by Zoey Parker
I followed him in. Something collided with my ankle and I looked down to see a curly-haired little dog planting its feet on my calf and looking up at me with its tongue out. “Cute pup,” I remarked.
“That’s Noodle,” he said. His voice was still shaking with fear.
“Come here, Noodle,” I said. I picked him up and placed him on my lap as I settled down on the plaid couch. “Sit, boy. You, too, John.”
John took a careful seat in the rickety chair that faced opposite the couch. He had put on a few pounds in the years since the picture I had was taken. A small potbelly stretched the fabric of his undershirt. “This is about what I saw, ain’t it?” he asked dejectedly. “The woman, Stanwell or Sanders or whatever her name was.”
I nodded slowly, keeping an eye on him as I petted the dog in my lap. Normally, I hated little rodent-looking fuckers like this, but for some reason Noodle was winning me over. He curled into a ball in the crevice between my knees and started to snore. “Tell me everything you remember,” I said.
“I knew it. You look just like the bastard who was there that night. The one who got all shot up.”
“Watch yourself,” I warned.
John blanched. “I’m sorry. Was he a friend of yours?”
“You could say that.”
“Well, I meant no disrespect. He was a mess, that’s all I’m sayin’. They did a number on him, poor fella.”
“Start from the beginning, John.”
He leaned back, sniffled, and wiped the back of his hand across his nose. “All right. I used to be on the force, yeah?” He pointed at a medal hanging on the mantle above the fireplace to my left. Albuquerque Police Department was stamped across the outer rim in big blue letters.
“Anyway, being a policeman ain’t exactly the road to El Dorado, if you know what I’m saying. Almost every guy in blue takes side jobs to make ends meet, put food on the table for the wife and kids, you know.”
“Sure.”
“Some guys do the seedier stuff—playing bodyguard for a mobster type, giving some of the coyotes a hand with pullin’ immigrants across the border, you know. I never had much of an appetite for that kind of thing, though. Too much risk. I ain’t much of a risk taker. But a man’s still gotta provide, and my ex-wife, being the money-grubbing whore that she was, didn’t make that easy on me. So I took a job working security at night for an apartment building that one of the biker gang guys owned.”
“James Sanders.”
“That’s the guy. I never met him personally; it was all set up through a buddy of mine, God rest his soul. But it was a steady gig, it paid pretty well, and there was never any trouble. Well, until all of a sudden there was.”
I dropped the dog and scooted forward onto the edge of the couch. “Keep going,” I ordered. “Don’t leave out a single detail.”
John sighed and scratched at a scab on the side of his head. “I don’t think you’re gonna love what I have to say.”
“I don’t care. Just keep talking.”
“Okay. So, this night, the night everything went down, I was at the desk up front, as usual. I’m half paying attention, half reading the newspaper, ’cause I didn’t expect anything, you know? Nothing had ever happened before! Not an ounce of a stir, and then, boom! There he is.”
“Who?”
“That’s the thing,” he said timidly. “I don’t know.”
I was on John in a single pounce. I grabbed the front of his shirt in my hands and roared into his face, “Why don’t you know? Why don’t you know, John?”
“He was wearing a mask! He was wearing a mask!” he screamed. He was blubbering all of the sudden, fat, pathetic tears rolling down his face.
I dropped him back in the chair, disgusted, and wiped my hands on my jeans.
“Please don’t hurt me,” he moaned. “I’m telling you everything I remember, I swear.”
I sighed and plopped back down on the couch, my head in my hands. The dog jumped back into my lap. I was too depressed to shoo it away.
Ivan’s tip was useless after all. This sorry bastard had actually seen the motherfucker who did it, the man who killed Olaf and James’s wife, but I was no closer to figuring out who it actually was than I had been this morning. All this for nothing. Not a damn thing.
“He jumped over the desk and hit me with the gun,” he continued in a low voice. “I blacked out. When I woke up, the ambulances were there and the people were already dead. I swear, that’s all I remember.”
“Thanks,” I said. I stood up and started to walk towards the door, dropping Noodle back into John’s lap as I passed him.
“It was funny, though. The paramedic said he’d never seen such a weird bruise before. Looked like the outline of a big knife in my forehead.”
I froze in my tracks with my hand on the doorknob. “What did you say?” I asked cautiously.
John twisted in his chair to face me. “On my forehead, where the guy hit me. It left a big outline of a knife in the skin. They actually tested it and said there was red paint flakes in the wound. Weird. Never did figure out what that meant.
Red paint. A knife imprint. A memory hit me. Jay tossing a gun on my desk. “Duncan and Spark took this from one of the guards.” I looked at the butt of the weapon—a red knife was printed in the handle.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Scout’s honor,” he said, eyes round with seriousness. “Just one of those weird things, you know? It never led anywhere.”
I stared him down for a moment. As far as I could tell, he was telling me everything he knew. There was no reason for him to hold back. The police had finished interrogating him a long time ago. Besides, being unconscious during the crime made one neither a liability for the murderer nor a suspect for the police. They’d probably figured he was useless. I would have, too, if I were them. But now he was telling something that might take me one step closer towards finding this son of a bitch and doing what should have been done a long time ago: getting my revenge.
“Thanks, John,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful. If you remember anything else—anything at all—you come on down to the Dark Knights’ headquarters and you tell me.”
“Will do.” He nodded furiously. I was about to leave when he added, “And I’m sorry about your friend, by the way.”
“I am, too, John. I am, too.”
Chapter Nineteen
Carmen
I was on my knees, working away at a stain on the bottom edge of the oven that refused to yield an inch to my furious scrubbing. I heard the door squawk open and slam shut, followed by heavy, booted footsteps thumping into the room. Only men walked like that, as if they needed the whole world to hear them before they were seen. Men like Ben—full of enough testosterone and bravado to make a whole high school’s worth of teenage boys swoon in jealousy—were the worst offenders.
I was so close to peeling away the stubborn top layer of whatever vile substance had managed to cake itself on the stainless steel when I heard the footsteps come to a stop behind me. I set the sponge down with a sigh, rocked back onto my heels, and blew away the hair that had fallen over my face. Turning around, I saw Ben was standing and staring at me with his mouth agape.
“If you don’t close your mouth, something’s gonna fly in there,” I remarked.
He blinked hard and came to his senses. “What are you doing?” he asked dumbly.
“Well, what does it look like, Einstein?” I teased. “It’s not like I’m composing a symphony or doing brain surgery over here.”
“You’re cleaning.”
“I thought it was my job to state the obvious around here.”
He closed his mouth, opened it again as if he were going to say something, then stopped and frowned.
“You look way more confused than I would have expected,” I said.
“It’s just…I don’t even know. I never clean.”
“You didn’t have to tell me that. This apartment is a pigsty. How long did you say you’ve
had this place?”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” I exclaimed. “Good God, do men just secrete disgusting messes and empty boxes of takeout Chinese, or did you buy all that pre-fab?” He looked even more confused and upset. I laughed. Who would have thought that it’d be so easy to get the infamously cool under pressure Ben Killmore to fluster? “Never mind,” I said, rescuing him from the need to come up with any kind of reasonable response to such a commonplace domestic activity. “I’m almost done anyway.”
“Okay.” He turned to walk away, but paused. “What’s that smell?” he asked, sniffing the air.
“That would be dinner,” I deadpanned. “Jay took me to a cooking supplies store today, so I bought a crock pot. I’m not that great of a cook, but those things make it easy for anyone. I bet even you could make something halfway decent.”
He was slowly coming back down to earth after the surprise and confusion I’d apparently inflicted upon him in droves. “That would be a losing bet, I’m afraid. My best dish is cereal.”
“Cereal? That’s it?”
“Well, I make a mean piece of toast, too.”
“Very impressive, Chef Killmore.”
“That’s Mister Chef Killmore to you.”
“Is that how those titles go?”
“My kitchen, my titles.” He smirked.
I giggled. “Yes, sir. Anything in particular I should know about your highness’s palate?”
“Yes,” he said with utmost seriousness, suppressing a playful grin beneath his scowl. “All meats must be hunted and killed by hand. Vegetables are to be home grown and skinned with a straight razor, none of this vegetable peeler nonsense.”
“Do you even know what a vegetable peeler looks like?”
“I wouldn’t be able to point one out if you stabbed me in the face with it.”
I laughed again. “I didn’t think so.” My knees were starting to ache from being pressed against the tile floor of the kitchen. I reached up and planted a hand on the counter to steady myself as I started to rise to my feet, groaning. I’d been crouched over for so long that my right leg was completely numb, and the second I tried to put weight on it, it nearly gave out under me.
Ben saw me beginning to tumble and rushed over immediately, catching me by the crook of my elbow and keeping me upright. “Easy, tiger,” he said. “That first step’s a doozy.”
I blushed. It was fun bantering with him, but I didn’t like to look like such a weakling in his presence, as if I couldn’t even stand up without his assistance. I needed to prove to him that I was perfectly capable of handling my own business, that I wasn’t some whimpering little girl who required doors to be opened and seats to be pulled out for me. My daddy may have been a bastard, but he hadn’t raised a weak daughter, and I was determined to show that to Ben.
Still, it was hard to complain about the gentle pressure of his hand on the bare skin of my arm. He’d hardly touched me since the wedding, but the simplest flesh-on-flesh contact sent a weird mix of heat and shivers racing through me. I smiled uneasily. “I’m okay,” I said. “Besides, none of this would have happened if you didn’t seem so determined to spill what looks like duck sauce all over the front of your oven.”
“It’s soy, I think, but point taken.” He let his hand drop away.
I bit my lip and tried not to miss it too much. I pulled off my gloves one at a time, flexing the cramps out of my hands as they emerged from the sweaty rubber. Stacking them one on top of the other, I slapped both across his chest. “Now, go wash up,” I demanded. “You’re all sweaty and gross.”
“That’s man scent, baby.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Definitely gross.”
He chuckled as he turned and headed for the bedroom. Just before he crossed the threshold, he paused once more and craned his neck back into the living room to look at me incredulously. “Is that a plant I see?”
“Yes, and you’re going to be in charge of watering it.”
“That’s an awful lot of responsibility.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the president or something?” I retorted.
“Yeah, but that was an accident,” he called jokingly over his shoulder as he peeled off his shirt and walked through the door into the bedroom. “The reason I got the job was because I was the only bastard dumb enough to take it.”
I stared longingly at the taut muscles of his back before he disappeared. The way the ink roiled with every little motion he made, the confident slope of his shoulders…I shivered again. I could still see the tiny imprints of his fingertips on my arm. I didn’t want to admit it, but Ben Killmore was chipping away at my defenses. I gulped. Stay strong, Carmen, I ordered myself. You’re here, but you’re not his.
Not yet, at least.
I felt myself blushing again. I needed to do something, move something. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop” was one of the things I remembered people in church saying all the time. I hadn’t realized how true that was until right this second. Every tick of the clock that passed while I stood in the kitchen and focused on the lingering smell of leather and musk that Ben had left behind was another nail in the coffin of my ability to resist doing what I wanted to do, which was namely to grab a fistful of Ben’s hair in each hand and devour those perfect lips of his.
Shaking my head to jolt myself into motion, I slid around the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on dinner. I poked around at the pot roast stewing in the crockpot and pulled a tray of sliced potatoes from the oven where they’d been roasting. They were sizzling and golden brown. Their salty smell filled the kitchen, wiping away Ben’s scent, for which I was both grateful and a little disappointed. I set them on top of the stove to cool while I tossed all the cleaning supplies I’d been using into a bucket and scurried over to the storage closet to put them away.
I dropped the bucket and gloves inside, stripped off the apron I’d bought today, and hung that on a hook on the back of the door. Then I closed it behind me and looked around the living room to survey the day’s handiwork.
I had to admit, I’d made a pretty good dent in the monstrous pile of work that had been facing me when I’d first arrived here. A few framed pictures hung on the wall, vases of flowers were dotted along new end tables, and the coffee table, which was once barren, now had an attractive spread of glossy photography books and a cute little Zen garden I’d found tucked away in the back of a knick-knacks shop at the mall. Between the new decorations and the filth I’d scrubbed away, it didn’t feel so much like a cross between a landfill and a monastery. Now, it almost felt like a home. My home. Or rather, our home.
That was a bizarre thought. I pushed it away immediately and got to work setting the table.
When the plates and silverware were arranged and the food was plated and ready to be served, I walked over to the bedroom to tell Ben it was time to eat. He was stepping out of the bathroom as I stuck my head in. His hair was sopping wet, droplets flying everywhere as he toweled it vigorously. The motion made his biceps bulge. My eyes traced the path of one thick vein as it wandered from his elbow up to the edge of his chest. Before I could stop myself, my gaze fell, tracking down his mountainous abdomen and coming to rest for the briefest pause between his legs.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I said. I turned beet red as I ducked back into the living room to shield my eyes. “I didn’t mean to walk in on you.” I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or die of embarrassment. It looked like it was my turn to be on the opposite end of the walking-in-on-someone-naked encounter, just like Jay had done to me earlier. I was positive astronauts could see how hard I was blushing from space.
I couldn’t quite explain why I felt so mortified. After all, I’d seen him naked before, hadn’t I? That was the cause of this whole mess—the thing growing inside me, the baby he’d put there. But it felt different now. That was a lifetime ago, it seemed like, back when I was a different person with a different path. So much had changed since then. I wasn’t ready to cross t
hat particular bridge for a second time, and I didn’t know if I would ever be ready.
Ben chuckled. “It’s okay. You can come in; I’ve got a towel on.”
I pivoted slowly back into the doorway, not daring to cross the threshold and unwilling to raise my eyes above knee level. “I was just coming to tell you that dinner is ready,” I said in a strangled voice.
“Thanks, Carmen. I’ll be there in one sec. I just gotta get dressed.”
“Okay,” I whispered. I spun back and walked over to the table to take my seat.
The flush in my face had barely started to die down when Ben came sauntering into the room wearing a fresh white t-shirt and jeans. The shirt was straining to cover his glistening skin, and little beads of water were still embedded in his beard and hair. He opened his eyes wide as he took in the spread of food I’d laid out across the table.
