The Thin Edge

by Peggy Townsend

  An old-fashioned floor heater was set in the wood, most likely left from when the old house was remodeled.

  She knelt and looked into the heater grating.

  Quickly she rose and pulled open three or four drawers until she found where the silverware was kept. She grabbed a butter knife and hurried back.

  It took her only a few minutes to loosen the four screws and lift the grate.

  She lay on her stomach and hung her head into the space.

  There, halfway underneath the workings of the old floor furnace, was a blood-covered knife.

  She rocked back up onto her hands and knees, letting the pieces fall into place in her mind.

  She dusted off her hands and went back to the bedroom.

  Kyle was trying to convince Davenport to take the pill, but Davenport was ordering Kyle to destroy the video.

  “I found it,” Aloa interrupted. “The knife was in the old floor heater.”

  Kyle froze, and for a moment there was no sound but Davenport’s shallow breaths.

  “Kyle put it there,” Davenport said.

  Aloa took a step toward him. “I don’t think so. When I came here the first time, I saw a scrape low on the wall near where Corrine died, about ankle high. I figured something had nicked it, your wheelchair or a piece of furniture. But, just now, I saw a piece of white paint on the edge of the knife. The same color as your wall. You used the robot to move the knife to make it look like a murder, like Hamlin had done it, but you must have scraped it against the wall.”

  She walked to his bed. “You blamed Hamlin for Corrine’s suicide. That way you could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

  “Bitch,” Davenport said.

  “You watched her,” Kyle said. “You watched her kill herself.”

  “She was a coward. She cut her throat because she couldn’t stand the pain. There was no honor in her death.”

  Kyle’s face was pale. His voice trembled. “I don’t know who you are,” he said.

  “I am a warrior,” Davenport said. “And you? You’re a sneaky, bed-wetting little creep who turned on the one person who treated you like a son. The father you never had.”

  “Stop it,” Aloa said.

  “I gave you everything. I took you in and taught you how to be a man and look what you did. You betrayed me.”

  Kyle’s body slumped as if the air was leaking out of him.

  “But you can make it right, Kyle. You can redeem yourself. Remember Ōta Dōkan? Remember his death poem?” Davenport said.

  A shudder ran through Kyle.

  “Say it,” Davenport said.

  “Had I not known / that I was dead / already,” Kyle recited slowly, “I would have mourned / my loss of life.”

  “Exactly, Kyle. I’m already dead. A useless lump of bones and skin.” Davenport licked away a drip of perspiration that had run down to his lip. “I used to have power. I used to make men shake when they saw me coming. Now I have nothing. No job. No purpose. No authority. All I had left was talk. All I could do was make Corrine feel bad enough to do what I should have done. To punish her for rubbing it in my face with that professor of hers. To make her pay for her sin.”

  His eyes blazed.

  “That was my last act. I’m ready to go. Put an end to all this, Kyle. Do it now. Show your honor. Show me you’re a man.” He coughed and seemed to struggle a bit for air. “It’s so easy, Kyle. Just pick up a pillow and hold it on my face. It’s right over there.”

  “Kyle, don’t,” Aloa said.

  “Press on it. Hold it there. Count sixty seconds. It won’t take long, Kyle. I’m already weak. Prove you love me. Prove you deserve to be my son.”

  Kyle shook his head slowly. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” Davenport said. “Be who I taught you to be. Be strong. Have honor.”

  For a moment, Kyle didn’t move.

  “Kill me, Kyle,” Davenport urged. His voice had gone as tight as a violin string. “Kill me right now. Just pick up the pillow.”

  “No, Kyle,” Aloa said.

  “Do it,” Davenport barked.

  The assistant’s gaze went to the floor. “I can’t,” he whispered.

  “Do it. I order you,” Davenport shouted.

  Kyle looked up. “How can I honor a man who accuses me of murder?” he asked softly. “How can I believe anything you say? You were willing to send me to prison for something I didn’t do.”

  “A warrior serves his master,” Davenport said.

  “No, sir. A warrior does what’s right.” Kyle straightened. “You don’t really care about anybody, do you? We’re all nothing to you. It’s all just a big ego trip, isn’t it?”

  “Kyle,” Davenport warned.

  “You played us all, just like you played that guy in Afghanistan. You had your little games, your little manipulations. You told me about it. How you wore him down by saying he was nothing and that he’d brought shame to himself and his clan. Then you told him his wife had died and his children were starving because he wasn’t there to tend his field or his goats, and you left the pencil on the table, didn’t you?”

  Davenport shook his head.

  “You hated it that he wouldn’t confess. You hated it because he stood up to you.” Kyle’s voice quivered. “You punished him. Just like you’re doing to me.”

  “I’m not punishing you, Kyle. I’m giving you this chance because I love you.”

  “No, it’s because I won’t take the fall for you, and if I kill you, you’ll get what you want. I’ll go to prison. You will have punished me too.”

  “He’s right,” Aloa said.

  “Oh, such a coward,” Davenport mocked. “Such a frightened little boy. You’ll never be the man I am.”

  “That’s true,” Kyle said.

  “You’re nothing, you know. You’re weak, a bug under my foot. I only tolerated you because Corrine couldn’t stand you, because her seeing you every day was a reminder that, because she couldn’t even bother to pay attention to the road, she’d destroyed me, that she wasn’t good enough to even wipe my ass.” Davenport’s voice rose, the edges of his words slurring slightly. “You’re a sniveling little sack of nothing, a weakling who cries the minute he’s challenged. Don’t think I haven’t seen you out there. Sitting by the pool sobbing your little eyes out because I told you the truth. That you’ll never be good enough, that you failed every test you’ve been given. I know exactly who you are. I know . . .”

  Davenport made a choking sound. His eyes widened, and he looked frantically from Kyle to Aloa. He grimaced and choked again. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. A trickle of saliva ran down his chin.

  “Sir?” Kyle said.

  He grunted and again tried to speak. He leaned his head back. A gurgling sound came from his mouth.

  “Wa hap?” Davenport grunted. “Wa hap?” His gaze darted wildly.

  “What? I don’t understand,” Kyle said.

  Davenport opened his mouth. The left side of his face drooped.

  “Oh god,” Kyle said.

  Aloa grabbed her phone from her pocket, shut off the recording app, and dialed.

  The dispatcher’s voice was calm. “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

  Aloa gave the address. “There’s a man here, a quadriplegic, and I think he’s having a stroke.”

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  Aloa sat in the dusky bar, listening to the noise around her. Lawyers, their ties loosened or their high heels kicked off, leaned back in their chairs and regaled each other with stories about stupid clients and petty judges. Laughter rang out.

  A covey of police officers sat around a table, their street clothes identifying them as civilians and their haircuts and demeanor letting patrons know they were anything but.

  Aloa waited on a barstool, a tumbler of scotch in front of her. She wore jeans and a pale sweater left over from her days in LA. Her lips were painted dark red.

  The bar’s door swung open, and she could see Quinn
walk in. He stood in the sliver of light that leaked from the streetlamp outside and seemed to search the room. He wore black jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt. For a moment, she simply admired the way he looked, then she raised her hand.

  He saw her and came over.

  She sensed his gaze flicker over her and linger on her lips.

  “You look good,” he said. His voice was a little husky.

  “Thanks,” she said and glanced away.

  He settled himself on the stool next to her and cleared his throat. “What are you having?” he asked.

  “Glenlivet. I developed a taste for it.”

  He smiled and signaled the bartender he’d have the same thing she was having.

  “I saw your story,” he said.

  Her piece on the murder of Corrine Davenport had appeared on the Novo website this morning. It told of the collector’s history of interrogations and how his career had ended on an early morning four years ago, leaving him helpless and plagued by pain and infections. Longer interviews with neighbors and Wendy Pianelli from the DA’s office had fleshed out the story of his anger, of Corrine Davenport’s guilt over the accident, and his manipulation of his wife. She wrote about Corrine’s affair, how Davenport had set up Hamlin by sending the dummy text message to make it appear as if Hamlin had been invited to come to the house that night and instead ordering Kyle to stop by so the nosy neighbor across the street could confirm the sighting of a man at the house. She also wrote about Kyle and his devotion to the man who had saved him.

  A search of journal articles in the National Library of Medicine database had led her to a medical investigation into prisoner deaths in Afghanistan, including the one involving Davenport; a second, more sophisticated toxicology report showed the presence of a hallucinogen in Corrine Davenport’s system. The fingerprints on the knife also matched Corrine’s. The story included quotes from those whom Davenport had helped as an FBI agent, who called Davenport a brave and honorable man who’d stepped in when they’d needed him most.

  “You did good,” Quinn said. “I especially liked that Machiavelli quote. The one about good men bent on doing good must know how to be bad.”

  “Yeah, except Davenport didn’t know where good ended and bad started,” Aloa said.

  “It’s a thin edge sometimes,” Quinn said.

  “Do you think Davenport will go to trial?”

  “I doubt it.”

  The bartender slid a scotch in front of Quinn and lifted his eyebrows at Aloa.

  “I’m good,” she told him. Then, to Quinn: “How is he?”

  “Davenport?” Quinn took a sip of his drink. “He’s still in that nursing home. He still can’t talk. It’s all gibberish.”

  “Will he get any better?”

  “Doctors don’t know. He could be like that for the rest of his life, they said.”

  Aloa thought of Christian Davenport using his words as a weapon.

  “The trouble is, his inability to communicate makes it hard for anybody to defend him,” said Quinn, “which is why he probably won’t go to trial. And even if he’s convicted, where would the state put him? I doubt there’s a prison that could handle his needs. If you ask me, he’s in as bad a prison as there is, anyway.”

  Aloa twirled her tumbler of scotch between the palms of her hands. “And Kyle?”

  “He got out on bail. Charged with hit-and-run driving, although your friends and their shenanigans with the evidence didn’t help the case much. He’s got a lawyer.”

  “It doesn’t excuse what he did, but in a way, Kyle was a victim too,” Aloa said.

  “Maybe, but he could have walked away. He had a choice. Giving you that tea and letting you go off, that was reckless.”

  “But not provable, according to the DA. There was no toxicology report. Just my word against his.”

  Quinn took a sip of scotch. “Why didn’t you tell me about that before?”

  “I don’t know. I guess because I knew you’d ask me why I drank something without asking what it was.” She didn’t say, however, that at the moment she’d stood on the cliff’s edge, falling had felt so right.

  “Lesson learned?”

  “I guess.”

  They dropped into silence. Aloa took a pull of her scotch, appreciating its smooth flavor and hint of woodsmoke.

  The veil between life and death was so fragile.

  Across the bar, a waitress clunked two pitchers of beer onto the cops’ table. A voice rose above the hubbub. “And there he was, this scumbag burglar with a laptop under one arm and a jewelry case under the other, coming out the front door,” one of the officers said. “And I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was a method actor, and that he was going to be a burglar in a play. That it was research.” The men howled and slapped palms on the table.

  Quinn smiled. “You know what Lighthall said?” he asked.

  Aloa shook her head.

  “She said you weren’t so bad for a reporter.”

  Aloa chuckled. “She’s not so bad either.”

  “So what’s next?” he asked.

  “Well, I’m finishing up the Sacrificial Lamb piece.”

  There’d been two other arrests in the case.

  “It’s going to be posted a few days from now,” Aloa said. “After that, I don’t know.”

  “That was a gutsy thing you did out there,” Quinn said. “Going after a guy with a ski pole.”

  “Don’t forget the bicycle wheel.”

  He smiled and swirled the scotch in his glass.

  “Remember I asked you about dinner and you said you’d decide about it later?” he asked. “It’s later. How about tomorrow?”

  “You mean somewhere besides here?” Aloa asked as the waitress came back into the room, holding aloft a platter that trailed the scents of tortilla chips, jalapeno peppers, and processed cheese.

  “Yeah. Somewhere a bit nicer than this,” he said.

  “With candles and waiters in long aprons?”

  “If you want.”

  She finished her scotch.

  “Are you still married?” she asked.

  He cleared his throat. “Technically, yes, but we’re seeing a mediator. She’s going to file next month.”

  Aloa hesitated, then set the tumbler on the scratched bar. She dug into her jeans pocket and laid down a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Let’s talk when you’re technically single,” she said and stood.

  “Is that a promise?” he asked.

  She studied him. “Maybe,” she said.

  The next morning, Aloa awoke to the ringing of her phone. First it was the BBC, then talk shows, and after that, a couple of political bloggers wanted to interview her about the Christian Davenport case. She talked to the guy from the BBC, did a quick interview with the bloggers, and agreed to one talk show and refused the other, referring them to Dean Potter, her editor.

  Finally, she climbed out of bed, pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Sunshine poured through her grandmother’s skylights, illuminating the cracked tile countertops, the old stove, the scuffed floor.

  She took her new Aldo Rossi French press from the shelf, set a kettle of water on the flame, and ground the beans. When the water was hot, she poured some into the carafe to warm it and dumped it out. She added the grounds and half the hot water for thirty seconds of what was called “bloom,” then poured in the rest of the water and waited for it to steep.

  The scent made her content with the world, and she debated making herself a piece of toast but decided to wait. First, she would go outside and sit in the sun. The long days of fog and her brush with death on the cliffs had made her crave warmth, blue skies, and solid ground.

  She shrugged into her old wool sweater. Erik was right about its general ugliness. Maybe she would use some of the money she’d earned from the Christian Davenport story to buy herself a nice sweater and a new leather jacket. She thought about Mexico. Maybe she would go to S
ayulita and swim in the warm water. Maybe she would sit in a little café and drink a margarita and watch people walk by.

  She pressed the grounds, poured the coffee into a mug, and let herself out the front door.

  The neighborhood was quiet. Even the monstrous home next door, which was owned by a twenty-eight-year-old and sometimes thumped with trance music, was silent. The buildings and the water and the bridge glowed in the soft light that made this place different from any other city on earth. It was the slant of the sun, the reflection of the sea, and the hills that made this a town where you could imagine dreams becoming real. Although hers were still a long way off.

  She thought of Elvis and of Keisha, who’d apparently detoxed successfully and been diverted to drug court, where she would work through the steps and do community service, and if she stayed clean, her arrest would be scrubbed. Destiny was still with her aunt, but there was a possibility of reunion. It would be a long, slow climb back.

  Aloa lowered herself onto the top step of the Vallejo Street steps and took a sip of her coffee. A house finch called from somewhere nearby and Aloa remembered how her father had said that a bird’s song was full of trills and slides and tones that a human ear couldn’t actually decipher unless we recorded the song and slowed it down. But to a bird, the melodies were as clear as if their avian brethren were shouting out their names.

  It was the same way with life. Unless and until we pay attention to someone closely, we will never know who they are.

  Her phone rang. It was the Washington Post. She let it go to voice mail. She would call back in a few minutes.

  “Christ on a cracker. You pulling a Jimmy Hoffa or something, Ink?” came a raspy voice.

  Aloa looked over her shoulder to see the Brain Farm cresting the hill. They were dressed in a salvaged array of vests, baggy jeans, and hats. When they got to the steps, they bent over with their hands on their knees and gasped for air.

  After they’d left the mansion in search of Hamlin, the gray-hairs had apparently gone straight to Tick’s grandson’s school, where Tick had somehow convinced the school secretary to call the boy to the office. The boy’s eyes had widened when Tick whispered he was his long-lost grandfather, but he must have inherited Tick’s improvisational DNA, because he told the school his grandpa had brought his science project from home and he needed to get it from the car.