by PT Reade
“Where are we?” Zoe asked from behind me.
“A place I used to live,” I said. I didn’t feel like going any deeper than that. If the damned key was making me nostalgic, what was the inside of the apartment going to do?
“Is it safe here?” she asked.
“It should be,” I answered as I slid the key into the lock.
The lock disengaged, and the door opened easily. When it swung open and revealed the small foyer, pangs of sadness stirred within me. We made our way up to the second floor. Each step felt heavier in my heart. Finally we were there.
Apartment 11.
The lock clicked, and the door eased open for the first time in over a year. I let out a sigh and entered the apartment, with Zoe in my wake. I considered hitting the lights, but the soft glow of the streetlights through the window outside provided enough illumination to get by. I almost expected Sarah to greet me, but the place was empty.
Just shadows and memories.
I walked through the rooms slowly, covering old ground. I was aware of Zoe watching me, maybe a bit cautiously, as I made my way through a place I once called home. It was sparse now, but otherwise, it looked the same. The larger furniture, sofa, TV, and beds, were still in the same locations, now covered in dust sheets. Other than that, everything was in boxes or plastic crates.
A life wrapped up in packing tape.
I peeked into the second bedroom, Tommy’s room, and saw the large square indented in the floor where the bed had once been. I tried to remember where it had gone after they had died. Had Rey’s aunt gotten it? I think so…someone in his family had needed a bed. As I tried to remember, I realized that I had no clear memory of where anything had gone. All of Sarah’s clothes had gone to the Salvation Army, but other than that, I had no idea. I’d been in a drunken daze in the months after my family’s murder.
“You okay?”
Zoe’s voice was soft behind me. For a moment, I’d forgotten she was there and hated her for interrupting. But I had brought her here, after all.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been…it’s been a while since I’ve been here.”
“Were you married?” Zoe asked.
“I was, but they– they were taken from me.”
There was a beat of silence before Zoe filled in the gaps. “My God, Thomas. I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
I shrugged, and just like that, I was actually glad to have her here. If I had to face these memories by myself, there’s no telling how I would have reacted. I hadn’t shed any tears in a long time, and I certainly didn’t feel like going through it all again now.
“I’ll give you some time,” Zoe said, giving me a soft squeeze on my shoulder and then backing away. I heard her walk back towards the kitchen and silently thanked her for it.
I turned back to the living room and approached the first box I came to. I dropped to my knees and opened it. It just so happened that it was a box of Sarah’s odds and ends. The first thing I saw was a joke gift I had given her for her birthday one year—a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, a slight jab at how she was always late for things. Beneath the book, there was an assortment of the music Sarah had introduced me to. Massive Attack, Radiohead, Bowie—the kind of artists she had grown up with and that I had grown to love.
I hated every CD in the box now but would have given anything to listen to them with her one last time. I dug deeper and found some trinkets: a box of hair ties, half-used bottles of perfume, a lone earring, and so on.
I closed the flaps on the box and looked all around the living room, sighing. I propped my back up against the couch and allowed myself to finally reflect back on the last two hours of my life. I had been shot at, ruined a car, and now had my dead ex-girlfriend’s twin sister with me. More than that, Rey and Kinsey were likely going to be pissed.
I might be heading back to London much sooner than I had intended.
How did it come to this?
I turned to see Zoe stepping slowly into the living room. She had two bottles in her hands, and I looked to both of them like they were my best friends. In her right hand was a half empty bottle of whiskey. In the other, a bottle of nearly full tequila. I knew she’d plucked them from the top shelf of the kitchen’s pantry. Sarah and I had kept our favorites stashed away there for times of celebration. If I remembered correctly, the bottle of whiskey Zoe now held in her hands had been purchased after Sarah had died, but I had not been able to get through it. Drinking the stuff had brought back too many great memories, which had, at the time, seemed to strangle me. But now it was almost calling my name.
“Is this okay?” Zoe asked. “I saw them in the kitchen. I thought it might help take the edge off.”
“Sure,” I said with a weak smile. “Pick your poison.”
“Whiskey,” she said. “I never was much for tequila. Besides, there’s a whole second bottle in there that hasn’t been opened.”
This was good. If she’d chosen Sarah’s old tequila, it might have wrecked me. She opened the whiskey and took a long gulp from it. She then handed me the bottle with a grimace. When I took my first swallow, the warmth in my stomach was like returning home. It made me far too happy…made me far too comfortable.
“You do know that you’re bleeding?” she asked me.
“Where?”
She grinned and pointed to my back. Somehow I had never even noticed that the back of my shirt was stained in blood. I touched my upper shoulder experimentally and felt a small gash there. I had no idea where it had come from—maybe the cemetery or a shard of metal from the car chase.
It occurred to me then that I was also sticky with sweat. A slight stink rose off of me, a smell I was used to: sweat and spent adrenaline. I needed a shower, but the water in the apartment had been cut off long ago. I then remembered something else that might be in the pantry that could help matters, though.
Taking another sip of the whiskey, I climbed to my feet with a groan and headed into the kitchen. There was a case of bottled water sitting in the bottom of the pantry—another of Sarah’s vices. I, personally, thought the idea of spending money for bottled water was ridiculous. Now, though, I was going to make good use of it. I grabbed up five bottles and carried them back through the living room. As I passed through, I looked at Zoe and shrugged.
“Make yourself at home,” I said. “I’m going to see what I can do about getting washed up.”
She observed the bottles of water and said, “That’s some Boy Scout skills right there.”
“Yeah, we’ll see.”
I went into the bedroom and stepped into the adjoining bathroom. I looked under the sinks, unsure if I had packed up the wash cloths. I found a few that had been left behind and took out one of them. I also saw a beaten up box of Band-Aids lying discarded in the back corner. Two fell out of the box when I shook it.
I lowered the stopper in the sink and poured the water bottles into it. I then gave a few pumps to the bottle of soap on the sink and mixed it together in the tepid water. I soaked the wash cloth in the soapy water and removed my shirt. It was far from the refreshing shower I wanted, but it would do.
I cleaned myself up as well as I could, and felt almost human by the time I had finished.
I also washed up the wound on my shoulder and found that it was wider than it felt. Fighting with the band-aides got me nowhere; I couldn’t angle myself in a way where I could apply them. So instead I dried off and then went out into the living room. Zoe gave a raised eyebrow when she saw me shirtless.
I handed her the Band-Aids. “Can you patch me up?” I asked. “I can’t reach.”
“Sure thing,” she said.
Zoe moved over and inspected the gash. “You should really get stitches on a laceration like this. It’ll heal much better,” she remarked.
“Picked up a thing or two from Darcey, huh?”
She seemed taken aback by the mention of her sister’s medical training, so I decided to drop that subject.
I turned
around to let Zoe attend to my back. Her soft hands felt like a soothing balm after the harsh events of the day. As she patched me up, I noticed that while I had been in the bathroom, she had opened two of the living room windows to combat the heat. A gentle breeze now tossed the drapes back and forth as fresh air came into the apartment for the first time in a year.
Zoe had also located the tumblers in the kitchen and had filled two of them nearly to the top with the whiskey. They sat on top of one of the boxes in the living room, and I realized in that moment just how similar this living room, with its boxes and dusty memories, was to Darcey’s apartment.
“Thanks,” I said when she was done with the Band-Aids. “Now I need to scrounge around and hope I can find an old shirt that I left behind.”
“Ooh, I bet that would smell nice,” she said, wrinkling up her nose.
“Yeah…”
I started looking through the boxes for a shirt, but it was pretty clear that I was out of luck. I did happen to come across a few of Sarah’s old sleeping tee shirts, but the thought of even pulling them out of the boxes, much less wearing them, was too painful.
“So, these guys who took shots at us,” Zoe said. “Any idea who they might be?”
“A few ideas,” I said. “I might have pissed off one of the most powerful criminals in the city earlier today.”
“On purpose?” she asked.
I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a people person.” Then, giving up on finding a shirt, I collapsed down on the couch. I took a long drink from the tumbler of whiskey and closed my eyes to enjoy the way it burned going down.
“Are we going to be okay?” Zoe asked. “Hiding out here, I mean?”
“I think so, yeah.”
She came over and sat down next to me. I could tell that she was scared but doing everything she could to hide it.
“You know,” Zoe said. “Darcey was…well, she was always sad that you two didn’t work out.”
“I wasn’t happy about the way it all went down,” I admitted. “But things worked out for the best, it seems. I got a family, and she got a career that she always wanted.”
Zoe laughed and chased it down with more whiskey. “Yes, her and that career of hers. Good God, she was driven.”
“That’s an understatement,” I said.
And somehow, the topic started to revolve around Darcey again. In the back of my head, I kept trying to decipher what had happened over the course of the evening while also reflecting back on a failed relationship. I could tell that it was good for Zoe to talk about her sister in such a way, though. The conversation, mixed with several glasses of whiskey (which I matched) relaxed her.
I lost track of time, telling the passage of hours only by the fact that we had opened up the second bottle of whiskey and it was half gone too. I sat up, intending to offer Zoe the bedroom for the night while I slept on the couch. When I did, my head was swimming.
“You okay?” Zoe asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “The drinks caught up with me.”
“Lightweight,” Zoe said with a teasing smile.
She emptied the tumbler she currently held and then stood up. She looked around the room for a moment, and I could tell that she was feeling a little woozy, too.
“Are we staying the night?” she asked.
“Well, I’m in no condition to drive,” I said. “And yes, after what happened this afternoon, I think we should stay off the radar for a while.”
She nodded and a thoughtful look came across her face. Then, without warning or explanation, she removed her shirt.
Before I had time to ask her what she was doing, she straddled me on the couch. Words froze in my throat as her perfectly sculpted body was inches from my face.
Suddenly, I was a horny teenage kid again. Things like this did not happen to me. But here I was, sitting on an old couch that had once belonged to me with a half-naked woman on top of me. It would have been easy to let that teenager take over, but it was too good to be true. The older and wiser part of me—the part that knew better—had to speak up. I hated that part of me right then.
“Zoe, wh-what are you doing?” I finally managed to ask.
“What comes naturally,” she said. “I never did thank you for saving me today.” She then leaned closer, her breasts pressing against me. She ran her hands along my chest and every nerve in my body responded. I hadn’t been touched by a woman like this since Sarah, and everything about Zoe was gorgeous, making it all too easy. She breathed into my ear, and I felt her lips on my neck. All the while, her hands continued to move. By the time her fingers had reached my stomach, I knew that I was not going to be able to resist her.
My head was still spinning, but for some reason I was fine with that. My hands went to her back and removed her bra. When it was cast to the floor and I pulled her naked chest tightly to mine, she sighed into my ear. She kissed me then, and the heat took me by surprise.
After that, everything happened far too quickly. The warmth of the night mixed with the heat of our bodies as I lost myself in her hair, her breath, and the ghosts of my old apartment.
TWENTY
For the first few seconds of the following morning, I woke up to every red-blooded male’s fantasy: a gorgeous woman dozing naked next to me. I felt a stirring in all the wrong places and looked away quickly. With the knowledge that what we had done last night had been stupid came the creeping sludge of a hangover.
Despite the perfection lying tight against me on the couch, I felt awful. A headache was coming…I could feel it drifting in like storm clouds. My stomach was a tumultuous pool and the guilt was as sharp as razors. Sure…it had been over a year since I had slept with anyone, so the libido was hard to ignore, but it was the fact of where we had done it that was killing me. I felt like I had defiled the memory of my wife.
I got up, pulled on my pants and walked into the kitchen as Zoe continued to doze behind me. I retrieved one of the remaining bottles of water from the pantry and sipped about half of it down slowly. If I didn’t get some aspirin for the headache pretty soon, it was going to be a monster.
I crept back into the living room to look for my phone. As I looked around, I suddenly heard it ringing. I followed the noise and located the phone behind one of the boxes on the floor. When I retrieved it, I saw that it was 7:32 a.m. and the call was from Nicole Remay in London, requesting a video chat. Zoe stirred on the couch.
Could this get any worse?
I hurried back into the kitchen, trying not to wake Zoe. I answered the call, and when I saw Remay’s face on the screen, I was racked with guilt again. Sure, there was really nothing technically going on between Remay and me, but it didn’t stop me feeling guilty as hell.
“Morning,” I croaked.
“Hey, Blume. So…I don’t know how to say this nicely, so I’ll just say it. You look like shit.”
“Well, I’m not much of a morning person,” I said, hoping she couldn’t tell that I was on the front end of a hangover. Remay had her hair pulled back, and her usual streak of red amidst the blonde was now a shocking purple. She wore little makeup today but still looked leagues better than I did.
“I’ve got some information on those files you sent me pictures of.”
“Great,” I replied as my brain tried to catch up with the events of the last couple of days.
“Well, maybe not so great. It’s mostly speculation since I can’t see the body in person.”
“Speculation is better than nothing. What do you have?”
“Ok, I think the jewelry was planted—probably not the victim’s based on what you said. Maybe added after death.”
“Why?” I asked.
Remay frowned before stating, “I’ve read about several similar cases of bodies dumped in water with jewelry. Usually they are pretty mangled like this one. The jewelry was silver or gold, right?”
“Right, how do you know?”
“It’s the shine. Shiny jewelry on a vic dumped in water attracts fish. The fish
start nibbling around the silver or gold and eat away all the evidence. Often they don’t even leave fingerprints.”
“Huh,” I said, recalling the patches of missing flesh on Darcey’s body. “That’s pretty smart thinking.”
“It is,” Remay said. “I wish it were mine, but killers have tried this one a few times before.”
Through the muck of my hangover, I recalled that one of Darcey’s ex-boyfriends had been a marine biologist. Given what Remay was telling me, that seemed…a little convenient.
“What is it?” Remay asked.
“Just processing,” I said.
“That usually means you have a lead.”
“Maybe, not sure yet.”
“So how are the States treating you?”
“Same as before.”
She smiled, and it reminded me of why I admired her so much; why I enjoyed being around Remay and, as much as I hated to admit it, I missed her.
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t know how New York treated you before, you never told me.”
I was about to offer a smart-ass answer but was interrupted by footsteps behind me. I turned and saw Zoe standing there at the entryway between the kitchen and the living room. She had her underwear on, but nothing else. I was suddenly struck by guilt again, sandwiched between Zoe in the room and Remay on the line…who had clearly seen everything.
I returned my gaze to the phone screen just in time to see the last remnants of a very hurt look on Remay’s face. She looked sad, upset, and angry, but it quickly disappeared behind an unreadable blank expression. Behind me, I heard Zoe mutter an apology and then walk quickly away.
“Sorry,” I said. “That was just—”
“Blume, it’s none of my business. You are—”
“Well, I don’t want you thinking—”
“Blume. It’s okay. Just…look…the other thing I was going to tell you about that body is that from what I can tell from what you sent over, the victim was likely strangled.”
“By hand?”
“Seems that way,” Remay said. It was clear that she was in a hurry to get off of the phone. I tried to imagine what she must be thinking. I felt like a prize asshole.