The first of many, it turned out. I do believe, looking back on it, that the entire episode just struck me dumb—dumb as a stump, to be exact. I just sat there, rooted to that floor, my front door standing wide open, the cold night air rushing in around me.
Eventually, I did manage to lean over and stare at the ax, this time being careful not to touch anything. I could see my handprints on the handle, perfectly imprinted where I’d grabbed it.
I peered at the blade again, squinting at the little tangle of hair. The hairs were short—maybe four inches long—mangled like Brillo and stuck to the jagged edge of the blade. The hair looked to be a bright auburn red. A white chip of something clung to the blade. A rush of nausea hit me.
The slam of a car door and footsteps on the sidewalk shook me out of my stupor. I scrambled to my feet, bracing myself against the wall as I stood, leaving another angry smear on the pale yellow paint. I slammed the door shut, locked it, and slapped the light switch off.
I leaned against the door, breathing hard, my heart knocking against my ribs, my brain screaming at me. Idiot, it screamed. Run.
The footsteps stopped on my front porch.
I held my breath.
“Dylan?”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
The doorknob rattled.
“Dylan!” he said again, sharply this time.
I reached down and grabbed the ax, stepping slowly away from the door.
He knocked. Loudly. “I know you’re in there. Open the door.”
I finally recognized the voice. Idiot, my brain said to me again.
“David?” I said out loud.
“Dylan?”
“Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me. Let me in.” He rattled the doorknob again.
“Is anyone out there?”
“I am. I’m out here. Let me in.”
“Are you alone?”
“Of course I’m alone. What do you think, I brought a date? I’m here to pick you up.”
“Is anyone in the yard?”
“I am. I’m in the yard. Let me in.”
“I’m not opening the door—not until you check.”
“No one is out here, Dylan. It’s just me. Open the door. It’s, like, ten degrees out.”
“Go look on the sides of the house. And in the back. And check behind the Burkes’ bushes.”
I waited while he walked around and searched the yard.
“All clear, Sugar Pea. Come on, babe. Open the door. I’m freezing out here.”
I shifted the ax to my left hand and opened the door.
David stepped in and flipped on the light, sucking in a quick breath as he got a look at me.
“Sweet Moses,” he said, and began to move toward me.
I backed up and raised the ax with both hands, stupid and wild with fear. I must have made a strange apparition. My white bathrobe was smeared with blood. My hands were smeared with blood. My wall and light switch were smeared with blood.
He stopped and held his hands up.
“Dylan. Come on, Sugar Pea. Settle down. It’s me.”
“It’s you,” I repeated.
“It’s me. Everything’s okay. Put the ax down, honey.” He spoke as though talking to a child. Or to a frightened pet.
I dropped the ax, the handle slapping to the floor.
I held out my arms. He stepped into them, holding me as I started to cry.
He had the good sense not to say anything. He just let me leak tears all over his nicely pressed shirt. When I finally pulled away, he had a little spider of a mascara stain on his chest.
“What happened, Dylan? Are you hurt?”
“No, no. I’m not hurt. I don’t know why I got so scared.”
He pulled back and looked at me, then passed his eyes around the hallway, taking in the scene. The scene of some vicarious carnage.
“What happened?” he asked again.
“Nothing. I don’t know.”
“Whose blood is this? It’s not yours? I thought you were hurt.”
“No, I’m not hurt. I don’t know whose blood it is.”
“Well how did it get all over you?” He looked around at the blood-swiped walls, then back at me, reaching for my hands and turning them over, inspecting my sticky red palms.
“Someone left this ax on my porch. I thought it was a present. From UPS.”
“Dylan, you’re not making any sense.”
“I heard something at the door. I thought maybe it was UPS or something. Bringing a birthday present, maybe. I opened the door and there was this ax. I picked it up before I knew it was—”
“Bloody? Someone left a bloody ax on your front porch? Whose ax is it?”
“I don’t go around taking inventory of other people’s gardening tools, David.”
He held his hands up again. “Okay, okay. Sorry. I just meant…what did I mean?” He took a breath. “It’s not your ax, I take it.”
“It could be mine, I guess. I don’t even know if I own an ax. Maybe someone took it out of my garage. Was the garage door open?”
“No. It’s closed.”
We both stood there for a minute, dumbstruck. That dumbness was contagious, it seemed.
“Maybe it’s animal blood,” he offered. “Maybe someone killed a dog or something…”
I recoiled.
“…and left the ax as some sort of sick prank. To scare you.”
“It worked.”
“I can see that.” He looked around again.
“What should we do?” I asked. “Call the police?”
“Probably. This is not the sort of thing you don’t report.”
“There’s hair on the blade,” I said.
He squatted down and peered at the blade, careful not to touch it.
“It looks like human hair to me,” he said. “A woman’s hair.”
“How can you tell?”
“It’s too long to be a dog’s. Or a man’s. Most men, anyway. And it’s too red. It looks dyed.”
I knelt down beside him. It did look dyed. The roots were black.
“Do you want me to call?” he said.
“Please.”
He turned and went to the kitchen.
I heard him dial 911, wait a moment, and then start the conversation. “I have something a little odd to report…”
I went to my bedroom and kicked the door shut behind me. Surely it would take the police a while to get here. This was the Dallas Police Department, after all. In a city of over a million people, they must have real, actual crimes in progress to take care of.
I stepped into the bathroom and caught sight of myself in the mirror. My third ghastly encounter with a mirror that day.
The wave of nausea returned, almost doubling me over. I retched into the sink, keeping my head down for a minute, letting the cold water run. I straightened back up and faced myself.
I looked like I’d been assaulted. Violently. My face was drained of color, and my eye makeup was smudged into little black rivers on my cheeks. My hair was wrecked. Blood was smeared in little hieroglyphs all over me and all over my fluffy white robe. My hands were sticky, almost brown now as the blood dried.
I peeled the robe off and let it drop onto the floor in a heap, vowing to myself that I would burn it at the first opportunity. I stepped into the tub and pulled the shower curtain closed. I felt like I could scrub forever and never get that blood off. Some redheaded woman’s blood.
I couldn’t even stand to think about it, whose blood that might be.
I worked up a good, thick lather, soaping myself generously and watching as the water went from pink to clear and circled into the drain. I was just starting to settle down when someone banged on the bathroom door, scaring me half out of my skin again.
“Dylan?”
“David? Is that you?”
He shouted through the door. “The police are here, Dylan. They want you to get out of the shower immediately.”
“Why?”
“I
don’t know, babe, but they don’t look to me like they’re going to take no for an answer. Finish up and come on out, okay?”
I rinsed off quickly and toweled off, hoping they weren’t waiting in the bedroom. I had nothing in here but my bathrobe and I wasn’t about to put that thing on.
Steam curled through the doorway as I cracked the door and peered into my bedroom. It was uninhabited. The door was closed. I grabbed some jeans and a sweatshirt, threw them on quickly and went out to face the DPD.
Two uniformed policemen were with David on the front porch. The front door was open, a police cruiser parked in front of my house, red and blue lights blazing. A white DPD van pulled up to the curb as I stepped into the hall.
“Hello,” I said.
Everyone turned to look at me.
“Miss Foster?” one of the men said.
“Doctor,” David said.
“Dylan,” I said, extending my hand.
The officer did not offer his in return. I dropped my hand back to my side, strangely hurt. I checked their name tags. Hernandez and Jones.
“Step outside, please,” Hernandez said.
“Can I just…?” I reached for the hall closet to grab a jacket.
Hernandez stopped me. “Step outside, ma’am.”
I obeyed—a rare instance of compliance on my part.
“Can you tell me what happened, ma’am?” Jones asked.
“Sure. I was in the bathroom getting ready for a date. A date with David.” I nodded at him. “And I heard something at the door.”
“What time was this?” Hernandez asked.
“I guess around ten after seven. Maybe seven fifteen? He was supposed to pick me up at seven thirty.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“So. I came to the door and opened it and this ax fell in.”
“It just…fell in?” Jones said.
I nodded. “And it was dark, because I hadn’t turned the porch light on and I couldn’t see what it was. So I picked it up and turned the light on.” I nodded at the light switch just inside the doorway.
Everyone looked at the switch and then back at me.
Officers Jones and Hernandez didn’t look like they were buying my story. My absolutely true story. It hadn’t dawned on me that anyone wouldn’t believe me. Why would I make something like that up?
“Do you own an ax?” Hernandez asked me.
“I don’t think so.”
“But you don’t know?” He raised his eyebrows at me.
I smiled weakly. “Apparently ax ownership is something most people document more carefully than I do.”
Hernandez scowled. “It’s not your ax, ma’am?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t think it’s my ax. If it is, I don’t know how it got onto the porch.”
“What happened after that?” Jones said.
“Well. So. Then, I realized it had something on it. I thought it might be paint. And then I looked at the blade and saw those—” I looked down at the blade, “—hairs.” I could barely say the word. “And I sort of freaked out.”
“And then I walked up,” David said. “Right, honey?”
He never called me honey. It sounded fake and sing-songy, like he was coaching me. We all glared at him to shut up.
“That’s right,” I said. “I didn’t know it was him, though. I thought it might be the ax guy. So I slammed the door shut and locked it and turned off the light.”
Hernandez walked over, stepping carefully around what I now realized was evidence and inspected the inside of the door. The story was there. Written in red handprints and streaks.
“And I couldn’t get her to open the door,” David said. “She was really scared. I had to convince her it was me, and she wanted me to walk around and make sure no one was out there. And even when I finally did get her to open the door, she was still scared. When I walked in, she raised the ax up, like she was going to hit me. Like a reflex or something. She was really traumatized.”
I think he was trying, bless his heart, to help me. But it was coming out like I’d been a participant in something. Or the victim of something.
“Who was in the yard, Dr. Foster? Did someone attack you tonight?” Jones asked.
“Nobody attacked me. I swear. I mean, take a look. I’m not injured or anything.” I held out my hands and rolled up my sleeves.
“We’ll get all that downtown. Photos and swabs,” Jones said.
“Photos and swabs?”
“You’re a crime scene, Miss Foster,” Hernandez said. “And your house is a crime scene.” He turned to Jones. “Who’s coming?”
“Jackson. He’ll bring the waiver.”
“Waiver?”
“Consent to search,” Hernandez said.
“Search? What for? I found the ax.” I pointed at the floor. “Lying right there on the floor. I told you. I picked it up, and then when David came, I just got scared and sort of freaked out. It was a reflex, just like he said, but then I realized everything was fine and no one was out there, and I put the ax down and hugged him and that’s why he has the mascara on his shirt.”
I hadn’t used a sentence that long since I was fourteen and talking on the phone about boys. I sounded like an idiot. A defensive, guilty idiot.
“And the shower?” Hernandez asked.
“Well…I wanted to get the blood off. I mean, it’s pretty gross. Don’t you think?”
It hadn’t occurred to me until then that the shower was another mistake. I could see it now, though. It made me look guilty of something.
Moron, my brain said.
Officer Jones nodded at the squad car. “If you’ll have a seat in the car, Dr. Foster, we’ll talk to Mr….”
“Shykovsky,” I said.
“Mr. Shykovsky,” he said. “We’ll get your statements while PES gets to work.”
“PES?”
“Physical Evidence Section.” Jones nodded toward the white van. “Baggers and taggers. And then we can get out of your hair.”
I winced. Don’t say hair.
Hernandez walked me to the squad car. Jones stayed on the porch and grilled David as the evidence team filed into my house. Officers Hernandez and Jones conferred for a minute and came out to talk to me again. Finally, they parked David in the backseat of the squad car next to me and locked us in.
I nodded at the growing knot of DPD personnel in my hallway. “They don’t believe me, do they?”
“Sure they do. They just have to ask all the questions, you know, be thorough. It’s their job.”
“You’re lying. They think I’m a nut.”
“No,” he said, looking at me with his beautiful, clear green eyes. Eyes which, in that tender moment, offered up enormous sobriety and compassion.
“What is it, then?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t say it.
“They think you whacked someone with that ax tonight.”
We looked at each other for a moment, the dreadful thought just hanging there, almost blocking the view between us.
“You were in jail last year, weren’t you?”
He was referring to an unfortunate incident in which I was wrongly accused of, well, trespassing and assault. None of which was my fault, might I add.
I nodded ruefully. “Check.”
“How was it?”
“Wonderful.”
“White tablecloths?” he asked, grinning.
“Check.”
“Expensive wine?”
“Midlist.”
“The presumption of innocence?”
“Check.”
He put his arm around me. “Sugar Pea, I love you, but you have the worst luck of anyone I know.”
I leaned my head back on his shoulder and settled in to await my fate.
3
There are no white tablecloths in jail. Or white sheets for that matter. Or white towels. Everything is gray. And old. And stained. The food, such as it is, is also gray. And old. Not to mention cold and greasy. Served on paper plates and plastic trays
with plastic utensils and little crummy foil packs of generic ketchup and those tiny, ridged paper packets of salt and pepper that scatter their contents when you open them. The beds are hard, the toilets squalid, the walls sticky and defiled with graffiti and other things you’d rather not know about, and the entire place smells like a sickening mix of disinfectant, vomit, and urine.
Fortunately, I did not enjoy a repeat visit to the pokey that night. Maybe Jesus took pity on me, knowing (since so many of His followers have done jail time) the apocalyptic impact such an experience would have on my fragile mental health that evening.
It was a long night anyway, though. Jones and Hernandez were joined by Jackson, Skank (I’m not kidding), and Brueheimer. Jackson was the detective. Skank and Brueheimer—who, taken together, sounded to me like Hitler’s law firm or something—were the evidence team. Baggers and taggers, Jones had called them.
I watched from the squad car as the five of them, the Jackson Five of the DPD as they quickly became in my mind, tiptoed through the rosy patches of evidence in my foyer, wearing white Mickey Mouse gloves and muttering gravely to one another. They took prints from every surface in the hallway. They bagged up the ax—in a brown paper bag, if you can believe that—like something they picked up at the grocery store. They searched my yard. They photographed everything. The whole bit.
Then they hauled David and me downtown, stuck us in separate rooms, asked us invasive, suspicious questions, and got our statements. I’d signed the consent form, so they swabbed the inside of my mouth for DNA. They photographed my bare arms and legs. They documented every second of my Saturday. Every phone call. Every conversation. Every encounter.
Between the two of us, we gave a solid performance. Truth was on our side, of course, but it seemed obvious to me that the Jackson Five did not believe us for one red-hot second.
Jackson was the toughest nut to crack. He was a solid six-foot barrel of a man and looked as though he could pull a tree down with his bare hands. He was black and gravelly as the asphalt street in front of my house. By the time he was finished with me, I was wracked with tension, and he was convinced I was a pathological liar.
Finally, he warned me not to leave town anytime soon and sent us both home in a squad car. The cop dropped us off, and David walked me to the front door, which was blocked off with yellow crime scene tape.
The Soul Hunter Page 2
