Blood Lies

by Daniel Kalla

  Joe’s wife joined us at the door. As tall as he, with gray hair, deep brown eyes, and full lips that amplified her welcoming smile, she stepped in front of Joe. “Dr. Horvath?” She extended her hand, revealing the swan neck and knobby fingers that were typical of advanced rheumatoid arthritis. “I’m Eliska Janacek,” she said in a much slighter accent than her husband’s.

  “It’s Peter,” Joe replied for me. “For God’s sake, Eliska. He’s not much older than Martin!”

  I smiled at Eliska. “Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Come, Peter.” Her eyes sparkled. “We’ll go to the living room and have an aperitif.”

  We sat in high-back chairs in front of a wood-burning fireplace. I resisted the urge to gulp the delicious red wine in my glass, but I still made short work of it. With the melodic strings of a cello concerto filling the background, by the time of my second glass I began to relax. “What is this music?” I asked.

  “Dvoák,” Eliska said. “His cello concerto played by Yo-Yo Ma. Lovely, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not just lovely, Liska,” Joe piped up. “It is one of the greatest pieces of music ever composed.”

  I smiled. “Dvoák was Czech, right?”

  “Of course!”

  I turned to Eliska. “Is Martin your son?”

  “Among other things,” Joe answered for her.

  Eliska rolled her eyes. “Our oldest. Martin keeps himself very busy.”

  “Oh?” I said. “Doing what?”

  “He’s a civil engineer,” Eliska explained. “He works for a Christian charity that is active in reconstructing villages after natural or man-made disasters.”

  Joe stood up and refilled my glass without asking. “That’s right. He goes into a village wiped out by bombs, earthquakes, or plagues…and he helps the poor hungry people build the biggest church they can erect to thank God for their good fortune.”

  “Jozef,” Eliska said, “Martin is doing good work.”

  “He does build the odd bridge or dam, too.” Joe smiled, showing a glimmer of pride in his son.

  Eliska leaned closer to me and rested her bony fingers on my wrist. “Neither Jozef or I is at all religious, but the Church has been good for Martin. He had some…problems in college.”

  “Cocaine,” Joe said candidly. “Very bad. He could have ended up like the others at our clinic.”

  “Then Martin found God,” Eliska said.

  “My cousin Kyle was saved the same way,” I said.

  “Religion is like methadone,” Joe grumbled. “Replacing one crutch with a slightly more benign one.”

  “Excuse him,” Eliska said, as if apologizing for a misbehaving child. “A dyed-in-the-wool socialist. He can’t help himself.” She stood up. “Come, let’s feed you.”

  We moved to the dining room. At the long oak table, there were four table settings laid out. I pointed to the fourth setting, my apprehension rising.

  Joe shrugged. “Edith sends her regrets. She’s fighting a cold today.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said, hiding my relief.

  While Eliska busied herself in the kitchen, Joe took the opportunity to turn the conversation to politics, and point out all the shortcomings of the current U.S. administration, as if I’d handpicked them myself. Rather than tell Joe how much I agreed with him, I sat back and let him vent.

  Based on our earlier discussion of Eliska’s cooking, I’d expected a traditional Czech meal. Instead, she served us a contemporary feast with butternut squash soup, followed by a pecan and blue cheese salad, and then a duck risotto that was as good as I had ever tasted.

  Not until dessert did we sample our first Czech dish, pusinky, which Joe had baked. Served with vanilla ice cream, the pastries were as good as he’d boasted, and I had three of the light meringue crescents.

  After dinner, Joe insisted I keep Eliska company while he cleared the dishes. Pleasantly tipsy from what must have been my fifth glass of wine, I said, “Joe tells me you made a militant of him?”

  The skin around her eyes crinkled. “I made a militant of him?”

  “In Prague,” I said. “Joe said he became a revolutionary on your account.”

  She laughed. “Joe lies.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was vice versa,” she said. “I was a perfectly apolitical school-teacher. Joe drew me into that hopeless revolution and almost got us both killed in the process.”

  Joe walked in from the kitchen. “I don’t remember it like that.”

  Eliska turned to me, ignoring her husband. “For his entire life, he has been the defender of the underdog and champion of the lost cause.” She shook her head. “You’ve seen his clinic, haven’t you?”

  “Don’t listen to the woman.” Joe grinned self-consciously. “I do it for the same reason I’ve always done it. The money.”

  I laughed. “And you’ve really made a killing on Hasting Street, haven’t you?”

  Joe shrugged. “More than enough.”

  Eliska stood up. “Peter, it has been delightful meeting you. With my arthritis, I get a little tired in the evening. Please excuse me.”

  I hopped to my feet, almost spilling my wine. “I should go, too.”

  “No!” Eliska waved away the idea. “Please stay. Jozef is a night owl. He would love the company.”

  I was genuinely sorry to see Eliska go. After thanking her for dinner, I followed Joe back into the living room where he poured me a glass of single-malt scotch without asking; not that I would’ve refused.

  Joe wanted to hear more about my life. Aside for the borrowed name, I was otherwise accurate in describing my middle-class childhood. I told him about my father’s battle with alcoholism that cost him his accounting practice and eventually his life. I even outlined Aaron’s struggle with drugs, though I neglected to mention that we were identical twins. I tried to press Joe for details about his son’s history, but he avoided the topic. Instead, he told me of his youngest daughter, Hannah, a concert violinist who lived in Victoria. He beamed when he announced that she and her husband were expecting “my first grandchild” in three months.

  At eleven o’clock, Joe abruptly switched on the TV. “I need to know a little something of what’s happening outside my window.” He flipped through the channels to find the local news.

  Silently, we watched the lead story about a shooting that killed two Indo-Canadians reputedly involved in the drug trade. Remembering the driver of the silver pickup truck in Aldergrove, I wondered if the victims or killers were associates of his.

  The anchorman turned to a story about a threatened transit strike. Slightly drunk and stomach full, I was so relaxed by the Janacek’s hospitality that it hadn’t occurred to me I might make the news. But the moment I heard the anchorman say “Seattle authorities are looking north to…” I sat bolt upright in my chair.

  “Dr. Benjamin Dafoe is the leading suspect in the double homicide,” the anchorman continued. “One of the victims was Dr. Dafoe’s ex-fiancée, Emily Kenmore. Seattle police believe the suspect might be hiding somewhere in the greater Vancouver area.”

  My fingers dug into the sides of the chair. My temples beat a drum solo. Acid filled my mouth. My eyes darted over to Joe who watched the screen impassively.

  Then a picture of my face filled the TV screen. “If you see this man, please contact Vancouver police immediately.”

  Slowly, Joe’s head turned toward me.

  Chapter 27

  Time froze while Joe silently appraised me. His face registered no signs of shock or outrage, but his cheeks tightened slightly and his eyes showed a guardedness that I’d never seen in him.

  To my surprise, the expected spike of adrenaline never came. Instead, I was filled with calm resignation.

  Eyes locked on me, Joe switched off the TV with the remote. “Dr. Benjamin Dafoe, I presume?”

  I nodded.

  “So who is Dr. Peter Horvath?”

  “The brother of a good friend. As you already guessed, he’s still in Taipei.�
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  Joe rubbed his chin. “And who is Benjamin Dafoe?”

  I pointed to the blank TV screen. “I’m the man accused of butchering my former fiancée along with a drug dealer named Jason DiAngelo.”

  “Accused?” He arched a bushy eyebrow. “Not guilty of?”

  My shoulders slumped involuntarily. “You really want to hear?”

  “Let’s say that I’m mildly curious,” he said, never taking his eyes off mine.

  I raised my glass to my lips. The ice cubes cooled my lips, as I drained the last of the scotch and then put the glass down on the coffee table. “What I told you before about my life isn’t that far off the truth. I had an identical twin brother…or I do have one.”

  “There’s a slight distinction,” Joe pointed out, as he leaned back in his chair as though he was settling in to watch a movie.

  “I think Aaron may still be alive.”

  “Think?” He held out his palms. “You don’t know?”

  Numb with indifference, I summarized the events without trying to hide or minimize any of them. I laid out the details surrounding Emily’s murder and my subsequent incrimination and finished by describing the mixed results of my amateur detective work in Vancouver.

  Joe rose silently to his feet and walked into the kitchen. I reached for my tumbler and sucked on the ice cubes. The cool wetness with the trace of scotch was exactly what my parched mouth needed. Even if Joe was on the phone with the 911 operator, I had no intention of bolting. I was simply too exhausted to run again.

  Joe returned five minutes later with an unopened bottle of scotch. Cracking open the cap with a snap that made my mouth water, he refilled my glass and then topped up his.

  “One time, when Martin was still having troubles,” Joe said, sinking back into his chair, “Eliska and I had gone out for dinner, but we missed our movie and ended up coming home early. When I walked in, I heard sounds from our bedroom. I grabbed a carving knife from the kitchen and tiptoed upstairs. The room was a mess—nightstand overturned, pictures on the floor, and the bedsheets torn. Martin sat on our bed, counting the roll of money he’d stolen from the lockbox under the bed. My own son, the cocaine addict.” He grunted. “I screamed at him to get out. I told him he wasn’t welcome in our house anymore.”

  Joe stopped to take a long sip of his drink. “Martin just laughed at me and said, ‘You’ll get over it, old man.’ He walked toward me for the door, still gripping my money. I didn’t trust myself with the knife. I dropped it on the floor.” He shook his head. “But if I was still holding that knife when Martin walked by me…”

  I understood Joe’s insinuation, but I didn’t bother to proclaim my innocence. We sat in silence for a minute or so, sipping our scotches. Finally, Joe looked up at me. His eyes bored into mine. “Did you kill her, Peter?”

  “It’s Ben,” I said. “Since the moment we met, you’ve been telling me what a good judge of character you are.”

  “True.”

  “Emily wasn’t just murdered. She was hacked slowly to death.” I swallowed, fighting off the unwanted flashback of her mutilated corpse. “Do you think I’m capable of something like that?”

  “I would like to hear it from you.”

  I held his stare. “I swear to you on my mother’s grave, I did not kill Emily or anyone else.”

  He looked away and sighed. “Dafoe, is it? That’s not even Hungarian.”

  “English, I’m afraid.” I chuckled. “Now you know all my dirty secrets.”

  Joe reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. Reluctantly, I waved him away from mine. “So now what?” he asked.

  “Depends,” I said. “Did you call the police?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then I’m going to use what time I have left to try to find Aaron and assemble as much evidence as I can.”

  “You mean against this Maglio person?”

  “And whoever else is involved,” I said. “All along, I’ve thought the only way to convince the police of my innocence is by providing a better suspect.”

  Joe studied his glass before sipping it. “Do you think Malcolm Davies or Jenny Ayott can help you?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I would like to talk to both of them again. But the contact information in the chart for Malcolm is wrong.”

  “I might be able to find him for you,” Joe said.

  I put down my glass and stood up. “Look, Joe, you’ve done more than enough.” I forced a smile. “And despite your vow to give me the benefit of the doubt only once, we’re well into double digits now. I don’t want you or Eliska mixed up in this any more than you already are. If you’ll let me go now without turning me in, that alone is a favor I probably can’t ever repay.”

  Joe rose to his feet and walked me to the door. “We’ll see. How can I reach you?”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  Joe grabbed a pen and paper from the nightstand. I didn’t hesitate in jotting down the address of my new apartment, and I scribbled my latest e-mail address below it.

  At the front door, he dug my coat out of the closet and passed it to me. Then he reached into his wallet and pulled out several one-hundred-dollar bills.

  “Joe…”

  He shoved the money into my palm. “Believe me, Dr. Horvath’s billings of last week will cover this.”

  I pocketed the money and shook his hand firmly. “Thank you, Joe.”

  It was after midnight by the time I stepped into the relatively warm evening. The fresh air sobered me. My numbness receded, replaced by the familiar survival instinct. I unlocked my bike and rode slowly back to Dotty’s building, careful to keep to the side streets.

  I was relieved to reach my apartment without seeing anyone in the building. I crawled under the sheets, and thankfully, the alcohol in my veins helped to drift me into a dreamless sleep.

  Shortly before seven the following morning, I sprang out of bed, driven by the pressing sense of borrowed time. After brushing my teeth and reinserting my brown contact lenses, I sat at the kitchen table and scribbled notes to myself. I tried to summarize what I knew graphically with boxes and intersecting circles, but the diagram became so crowded with names and other chicken scratch that it began to resemble a large inkblot. Frustrated, I balled up the paper and threw it in the corner.

  On the next page, I scrawled out a list of all the people whose paths I’d crossed, adding brief notes beside each name. I put a star and a question mark beside Marcus, Maglio, and Prince. But my eyes kept drifting back to one name: Drew Isaacs. He was the only witness I’d found to attest to Aaron’s survival. Maybe he knew more than he was saying, or had forgotten to mention some detail that would lead me to Aaron.

  I threw on my clothes and headed out to find a pay phone. I had my hand on the building’s front door when a voice from behind stopped me. “And where do you think you’re going?”

  It took me an anxious moment to place the scratchy voice. “Good morning, Dotty.” I spun slowly, wondering whether she might recognize me from the newscasts.

  Grinning madly, she stood by the mail slots in another muumuu, a mauve and pink one today. “Well, good morning, Doctor,” she said in a singsong tone, and I assumed my cover was still intact with her. “Have you had breakfast?”

  Fearing an invitation, I lied. “Yes, a big one. Thanks. I’ve got to run to the hospital.”

  “Doctors,” she sighed. “It’s nothing but work for you.”

  I simply nodded and hurried out the door. I unlocked my bike and hopped on as soon as it rolled off the grass. I would have loved to work off my mounting stress with a long punishing ride, but every minute was precious now. I cycled onto Main Street and found a phone at the corner gas station. I dropped in a quarter and dialed Drew Isaacs’s number. After five rings, I reached his curt voicemail. I was about to hang up, but I changed my mind. “Drew, it’s Aaron. I need to talk to you urgently, but my cell is dead.” I scanned the street until I spotted
the Vietnamese restaurant across the way. I squinted to read the name off the sign. “How about the Saigon Palace, on the corner of Fifteenth and Main? I’ll wait for you there at around one o’clock.”

  After hanging up, I reached for my wallet and dug through it until I found Jenny Ayott’s address. I couldn’t place the street, so I went inside the gas station and bought a map along with a coffee that tasted so acrid I managed to swallow only half of it before tossing the rest. I pinpointed Jenny’s address on the map and then rushed out to my bike.

  As I headed north, I thought more about my initial conversation with Jenny. Her description of Aaron’s final cruel words to her still troubled me. His personality aside, something else didn’t jibe with the comments but I couldn’t articulate exactly what.

  I reached Jenny’s apartment building (another grayish box from the fifties) on Pandora Street. I checked my watch: 8:10 A.M. Collecting my thoughts, I buzzed her apartment from the ancient intercom by the door.

  It rang three times before she came on the line. “Who is it?”

  “Jenny, it’s Dr. Peter Horvath.”

  “Dr. Horvath?”

  I sensed suspicion in her tone. “Can I see you for a minute?”

  She didn’t respond immediately. “I could come to the office later,” she finally said.

  “No. I was hoping now.”

  “Now isn’t so good, Dr. Horvath. I’ll call the office and make an appointment—”

  I cut her off. “Listen, Jenny, we both know my name isn’t Horvath.”

  She didn’t say a word, but I could tell from the intercom’s crackle that she was still on the line.

  “You’re Aaron’s twin, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Yes, Benjamin. And I need to talk to you about my brother.”

  “What about him?”

  “I think he’s alive.”

  The intercom deadened, and I thought I’d lost her. Then the door buzzed, and I grabbed for the handle before Jenny could change her mind. I walked along the worn carpet in a hallway that smelled much staler than the building Dotty maintained. I followed the stairs up to the second floor and found her room three doors down.