THE LIFE LEFT: A GRIPPING PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

by L. W. WEDGWOOD

  He followed Michael into his bedroom. Open books were stacked high on every available surface. “You have been busy,” he said.

  Tossing himself back into his seat at the desk, Michael sighed. “I don’t know how you did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Got so far ahead. At this stage, I think it will take me years to catch up to you. I don’t know. Sometimes I just feel like such an idiot.”

  “You are the smartest person I know. You will catch up.”

  “I’m not so sure. At least I don’t think I’ll be joining you at university any time soon.”

  “You will be there before you know it.”

  “With your help, maybe.”

  “I believe you could do it on your own with no problem. But you know that I will continue helping you in every way that I can.”

  Michael smiled. “I’ll be forever in your debt.”

  “On the contrary, I think it is I who are in your debt.”

  “You mean for yesterday?” Michael said after squinting for a second in thought.

  “Yes.”

  “So, are you going to tell me why I lied to the authorities?”

  “I can still hardly believe that you guessed what was happening.”

  “Nonsense, the situation was as transparent at glass. And you did lead the way. All I had to do was put a rough timeline on things.”

  “You guessed well.”

  “Well enough to get you off the hook?”

  Abn thought about that for a moment. “I think so,” he said.

  “Which brings me back to my original question. What’s the big mystery? What did I get you off the hook for?”

  “You would not believe me if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  “For murder,” he said without hesitation.

  He watched as Michael burst into laughter. He kept laughing for a minute or so before appearing to realize that Abn wasn’t laughing along with him. Eventually, his laughter receded into to chuckles. And soon the sounds of amusement halted altogether.

  “You are joking …aren’t you?” Michael finally said.

  Abn had never lied to Michael and he wasn’t about to begin doing so now. They knew things about each other that no one else knew. Their friendship was something so much more important. He would never let a lie take that power away. “I am not lying,” he said.

  “Good God, man! You need to explain.”

  He didn’t leave anything out. He paused only when Jenkins bought the tea and icepack into the room. The icepack half melted against his bruised temple and teapot had been emptied before he completed his explanation. By this time, he could see that Michael’s humor had all but vanished. It had been replaced by a certain wide-eyed consideration; the kind you’d expect to find on the face of an auctioneer as he appraised a rare but dangerous weapon. Or the kind you may see on the face of a civilian in a war-torn country as the tanks rolled into town.

  Long minutes passed as Michael pawed at his empty tea cup in silence. Abn wanted to say something more. He wanted to justify his position further. But he realized that the die had been cast. There was no going back now. Michael’s reaction depended solely on what had already been said.

  “You’re going to have to give me some time,” Michael eventually replied with strain saturating his tone.

  He tried to read the meaning in Michael’s darting eyes. “Time for what?” he asked.

  “Hell, man. You’ve just told me that you killed people.”

  Abn nodded. “I understand.”

  “I just need time,” Michael repeated with a forced smile.

  Abn stood from where he sat, somehow knowing that he’d been given his que to leave. He placed the soggy ice-pack onto Michael’s desktop. “We will talk again soon?” he said with a step toward to the door.

  “Of course,” Michael said.

  Confidence had been higher in Abn as he left the house. He knew he was putting his freedom in his friend’s hands. He had never trusted anyone in the same way he trusted Michael. An epic battle unfolded within his consciousness. One side insisting on distrust; insisting on rectifying the problem by any means necessary. The other side saying that he needed to trust Michael. Michael deserved his trust. Living without some form of trust was not living at all. This inner battle of forces didn’t let up throughout his ride home. Even as he walked through the front door and Jane greeted him, the battle continued. He knew he would be in for another long and sleepless night.

  CHAPTER 10

  The sound of the knock at the door was a most unwelcome interruption. It had been a trying couple of days for Henry. First, he’d had to contact his extended family and friends to tell them of William’s death. This had been an ordeal unto itself. Managing relations with people in general, let alone family, was a feat he’d never excelled at. Half of the people he’d spoken to barely knew who he was. The other half didn’t want to know.

  Then he’d had to organize the funeral. The venue, the catering, the priest; it all took time. And it all took far more concentration and effort than anything he was used to. But to not follow through with a traditional Māori send off for William would be a stain upon his name and a slight against his son that he knew he couldn’t afford. William deserved better than that. He deserved the best.

  The knock at the door came louder this time. Henry didn’t like the sound of it at all. The knock wasn’t your normal kind expected from normal people.

  Reluctantly setting his barely touched bottle of Jim Beam aside, he levered himself upright and wound his way through the clutter to the front door. As he swung the door open, his worst fears were answered.

  “Henry Tua?” said a man.

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Detective Bell and this is my partner, Detective Boar,” Bell said, thumbing over his shoulder.

  “Boar like the pig?” Henry said with a grin.

  A flat smile showed that Bell was no stranger to the observation. “Yes,” he said.

  “What do you want?”

  “Can we come in? We just want to talk to you about your son for a minute,” Bell said.

  Henry knew from experience that this wasn’t a request. They were coming in either now or later. The best he could hope for was a stiff drink to wash down whatever they were serving up. He spun on his heel and motioned the detectives to follow him into the house. “Come,” he said.

  Henry collapsed into his seat again and picked up the bottle of Beam. Two full swallows passed into his stomach as he listened to the footsteps of the detectives approaching and then entering his lounge. They stood there before him, looking unsure of what to do next. The extent of the surrounding clutter limited the number of sitting positions. He enjoyed the view of their discomfort; reveled in it for a moment. And he couldn’t help noticing how the dull afternoon light filtering through his torn curtains seemed to further amplify their dour appearance.

  “Take a seat,” he eventually said, motioning to the empty bottles and old magazines stacked atop his couch.

  “We’ll stand,” Bell said.

  “Please yourself.”

  “This won’t take long,” Bell said.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me about William.”

  “That’s right. We have some grave news, I’m afraid,” Bell said.

  “He’s dead. I don’t know if it can get any graver than that.”

  Bell removed a sheath of papers from the small satchel he carried and handed it over to Henry. “I’m afraid there’s always something graver, Mr. Tua,” he said.

  “What’s this,” Henry said, as he looked at row after row of tiny print.

  “That’s your son’s autopsy report.”

  “I don’t have my reading glasses. And why’re you giving me an autopsy report. I know what killed my son. I was with him almost every minute up until he died.”

  “Almost every minute?” Bell said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you weren’t there d
uring the last minutes of your son’s life, were you?”

  Henry didn’t like the way Bell was talking. And he further disliked his silent partner. Boar stood there scanning every surrounding detail as if he were some kind of a cyborg, accumulating a digital catalog.

  “Now listen here. I nursed William for years after he got sick. I waited on him and took care of everything he ever needed. So, if I wasn’t there at the last moment before the cancer took him, then that’s not my fault. But really, if you two fellas are accusing me of anything, I don’t give a fuck. Chuck me in jail and throw away the key. I don’t care what happens to me anymore. My boy is dead. Look around you. Does it look to you like I had much else? Jesus fucking Christ!”

  “We are not saying that anything is your fault. But we do have to let you know that it wasn’t the leukemia that killed your son,” Bell said.

  “What you mean?”

  “It’s all in the autopsy report…”

  “…I just told you, I ain’t got my glasses. I can’t read any report.”

  “Then with your permission, I can tell you what the report says,” Bell said.

  “That’s your job, ain’t it?” Henry said before taking another pull on the bottle of Beam.

  “No, it’s not quite our job, but as you wish.”

  “If I had my wish, my son would be sitting here relaxing with me. He’d be healthy and happy. So, don’t go telling me about wishes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just say what you have to say and leave me alone. As you can see, I’m a busy man.”

  “Simply speaking, your son was poisoned. That about sums up what’s in the autopsy report,” Bell said.

  “He died of leukemia. He’d had leukemia for years. That’s what killed him.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not true.”

  “But it is true.”

  “I’m afraid the autopsy revealed that even though your son was in the end stages of his fight with leukemia, the final cause of his death was poison. Specifically, someone injected sodium hypochlorite into him.”

  “Sodium what?”

  “Bleach. Someone killed your son by injecting common kitchen bleach into his bloodstream.”

  Henry froze in mid swallow from his bottle. He hadn’t anticipated Bell’s revelation. In his younger years as a mob member, he’d used bleach as an interrogation tool. It did nasty things to a man’s eyes. He couldn’t imagine the pain it would inflict had it been injected into someone’s bloodstream. He wanted to feel angry. He wanted to hate Abn for what he’d done. He could not. Even within his alcohol induced stupor, he rationalized that Abn must have chosen the only means available to him to carry out his task. Painful or not, the result was a much better option than the weeks of suffering his son would have endured otherwise. In a way, he now admired Abn for what he’d done. Clearly, the boy was very smart. He would have known the pain he had inflicted, yet he’d pushed through with the task anyway. Abn had done the one thing that he as a father could not do, in spite of all of the odds against him.

  “Mr. Tua, are you okay?” Bell asked.

  “Jesus Christ!” Henry said.

  “Yes.”

  “Bleach? You sure?”

  “I’m afraid so. Autopsies don’t lie.”

  “Show him the picture?” Boar said.

  “What picture?” Henry said as he looked to Boar for clarification.

  Pulling his phone out, Bell stabbed at the screen for a few seconds before handing it over to Henry. “Do you know this boy?” he said.

  Henry looked at the screen and found a picture of Abn looking back at him. His blood froze in his veins. He realized now that the detectives had cornered him. How had they gotten onto Abn? How much did they know? Denial seemed to be the only course forward from here. But was that the correct course? It had to be. He knew he owed Abn a debt that he could never fully repay. In that moment, he suddenly felt an overwhelming need to protect Abn at any cost.

  “I’ve never seen him before. Who is he?” Henry said.

  “Take a closer look at the screen. You said you don’t have your glasses.”

  “I can see well enough to know that I don’t know the boy in that picture. Who is he?”

  Bell’s confidence visibly deflated as he answered, “He’s a person of interest. Nothing more,” he said.

  “A person of interest?” Henry echoed, not really understanding at all what that terminology meant and not really wanting to. All he knew now is that he wanted to get the detectives out of his house. He needed time to think. He needed time to drink.

  “Yes, a person of interest,” Bell said.

  “He doesn’t look like a killer to me.”

  “We’re not saying he is. We’re not accusing him of anything. We’re just trying to get a handle on the facts. We need to know where everyone visiting the hospice was at the time of your son’s murder,” Bell said.

  “…And the boy in the picture is a gray area,” Boar chimed in.

  Henry smiled on the inside. “Meaning you don’t know.”

  “That’s right,” Bell said.

  “Then as of now, you still don’t know, as I don’t know who that boy is.”

  “Okay,” Bell said, with a sigh of submission. “But just for the record, where were you between 3:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. last Wednesday?”

  Henry raised the bottle of Beam in the air. “I was here.”

  “Okay. But is there anything you can think of, anything at all that you may have seen that could help us with our investigation?”

  Henry took one more pull on the bottle before answering, “No.”

  He felt relief wash through him as he let the detectives out. For the moment, he had outmaneuvered them. For the moment, their curiosity had been satisfied. But something told him that they hadn’t been completely honest with him. In his experience, cops were never honest. The only question was, what were they hiding?

  * * * * *

  Bell looked sideways at Boar as they took their seats in the cruiser outside of Henry’s house. “So, what do you think?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what I know. And I know what you know. We have a witness who saw Henry talking to Abn outside the hospice that day. So, he’s lying. The only question is, why is he lying?” Boar said.

  “Henry’s a drunk. He’s been in and out of prison for much of his life. He’s definitely a cop hater, which may be reason enough for him to stonewall us. Or it could just be that his eyesight’s much worse than we think. He simply may not recognize Abn as the boy he spoke to outside of the hospice that day. Or Abn may not have even been there at all. Our witness could be wrong,” Bell said.

  “Maybe… …Maybe,” Boar said.

  “But you don’t buy it?”

  “No.”

  “Shall we bring him in for a formal statement?”

  “No, let’s leave him on the back burner for the moment. Let’s wait until we have something more… Until we get a clearer picture of what’s going on here first.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Ed woke with a start. He’d been dreaming again. Afghanistan, Larmina, blood. Always blood, endless blood. This wasn’t unusual. He’d long since accepted his nightmares as a routine part of his sleep pattern. Something else had disturbed his alcohol induced oblivion. Something, but what?

  The streetlamp filtering light into the shadows of his bedroom told him he should still be sleeping. Several minutes passed before he realized that he wouldn’t be unconscious again anytime soon.

  A bus further stirred his restlessness as it rattled through the empty Newtown streets. The chasm between the warmth of the bedcovers and the bottle of Jack Daniels on the bedside table suddenly felt as if it were traversable. Anything to take the edge from the shock of sudden consciousness.

  The bracing tentacles of reality further spurred his motivation to drink as he sat up on the bedside. Only when the first mouthful of whiskey washed over his tonsils did he realize what h
ad kicked his mind to life.

  It had been a memory. And not his usual kind.

  That evening, he’d watched from the sidelines as the detectives had questioned Abn. From where he’d stood, he’d seen every detail in Abn’s facial expressions. All of the signs of a liar were there. The pursed lips, the face touching, even the involuntary movement of the eyes to the right as each question was asked.

  Ed knew all the basic methods of seeing a lie. During his time as an officer, he’d taken training seminars covering interrogation. This skill now left him with no doubt. Abn had lied to the detectives, but why? What was he hiding?

  Ed felt convinced that he needed to find answers to these questions.

  After three more chugs on from bottle of Jack Daniels, he pulled on a pair of jeans and stood. The world held beneath his feet. Confidence in movement further returned as he fully dressed and then headed for the door.

  Wilson Street glistened in the aftermath of evening rain. The odors of the soaked surroundings filled his nostrils as he made his way east. Refuse from Jimmy’s Fruit market mostly filled that mix. But as he passed a sleeping homeless man in a doorway, unclean, dampened flesh joined the 2:00 a.m. smell that the world had on offer.

  It didn’t take him more than a few minutes to find his way to Patel’s Dairy on Owen Street. He couldn’t see anyone else around. Only a single lightbulb glowed from somewhere within the back of the dairy.

  As casually as he could manage, he crossed the road to the dairy and walked by, barely pausing to glance through the window. As he’d imagined, Mr. Patel had a camera just inside of the entrance.

  Seconds later, he slipped down the side alley and over a fence containing a small patio at the rear of the dairy. The store, just like countless others, had a residence above it. He hoped that Mr. Patel and his wife were heavy sleepers. They were the only two occupants of the home. He knew this from his regular visits. Mr. Patel couldn’t stop rambling on about how he had shipped both of his children off to university where they were doing extremely well.

  No lights lit the patio. But the glow from a neighboring home illuminated the area just enough for him to see the rear door. He tried the handle and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. He’d never been good at picking locks, so that was out of the question. However, to the right of the door, he noticed a window had been left ajar.