The blood was still draining, still spreading. It was going to cover a multitude of sins. “Sit down. No, don’t faint. Don’t faint.”

Snuffling sound as Therese dropped the phone, replaced it on the cradle, wiped her face. Sunday, I thought. Sunday. They’d be here in less than five minutes.

“Therese. Stand here. No, it doesn’t matter about the blood now. Listen. Sandra, here’s what happened. He came in, just like last week, and pressed you against the sink, where you were washing the knife. You struggled because this was just like last week. Just like last week. He reached around, grabbed your hand, broke it, grabbed the knife. You were struggling even more. He cut your face. Dropped the knife. You picked it up, cut his arm, just the way you said, then cut him again. You were panicked, because this was just like last week, but worse. Then you called Therese. That’s all you remember. Don’t mention the self-defense class. Now, tell me what happened.”

“Washing knife. Came in, like last week. Squashed me. Broke my hand getting knife. Cut my face. Like last week but worse, worse. Dropped the knife.” She was beginning to gasp with shock and pain. Her face was a mask of blood. She looked like a woman who had just fought for her life. “Then called Therese. Then . . . I don’t remember.”

“That’s fine. Therese, Sandra called you. You came straight here. You don’t remember what you did, exactly, but at some point you called me. Later, they’ll ask how you know Sandra, why she called you. Tell them you met at Crystal Gaze. Don’t mention the self-defense class. They’ll ask why you called me.”

“Why did I call you?”

“You probably panicked.”

“I did panic.”

I nodded. “You knew I used to be police, you knew I’d know what to do. You met me at the bookshop, too.”

“At the bookshop. When?”