Takeover

by Diana Dwayne

  I open the door slowly, Sam’s already there on the porch. “Keep quiet,” I whisper. “My husband and brother are passed out on the couch.”

  “Can you come out here?” she asks, clutching her arms and shivering.

  “What happened? Are you all right? It’s like seventy degrees outside.”

  “I know,” she says. “Just please, I wanna talk to you.”

  “Fine,” I say. “Meet me around back.”

  I don’t know if it’s drugs or what, but Sam’s not looking so good. We seemed to hit it off all right in jail, but I’m not so sure that I really trust her. On my way through the kitchen, I grab a paring knife, and wrap it in a napkin so it doesn’t stab me when I put it in my pocket. I open the back door and walk outside.

  “I thought you wanted to come in because it’s cold.”

  “That ain’t why I’m shiverin’,” she says. “Look, I need a place to crash for a while, but I didn’t know you had people over. I can’t let anybody see me, y’know?”

  “Why?” I ask, moments before I come to the simple realization. “You broke out of jail.”

  “I wouldn’t say I broke out,” she says with a half-smile. “It’s more like I saw an open door and I walked through it.”

  “You can’t be here,” I say. “You have no idea what’s been going on in my life since the last time I saw you. If you stay here, we’re both going to prison.”

  “Shit, girl tries to come to her cellie for some help an’ all you can do’s turn me away like I’m a stray dog or somethin’.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “They was transferrin’ me up to the court for ‘rainment or whatever. Lady cop undoes my cuffs and leaves the door open on her way out. At first, I just was lookin’ through to see what the court room looked like, right? But door led to a hallway with a bright green exit sign at the end of it, so I took it as a gift from god.”

  “Right,” I say, putting my hands on my forehead, trying to think what to do with this person.

  “The fuck is that?” she asks, pulling the knife out of my pocket. She laughs. “You think I was gonna rob you or somethin’?”

  “I didn’t know why you were here,” I say. “Like I said, things have been kind of messed up since I got out.”

  “Messed up,” she says, using the tip of the paring knife to clean under her nails, “right. Rich white girl gets out of the joint and everythang’s changed.”

  “Someone tried to kill me,” I say. “I don’t know who, so forgive me if I’m not exactly in the trusting mood right now.”

  “Someone tried to off a pretty thing like you?” she chuckles. I have no idea what’s so funny. “Shit,” she says and hands back the knife. “Tell you what,” she starts again, “you hear me out, and if you don’t wanna keep me here or whatever, that’s cool. You think I’m tryin’ to gank yo shit, put that thing wherever you want.”

  “Okay,” I say, and quickly feel compelled to clarify. “I’ll hear you out.”

  We sit down and she tells me her sob story. She escaped the courthouse, somehow made it across town without someone noticing her bright orange jumpsuit with the words “DOC Inmate” on the back of them, only to find her boyfriend in his apartment screwing the girl that she beat up; the one that put her in jail. She fails to make another mention of the fact that the girl was actually his girlfriend to start with. After that, she looked me up and made her way over, thinking that the eighteen or so hours we spent in a cell together was enough to get me to risk my freedom for her.

  “You know,” she says, “I can tell from your face you don’t want me here. I get that. You don’t know me outside of a cell, but I’ll tell you what. You give me a nice, quiet place to sleep tonight, and I’ll put that knife in any asshole tries to kill you, feel me?”

  “Do people still say ‘feel me’?” It’s not the most pertinent question, but it’s the first one that comes to my mind.

  “Shit,” she says. “You got a basement, an attic?”

  “We have an attic,” I say, “but I don’t know how I’m going to explain footsteps coming from the ceiling to my fiancé.” I say that as if it’s the only problem I have with this proposition.

  “I can be real quiet when I want to,” she says. “When’s your man off to work?”

  “He doesn’t work,” I say.

  “White boy’s got him a sugar mama, huh?”

  “I don’t work either. I got fired today.”

  “Look,” she says, turning to face me. She has a puppy dog look in her eyes that would rival that of—well, a puppy dog. “You don’t want me here, I understand, but I ain’t got no place else to go. Just give me a few days to figure out somethin’. You won’t even know that I’m here, aight? I promise.”

  “If you get caught, I get caught.”

  “That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout,” she says.

  “No, you don’t understand. If you get caught, I’m going to go to prison for hiding a fugitive from justice. I can’t do this, not right now while I’m still on the police’s radar—”

  “Fuck,” she says, standing up. “I knew you was a vanilla bitch first time I saw you comin’ into that fuckin’ cell. You think you such a goddamn martyr, bitch you ain’t got a clue what—”

  “—that’s why I’m going to give you money for a hotel room,” I say. “Now sit down and shut up before you say something rude.” I’m starting to like this side of me. Sure, it’s still the side that’s going to pay for an escaped convict’s hotel room, but at least I’m starting to stand up for myself.

  Sam stops in her tracks and looks at me. “Ha!” she says, a little too loudly. “I knew you was gonna come through for me.”

  “First thing’s first,” I say, motioning for her to quiet down, “we need to get you out of those clothes or you’re not going to make it another mile.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Aiding and Abetting

  By the time we get Sam into something that she doesn’t think makes her look like a prude, it’s almost three in the morning. I’m tired, and I’m certainly not driving anywhere. I don’t know how far it is to the nearest hotel, but I can’t think that it’d be too big a deal to let her stay the night. Sure, I’m probably going to have to explain it to James and absolutely not let my brother see her here, but maybe I can distract them long enough for her to make her way to whatever freedom she’s going to have.

  For now, she’s sleeping in my bed and I’m on the floor. Maybe I’m too accommodating, but I can’t be sure that she hasn’t had a more stressful day than I have. Okay, maybe the “stress” from her day was due to her decision to commit a felony, but still. My back is kind of sore and the firmness of the floor is helping.

  I fall asleep, but it’s one of those alcohol meets exhaustion kinds of sleep where I’m half-aware of every noise from outside but way too out of it to understand what those sounds could possibly mean. I don’t know whether my sleep deepens and I lose a lot of time or whether it actually happens this quickly, but the next thing I know I can hear James yelling downstairs.

  I get up as quickly as I can, but I’m still drunk enough that it’s a bit of a process. My mind is swimming with alcohol and my head is pounding, but whatever this is, it can’t be a good thing.

  I look to the bed, but Sam’s not in it. James is still yelling, but I don’t understand what he’s saying. I stumble my way out of the bedroom and down the stairs. The living room is dark. James must be in the kitchen. I have no idea where my brother could be.

  When I finally make my way to James, I can hardly take a step in the room. The volume of his voice is too much for my hungover brain. “James,” I say, barely above a whisper. “James?”

  He finally turns to look at me and he keeps yelling, but my throbbing head is beyond overloaded by the sheer decibels coming out of his mouth.

  “You’re going to have to calm down,” I say, my eyes half-open, only partially aware that something must be really wrong for him to be acting this way.<
br />
  “Calm down?” he screams, and I plug my ears. It doesn’t help very much. “How do you expect me to calm down when—” he says a lot more, but I can’t process it.

  “James,” I say again, quietly. “Could you repeat that again, only a lot quieter?”

  He finally takes a deep breath and lowers his tone, but from the look in his eyes, his self-control isn’t going to last very long. “How do you expect me to calm down when,” his voice rises with every syllable, “there’s a fucking body on my kitchen floor!”

  “What?” I walk closer to him and look where he’s pointing. There’s the body of a man, dressed in black, wearing a ski mask with a knife sticking out of his temple. He had been hidden by the countertop before, but now I’m screaming.

  There’s so much blood. I can only imagine how much has been soaked up by the mask and his clothes, but it’s all over the floor, puddled thick and dark. I can’t tell if it’s dry or not, but that’s not really what’s pressing in my mind right now.

  “Where’s Sam?” I ask.

  “Who the fuck is Sam?” James screams at me. “God, I can’t believe this! I can’t fucking believe this! I can’t—”

  It’s not the nicest thing that I’ve ever done, certainly not the most understanding, but if James is going to stand here screaming while I’m trying to figure out just what the hell happened, he’s going to get slapped. My hand hurts, and James’s face is already going red. “You need to calm down,” I say. “Standing here screaming at me isn’t going to do you, me or anyone any good, do you understand me?”

  “How the fuck can you be so calm?” he asks. I don’t particularly like his tone, but at least the volume is down.

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “How the fuck should I know? I can’t—”

  “Where is Andrew?”

  “He’s waiting out front for the cops. They should be here any minute.”

  “When did you find the body?”

  “Just barely!” he says, his voice starting to rise again, but I cock my head a little and he takes another deep breath.

  I look over at the clock on the microwave. It’s not quite five. I’ve only been asleep for a couple of hours and there’s a dead guy on my floor. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, shaking his head. He’s crying. My frustration starts to melt away as the reality of the situation sets in. I put my arms around James.

  “Did you see anyone else?” I ask. I’m pretty sure I know exactly who did this. To think, I almost told her to stay away from my house.

  “No,” James says. “I woke up and came in here to get a glass of water and he was just there.”

  “Was he breathing when you got in here?”

  “No,” he says, “I don’t know. I haven’t moved since I saw him.”

  “Okay,” I say, trying to hide my own fear. If Sam hadn’t escaped from the courthouse today and looked me up, chances are, I’d be dead. How the hell did she know that he was in the house?

  James and I hold each other and continue to stare at the lifeless body of the masked man. Whoever this is, he came here to kill me. For a moment, I start to think that it might be Mr. Waite, but he would never do his own dirty work. I’m more convinced than ever that he has something to do with all of this, but the man on the floor has to be someone else.

  “James, I need you to grab the handle of the knife.”

  “What?”

  The front door opens, and I hear a lot of footsteps coming through. I turn to James and I can only hope that he understands what I’m telling him, because I’ve never spoken so quickly in my life. “I’ll explain later, just wipe the handle and grab it with your right hand. I know who did this and if it wasn’t for her, we’d all be dead right now, or at least I would. He’s in our home, he’s wearing a mask, and he was obviously wearing it when he was stabbed, so you did this to protect yourself and this home. You’re not going to get into any trouble for this, it was self-defense. Do you understand me?”

  We can’t have more than a few seconds before the officers come into the room, and I can’t imagine that Sam was wearing gloves when she did this. I may not have owed her anything before, but I sure as hell do now.

  “James,” I say in a quiet, forceful voice and in a moment, he’s leaning over the pool of blood, wiping the handle down with his shirt sleeve. He just manages to get his fingers on the handle of the knife when the cops come into the room.

  “Freeze!” one of them shouts melodramatically, and James stands up straight.

  “I was—” James stammers. Come on James, you can do this. He looks at me and back at the officers. “I was checking for a pulse.”

  I don’t know if I’d call it relief, but my heart rate does drop by a couple beats per minute.

  “What happened here?”

  My brother is behind the officers. I didn’t have a chance to ask James what he had told Andrew. James says, “I came in here to get a glass of water.” He looks at me. “I don’t remember,” he says. “I mean, it all happened so fast.”

  I look over toward the officers, and I’m not sure why I’m surprised that the same detective who had me in cuffs a few days ago is the one doing all of the talking. “Sir, you need to tell me exactly what happened,” the detective repeats, putting latex gloves on his hands and approaching the body.

  “Like I said,” James says, looking back at me, “I came in here for a glass of water and he was here.” James, please stop looking at me right now.

  “What do you mean ‘here’?” the detective asks, reaching two fingers out and feeling the neck of the man on the ground.

  “I mean he just—” James breaks into tears again. “He just came out of nowhere. I don’t even remember exactly what happened. All I know is that he was here and the next thing I knew, he was on the ground.”

  “Well,” the detective says, “he’s dead.”

  “Oh my god,” James says as if he didn’t already know. Actually, I think I understand his reaction because hearing those words has me bending over the sink, vomiting.

  I can hear the detective sigh in the background, but there’s not much I can do about anything right now. “Can you guys get your pictures so we can get the mask off this guy?” the detective asks as I continue to refund the contents of my stomach.

  I manage to turn the water on, and I straighten up slowly. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “You know something, Pearson?” the detective asks. He points at me. “You are bad luck.”

  “What do you—”

  The sound of the camera clicking is enough to make me feel nauseated again, but I manage to keep myself from a return trip to the sink. “People have a way of ending up dead around you, and I’m going to find out why.”

  “Please,” I say, not acting. “Please do.”

  After the photographer has gotten his pictures of the scene, the rest of the men make their way to the body. The detective asks James and I to leave the room a few times before the request reaches either of us.

  We make our way to the living room and Andrew’s on the phone with Jillian.

  “No,” he says. “I don’t know what happened, but the guy was inside the house, wearing a black ski mask.” He listens for a moment. “No, the knife went through the material. Whoever it is, he was wearing it at the time.”

  “What’s going on?” James whispers to me.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper back.

  “You just had me put my own fingerprints on the handle of a knife in some guy’s head, you’ve got to do better than ‘I don’t know,’ Rose.”

  I take a second before I answer to let one of the officers walk through the living room on his way outside. “I know who killed him, but I don’t know who he is. I don’t know why he was trying to kill me, I don’t know why anyone would try to kill me. The only thing I can figure out is that it has something to do with my boss.”

  “McDaniel?” he asks.

  “Actually, I think Waite is much more like
ly.”

  “Waite?” James asks and then holds his tongue as that officer comes back through the front door. “Why would he have anything to do with this?”

  “All I know is that before he took over, nobody was trying to kill me.”

  “Who killed the man?”

  “I can’t talk about that right now, but I promise I’ll tell you everything when all of these people are gone.”

  “All right,” Andrew says to the receiver on his phone, “I’ll tell her. Love you. Bye.” I look over at my brother and he says, “Jillian says that between what happened with the car and the fact that this guy was inside your home, wearing a ski-mask, you guys are going to be all right. No charge for defending yourself, James.”

  “Well that’s good,” I say, disconnected.

  “She also says that maybe it would be a good idea to go to a hotel and check in under an assumed name for a few days, at least until the police can figure out what the hell is going on—”

  “What’s going on,” the detective says, coming around the corner into the living room, “is that we’ve got someone dead in your house, and I want to know why.”

  “So do I,” James and I say in almost perfect unison.

  The detective chuckles. He’s carrying something in his hand, it’s a digital camera. “Do you recognize this man?” he says, holding it out toward me, not James. “They’re getting ready to remove the body, and I wanted to get a snapshot of the guy without his mask. It wasn’t particularly easy, given the fact that I didn’t want to remove the knife yet, either.”

  I take the camera, but as soon as I look at the screen, I’m vomiting again. Somewhere, off in the distance of what seems like another reality, I hear James saying, “Oh my god.”

  “What?” Andrew asks. “Who is it?”

  I’m still heaving, so James has to answer for me. “It’s Mark,” he says, taking a deep breath. “It’s your brother.”