I had nothing.
I poured myself a quarter glass of wine and stared at a clock shaped like a wallaby on the wall behind the bar. Twelve minutes had passed since James had gone to the car. In my estimation, it shouldn’t have taken more than five to get there and back. Maybe he was on the phone. Or maybe he wasn’t. Sitting there, watching time tick by, I became consumed with what could be keeping him, and my anxiety spun into overdrive.
Wondering wouldn’t suffice.
To satisfy myself, I needed to know why he hadn’t returned yet, and I needed to know now.
While the bartender handed a drink to a customer on the opposite end of the counter, I leaned over the bar, plucking one of the knives he’d been using to slice limes. I tucked it into my purse and stood up, looking at the clock once again.
Fourteen minutes had come and gone.
Something wasn’t right.
I headed out of the restaurant, sprinting toward James’ car. The driver’s-side door was open, the interior light was on, and his cell phone was sitting on the seat. The sweater he’d meant to bring me was still on the back seat where he’d left it. And James was nowhere to be seen.
I spun around, my eyes darting back and forth, scanning the area. “James, are you out here? James! Where are you?”
A couple walking hand in hand across the parking lot stared at me like they thought I was intoxicated. The man gripped the woman’s hand tighter, and then they quickly changed direction, as if trying to get as far away from me as possible.
I braced myself against the car and breathed, trying to get my nerves under control. When I was able to focus again, my eyes came to rest on the car’s windshield. A few letters were written across it in the same shade of red that I’d seen on Adelaide’s forehead, only this time it said: FOO, a word clearly left unfinished.
I surmised James had caught the killer in the act of vandalizing his car before the killer had a finished product. If I was right, where was James? And where was the killer?
The restaurant was located at the far end of the pier where the cruise liners docked when they entered port. With one direction leading out to sea, three other possible directions to investigate remained, and that was if James was still in the area.
I needed help.
I palmed my cell phone, intending to call the police, but then I spotted James’ watch several feet in front of me on the sidewalk. I rushed over and picked it up. The watch face had a small crack, and the sidewalk where it had been sitting was littered with what appeared to be blood spatter that continued into the park. I switched my cell phone’s flashlight on and followed the droplets of blood into the park, where the grass hid them from view.
I glanced around. “James? Are you here?”
The sound of a man groaning washed through the trees. It was faint, but loud enough for me to confirm the direction it had come from. I raced through the darkness and found James bent over on all fours. He was bloody, but alive—for now.
I readied my kitchen knife and glanced around. Seeing no one, I dropped to my knees beside him.
“How bad are you hurt?” I asked.
He raised his body enough for me to see he’d been stabbed in at least two places—once in the hand, and the other in the abdomen. He attempted to lean against the tree and come to a sitting position, a move that proved to be a mistake. Blood was pouring from his chest more rapidly now. He was losing too much of it, too fast.
I pressed my hand over his, pushed into his chest, and said, “You’re losing too much blood. We have to stop it. We have to keep applying pressure.”
With my other hand, I thumbed the number to the police station. Before the call was answered, James’ eyes closed and his body went limp, sagging to the ground next to me. When my call was picked up, I blurted, “I’m at the park across from Coltello e Forchetta. Senator James Ashby has been stabbed. I need someone here. Now!”
I had always found the mind to be a complex curiosity, especially when multiple things all occurred at basically the same time. The overload often forced my mind into protection mode. I’d always assumed it was my brain’s way of compartmentalizing, slowing down a situation riddled with too many moving parts to process in one given moment. When the parts became still enough to filter the rapid-fire events into internal boxes, then I could open and examine each one individually, instead of all at the same time.
My mental boxes of unfortunate events were stacked on top of each other, and as the seconds passed, I had started pulling them down, unpacking each detail until every box had been opened. I then tried blending them together into one, forcing myself to remember the pattern of events as they occurred so I didn’t forget. At the moment, it proved to be an impossible task. My mind was an endless fog, and the more I tried to stitch the recent events of the night together, the more they kept unraveling.
I was alone in a hospital room on a bed, fully clothed, including my shoes, unsure of how I’d ended up there. My head was throbbing.
For all the things I didn’t know, there were a few things I did:
James had tried to tell me something when I’d reached him, but he’d had trouble talking. His voice had been low and gravelly, and I had been too preoccupied trying to stop the blood from pouring out of his chest to understand a word he was saying.
My call to the police seemed to go on a lot longer than I remembered. When I checked my phone, I noticed the duration was four minutes, even though I was sure it had been closer to one.
I had started having flashbacks from the time after I’d called the police and before they arrived ... of someone else being in the park. I was on the ground looking up, staring up at what I assumed was a man, but his face was blurred to me. Whether he was real or something my mind had invented, I wasn’t sure.
And finally, I had no idea where James had been taken and whether he was dead or alive.
The foreigner had looked so peaceful resting on the ground next to the senator. With one flick of his wrist, the man could have easily slit her throat if he’d wanted to, and she would have been dead. But killing her hadn’t appealed to him in that moment. He didn’t have enough of a reason to rationalize her death. Not yet, anyway. And with the senator dead, the justice the man had been seeking had been served. He saw no point in adding to the death toll again unless he had to.
Over the last day, he’d spent a great deal of time pondering just how much killing was too much killing, or if the concept of a certain number making more of a difference than another actually mattered in the end. He’d come to a decision that it wasn’t practical for murder to be viewed in terms of numbers, or in deciding how much killing was too much.
It was more of a matter of principle.
Some people needed to die.
Plain and simple.
And ridding the world of such filth made it a better place.
Every time he opened the paper or switched on the news and saw a crime go unpunished, it lit a fire inside him that refused to go out. Why did some crimes come with a heavy price, while others weren’t deemed punishable at all? And why did only certain people have the ability to pass judgment on everyone else? Society as a whole seemed unfair and biased, something that needed to change.
And why was it so many murderers seemed to kill for pleasure? He took no pleasure in what he did. It was merely a way of exacting justice that wouldn’t be served any other way.
A week earlier, he’d read an article outlining murder statistics around the world. He was pleased to learn Australia ranked 183 out of 216 countries. The United States was far worse, ranking at 111. But even America paled in comparison to Honduras, where over ninety percent of the murders in the world occurred per every hundred thousand residents.
Those lunatics were the real savages.
Not him.
He could kill a hell of a lot more if he wanted and not even make a dent in Honduras’ outrageously high average. He could continue killing for the remainder of his life if he liked, and Australia would
still never end up on top.
But did he want to?
Killing people was a lot of work, and it exhausted him, mentally and physically. Each time he forced a blade into someone’s chest, there was a heaviness attached to it when he pulled it out. It was almost like taking the life of another stripped away years from his.
He’d done what he’d set out to do, and he’d gotten away with it. What was the point in continuing? There was a lot more to life than murder—like gourmet sauces and exotic cuisine, hobbies he’d once struggled at, but now mastered.
It had been a long, murderous day.
He stripped off his clothes, changed into a pair of plaid pajamas, and rested his head on a pillow, congratulating himself on a good night’s work. He was so entranced in his thoughts he almost didn’t notice Petey, who was sitting in a recliner chair next to the bed, reading a book.
“To kill or not to kill,” the man said. “I don’t know, Petey. What do you think?”
James’ father Noel—a.k.a. Froggy—entered my hospital room, crossed in front of my bed, and sat on a chair opposite me. He looked a lot paler today than he had the last time I saw him. He also looked worried, and I prepared for the worst.
He folded his arms in front of him and said, “How ya goin’ today, Sloane?”
“All right, I think,” I said. “But I’m not sure what’s going on.”
“I might be able to fill in the gaps for you.”
I pushed a pillow behind me and sat up. “I wanted to apologize to you about how I behaved when we first met. I’d like to blame my behavior on jet lag, but there really was no excuse for it.”
He shrugged. “No need to apologize. It’s all good, darlin’. No worries.”
“I shouldn’t have been such a jerk to you, though. You didn’t deserve it.”
“Probably not, but it’s all in the past now.”
“How’s James?” I asked. “I don’t know what happened after I found him in the park. Is he ...”
“Dead? No. Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“He’s in surgery. I should know something in another hour or two. He’s tough. Always has been. I expect he’ll make it through and be all right, or maybe that’s just what I keep telling myself because I’ve lost one child already. I’m not ready to lose another.”
“What has the doctor said?”
“He couldn’t believe James was still alive when he got here, because of all the blood he’d lost.” He leaned back in the chair. “I’ve been thinking about the first time I stepped foot in this hospital. It was the day Caroline was born. She was such a little thing. Premature. Underweight. They kept her here for three weeks after she came into the world. Every day after I got off work, I’d drive over straightaway to see her. When I walked in and she looked up at me, I could swear I saw her eyes change, like she knew I’d be coming, like she’d been waiting all day for me to get there. Probably sounds crazy, but it’s the truth.”
“It doesn’t sound crazy at all. Not to me.”
“What made you decide to become a private investigator, if you don’t mind me asking? Doesn’t it wear on you? Isn’t it hard spending your life surrounded by so much death all the time?”
“Death isn’t all it is. It’s just part of it.”
“I guess I just don’t understand what drives you to be in this line of work. Since Caroline died, I feel like I’m suffocating. All I want is to breathe like I used to, to feel normal again. I don’t know if I ever will.”
“You will, one day. You’ll get there. It’s a long process, but time offers the chance for healing.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
I nodded. “I am, but what I went through was different. I mean, same type of emotions, I suppose, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose a child.”
“I couldn’t imagine it either, until it happened.”
“James told me you’re a retired chief superintendent.”
“I am, but I’d say what I did and what you do on a routine basis are not the same. This city is a safe place, or it was until recently.”
“I never thought I’d become a private investigator,” I said. “I wanted to be a therapist.”
“Then what made you decide to do it?”
“Several years ago, my sister was murdered, and her death changed everything.”
His eyes widened, and he leaned forward. “How did it happen?”
“She was the victim of a serial killer named Sam Reids. He called himself ‘Sinnerman.’”
“He still alive?”
I shook my head. “He’s in the ground where he belongs.”
“Hard to believe there are people in this world who are so evil. You kill him?”
“I wanted to,” I said. “He was a real scumbag. I even had the chance, but I didn’t go through with it. Someone else did it for me, so I didn’t have to do it. Before we found the killer, I’d go into the police station at least once a week, checking in on any new leads they had. Even though they did everything they could to find him, any leads they had turned into dead ends. It was frustrating, for me and for them. I grew tired of feeling helpless and decided to learn everything I could about tracking murderers and getting inside their minds. I started working for a private detective agency that specialized in tougher cases, and I became good at it ... so good I opened a business of my own.”
“You found Sinnerman?”
“I’d like to say I did,” I said. “Truth is, he found me first.”
“I’ve thought a lot about what I would do if I came face-to-face with the man responsible for all this—the man who has torn a hole through my family.”
“I experienced the same feelings when it happened to me. In my situation, when we caught the guy, there was someone there with me. Someone who knew I’d never killed anyone before. He talked me out of doing the one thing I’d dreamed of doing since the day my sister drew her last breath. Ever since then all I’ve ever wanted to do is take on high profile cases like your daughter’s and bring families the closure they’re looking for.”
“Do you only take on murder cases?”
I nodded. “I tried stopping for a while, tried taking other, less-risky jobs like internet searches on missing people, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy me. Finding murderers is in my blood now. It makes me feel whole and alive. And now I suppose it’s your turn to think I sound crazy.”
He held two fingers up an inch apart from each other. “Maybe a little. You didn’t kill the man responsible for your sister’s death. Does that mean you’ve never killed anyone?”
“I do what it takes to get the job done. The person I was before, the one who went after Sam Reids, was more of a girl than a woman. I’ve changed a lot since then.”
I grabbed the glass of water on the tray next to me and took a sip.
“Now you can answer something for me,” I said.
“Sure. What would you like to know?”
“What the hell happened tonight?”
“When the police arrived at the park, they found you lying on the ground next to James,” Noel said.
“I don’t remember ever being on the ground,” I said, “but I’ve been having flashbacks that suggest I was at one point.”
“At first the paramedics thought you had been attacked too. Some parts of you were bloody. It wasn’t your blood, though. It was James’ blood. When they got you all cleaned up, there wasn’t a mark on you. What do you remember?”
I still hadn’t separated fact from fiction.
“I remember finding James,” I said. “I put my hand on his chest to try to stop the bleeding. I’m just not sure what happened next.”
“You called for help. Sometime during the call, the paramedics believe you passed out. Thankfully it wasn’t long between your call and when the ambulance arrived.”
“Why would I have passed out? I’ve been in far worse situations than this before.”
“You didn’t just faint once, darlin’. It
happened a second time in the ambulance. You don’t recall?”
I shook my head.
“You gave general information about James to the operator,” he said, “and then it sounded like the line went dead, but the call was still engaged. The operator tried communicating with you several times, but you were unresponsive. Seems there’s a lot you don’t remember. What about the time frame before you found James?”
I crossed my arms, thinking. “After I exited the restaurant and realized James wasn’t at the car, I found the watch he’d been wearing on the ground. There were spots of fresh blood on the sidewalk. The blood trail led me into the park where I found him.”
“And was he alone?”
“Yes ... I mean ... I think so. I didn’t see anyone else there, but I’m getting the feeling the killer likes hanging around in the shadows, watching what’s going on. And I keep seeing glimpses in my mind of a man hovering over me, but I can’t make out his face.”
“Could have been the police or the paramedics.”
Maybe, but my gut told me otherwise.
“James was stabbed in the chest, and it looked like his hand had been sliced too,” I said. “Did he have any other injuries?”
“His upper left forearm was cut, but the wound wasn’t deep. It’s more of a scratch in comparison to the other ones.”
“I wish I could have been there to help him.”
Noel leaned forward and grabbed my hand. “You were there to help him, Sloane. You saved his life.”
“I hope so.”
“How did James end up in the park without you? Weren’t you at the restaurant together?”
I nodded. “We’d ordered some wine and were talking about different things related to the case. He noticed I was cold and offered to get me the sweater he had in his car. He went outside to get it. Several minutes passed and he hadn’t returned, so I went to check on him. I found the door to his car open, and ... you know the rest.”
Smoke and Mirrors Page 7