The Request

by David Bell

  Since the police seemed to be barking up the same tree, it made it all seem bad for Blake.

  Very, very bad.

  “I admit Blake might know more than he’s let on,” I said. “But he’s never hurt anyone. Not like that.”

  “So he has hurt people?”

  “We’ve all hurt people, Kyle, haven’t we?”

  I thought of the accident from college, the one I caused. Maggie and Emily Steiner.

  If the memory of them ever slipped away, Dawn Steiner or Blake would be there to bring it back.

  Once again Kyle leaned against the counter, his fingers splayed against the granite surface. “See, he came on all strong with her and then just dropped her when he went back to this other woman he’d already been involved with. He was careless with Jen’s feelings.”

  I nodded, picturing Samantha in my mind. Did Sam even know Jennifer had ever existed?

  “But he wouldn’t stop,” Kyle said.

  “Stop what?”

  “Calling her. Texting her. He kept her on the line, almost like he was afraid something wouldn’t work out and he’d need a backup plan.” He straightened up, lifting his hands from the counter.

  I thought he was going to pour another drink, but he didn’t. He ran both of his hands back and forth across his face, pulling against the skin until it stretched, his mouth forming a wide O. When he spoke again, he wasn’t looking at me. He stared at the kitchen cabinets as though something important was being reflected back at him from their surface.

  “Jennifer is strong. She worked with prisoners, ex-cons. She always said she was a sucker for a hard-luck case. She liked to help people who needed it. Give them second and third chances. Maybe that’s why she liked me. But even strong people get hurt and feel vulnerable. You have to understand that.” His voice became lower. “She’s like anyone else. She wanted someone to care for her. We all do.”

  When I first showed up, I’d hoped to find Blake or, short of that, some idea about where he was. When I found Kyle instead, I hoped he’d have something useful to share with me. But here stood a man with a broken heart, a man who seemed less tethered to reality than even Blake. He said he’d just gone by Jennifer’s house and driven away when he saw the police and the coroner. But did I really know what he might have had to do with her death?

  Her murder, I reminded myself, trying to get used to the fact that word had become a part of my life.

  Murder.

  “I think I need to move on,” I said. “I’m going to see if I can talk to some friends. Maybe someone else has heard from Blake.”

  “Do the cops suspect you?” Kyle asked, still not looking over at me. Still staring at the cabinets.

  His question hit me with the force of a hurricane.

  Did they? Was I a suspect?

  Kyle went on. “You said they talked to you because you knew Jennifer. You had business dealings or whatever. Do they suspect you? Did you have to give an alibi and all that?”

  “I did. I kind of assume cops think everyone is a suspect until they find out who the guilty party really is. They start with the people closest to the . . . victim and work their way out.”

  “Nobody had broken into her house,” Kyle said. “The cops mentioned that to me.”

  I knew what I knew—Blake had the door code. It surprised me the cops would tell Kyle something like that if he was a suspect. But as if he had read my mind, he provided more information.

  “See,” he said, “they figure somebody knew her door code. That’s what they kept talking about. That door code. They think that’s how the killer got in without breaking and entering or whatever. And I knew that code. Jennifer just gave it to me recently. It’s silly, but it felt like a step forward for us. You know?” He almost smiled at some private, happier memory. “We’d had some rocky times lately because of Blake. He kept trying to contact her, and I didn’t like it. I don’t know what he wanted, but he kept reaching out to her. But she told me she was really done with him. Absolutely. Sometimes she went to yoga late, and I’d meet her afterward. That’s what we were doing last night. Or, I guess, trying to do before . . . Well, I went over there to surprise her.”

  “Surprise her? She didn’t know you were coming?”

  Kyle’s eyes flashed. “Sure. Don’t you ever surprise your wife? Chocolates? Flowers? A surprise. That’s what it was.”

  I wasn’t reassured, but I nodded. “Sure. Okay. Well, let’s hope the police figure it all out soon.” I took a step back, heading for the door.

  “Where is he?” Kyle asked. “Blake. Where is he?”

  The temperature in the room dropped. A cold sensation passed across my skin. Kyle’s voice had taken on a different timbre. Something edgier. More desperate. More angry.

  “I told you—I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I’m looking as well.”

  Involuntarily, I took another step backward.

  Kyle turned to face me. Finally. I saw his face. Pale. But something hot burned in his eyes.

  “They’re going to hang this on me, you know,” he said. “We’d been dating. They always look at the boyfriend. And I knew the code. . . .”

  “Maybe it was one of those convicts she worked with. That’s something for the cops to look into.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe your friend.”

  “If I find him, I’m going to make him go to the police.”

  “I’m a suspect,” Kyle said. “They told me not to leave town. They want to keep talking to me. They want me to give hair samples . . . DNA. . . . She really drove me crazy, you know. How much I wanted her . . .”

  “I have to go,” I said. “I have some other problems to solve in addition to whatever is going on with Blake.”

  But Kyle was shaking his head. And then he moved toward me before I could get away.

  “I can’t let you leave.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  I took yet another step back. And another.

  I couldn’t see behind me. I had no idea if I was about to stumble over a piece of furniture, an ottoman or a coffee table, that would send me flipping backward onto the floor, where I would be completely at the mercy of Kyle and his quickly darkening mood.

  “I’m going,” I said. “I have nothing to do with this. It’s all very . . . different from what my life is usually like.”

  I lied. I very much had something to do with it. I’d found the body. I’d been in the house. I’d used the door code. I knew the man who was presumably the prime suspect.

  And I was in his house with another man, who seemed to be either an avenger or a suspect himself.

  Kyle remained in place in the kitchen. I thought—hoped—my words had frozen him. That I’d managed to slip enough steel and defiance into what I’d said about leaving that he’d decided to just let me go, to give up on any notion of fighting.

  But then he surprised me.

  He wrapped his hand around the bourbon bottle and smoothly, confidently, as though he’d been practicing the move his entire life, flipped the bottle into the air, causing it to spin end over end. When the bottle came down, Kyle expertly grabbed it by its neck. Without hesitating at all, he swung the bottle, smashing it against the granite that had so recently supported his weight and leaving him with a jagged, spiked weapon that looked more threatening than a gun or a knife.

  “Stop,” he said, looking right at me as bourbon leaked from the bottle onto his shoes. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who could have so smoothly executed such a move. But people were full of surprises.

  So I stopped.

  He moved closer, putting me within easy jabbing range of the end of the bottle. My eyes zoomed in on those points. The glass glinted in the sunlight coming over my shoulder. Kyle’s fingers looked thick and rough as they gripped the neck.

  I felt even colder. Almost enough to shiver.

&
nbsp; I couldn’t remember a time in my life when someone had threatened me to such an extent.

  “I don’t think you know how bad this can turn out for me,” he said. “When they start asking someone for DNA, it isn’t because they think he’s a good citizen.”

  “You were in the house. You dated. Of course your DNA is in there. Just tell the cops that. They’ll understand.”

  “I already told them that. Do you think they listen?” He stood still, the bottle in the space between us. “Damn. Do you think . . . Is it possible they think this was a sex crime? Someone raped her and then . . . ?”

  “I really don’t know what’s going on,” I said. “Not really.”

  Then my phone started to ring. The tone sounded insistent and urgent as it filled the space between and around us.

  Was it Amanda calling me home? Was it the police?

  Or . . .

  I made a move to answer it, but Kyle jabbed the bottle toward me.

  “This could be Blake,” I said. “It probably is.”

  Kyle hesitated, and then he used the bottle to gesture toward my pocket, telling me to answer. But the caller ID screen told a different story.

  Samantha.

  I didn’t tell Kyle who was calling. I just answered.

  “Oh, Ryan, where are you?” she asked without any greeting.

  Should I have said—I’m standing in your house with a man waving a broken bottle at me?

  I kept it simple. “I came to your house, looking for Blake. Do you know where he is?”

  “That’s why I called you. I thought you might know.”

  I took a risk and turned my back on Kyle, moving a couple of steps away. I expected to feel the jagged points of the shattered bottle in my neck. . . .

  I tried to lower my voice. “I don’t, Sam. Did the police talk to you?”

  “Yes.” Her voice broke, and she sniffled. “Last night. Late. They came by to talk to Blake, but he wasn’t home. I was honest with them. I didn’t know where he was. And then this morning, before I left for work, they came by again.”

  “So you know why they want to talk to Blake?”

  Samantha didn’t answer right away. I chanced a look over my shoulder, expecting the bottle to gouge my eye out, but Kyle stood behind me, still holding the bottle but obviously intent on learning whatever he could from my conversation.

  “I can guess,” Samantha said, her voice low. “It’s all over the news. This woman was killed, and Blake knew her somehow.” Then her voice took on a harder edge, unusual for Samantha. “You knew her. Blake told me once that you introduced them.”

  “Kind of. Maybe. Did he tell you anything else about her?”

  “So you don’t know where he is?” she asked.

  “I don’t. I saw him last night. He came by the house. Late. But that was it.”

  “He came back to our house last night, after the police left. I was dozing off, but I heard him come in. I thought he would come up to bed, but he didn’t. He left the house again without talking to me. And without saying where he was going.”

  I heard shuffling behind me. Kyle moving around. Again I turned to look, to see what he was doing, and I saw him disappearing to the front of the house, leaving me alone. Mercifully.

  “Sam, I’m worried about Blake. I’m worried he’s in over his head, and the police just showed up here and seem to suspect him of doing something. We have to find him.”

  “I know.”

  “Where are you?” I asked. “Are you out looking for him?”

  “I’m at work.”

  “You are? Why?”

  “I just got here. I wanted things to be normal. I can leave, I guess. But then I’d have to tell my principal why I’m leaving. How do I do that?”

  Kyle was still out of the room. And the back door was just ten feet away from me. Broken bottle be damned. I wanted to get out of that house. I needed to get out.

  “I’m going to come see you, okay? We have to talk. I can come to the school. But right now I have to go.”

  I ended the call and looked back one more time. Still no Kyle.

  So I went for the door. And as I did, Kyle came running back into the room, as though the house had gone up in flames. I checked his hand. No bottle. But he charged right at me anyway, and I braced myself for a collision.

  But he went past me, saying only one word.

  “Cops!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The uniformed cop who came around the side of the house just as I emerged from the back door held his hand above his gun. When I saw that placement of his hand, I froze, one foot outside of the house, the other still inside.

  I’d never been confronted by a cop that way before, but something instinctive, something that everyone in the human race who had ever seen a cop show understood, kicked in, and my hands went up above my head like I was signaling a touchdown.

  The cop approached me, speaking into his lapel radio. His body was crouched like a wrestler’s, although, thankfully, the gun remained holstered. I caught a glimpse of Kyle disappearing between the houses where I had first seen him.

  “Officer,” I said, trying to direct his attention that way.

  “Quiet.”

  “Officer, that man—”

  “I said, ‘Quiet.’”

  He approached me where I stood in the doorway, and then waggled his fingers, indicating that I should step all the way out. I did, with my hands still in the air, and when I came out, he took me by the left arm and spun me around. Before I knew what was happening, my face was pressed against the siding that covered the back of the house, and my arm was getting twisted around behind me.

  “Sir, for your own safety and for mine, I’m going to pat you down to see if you have any weapons. Do you have anything in your pockets that’s going to stick me?”

  “My keys, maybe.”

  “No knives? No needles?”

  “Of course not.”

  My outrage meant nothing to him. He patted me down—torso, outside of my legs, and then up the inseam and back down. All the way down to my shoes.

  “You have identification in your wallet?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  He removed my wallet from my back pocket. “Stay still,” he said, his hand applying less pressure but still enough to keep me in place.

  I had no intention of leaving without his permission.

  “Why were you in this house?” the cop asked. “Do you have permission to be in there?”

  “My friend lives here.”

  “Did your friend give you permission to be inside?”

  “That man, the one who ran off between the houses over behind us—he opened the window and went inside first. I was trying to see what he was doing. I was worried. I think you need to talk to that man.”

  “What man?” the cop asked.

  “Didn’t you see him running off when you came into the backyard?”

  “I didn’t see anyone,” the cop said, his voice dripping with skepticism.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I don’t kid, sir.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another cop emerge from around the corner of the house. She held her hand above her holster, and when she saw me pressed against the back of the house, she said, “Is that all you got?”

  “I haven’t been inside yet.”

  “There’s no one else in there,” I said.

  “I’ll check it out,” the second cop said, and she went past us, heading for the back door of the house.

  “Hey,” my cop said. “Do you need a warrant?”

  “Someone broke in. That’s good enough for probable cause.” And in she went.

  “Sir,” my cop said, “for your own safety and my safety, I’m going to place you in handcuffs right now.”

/>   “You are?”

  He pulled my right hand back and brought it against my left. I heard the jangling of the cuffs, metal clanking against metal. The first one clamped onto my left wrist, tighter than I would have expected.

  Before he was finished, I sensed someone coming around the side of the house. Someone in civilian clothes.

  “That won’t be necessary, Officer,” she said. “He’s okay.”

  “Are you sure, Detective?”

  Rountree came all the way over to us and gave me a wry smile. She carried a walkie-talkie in one hand. “I’m sure. Why don’t you go look inside?”

  “Do you think we need a warrant, Detective?”

  “We need to make sure everyone is safe. What if the homeowner is lying on the floor in there, bleeding? Shouldn’t we help? Let him go and get in there, Officer.”

  I felt the handcuff being released from my wrist. I felt the officer step back, letting go of my arm and giving me space. It seemed safe to turn around, so I did. I was happy not to be pressed against the wall anymore, my nose and cheek rubbing against the aluminum siding.

  Rountree studied me, the sun picking up the gold flecks in her brown eyes.

  “Mr. Francis,” she said, “you seem to be showing up everywhere I step. Sort of like dog shit. Do you care to explain this one? Or would it save time if I just had the officer put the cuffs back on you?”

  “It’s not what it looks like, Detective.”

  “Okay, I’ll play along. Tell me what’s going on. Because from where I stand, it looks like you broke into the home of a murder suspect. A man we’ve been trying to find for almost twelve hours.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “I didn’t break in.” The sun had fully risen over the houses behind Blake’s, so I used my hand to shade my eyes. “That guy who was just here, Kyle Dornan. He’s the one who broke in.”

  “Kyle Dornan is in the house?”

  “He was.” I pointed across the yard. “He ran off when he saw you coming. He went between those houses over there. I tried to tell the cop who put me in cuffs.”