by Daniel Kalla
“Male victim not yet identified. His wallet is missing. But the woman? We’re pretty sure her name is Emily Jane Kenmore.”
I was quiet for a long time, and Helen respected my silence. I cleared my throat. “Why do you need me there?”
“For one, to confirm the woman’s ID. Second, you might know our John Doe. And finally, to give us your medical opinion.”
“My opinion?” I said in a monotone. “You’ll get far more from the CSI team and the forensic pathologist.”
“Ever since that hit TV series, those CSI guys are insufferable.” Helen chuckled. “Besides, maybe you can add something. You see a lot of stabbings, don’t you?”
“One or two.”
“Can you drop by here on your way home? The address is—”
“I know the address.”
After all, I had once lived there, too.
Chapter 2
Barring an alien abduction, I must have driven to Emily’s condo myself. But after the shock of Helen’s phone call and my busy night shift at the ER, I have no recollection of the trip. When I emerged from the fog, I stood at the doorstep of apartment 302, on the third and top floor of the Tudor-style building. The door was wide open. People in blue Windbreakers with the letters CSI emblazoned on the back bustled past while I stood motionless.
Two years earlier, I’d hurtled over yellow crime-scene tape in my rush to get to the trunk of the battered and burned BMW where my brother had lain. Even though his body had been moved to whereabouts unknown, the huge puddles of congealed blood left little doubt that he was dead. And that bloody trunk had opened a wound that had yet to heal.
This time, I felt no urgency. I stood for what seemed like ages at Emily’s door, ostensibly to compose myself, but secretly knowing that my inertia was the only thing preventing what I was about to see from becoming my unpleasant reality. However, when the tall bulk of Helen Riddell appeared on the other side of the threshold, I knew the game was up. At nearly six feet and pushing two hundred pounds, Helen was tough to miss. Dressed in a loud green pantsuit, she greeted me with her trademark effusive smile that exposed the prominent gap between her two front teeth. “Hey, Benjamin, thanks for coming down.” She held her big arms apart, as if she might hug me, but stopped a few feet short.
I nodded. “Hi, Helen.”
“One of the CSI boys told me there was a guy hanging out by the door. He called you a statue.” She laughed. “And unless my gay-dar is way out of whack, I don’t think he meant it in a homoerotic way, neither.”
I forced a smile and crossed the doorstep to join Helen in the spacious but dark living room.
Glancing around, I fought to hold back the flood of memories associated with the sight of Emily’s framed black-and-white sketches and photos. But the scent of her Calvin Klein perfume and the wax of candles (which she burned to mask the smell of her cigarettes) broke past the mental barrier. An image of Emily—wrapped in nothing but a sheet as she stared down at me with that vaguely amused post-orgasmic glow—still burned in my brain.
Helen raised an eyebrow. “You spent some time here, huh?”
I nodded. She didn’t press me for the details, and I didn’t offer any.
“Think you’ll be okay to see the bodies?” Helen chewed her lower lip and her gray eyes were drained of their usual jocularity. “Ought to warn you, Ben, it’s not pretty.”
I shrugged and began to move in the direction of the noise. After a couple of steps, Helen tugged at my shoulder. “You’ll need these dahling accessories.” She dangled a pair of latex gloves and plastic foot covers. As I was slipping into them, Helen asked, “Ben, you ever been to a murder scene before?”
I shook my head. I’d been a consultant for Helen and the Seattle Police Department for more than five years, working one or two cases a year and befriending Helen in the process. But despite all the poisonings I’d consulted on, I’d attended only a handful of the autopsies. There were no crime scenes to speak of. And the trunk of Aaron’s car wasn’t technically a murder scene without a body.
“Couple of pointers,” Helen said. “Don’t touch anything without checking with me. And don’t step over the chalk lines or on any of the…you know…bloody spots. Believe me, you never met anyone as territorial as the CSI guys.” She smiled. “They’re worse than male wolves with very full bladders.”
Helen’s attempt to lighten the mood was wasted on me. My edginess spiraled with each step down the hallway.
We hadn’t even passed the guest bedroom when I caught sight of the pair of shoes jutting out the doorway of Emily’s bedroom. “That’s our John Doe.” Helen nodded at the legs in jeans and sneakers.
I took a breath and continued. Another few steps, and the bedroom opened up for me in graphic detail. In his late twenties, tall and muscular, the John Doe lay draped across the doorway. He stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, both blood-drenched hands clasping his neck, and his sculpted features cast in an expression of utter disbelief. The front of his pale blue shirt had blackened as had the beige carpet surrounding him. There were no visible slash marks on his face or chest, so I assumed all the blood came from his neck. And judging by the sheer volume of it, I determined that one or both of his carotid arteries must have been severed.
“Know him?” Helen asked.
“No.” And I didn’t. Not even his name. But I neglected to mention I’d once met him.
I scanned the rest of the bedroom. Complete shambles. A bomb could have done less damage. The bedcovers were shredded and strewn across the room. Emily’s oak bureau, her prized family heirloom, was toppled on its side, the drawers scattered. Both nightstands were upended. The wall mirror lay facedown on the floor, bits of glinting glass encircling it like spectators at a car crash. Only one charcoal sketch managed to cling askew to the wall; the rest of the frames scattered the floor. But everything paled compared to the walls. Someone had unleashed a sprinkler of blood on them. Streaks and blotches spattered every surface. It dripped down from the upended furniture and soaked the carpet beneath. Even the ceiling was sprayed.
I still didn’t see Emily.
Helen directed her gaze to the far side of the king-sized sleigh bed. Following her eyes, I sidestepped John Doe’s sprawled form and walked along the foot of the bed.
I stopped cold on the other side. Nothing I’d seen so far prepared me for the sight of Emily Kenmore.
My legs weakened. The room whirled. I almost gagged. I’d never been as close to seeing hell.
I felt Helen’s arm steady my right elbow. “C’mon, Ben. Let’s get out of here.”
I shook my head and gently pulled her hand away. “I’m okay,” I lied, forcing my eyes to survey the carnage.
In a tank top and hip-hugger jeans, Emily sat on the floor propped against the side of the bed, her blue eyes staring at the radiator ahead. She was pale to the point of gray. Both arms hung limply at her side. A huge gash ran across her neck, exposing a flash of a bone and trachea through its ragged edges. But unlike the male victim, the wound wasn’t isolated. She was slashed from head to toe. Her face had multiple nicks and lacerations. Her shirt was hacked in several places. I could see at least three stab wounds on her exposed abdomen; the one above her belly button was so long and deep that a loop of small intestine poked through it. Blood obscured the rose tattoo that I knew blossomed below her belly button.
I closed my eyes and breathed slowly. When I opened them, someone else had joined us. “Whoa, Ben, you don’t look so hot. Need a seat?” he asked.
I turned to see Helen’s partner, Detective Richard Sutcliffe. Dressed in a silky gray Italian sports coat with a shiny V-neck shirt and expensive-looking loafers, Rick’s handsome smile, as always, smacked of insincerity. “I didn’t think anything would faze a guy who works the ER.”
Annoyance was just the tonic I needed. “We don’t see that many murder victims in the ER,” I said.
“Guess not.” His smile didn’t waver. “But lots of attempted murders. Not to mention the car s
mashups and all that.”
I should have let it go, but walking away at the right time was never my strong suit. “Yeah, but most of my trauma patients haven’t been mutilated and left for dead for twelve hours.”
Rick shrugged. “The CSI boys figure closer to fourteen.”
“Plus, I usually don’t know the victim.”
Unruffled, his smile grew wider. “Of course.” He raised his left hand, which held a blood-spattered framed photo.
The snapshot captured happier days for all three of us. Emily, gorgeous in a red summer dress, held up a fruity drink and toasted the camera. Aaron and I each had an arm around her while we hoisted umbrella-clad cocktails of our own. We’d taken the carefree Hawaiian trip seven years earlier, but were it not for the photo, I would’ve questioned my presence; it seemed like one of those vague early-childhood memories that might have been just a remembered dream.
“That you on the right?” Rick pointed at Aaron.
My finger tapped the other side of the photo. “I’m the one with the beard.”
“Identical twins! That must happen a lot.” He paused. “I mean before your brother disappeared.”
“You mean, before he died,” I said.
“Yeah,” Rick said. “Unofficially.”
A CSI guy squeezed around Helen to get to the corner of the room, but not before flashing us an annoyed frown.
“Don’t go getting your Windbreaker twisted in a knot. We’re leaving soon,” Helen said to him. Then she turned to me. “You seen enough?”
More than enough, but I found it hard to take my eyes off Emily. Despite the carnage, her eyes hadn’t lost their enigmatic distant charm. As I turned and walked away from her for the last time, I felt a pang of loneliness.
I followed Helen and Rick into the living room. Standing by the door, we formed a triangle. Rick still held the holiday snapshot in his hand, but Helen began the interrogation. “Okay if we ask you about Emily?”
I nodded.
“How did you know her?”
“We met at a party about ten years back. Hit it off right away.”
“Serious?” Helen asked.
“At times.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“We were on-again, off-again for a few years,” I said. “It ended for good about five years ago.”
“On friendly terms?” Rick twirled the photo with a gloved hand.
I shrugged. “Civil enough.”
Helen nodded. “Have you seen her much since?”
“Intermittently. Sometimes we’d go months without seeing each other.” I stopped to swallow. “Other times we’d have more contact.”
“She never married, right?” Rick asked.
I shook my head.
“Shacked up?”
I shrugged again. “Don’t think so.”
“Only ladies’ stuff in the closets and bathroom.” Helen thumbed back toward the bedroom. “You don’t know if she was involved with our poor John Doe back there?”
“Not that I know of. But Emily always had a boyfriend on the go. Sometimes more than one.” I caught a sly glance from Rick, but he didn’t comment. “Emily and I ran with very different crowds….”
“Meaning?” Helen encouraged me with her eyebrow again.
“Emily was an addict.” I almost leaned back against the door, but thought better of it when I noticed one of the CSI guys eyeing me. “When I first met Emily, she drank too much and dabbled in coke. But she managed to sober up and stay dry for a few years.” I rubbed my eyes, suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue from shock and my overnight ER shift. “Then she got more heavily into the drugs…”
Helen nodded empathetically. “The slippery slope, huh?”
“Yeah, Emily bounced from one crutch to another: coke, crystal meth, designer drugs…Didn’t seem to matter.” I looked down at the booties still covering my running shoes. “She tried. Christ, she tried! Detox, rehab, AA, you name it. She would stay clean for a month or two, but inevitably, she’d slip. The pull was too strong.”
“What did Emily do for work?”
“She’s—she was—an MBA. She worked in hotel management for a while. Then commercial real estate. Not lately, though. I’m not sure if she’s even had steady work in the last year or two.”
Helen’s gaze circled the living room before resting back on me. She chewed her bottom lip again. “Ben, this place looks like it would cost something to maintain. And the drugs…”
“Emily always managed to find money,” I said. “Her parents are well off. And I never knew her to date anyone without means, you know?”
Both Helen and Rick looked at me expectantly.
“Yeah, myself included.”
“She was gorgeous, huh?” Helen squinted and her teeth dug into her lower lip to the point where I thought I might see blood. “A pretty woman supporting a hefty drug habit…”
“Are you suggesting Emily was a hooker?” I asked.
“Not a street worker,” she said. “But high end. An escort.”
I stared at her, unwilling to dignify her question with an answer, even though I knew it was reasonable to speculate.
“Okay. Is it possible she dabbled in the drug trade?”
“Anything’s possible,” I said. “But hooking, trafficking…I just can’t picture it.”
“When did you last see her, Ben?”
“A week ago.”
“How was she?” Helen asked.
“Clean,” I said. “Said she’d been off everything for over a month. This time, her words didn’t ring as hollow to me as usual. Not that I ever trusted her on that front, but I kind of hoped this time…”
Helen ran a hand through her wild black curls. “She didn’t mention any kind of trouble? Anyone she was concerned about?”
“She was as happy as I’d seen her in a long time. Like the old Emily…free of drugs.”
Rick, who had stood suspiciously silent for the last few minutes, grinned again. “Never married or anything, right?”
My irritation rose again, but now it was accompanied by slight foreboding. “Why do you keep asking?”
Rather than answer, he turned and walked to the coffee table. Just before he reached it, I understood the reason for his smirk. He picked up a big glossy coffee-table book—a collection of baby names, complete with rundowns on their cultural derivations and cutesy baby photos. Up to that moment, I’d forgotten about the book.
Rick brought it over to where we stood. Wordlessly, he flipped it open. Inside the cover, the scrawled inscription read:
To my best friends, Emily and Benjamin,
Congratulations on the engagement! Wishing you the happiest of lives together. Looking forward to all those beautiful nieces and nephews.
Much love,
Aaron
Chapter 3
I stumbled out of Emily’s apartment in a state beyond exhaustion. I had no idea whether Helen or Rick had bought my explanation for glossing over my engagement to Emily. Nor did I care.
I needed a fix. Anything to settle my inner tumult. As soon as I parked the car, I changed and grabbed my helmet. Fifteen minutes later, I was pushing my mountain bike as hard as I could through the trails. Every stump, bump, and jump was a welcome distraction. The branch that nearly decapitated me brought the first smile to my face in hours. A mental train wreck, I should’ve known better than to hop on a mountain bike. But I needed the rush. No matter how steep or treacherous the hill, I couldn’t ride fast enough.
Nothing worked. I couldn’t shed the vision of Emily sitting lifeless against the same bed where we used to make love. And that damn engagement gift from my brother! I never even liked the book. I always associated it with the beginning of the end for Emily and me.
Six years earlier, twenty-eight years old and fresh out of ER residency, I was determined to knock down my debt load. I vacuumed up shifts no one else wanted, which meant I wound up working a lot of weekends and nights. I’d just finished one such brutal Friday-evening shift at S
t. Jude’s. (An inner city hospital, St. Jude’s is the Ellis Island of Seattle—welcoming, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, her poor, huddled masses of disenfranchised psychiatric patients and addicts.)
The downtown had been in a surly mood that Friday. Her denizens couldn’t punch, club, stab, or shoot each other fast enough. But it didn’t dampen my mood. Stitching up the slit that, thanks to a cheated hooker wielding a wine bottle, ran from ear to ear along the scalp of my final patient, I hummed loud enough that the old drunk warbled along with the tune.
At one A.M., I changed out of my scrubs, grabbed the bouquet of flowers (that had drawn so many friendly digs from the staff) from the bedpan-cum-vase in the staff lounge, and raced home to my new fiancée.
Hoping to rouse her from sleep—one of our favorite ways to initiate lovemaking—I was disappointed to hear noise coming from inside the apartment. I opened the front door to find a small party in the living room.
“Welcome home, bro!” Aaron rose from the chair and greeted me with a hug before heading into the kitchen.
“You didn’t need to bring flowers,” my cousin, Kyle Dafoe, called from the couch where he sat with an arm draped around his flavor-of-the month hard-bodied girlfriend. “Your presence alone is sunshine enough for me.”
“I’ve got something other than flowers in mind for you,” I said. “Something a lot heavier.”
“Join the club.” Kyle laughed. “Good to see you, Ben. Been way too long.”
I followed Aaron into the kitchen. I stuffed the flowers into a vase.
“Beer?” Aaron asked from behind the open fridge door.
I nodded. “Where’s Em?”
“Bathroom.” Aaron handed me a cold bottle. “How was work?”
I took a long swig, savoring the cool sweetness. “Usual Friday-night crowd.” I pointed to the counter, littered with empty beer bottles and a nearly drained twenty-six-ouncer of Johnnie Walker Red Label. “I’m surprised none of you ended up there.”
