The Stairwell

by M. M. Silva

  That took a minute to sink in, and when it did, I thought I might vomit. “The victim?”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled.

  “Viciously attacked? Unjustly accused? By me? He’s going to tell the world what I did to her? Me? To her?”

  He didn’t respond, just cleared his throat like people do when they’re tremendously uncomfortable.

  “Burns, tell me this is a really bad joke. Tell me this is you just being a dick because I screwed up in that office, and we can go laugh about it over a beer when I’m back on my feet.”

  “I wish I could, kid. It’s kind of looking bad; I’m not gonna bullshit you.”

  “Bad for me?” I squeaked. I was feeling tremendously self-absorbed at the moment, but the situation merited it.

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “Trust me when I say that telling you this is the last thing I want to be doing right now, but you need to be ready for the shit-storm that’s likely headed your way.” Another pause. “And since you brought it up, yes, I’m doing this despite the fact you royally screwed things up by going in that office.”

  “She’d have bolted if I hadn’t gone in there, so I’m done apologizing.” Looking down at my cast, I said, “I’m gonna be paying for it for months, too.”

  “Rationalize all you want. Once you’re out of this mess and walking again, I’m going to whip your skinny ass and put you back on crutches.”

  Out of this mess? Had the world gone crazy?

  Colin’s voice softened. “I’m just kidding, Maloney. I wish I’d been the one who found her. I’ve got quite a few pounds on you; I would have shut her down quickly. That damn fall down the stairs is getting her all kinds of sympathy.”

  “That’s great. She gets sympathy, and I’m suddenly the bad guy. So tell me what I’m up against,” I said, hating the sound of resignation in my own voice.

  “Okay, it’s not me saying it, and it’s not—”

  “I got it,” I said impatiently. “Your disclaimer is duly noted. Tell me what the horrible bad other people who most certainly aren’t you are saying about me.”

  He sighed heavily. “Okay…if you just go with the facts, you killed a guy recently.”

  I felt like he’d sucker-punched me in the stomach, and I couldn’t catch my breath. My reputation was suddenly on trial. My credibility was in question. “Burns, the cops all know what happened—”

  “With your sister as the only eyewitness,” he interrupted.

  That stung. “My sister is an attorney, an officer of the court, Detective. She wouldn’t lie for anyone, especially me. She hates me right now.”

  “I’m just saying…to some people, that looks pretty bad.”

  “Well, some people can go fuck themselves.”

  “Responses like that aren’t going to get you any brownie points.” He plowed on. “So then you’ve got to look at the facts with you and Melanie. You were with her earlier in the year when all that shit went down at the abandoned house. But it was just you and her—”

  “My word against hers is what you’re telling me,” I interrupted, not wanting to hear his long, drawn-out, blathering explanation.

  He hesitated. “Exactly that, yes. And you didn’t see her kill Darrin, did you?”

  I remained silent. I simply could not process this.

  “And you didn’t see her kill that homeless woman.” He didn’t ask me this time; he just stated what we both knew. “You weren’t an eyewitness. There were no eyewitnesses to any of the claims you’ve brought against her.”

  “Burns, she told me all the shit she did. She almost bragged about the people she’d killed, all the planning she’d done—”

  “Did you have a recorder going at the time?”

  He was pissing me off. “When I had the gun to my head? When I was being held hostage in a truck that wasn’t mine? No, Colin! I didn’t whip out a fucking recorder. For someone who claims to be my friend, you sound an awful lot like a cop right now.”

  “I am both your friend and a cop. I know you’re shocked, but believe me, I’m putting this lightly compared to what some others are saying.”

  “She told me,” I whispered. “She murdered those people. And she’s coming after Vic.”

  “Yep, according to you, kid.”

  My anger flared again. “Yeah, according to me! I’m not the murderer here. I’m not the psychopath who’s killed countless people. What about her mom who she burned up? What about the guy she dumped in Boston Harbor? What about poor Bobby? She shot him in bed, for God’s sake.” I couldn’t help the hysteria in my voice.

  Colin remained nonplussed. “Again, you’ve got evidence for all of those? Heck, do you have evidence for even one of those?”

  “Whose side are you on?” I pleaded. “Colin, she can’t be the victim here. She would have killed me. She’s killed people in cold blood. She pre-meditated for years while her sick brain rotted away. She’s a monster. She killed people, and then she ran away.”

  “She claims she ran because she was scared of you.”

  That was it. My brain shut down.

  “Colin, stop talking. My mind is too full to process one more miniscule grain of this crap.” I reached over and rang the little bell that was propped on the end table beside my perch.

  “Tell me I didn’t just hear what I thought I heard,” Burns chirped.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” I insisted as Doob rushed into the room, still on the phone. “Diet Coke, please,” I mouthed at him, and he dutifully delivered one and then went back to his bedroom.

  “Maloney—”

  “We’ll call you back in a little bit,” I said and disconnected.

  CHAPTER 41

  AFTER I HUNG UP ON COLIN, I STARED AT THE WALL FOR quite some time. Literally stared at the wall. I’m not usually a fan of wallpaper, but Doob’s brownish-gold ornate curlicue design had me staring at it like an infant in a crib mesmerized by a mobile toy dangling over her head.

  What in the hell was this world coming to if Melanie was viewed as the victim and me the aggressor, the criminal?

  Doob resurfaced about twenty minutes later. He looked at me and then at the wall—trying to see what I was so fascinated with—then back at me. “You look like hell, Meg. Do you want me to make you something?”

  I shook my head.

  In one hand he held his laptop; he perched his free hand on his hip.

  “Did you finish your Diet Coke?”

  I nodded.

  “You want another one?”

  “Please.” He went into the kitchen and came back with a two-liter and a glass full of ice. “It saves me time if I hydrate you in bulk.”

  I gave him a weak smile. “Well, time is of the essence. We’re supposed to call Burns back.”

  “True dat,” Doob said and then did some weird hand gesture. “That’s me being gangsta. Did it scare you?”

  “I’m shaking in my cast,” I sighed. “Let’s call Burns and get this over with. I guarantee we’ll be waking him.”

  “Sissy,” Doob said and then quickly held up a hand. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

  I smiled. “Before we call, let me switch gears for a second. Did you find out when Ava’s house was paid off?”

  Doob cracked his knuckles. “Through no small feat of brilliance, I was able to determine Ava’s house was paid off in one large sum three months after Rusty was locked up. She also made a bank deposit of ten thousand dollars each year on the anniversary date of his incarceration. Might make for some nice kitchen renovations,” he mused.

  “Hunh. Seems Mr. Malcolm Gage Johnson was paying hush money. The bad guys seem to be winning the wars at this point,” I said miserably.

  “Meg, I don’t know what all Colin told you, but Melanie’s not going to get away with anything. She and her lawyer are grasping at straws.”

  I shrugged. “What’s incomprehensible is she’s trying to turn the tables on me, but that’s not my main concern. I’m just worr
ied there’s going to be enough reasonable doubt in the case against Melanie. Our society is a little bit nuts right now. She could get away with everything.”

  Doob’s face fell. “That would be bad.”

  “Understatement of the year.”

  My ring tone blared, and I was surprised when I saw it was Burns. Putting him on speakerphone, I asked, “Did you miss us, Detective?”

  “Melanie’s been shot.”

  CHAPTER 42

  “WHAT?” I SCREAMED AS DOOB COUGHED UP HIS mouthful of potato chips.

  “I can’t believe it, either. My phone started blowing up twenty minutes ago. She got shot. She’s in surgery right now.”

  “She’s in a hospital, Burns! She has a policeman outside her door. How could someone just walk in and shoot her?”

  “They didn’t. Someone shot her right through her hospital window from the parking garage across the street. It hit her in the stomach, and the nurses came in and found her when her monitors started going nuts.”

  “The window didn’t break? The cop didn’t hear anything?”

  “Did you pay any attention in physics, Maloney?”

  “Hey, I knew about the fermentation in the tank that caused the great molasses flood.”

  “The what? Don’t answer that, I don’t have time. Anyway, it wasn’t a machine gun that would have blown out the window. I don’t have all the particulars, but it must have been almost like a sniper shot. I’m heading over there now; I just wanted to let you know. And Doob?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you have to tie her up and gag her; if you have to pour pain pills down her throat; if you have to lock her in a room; if you have to rupture her other Achilles, keep that one-legged snoop at your apartment. Do not, I repeat, do not let her come down here. I will keep you guys updated as I can.”

  “I’m right here, and I don’t appreciate—,” I said, but he was already gone. I looked at Doob. “If you even try to tie me up, you will have a crutch so far up your—”

  “Like I’d try,” Doob interrupted. “I don’t have a death wish. But he’s right about us not going down there. You aren’t exactly coordinated on those crutches here, let alone getting around at a hospital crime scene. Why don’t you try to get a little sleep? He’ll call us later.” Doob grabbed my cell phone and put it in his pocket. “Sleep,” he ordered and pointed toward my temporary bedroom.

  “You suck,” I said as I stood with the help of my crutches and shambled away.

  “You’re welcome,” he called after me.

  Going to bed was a crap idea. Doob’s a bully. Instead of staring at the wallpaper, I now stared at the ceiling. As if sleep would come. Melanie had been shot. How did I feel about that? I couldn’t deny I thought the world would be a better place without her, but I always pictured myself as the one bringing her down. But would I kill her? Could I kill her? Was it better this way? Was it better I wasn’t the one pulling the trigger? I didn’t know if I wanted her to live or die.

  So what type of person did that make me?

  Despite my conviction I wouldn’t sleep, Doob knocked on my door at about five o’clock in the morning. “Rise and shine, my pissy patient. Burns has some news. Should I bring your phone in so you don’t have to get up?”

  I flipped on the bedside lamp and waved him in. “Yeah, thanks,” I said with a raspy voice.

  We learned Melanie was in critical condition after surgery. Burns had been right. A sniper shot from the parking garage across the street. The police assumed the shooter went for her mid-section because he or she didn’t have a clear shot at Melanie’s head or upper body due to hospital monitors blocking her. Both her legs were in casts and under the covers, and a leg wound probably wouldn’t have been as severe as a shot to the stomach, so they concluded that was the logic in the shooter’s head. They were now trying to gather evidence at the parking garage, but so far they’d come up with nothing other than the thought the sniper left on foot because no cars had exited the garage within the hour window after the time of the shooting. They didn’t have cameras at all of the pedestrian exits, so someone could have easily gone down the stairwell and vanished into the dark, cold night.

  “Are the blinds usually open in a hospital?” I asked.

  “I dunno. Why?”

  “I’m just wondering if they’re typically open, or if someone at the hospital made sure they were open. If that’s the case, you could have an accomplice right there in the hospital. Or it could have been a visitor, if she had any.”

  “Good point, Maloney. I didn’t ask, but I’ll look into it. You now know all I know at this point, kids. Including the fact that Bragginnini is going nuts, claiming he’s going to sue everyone from the Boston PD to the owner of the parking garage to Santa Claus.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I can only imagine. If she was getting some sympathy votes before, it’ll get even worse now.”

  “Tru dat,” Doob said.

  “Enough with the gangsta,” I replied.

  “I’ll call you guys later. Take care of that leg, Maloney.” Burns disconnected and left us to our thoughts.

  Doob looked at me. “Time to get ready for prison, princess.”

  CHAPTER 43

  LATER THAT DAY, I FOUND MYSELF OUTSIDE THE STATE PRISON located in Cranston, Rhode Island. Doob, my dutiful chauffeur, helped me to the entrance but then retreated to the car as previously agreed upon. Doob and prisons don’t exactly mesh. Plus, he wanted to stay in the car with Sampson.

  True to his word, Gus had expedited the requisite channels, but that didn’t get me out of the rigamarole one has to go through in order to get through the door. It was extra-fun while on crutches, and evidently they thought I’d smuggled a blow torch in under my cast. The guard who frisked me was the size of a baby whale, with red hair, ruddy skin, and foul breath. Fairly certain I was supposed to have a woman handle me, I wanted to tell him to fuck off and go find himself a mint, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d pissed me off. He seemed to get a little too familiar when searching certain parts of my person, but I managed to stay mum. After all, I was on this man’s turf, and he easily had a hundred pounds on me, along with an attitude that was begging me to try something. I reluctantly remained docile, and told myself a perverted guard would be a small price to pay if I solved this case once and for all. The man instructed me to sign a form, and I couldn’t resist a little jab before moving on to the visitor’s room.

  “I should have at least gotten dinner for that,” I quipped. To my surprise, the guard smiled menacingly, and I noticed one of his front teeth had a huge gold cap on it. His breath had probably eaten away all of the enamel on the original tooth. One day he’d have an entire mouth of glimmering gold teeth. Gross.

  “I’m on vacation next week. Maybe we can arrange that, Miss Maloney.”

  A shiver ran down my spine. This dude was something straight out of Deliverance, and I actually looked forward to meeting a criminal after dealing with Big Red.

  When I visited Vic in prison the previous March, I drove home in silence, thinking about our discussion the entire time. I found myself doing that again today. Evidently prison visits put me in a reflective mood. I replayed the visit as if watching it on television.

  Rusty McGraw was a downtrodden, sad man, who looked to be in his mid-seventies instead of in his forties. He said—rather mouthed—exactly one word during my visit, but this was an issue of quality over quantity.

  I’d introduced myself as a friend of the new owner of the home, and when I told Rusty Jeff was concerned about the way Charlie had died, Rusty seemed intrigued. That is to say his mouth twitched. However, the only thing Rusty would confirm was that Charlie had visited him the day before he died. He did this by nodding when I questioned him about it.

  I went on to ask him if he knew the name Malcolm Gage Johnson, and again, he nodded slightly and his mouth twitched. But this time it was like he made a full circle with his closed lips, which was the most emotion I
’d seen from him to that point.

  “If Malcolm had anything to do with you being in here, you could have said something. You could still say something,” I gently prodded. He cast his eyes downward, and I made out just a barely perceptible shake of his head. There was something more there, but I wasn’t going to get it out of him in one visit when it had been buried in him for a couple of decades.

  So I moved on. Through my inquiries and Rusty’s nodding or shaking his head, I managed to learn quite a bit. It was kind of refreshing I could glean so much from a completely one-sided conversation. Rusty had learned of Charlie’s death from the newspaper and nodded that Charlie didn’t deserve what happened. Agreeing with him, I then suggested Charlie might have been looking for something, but I didn’t mention the coins. I knew the guards were listening and didn’t want to get thrown out. When Rusty cocked his head at my comment, I shrugged and explained Charlie might have been looking for something important that needed to be retrieved before the new owner took occupancy. I raised my eyebrows to heights previously unscaled, in my own non-verbal plea for some information, but Rusty didn’t budge.

  Thinking he might want to know about the new owner of the home, I told this stranger everything I knew about Jeff: he grew up with a single mom who’d always worked two jobs to make rent, his love for books that developed his passion for school even as a kid, his college years and his sports prowess, his lottery winnings, his success with his security company, anything and everything I could think of to show this man Jeff was a sincere person trying to figure out what had happened in his home. As I babbled on, I realized my speech would have been more effective if Jeff had actually come along with me. Maybe next time.

  During my ramblings, Big Red had come over and gruffly told me to wrap it up. Wasn’t he supposed to be working the entrance of the prison? Was he following me? Creepy.

  Rusty had stared at Big Red with loathing, and I realized this man might never have a visitor again in his lifetime. Knowing my time was up and I’d accomplished jack shit, I heaved a sigh and put my head down. But if I felt defeated, I could only imagine Rusty’s life. Compelled to say something reassuring to him, I looked back up.