Guarding Gabriel

by J. A. Wynters

  “Barry Thomson’s body was found in a number of pieces in the basement of 47 Main street. I believe it was your residence between 2003-2004?”

  “Yes, but –”

  “The basement flooded two weeks ago. The thawing snow caused a blockage in the pipe and it burst flooding the basement. Building maintenance found what was believed to be a human skeleton. Among the dismembered body they found a wallet and a cell phone. The ID belonged to Mr. Barry Thompson Junior. DNA tests will confirm his identity by week’s end.”

  “So why are they blaming me? There’s no evidence.”

  “Look Jane,” she cut me off with another sharp lashing of her tongue. “I’m going to be honest with you, because believe it or not, I do want to help you, even if you don't want to help yourself.”

  My mouth dropped in an effort to talk, but she raised her hand to silence me.

  “You, are what we in the industry call fucked.” She didn't mince her words. “You were found in your home with Mr Hellström’s body, the weapon and DNA evidence in just about every room of your apartment. New evidence has emerged of your whereabouts the night that Leon died, and Barry’s death has produced questions that lead to you.”

  She sighed and straightened up as if embarrassed that she showed an ounce of humanity. “Our only defence, your only defence, is to plead insanity.”

  “What?” my voice faltered even as my body began to shake.

  “Look Jane.” There was her teacher to a stupid kid again. “When they found you, you insisted that Gabriel did it.” Her eyebrows rose in both question and accusation. “And more than a few people have heard you mention his name, but Jane, you do realise he is a fictional character, don’t you? He isn’t real?”

  I let her words sink in even as he sat on the edge of the bed and gave me an innocent look. I ignored him, the hot anger battling the sinking fear. He did this, all of this, and they think it was me.

  Helen packed her papers into her case and stood up. “We will set up another meeting once you are released from hospital and we can talk about strategy. It seems that you will be released in the next few days. You will be taken from here to the local police station and be booked. Then they will take you downstairs where you will be put in a cell. Make sure you inform me and we can get proceedings ready for your bail.” She waited just long enough to let me murmur or nod then turned around and left the room.

  When the door closed behind her, I shot Gabriel a seething look. “You hurt them? It was you?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I am talking about Jane. Search your memories. Who am I? Who are you?”

  “I want you to leave.”

  “Jane.” He took a step toward the bed.

  “Leave Gabriel, I don’t want to see you.”

  “Jane. Janey, I did this all for you, for us.”

  “No.”

  “I love you.”

  “Go away.”

  “Jane.”

  “JUST LEAVE.” I must have screamed it because the door flew open and the guard burst into the room.

  “What’s going on here?” he looked at me suspicion clouding his features.

  “Nothing.” I fell back into the bed scanning the room. Gabriel was gone.

  I pulled the cover over my head while the officer scoured the room. When he had discovered no one, he walked out reminding me to keep it down.

  Neither Gabriel nor Helen returned after their last visit. The oppressive hospital room became smaller, the walls pushed against me as I was confined to the bed. My body ached and wrists screamed with discomfort while I was bound to the bed. All I wanted to do was get out, get up, be done with it all.

  The end was coming. I just didn’t know how fast.

  The fresh air was cool and tinged with regret. The taller of the two policemen that had been watching over me, wheeled me out to the car park. The light of morning was almost too bright, and I sheltered my eyes. The wheelchair came to as top in front of an unmarked police car. The barrel-shaped officer held my door open and I climbed in, he indicated that I should fasten my seat belt and I obliged. It was a new sensation not having my wrists bound. I followed every instruction and order just to retain the use of my hands. The door slammed and the car shook as the two men climbed into their seats.

  The police car smelled like burned cigarettes and vomit. I fought the urge to gag despite the bile rising in my throat. The two men in the front spoke about me as if I wasn't even there, I heard the word crazy and batshit floating around while my head lolled against the window taking in the city-scape as we neared the police station.

  The day blurred into long corridors and slamming cell doors, into Clarice’s panicked voice and Helen’s unphased one, into cold bare walls and clanging metal.

  My bail was served and paid for and for a moment I was free again. But not really. chains of grief and fear clung to my heart and weighed me down.

  I was allowed to return home. It didn’t feel like my home anymore.

  Yellow crime scene tape stuck to my door leering at me. I pushed past it and scoured my apartment. My stomach coiled at the scene. Black fingertip marks were smeared on almost every surface, the floor was scuffed and scattered with overturned furniture, and dried black blood pooled in spots along my floor.

  Was it mine? Was it Gabriel’s? Was it…? I didn’t want to think of his name.

  I switched on my computer and emailed Clarice, she had been waiting patiently. I sent her the final book in the Guarding Gabriel series. It was my best work, epic, thrilling, heart wrenching, tear jerking finale. I knew the fans would love it. I turned my computer off, hoping it wasn’t for the last time and gathered a few possessions. Clothes, some books, my toothbrush. I wasn’t coming back. As I stepped towards the elevator, I suddenly felt like the same Jane that met Girsh on that rainy morning. Alone, with no home and a box full of a few possessions. I held the tears that welled in my eyes long enough to make it to Helen’s waiting car. As we pulled away, I didn’t look back.

  2007

  I walked the media gauntlet on the way in to court. Despite all the police’s ‘efforts,’ the media managed to find me at the back ‘secret entrance’. They had labelled me the Fallen Angel. Probably had something to do with Gabriel’s name. I shielded my face from the bright flashes that dazzled me as strong arms pulled me along to the safety of a closed door.

  It wasn’t the trial of the century, but, with Clarice, the old fox timed my latest release with the start of my court case. Book sales went berserk. Not only did the first print run almost sell out globally in a week, but readers were buying the very first book of the series. Guarding Gabriel was suddenly flying off the shelves. Despite their resentments, the publishing house was suddenly very happy with me again.

  The courtroom was packed as the prosecution began their case against me. To them I was a piece of cloth, and strand by strand they were going to unravel me.

  They started with Björn. Dissecting and gauging our relationship in front of everyone. Taking something beautiful and pure and dirtying it with ugly words.

  The list of witnesses was long. An endless line-up of officers and experts. Each, in turn, they pointed fingers at me and described how they found me that night, the blood, the knife the screaming. They used words like trajectory and blood splatter, incoherent babble and Gabriel. Why did they use his name?

  I didn’t want to listen. Instead, I watched him watching me.

  Gabriel.

  He leaned in the far corner. His dark eyes resting on me. He didn't come close and I didn't want him to, but every day as I sat shrinking into my chair, I could feel his anger grow dimmer. Though I didn't want to admit that I needed him, he was my only friend.

  Their final witness for Björn’s case was Maja, his twin sister.

  When she walked into the courtroom I gasped. The resemblance obvious and painful, but where Björn’s eyes looked at me with desire and love, her ice-c
old hatred froze me in my seat. She was his equal in every way. Her powerful stride and intelligent words, the way she flicked her hair in the same way he used to, and how her accent rolled in the same melodic way that his did. I wondered if she was as strong as him in bed too. Would she bite my nipples as hard or taste my wet pussy? I wondered what it would feel like to touch her soft skin and run my hands through her hair. If only she didn’t look at me with so much loathing, I might have asked her to come home with me, to look at her, talk to her, feel her. To remind me of him.

  When she finished her testimony, she stormed out and didn’t give me a backwards glance.

  In its third week, the trail seemed to be dragging forever. I had moved into a hotel room unable to live in my apartment. Björn covered every surface of it, figuratively and literally. The hotel room was near the courtroom. I stood at the window relishing the cold city air and trickles of city noise that filtered through the window. I was lonely. How had I fallen so far? So fast? My eyes fell on the giant billboard overhanging the highway. Even from this distance, I could see Gabriel’s perfect face glowing at me. He smirked at me even as he held Mia.

  The week that they started talking about Leon I fished out the red lingerie he had given me. I wore it every day. It was like feeling his hands on me. Like he was right there with me. Gabriel sat across the courtroom from me, always smiling, always supportive, sometimes he would even hold my hand as I cried through the terrible things they said. None of that was true.

  Another group of experts gave testimonies. My mouth hung open as they produced evidence and proof of my alleged misdeeds.

  Despite all their accusations, I loved Leon. I would have never cut the brakes in his car. I had no knowledge of cars or how they work.

  The witnesses presented my research history. Searches that had been wiped from my computer’s memory and were recovered by the forensic team. I had no recollection of these. Helen did her best to dispute facts, I was a writer after all, but facts were facts, and despite her prestigious law degree, being a writer didn't seem to float as a defence.

  When Scott came to court, he glared at me with angry disappointed eyes. A contrast to the sad, needy eyes at his brother’s funeral. His anger made him seem bigger, broader, unruly, almost attractive. Maybe that's what he was always missing, some fucking emotion. He didn’t testify, we hadn’t really spoken in years, but Sammy did.

  My stomach rolled as she sauntered into the courtroom. Even in a full body suit, she could command everyone’s attention. I tried to catch her eye implore her to think of what she was doing and why, but she didn't look at me. Not even once. That hurt more than the seething, angry looks I had received up until then. It was a cold knife in my heart all over again.

  Sammy’s testimony was short. She spoke of our single phone call, the one where she told me about Leon. The one when I pushed Gabriel away. The one that crushed my soul, and here she was all over again ripping that wound open, and mocking my grief by telling the world I was talking to an imaginary man.

  My heart cracked a little more, the wedge piercing it constructed of anger and disappointment.

  Barry was the hardest. Not because I loved him or he meant anything to me. We never got there, never got a chance to see what we might have been. It was just too graphic, too disturbing. Too unbelievable.

  But possibly worse, it was the horrified look in the jury’s eyes. The disbelief. How they bought everything the investigators fed them.

  The so-called experts were back explaining how I had dismembered him and hidden him in the basement. How in a luminol test of number 19, blood had been found, pooled and smeared on my walls. How I had destroyed his phone, and how in a final act of cruelty I shoved a butt plug in his ass.

  I wish I could have stood up and screamed at them to just look at me. How could they see me as this murderess that carried body parts down to the basement? At some stage, I would tell them Barry enjoyed the butt plug up his ass, but I think everyone stopped listening by then.

  Despite the gore, and ugliness of the weeks that fell into one another in endless talks and testimonies, Grish was always there. A solemn quiet figure in the back. A sentinel of stoic support. Non-judgemental and worried, like a father who is deeply disappointed but wants to tell their kids he would be there no matter what.

  I was his no matter what.

  Until Rebecca.

  Rebecca.

  It took me a long moment to remember her mousy face. The last time I saw it, it had a dick in its mouth.

  Josh’s dick.

  On that day, her hair wasn’t wound tight into a serious bun and her body wasn’t covered in a thick body tight sweater. Josh’s fingers were twisted in her hair, it was clumped around her face with sweat, her boobs bounced up and down slapping against one another, as Josh’s hand guided her head while she sucked him off.

  What the fuck was she doing here?

  “State your full name for the record.” The scrawny balding prosecutor smiled at her. I wondered if maybe she sucked his cock too.

  “Rebecca Bradshaw.”

  “Rebecca.” The prosecutor’s voice sounded whiny. “How do you know the defendant?”

  “I don’t really know her.”

  “Oh?” a theatrical sound followed by extreme over-exaggerated eyebrow raise. “Well would you like to tell the court how you know the defendant?”

  “We dated the same man.”

  I gaffed. Dated. She fucked my boyfriend. A murmur went up in the court and died down.

  “What was his name?”

  “Josh Rogers.”

  “And how did you meet Mr. Rogers?”

  “At a club one night. We were both drinking alone, he came over and we started talking.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we got on so well that we met a number of other times.”

  “And were you aware that he was in a relationship with another woman?”

  “Not at first, but after a while, yes.” Biatch! I smiled in victory as the court burst into another judgemental murmur.

  “Could you tell the court how you found out about her?”

  “He told me.”

  “And you chose to remain with this man?”

  “Yes.” She squared her shoulders as if daring anyone to question her decision to sleep with a man in a relationship. For once, all eyes were not on me.

  “Did he end things with her?”

  “No. She caught us together.”

  I could feel that she was not going to give more detail and that the prosecutor would sail right over the finer details.

  “You were sucking his cock on your knees,” I shouted at her as the court erupted into laughter and talk. Her face became the colour of ripe strawberries and the judge smashed his gavel on its wooden disc threatening to throw me out should I open my mouth again. There was no need. I did what I needed to do.

  “So,” the prosecutor tried to salvage his witness. “You were in a sexual relationship with Mr. Rogers?”

  Rebecca cleared her throat. “Yes.”

  “What happened after she caught you together?”

  “She lost her shit completely. She started yelling and throwing things, smashing all his stuff. She went completely insane.”

  “Did she threaten you?”

  “She threatened Josh. She told him he better not leave her. She reminded him that he told her that he loved her,” Rebecca sniggered. “She turned into a snivelling pathetic mess. Josh was pissed. He tried to break up with her a few times, but she always turned into a manipulative little girl that guilted him into staying.” My mouth twitched as I tried to set her alight with my eyes. Lies!

  “He promised me that he would get rid of her, so maybe the fact she caught us together was a blessing in disguise, the push she needed to set him free.”

  “Tell us what happened next.”

  “He told me to leave. He promised he would sort things out with her, and that we would be together after.”

  “Is that wha
t happened?”

  “No.”

  “What did happen then Miss. Bradshaw?”

  “Josh called me a few hours later. He said that he and Alison had broken up and that he wanted to meet up the following day to pick up where we left off.” Her cheeks burned bright pink.

  “Miss Bradshaw, who is Alison?”

  “That woman over there.” She pointed right at me. “When Josh was dating her, she was going by Alison Wynters.”

  The courtroom erupted for a third time. I could feel all eyes shift to me. I didn’t see the big deal, people changed names all the time.

  “Miss Bradshaw, did you meet Josh the next day?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  I rolled my eyes. She said no already. Move on.

  “Tell us what happened.”

  “He disappeared.” Another low murmur, but this time there was tension, anticipation, I could almost hear the crowd in the court slide to the edge of their seats.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He didn’t call me the next day, or the day after that. I went to his apartment and knocked. He didn’t answer. I got his spare key and went inside. Most of the stuff from the night she caught us was cleaned up. Some of his clothes were missing, his favourite Led Zeppelin singlet and some other metal shirts, also a tie-dyed blue and purple sheet that he had as a wall hanging, but that was it, the rest of his stuff was left behind. His phone and wallet were gone.”

  “That’s a very specific inventory, did you spend much time going through his stuff?”

  “I didn’t need to, these shirts were hung in a display rack, it was his concert collection, merch he had bought or clothes he wore only for concerts, they were ripped from moshing and dirty from mud, and stank of beer, he never washed them, it was his pride and joy. It was disgusting if you ask me, but I guess it was his thing.”

  I could feel the air snap as she mentioned the sheet, the shirt, the specifics. From the corner of my eye, I saw Grish as he stood and slunk away silently from the courtroom. That was the last time I saw him. Maybe some wounds are too hard to heal and maybe I had cut him too deeply.