by Sharn Hutton
He wanted to answer, but his mouth wouldn’t work. The air was thick and heavy and pushing him down. The chair drooped then swallowed him up, sucking him into its upholstery, where the world was flat and hard. Jerry didn’t like it.
He could feel her pressing against him, but couldn’t see her, couldn’t move. Jerry fought against the bonds that held him still and with a herculean effort, opened his eyes.
EIGHTY
“THANK YOU, SAINT ANTHONY! OH THANK YOU!”
The ceiling was formed from yellowing tiles suspended in a metal grid and it wasn’t familiar. His eyes slid down onto pale green walls and an institutional doorway, all lit in a harsh unnatural light that left Jerry feeling at a loss. The weight pressing down on his chest shifted and juddered in time to the sound of throaty sobs.
“Jerry? Jerry! Can you hear me?” Adam’s face reared into view, tear-streaked and blotchy. “Oh God, I was starting to think I’d never find you.” He dragged the back of his hand beneath a snotty nose.
Jerry squeezed his eyes together in a long blink. “Adam?” He’d been dreaming: really being Remi, and Remi had wanted surprising things. His body still felt drugged by sleep, sunken into a groove in the mattress, and he arched up the small of his back to release it from its sweaty clasp.
“How long have I been here?” Jerry’s voice rasped painfully in his throat and he rocked his head to push away the sleepy haze.
“Ages! Days!” Adam sniffed.
“Days?” Jerry rubbed at his eyes. How was that possible? He couldn’t remember.
“Four, I think.” Adam looked shaky and pale.
“Didn’t take you long to turn into a girl.”
Adam let out a laugh that turned maniacal and then reduced to sobs. He wiped the tears away on Jerry’s sheet.
A doctor came into focus on Jerry’s left then, sporting the obligatory white coat and dark circles. The engaging smile he wore made a fast swap with furrowed sobriety. He shooed Adam upright then shone his pen light at Jerry, first one eye and then the other.
“Uhuh. Yes. That’s good.” He made notes. “It’s quiet remarkable. Remarkable.” He paused to take a long nasal breath then fixed his eyes on Jerry’s.
“First of all, we are delighted to finally know who we have here, thanks to the snivelling wreck.” He looked at Jerry over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses and wafted a hand at Adam, who now stood at the foot of the bed.
“You have been missed. Just as well your CT scans look normal.”
He waggled his fingers in Jerry’s direction, eyes popping. “You had us all going for a while there, but it turns out you’re fine. All fine.” He swept his eyes to the ceiling, mouthed something Jerry didn’t quite catch and continued.
“You’ll need to stay in for observation for another twenty-four hours or so, but after that you’re good to go, you poor bastard.” He clicked his pen with a flourish, slotted the clipboard over the end of the bed and stalked out of the room.
The nurse who’d stood behind him watched the doctor leave, but made no effort to do so herself. “You can watch TV or maybe read the papers. I think you’ll find it educational.” She reached up to the small screen set high on the olive green wall opposite Jerry’s bed and flicked it on, passing Adam the remote. “I’ll find you a paper.” She smiled weirdly, then left too.
The TV babbled up on the wall: a news report of some kind. Adam turned the volume down.
“What the hell happened?” Jerry rasped, reaching for a water glass.
Adam gripped at the metal bed frame. “Ah, Jerry, God, I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to, at least I didn’t mean to hurt you. Definitely not hospitalise you.” Adam noisily blew his nose and came round to sit beside him in the visitor’s chair.
“What?” Jerry’s head was throbbing. He tentatively felt around the back to a large padded dressing. The prickle of new hair growth skirted the edges. He winced. “Oh man. What are you saying? You meant to hurt me?”
“No! Well not really. I was trying to make things better, be better. I thought I was doing the right thing.” Adam’s voice was quiet now, his eyes cast down to the floor. He wasn’t making sense.
“But I’m over it,” Adam went on close to a whisper, “I was wrong, confused. I got lost it in it. I’m sorry, Jerry. So sorry.”
“What are you on about?” Jerry rubbed at his temples. “Can we talk about this later? My head hurts.”
“I need you to forgive me, Jerry. Please? I can’t live with this hanging over me.” Adam looked directly at him, his face contorted with remorse. Jerry recoiled from the emotion. “Yes, yes, shut up already would you?”
Adam grabbed Jerry’s bandaged hands, making him wince with pain. “Ow! Ow! What’s this?” Jerry tried to draw them away “What happened to my hands? Do you know what happened to my hands?”
Adam gave a sheepish shrug. “I may have been there.”
Jerry scowled and flopped his head back to the pillow.
Up on the wall the TV report changed and Jerry gawped at the picture. “Is that…?” Adam turned to see. “Spink.” Adam blipped up the volume.
‘... the latest development in the mystery case that’s gripped the nation. The quirky Detective Dinwiddy announced the arrest of Donald Spink last night. There is significant evidence that Spink was involved in the disappearance and possible murder of British man, Jeremy Adler.’
Jerry screwed his eyes up into a long blink and popped them open again, but Spink’s face remained on the screen. “You have got to be kidding me,” he rasped.
‘Early findings, leaked from the forensics report, have put Spink firmly at the crime scene, confirming incidences of both fingerprints and bodily fluids.’
Jerry and Adam looked at each other open-mouthed.
“Bodily fluids,” said Adam and the pair of them drew their chins back into their necks and grimaced with synchronised revulsion.
“Ew! Spink! Please tell me you didn’t?” Adam groaned.
“What? Oh please!” Jerry felt sick.
Adam punched at Jerry’s shoulder. “Right, like I’d believe that!”
“Argh!” Jerry tensed his shoulders in a protective flinch. “My back. What’s wrong with my back?”
“Oh yeah, your back. Sorry about that.”
“What?”
A uniformed police officer, now on the screen, started talking to cut Jerry off.
“I can confirm that our forensic examination of the crime scene has provided DNA evidence of Donald Spink’s participation in this crime,” the officer identified as Dinwiddy told the camera, “However, this was not information intended for public consumption and, as our man hunt continues with a further suspect in our sights, I would like to ask the gentlemen of the press to refrain from publicising any more discoveries.”
Jerry’s jaw flapped and his wide eyes turned to Adam’s. “What the fuck is going on?”
EIGHTY-ONE
“HERE.” THE NURSE FROM EARLIER DROPPED A NEWSPAPER ONTO JERRY’S LAP. “Check out page five, you’re famous!”
“The TV,” Jerry spluttered, “Dinwiddy.”
“Yeah, he’s a peach isn’t he?” She rocked back on her heels, grinning.
“Wha… I mean who…er. How?” Jerry thrashed around his brain for an explanation and found none.
“Indeed,” said Adam, biting his lip.
The nurse eyed Jerry down her nose. “I can understand why you’re surprised to see Dinwiddy, but you?” She turned her attention to Adam, “Where have you been, under a rock?”
Adam slumped and puffed out a breath. “Mostly. I may have seen him at bit.”
“A bit.”
“U-huh.” Adam was looking down at the floor and Jerry could see he was reluctant to say more.
The nurse leaned in conspiratorially. “Do you know what actually happened?”
“Mm, yeah.” Adam was really examining that lino. “We kind of had a bit of a fight,” he said with a shamefaced shrug. Jerry searched around in his memory, but there wa
s nothing in that department either. His face must have shown the blank.
“You were drunk, very drunk,” said Adam, seeing Jerry’s befuddled expression. The nurse sighed, “Well, you’d better get your story straight because the police are on their way.” She shrugged her shoulders at them and left.
Jerry’s eyes switched back to Adam, who sucked in his lips and turned back to the TV. “Yeah, they’re probably following me.”
“Right.”
Jerry closed his eyes and tried to construct the picture. “So, we had a fight, you knocked me unconscious—”
“Well, you kind of did that to yourself.” Bizarrely, Adam looked sincere.
“What?”
“Just believe me.”
Jerry sighed and flopped his arm to the stiff sheet. “So, we had a fight, I beat myself over the head until I was unconscious…”
Adam shrugged.
“Then what?”
“I put you in an ambulance and here you are.”
“And you have been…?”
“Drunk. Mashed. Off my face.”
Jerry paused for a moment to jiggle this information with his tired brain. It wouldn’t slot together so he gave up. “OK. So let’s pretend that that’s all perfectly reasonable for a minute. What the hell is going on with Spink?”
They shuddered together.
“I mean how the hell did Spink get his…” Jerry rolled his hand over and over, unable to say the word “into my room. I mean, ugh.”
Adam didn’t speak, but he looked like he was thinking.
“And what did we fight about anyway?”
Adam tapped at his bottom lip. “Um…”
EIGHTY-TWO
DINWIDDY RAN FOR ALL HE WAS WORTH UP THREE FLIGHTS OF STAIRS, time too precious to wait for the elevator. The Fox was in a hole and Dinwiddy wasn’t going to let it out. He pounded down the corridor, avoiding the joins in the tiles as he ran.
He swung the double doors to Neurology wide and crashed them back against the wall. The nurses broke their huddle and straightened up to see what all the noise was. He could see that they recognised him. They’d known that he was coming and saw the determination in his eyes.
“Where is he?” Dinwiddy rushed the whisper out too loud.
“Thirteen, they’re in thirteen.” The nurse pointed down the corridor. The door at the end was open wide, but showing only wall.
“Unlucky for him,” Dinwiddy mumbled low and hurried on.
He didn’t bother to call out, figuring his presence in the doorway was all the notice he wanted to give. He gripped the frame both sides and skidded to a stop. That got the occupants’ attention all right. They stared at him, one by the bed and one in it.
Dinwiddy’s chest heaved and he took a moment of their surprise to wrench oxygen from the air. He held up his hand to hold them firm and they waited: expectant and bemused.
“Mr Fox? Adam Fox?” he gasped eventually.
“That’s right.” The man sitting by the bed spoke up. He was sharp enough to be the lawyer that cut through red tape. Dinwiddy stepped into the room, swallowing hard. The man in the bed was bandaged, but familiar. Dinwiddy scanned his face and matched it to his case file.
“Well I’ll be… Now isn’t that… My goodness… Are you Jeremy Brian Adler, sir?” Dinwiddy was flabbergasted by the resemblance if it wasn’t.
The fellow didn’t speak, but the corner of his mouth hitched up a notch and his head went to nodding.
“Well don’t that just knock it catawampus.” Dinwiddy put his hands on his hips and absorbed the news. His man was alive after all. How about that? For all the assumption and deduction, the murder had never taken place. Adler lay there right as rain before his very eyes.
Dinwiddy strode over to the bed, taking in the flesh and bones of the pixels he’d come to know. He scooped up Adler’s hand and shook it with delight.
“Detective Dinwiddy, LVMPD. I am mighty glad to make your acquaintance, sir. I had it for sure that you was dead, but here you are, as fine as frog hair.”
Adler wore a pained expression until Dinwiddy noticed the dressings on his hands and let go.
“Well perhaps not quite, but alive! You sure have made a stir!” Dinwiddy wagged his finger at him. His new friend managed only a grimace.
“Now, just how did you get into this state? Is there a charge to answer?” He flitted his eyes back and forth between the two men. Adler looked at Fox and Fox looked dolefully back.
“No, no, I don’t think so,” Adler said at last.
“Well.” Dinwiddy scratched at his chin. “I’d sure as hell like to know what this has been about.”
“My head hurts,” Adler mumbled, “Can we talk about it later?”
“He just woke up,” Fox interjected, “He’s been unconscious for days.”
Of course he had. Now that made sense. “Huh. Well I suppose. And what about you, Mr Fox?” Dinwiddy turned to look him square in the eye. “Just where do you fit in?”
Fox shook his head. “It really is a very long story.” He wrung his hands but his eyes were soft, sincere and contrite. The man had seen a battle and come out the other side. Dinwiddy felt that he could trust him.
“There’s not much of a murder case when you can’t rely on the victim to be dead. It looks as though I’ve got nothing much but time and a hungry curiosity.”
“There’s plenty to chew on,” Fox said with a nod, “You can count on that.”
EIGHTY-THREE
ADAM WALKED SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE NOW FAMOUS DETECTIVE THROUGH THE WARD. Dinwiddy hadn’t seen fit to handcuff him, even though he was under arrest and Adam was glad to be able to stretch and move his arms around.
His ribs had felt increasingly bruised since finding Jerry’s room and, now that he was up and walking, a curious sensation of pins and needles was crawling down his left arm. He twitched his shoulder up to deflect a stab of pain beneath his shoulder blade and the sudden movement caught Dinwiddy’s eye.
“I’m afraid there’s no avoiding the process, not when the wheels of our investigation are rolling along,” he said, throwing a glance over his shoulder, “Now don’t get yourself all into a sweat about it.”
Adam flinched at the pressure in his chest and stopped to lean his right hand against the wall.
“I’m not,” he said, feeling the bead roll down his cheek. “It’s just my chest.” He rubbed at its centre with a bunched fist. The pain that he’d felt in Seb’s apartment building returned in a wave that cut Adam down to his knees.
Dinwiddy stood over him, clearly taken aback. “Now what’s this? Nurse! Nurse! Some assistance please!” he called out and the nurses who’d been quietly watching their progress ran over to help them. The one who’d been so chatty earlier laid a gentle hand on Adam’s shoulder. “I thought you looked pretty grey.”
“It’s been a tough couple of days,” Adam puffed out.
“Pains in your chest?”
Adam nodded and winced as another bolt shot down his left side.
“Heart problems in the family?”
“I don’t know, I don’t think so.”
The nurse cupped Adam’s wrist to feel for his pulse.
“Well I think they are now. Looks like you’re having a heart attack.”
After the week he’d had, Adam wasn’t in the least bit surprised.
EIGHTY-FOUR
JERRY SQUEEZED PAST THE HEAVY DOOR to see his old friend propped up in bed, connected to machines by wires and tubes. Jerry’s emotions tussled for supremacy: relief; anger; fear. He needed a friend in this alien environment. Waking up centre stage in a police enquiry was freaking him out. Everyone he’d encountered already knew who he was, while he felt like he’d been deposited in the future with no understanding of his past. Fragments of the evening with Adam had been coming to him in stages and now he could remember their fight, but not what they’d fought about. There was just too much hoo-ha to let it go unexplained.
He stood at the foot of Adam’s bed an
d watched the green and red lines that traced his heartbeat and breathing. They seemed steady and regular to his untrained eye. Good enough to risk waking him up. Jerry reached forward and jiggled Adam’s leg. Adam rolled his head to the centre and slowly opened his eyes.
“Jerry,” he said in a soft voice, “How are you?” but Jerry hadn’t come for an exchange of pleasantries.
“Why did you do it?”
Adam’s forehead puckered into a frown.
“I’ve remembered more and more. We were having fun, I’m sure of that. And I was drunk, drunker than you. And you, you were well moody in the end, you pushed me around.” Jerry leant on the bed frame, feeling his adrenalin rise.
“Ah, Jerry.” Adam put one hand to his face.
“I don’t understand what happened, Adam.”
Adam rubbed his face, trailing wires flopping at the bed clothes. “It’s my fault and I don’t think that you’ll understand anyway.”
“Why don’t you try me?”
Adam sighed and gestured to the chair beside his bed. “I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to like it. Promise me you’ll hear me out?”
Jerry walked around to the moulded plastic chair and settled himself into it, careful not to disturb the dressings on his back. “I’m all ears.”
Adam swallowed deeply. “God, I don’t know where to begin. You know about the job. How I spent so long working my way up. I put so much time and effort into it, Jerry. Really thought it was the right thing to do. But I wasn’t.” Adam turned his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head. “I didn’t even see it when Gracie left me. Couldn’t see how it had taken over my life. I thought I was so fucking clever: finding all the loop holes, beating the system, freeing the scum.” He huffed out a laugh through his nose and then winced in his chest, finally turning to face Jerry again.
