New York at night during the summer was only different from the day in that the sun wasn’t trying to add its bullying fist to the overbearing sticky mallet with which the heat was pounding you. The temperature had perhaps dropped a grand total of two measly degrees since the sun set hours and hours ago.
Joshua had no real idea what time it was. Sometime between dark o’clock and way-too-damn-early-in-the-morning. All he knew was that he was still moving away from Agent Cooper and the salvation she offered. And that he had three more of the tiny bottles of booze. There was a Smirnoff vodka, a Captain Morgan’s spiced rum and a Bailey’s Irish Cream. Fantastic.
He was regretting not looking more closely at what he had snagged out of the minibar at this point. Couldn’t have been Johnny Walker red label, now could it? No, no. Definitely not.
Three more bottles. Then he was out. Three more miniscule containers of precious alcohol and then his life stepped completely off the edge of the cliff, figuratively speaking. It never ceased to amaze Joshua just how far down he could fall when he set his mind and resources to it.
Of course, he didn’t only have himself to thank this time around. No. It had taken some tactical support from the good ol’ FB of I to take him down to a truly subterranean level. Uncle Sam hadn’t been content with him just flattened on the pavement. They had sent one of their best and brightest to leave him in a pit out of which there was no way he could climb.
He came upon the mouth of an alleyway and heard sounds coming from the ill-lit night there in its depths. Sounded like a mugging. Some poor schmuck getting his wallet lifted at gun or knifepoint.
Gotta love New York. Joshua tried to rouse some feeling of pity, but even that required more strength than he had. At least if he wanted to keep walking. And he definitely wanted to keep walking.
He began to cross the street. No one had helped him in his hour of need. He wasn’t about to risk his neck to keep some slob and his money from getting parted.
A feminine cry and the sound of ripped clothing changed the mental image from a mugging to a rape. Joshua paused, but once again failed to arouse within himself the passion needed to call out. He pulled out the Smirnoff, twisted off the cap and sucked the fluid down. Kerosene would probably taste less caustic.
Keeping away from the crime was one thing, but he couldn’t quite stop himself from at least taking a look. He glanced over his shoulder long enough to catch a flash of long blonde hair fanning out as the attacker dragged the girl through the one small pool of light cast by an overhead bulb on one of the buildings.
It was Livvie.
The thought punched a hole in his gut that threatened to take his breath away and never give it back. It was her sixteenth un-birthday. She would’ve been out tonight, celebrating with her friends.
This could have been her.
It wasn’t her. Of course it wasn’t her. But Joshua found his feet moving toward the conflict of their own volition. A stranger he could’ve passed by with little remorse. It would have been just one more tiny drop of shame to add to the sea that already churned within him. Passing by the rape of his baby would create an inner ocean that could never be contained.
Beginning to run, Joshua found the landscape around him tilting dangerously. He pulled back to a brisk walk, holding onto his equilibrium with an iron grip. Now was not the time to fall down from the drink. Had to keep it together for his daughter. Somebody’s daughter.
He caught sight of the girl, now on the ground with part of her shirt torn off. Her attacker was standing above her, a gun in one hand, the other wrestling with his belt.
The first moment of this confrontation was the most important. He could try to sneak in closer and attack from behind, or he could just surprise the guy by calling out to him. A rapist interrupted had two choices: cut and run, or face the added exposure and danger of dealing with the new threat. Most bolted.
“Hey!” Joshua yelled. The rapist stopped worrying about his belt and spun around, the gun now pointed square at Joshua. Perfect. This guy was an idiot with something to prove.
“This has nothing to do with you,” the attacker growled. He was young, Caucasian, with piercings all over his face. “Walk away now before you get hurt.”
“Go ahead. Shoot me.” Joshua edged forward, angling himself to try to get between the man and his prostrate victim. Problem was, it was difficult to be stealthy when you were drunk. His feet kept betraying him, catching on the pitted surface of the neglected asphalt.
“You’re crazy,” the young man barked, moving the gun to follow Joshua’s movements. The attacker paused, then looked closer. “And drunk.”
“Yes… and yes. Very observant.” Just a few more steps and Joshua would be able to leap in between the gun and the girl.
“Stop. I’ll shoot. I mean it.” A note of hysteria had crept into the thug’s voice.
“Look at me. Does it seem like I give a shit?” Joshua leapt just as he finished his sentence, trying to catch the man off guard.
It didn’t work.
His reflexes dulled by the alcohol, Joshua found that his leap was less of a jump and more of a stumble forward. The attacker had more than enough time to respond. The pistol in his hand punched into the side of Joshua’s head, catching him right where he’d been kicked earlier that night. Flashes of light exploded in his vision. But in spite of the pain, Joshua barreled forward, lashing out with his fist in as close to the right direction as he could manage in his current state.
He connected with the guy’s abdomen, and Joshua felt the whoosh of air that rushed out of the criminal’s lungs. The victory was short-lived, however, as the man used his other hand to lash out at Joshua’s side… the one with the cut from the knife injury. The pain was immediate and intense.
Joshua groaned and fell back, clutching at the man’s gun hand as he did so. The attacker pulled back, trying to free his weapon from Joshua’s grip, and as he did so, the pistol fired, the recoil whipping his arm back.
A cry came from the direction of the girl on the ground. She was clutching at her stomach, red seeping out from between her fingers. The stray bullet had found a target, and that target was now writhing on the asphalt in a growing pool of her own blood.
“Shit!” the young man cried out, staring down at the girl. He turned to face Joshua, who was trying to lift himself up from where he’d been thrown. “You! You made me do that. It wasn’t me. It was you.” He swung the pistol back around so that it was pointed once more at Joshua. “Now I have to kill you and her both, you son of a bitch.”
“Or you could drop your weapon and raise your hands,” came a voice from the entrance to the alley. Agent Cooper strode forward, her standard-issue Glock steady in her hands, her stance straight out of Quantico. Okay, standard could be boring, but right now Joshua found that he was relieved to see it.
The would-be rapist’s gun clattered to the pavement, and Coop eased forward. After spinning the young man around, she pulled out a pair of handcuffs and slapped them onto his wrists.
Joshua crawled his way over to the girl on the ground. She was moaning, still holding her stomach in her hands. Joshua tried to peel back her fingers, needing to see how serious the wound was. As her hand moved away, he could see the extent of the damage there. It was bad.
“I’m so sorry,” Joshua whispered. “I was trying to help.”
The only response he received was continued moans. A shadow fell over them both, and Joshua turned to look up at the slight figure of Agent Cooper above him. She pulled out her cellphone and swiped at the touchscreen.
“I’m calling this in, and then we’re going to talk.”
Right now, Joshua could think of nothing that sounded less appealing.
* * *
The NYPD had taken over the scene, and Sariah had given her statement. She’d also made sure that the victim of the attack was going to be okay. The paramedics seemed optimistic about her chances, but a gunshot wound to the stomach was never an easy fix.
&n
bsp; Now she was just waiting on Joshua. He’d been much more subdued than Sariah had seen him up to this point, cooperating with the detectives on the scene as they grilled him about the details of the encounter.
Sariah had to admit that she had been shocked to find Joshua in that alley, attempting to stop a rape from happening. The man she’d met and spoken with so far that evening was not the kind of person who would push someone out of the way of a moving bus, even at no risk to himself. So what the hell would have caused him to step in here?
That fit in much more with the idea of the Agent Joshua Wright that Sariah had read up on before getting to Manhattan. The man in the file was someone who wouldn’t ever stand by while someone was getting hurt.
The fact that drunk, self-sabotaging Joshua had done it suggested that there was something of that former agent still trapped inside of him. Now all Sariah needed to do was unlock it and set it to work catching a killer. And she had a couple of ideas on how she might do that. None that would be pleasant, but maybe pleasant wasn’t what the former agent needed right now. If it was, he was out of luck.
She wasn’t that person.
Joshua moved away from the detective interviewing him, with a last gesture of finality. As he walked nearer to Sariah, she noticed that his gait was unsteady, and it didn’t appear to be from the alcohol. What their earlier encounter hadn’t managed to do, this one may have. Her gaze went up to the side of his head, which showed signs of significant bruising.
“You want to tell me what happened?” Sariah asked.
Sighing, Joshua slumped down and sat on the curb. “I was trying to help.”
“Looks to me like you were trying to get her killed, and maybe yourself in the process.”
The former agent winced, whether from her statement or from the pain of sitting down beside her with all of his various battle wounds, Sariah couldn’t tell. He sighed, a deep and long exhalation of breath, that felt like it carried his soul with it.
“She reminded me of someone.”
There was pain and suffering there of which he wasn’t even scratching the surface. It showed in the slumping of his shoulders, the set of his mouth, the clenching of his hands. Here were the buttons she needed to push to get him to go with her. She knew it. And yet, now that it had come to the moment, she couldn’t force herself to do it.
“Must’ve been someone pretty spectacular.”
“Yeah.”
“Wife?”
“Daughter,” he replied, then broke down sobbing.
Sariah sat there, not sure what to do. She had pushed the buttons without intending to. He cried like a young child, holding nothing back. No attempt to stem the tide of tears, no sniffing to keep the snot from running down his face, no turning away to keep other eyes from seeing. It was an ugly cry, un-masculine and un-adult.
It might have been one of the most beautiful things Sariah had ever seen.
The sobs continued unabated for quite a while, investigators from the police team passing by, sending inquiring looks in Sariah’s direction. Need any help? Can I do something? She shook her head, sending each of them on about their business. Joshua had created a private space that deserved to be kept private.
After several minutes, his shaking form began to quiet itself. He lifted his head and turned to look at her, his eyes red from his outpouring of grief.
“Thank you.”
Surprised, Sariah sat back. “For what?”
He shrugged, his face creasing itself into a hundred lines of pain. “For not trying to help. For just sitting there.”
“I’d love to claim some kind of wisdom here, but I had no idea what to do.”
“No one does. Most of them try anyway.” He looked around at the scurrying figures surrounding them at the crime scene. “Trust me, I’ve experienced it all firsthand. It’s part of what drove me to New York.”
“And to the bottle?”
“Yeah. That too.” Joshua let loose one more sob, almost like an aftershock. He shook his head. “She could have died.”
It wasn’t in Sariah to sugarcoat. It might’ve been the nice thing to do, but she wasn’t sure that nice was what he needed right now.
“It’s not a sure thing that she won’t.”
“I know.”
Sariah took the measure of the man beside her. Here was someone who had suffered the grief of multiple lifetimes and had been left a hollow shell. If there were ever anyone who deserved to be able to wallow, to receive unending comfort, this was the one.
Too bad he was stuck with her.
“What you’re doing doesn’t just affect you, Joshua.”
“I get that.”
“Do you?” Sariah probed, catching his gaze and holding it. “Do you really get it? Because it’s not redemption I’m bringing you.”
Joshua met her gaze head on. “Then what?”
“I’m bringing you the names of the dead. The ones you could have saved but didn’t.”
Pushing himself back up to standing, Joshua hobbled away from her, weaving a bit and clutching at his head. He peered up at the one light bulb that had served as the only illumination in this alley, before all the flashing lights had shown up. The gleam from the lit globe brightened his face, giving him an almost angelic glow for a moment. He turned back to her.
“That…” He paused, then grimaced. It almost seemed like a smile. “That kinda works for me.”
“I thought it might.” Sariah gestured for him to follow. “And now let’s get you to the hospital. You’re looking like you might be concussed.”
Joshua’s squawking didn’t die down for quite a while after that.
* * *
The New York Hospital, Queens, looked like some kid had been playing with his Erector set and decided to quit and walk away. It was a gray, jagged set of interconnected boxes that did nothing but depress anyone who looked at it.
And right now, it was Joshua Wright who was looking at it. At least the front entrance was a tiny bit more welcoming, with its maroon brick façade cut with green-tinted glass. But as he and Agent Cooper walked through the doors, the inside was just like any other hospital: drab, off-white walls that spoke of sterility and healing to most, but screamed nothing but germs and suffering to Joshua.
Plus, the alcohol was starting to wear off.
What was he doing here? He’d never allowed someone to drag him to a hospital before. What made tonight different?
Joshua observed his captor as she checked in at the desk of the ER. She still seemed to be as put-together and fresh as she’d been when he first saw her. There was no attraction here. Some men went for the young ones, but that had never appealed to Joshua. But there was something about this agent that was getting itself wedged underneath his skin in a big way.
He didn’t like it.
There were several people ahead of them, but none as serious as his possible concussion. Shocking for Queens. When a pert young nurse in braided pigtails called for him to come back for an initial evaluation, Joshua noticed more than one pair of eyes glaring at him out of dark faces. Look at whitey, going up to the front of the line. At least having Coop with him mitigated the race card a slight bit.
Following the nurse back to triage, Joshua called back to Coop, who was three steps behind him, “If I die from something I catch here, I’m taking you down with me.”
The nurse turned with a flip of her braids. “Oh, we take hygiene very seriously here at New York Hospital, Queens.”
“I bet you do,” he replied. “Probably douche after sex, too, don’t you?”
“Excuse me?” Every ounce of politeness the nurse had radiated vanished in those two words.
“Joshua,” Agent Cooper growled from behind him. Hey, he had warned her not to take him to the hospital. She should learn to pay attention.
“Sorry.” He smirked at the nurse, her badge proclaiming her to be Nurse Jensen. “It’s the concussion. Can’t help it.”
Coop moved forward, speaking to Nurse Jensen. “
It’s the fact that he’s an asshole. And he’s right, he can’t help that.”
The nurse gave Agent Cooper a smile and a nod, fixed Joshua with a glare and then turned to prepare the blood pressure cuff. She gestured with a free hand to a chair in which he could sit.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
* * *
Sariah watched as the nurse fumbled with the cuff, struggling to get the Velcro open, then dropping it twice before she managed to get it around Joshua’s arm. As she maneuvered around to try once more, she bumped into Joshua’s side, grazing the place on his side that Sariah had bandaged up earlier that night.
Joshua hissed in pain. “You have done this before, right?” He fixed her with a steady gaze. “How old are you? Have you even had your first period?”
The gasp told Sariah that the former agent had struck a nerve. The roughness with which she grabbed his arm to reapply the cuff told her he’d struck true. The combination of the alcohol burning off and his being in a hospital had turned Joshua into a rabid dog.
“And those pigtails. Really?” He snorted in disdain. “Are you trying to fit into some old lecher’s porn fantasy? Might as well be wearing a school girl uniform and sucking on a lollipop.” The nurse’s breath came faster and her bottom lip started to tremble.
“Joshua,” Sariah warned. “Whatever you’ve got going on in that sick brain of yours, keep it there. This girl’s done nothing.”
“Nothing? Oh, that’s not true, now, is it, Nurse Jensen?” He winked at the nurse. “She’s screwing her boss. Aren’t you, precious?”
The poor girl managed to hold on for another few seconds, then burst into tears and fled the room. The sound of her sobbing could be heard down the hall.
Joshua stretched, groaning as he pulled on the area of his side that had been bruised. “There. That should work to get someone competent in here.”
Sariah stood up from the chair where she’d been watching this scene play out and approached the table where Joshua sat, perched. The bright fluorescent lights overhead buzzed and blinked in time with the beeping of one of the instruments in a nearby room. They spoke of the breakdown of all things human, both the body itself and everything else created by this magnificent, warped race of self-eaters. Clapping her hands together in a slow rhythm, she caught Joshua’s eye and held it, making her distaste clear.
Humpty Dumpty: The killer wants us to put him back together again (Book 1 of the Nursery Rhyme Murders Series) Page 5