The Man on the Washing Machine

by Susan Cox

  His callousness was appalling, and I don’t know why I believed him when he said he hadn’t killed Nicole, but I did.

  He looked at me carefully and said in a changed tone: “What do you want me to do, Theo? I’ve watched CSI; I know they’ll find plenty of blood evidence and compost scraps or whatever if they know where to look. Are you going to tell them?”

  “Are your clothes still in the freezer?”

  It didn’t surprise me that he’d shown presence of mind about that, too. “I took the bags and distributed them among the trash cans downtown on trash night,” he said. “They’re long gone.”

  Hardly able to process all he’d told me, and feeling I never wanted to look at him again, I still found myself thinking that no serious harm had been done; Nicole was already dead when he buried her. My thoughts slid to a stop when I realized what I was considering. I didn’t give a rat’s ass if Derek got caught up in all of this mess he’d created. But Nat was in love with Derek and I owed Nat my life; I’d often told myself I would do anything for him. Now I knew what that meant.

  “I won’t tell Lichlyter what you’ve told me about burying Nicole. You’re on your own with the rhino horn though,” I said. “Did you hit me and steal the crates from the garage?”

  He looked shamefaced. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Theo. First you and then Haruto showing up—”

  “You didn’t move those crates by yourself.”

  “I’m not getting anyone else involved.”

  I had a good idea who it must have been. It was a very painful realization.

  I left him sitting on the roof, legs still dangling over the edge, staring at nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I needed time to absorb Derek’s confession and figure out what it meant. I also wanted to hear Ben if he came back to the studio so I could call Lichlyter. I went downstairs to Aromas.

  Darkness had fallen by the time I looked up and realized I needed to put on some lights. A light tap on the street-side door made me jump. I looked over and saw Kurt beckoning me through the glass door. I was very aware suddenly of being alone in the store.

  “What do you want?” I said stiffly through the glass. I wanted to talk to him, but in daylight. With witnesses.

  “Can I come in for a few minutes?” His earlier anger was gone and he was shivering in shirtsleeves, and for some stupid reason I took pity on him and unlocked the door. In a different mood, I might have enjoyed the sight of Kurt pared down to the inner man. His disheveled blond hair and the patches of pink high on his cheeks made him look like a discarded doll.

  “I don’t have much time,” I said when, in truth, I had nothing but time.

  “I don’t expect much,” he said humbly.

  I hesitated. “Come in,” I said, and opened the door wide enough to admit him.

  “I guess I haven’t been here in a while,” he said as he looked around, trying to make it seem casual. He was keeping his taped-up hand in his pocket. “Still wanted to check that you’re doing okay. You’ve had a lot to deal with.”

  “Tell me something,” I said as I casually walked over to stand behind the counter. Still watching him carefully, I ran my fingers over the assorted detritus down there.

  “What?” he said cautiously.

  “Someone tried to kill me last night and I injured their right hand. Tell me how you hurt yours.” While I was speaking, I pulled a pistol-shaped soap out of its box under the counter and aimed it at him. It looked amazingly real. In the half-light it almost fooled me.

  He goggled. “Theo, what the hell!”

  “Keep your hands where I can see them. I don’t have to kill you, I can shoot you in your other hand. You’ll probably never operate again—” I narrowed my eyes and tried to look threatening and it must have worked because his pink cheeks turned faintly green.

  “For God’s sake! What do you want to know?” he said wildly.

  “How did you hurt your hand?”

  He ground his teeth. “Sabina slammed it in a car door.”

  I blinked in surprise and couldn’t stop a grin from coming. “Go on.”

  “It’s not so goddam funny. It broke two of my fingers and my hands are—”

  “Important, I know. Not too many one-handed surgeons around. Why the fight?”

  He scowled. “That’s all we do, all the time,” he said petulantly.

  I suddenly remembered Sabina’s visit to the medical building at 450 Sutter for collagen injections. Insight came in a flash. I almost groaned aloud, it was so clear. “Sabina’s pregnant.”

  He made an involuntary move toward me and I raised the soap pistol a couple of inches even as I stepped back in alarm.

  “Damn that interfering old sonofabitch! I knew he wouldn’t keep quiet!” He slammed his fist into the palm of his injured hand. It must have hurt like hell, but he didn’t even pause for breath. “Did he tell you it’s not my baby?” he said in a fury.

  “What? Who?” I said, mystified.

  “Old man D’Allessio. He saw us fighting. Sabina was screaming at the top of her lungs; I knew he’d overheard everything. I told him to keep his mouth shut. I’m glad someone knifed him. The miserable old bastard.”

  “Nobody told me anything,” I said roughly. But she’d given up hot whirlpools at the club, and she wasn’t drinking alcohol or coffee. Her jeans weren’t just fashionably tight; she was putting on weight. Nat believed the lie about those lip-enhancing collagen injections because he met her outside 450 Sutter. But in that expensive medical building, plastic surgeons practice side by side with other kinds of doctors. “It was a guess,” I said more gently.

  He looked at me, baffled and still furious as I used the barrel of the gun soap to count out the points on my fingertips. “So, let me see if I’ve got this right. Sabina started a baby. The father either ducked out, or she turned him down—maybe that fellow in the black limousine she was seeing until last month. You’ve been waiting for your chance with her but when the two of you started to get serious, she told you about the baby. I’d bet money you were clueless enough to suggest an abortion—no wonder she’s been so pissed at you. She’s Catholic, you idiot.”

  “I didn’t know that!”

  “You didn’t want to get involved with the mother of some other man’s baby because of what people would say about you…” I took a deep breath. What an oaf.

  He made a quick movement in my direction and I raised the gun soap again. He stood still. He was breathing hard and the boyish charm was hidden underneath his rage. His eyes, the winter-cloud eyes, were like splinters of ice.

  “Did you stab him to keep him quiet?” I asked calmly.

  “What? What’re you talking about?” He seemed genuinely surprised.

  “Professor D’Allessio. He knew about the baby—you’d be a laughingstock if everyone knew about it.”

  He passed shaking fingers over his upper lip. “Don’t be ridiculous. All I had to do was break things off with Sabina.” He flushed. “I told her everyone would know! I told her I won’t have anything to do with someone else’s baby.” He seemed suddenly to recollect himself and fell silent, breathing hard.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I said. He looked disbelieving and I shrugged. “You can’t help being a jerk.”

  I caressed the neck of a gallon jug of shampoo and tamped down an almost physical need to hit him with it. Instead, I walked over to open the door, still struggling to be civilized.

  “Sabina might still be prepared to take you back; I wouldn’t push her too hard though,” I said through my teeth. If Sabina had any sense she’d run a mile.

  His face suddenly tightened. “I could have you arrested for—for threatening behavior! Sabina said you didn’t have the gun anymore!” he said, darting a furious look at the gun soap.

  I paused. “How did Sabina know that?”

  “She said she took it from your place; God knows why. She says she gave it to someone. Haruto or Nat or someone.”

  “Which one of them?”
I said, and held my breath.

  “I don’t know. Obviously, she was lying,” he sneered. “Your inspector friend will be interested. There’s no way you have a license for that thing. You always said you were afraid of guns.”

  I held it up and snapped the barrel off. Little chips of soap fell on the floor. “I won’t tell if you don’t,” I said. And then, because I couldn’t help it, I chuckled at the expression on his face.

  He hesitated, clenched his unwrapped hand into a fist at his side, and stalked out. I watched him go. Jackass. But unfortunately I believed him. And I could always check with Sabina about the car door. I bit my lip to stop another smile coming. That had to hurt.

  I looked around the store and sighed heavily, amusement gone. All hell was quietly breaking out all around me. Did everyone I knew have secrets? And I’d thought it was just me.

  I started lining up stacks of soaps and bottles of lotions on the shelves, giving myself time to think. I ran through the facts I had, but the conclusions I came to were so confusing I couldn’t decide for certain what I believed. I thought Derek was telling the truth, as far as it went. So was it possible that the rhino horn wasn’t involved in Nicole’s death, that there was some other, more personal reason for her to be killed after all? But how did Tim Callahan’s death fit into all of this? He’d been the first one killed, practically in the act of breaking into one of the crates, which brought the rhino horn back into focus again. Shit! And why was Professor D’Allessio attacked? Had he seen something dangerous to the killer?

  And where the hell did Charlie O’Brien fit in?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I climbed the stairs to my flat and kicked the door behind me savagely. Lucy greeted me, and I scratched her ears. She wandered off, duty done, and I went into the bedroom, forgetting that my mattress was riddled with bullets and my pillows trashed. I sat on the floor with my laptop and thought about friendship and betrayals and the evil consequences of good intentions.

  I knew Derek had buried Nicole, and why. I’d also remembered why the gentle sound of Nat’s pendant had been bothering me: I had heard it in the garage last night, before Haruto and I had been coshed and tied up. I thought suddenly about Derek and Tim Callahan and Nicole all knowing one another fifteen years ago. They were together in school—but there might be another connection.

  I tapped Professor D’Allessio’s name into Google and came up with hits about Renaissance drama and a lot of articles in Italian, which, when I put some phrases into the translate program, were even less helpful than the originals.

  Nicole’s name brought up a photo of her at an art show, which brought tears to my eyes because—well, just because.

  Tim Callahan’s name produced a small article about the riot at the Adelphi Club and when I dug a little deeper more familiar names popped up. Including the name of the Adelphi Club president who was mishandling the protests and who had fallen from grace with a resounding thud. Omigod. I started to hyperventilate—if I could find connections on the Internet, anyone could! And if they began their search with the Adelphi Club, it wouldn’t take long for the same familiar names to surface.

  Lucy had been pestering me for most of the time I’d been upstairs. She needed dinner and she needed to go outside. When she abandoned me I knew she was minutes away from destroying something as payback for my neglect, so I snapped shut the laptop, called Lucy, and hurriedly opened a tin of her favorite beef and bacon food. I mushed the vile stuff around in her bowl with some dog biscuits and put the dish down, expecting to hear her nails on the floor as she charged down the hall. When I didn’t hear her, I called her name again, surprised that I should have to. Perhaps my inner turmoil was affecting her. Maybe she didn’t feel much like eating, either.

  I returned to the bedroom. “Lucy, where are you? Dinner’s on.”

  But there was no answering patter of footsteps. At least, not in the house. I went back through the kitchen and into the utility room. The door was ajar and I heard her flopping down the stairs. I remembered the backward kick I’d intended should close the door but obviously hadn’t. I called her again, but she ignored me. I locked the back door (lesson learned, finally) and started down the stairs.

  I followed her into the garden. Nothing was going to happen, I told myself nervously. There were too many lights on—too many people on the other side of their windows and doors. Kurt. Sabina. Helga. Davie. Haruto. And my best friend, Nat.

  I’d have to flip the start and end points of my Internet search to be certain; I’d have to double-check, but somehow I knew.

  “Lucy!” I hissed. “Lucy! Where are you?”

  I searched in a random pattern across the darkened garden, calling her name and checking under her favorite shrubs until I found her. She gave me a welcoming lick in the eye when I snatched her up, and then wriggled in her eloquent way to tell me business had not been taken care of.

  “Hurry up,” I muttered at her, looking around anxiously. There were moon shadows in the garden and Lucy’s white fur was dim in the gloom under an azalea bush. She was a small, humpback oval, like a guinea pig or a molded cream cheese salad. She rustled furtively and I looked away into the darkness to spare her embarrassment, and check once more that we were alone. The garden melted into a series of shapes, each blacker than the last, like hills rolling into the distance. I could see the shape of the toolshed near the vegetable garden. To my left, the frame of the children’s swings looked like a gibbet, and the lights in the buildings were like holes in black velvet. I heard the occasional snatch of laughter, saw the shadows as people passed behind their lighted drapes. Lucy’s steps crunched lightly on the path. I looked toward the sound and called her name. “Lucy! Stay close!” She looked back at me suspiciously, her cataracts glittering in the moonlight like opals.

  I don’t know when I realized someone was there, or how long he had been standing in the dark, waiting for me to turn my back. Suddenly he was there, a few feet from where I had been staring into the shadows. In my highly sensitized emotional state, the silhouette looked terrifying; shapeless and malevolent. I took a step backward. The intense black shadow stepped toward me.

  “Who’s that?” My voice cracked. Terror and misery closed my throat in a helpless squeak.

  The shadow flew at me in a flying tackle like a headlong dive. I turned to run, tripped, and flung myself into someone else. I automatically raised my fist at the second attacker’s head and lashed out. The keys arrayed around my knuckles connected, and I heard a heavy grunt. I aimed low with a furious piston-action kick and felt it connect. He bellowed like an animal and leaped at me. I raised jerky arms to ward him off and his partner cannonballed into me from behind, lifting me and flinging me to the side. I fell like a stone and heard something in me crack. For a suspended, fluid moment I thought I was dead—except surely death didn’t hurt so much. And then, outlined above me in the moonlight, I saw Nat vault over me.

  There was a bewildering, fierce, piglike grunting and the ugly, squelching slaps of bone hitting flesh, and two voices snorting incoherent threats. A voice snarling “Fuck you!” And then the sound of a scream and staggering footsteps and someone crashing heavily through the shrubs. Nat, panting and heaving deep, tattered breaths, was leaning over me. The moonlight glinted on a blade.

  “Theo?” Nat said faintly. Still fearful and not quite comprehending what had happened, I struggled to shimmy backward along the ground. The torn sleeve of my sweater hung loose around my elbow. In the light from the moon, blood ran down my bare arm. I looked up at his terrified face, heard the soft, feathery fall of the knife from his hand. I couldn’t breathe. Shallow gasps were absurdly painful. Ribs. He’d cracked my ribs when he threw me sideways; knocked me out of harm’s way, out of the killer’s path.

  Familiar voices shouted, “What’s going on out there?” “What’s happening?” Footsteps pounded toward us. Nat’s eyes fluttered, then rolled, and he fell on top of me.

  Caught between relief and agony, I almost la
ughed. He’d seen the blood in the moonlight and fainted. I pushed him aside, took an experimental, painful breath, and rolled him over. He flopped inelegantly, still out cold and damn near breaking my legs with his weight. I checked myself for wounds, but couldn’t tell where the blood had come from.

  “Theo! Thank God! What the hell’s happening?” Haruto’s voice was shrill, his face taut with agitation. He knelt down beside me on the grass. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I gasped.

  “Hey! Somebody—a little help!” Astoundingly, Ben’s voice came from the lower reaches of the garden. I now realized I’d been hearing disjointed swearing and more slaps and squelchy thumps.

  Haruto leaped to his feet. He shouted something and disappeared. I sighed, winced painfully, and gave Nat a nudge.

  “C’mon, Nat. Rise and shine.” But he made no sound and didn’t move. I looked at his face again, and leaned over him in alarm. He looked like a ghost.

  “Nat!” Every move I made was excruciating, but I tried to shake him anyway. In my own body the action set off a series of inner crackings and grindings and agonizing catches of breath, but it didn’t rouse him. I dragged my legs painfully out from underneath him and lifted his head into the crook of my arm.

  “Nat, can you hear me?”

  His eyes fluttered slightly and a faint smile came to his lips.

  “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” He’d seemed okay; winded, I thought. And he always fainted when he saw blood. It had been that, at the last, which persuaded me of his innocence.