The Warning

by Michelle E Lowe

  There was no hurry to get the knife. If he’d rushed for the weapon, something would have been turned over or fallen to the floor.

  He stepped through the doorway and knelt beside the puddle of blood. A handprint also stained the floor. He stood and stepped over the smear to kneel near the handprint. He saw half of a palm, the tips of four fingers, and part of a thumb.

  The handprint is facing the door. It seemed she’d tried to escape.

  There were many ways to determine how the murder might have happened. Perhaps both were in the kitchen and the killer had grabbed the knife. The victim had then tried to run but could only reach the hallway when he’d caught up to her. Judging by the location of the stab wound, it wouldn’t have been likely that the killer had grabbed her from behind and pulled her back to him. She could have fought, which meant she would’ve turned around. To make the injury during a struggle was lucky. The only way he envisioned it happening was if Crowe had tackled her to the floor and stabbed her then.

  He rose and went into the living room, where he found two Jack-o’-lanterns; one perched on the coffee table, and a larger one on the floor, near a small entertainment center. The couch lined the wall, facing a flat screen TV, with a recliner against the adjacent wall. A round glass coffee table stood in the middle.

  A box of tissues sat on the coffee table. A few wadded-up ones scattered like tumbleweeds on it, with a closed notebook and pen lying next to them. He picked up the notebook and flipped through the pages, finding them all blank. He looked down at the tissues. Jade Sho kept her place clean and tidy. A box of tissues was out of character for the décor; she might have had a cold or been upset about something.

  He was about to put the notebook back when his instincts told him to flip through the pages again. He did so, more slowly this time. Near the front cover, a torn paper still was attached to the wire coil. A page had been ripped out. He noticed markings on the page behind the missing one and brought the notebook closer to a lamp. He clicked the light on and tried reading it.

  Dear Nikolai,

  I know I said we should never speak to one another again, but I can’t help but reach out to you. I just want to say that …

  The letter ended abruptly. He assumed it was the victim’s before Crowe buzzed her from downstairs.

  A slow blinking light caught his attention. His eyes wandered over to the window where a black keypad mounted beside the sill. He owned a similar security system. Currently, the window was unlocked.

  He left the living room and entered the bedroom, where he discovered the same tidiness as the rest of the apartment. Movie and rock posters were pinned to the wall with thumbtacks. The two pieces of furniture—a worn bed and night stand—appeared to have come from a thrift store. A purse was the only item on the floor, lying beside the neatly made bed. His attention drew to a photo album placed on a small shelf of the night stand. He took it out to look through it. Nearly every picture depicted Jade Sho and Crowe. Some were shot in Mexico City; while others showed the apartment and different places about the city. Each showed a happy couple. Both were smiling, hugging, or kissing each other. He saw a couple in the midst of young love, facing a hopeful future. Not a couple on the verge of collapse.

  At the end of the album, he discovered a vacant space between two pictures. A photo had been taken out.

  Who would have taken it, and why?

  He pondered a moment when a knock came and the door opened.

  “Detective Knox?”

  “I’m coming,” he said, closing the album. He stepped into the living room, where Mason and the landlord stood in the foyer. He extended his hand toward the hallway, gesturing for them to join him there. He slipped off his latex gloves after they’d moved into the hall. “Are you Mr. Loy?”

  “One of ’em. My brother and me run dis place. He’s de maintenance man. I’m just de rent collector.”

  “Were you here at the time of the murder?”

  “Yep. I live in apartment one. My brother lives in three.”

  “Was your brother here as well?”

  “No, he’s on vacation. Won’t be back for another week.”

  Knox turned to Mason. “I need to speak to him alone.”

  Mason left without argument. Knox returned his focus to the landlord. “Did you know Nikolai Crowe?”

  “Kinda. Just talked to ’im here and dere. Nice kid. So I thought.”

  “Did you see him enter the building earlier today?”

  “Yeah. My brother hooked up monitors inside my apartment to view all de cameras around de building. I’d seen de kid come through de lobby around four.”

  “Did you see if someone leaving the building had let him in, or did someone buzz him in?”

  “No one’s allowed to enter de building without being buzzed in by a resident. Dat, umm … what’s dat kid’s name?”

  “Crowe.”

  “Yeah, him. He would’ve needed to be buzzed in.”

  “What’s the security like in this building?”

  “It’s an old building. When my brother and me took over, we installed a good security system, but a murder still went down here some years ago. Some guy got in when someone else was leaving, and he blew some other guy away over money owed. After dat, I warned de tenants dat if dey let anymore strangers in, dey’d hafta pay an extra six hundred bucks in their next rent.”

  “What other methods do you have to keep your tenants safe besides threatening to raise the rent?”

  “My brother installed an alarm system on all de windows. It’s up to de tenants to use ’em. If anyone tries breaking in, de alarm will go off and alert de police.”

  “Do you give them a code, or do they have their own?”

  “No. I give ’em de codes. I have ’em all written down in a book inside a safe. Whenever someone moves, I change de code.”

  “So, you saw Mr. Crowe entering the building today. Did you see him leave with a sleeping bag?”

  “Nope. I don’t sit around watching de cameras all day. I like watching actual TV. Didn’t catch de footage of ’im going down de elevator to de garage.”

  “How did you know he went down to the garage?”

  Loy gave him a blank stare before he said, “Why wouldn’t he? I mean, what was he gonna do, carry de body out to de street?”

  “Did you send the surveillance tapes of Mr. Crowe to the police?”

  “Yep. Some cop—I think it’s de one who was just here—called me and told me to e-mail all of today’s footage over to de Twenty-third Precinct, right away.”

  How would Mason know where the victim lived so quickly? And how would he have guessed the murder had taken place here without Nikolai confessing to the crime?

  “Did you know the victim? Talk to her?”

  “Only when we crossed paths. Friendly girl, and an A Betty, too. But she liked keeping to herself. Was she really de mayor’s daughter? De news said she was.”

  “She didn’t say anything to you about her father?”

  “No. Like I said, she was a private person. Her boyfriend was more chatty.”

  “Did you ever see the two together? Seen them interact with one another?”

  “Sometimes. I’d seen ’em leaving together, other times, coming in. Dey seemed to be a couple of kids in love, y’know? Big smiles, laughing, Dat kinda thing.”

  Judging by Loy’s statement and the pictures in the photo album, it seemed Sho and Crowe’s relationship had been riding on its peak.

  If Jade had loved him, why had she called it off between them?

  “Is dere anything else?” Loy asked. “Hate to be rude, but my programs are on.”

  “No,” he replied, reaching into his inside coat pocket. “If you can think of anything else, give me a call.”

  Knox handed over his card. The landlord glanced at it and nodded. “Okay, will do.”

  Knox went downstairs and found Mason outside, smoking.

  “Find out anything useful?”

  “Maybe,” he said w
ithout giving anything away. “I wanted to speak to you.”

  The officer nodded while taking a drag. “All right, shoot.”

  “How’d you know where the victim lived?”

  “Her driver’s license,” he answered quickly, as if waiting for the question. “The wallet was on the body.”

  “How’d you know where the murder took place?”

  “Lucky guess,” he said, almost proudly. “I called the landlord while I drove Crowe to the station and told him to send over the security footage from today. After viewing the footage, Shaw got a search warrant and had an officer come here to confirm the crime scene.”

  “Tell me about the arrest.”

  Mason inhaled and exhaled smoke. A Channel Eight News van screeched to a halt across the street. Knox turned around. “Shit.”

  “Detective Knox!” Sakura called, getting out of the van. “Detective Knox!”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” he said to Mason. “Go back inside. She can’t follow you in.”

  Mason flicked his cigarette away and pressed the button on the keypad. As Loy buzzed him in, Knox went to his car at the curb and opened the driver’s side door.

  “Knox, wait!” Sakura shouted, running across the road. “Just a few questions, that’s all.”

  He turned a deaf ear to her, revved his engine, and sped away, leaving her standing on the sidewalk.

  In an upscale apartment on the Upper East Side, a woman returned home. She cradled a bag of groceries in each arm. She found a man in the living room.

  “Hi, honey,” she said before entering the kitchen.

  “Hello, sweetheart. How was your trip to the store?”

  She placed the bags on the counter and looked over an island table. “Just fine. I found plenty of good things to eat.”

  He nodded. “That’s good. You should see the places I’ve found for us to go.”

  She left the groceries on the counter and went into the living room to join the man where he sat at the computer desk. “What did you find? Someplace nice, I hope.”

  The screen displayed a vacation website to Europe.

  “What do you think of Germany?” he asked, clicking on a German site.

  Her face scrunched up when a dull, drizzly photo of Berlin filled the screen. “Too wet. How about Italy; or better yet, Australia. It’s nice and warm in Australia.”

  He typed in Australia on the search bar and clicked on the first site. The Opera House in Sidney appeared on the screen.

  “It looks beautiful,” she said.

  “Australia is a pretty big country.” He clicked on another site. “We could go into the Outback.”

  She gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. “I like that idea. Let’s go.”

  “All right, I’ll book a flight for tomorrow.”

  She smiled. “How are the kids?”

  “The same. Want to check on them?”

  She approached the hallway. “Will you start on dinner? I’m sure they’re hungry.”

  “Right away, dear,” he said, standing.

  She entered the master bedroom. The room brightened when she passed the threshold.

  “He left you in the dark?” she said to the couple tied to the bed. “He shouldn’t have done that. Your kind doesn’t like the dark. You want light and warmth. That’s why we’re going someplace where it’s warm most of the time. We’ll fit in easier there.”

  The couple almost couldn’t blink. Electrical and elastic cords bound their arms to their sides and their feet were bound between the steel rods of the footboard.

  She approached and sat next to the man. Both flinched and tried to move away.

  “Did you hear us in there?” she asked hopefully. “Did we sound human enough? We’ve been studying the way you speak to each other.”

  Neither answered her, only stared with wide frightened eyes.

  “Oh, how can you say anything with these on? Here.” She pulled down their gags. “There, I bet that feels better. Yes?”

  The man took a deep nervous breath before he spoke. “We know what you are. What do you want from us?”

  “Nothing from you,” she said. “Well, besides your home and credit card, but that’s only temporary. We’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  “We’ve been tied up for hours,” the woman complained. “We haven’t eaten anything, and I have to go the bathroom.”

  “Don’t worry about that. My husband…well, my pretend husband, is preparing you something good to eat. We haven’t been programmed to cook, but I think we can figure it out.”

  She tilted her head sideways and slipped off the blond wig. She had two thin lines above her eyes where she’d drawn in her own eyebrows. She placed the wig on her lap and stared at it with a somber expression. “I wish I had real hair. I look pretty with hair.” She took a cell phone from her coat pocket and studied the Voice Message symbol on the display screen. “Soon, others will come looking for you.”

  “Are you going to kill us?” the man asked nervously.

  She laughed. “Kill you? No, of course not. We just needed your home, that’s all. When we leave tomorrow, we’ll call these people who called you tonight and tell them you need help. We’ll say it’s an emergency. When they come, they’ll find both of you okay, I promise.” She gave them a serious expression. “Don’t you understand? We don’t want to hurt anyone. We don’t like what we’ve done, but it’s the way it has to be for now.”

  Chapter 9

  Nikolai reached Mount Sinai Hospital and entered the E.R. He wore the hood of his jacket over his head and walked with a limp. To put on the appearance that he was ill, he coughed harshly, which quickly made his throat raw. The limp wasn’t an act, however. With each step, sharp radiating pain in his right leg stabbed every nerve.

  A thick wall of bulletproof glass separated the E.R. from the waiting room. The only access in was through a nurse. It wouldn’t be wise to ask anyone to see his sister. He was a wanted man now.

  Halloween decorations were taped onto the walls and the glass. Cutouts of ghosts, pumpkins, witches, black cats, and bats hung from the ceiling. Nikolai wished it was Halloween. He could dress up like a gorilla or zombie to avoid notice.

  Instead of going to the nurse, he sat next to a man wearing dark sunglasses and holding a cane.

  “Who’s there?” the old man asked sharply.

  “Just a patient, sir,” he said politely.

  “Patient, eh? What you in for?”

  “Food poisoning. Nothing serious.”

  “Food poisoning, eh? Bet it was that crappy vegetarian joint on 103rd. You a vegetarian?”

  “No, sir.”

  The old man shifted in his chair with a grunt. “I’ve got blood and fluid coming outta the vessels of my eyes.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “No worries. I’ll have my vision back and be home by tonight. I’m getting that new and improved Lucentis injection that’ll fix everything wrong in my eyes.”

  “Could I borrow your phone for a sec?”

  “As long as you don’t try stealing it. I’ve spent thousands to get my eyes fixed and can’t afford to buy another phone.”

  “I won’t take it,” he promised.

  The blind man smiled at him. “You sound like an honest kid. Here.” He reached into his coat pocket and handed him his phone.

  “Thank you.”

  He tried to remember Jean’s number but couldn’t to save his life. Why try remembering numbers already stored in phones? And yet it wouldn’t be wise to reach her on her cell. The call could be traced.

  He looked around until he caught sight of a poster with a picture of Hiroshi Sho on it, smiling and holding a child in his arms. The mayor’s eyes seemed locked on him. The text below his picture read: Give her a chance to live a healthy life. Donate today to the Health is Golden Foundation.

  Sho had started the Health is Golden Foundation himself. The proceeds went to find cures for diseases yet to be eliminated by medicine. He’d seen the post
er before in coffeehouses and grocery stores. He got up and approached it, where he slid his finger down the side of the photo. On the poster was a list of numbers to every hospital and business that took donations. Mount Sinai was one of them.

  Jean’s hospital phone beeped. She unclipped it from her pants pocket. The call was coming from one of the nurses in the E.R. “Hey, Paige.”

  “Listen, I’ve got a Doctor McCoy from ICU for you. Do you want me to put him through?”

  “Who?”

  “Doctor McCoy. He asked for you by name, so I assume he knows you.”

  “I don’t know any Doctor McCoy. What does he want?”

  “He needs to speak to you about a patient who was run over by an old Volkswagen.”

  She blinked several times, and then something in her mind clicked. “Wait. Did he mention the color of the car?”

  “Yeah, actually. He said it was pink.”

  She nearly fell over. “Put him through.”

  “Okay.”

  She heard a click. “This is Doctor Crowe.”

  “Jean?” Nikolai said.

  She raced into a vacant room and shut the door. “Nikolai? Where are you?”

  “I’m here at the hospital. Jean, I didn’t kill her.” He kept his voice low. “Please, tell me you believe that.”

  “They showed video of you going into her apartment.”

  “It wasn’t me. You know me better than that. Do you think I’m capable of murder?”

  She leaned against the door, a hand on her forehead. She felt lightheaded.

  “Jean?”

  “No,” she finally said. “I don’t think you killed her. Why’d you come here? It’s too dangerous.”