Alyssa Grifero set her Ristretto cup of coffee on the coffee table and set out to engage in one of the most difficult and determining conversations in her life.
"I have a huge problem on my hands," she said, "and I don’t know where to start. I think it's best to try to convince you first that I'm not a murderer.”
"No, first explain to me how you found this apartment and how you know me," said Jaime, who seemed ready to waste no time.
She gave him a nervous smile. She expected that reaction from her.
"Your friend, that Sara, she is in Oxford.”
"Oxford? What the hell is she doing there?”
"I don’t know that, I don’t even know her," Alyssa said, trying to compose a series of convincing phrases in her head. “But for some reason, your little friend was in the same place and at the same time as the murder of Mike Lennard, which all the news programs associate me.”
"But you had nothing to do with it, I suppose."
Alyssa noticed pure sarcasm in the words of Jaime, possibly destined to make her have to give the maximum detail to her story.
“Of course not.”
"And then who killed that man?"
"I don’t know," she lied without the slightest hesitation.
He snorted.
"All right," he said, “continue. Sara was at the crime scene and then what?”
"Several policemen withheld her. One of them put her in his car and kept her there for a long time. I guess he questioned her.”
"Okay, and in the meantime, where were you?"
"I saw it all from behind a dumpster in an alley next to the house. No one knew I was there, not even your friend.” At this point in the story, Alyssa was already talking almost to herself, as if she had difficulty remembering the scene. Then she turned to Jaime with a new determination in her voice. “Then, when they all left, I left my hiding place, and when I was crossing the road I accidentally kicked a cell phone that someone had lost. I picked it up and turned it on. It turned out to be owned by Sara Mora, the girl who had just been questioned and who had been receiving persistent emails from a certain Jaime Vergara, that is, from you. Coincidences of life, that Jaime had been news of course of attempting homicide. Same as me. And I had been given the opportunity to meet you.”
For the first time Jaime looked impressed. Much to his regret, he had to admit that the story was beginning to interest him.
Alyssa gave him her most frail look as she leaned toward him.
"Jaime, we're both just as fucked up. That is why we have to help each other.”
"So you set yourself up as Sara to get my address and come here," the host accused loudly.
"I know it wasn’t the most honest thing, but what else could I do? I didn’t know where to go, they’re chasing after me!”
Jaime made a face that she interpreted as a sign of suspicion. It was going to cost her a lot to win the confidence of this man.
"Well, I suppose you're telling the truth, and you have nothing to do with the Oxford murder. Why are the police chasing you then?” He insightfully wanted to know,.
Alyssa spent most of her time telling him the rough details of her relationship with Charley Rubial until the time of his suicide. She omitted nothing.
She also told him of her lightning trip to England, the unexpected death of Charley's then-unknown brother, and the reasons why the police had related that death to her trip.
"Why did you travel to England? And what were you doing in the middle of the night next to the house of Charley's brother?” As she had foreseen, Jaime had arrived on his own at the same conclusion as the police.
Alyssa looked at her watch.
"My fifteen minutes are over, but I don’t have much more to finish. Can you give me some extra time?”
Jaime nodded.
"Okay, but answer: What was the reason for your trip and what were you looking for in that apartment?"
"You're going to have to trust me on this. The answer to your question is something I would rather keep secret, at least for now.”
Vergara seemed to plunge into his own thoughts. The silence lasted so long that Alyssa began to rustle impatiently on the couch. Finally he waved his arms in disgust.
“I still don’t understand. What do you intend by coming to my house and telling me all this?”
"We are reaching the key point of the question. To begin with, what I need is for me to take shelter in your house until the storm is over.”
Chapter 11
"You haven’t answered my question: Do you regret your behavior in the past, or not?"
"Never ask that question, Morgan, listen to me, because we all regret everything by nature. And besides, we like it.”
“How do we like it?"
"I'll put it another way: the human being has found a way to harm himself and then experience the pleasure of healing. There goes the sixth. Think about it.”
Friday, November 10, 2006
The fifteen minutes set by Jaime Vergara had already expired, and yet the girl was still on his sofa and no one had called the police. Jaime was so baffled that he had to ask Alyssa to repeat what she had just said to make sure he understood correctly. Providing refuge for a fugitive? For the love of God!
He had risen from his chair and stood in front of the window massaging his neck as he watched the traffic. Accumulating information: A complete stranger that the police were looking for all over the country had found Sara's cell phone in England, had flown back to Spain by circumventing border security, and had planted herself at his house posing as his friend and asking for help. She claimed to have killed no one, although she confessed to being the sexual partner of a suicidal madman. Skepticism had seized him when he asked the girl specific questions about her intentions in the Anglo-Saxon country, and she decided to keep her secrets to herself. However, the story had not reached the end, and by then Jaime was too intrigued not to hear the denouement.
"And you, what are you offering in return for my hospitality?" He asked Grifero when he met her gaze again.
She smiled bitterly.
"Sara is in grave danger," she said dryly.
Jaime raised his eyebrows at this resounding statement.
"Go sit in your chair again," Alyssa suggested. “In the meantime, I’ll smoke a cigarette.”
Sara Mora hadn’t looked away from the house since the two policemen entered it. More than fifteen uncomfortable minutes had passed and the detectives were still inside. It was as if the earth had swallowed them. During that time, she weighed very seriously the option of turning around and leaving where she had come, now that they were busy, and avoiding to be found sneaking around. In the end, curiosity was greater than her fear, so that she remained waiting in her position from behind the corner of the store.
Somewhere a street band sounded. In keeping with the intensity with which the melody reached her ears, she guessed that the group was approaching. In fact, a set of flutes, violins, guitars and trumpets soon emerged from a street perpendicular to Cowley Road, a couple of blocks from the liquor store. The musicians turned towards her with the intention of climbing the avenue, so that she faced them. The group consisted of about a dozen men and women. Sara flipped her body so that her back was turned on them (she had decided that the less people saw her hovering around the house, the better it would go for her) and she noticed how the band passed by. When she made sure that they were far enough away so that they couldn’t identify her, she turned back to the sealed house. She was startled to find that at that very moment the front door was opening.
She tensed her body and took refuge behind the corner like a scared cat. Less than eight meters, exactly the width of the liquor store, now separated her from the two policemen. If one of the two turned his neck a little to the right, he would see her. She held her breath and counted to ten in silence.
1, 2, 3..., pleasepleaseplease... 4, 5, 6..., well, it seems they haven’t seen me... 7, 8, 9..., and ten!
She cocked her he
ad slightly to observe with her right eye the activity of the two detectives: they were moving away from the gate and were waiting impatiently for the band to finish passing so that they could cross the road. They seemed worried. Sara leaned a bit more to focus her gaze on the front of the house and made a discovery.
They’d left the door open!
She noticed how, after the agents exchanged a few words in a completely unintelligible English to her from that distance (and even more with the musical banging still sounding in the background), the blonder of the two pointed towards the front. In front of them was a place where, according to the sign on the entrance in bright colors and the poster of Take Away from the window, they served Turkish food to go. They entered it and both figures disappeared behind the door.
Sara was alone again by the liquor store. The little orchestra had passed the number 219 and its popular melodies were now like whispers between the roar of the cars. She watched with suspicion the shadow of the door of the house and she felt a surge of a powerful temptation. If she ran out to the house, she calculated, it wouldn’t take more than five seconds to reach it. Then she could hide inside and camp at her leisure. There was a risk, however, that in those five seconds, one of the two policemen would look that way through the glass of the premises, and that he would detect a mad girl running down the street, look more closely at her, and recognize her as the suspect that they found next to the victim’s corpse the night of the crime.
She didn’t risk it. She looked around to see that she wasn’t catching anyone's attention, pressing her body against the wall, she kept her eyes fixed on the entrance to the Turkish restaurant. At that moment her wristwatch marked three-ten.
Alfred Horner was still carrying Sara's letters in his head as he crossed the front door and joined his companion in the doorway of Mike Lennard's home. He rearranged his arm bandage before sitting at the bar. They both stared at the road thoughtfully.
"Looks like we've wasted our time getting back here,” Thomas said, not looking away from the front.
Horner did not speak.
"What do we do now, Fred? Any ideas?”
"They sound good," he remarked.
“What?”
“The band. They’re good.”
He saw Carroll turning to him and looking at him as if he were looking at someone who had just uttered a supreme stupidity. What his companion was unaware of was the whirlwind of ideas that he was spinning around in his head that prevented him from thinking of anything else. S-A-R-A-M-O-R-A...
He shrugged to hide his distraction.
"I don’t know, let's go back to the police station and continue the investigation. We'll go over Lennard's past, shall we?” Horner proposed the first thing with meaning that occurred to him, for what his body was asking for was in fact a time for reflection.
“Wait a minute.” Carroll raised his hand, taking the lead role this time. “We're going to snoop a little more before we go.”
He accompanied the proposal pointing to the road, which at that time was occupied by the members of the aforementioned musical group. Horner followed the imaginary line drawn by Carroll's finger and looked over the slow-moving musicians, oblivious to the detectives' conversation. Across the street was Ahmets, a small, humble-looking place that seemed to offer Turkish food.
"You’re craving kebab, Tom?" He asked ironically.
"No, fuck, but it's the closest restaurant to Lennard's house. If he minimally liked Turkish food, surely the owner of the premises knew him, and in that case he could give us some information about him.”
Horner gave his companion a smile of admiration.
“Great idea.”
“Thank you. In addition, he could have even witnessed the crime. We won’t lose anything by asking.”
"Well, although I think you're optimistic. The murder took place around midnight, and at that time it was already closed.”
“What do you mean, these Turkish places never close!”
Carroll gave his partner an affectionate punch on the shoulder and set out to cross the street, now free after the passage of the musical procession. Horner followed without suspecting that the woman who was in all his thoughts was watching them a few paces away.
A middle-aged man with curly hair, a swarthy complexion and sparse in words was attending Ahmets. He identified himself as Mirsad, and didn’t seem intimidated when Thomas Carroll showed him the plaque that credited him as a police officer. On the contrary, he dedicated a smile full of arrogance to the pair of detectives.
"We won’t take up your time for long, Mirsad. There will only be a few questions.”
Carroll paused in case the man wanted to say anything. Then he cleared his throat and began a brief interrogation in which Horner remained in the background.
"Well, did you know the man who lived in the opposite house, number 219?"
"I don’t know who lives on this street. I go to my business and then I leave.” Mirsad spoke with a strong Arabic accent.
"His name was Mike Lennard. Does that name sound familiar?”
Mirsad shrugged and shook his head.
"He was a Caucasian man, dark-haired and upper middle class.” Carroll accompanied the description by showing a photograph of Lennard they had printed that morning at the police station. “Have you ever seen him in this place?”
The restaurant owner peered at the image for less than a second.
"He doesn’t look familiar, but dozens of customers come here every day. I can’t tell. Why? What has this guy done?”
"This man was killed last night in his own house. Right across from your place.”
Mirsad changed his face. He looked at the portrait again, this time with interest.
"I have not seen him in my life, I swear."
"Didn’t you see or hear anything that caught your eye last night?"
“We shut down at night. If we were open, I would have known.”
Thomas turned to look at his partner and gave him a gesture that recognized that he was right about the times of the Turkish restaurants in Oxford. Then he continued:
"What time did you close yesterday?"
“At midnight.”
"At that time the firing had already occurred, according to witnesses and the coroner's opinion. Although the police cars, that is we, the investigators, didn’t arrive until at least a quarter past twelve," he calculated.
"I don’t know what to say to you. Here we usually have the TV on, maybe we had it at such a high volume that it didn’t let us hear what happened in that house.”
Carroll squinted at the other side of the bar and found that there was indeed a television.
“It’s fine don’t worry. We have no further questions for you.” He saved the close-up of Lennard in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a business card. “If you remember anything useful about this man or any strange event that happened in the neighborhood yesterday, call me at this number.”
Mirsad accepted the card and nodded. When Carroll was crossing the door, Horner opened his mouth for the first time since they entered the room:
"Is that camera working?"
On the roof, next to the doorframe, an old security camera pointed towards the exit from inside the restaurant. Horner had discovered it, and taking into account the position of the target, he was sure it recorded everything that happened at an important place outside the premises.
"Yes, of course it works," said the Turk, almost offended by the question.
"In that case we're going to need a copy of yesterday’s tape, Mirsad."
Sara stepped through the opening of the front door of the house immediately after the detectives' car disappeared into the horizon, down the street. Although the vehicle was already out of sight, she had left her hiding place with a jump (she was getting fed up with the damn corner of the liquor store) and sprinted to the threshold. She entered the number 219 between gasps, caused in equal proportions by the emotion and the effort.
Keeping her e
yes on the front (in this particular case, towards a storage closet that Lennard had placed in the hall) became Sara's first challenge inside the house. The reason was simple: the first door on the left that was just next to the entrance hall was the bathroom door. The last person to leave it (possibly one of the police officers a few minutes ago) had left the door open. If the doctor had turned her neck in that direction, her gaze would have landed flat on the scene of the tragedy that she had not yet permitted herself to see.
Better not to torture herself, she prevailed. Let's keep going.
She had a singular nostalgic moment when she set her feet in the largest room of the house, which served as a living room. She kept herself absorbed in silent observation of every corner, and felt how she traveled in time. She discovered that she had been there before, many years ago that it felt more like centuries. And yet, now it was as if she had never left, as if everything lived from then on was not of the slightest importance.
She found that quite a lot of furniture had been moved, and some even replaced with newer ones. Dozens of magazines, most of them specialized in dance classes and cooking classes, were piled up on the floor next to an old beige sofa. The television cables, the mini-cassette speakers, and the console controls hung from the cabinet to the little table like a futuristic and arbitrary spider's web that contributed to the deep general disorder.
"No doubt it's a man's room now," Sara said, pursing her lips as a patient mother trying to teach a disobedient son.
She noticed the color of the walls, light gray, and made an effort to remember the painting it had in the past. It was not necessary to think very hard, for in the thin separation between the skirting board and the wall; one could perceive the color on which Mike Lennard had probably decided to paint his dull gray.
The Butterfly Effect Page 15