Great Kills

by Kevin Fox

  “—Anton, NO!”

  I turned in time to see a teen boy, six-foot tall, muscular and soaking wet, with blood streaming down his face from a scalp wound coming at me. His shoulder caught me in the ribs, causing me to lose balance and slip –

  – Free-falling over the side. My weight took Dariya and the raft with me, tumbling twenty feet down into icy waters. The salty wetness felt like acid and I was unable to get a breath before I hit the frigid waves. My lungs went into spasms almost immediately. I kicked, desperate to get to the surface, feeling my right foot connect with someone’s body.

  I hoped it was the idiot Anton and not the girls. A moment later I broke free from the sea’s wet grasp, gulped the air and swallowed salt water as another wave hit me in the face. The raft was being pounded by surf that covered the flimsy craft in salty spray and I reached for it. Dariya was already in it, holding on valiantly as it was tossed, at the mercy of the waves.

  Anton was nowhere to be found, but I caught a glimpse of Alina swimming toward the shore. The waves were determined to help her, thrusting her at the shoreline as violently as possible. The last few feet would be the most dangerous for her as the waves smashed against the hard pavement below, but it looked as if she’d make it.

  Exhausted, I swam without making much headway. Dariya was screaming, furious at the universe and cursing me for some reason. It didn’t last long. Two large waves brought us to within twenty feet of solid ground, and then a third, larger wave caught us –

  …And the world turned upside down again.

  The raft was flipped upright and over by a sudden surge, and I caught a glimpse of Dariya going headfirst into the water before I was pummeled by debris. Something jagged and sharp caught me in the stomach as I struggled to orient myself. I flailed, slammed a heel into the bottom, then slipped and went deeper until I felt the rough surface of the paved road. It scraped my torso and tore my skin as the waves tried to pull me back under, but I fought back, clawing my way out.

  …I might have blacked out.

  I know I’m missing pieces of what happened next…

  The next clear memory I have is lying flat on my back, shaking water out of my eyes. The street was lit up, brighter than before. It was a sporadic, flashing light, illuminating everything in a shocking-blue glare. I turned my head to find what I knew I would, but hoped I wouldn’t –

  – Downed wires, dancing like electrified snakes as they put everything within thirty feet into stark and brilliantly lit contrast. I knew that if the wires landed anywhere near me, all of this water would conduct that energy perfectly and the voltage would finish me off. I got up carefully and saw him.

  Again. One-eyed Willie. The guy with the collapsed left temple and no left eye, standing in the shadows beyond the downed wires, only illuminated when they sparked. I knew that I’d seen him somewhere before, but of course I couldn’t remember where – or if it was just in a night terror. I moved toward him, but as I started to he pointed behind me. That’s when I heard her shriek and turned to find Dariya walking out of the waves, legs bloody and a gash on her head. In spite of the punishment she’d taken, she still looked as if she were ready to take on the world, but was shrieking as if it had already ended.

  …Then I saw Alina lying motionless in the middle of the street, her legs still being lapped by the waves. Even from where I stood, I could tell that she wasn’t breathing. I glanced to see if One-eyed Willie was coming to help, but he was gone. It was all on me. Looking back, maybe I should have told Dariya what I was going to do, but even if I had, I doubt I could have prevented what happened next.

  I only did what I was trained to do.

  I went to Alina, dropped to my knees, made sure her airway was clear, and started CPR. It took a few seconds of blowing air into her lungs and pounding her chest, but Alina coughed once –

  – And then there was a sharp blow to the back of my head. The pain disoriented me and my vision dimmed as I rolled over expecting to find Anton –but it was Dariya, swinging at me, her arm coming down at my chest. I didn’t have time to react –

  “I said don’t touch her!”

  The scream landed at the same time as a sharp blow to my ribs that hurt more than it should have. As Dariya went to pull back, I tried to grab her arm, but she was wet and slick and slipped away. As I tried to go after her, I found I couldn’t breathe. That’s when I looked down and saw the walnut hilt of the Karatel knife protruding from between my ribs.

  Dariya had stabbed me.

  I’d fucked up. I should have known. Should have pieced it together.

  Of course, it was Dariya. She was the killer. I knew when I saw her with the gun, but I’d forgotten about the first dead man, the one who had been stabbed. Dariya must have gotten the knife first, stabbed him, then took his gun and killed them all.

  “Why?” I asked her, confused. Why stab me after I’d saved them?

  “You’re just like them. You, you tried to rape her… as soon as… you could.” She stammered. In spite of the rain, I could see that Dariya was crying, a victim, trying to be a survivor. I admired her for that, at the same time that I wished I could pull out the knife and give her a taste of what it felt like to be hurt for no good reason.

  The anger only lasted for a second… I knew that this girl already knew what that felt like.

  I crumbled to the ground, losing my sense of time and place for a moment. In my peripheral vision I noticed movement, dimly aware that Dariya had helped Alina up. I couldn’t focus on them, only on the knife – and my blood, seeping out around its blade. It occurred to me even then that it was a beautiful knife, an uncommon knife, unlike the ones I used to take off perps when I was a uniform. I didn’t know then that it was designed specifically for the Russian FSB, the successor of the Soviet KGB, but I knew even then that it was a knife used by professionals to kill.. In the sharp electrified light from the downed wires that hissed and danced, my focus on the knife didn’t seem irrational, just hallucinatory. As if this was another night terror and I’d wake up any moment, throat raw from screaming. I didn’t.

  I closed my eyes as I lay on the pavement, realizing too late that the heavy rain falling on my face would make me feel like I was drowning again. The water was encroaching on me, crashing closer and closer as spasms of sharp pain radiated through my chest. My vision was fading inward and it was getting darker all around me as I heard footsteps splashing in puddles nearby, running toward me.

  I prayed that it wasn’t Anton or Dariya coming back to finish the job, as whoever it was kneeled at my back. I tried to turn to see if it was the creep with the damaged face, but couldn’t. It was then that I heard a woman’s voice, humming and mumbling something.

  “Cuimhnigh, a Dia go léir, nár chualathas trácht ar éinne riamh a chuir é féin faoi do choimirce ná a d’iarr cabhair ort ná a d’impigh d’idirghuí is gur theip tú air.”

  The voice had a rich treble tone, and the rhythm of this language was once again that of a prayer, but much sweeter, and gentle. Soft hands reached around me and gently laid me flat as the sound of the incantation went on. The shadowy silhouette of a woman in a hooded raincoat hovered over me, her face almost invisible in the shadows until intermittent flashes from the downed wires illuminated her hazel eyes. They met mine, reflecting the sparks of electric light, giving her an otherworldly air and opened wider, startled as she saw my face.

  “The girl stabbed you?”

  I nodded, catching my breath as I placed her sultry voice – she was the woman who’d been calling me, giving me tips over the phone for the past few years. My stalker.

  Christ, she was the reason I was here.

  “…It wasn’t her fault. She thought I was…” My voice trailed off. I had to stop, catching my breath to try again. “…She didn’t… mean to.”

  “I’d hate to see what she does on purpose,” she said, even as she put one strong arm around my shoulders, getting ready to lift me.

  “Who are you? Why’d you call m
e here?” I asked.

  “Now’s not the time. There’s too much to tell and you’re bleeding. Can you help me?” She asked, leveraging my weight, helping me to support myself. Once I was on my feet I looked back down at the knife, my free hand unconsciously drifting to its hilt, wanting to free it from my chest.

  “Don’t touch it. It looks like it missed your aorta and the superior vena cava.”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  “No. But I know that if I move it the wrong way, the blood will flow and you’ll die,” she advised.

  Good to know. I kept my hands away from it, stumbling one painful step at a time to my car. I don’t remember all of the next few moments, but one brief bit of clarity is the image I had of her face as she took my keys and laid me out on my own back seat. The wind whipped off her hood and her silky auburn hair streamed out over her shoulder for an instant. She caught my eye, and despite the seriousness of the situation, she smiled. In that moment, I’d swear I’d known her before – seen her like this, soaked through by the rain.

  Chapter Six

  I could hear the pure tones of rain drumming on the metal roof of my Nova as I opened my eyes to near darkness. The woman in the front seat was a dim silhouette and was driving cautiously around fallen trees and through deep water. In spite of her caution, water was seeping in the doors as we made our way up Holten Avenue, moving toward Staten Island University Hospital.

  Keeping my eyes open was difficult, but I tried to focus on the woman who saved me. I felt like I should remember her from some class or summer camp – but I didn’t. Typical. This happened all the time with my memory issues. Sometimes the person I thought I should remember was a stranger, other times I’d spent a year or two in school with them.

  “I know you,” I finally said, hoping she’d fill in the blanks.

  “You didn’t last time we met,” she said simply, confirming that we’d met before.

  “Sorry, my memory is… terrible,” I said, struggling. It was getting harder to breathe. “If it was college, I’m …sorry. There were …whole months …I lost. Did we…?” I asked, worried, but she just smiled.

  “Don’t hurt yourself talking. It’s all right. I’m ‘Rigan,” she told me.

  The name didn’t sound familiar. At all. I nodded, too tired to speak and now able to see the emergency lights of the hospital. Chaos was swirling outside the doors as injured people walked or were carried in, soaking wet through knee-deep water. If the tide surged much further, even the hospital’s emergency generators would be under water.

  Rigan pulled the Nova up near the ER and I took out my phone and slid it under the seat. The photos I took would be evidence and I wanted to keep them safe. It was hidden by the time Rigan opened the back door and I had sudden and startling sense of déjà vu. I’d seen her before, like this, leaning down into a car over me… I recognized her hazel eyes. I was sure of it...

  And then I wasn’t…

  Pain shot through my chest as Rigan tried to move me, and she was a stranger again, just helping me out of the car. The exertion made my head spin, I stumbled and then it all went dark for a while. Sounds lingered distantly, disconnected in time and space as the splashing, overlapping metronome of the rain and the voices of doctors and nurses and EMT’s, disjointed and without meaning, filtered through.

  …And then I was gone. One moment Rigan was with me, and the next…

  …I was freezing, shivering in the cold and the darkness, a fine misty fog gathered around me. The moon cut through it from above, illuminating the shallow water that I stood in, so bright that it threw the shadow of a gnarled oak onto the still surface in dark contrast. All around me were cattails and marsh grass, like the ones I remembered being everywhere in Staten Island when I was a kid. Every muscle and joint in my body was swollen and stiff as I kneeled in the pond, thrusting my arms into the darkness of it, digging my fingers into the thick gray clay. The tendons in my hands were stretched to the point of agony as I noticed a face in the disturbed reflection of the water. It was my face – when I was seven years old.

  After a moment, my fingers scraped something below the surface. It was hard and flat, about two-foot square. I grabbed the edges, dragging up a box wrapped in some kind of waterproof oilskin, when I heard the rustle of leaves, too steady to be the wind. Startled, I put the box in the oilcloth and shoved it back in its watery grave, covering it quickly with heavy clay. I’d barely hidden it when I saw him, moving out of the mist with a shotgun in his hands, raising it as he strode toward me – a dark-haired man with a mustache and sideburns.

  — Before I could move he was standing over me, the barrel of the shotgun pushing down on my chest with a sharp pressure. I couldn’t move. Could barely breathe…

  “Where is it?” He asked, his trigger finger twitching.

  “I’m…” I tried to answer him, but my breath gave out.

  “Tell me or die here.” He said, shoving the gun into my chest harder, forcing my face under the frigid water. I tried to hold my breath, but I could feel my lungs spasm and I choked, coughing…

  He let me up, smiling coldly. Beyond him, hiding in the dense cattails, I saw the moon reflecting off familiar eyes that looked black in this light but weren’t. I knew who they belonged to, and I knew that they wouldn’t look away until it was all over.

  “If your friend has it, tell me where,” he said, leaning once again on the barrel, threatening to send me under. I struggled to speak, but my mouth was full of water and all I got out was something that sounded like ‘dool hun if’, before the man pushed me under again and my chest felt like it was going to burst –

  —The pain was excruciating as I regained consciousness to find a nurse pressing down on my wound, trying to stem the flow of blood. Rigan was still talking to me, as if I hadn’t been lost in my nightmare for long.

  “Hang on. You’ll be fine.”

  “Stay…” I told her, knowing that she knew more about than she was saying, but she pulled away, shaking her head.

  “I’m sorry. I am. But I have to find the girls before they do. You’ll understand when you remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “Everything,” she said softly, so only I could hear as the stretcher rolled down the hall. “…And don’t trust anyone. If they know you remember, they’ll kill you,” she said. I felt her warm sweet breath on my face, and then she kissed me and whispered, “Go dtí an chéad uair eile. I’ll be in touch.”

  Rigan had barely finished speaking when the stretcher slammed through the doors of the O.R. and she was left behind. A moment later there was a mask coming toward my face and I was gone again, dreaming fevered dreams, full of hallucinatory images that made no sense…

  …The next thing I remember there was a haggard and care-worn face that I recognized, but couldn’t quite place, watching me from the chair next to my bed. I couldn’t find a name to match the face, but the man helped me out as he leaned over me with a smile I recognized as the ‘good cop’ smile.

  “Hey, he’s back. Good to see you, Detective. I’m Detective Lieutenant Michael Burke. I just have a few questions about your attack,” Burke said pleasantly, as if asking for gardening tips.

  “I know you…” I tried, but I’m not sure how it sounded to him, because the words were mangled and a dark look crossed behind his eyes for a moment. Maybe he didn’t recognize me, but I’d finally placed him. He was a pallbearer at Uncle Joe’s closed-casket funeral. I was only seven at the time, but he looked vaguely the same, with his close-cropped hair now completely gone and the addition of crow’s feet around his eyes. I was sure that I’d changed more than he had.

  “You’ve got an interesting memory. Last time we met, I was probably your age.”

  “…At the funeral, right? You were on the task force with…” I struggled to finish. Whatever drugs they’d given me made my mouth feel like it was filled with glue. “…my dad and Uncle Joe,” I finally finished.

  “I was. We can catch up sometime. R
ight now, I need you to tell me everything you recall. I’ll catch the woman that did this. You know who she was?”

  “No,” I whispered honestly. A door slammed somewhere nearby and I heard a deep male voice, angrily addressing Burke.

  “Lieutenant, I told you – not now. He needs to recover. He’s still feeling the anesthesia.”

  “He’s fine. Aren’t you, kid?” Burke asked, leaning in closer. His features were blurry and I was fading again, trying to focus on him but only seeing –

  -- A rippling image of the barrel of a gun and the bright light of moon, shining down through water, blood-tinged from my wounds. The shotgun pushed harder on my chest and the moon receded, fading behind a cloud. Rain fell on the surface, causing the moonlight to ripple –

  – And then suddenly I was struggling toward the surface, hearing voices calling my name from nearby…

  “…Killian. Come on. Talk to me. Who was she, Detective Collins?” Lieutenant Burke asked. I tried to sit up and focus. I was unsure of how long I’d been out, but Burke hadn’t moved.

  “Who did this to you?” He asked again as I tried to clear my head.

  “Some girl. From the yacht. Maybe fourteen.”

  “Nurse said it was a woman that brought you in. Got the impression you knew each other. What about her?”

  “Good Samaritan, that’s all,” I told him. He knew I was holding back. I got a good look at her – could have described her hazel eyes and the asymmetrical freckles on the bridge of her nose, but I wasn’t ready to share her with Burke just yet.

  “What’s the damage? Did I win the line-of-duty lottery?” I asked, changing the subject as I realized that I wasn’t feeling too badly, considering I’d been stabbed in the chest. Other than a sore itch between my ribs and a dull oppressive headache, I felt better than I had most Sunday mornings in my early twenties. Burke smirked and shook his head.