Deadly Interest

by Julie Hyzy

  Diana wasn’t holding onto me, but she might just as well have been. She hovered so close behind that I could smell her stale, musty body odor. Mixed with the tang of sweat from her fear, it caused me to lean away. I kept my mouth closed, moving toward the kitchen, hoping to put some airspace between us.

  Diana’s bedroom stood just off the living room, and she broke away from me, toward it, looking every direction at once, peering around the doorway, the upper half of her body stretching to allow her to scan the small room, as she flicked on the lights before stepping foot inside. I pitied her, but this was exactly the way she’d have to do it. Small steps.

  A half-second later, her voice rang out. “Where are you going?”

  “Just right here,” I said, inching down the dark hall, swinging my arm to gesture. Just like my house, Mrs. Vicks didn’t have a dining room. Her bedroom was in back, just off the kitchen, and I wanted to take a look.

  Diana spoke again, her panic so clear that her voice hurt my ears. “But she was murdered in the kitchen.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t want to go in there,” she said.

  “Actually,” I said, in my best calming voice, “I do. I’ll just take a look around while you gather your things, okay?”

  I was curious in a morbid way, to see where Mrs. Vicks had been slain, but even more than that, I wanted to distance myself from Diana. Her closeness and her need to cling were smothering; I had to fight the urge to shove her away.

  I knew my aunt wanted Diana to move back in here, the sooner the better. If her behavior thus far was any indication, however, Diana was never coming back.

  Other than the occasional snuffle and sounds of moving about from the front end of the house, letting me know that Diana stayed busy in her room, the house was quiet.

  Dark, too.

  Whoever had been the last person out hadn’t left on any lights. I crawled my left hand against the long wall, in search of the light switch I knew was about halfway down. Just before I reached it, I heard a muffled bump.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  No answer from Diana, so I raised my voice and called out again.

  “Yeah, why?”

  The last thing I wanted to tell her was that I’d heard an unexplained noise. My house was full of them. Everyone’s house was full of them. But right now, in Diana’s fragile state, it might be enough to send her screaming out the front door.

  “No reason,” I lied. “Just checking.”

  I flipped up the light, and the room flooded with artificial brightness. The cheerful yellow kitchen seemed less so today. The steaming scent of pork roast had given way to a chemical odor, and the warmth I’d felt that night was nowhere to be found. As if its life, along with Mrs. Vicks’, had been taken away that day.

  I made a slow tour of the room, documenting every detail that might or might never prove important. The police evidence technicians had been through the house, and black fingerprint powder clung to every surface. I couldn’t imagine that I’d find anything material that they missed. I certainly had nowhere near their capability for obtaining and analyzing left-behind hairs, fingerprints, DNA.

  But, as my mind warmed to the idea of analysis, I might be more likely to pick up on something out of the ordinary for Mrs. Vicks, that might seem commonplace for anyone else.

  The kitchen table looked a lot like it had when I’d left the house Thursday night. Files and paperwork scattered across the Formica top, though rather than in precise piles, the papers were strewn about, having slid out from their neat manila folders. A few had hit the floor, some lying open and face-down.

  I thought about David’s tidbit of information regarding Mrs. Vicks’ financial affairs and I picked through them, looking for her name as account-holder at the top of them.

  Another bump. This time I cocked my head. I could have sworn it came from below me. “Diana?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard. “Did you knock something over?”

  She didn’t answer, so I ignored it.

  The crime scene had been cleaned up. By whom I had no idea. Even though they’d done an admirable job of removing what must have been a stomach-wrenching mess, I could tell, by a few stray marks, where Mrs. Vicks had fallen. The evidence technicians who’d been through here had no doubt taken everything they needed. Now I had free rein to search for what I needed.

  Too bad I had no idea what that was.

  I knew just from standing there that I’d find nothing in the kitchen. Mrs. Vicks bedroom was steps away. The heavy oak door, four horizontal panels polished to a high sheen, stood slightly ajar and I pushed it open, wincing at the long creaking noise as the hinges protested my entrance.

  Heavy draperies shut out even the pale moonlight. The room was dark as a cave and almost as cold. I fingered the wall, looking for a switch, even as my eyes became accustomed to the dimness. Flicking it up, I squinted at the same moment in anticipation of bright light, and felt my eyes widen in surprise when nothing happened.

  From her room, Diana screamed. “Alex!”

  I froze in place. “What?”

  “My lights!”

  Turning fast to return to the still-bright kitchen, I opened my mouth to answer her as Diana lumbered in. I caught sight her panicked face for one half-moment.

  Then, those lights went out.

  Diana’s high-octave scream coincided with the plunge of my stomach. Lights generally went out at once, not one room at a time. Not without help. The fuse box was in the basement, which meant whoever had killed the lights was still down there, too.

  We weren’t alone in the house.

  “Alex,” she cried again.

  “Shush,” I said, my voice sharp, my senses on frenzied alert. “Move,” I said. Positioned dead-center in the narrow hall, she blocked our way out.

  She ignored my imperative, her chilled fingers finding me in the dark. Clamping onto my right arm, she pulled me toward her, her breath coming in hot shallow beats against the side of my face. I shook her off, with an involuntary brusqueness that meant that my flight or fight reflexes had fully engaged.

  Diana tried reaching again, her fingertips skimming me as she emitted little whimpers of terror. I sidestepped her in the dark, and issued a whispered order for her to run—to get help.

  She didn’t move.

  More shallow sobs and even as I worried she’d hyperventilate, my mind raced through all possible scenarios, all possible outcomes. If the killer had come back, we needed help and we needed it now.

  “Go,” I said, shoving hard at Diana, fully intending to follow her out the front door. As my eyes started to become accustomed to the darkness, I flinched at the blankness I saw in her expression. The girl was in shock.

  “Diana—” shaking her, “Go, already.”

  She sat, her body dropping against the wall, sliding down with a whump.

  I grabbed for her arm; it was like pulling at a sandbag. Her bulky body didn’t move.

  I uttered an expletive under my breath. “Goddamn it, Diana—move! Or I will goddamn leave you here.”

  My words had no effect. Whether she knew I didn’t mean it, or she just hadn’t heard, I couldn’t tell.

  It didn’t matter.

  Dropping her arm, I lunged for the phone, just steps away.

  Banging against one of the aluminum chairs, then banging into the kitchen table, I reached the receiver and grabbed the portable phone. Blinking, I tried to make out which was the ‘on’ switch as I moved back to stand near Diana.

  Two buttons looked promising and I pressed each, in turn, waiting for the welcome sound of a dial tone.

  Nothing.

  I shook the phone, then heard the heavy wooden basement door open below, realizing too late that the lack of electricity rendered a portable phone useless.

  “Shit.”

  My cell phone sat at the bottom of my purse fifteen steps behind me in the living room. Turned off.

  Warning came with a sickening squeak from the basement
stairs and as the back door flew open, I heard myself react—a gasp-scream silenced by fear.

  Terror and indecision rendered my feet immobile. Before I could decide my best move, he was on us, his huge silhouette looming behind a piercing flashlight beam.

  My head exploded in a flash of brightness and I heard, rather than felt, the sound of it hitting the kitchen wall. I had a moment of awareness, noting the skin-against-plastic sound of my face skimming downward as my legs gave out and I crumpled to the floor. I may have gone out then, I couldn’t be sure, but I became aware of Diana crying—but it was as though hearing her sobs through a fog. Curled into a fetal position on the floor next to me, she was making small mewling hiccups of pain. I tasted metal that I knew had to be blood.

  Lying on my side, the cold linoleum against my left cheek giving me reassurance I was still alive, I tried to shout that I’d already called the police, but my brain couldn’t make the connections to force my lips to make the right sounds.

  At my indecipherable mumbles, I heard a grunt, which I took as surprise. A moment later, I suffered a solid kick to the stomach. Vomit, hot in my throat, nearly choked me, till it chugged outward from my mouth and nose, forming a warm puddle beneath the left side of my face. The flashlight’s beam cut across my eyes.

  I no longer heard Diana. A man’s voice addressed me, or so it seemed. Whatever words he uttered were punctuated by further kicks, mercifully less intense. Or maybe I was less aware. My mind worked enough to convince me I ought to feign unconsciousness.

  It wasn’t hard. My body had had enough. I felt it shutdown. All I wanted to do was close my eyes make the pain of breathing go away.

  I heaved.

  Another bubble of hot bile shot from my mouth. I took a ragged slice of breath and finally, sweet darkness carried me away.

  Chapter Eleven

  My head pounded with the kind of headache that makes sound fade in and out with every throb. Loud, soft, loud, soft.

  It took a full minute of this see-saw wailing before I realized it probably wasn’t a European police car giving chase. I sat up gingerly, every movement causing head-pound flashes behind my eyes.

  Cool moonlight draped the area in blue, and I listened, hard, as I blinked my eyes to clear my vision. A soft rush of heat poured from a vent near my face. I listened for a long time, waiting for some indication that our attacker was still in the house.

  Nothing.

  I hadn’t lost consciousness—the part of my brain that maintained my life support had also kept me awake, though barely—tucking away small memories as I lay there. The man had been saying, “Not here,” repeatedly, and I’d heard the drag of the uneven back door scraping against the cement landing. He must have pulled the door shut when he left.

  Now, my tongue felt huge, and the right side of it burned as though it were on fire. I wiped my chin, my fingers coming back sticky-warm with my own blood. I blinked, trying to see, still trying to determine the source of the uneven noise.

  Diana lay on her back, her left arm bent mid-forearm at an angle so gruesome that seeing it nearly churned my stomach upward again. Her pained eyes were clamped shut, and her long, high-pitched moans rose to the ceiling. My European siren.

  Bracing myself on all fours, I tried to balance, holding my breath against the searing pain in my abdomen. My left knee must have twisted as I fell; moving it shot long streams of heat up my leg. I braced myself on my right knee and was about to stand, when my foot caught the edge of a slippery puddle and gave way.

  My head, already hammering with the shushing sound of pain, bounced against the linoleum. I rested for several shallow breaths before trying again.

  When I finally made it to my feet, the down-rush of blood helped the headache subside. I looked down at Diana’s twisted arm and hoped for her sake she was unconscious.

  Extending my right arm, I winced at the unexpected pain there, too. I pressed my hand flat against the wall and cautiously stepped over Diana’s supine form. I knew I’d forever remember the interminable half-walk, half-crawl to the living room to dig out my cell phone out of my purse.

  When my fingers finally curled around its cool metal exterior, I whispered a small prayer of thanks, and hoped I wouldn’t lose consciousness before help came.

  * * * * *

  Detective Lulinski showed up moments after the paramedics arrived.

  Part of me wanted the efficient medical personnel to be more careful, to be sure they weren’t trampling over clues that might point the finger at the guilty party, but more than that I wanted them to stop the pain in my head.

  “You might have a mild concussion.” The clean-cut young man who said this to me stared so hard into my face that I was mesmerized.

  He continued to stare into my eyes, aided by the beam of a small handheld lamp. The house lights had come back on at some point, but I didn’t know who’d taken care of that. “Did you lose consciousness at all?”

  “No,” I said, knowing that any other response would land me in the hospital for sure.

  He asked me several other questions, which I answered as precisely as I could, feeling as though I were talking with a clothespin clipped to my tongue.

  Time had no meaning for me. I watched as Detective Lulinski took reports from both paramedics and from uniformed officers. He strode back and forth through the room several times as the young medic ministered to my wounds.

  I made out the name stitched above his pocket: Chet. With effort, he helped me over to the long beige couch. I sat there and he knelt on the floor in front of me, taking readings, reporting in via radio, and marking notes on a clipboard. We’d moved to one side of the room to allow passage of the stretcher that would eventually carry Diana out to a waiting ambulance and off to the emergency room.

  Chet reached into his case to pull out gauze packages, when Detective Lulinski crouched in front of me. “Can I talk with her a moment?” he asked.

  Chet nodded, still concentrating on his task at hand. “Yeah,” he said. “I want to keep her alert and awake. As long as she’s up for it.”

  Catch this bastard, I wanted to say. I nodded with as much eagerness as I could muster, then was immediately sorry. It felt like rocks banging against the inside of my skull.

  “Miss St. James,” Lulinski began.

  “Call me Alex,” I said, the end of my name coming out in a lisp. I tried to smile, but it hurt.

  Detective Lulinski wasn’t wearing his customary gray suit. Instead he had on a blue flannel shirt and jeans, no jacket. When I looked into his gray eyes, I didn’t see the hardness I was used to. Instead, his expression was filled with sympathy and that caught me off-guard. He reached out and, lightly, took my right hand in his left. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re strong.”

  The warmth of his hand, the sense of relief knowing how lucky I was to be feeling it, sent hot stings to my eyes. “I look that bad, huh?”

  He gave me an avuncular pat. “Nah,” he said. “Just a little frazzled around the edges.”

  Even though Chet had made a valiant effort to clean me up, I couldn’t ignore the surrounding sourness of remaining upchuck. My face felt sticky from the antiseptic pads he’d used to wipe it, and when I tried to tuck my hair behind my ear, my fingers got stuck in a gummy mess.

  I still felt as though I’d been shot in the tongue with an extra-strong dose of Novocain. “How’s Diana?”

  Lulinski’s gray eyes clouded for a split-second before he managed to settle an impassive expression onto his face. “She’ll live, if that’s what you mean. Her arm’s been broken in several places and the paramedics think she’s in shock. That’s what’s really worrying them now. She’s totally out of it. She doesn’t seem to have the spirit to rally.”

  “But I do?” I asked, pulling my mouth around my tongue, trying to control my words better.

  “I’m counting on it,” he said. “Now tell me everything.”

  * * * * *

  Despite Detective Lulinski’s insistence that I
go for an MRI, I signed a waiver declining a night in the hospital, and promised that I’d have my aunt come stay with me till morning. Overcome with guilt for sending me back to the house with Diana, Aunt Lena insisted on staying up the entire night, checking on me every twenty minutes.

  Lucy wanted to help, and between the two of them I spent restless hours, dozing off for short moments only to be awakened by a cool touch of fingers to my wrist, my cheeks, my forehead. I must have cried out once, because I sat up instinctively to see both Lucy and Aunt Lena there, twin frightened looks on their pale faces.

  “I’m okay,” I said, and lowered myself, with effort, back to a reclining position.

  My mother had always said that the mouth heals quickly because saliva helps speed the process. So, when morning light snuck through the mini-blinds in my room, I worked my jaw, and practiced a couple of words aloud, surprised at how much clearer my speech was compared to the night before. My tongue had even shrunk back to its normal size, although there was a small patch on the right that I still couldn’t feel.

  I vaguely remembered washing up the night before and then crawling into my oversized T-shirt. Now, as I sat up, I tugged at its hem, feeling a chill on my legs as I inched the covers from them, grimacing with each movement.

  Now, wincing, I eased my legs over the side of the bed and considered my options. Too raw to brush my teeth last night, I’d rinsed my mouth with warm salt water instead, hoping to wash out as much blood as I could. At the time I thought I’d done a decent job, but right now it felt like my teeth were wearing sweaters.

  Steadying my feet on the cool wooden floor, I started to boost myself upward.

  “Don’t try to stand up by yourself.” My aunt’s sudden appearance at the doorway startled me. “Lucy,” she called behind her. “Come here and help your sister.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, then as though to prove it, I took several steps forward, trusty fake smile in place. Aunt Lena didn’t have to know I’d sucked in a whoop of breath at the first step. I felt like I’d done about a thousand sit-ups, and was now wearing hundred-pound weights on my arms and legs.