Pontiff (A Thriller)
Page 45
I never took the elevator. You can avoid being seen if you pass someone on the stairs; it's impossible in an elevator. I took out my keys and started looking for the one I wanted. By the time I reached the third floor, I had found it. The door was there in front of me. My heart was pounding—from racing up the stairs; from the tension of the coming confrontation. I put the key into the lock, and that's when I knew that something was wrong.
The wood around the lock had been splintered and gouged, as if someone had attacked it with a hammer. I tried the knob; the door was locked. I turned the key, and the door swung open.
"Amanda?" I called out, closing the door behind me.
No answer. I moved into the living room. My heart sank. The place had been ransacked: books and tapes and compact disks pulled off shelves, papers scattered on the rug, the glass coffee table upended. A spider plant lay on its side, its pot cracked, dirt trailing from it like blood from a wound. "Amanda?" I whispered, a prayer now: She wasn't here; she was at a friend's place; she was at the police station. "Amanda?"
On the floor next to the bookshelves I saw several large shards of glass. It took me a moment to recognize them; they were the remains of her crystal ball. "I wish I knew where all this was going to end up," she had said to me once, smiling wistfully. "I wish I had a crystal ball I could look into and see the future." So I had bought one for her. A joke. It was the only present I had ever given her. It had never done her much good, and now, shattered into a dozen pieces, it looked more useless than ever.
I wanted to run away. I wanted to rewind the tape and start over again. This wasn't it. The scene was supposed to be entirely different. She should be standing here, beautiful, frightened, apologetic. She had made a mistake. She could explain everything. Nothing for me to worry about.
But my will wasn't strong enough to change reality, and I knew that running away would only make things worse. So I forced myself to move through the apartment, pleading with God to make it empty.
Her bedroom seemed untouched. So was the bathroom. The little second bedroom she used for an office was a mess; the desk drawers were all open, and her floppy disks were scattered on the floor like shingles ripped from a roof by a hurricane. But her computer was on, humming softly in the silence. On the screen, white words against a black background. I stepped into the room and read the words:
she had to die she had to die she had to die she had to die she had to die she had to die she had to die she had to die she had to die she had to die she had to die she...
They swam in my vision; they merged and twisted as I stared at them and tried to change their meaning. They are only words, I thought. Words can lie. Or they can just be words, sound without content, a speech to nice Republican ladies.
One last room.
I walked past the words and into the kitchen, and that's where I found her.
She was sprawled on the black tile floor. Her white shirt was torn and bloody; her eyes were open, and they stared unblinking at the ceiling. They seemed amazed that this was the last thing they would see. I reached down and touched her wrist; she was cold.
I looked around wildly. Was her murderer lying in wait for me as well? But I had searched already; I was alone. I closed her eyes, and then I closed my own, slumping down beside her on the floor. The apartment, the city were silent; the only sounds were the hum of the computer in the next room and the thumping of my heart. She was cold. She was dead.
Amanda.
At that moment I would have given back everything I had accomplished, everything I had achieved, for Amanda to be alive again.
But it wasn't going to happen. My life ticked inexorably onward, and gradually my grief yielded to the pressures of the moment. After a while I forced myself to open my eyes. I haven't been to a great many crime scenes in my life, but I'm not unfamiliar with murder. I tried to look at Amanda clinically. No rigor mortis, so she'd been dead less than eight hours. On the floor, the bottom of her arm was purplish from the blood settling there, so lividity had started. That meant she'd been dead at least a couple of hours.
Someone had murdered Amanda in the late afternoon.
And I thought: Exact time of death is going to be important.
Her clothes were intact, except for where she had been stabbed. At least she hadn't been raped, thank God. There was a bruise on her right forearm—where her attacker had held her? There were cuts on her hands and arms—where she had tried to defend herself?
On the floor near the sink I saw a kitchen knife, its blade dark with dried blood. I recalled using that knife to chop celery one evening.
Oh, Lord, I thought: fingerprints. And then the pressures started to overwhelm me. I had to do something. I was in terrible trouble.
I crawled over to the knife. I took out my handkerchief and wiped the handle—
—and immediately felt stupid and evil. It had been months since I had used the knife. My fingerprints couldn't possibly have been on it. What mattered more: saving my career or finding out who had murdered Amanda?
But then I realized that finding out who had murdered Amanda was just as likely to end my career as having my fingerprints on the knife. This murder couldn't be a coincidence.
So what should I do? Run away? Go outside and howl in the fog? I couldn't think of anything that would help. I don't deserve any credit for it, but finally I decided to do what civilization had taught me to do. I went into the bedroom and called the police.
I gave the dispatcher the address and told her there had been a murder. She asked for my name, and I gave that to her as well. She didn't seem surprised. There are plenty of James O'Connors in Boston.
Then, continuing to be responsible, I called Harold White. No answer. I tried Roger Simmons next. He was home. "Hi, Roger. Jim."
"Jim, how are you? What can I—"
"I'm at a murder scene, Roger. I discovered the body. I just called the police. They haven't arrived yet."
"Jesus Christ," he whispered.
"I need you," I said. I gave him the address.
"Jim," he said, "I'm not sure I'm the person you want. You know I haven't done criminal in—"
"That's okay. Between the two of us it'll all come back. And get hold of Harold if you can. He isn't answering."
"All right, but—"
I hung up. I didn't feel like chatting with Roger.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked around. Lights were on, I noticed: in the living room, here in the bedroom. Did that mean she had been alive into the evening? The time of death matters.
But it had been foggy all day, and the apartment was dark anyway, so—
So what? Amanda was dead.
I looked down at the black comforter on the bed. Black comforter, black rugs, white walls. "Why is everything black and white?" I asked her the first time I saw her apartment. I was nervous; I needed to talk.
"I have no style," she said. "Decorating's easier if you stick to black and white."
I didn't believe her. She oozed style. "I think it's because you're a journalist," I said. "Journalists like extremes. Good guys and bad guys. Saints and sinners."
"All right," she said. "Have it your way."
"So am I a good guy or a bad guy?" I persisted.
And then she smiled at me. That sensuous, knowing smile, the smile of a prom queen watching the gawky boy try to ask her for a dance. "I don't know," she said. "But I intend to find out."
The words were filled with menace in the remembering. I thought of her white shirt, now stained red. I thought of her white skin turning purple against the black floor. I heard sirens.
I thought of what I had come here to find out. Too late for that now. If it was here, hidden somewhere in the computer or the pile of floppy disks, I was ruined. But I thought: At least I can't let them find out we were lovers.
We had been careful, I knew. No presents, no mementos. No risks. Was there anything—
Yes. A Polaroid snapshot we had taken with a timer one night after a bottle of
wine: the two of us kissing openmouthed on the edge of the bed. Where I was sitting now. We didn't stop kissing when the flash went off and the camera spat out the photo. Afterward I suggested that we burn it, but she refused. "I need something to remind me of you when you're not here," she insisted. Were those words another lie? I hadn't thought so at the time. She kissed me again, and I didn't object when she kept the photo.
She had put it in the drawer of her night table, beneath her birth control pills. Could it still be there? Perhaps she had thrown it away in anger or despair; more likely she was saving it for evidence. I opened the drawer. The pills were where I remembered them; I picked them up, and there was the photograph. I stuck it in my pocket without looking at it. And then I held my head in my hands and started to cry for the first time since I was twelve years old.
Senator
A Novel
by
Richard Bowker
~
To purchase
Senator
from your favorite eBook Retailer,
visit Richard Bowker's eBook Discovery Author Page
www.ebookdiscovery.com/RichardBowker
~
Discover more with
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Page forward and complete your journey
with an excerpt from
SUMMIT
The Psychic Thriller Series
Book One
Excerpt from
Summit
The Psychic Thriller Series
Book One
by
Richard Bowker
Dieter Schmidt was glad to be going home. He despised Russia and he despised Russians, and three years was long enough.
There was not a season here that did not make him miss Germany. It was spring now, and Russia was turning to mud. The people were starting to go outside hatless and coatless, and he was forced to see more of their doughy white skin, their thick, shapeless bodies, their ill-fitting suits and faded dresses. In the parks, he knew, the more adventurous of the women would be sunbathing in their underwear, a custom that almost made him sick with revulsion. Who could find these women attractive, with their steel teeth and their cheaply dyed hair and their square, sullen faces that looked middle-aged at thirty? Who could find this gray city attractive, with its absurdly outsized monuments and endless, dreary high-rise apartment buildings? Who would want to live through the fierce cold and the fierce heat, under the endless, impudent stares of people who wanted only to destroy your nation?
He hurried past an orange-vested babushka sweeping the sidewalk and thought of home, of bright blond frauleins and neon signs and restaurants that really had everything listed on the menu—of being able to write and speak without worrying about the enemy....
Not exactly, of course. He would still be in the fight. But he would be home, fighting an enemy for whom he had a little more understanding and sympathy. It could only be better.
Reasonably sure that no one was following him, he turned off Gorky Street toward the address that had been given him. He wasn't home yet, unfortunately, and there was still business left here in Moscow.
* * *
"He's on his way," Yuri announced. He sat in a corner of the room, wearing headphones and smoking a Belomorkanal.
Colonel Rylev nodded and turned to Professor Trofimov. "Ready?" he asked.
"Of course, of course," Trofimov replied, wiping his hands on his white lab coat.
They both turned to look at the woman.
* * *
She lies alone in darkness, waiting. Waiting to dream. Her mind is empty now except for one thing: terror.
Dreams can kill. And worse.
And the dream is about to begin.
* * *
Pavel Fedorchuk was waiting for the knock on the door. He was a small man, with jet black hair and eyes that were in constant motion. He was wearing a crisp new pair of Wrangler jeans and a sweatshirt that said Property of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary Swim Team. A Duran Duran album was playing on his stereo. He was smoking a Marlboro; the ashtray on the table in front of him was overflowing..There was a half-empty bottle of vodka and a loaf of black bread next to the ashtray.
When the knock came, he promptly stubbed out the cigarette and went to open the door. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a bullet wound received in an ambush outside Kabul. "Coming," he muttered.
Dieter Schmidt was in the corridor, looking unhappy. He walked inside without a word, and Fedorchuk quickly closed the door behind him.
Schmidt looked around. The apartment was in darkness, except for one bare light over the table where Fedorchuk had been sitting. "We shouldn't meet," Schmidt said in heavily accented Russian. "This is very dangerous."
"Don't worry," Fedorchuk replied. "This is the last place anyone would expect you. Want some vodka?"
Schmidt shook his head, not attempting to hide his distaste as he saw the half-empty bottle. Fedorchuk shrugged and sat down at the table. Schmidt sat opposite him. Duran Duran howled in the background. "I don't understand why you came to us instead of the Americans or the British," Schmidt said.
"Why should it matter?" Fedorchuk asked, lighting up another Marlboro. "The glory will be yours instead of theirs."
"If this is on the level. If we decide to take you."
"Well, that's what we're here to talk about, right?"
"Of course. Let us begin, then."
"Yes. Let's begin."
Summit
The Psychic Thriller Series
Book One
by
Richard Bowker
~
To purchase
Summit
from your favorite eBook Retailer,
visit Richard Bowker's eBook Discovery Author Page
www.ebookdiscovery.com/RichardBowker
~
Discover more with
eBookDiscovery.com
Richard Bowker is the author of Replica, Senator, and other novels. He lives near Boston with his wife and two sons.
You can contact Richard through his website: www.richardbowker.com