Guess Who

by Chris McGeorge

  “What’s going on out there?” He raised his foot again. Bang.

  They were being too loud. Something was very wrong. He could hear a scream that was not Mandy’s, but was still youthful. He thought it must have been Headphones. He could hear Mandy’s incoherent sobs. He could hear Ryan shouting at someone, telling them to calm down, telling them to...put down the knife.

  And Sheppard realized what had happened. He had brought a weapon into a room with a murderer. Alan had seized his chance and had obviously been backed into a corner where he had to do it again.

  Another murder. No.

  He had to get in there. He had to know.

  With a renewed strength, he slammed his entire body weight into the bathroom door and continued to do it even as his right arm became numb. “Hey,” he shouted, over and over again.

  Finally, outside, the conversation subsided and someone moved, close enough to the door for him to feel it. There was someone standing right on the other side.

  “Come on. Come on,” he said, deciding to slam once more into the door. “Come on.”

  There was no response, and it seemed so long that Sheppard thought maybe the person had moved away again. Maybe he was still deemed the murderer even though something else had just very obviously happened. Maybe locking Sheppard up had been the best decision they ever made. No, Sheppard thought, that’s Winter talking.

  Sheppard backed up and slammed his entire side into the door one last time. Silence. And then...a click. And then the bathroom door opening very slowly.

  He stepped back as it swung wide.

  Ryan stood there, very pale and very uncertain. He didn’t look at all like the cavalier guardsman he had played while throwing him in there earlier. “I’m... I’m sorry,” the young man said, not daring to meet his eyes. “I thought it was you. I... He got into my head. You know...” Ryan was blaming himself as much as Sheppard was, and why not? At that moment, he wanted the young man to blame himself for everything. Because now Alan had killed again and Sheppard would have to clean up the mess.

  Sober. Straight and clean. A miserable existence.

  Sheppard stepped forward but couldn’t manage a friendly look toward Ryan no matter how hard he tried. Sheppard turned around and showed Ryan his handcuffs. “Oh,” Ryan said, patting himself down, “of course.” A few seconds later, the cuffs were off. Sheppard made sure to keep hold of them and Ryan looked at him sadly. “We’re going to need them,” he said, and turned into the room.

  More death in a room that needed none at all. Alan Hughes, the murderer. Sheppard walked out of the bathroom, picturing what the scene would look like when he turned clear in his mind.

  He looked—and it was different.

  As he expected, Ryan, Mandy and Headphones were all standing back, visibly shaken, trying not to look at the body that was making a mess on the carpet in front of the television.

  Alan Hughes lay face down on the carpet, the knife protruding from his upper back, around about where the heart was. He looked rather pathetic, lying there—a molecule of his former self. Blood was slowly leaking out of the wound, on either side of the knife.

  There was a trail of blood leading off to the window and Sheppard followed it with his eyes, not quite ready to believe who was going to be standing at the end of it. But it all made sense, in a kind of odd way. It all sort of added up.

  Because at the end of the blood trail, with blood staining the torso of her dress and a big grin on her face, was Constance Ahearn.

  35

  Constance? How could it be Constance? But in some ways, it made sense—in an odd sort of way. It all added up. He had to act quickly. He threw the handcuffs to Ryan, who advanced on Constance. Sheppard went to Alan and checked his neck for a pulse. None. He checked his wrist. Nothing either. Alan was dead. The knife was sticking out from under his shoulder blades. Must have threaded through two ribs, pierced his heart. The big, bad lawyer didn’t seem so scary anymore. As he looked up, he saw Mandy and Headphones, squashed into the farthest corner, holding each other.

  Constance was moaning as Ryan tried to put the handcuffs on her. Sheppard helped him by grabbing one of Constance’s flailing arms. She wasn’t making any sense, spouting rubbish about Jesus and God and Hell. Pretty much par for the course there then.

  “The promised land is filled with traitors. The promised land is here.”

  Ryan managed to slip on one handcuff and then stopped. “We should cuff her to a chair.”

  Sheppard nodded and took the chair that was slotted under the desk and held it as Ryan wrestled Constance down. Sheppard took the other handcuff as Ryan pushed Constance’s right arm through the back of the chair so they could be sure she wasn’t going to go anywhere. Not easily, at least.

  Sheppard and Ryan straightened up and stepped back from Constance. She regarded them with those wide eyes of hers. The kind of eyes you could get lost in, that’s what he had thought, right? Now those eyes looked like somewhere he was afraid he would get imprisoned.

  “What happened?” Sheppard said, turning to the others. Mandy and Headphones seemed unable to respond. But Ryan cleared his throat and managed to speak, although it seemed like he was fighting himself the entire way.

  “We were just talking. That’s all. Just talking. We hadn’t kept track of the knife—we should have done, but we didn’t. Putting you in the bathroom, we were all a bit shaken up. Alan said that we had finally solved the puzzle. He was so sure, so adamant, that you had killed the man and that you were the answer to the question that the horse man asked. He kept saying that—over and over.

  “So he just shouted for a while. Looking at the TV, looking all around. ‘We’ve got him. Morgan Sheppard is the murderer.’ All around the room. But there was no kind of answer. No kind of sign that the horse man had even noticed him. Alan said that he was playing games with us. So he got annoyed and shouted louder. Then he started screaming some incoherent rubbish, just venting you know?

  “We were all just watching him. I admit that he got to me. He made me think it was you. But I wasn’t happy about it. But Alan was almost gleeful. I sat on the bed, watching the TV. I mean, watching the letters flicker up and down. ‘We hope you enjoy your stay.’ I can’t help but think it means something. Anyway, Rhona was where she always was and Mandy and Constance were sitting on the right side of the bed.”

  Sheppard looked to Mandy. She silently nodded.

  “So nothing happened for a while. Alan calmed down for a bit. We all kept to ourselves. Me and Mandy had a talk and I understood maybe I was a bit hasty putting the cuffs on you and throwing you in the bathroom. I told this to Alan and obviously he wasn’t best pleased. We had a talk; all of us gathered around and that was when it happened. She stabbed him, like it was nothing. She must have slid it in his back like she was cutting a cake. Alan gave out this kind of yowl and then keeled over. Dead.”

  Sheppard sighed. It wasn’t as if Alan wasn’t a thorn in his side the entire time he’d been in the room, but that didn’t mean he should die. He looked from Alan to Constance, who was rocking the chair left and right, almost looking like she was enjoying it. Her own little fairground ride.

  He looked down at what was once Alan Hughes.

  “We need to move him,” Sheppard said, “he’s only going to make people uncomfortable here.”

  Sheppard stepped over Alan to get the man’s feet while Ryan got his shoulders. On three, they hoisted him up. They slowly carried him to the bathroom, attempting to not drip too much blood on the carpet. They mostly succeeded, with only a small trail tracking to where he lay—Ryan backed into the bathroom, pushing the door open as he went and Sheppard followed. They lowered Alan onto the floor—blood dashed across the white tiles as they let go.

  Two dead bodies. It didn’t feel weird anymore. Being around all this death. That kind of day.

  “Should we, you know,
” Ryan said, nodding to the knife, “take it out? Just doesn’t seem right to leave it in there sticking out like that.”

  Sheppard didn’t particularly want to touch it, but knew that it was probably the right thing to do. With one glance at Ryan, seeing that the young man had no intention of actually doing the deed, he stepped forward. He bent over the body. With a deep breath, he grasped the wooden handle of the knife, standing up to attention. The spiders were still there, on the back of his hand, but he tried to forget about them. He pressed down on either side of the wound with his other hand, knowing that this was how they did it on those Saturday evening hospital dramas. He yanked the knife. It didn’t move. It was stuck in tight. Sheppard yanked again and it gave way slightly. On the third pull, it came free and in its place a fresh fountain of blood spattered Sheppard’s shirt. He flinched away, but too late.

  Ryan looked at him, freshly colored in Hughes. “That’s gross.”

  “It was stuck in there tight,” Sheppard said, trying to connect two dots that he couldn’t see, at least not at first. But then he got it. The wounds in Winter’s gut had been deep, really deep. That was why he thought that it was probably a male. But if Constance could manage to plunge a knife so far into Alan’s back, she could easily have killed Winter.

  “What?” Ryan said, reading his expression.

  “Nothing, or maybe something.” Sheppard went to the sink and washed off Alan’s blood. It all blended in—Winter’s, Alan’s, creating a pinkish stain on his torso.

  He studied the knife in the light, stuck it under the sink, and saw Ryan staring at him. “I’m going to hold on to this,” Sheppard said. “Do we have a problem with that?”

  Ryan shook his head.

  “How long was I in here?” Sheppard said. “How long do we have left?”

  “I’m sorry I put you in here.”

  “How long do we have left?”

  “It’s just Alan was so...”

  “Ryan. How long?”

  Ryan said nothing but walked out of the bathroom, holding the door open for him. Sheppard stepped forward, knowing that he had to look, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. He managed by shutting his eyes and looking in the direction of the timer. He opened his eyes and felt his stomach lurch.

  He had seventeen minutes left.

  36

  Constance Ahearn was humming some inconsequential tune as Sheppard turned back into the room. She looked at him and smiled. He did not smile back.

  He barely registered that Mandy and Headphones were now sitting on the side of the bed in each other’s arms. Ryan looked like he didn’t know what to do with himself. The room suddenly seemed a lot more empty—Alan’s ego had filled the room full of something, at least. Now everything was quiet. The horse man hadn’t been around for a long time. It was only them now. Him and the young people and a killer. It had to be her. She had to have killed Winter too.

  Sheppard walked up to her, got level with her, got up in her face like he was on his TV show. Like the lights had just come on and the audience was rabid.

  Because you know why? NOTHING GETS PAST HIM.

  He heard it, behind him. The audience shouting it out, prompted by some assistant holding up a card saying “Catchphrase.” Not real. He was still hallucinating. Needed to get more of a grip. He couldn’t lose it now.

  “What did you do?” Sheppard said to Constance, a lot sadder than he thought it was going to come out.

  Constance’s eyes snapped to his. There was madness there now. It wasn’t there before, right? He would have seen it. She smiled. “I saved you. I saved you all.”

  “What do you mean?” Sheppard said. “You killed a man.”

  “He was a liar. He was an adulterer. He was a glutton.”

  Constance tensed up in the chair and the handcuffs rattled as she tried to move her hands. “No man resided there.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “I just know.”

  “You’re crazy,” Ryan said, beside him.

  Constance’s eyes shot to him. Then back to Sheppard. Sheppard held a hand up to Ryan. He was thinking exactly the same thing. But crazy people didn’t know they were crazy.

  “So you saved us,” Sheppard said. “Is that because you thought Alan killed Simon Winter?” After all, he had thought the same himself.

  “Yes and no.”

  “Did you kill him? Simon Winter.”

  Constance looked at him for too long. “No.”

  “You’re religious. What happened to ‘Thou shalt not kill’?”

  “I don’t need to be talked down to by you, Mr. Sheppard. I know what I’ve done, but He will see it differently. He will forgive me, when I am come to the kingdom of Heaven. He sent someone to tell me what to do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You could see it. You could see it in his eyes,” Constance said, widening her own. “He had evil in them. And I was told that I must act. To save everyone in this room.”

  “Who told you to kill Hughes?”

  Constance looked around, as though she was trying to avoid the question.

  “Please, Constance,” Mandy said, “just answer him.”

  Constance looked at Mandy and softened slightly. It seemed she trusted the young girl more than Sheppard. Obliging, she leaned forward on her chair and whispered, “The Mary Magdalene.”

  Sheppard chuckled and nodded. What else had he expected? “The Mary Magdalene. You’re insane. You killed a man in cold blood. Do you understand that, Ms. Ahearn?”

  “I saved the soul of the man the Devil resided in by setting him free. She told me to kill him. She told me to take the knife and plunge it into his back. She said only I had the power—because I had the Holy Spirit on my side.”

  Sheppard felt that fire. The fire he felt when he was on set, but this time he wasn’t acting. This was a real burning anger. An emotion free of the drugs and the drink. He hadn’t felt one of those in a long time. Apart from fear of course. “You killed a man. And that means you had it in you to kill Winter too.”

  “Why would I kill Simon Winter?” Constance said, defensively. As though her integrity was still something she could fight for.

  “I honestly have no idea. Maybe because you saw him with your Evil Man. Maybe because he was one of the four horseman of the apocalypse. Maybe because he cut you off in a bike lane once? I don’t know anymore.”

  “Demons, Mr. Sheppard. We are already enduring our punishment.”

  And that made him remember. Constance’s initial outbursts in the room, when she had been running around and throwing herself into the walls. What had she been saying?

  Is this the punishment I must endure?

  We’re all in Hell. And you’re all here with me.

  “You said things, when we first woke up in the room. You said something about this being your punishment. What did you mean by that?”

  “What?”

  Sheppard looked around. Ryan was nodding, remembering it too. “She was talking rubbish about this being her atonement.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Constance squealed. A little too readily.

  “Who are you, Ms. Ahearn? Who are you really? What’s your secret?”

  “We all have secrets. That doesn’t make them relevant.”

  Sheppard sighed. “The first thing you said to me. You said you were being punished.” Just two hours ago, but it might as well have been a lifetime. If Sheppard didn’t work this out, it was indeed a lifetime.

  “My family is strongly Catholic, Mr. Sheppard.”

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed,” he said, sensing the sarcasm would probably be lost on her.

  “My daughter got pregnant, and she had an abortion. I disowned her and she moved halfway across the world to America. California. She tried to contact me but I
never talked to her. One day, I got a call from her husband. My baby girl had been hit by a drunk driver, killed along with a new unborn child. I prayed for the safety of one child and ended up killing another.”

  Sheppard frowned. He didn’t want to be cruel but the first thing that sprang into his head was Is that it? He was sure it was very horrible but he was expecting something a little more... All he found was a dead end.

  “I told you I had nothing to do with your investigation,” Constance said. Constance was crazy, but he couldn’t help thinking that in some ways, it wasn’t her fault. She obviously had some severe mental problems, but right here and right now, that didn’t matter. Unfortunately for her, if Heaven and Hell did exist, Constance had earned herself an ensuite in the latter, hotter one.

  Sheppard paused. “I’m sorry. But I think you have everything to do with it. I think you killed Simon Winter.”

  37

  Sheppard turned to the rest of the room, and raised his voice, just as Alan had done an age ago. “Constance Ahearn. The murderer is Constance Ahearn.”

  He waited for a moment. Nothing happened. Ryan looked around, expectantly, while the two girls just looked on, bewildered. This had to be it. It had to be her. He was looking for something, maybe some kind of acknowledgement. Some kind of hope. A reason to keep going—if only for a few more seconds.

  Constance Ahearn gave out a fresh splutter of laughter. “Not quite, Mr. Sheppard.”

  Sheppard wheeled around, looking toward the timer.

  It was still counting down. Five minutes.

  What had gone wrong? Constance was the murderer. She was the only one that made sense. But the game was still going. They were still dying one second at a time.

  “Why didn’t it work? How could it not work?” Ryan said.

  This wasn’t over. This couldn’t be over. “Maybe we haven’t worked it out right. Maybe she needs to say something.” Sheppard kneeled down and was face-to-face again with Constance. The woman looked normal, as if nothing was happening at all. She smiled at him and tilted her head to the side, as though she were greeting a family pet.