The Perfect Neighbor

by Blake Pierce

  Jessie felt his weight digging into her, trying to squash her into the floor. From her vantage point, she could see Ryan to her right, the knife protruding from his unmoving chest. To the left was Hannah, crumpled in a heap by the couch, dazed but frantically, valiantly trying to get her bearings. Jessie had a momentary flash of Garland Moses, struggling much as she was now, desperately try to escape the merciless crush of a man she’d once somehow loved.

  The thought of it all produced an uncontainable fireball of fury in her gut. Setting aside all the pain in her shoulder and her back and her heart, she yanked down on the handcuffs, squeezing the metal chain in the flesh of his neck, picturing it cutting through to the bone of his windpipe below.

  She felt him trying to push off the floor with his hands and ripped him back down, using every ounce of strength she had, imagining actually smashing her elbows through the wood of the floorboards.

  She heard him gagging, felt his resolve weakening. But just when she thought he’d begun to give up, he flung himself upward again. Her grip loosened and she knew that he was about to break free.

  But then, out of the corner of her eye, a figure flew toward them, smashing into Kyle’s chest and sending everyone collapsing back to the floor. With Hannah now on top of him and Jessie underneath, Kyle was pinned.

  Jessie took a huge gulp of air and redoubled her efforts, pulling down with a reservoir of determination she didn’t know she was capable of. The chain of the cuffs cut into the soft skin of her fingers, making them raw with pain. Something she couldn’t identify was dripping off Kyle’s body onto her face. It was salty but she didn’t know if it was blood or sweat.

  Despite her best efforts, she could sense that her strength was fading. Kyle’s neck muscles strained against the chain like the Incredible Hulk tearing through his own clothes. Still, she refused to let go. Jessie ignored the protests of her body as she clutched the chain tight and pulled, imagining his muscles were ropes that would eventually snap.

  He paused for a half-second, before unexpectedly flinging himself upward.

  She heard something crack but kept tugging, always tugging, now feeling herself get stronger with each passing second. She visualized herself actually decapitating him and closed her eyes tight as she tried to make it a reality.

  At some point—she wasn’t sure when—she sensed that Kyle was no longer struggling against her. She opened her eyes to find her sister staring remorselessly at his face. Hannah sensed Jessie’s eyes on her and glanced down.

  “You can stop pulling,” she said with remarkable calm. “He’s dead.”

  *

  Jessie was having trouble breathing.

  It wasn’t her injuries or the state of shock she could sense was lurking in the nearby shadows of her mind. Rather it was her constant efforts at CPR on Ryan.

  At her instruction, Hannah had already called down to Officer Nettles to alert him. She said it was quicker than trying to reach 911. While she was calling, Jessie had evaluated the spot where Ryan had been stabbed, on the right mid torso just above the diaphragm, and made the command decision to remove the knife.

  Based on her admittedly rudimentary medical knowledge, she was reasonably certain that it hadn’t entered near any major arteries. But it had likely punctured the lung and every time he inhaled and exhaled, even softly, he risked further damage to it. So once Hannah hung up and said EMTs were on their way, Jessie had methodically explained what would happen next.

  “I have an extra key to these handcuffs in my bedside drawer,” she’d told her. “You get them while I keep pressure on this wound.”

  After Hannah returned with the key and uncuffed her, she walked her sister through the next steps.

  “Get several towels from the linen closet. I’m going to remove the knife.”

  “Why?” Hannah demanded. “Won’t he lose more blood that way?”

  “Yes,” Jessie told her more calmly than she thought possible. “But the knife is damaging his lungs and his breathing has become shallow and irregular and I’m worried he won’t survive until help arrives. I’m going to have to start CPR. I’ll need you to use the towels to keep pressure on his wound. There will probably be lots of blood. Don’t stop pressing. Got it?”

  Hannah nodded.

  “But before we do any of that, I need a favor.”

  “Okay.”

  “I dislocated my shoulder earlier,” she said. “There’s no way I can do chest compressions with it like this. I need you to yank it back into the socket.”

  “Oh god. I think I’m going to pass out.”

  “You’re not going to pass out. You just saw a man die, not for the first time, and you got through that. This is nothing. Besides, I can’t do this alone so you’re not allowed to pass out.”

  That was almost five minutes ago. Jessie wouldn’t find out until later that Kyle had remotely disabled the elevators before beginning his attack. That meant that Nettles and Beatty had to run up thirteen flights of stairs to get to them. By the time they arrived, Jessie was gasping for air and her arms, already pumped out, felt like strands of spaghetti. Hannah had offered to take over chest compressions but Jessie told her to keep pressure on the wound. She didn’t want to tell her that she didn’t trust anyone else to do this.

  When Nettles and Beatty burst into the room, they didn’t ask if they could take over, they just did it. Beatty attached Ryan to an Ambu resuscitation bag while Nettles attended to the knife wound. Jessie slumped down beside them, too exhausted to physically drag herself any farther away. Hannah crawled over beside her sister and wrapped her blood-drenched hands around her.

  Even when the EMTs arrived, preparing to take all three of them to the hospital, she wouldn’t let go.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  “Kat’s here,” Hannah said, snapping Jessie out of her reverie.

  Her friend had pulled up in front of their building and was walking to the lobby.

  “Hi, ladies,” she said warmly as she looked at their suitcases. “Is this everything?”

  It took a second to process the question. That happened a lot lately. Jessie had felt numb for most of the last day and a half.

  Katherine Gentry, her best friend, had returned early from her neurological evaluation in Phoenix and had offered to let the two of them stay at her place until they found a new one. Looking at her, Jessie thought Kat’s time at the Mayo Clinic, even though it had ended prematurely, had served her well. She appeared rested and in high spirits.

  The effects of her multiple concussions obviously couldn’t be countered in one half-week stay at the facility. But even in Jessie’s anesthetized state, she observed that Kat looked hopeful and healthy. Her dark blonde hair, usually tied up in a bun or ponytail, was loose around her shoulders. Always in good shape, Kat looked like she may have allowed a happy extra pound or two on her normally rock-hard, muscled frame. Even the long scar under her left eye and the pock marks on her face and neck that served as constant reminders of her time in a war zone couldn’t diminish her striking confidence.

  “It’s enough to get us by for the next week or so,” Jessie told her. “We’ll have movers take care of the rest when I have time to set it up. We just need to be out of the place, you know?”

  “Of course,” Kat said, not pushing the issue.

  “I’ll meet you guys in the car,” Jessie said. “I just need to turn in the keys at the security desk.”

  Kat and Hannah went outside. Jessie watched them go for a moment before slowly making her way up the lobby stairs, favoring her aching shoulder. She didn’t say it but she was also glad that Kat would be able to help them with everyday tasks they would otherwise struggle with. It turned out that Hannah had cracked a rib when Kyle knocked her into the couch. She was moving gingerly too, trying to take only small inhalations to reduce the ever-present tenderness.

  Jessie had fared better than she expected. Some of the burn wounds on her back had opened up again, her hands were bandaged, and her left arm was
in a sling. But otherwise, she felt physically all right. How she felt emotionally was another matter.

  Despite pleading from both Captain Decker and Hannah, she had refused to go to the funeral. She wanted no part of it. She had buried too many people these last few years. She couldn’t do another. When Jack Dolan called and tried to convince her to go, she hung up on him.

  She immediately shoved that thought to the back of her mind, so that it wouldn’t send her spiraling into the black hole that constantly threatened to consume her. Without the presence of the man she counted on to keep her head above water, the man she’d gotten used to having beside her through each day and night, she found steering clear of that black hole increasingly challenging.

  So she chose instead to focus on concrete things that could buoy her spirits. There was some good news. Apparently there was an opening at Central Station for a police researcher, so she made sure to put in a good word for Jamil Winslow.

  More significantly, within minutes of learning what happened at Jessie’s condo that night, Jack Dolan had ordered his overnight agents to raid Kyle’s townhouse. They quickly discovered that the man sleeping in his bed was a guy who went by the name of “Rick,” and had an impressive fake ID to support it. He bore a striking similarity to Kyle, even close up. They also found a secret tunnel traveling from Kyle’s townhouse, under the yard to the back unit of the townhouse one street over, as well as definitive evidence in the home that Jessie’s racist Facebook posts had been hacked.

  Dolan’s bosses wanted to bring Rick in and throw the book at him. But Dolan had other ideas. With their blessing, he made it clear that if Rick refused to work for them, the Bureau would leak that he was doing so anyway. They would thank him for his assistance in foiling Kyle Voss’s plot and sharing the cartel’s plans in the U.S. The only way they would not leak this falsehood was if it became a fact. Otherwise, Dolan told him, he was essentially a dead man walking.

  Facing that possibility, Rick, whose real name was Esteban Huerta, broke. Over the course of a fourteen-hour interrogation session led by Dolan and some colleagues at the DEA, Huerta gave them the particulars on how Kyle managed to secretly escape in order to attack Garland and Ryan. He also revealed the cartel’s plan to have Kyle reestablish himself in the finance community and eventually launder their money through the charitable foundation he’d established to help wrongly convicted prisoners.

  Huerta agreed to become a double agent of sorts. Once Kyle Voss’s death became public, the FBI would come up with a cover story that kept him out of it. When he was recalled to Monterrey, he was to try to rise within the organization, all the while feeding a designated DEA handler with regular information on the cartel. Jessie was glad that there would be at least one positive outcome owing to Kyle’s release from prison.

  She handed the key to the guard at the security desk, who smiled and nodded but said nothing. She didn’t blame him. What could he possibly say?

  As she delicately made her way back down the stairs and out of the lobby to the car where Kat and Hannah waited, she reminded herself that there was one other bit of good news. It was related to Barnard Hemsley, the slovenly, coked-up divorce attorney who had made their lives so difficult.

  Considering what happened to Ryan later that night, the Manhattan Beach district attorney decided it would look bad to drop charges against a man accused of assaulting a decorated detective, even if that assault amounted to poking a finger in his chest. As a result, Hemsley had an upcoming court date, as a well as a hearing before the California Bar Association. Jessie offered to be a witness at both proceedings.

  Kat hit a bump in the road, bringing Jessie back into the present. She looked around and noticed for the first time that Kat had veered off the normal route to her place.

  “This isn’t the way to your apartment,” she said warily.

  “Good catch, profiler lady,” Kat relied dryly. “We’re making a pit stop on the way.”

  Jessie felt her stomach twist up involuntarily.

  “We’re not going there,” she said emphatically.

  “Yes, we are,” Kat replied calmly, as if speaking to a stubborn child. “The service starts in twenty minutes. I want to go. Hannah wants to go. You can sit in the car if you want. But we’re going.”

  The remainder of the drive took place in silence. When they arrived at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, Kat pulled over to the side and spoke to an officer at the gate. He motioned for a colleague to escort them past the endless stream of vehicles to the reserved parking area. Jessie could see a massive crowd walking toward a grave about sixty yards away. They all sat quietly for several seconds before Hannah finally spoke.

  “I know they saved seats for us,” she said softly. “I’m going to head over.”

  “See you soon, kiddo,” Kat said.

  Hannah shut the door and Jessie watched her fall into line with the other mourners, her head down, her shoulders slumped. Jessie noticed that the girl was wearing a lovely, muted, floral dress.

  When she put it on this morning, it hadn’t registered that it would be appropriate for either settling in at a new home or attending a funeral. Jessie silently chastised herself for missing the clue before chastising herself a second time for being so hard on herself.

  “Okay,” Kat said firmly. “Let’s have it.”

  “What do you mean?” Jessie asked irritably, still annoyed with her friend and now confused too.

  “I know you’re upset, Jessie, devastated even. And I know that the idea of being here right now seems like more than you can bear. But we also both know that if you don’t go, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. It’ll be another way to pile guilt on yourself and god knows, you’ve already got a mountain’s worth of that. So why are you still in this car and not at that gravesite?”

  Jessie sat quietly for a long time, unsure how to respond. But if anybody could understand, it was Kat. She’d lost fellow soldiers during her tours, friends she’d never see again, whom she’d watched get blown apart. The acid brew of death and guilt was no stranger to her.

  “I feel like I should have been able to stop it,” Jessie finally said. “I knew Kyle was a threat. I knew what he was capable of. I should have pushed harder to take him down. I shouldn’t have trusted the FBI to watch him. Nobody knew Kyle like me. Even the people who believed he had ill intent didn’t comprehend how clever he was, the depth of his hatred. I should have made them understand.”

  “You tried,” Kat insisted.

  “Not hard enough. Or else we wouldn’t be here.”

  Kat sighed. After a few seconds, she tried a different tack.

  “At least he’s no longer a threat to anyone else. That’s because of you.”

  Jessie nodded. And then, before she could stop herself, the words were out of her mouth.

  “I liked it,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “When I was choking him and I heard his windpipe snap, I liked it. The feeling was satisfying, almost…thrilling. I’ve had to kill people before but I never felt like that when I did it. What does that say about me?”

  Kat took her hand and squeezed.

  “All it says is that he pushed you to that point. He was threatening everything you held dear. Stopping him—ending him—was your only option. I don’t think you were feeling thrilled in that moment. I think you were feeling relief.”

  Jessie looked her friend in the eye. She couldn’t tell if she was sincere or just trying to make her feel better. Either way, it didn’t change how Jessie felt.

  “I’m not so sure.”

  *

  There were easily a thousand people at the funeral. Jessie knew it was being carried on closed-circuit television too, with the feed going directly into monitors at police stations all over the city. Though it was a private event, local news was sure to get the footage one way or another and air it to millions.

  She took the seat that had been reserved for her, between Hannah and Captain Decker. Sh
e wasn’t entirely sure when or how she’d changed her mind about coming but she was here now. Kat stood a little distance away.

  The rabbi said a few words, and then recited a few prayers. After that, the deputy director of the FBI, who had flown in from D.C., spoke. Captain Decker got up next and talked for a bit. Jessie didn’t hear any of it.

  At some point she realized there were no more speakers and that everyone was silent. She looked up. Several eyes were on her. She leaned over to Hannah.

  “What’s going on?” she whispered.

  “The rabbi asked if anyone from the family wanted to speak.”

  “He doesn’t have any family.”

  “That’s not true, Jessie,” her sister said.

  She was right ,of course. For some time now, Jessie had known that Garland Moses viewed her as a surrogate daughter. His wife had died young of cancer, though he’d never mentioned that to her. He never remarried nor had children of his own. But without ever saying it out loud, he’d made it clear in countless unspoken ways that he viewed Jessie Hunt as the child he’d never had.

  She found, much to her own surprise, that she had risen to her feet and was walking over to the lectern. And then, without really knowing what words would come out of her mouth, Jessie began to speak.

  “I only knew Garland Moses for about two years, although of course I knew of him for many before that. I was scared of him at first, intimidated, though he never gave me a reason to be. It was his reputation for hunting down the worst of humanity that made him seem fearsome.

  “But once I screwed up the courage to talk to him, to seek out his counsel, to get to know him, I discovered that he wasn’t so fearsome after all. He was gentle, which he hid by being quiet. He was kind, which he masked by seeming absent-minded. He was warm, which he veiled in crustiness. He was generous, which he pretended was inadvertent. He never once refused me help when I asked or advice when I needed it.