Sliver of Truth rj-2

by Lisa Unger

  I’m the girl with my homework done and my pajamas on, watching Max ride his bicycle up and down the street. It’s late and cold but I’m darkly envious of his freedom. I wonder if he’s darkly envious of my Howdy Doody pajamas and freshly washed face. Maybe we are the same. Maybe we are each other’s shadows.

  I awaken to sirens and these strange thoughts and this image of Max in my head. New York City sirens and London sirens are so different. London sirens with their waxing and waning seem so much more polite. Coming through, they seem to plead. Stand aside. New York City sirens are boldly insistent, downright rude. What the hell are you waiting for? they want to know. Get out of the goddamn way. Can’t you see this is an emergency? When you live in New York, you live with the sound of sirens in the periphery of your consciousness. Ambulances, fire trucks, police cars—it seems like there’s always someone in trouble in the city, always someone racing to the rescue. You stop hearing it; it becomes part of the city music.

  London sirens seem mournful. They seem to say Something awful has happened and we’ll respond the best we can, though it’s probably too late. New York sirens are brazenly sure that they can save the day.

  It was a London siren I heard, waxing and waning, fading off into the distance. It took me a second to realize that I was in a hospital room, cool and quiet. It was dim, with some light coming in through a small glass window in the door and from between the drawn blinds and window frames—not from sunlight but from street lamps. I didn’t know what time it was.

  I lay still, scanning the room with my eyes. As they adjusted, I noticed the thin-framed woman sitting in a chair by the door. A rectangle of light fell across her. She had white-blond hair and a wide mouth that sloped dramatically at both corners in a caricature of a pout. In spite of the fact that she was slightly slumped to the side, leaning her head on her hand, she looked put-together and officious in a navy blue suit and sensible low-heeled pumps. She stared at the wall, a million miles away.

  I cleared my throat and shifted myself up a bit. I was aware of a terrible dryness in my mouth and reached for the water pitcher I saw by my bed. The woman quickly got to her feet to stand beside me. She poured me a glass of water and handed it to me.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  Under the circumstances, it was a difficult question to answer.

  “It depends,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse and raw.

  She looked at me quizzically.

  “On where I am, on how I got here. On what’s wrong with me.”

  I was trying for cool and smart-ass, but I felt hollow deep in my core.

  She politely averted her eyes while I tried to drink from the cup in my shaking hand. Then she reached out to steady my wrist and things went better.

  “I was hoping,” she said, “that you’d be able to answer some of those questions for me.” Her accent was thick, heavily Cockney though I could tell she struggled to keep that to a minimum.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m Inspector Madeline Ellsinore. I’m investigating your case.”

  “My case?” I said, putting the water down on the table and leaning back.

  “Well, yes,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and resting her eyes on my face. “An American woman shows up at a London hotel and checks herself in, hangs the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on her door for two days. The only time anyone hears from her is when she calls to find out where she is. She’s then discovered to be suffering from a badly infected gunshot wound when she stumbles into the lobby at the end of the second day. She collapses and is rushed to the nearest hospital. Though she has sufficient ID, passport, cash, and credit, there is no record of her arriving in London on any commercial flight in the past six months. I’d say that warrants an open case, wouldn’t you?”

  I nodded slowly. She was official but not unkind. Her eyes were a pale blue. She was small, petite as she was thin; she looked like a runner, a fast and strong one.

  “How did you get to England, Ms. Jones? And what are you doing here?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

  It’s a weird thing to admit. Have you ever woken up one morning after a night of drinking and found yourself in a strange apartment, a strange person sleeping beside you? It’s like that but much, much worse. I felt as if I’d woken up in someone else’s body.

  She blinked at me twice. “That’s hard to believe,” she said finally.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s true.”

  She gave me a blank, assessing look. There was something cold and robotic about her in spite of her prettiness, in spite of her soft, smoky voice.

  “Who shot you, then?” she asked matter-of-factly, as though she’d settle for that small bit of information as consolation.

  I shook my head again. The ground had fallen away beneath my feet and I was floating in a life that didn’t belong to me.

  “Are you aware, Ms. Jones, that you’re a ‘person of interest’ with the New York City Police Department, wanted for questioning in relation to the murder of a Sarah Duvall?”

  That morning came rushing back to me, how Sarah fell and died in front of me, how I chased the man in black and was apprehended by the police. Dylan Grace came to get me and took me to Riverside Park, where I fled from him. It had all gone worse from there. I thought of Grant and his stupid website. Jake falling. I grasped for what had happened to us after the helicopter rose from nowhere, drowning us in light and sound. The harder I thought about it, the further it slipped away. I felt a terrible nausea, a pain behind my eyes.

  “The FBI would like a go with you as well, in connection with a man named Dylan Grace.”

  I thought about the things he’d told me in the park. More lies? How could I be sure? Had he been in my hotel room or was that a dream? I remembered that he’d looked bad himself, that he’d jabbed me with a needle. I shook my head again.

  “You really don’t know what happened to you, do you?” she asked, incredulous, handing me a tissue from the box by my bed. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose. I entertained flashes of memory: running with Jake along the stone wall at the Cloisters, gunshots cracking the night air, falling hard to the ground as if I’d been shoved, the dark shadow of a man whose face I couldn’t see asking, “Where’s the ghost?” Most of all, I knew there was pain—white hot, total, nearly indescribable in its intensity, the kind of pain that mercifully kills memory.

  “No,” I said finally. “I really don’t.”

  But between you and me, that wasn’t the whole truth. Memories were filing back quickly. I remembered a knee on my back, a black hood being placed over my head. I just couldn’t make sense of anything. It was a nightmarish jumble.

  “Does the name Myra Lyall mean anything to you?”

  I nodded my head slowly.

  “An American crime reporter with the New York Times,” she said. “She had some connection to you, if I’m not mistaken. She wanted to talk to you regarding an article she was working on about Project Rescue. Then she disappeared.”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Sarah Duvall was her assistant.”

  I nodded again.

  “We found Myra Lyall’s body yesterday in a canal about a mile from King’s Cross, one of our red-light districts. She was in a trunk. In pieces.”

  I think she doled out the information like that for maximum impact. I tried to think about what she said in abstracts, not in logistics. Still the nausea and the shaking, which had been diminishing, returned with a vengeance.

  “No record of her travel to London, either,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I felt some combination of grief for Myra Lyall’s end and terror at how it had happened. I wondered how I had made it to a plush Covent Garden hotel and she had wound up in a trunk in a London canal. In pieces.

  “Ms. Jones, if you have the first idea what’s going on, I strongly recommend that you share what you know with me,” she said. She walked over to t
he chair by the door and pulled it up beside my bed, sat down slowly as if she were settling in for a nice long chat. “I can’t help you and I can’t protect you if you don’t. You seem like a nice girl, yeah? You seem frightened and I certainly don’t blame you. But a lot of people are dead, and from the look of you, it’s just luck that you’re not one of them. Maybe we can help each other.”

  I didn’t ask for this. Not for any of it, I’d said to Ace.

  Are you sure about that? he’d wanted to know.

  I decided finally that I was out of my league. I asked to see her identification, which she offered to me without hesitation. Fool me once, you know? When I’d determined that she was who she said she was, I told Inspector Ellsinore everything—everything I could remember, anyway. While we talked, various nurses and doctors made their appearances, poking and shining lights in my eyes, checking and then changing the bandage on the wound at my side.

  Inspector Ellsinore took copious notes. When I had finished giving my statement, I asked her to help me contact the American embassy. She did and they promised to send a lawyer to the hospital.

  When the call was finished, she put a hand on my arm and said, “You’ve done the right thing, Ridley. Everything is going to be fine.”

  I gave her an uncertain nod. “What happens now?”

  She looked at her watch. “You get some rest. I’ll contact the U.S. authorities and let them know that you’re cooperating. And tomorrow we’ll figure out when and how we can get you home. Is there anyone there you want me to call?”

  My parents were cavorting around Europe, snapping pictures and sending postcards. They could probably be here in a matter of hours, but I didn’t want them. Ace was clearly incapable of offering any help or support. I didn’t even think he had a passport. I had no idea where Jake was or if he was okay. The thought of him brought tears to my eyes, and a now-familiar feeling of panic regarding his well-being and whereabouts.

  “No. Just if you find out anything about Jake Jacobsen, I need to know. Please.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out. Try not to worry.”

  She left her card on the table beside my bed, gathered up her things, and walked toward the door. With her hand on the knob, she turned back to me. “And I’m sorry, Ridley, but there are two officers outside this door. As much for your protection—”

  “As for my detention,” I finished her sentence.

  She nodded. “Just until we’re sure of what has happened to you, how you got here. You understand. So just stay put for tonight. Rest up. You have a busy couple of days ahead of you, I suspect.”

  THE ROOM WAS cool and sterile and I lay there wide awake for I don’t know how long. I got up to pee once, but the journey and execution were so painful, I decided I’d hold it if I had to go again. There was a bedpan by my bed. But there was no way I was peeing in a bedpan. I just couldn’t deal with that. I felt numb, depressed, and very, very lonely. The phone sat waiting by my bed, but I didn’t feel that there was anyone in the world I could call. The truth was, I was on my own. I had been since the day Christian Luna sent me the photograph that changed my life. The only person I had been able to rely on consistently since then was Jake, and even that relationship was riven with lies and half-truths on his part. I tried to shut away the image of him bloodied and falling from some great height.

  I tried to reflect on all that had happened, all that I knew: Dylan Grace and Myra Lyall, the things Grant had said, the streaming video from Covent Garden, the fact that I’d woken up in a hotel just blocks from that corner. I tried to apply my writer’s mind to all these disparate events and to extrapolate possible connections, come up with theories, but I just wound up feeling sick and afraid. I thought of Myra Lyall’s awful end, Sarah Duvall’s death on the street, Esme Gray, Grant’s last phone call to me. Even before recent events, Dylan had accused me of being the point at which everything connected. And I could see that he was right.

  All this had started because I wanted to know Max, I wanted to see his true face in order to better know myself. But I was no closer to him. And I’d never been further from me—I barely even recognized my reflection in the mirror. All in all, the whole enterprise had been a deadly and unmitigated failure.

  A nurse padded in and offered me some pills. “For sleeping, love,” she said kindly. I took them from her and pretended to swallow, gave her a grateful smile. When she’d left, I took them from my mouth and dropped them in the cup beside my bed. I didn’t want to be drugged into sleeping. I didn’t feel safe enough for that.

  I alternated between a kind of sleepy twilight and agitated restlessness until I heard something strange in the hallway that snapped me into total wakefulness, poked a finger of fear into my belly. It was a soft, sudden noise, a quick shuffle followed by a thud, that was over almost before it began. But something about it was not quite right…as if the energy of the air had changed. I sat wide-eyed and listened for a while.

  I relaxed a little after a minute or two. Other than the ambient sounds—a television somewhere turned on low, the metronomic beeping of a machine, an odd ubiquitous humming that probably came from the fluorescent lights and a hundred medical machines—there was silence. I’d just started to drift off again when another noise came from just outside my door, the sudden jerking of a chair. I saw footsteps cross in the light that leaked in from the threshold. I got up from the bed with effort and looked around the room. The bathroom was a trap; no exit. I was in no condition to crouch between the bed and the window. I walked quietly and stood beside the door, looked around for something with which to defend myself. The effort it required to do this was staggering.

  I must have been quite a sight, bare-assed in my hospital gown and stocking feet. I painfully bent over to pick up one of my boots, which stood beneath the chair upon which Inspector Ellsinore had sat with all her questions. It was the only thing that I had the strength to lift that looked substantial and heavy enough to do any damage.

  My breathing became shallow and I could feel the adrenaline pumping in my veins. I noticed the phone with Inspector Ellsinore’s card beside it, and also the call button, which I should have pressed while I was still lying in the bed. I thought about going back, but the distance of maybe five feet seemed insurmountable to walk or even crawl, considering how much effort it had taken to make it to the door. I leaned my weight against the wall, boot poised, and listened to the hallway. A minute passed, maybe two, and I started to wonder if I was suffering from paranoia (who would blame me?) or posttraumatic stress. I was about to put my boot down when the door started to open, so slowly I almost didn’t notice until the dark form of a man slipped inside. He stood with his back to me, staring at my empty bed.

  Before I could lose my nerve, I brought the boot around hard, hitting him solidly in the temple. The blow was so strong that it sent shock waves of pain through my own injured body, and I stumbled back, dropping the boot as he crumbled to the floor with a moan. My intention had been to strike the blow and then run screaming into the hallway, but I could barely catch my breath or move, the pain in my side was so intense. I’d been betrayed by my own body, and was outraged by my physical weakness. The anger and frustration got me to use the wall to move myself, however slowly, trying to get to the hallway.

  “Ridley, stop.”

  I turned to look at him. Though it was dim, I could see his face as he sat with his hand against his temple, a rivulet of blood trailing down his cheek. It was Dylan Grace. There were a thousand things I wanted to ask him. All I could manage was, “Stay away from me…asshole.”

  I sunk to the floor against the wall. I thought I’d see if crawling was any less painful. It’s a terrible and amazing thing to realize how totally you’ve taken your health and physical strength for granted. The door might as well have been a mile away.

  Dylan grabbed my wrist. He was lucky I couldn’t reach my other boot.

  “They’re coming for you, Ridley.” His voice was desperate. “Come with me. Or die he
re. Up to you.”

  I sagged against the wall, out of options, out of strength. Death—or at least unconsciousness—was starting to appeal to me. A slow fade to black, the cessation of fear and pain—how bad could it be? He started to move toward me and I was about to use my last ounce of will to scream my head off when I heard a sound out in the hallway. It was something I recognized, though at the moment I couldn’t say how: the sound of metal spitting metal, a projectile slicing air without the concussion—a gun fired through a silencer. Maybe I’d heard it on the street without realizing what it was when Sarah Duvall was killed. It was followed by something—someone—falling heavily to the floor. These sounds froze the scream in my throat.

  Dylan crawled over beside me, put his finger to his mouth. He drew a gun from somewhere inside his jacket. It was flat and black like the gun I’d seen Jake carry, like the one I’d fired badly myself in an abandoned warehouse in Alphabet City. I didn’t know what kind it was, but I was glad to see it.

  The silence that followed dragged on for hours or minutes. Where were the officers supposedly stationed outside my door? (Do they call them officers in England or is it bobbies? Either way they should give those poor guys some guns.) I guess I knew the answer. I tried to be brave. The fear and the pain and the fatigue were almost too much to handle. I could feel myself getting a weird giggly feeling I’d had before in times of grave stress and danger.

  Then the door started to open. A tall, lanky form moved in like a wraith. A gun hung in a hand by his side. He stood still as stone with his back to us—I could smell his cologne, see that the hem on the back of his coat was ripped. I held my breath. Dylan rose and lifted his gun silent as a shadow. When the form turned quickly, sensing Dylan behind him, Dylan opened fire. The darkness exploded. I was deafened by the sound. The powder burned my nose and the back of my throat as the man fell heavily to the floor before he’d even had a chance to raise his gun. I stared at the crumpled pile of my would-be killer, listened to an awful gurgle that was coming from him.