Witness to Death

by Dave White

  When he entered a long yellow hall, he saw why the air smelled that way. A guy in light blue scrubs and long lab coat dropped a cigarette on to the floor, trying to step on it quickly before anyone saw what he was doing. He looked up and saw Callahan.

  “You’re not supposed to be down here, sir,” the labcoat said.

  “My mistake. I was looking for the maternity ward,” Callahan said, stepping further into the hallway.

  The labcoat shrugged. “That’s on the 3rd—”

  Callahan wrapped his forearm around the throat of the labcoat, stepped behind him and pulled. He cut the air to his windpipe, and waited until the guy passed out. There wasn’t time to talk his way into the morgue, and to be honest, Callahan wasn’t in the mood to try.

  He dragged the unconscious body around the corner, and tucked it in a janitor’s closet. The door to the morgue was locked, and there was a small keypad on the wall. Callahan flipped through his PDA, looking at the codes Weller had uploaded. He found the line marked Greenville and typed in the five digit code. The door hissed and the lock snapped open.

  He stepped through double swinging doors into a white tiled room that held two stainless steel metal carts and a bunch of drawers in the wall. It’d been a while since Callahan’d been in a morgue.

  He opened the first drawer and tugged out the body, a blond man with a bullet hole in his chest. No other markings. He appeared to be in good shape, but nothing to give away his training. When Callahan checked the other four bodies, he didn’t find any indication who sent these men to kill him. Short haircuts, bullet holes, a few scars, but no tattoos or anything else that stood out. If he had to guess he’d say military, but beyond that he couldn’t put a finger on which division. He took photos. When he snapped one of the guy he interviewed, he marked it with a caption.

  The skin on the bodies was all ashen, and gray, except for the bullet holes, which had dried reddish brown. Hours of training at the range had paid off again. Nice shots.

  Callahan texted the pictures of the bodies to Weller.

  He left the morgue and checked on the labcoat. The guy was stirring. His breathing was normal. Time to get the hell out of there.

  John and Ashley stepped into her apartment. They hadn’t talked on the car ride from Jersey City. John had tried once more to ask what the hell was going on, but Ashley just shook her head and turned up the radio. “Thunder Road.” John spent the rest of the trip breathing through his mouth so he didn’t smell the smoke anymore. And flexing his forearms to stop the tremors.

  The apartment was cluttered. Three day old newspapers were scattered across the table. The room smelled faintly of old coffee. A half filled glass of wine was on the floor next to her chair. It rested on top of a folder with a name on it. John could make out “Peter,” but not the last name. He hadn’t been to her place in a week, and he wondered how long that glass had been there.

  The room felt cold. He took a breath through his nose, and let it out through his mouth. The smell of smoke was still there.

  “Why did you come for me, Ashley?”

  “I saw you on the news. They said you got arrested. I wanted to help you.” She picked up the wine glass and grabbed the file underneath. “Come on, we don’t have time.”

  John closed his eyes. Things just weren’t clicking for him. “Time for what?”

  “We’re running, John. We’re getting the hell out of here. Starting over wherever we can get to.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she went into her hallway closet, dragged out a suitcase into her bedroom. She emerged two minutes later, the suitcase behind her. Clothes had been thrown into it. She put the folder in it and then zipped the case.

  “I made a mistake, John. I thought I was trying to do the right thing and help.”

  It didn’t register with John immediately, but somewhere in the back of his brain it clicked in. He imagined standing outside the Starbucks, looking through the window and seeing Frank facing him. The woman Frank was talking to. The back of her head, the brown hair peeking out from the hat. The crook of her arm, the way she moved. The idea John had been trying to block out for weeks now.

  “Have you been seeing Frank? Was it you in the Starbucks?”

  Ashley shook her head and leaned forward. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I saw you talking to him. Like three weeks ago, at the Starbucks in Montclair.”

  Ashley closed her eyes. John could swear she went a little paler.

  “I think someone is going to try and kill me,” she said. “They’re coming after me for the mistake I made. When I saw you on the news—twice—the second time they said you’d been arrested, I got really scared. If they went after you, they were definitely going to come after me. And you were a sitting duck in jail. So I came to get you out. It was all I could think of. I went to Home Depot and got the turnpentine.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The muscles around his stomach tightened. Bile rose in his throat and he gagged.

  “You don’t get it?” Her voice was rising and cracking. “I didn’t want you to follow Peter. I wanted to protect you. And myself. And then you went and did it anyway.”

  “I was just—”

  “Now I’m trying to save us both,” she said. “We’re wasting time. We have to get out of here.”

  John stood up. If he could just forget who he was talking to, and ask the right questions, maybe he could learn a thing or two.

  “Are you caught up with the mob? Are you gambling?”

  Ashley stood up too. She stepped around the table and put her arms around John’s shoulders. Her eyes were soft and watery.

  “No. It’s none of that. We have to go.”

  She stepped away from him.

  “Is Frank a terrorist?”

  “I can’t tell you, John. I can’t.”

  John sat back down, his legs giving out beneath him.

  He was about to say something else. He wasn’t sure what, but his mouth was open and sound was coming out, but Ashley held up a hand. John closed his mouth.

  “We’re leaving now.”

  She walked across the room, to the lamp near the window. She reached out and clicked it off. As she did, there was a loud bang and the cracking of glass.

  She turned slowly, and he noticed the sadness in her eyes was gone. Now they were scared.

  She dropped to her knees and pressed her hands to her stomach.

  “Ashley? ASHLEY?”

  As John got out of his seat, his entire body went numb. His hearing was replaced by a ringing sound. He tried to ignore it all as he rushed toward her.

  Ashley fell into John’s arms. He took a step back, catching her at her elbows. Air escaped from her lips in a hiss. He looked into her eyes as they glazed over. A warm liquid oozed from her stomach on to his shirt, and he felt it soak through to his chest. Near the wound something sounded like a straw sucking up the last bits of a drink.

  “John, I—” she managed but the rest was cut off as she struggled for more air.

  On the fire escape a woman, tall, thin, wearing black clothes and a gray ski mask held a gun and a knife. She used the butt of the gun to punch through the already cracked lower window pane, shattering it. Little pieces crinkled to the carpet. Once most of the glass was cleared, she stepped into the apartment.

  “You,” the woman said, her green eyes glaring at John through the mask. “You were the one on the news.”

  She glided through the door, flipping the knife in her hand without looking at it. Her movements struck John as the exact opposite of her tone of voice.

  John reeled backwards, dragging Ashley’s limp body with him. She was dead weight and he couldn’t carry her far. He felt her slipping away, out of his hands and he couldn’t stop it. The best he could do was let her hit the floor as softly as possible. It didn’t matter. She still hit the ground with a dull thud.

  The woman with the knife was o
nly ten feet away from him now. He turned, got to his feet, and ran toward the kitchen. He made it to the doorway, when he felt her hand on him. As he started to turn into the kitchen, he felt his legs go out from under him. He fell forward sliding along the tiles into the counter. The flesh in his upper left arm, near his shoulder was on fire.

  John reached back toward the pain, only to feel the knife embedded in his flesh. The throbbing burn radiated through his left shoulder as he flexed his muscles to make sure they worked. They did, but the pain was excruciating.

  Flat on his stomach, John tried to pull his injured arm around his head to attempt to crawl. He could barely move it three inches. Electric tingles ran down his left arm and side followed by a sensation like sandpaper being dragged over his nerves. “Where do you think you’re going?” the woman asked.

  John used his good arm to crawl ahead. He grabbed the counter and tried to pull himself up. If he could stand, he would be able to reach the kitchen knives Ashley kept on the counter. Even a small pairing knife. A rolling pin. Anything to defend himself. His triceps felt as if someone tied a rope to each end and yanked as he tried to pull himself erect. The rest of his body wouldn’t work, as if it was completely surprised at the wound. As if it were unsure what to do.

  She was standing over him. Glancing over his shoulder, John saw the woman was reaching forward. She grabbed the knife and twisted.

  He threw his head back and screamed, the sandpaper feeling turning to a charge of electricity. John’s entire body went rigid and then he collapsed to the floor.

  ****

  John’s eyes fluttered against coarse fabric. He should be staring at the ceiling of the kitchen, the woman standing over him, his shoulder still burning. Instead, he lay on his stomach, a cushion from Ashley’s couch pressed into his face. A weight pressed his body into the cushions, and other than his throbbing shoulder, his left arm was numb.

  Using his good hand, he tried to push himself up. No dice. She was on top of him. The woman with the knife.

  “Who are you?” he mumbled into the cushion.

  He turned his head slowly. From this angle, he could see Ashley wasn’t on her stomach anymore. She was propped up in the corner of the room, head tilted forward, staring at her pale blue carpet. She held her left hand over the wound, blood seeping through her fingers. She moved her lips, but no sound came out. “You don’t need to know who I am. In fact, it’s better if you don’t.”

  The woman was straddling his butt, legs bent at either side of him. She shifted her weight and caressed his back with a hand.

  Fingers dragged slowly up his spine then toward his shoulder. He realized what was happening and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt the knife twist to the left and then felt the top of his shoulder explode. He gritted his teeth, and his body jolted upward. The woman was strong. She kept him on the couch and was able to ride his back.

  “I won’t do that again, if you answer one question.”

  John tried to talk through his clenched teeth, but spat and gurgled instead.

  “Where is Peter?”

  He tried to speak again, but couldn’t relax his jaw. How could he answer her if he couldn’t talk? Saliva rolled down the corners of his lips and soaked through the couch cushion.

  She twisted the knife and again he arched his back into the air. Every muscle pulled against its tendons. The pain was sharp like a thousand paper cuts and hot as boiling water.

  “Answer me, John. You’ll be able to use your body again if you do.”

  Peter? Who was Peter? The name sounded familiar, deeply familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  “If you don’t, maybe I’ll work on the girl some more. She’s only still alive because I may want to talk to her too. But first, you and me? We need to chat some more.”

  The woman yanked the knife from his shoulder. Dark spots clouded his vision, his stomach lurched and he felt very cold. He shook violently, like he’d stuck his finger in a socket.

  He felt the woman slide down his body, not slowly or sexually, but quickly as if she were pressed for time. She pulled his shoe off and tossed it to the floor. Then she rolled down his sock and pressed the blade against the back of his ankle.

  “If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I will cut your Achilles’ tendon. It will snap and roll up the back of your leg like a tape measure. You’ll never walk again. Do you want that?”

  John looked at Ashley. She’d moved. He swore she’d moved. She wasn’t staring at the floor any more.

  “Tell me where Peter is.”

  He went limp at the words. He expected the knife to dig into him at that moment. And everything would be over.

  Instead, the edge of the blade tickled against his skin.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and focused only on the words. The answer he prayed would save his life.

  “I don’t know,” he said, the words spilling from his mouth with another stream of saliva. “I don’t know who that is!”

  He heard the woman sigh.

  “That’s not true. I know it’s not.”

  John forced his eyes open. His tongue moved against his teeth and his mouth opened. And then he saw Ashley put her hands flat on the floor. She pushed herself to her feet.

  Screaming, she charged the couch.

  “What the hell?” the woman said.

  He felt the woman jump off him and scramble away. John managed to push himself up and roll off the couch. He hit the carpet with his bad shoulder first, and screamed as it exploded in pain.

  There was another bang. He rolled over and saw the woman aiming her gun and Ashley falling backward. She hit the ground with a loud thud, her head leaned against the wall awkwardly.

  He crawled toward Ashley and prayed. Somewhere he thought he heard a police siren. Maybe someone had heard the shots and called. A concerned neighbor. A pedestrian.

  “The cops,” he heard the woman say. She’d heard the sirens too.

  Seconds later, he heard the apartment door open, then slam shut.

  Pulling himself as hard as he could, he felt Ashley’s foot, with his right hand. He wrapped it around her ankle and squeezed it gently. He hoped she knew it was a thank you.

  He watched her face pale, already turning to a shade of gray. Her breath was coming in short bursts. John had managed to pull himself up next to Ashley and hold her. Her head rested on his good shoulder, her short breaths moist against his neck.

  Meanwhile, he pressed his bad shoulder against the wall, trying to slow his own bleeding.

  “Ashley,” he said, as she shuddered against him. “Just hold on. There’s an ambulance on the way.”

  He hugged her closer and listened to the air escape from her lungs. He felt the heat from her body leak away and her skin become colder. John closed his eyes and prayed for her to say something. Instead, she shivered hard, as if she were having a seizure. Her eyes shot wide open. She coughed hard, once, twice, and her body wracked, almost bouncing off the ground.

  On the third cough, blood spattered through her lips. Her body sank inward. He shook her once gently. No reaction. Her blood seeped over his hands, warm and thick.

  “Ashley?” John said. “Oh God, Ashley, wake up!”

  But her breath slowed and then stopped.

  A wave of heat ran through his body, starting in his gut and rolling all the way up into his cheeks, then his eyes. His vision blurred. Pulling Ashley closer to him, he listened for signs of air coming from her mouth or nose.

  “No. No. No. No.” His eyes burned, and then they flooded over. Convulsions wracked his body, and then he buried his face in her shoulder. John kept saying Ashley’s name, hoping at one point she’d answer. He held her tight, rocking back and forth as the tears rolled down his face.

  Just like his dad had held Hannah. Crying and screaming, rocking back and forth waiting for the paramedics to show up. His dad kept brushing her hair back over her face telling her it was okay. Just wake up. It’d be okay if she’d just wake up.

  The
paramedics.

  The sirens John had heard screamed down the street and past the building. They must not have been for them. No one showed up and no more sirens came, the one he heard before must have gone somewhere else. But it appeared to have been enough to chase the woman with the gun away.