Baggage

by S. G. Redling

  As I stomp over the packed snow covering the parking lot of Everly Place, I let the reality of the situation flood through me: Hinton is dangerous to me. I am in danger.

  Welcome to the Fucked Up World of Anna Shuler Ray. There’s a small, pissed-off, hand-hacking butcher running around the edges of my world, and it’s the cop I’m afraid of.

  My apartment is cold and dark and filthy. Home. I kick a sweatshirt out of the way, ignoring that it lands in a bowl of French onion dip. A wine bottle rolls away from my foot as I slog through the wreckage. All I want to do is lie down. The couch is out of the question—that miserable monstrosity is as inviting as a coffin. I want my bed. I want sleep. But even I’m not so far gone from basic hygiene that I don’t recognize how filthy I am. I step into the bathroom, just the thought of hot water and clean clothes making me relax.

  Until I see the shower curtain is drawn.

  I wonder if it’s possible to die from adrenaline poisoning as I stand in front of my bathtub staring at the ugly blue plastic shower curtain drawn out in front of me. I’ve never really looked at it, because I only see it from inside the tub. I never draw the curtain after my shower. I never hide my tub. I don’t like to see it, but I never, ever let it hide from me.

  My hand feels separate from me as I watch it drift out toward the shower curtain. A dismembered hand is an image I don’t need to bring to mind right now, but there it is. My brain won’t translate the sensation of the plastic crinkling beneath my fingers and I don’t think I’m breathing as I draw the plastic curtain along the bar.

  Karmen Bennett is in my bathtub. Crouching. Holding a knife.

  She only moves to tighten her grip on the kitchen knife. She’s tense, compact, drawn in like a frog in a hole. A frog with a knife.

  My hand falls away from the curtain and I sit back hard on the sink.

  “I’m faster than you,” she says, her gaze darting toward the door.

  “I don’t doubt it.” My hands feel heavy where they hang at my sides.

  “Are the cops with you?”

  “No.”

  She rises from her crouch, relaxing a little at that, which seems foolish to me. Why would I tell her the truth? I mean, I am, but why would she believe me?

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  She waves the knife in her fist. “What does it look like?”

  You don’t want to know, I think.

  “How did you get in?” A stupid question. Even locked, the doors on Everly Place can be opened with a brisk sneeze. Obviously, I’m not the only resident aware of this. “What do you want?”

  “I need your help. Do you think I killed Professor Trachtenberg? Or Bobby?”

  My adrenaline has drained away. I’m not sure what’s taken its place but it’s not fear or anxiety. Standing in the tub, Karmen looks small, smaller than Jeannie even. She’s lost her layers of clothing and I never realized how slight she is, how young she really looks. Without the black eyeliner her eyes actually look larger. She looks scared.

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

  “It matters to me!”

  Small or not, she looks very comfortable with that knife. I think of the array of drawings Hinton showed me, pictures of me drawn by this scared girl in the tub. I think of that newspaper clipping stuck under that cop car wiper blade. “Detective Hinton has some theories about why I matter to you.”

  “Fuck!” Karmen presses both hands to her forehead, the knife jutting up like a headdress. Her fingernails are dirty and her breathing is loud in the small bathroom. “Fuck! Those pictures. You weren’t supposed to see those pictures. She’s wrong. She’s got it all wrong. It’s not like that. Fuck. You weren’t supposed to see those. Those were mine. Those were for me.”

  She’s rocking on her feet, her fingers digging into her skull. I want to comfort her, to pull her out of that dark space, but the shaft of that knife flashes next to her head as she rocks and her knuckles are white around its handle.

  “Why do you have a knife?” I ask. I suppose, under the circumstances, this should be as obvious as how she got in. But I know very well that circumstances aren’t fact. Besides, she doesn’t seem keen to use it. On me at least. “It’s me, Karmen. Talk to me.” I keep my voice soft and calm. “Not the police. Me.”

  “Everything is so fucked up.” Her voice is small and broken on her sobs. She’s leaving marks on her forehead from her grinding fingers. The knife is coming very close to her face. “It’s all so fucked up,” she says again. I’m inclined to agree. “And Bobby and my project . . . you always helped me and now . . . ” I want to reach out to help her again but before I can, her head snaps up, her eyes narrow with rage.

  “Don’t look at me like that! Everyone is looking at me! My dad, that cop. Why is everyone looking at me like that?”

  She’s scratched red lines into her skin that make her look like a wild creature. Her eyes are glossy and I wonder if she’s high.

  “Maybe you should put down the knife.”

  “Why?” she snaps. “So you can kill me, too?”

  I know she’s armed and probably high and that makes her dangerous, but in that moment it is all I can do to not slap the shit out of her. I keep seeing that newspaper clipping. I keep seeing that red circle drawn on it. God damn it, Karmen.

  I keep my voice low. “Karmen, don’t assume you know me. Whatever you think you’ve found out about my life, whatever you think you’re going to prove about what’s going on here, you’re wrong. You are wrong.”

  Her eyes widen, a kaleidoscope of emotions playing over her face—fear, confusion, anger. It settles on sadness. “You were wrong about Bobby,” she says and sniffles. “He wasn’t that bad. He didn’t deserve that.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Karmen heaves an exhausted sigh and nods, then scrubs her nose hard with the back of her hand. Her free hand, that is. Whatever emotions she’s warring with haven’t distracted her from keeping the blade ready.

  “I just want to go,” she says in a small voice. “I don’t want to talk to the police. I won’t say anything. I just want to go. I just want to get away from here. Away from all of this.”

  “Karmen.” Her shoulders sag when I say her name. Surrender, I hope. “You need help.”

  The kaleidoscope shifts again. Rage. The eyes on me are filled with all the fury of trapped alley cat.

  She climbs out of the tub, the knife back in full-weapon mode. She’s sweating and talking very quickly. “You got that right. I need help and you’re going to give it to me. You’re so good at helping, aren’t you? You and Trachtenberg—so smug, so smart. Having such a good laugh at the stupid hillbilly.” She rolls her eyes, showing a lot of bloodshot white, as she raises her voice to a syrupy falsetto. “‘Oh Karmen,’” she says, waggling her head, “‘where did you get that bruise?’ ‘Oh Karmen, your work is so powerful.’ ‘Oh Karmen, let me help you with that application.’”

  She’s tiny, almost a foot shorter than me, but that knife, now up tight under my chin, makes up for the difference. “You never gave a shit about me. You laughed at me. You only pretended to help me. Well guess what? Here’s your chance to make it up to me. You’re gonna help me get the hell out of here.”

  I speak carefully, mindful of the knife point touching my neck. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Money.” I can’t help but snort at that and she shuts me up with a little jab. “No, I’m not robbing you. I’ve seen your apartment, okay? I’m not blind. Bobby has money hidden next door. The cops didn’t find it but I know where it is. You’re gonna help me get the money and I’m getting out of here. You’re going to stay right next to me while I get that money out.”

  “Where is it hidden?”

  She sneers at me. “Where do you think?”

  My stomach drops and my palms sweat against the vanity. I can see that newsp
aper photo. I can see the red circle she drew on it. My voice has no body. “The hall closet.”

  “What? No.” Karmen looks at me like it’s the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. “Who hides shit in the hall closet?” Before I can give her the obvious answer, she points to the wall behind the toilet, the wall our apartments share. “It’s in the plumbing wall. Why do you think I was in the bathroom in the first place?”

  She yanks my arm, disrupting the rapid descent my thoughts were taking, and I stumble against her. She reads it as aggression and before I know it, the knife is back at my throat and Karmen is hissing in my face.

  “Don’t even try it. I’m not scared of you.”

  Keeping the knife pointed at me, she crouches down, reaching into the tub and pulling out a hammer. Then she’s standing there in front of me, wild-eyed, scared, holding a knife and a hammer, and still, somehow, my fear won’t rise. It can’t get any traction. It keeps slipping on her question.

  Who would hide something in the hall closet?

  She wasn’t taunting me with that question. She didn’t know. How could she have read that article and not known?

  She must see me relax because she nods. Maybe she thinks she’s gotten me in line. She tips her head toward the toilet, gesturing for me to step in front of her. The only space there aside from sitting on the toilet is the little spot at the end of the tub where a normal person would probably keep a hamper or maybe a magazine rack. All I have there is a pack of toilet paper.

  “Stay where I can see you.”

  I realize that’s going to be a problem before she does. She’s staring at the wall in front of her, probably trying to reconcile it with the identical bathroom on the other side of the wall. The toilet sits close to the wall on the right. I’m standing in the narrow open space to the left that, judging from Karmen’s troubled expression, must be close to the spot where Bobby hid his money. If Karmen plans on knocking a hole in the wall, she’s either going to have to move in front of me or give me the hammer. Neither one of those works well with her plan.

  I’m no street fighter, but even I know a hammer requires a lot less finesse than a knife.

  Unfortunately, she comes up with a solution. She sets the hammer down on the toilet seat, glaring at me while she slips the knife into her back pocket. Then she lifts the heavy ceramic lid off the back of the toilet. She holds it like a baseball bat and nods at the hammer.

  I’m not a mechanical engineer, either, but I can calculate which one of us is going to get the most bang for her buck with our respective weapons. Looks like I’ll be knocking a hole in my wall.

  Karmen points to a spot beside the toilet.

  “Right there. In there somewhere between the studs. In a canvas bag. Bobby put twenty K in there for safekeeping. It’s his getaway money.”

  “He obviously won’t be needing that anymore.”

  She rears back with the ceramic lid and I pick up the hammer. One hard whack and I succeed in putting a hole the size of the hammer head in my wall. I have to yank hard to free it. Two more swings and I’m just dotting the drywall. Karmen screams at me to hit it harder but it’s not until I start dragging the hammer down after my blows that the wall begins to crumble. Old plaster and god knows what else crumbles loudly within the wall and dust blows out everywhere. Karmen keeps screaming at me to hit harder but all I can hear is the warning voice in my own head telling me not to think about this, not to think about knocking holes in walls, not to think about the space between the studs, about things that can be hidden there.

  Finally she shoves herself against me, knocking me into the wall. I haven’t realized how much drywall I’ve cleared but she’s seen a red nylon gym bag sticking out from between a stud and the water pipe and is jerking on it to free it. She’s gripping it with both hands when it slips out of its hiding space. Her look of triumph is short-lived when we both realize that she’s holding a bag; I’m holding a hammer.

  I’m holding a hammer up high, over her head. All I have to do is swing down.

  Karmen stands before me. We’re close. Where her arms wrap around the nylon bag, she almost touches me. Her eyes stare up at me, wide and bloodshot, but all I can see is how she clutches that bag to her chest. I remember clutching my backpack like that when I was a kid. I remember the panic of hanging on to something that you cannot let go of.

  I lower the hammer and Karmen starts to cry.

  That’s when I realize we’re not alone.

  “Don’t move.” Detective Hinton stands in the doorway, gun trained on Karmen. “Ms. Ray, drop the hammer and kick it toward me.” I do although it gets caught in the bathmat in front of the tub. She steps farther into the room until she can reach the hammer with her foot. She drags it toward her and then kicks it behind her out of the bathroom.

  Karmen drops onto the toilet, her face buried in the bag. Sobs make her shoulders shake. Hinton nods at me but I don’t know what she means by it. I don’t know anything right now.

  “Karmen Rene Bennett,” Hinton says in that nice voice of hers. “You are under arrest for the murders of Ellis Trachtenberg and Robert Alistair. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” She holsters her gun and draws out a set of handcuffs. I don’t listen as she tells Karmen her rights. I don’t listen to Karmen’s sobs. I hear the handcuffs lock in place and I close my eyes.

  Then I’m back in a rerun of a hell I know too well. Cop radios squawking, uniforms standing around, someone taking notes, and as always one cop watching me. This time it’s Hinton. We’re sitting together on the couch. I wonder if I’ll remember her name after a while or if it will vanish in memory like the other cops’ at the other scenes.

  “Ms. Ray, just a few more questions.”

  I nod and watch her write. How long has this taken? I can’t even begin to guess. Karmen is long gone, taken out in a squad car. Hinton’s partner is wrapping things up with the uniformed officers. They’ve taken pictures of my bathroom, put the bag of money into evidence with the knife and the hammer, and check that the police tape sealing the apartment next door is undisturbed. My phone buzzes in my pocket. Still not Jeannie. It’s Meredith texting me.

  Just drove by your place. What’s with the police?

  Hinton is answering a call on her radio so I type back.

  Karmen arrested here. Had a knife. Long story. An understatement, but I don’t feel like typing anything longer. I have no doubt Meredith will know more about this than I do before long. She doesn’t text me back and I can only presume she’s on one of her fact-finding missions.

  Hinton signs something on a clipboard and hands it to a cop who takes it and heads for the door. At a nod from her, he pulls the door closed and we are alone.

  “We’re about done here, Ms. Ray. I may have some more questions for you as we close out the investigation and you will have to make another statement for the trial. You will most likely be called as a witness.”

  I nod, not really listening to her words, just waiting until there’s space to say my thoughts out loud. “Why were you here? How did you know she was here?”

  “We’ve had a car watching Bobby’s apartment, waiting for Karmen to show back up. When you left the station, I radioed out and asked whoever was on watch to let me know when you got home. The kid called back and said you had gone into your apartment five minutes before.” Hinton shook her head. “Unless you are one hell of a ridge-runner, there was no way you got home that fast, so I headed up here in an unmarked car to see who it was. I beat you here. I watched you go in and I followed you.”

  “You followed me into my apartment?”

  She nods. “These doors are the same pieces of crap they had been when I lived here. Not exactly tough to open. First I listened outside the door. I knew it had to be Karmen inside. Your cousin is at the gym in Elkins—we’ve been keeping tabs on her, too.”

  I let out a disgus
ted laugh. “I don’t suppose you were keeping tabs on the fact that Karmen had a knife. And a hammer. Were you going to keep tabs on how many times she stabbed me? Or smashed in my skull?”

  Hinton shrugs. “I had to know if you were working together. I had to know if she was coming to you for help and if you were going to give it to her. I was outside the bathroom when she started yelling at you. I heard the whole conversation. Surely you can understand my curiosity about what was hidden in the walls. You of all people should know what an interesting question that is.”

  I’m this close to resuming my earlier profane chant. I want to tell Hinton what she can do with her interesting questions. I want to suggest that she use both the hammer and the knife to lodge Bobby’s bag of money deep into one of her orifices, but I don’t. There’s no point.

  “So now do you believe me? That I had nothing to do with it?”

  She gives me a look I can’t read. “We believe Karmen was acting alone.”

  Not quite the same thing, is it? There’s no point in asking her that, either.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The cops are gone. The sound of radios squawking fades away but the memory of it rings in my ears. I’m alone in my apartment, trying to catalog the massive inventory of things that are fucked up about this. I don’t know where to start. I’m drowning in a sea of dark details and the only thing close to a bright side is that I’m not currently in handcuffs.

  Police. Arrests. Handcuffs. Weapons. Reports. So many familiar details. One very noticeable detail is missing.

  Where is Jeannie?

  Someone taps lightly on the door and pushes it open and I think, Oh, here’s Jeannie. But I’m wrong. It’s Meredith, tiptoeing into my apartment again, looking just as worried as the last time she found me sitting here on my couch, numb and dumbstruck. She stands in front of me, hands on her hips, huge purse slung over her shoulder, an almost cartoonish mom-face going on.