The First Cut

by Ellery Kane

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “To you? What about everything you’ve done? The things you’ve taken from me? My career, my family, my chance at happiness with Kate.”

  Beneath him, Cleo thrashes, a fish out of water now. In the last throes of effort, she reaches for his hand, for the knife just beyond her grasp. And my own chest seizes with the strain of her breathing. The way she heaves, then stills. Heaves, then stills.

  “Cooper, I never meant to hurt you.”

  Another staccato burst of laughter chills like ice water down my back. “You think that makes it better? You didn’t mean to. Is that how you sleep at night? Is that what you say to yourself about Wallace Bergman? Kate told me everything, you know. I saw the police reports. Did Ian drug him or was that your idea?”

  Cleo stops moving, and I try to figure what to do, but my thoughts move like the undead. Dull and lead-footed. So I keep talking.

  “I understand you’re angry. You blame me for writing that evaluation. You think it hurt your chances of being promoted to detective. And you’re right. I get that you’re mad about Luke. You think I haven’t been honest with him. And you’re right about that too. But, until today, I had no clue about you and Kate. I couldn’t have taken that away from—”

  “You’re the reason she’s dead. Ian wasn’t even supposed to be here that night. And Kate was going to leave with Maddie. I’d finally convinced her to make a clean break, to let the money go. And then, all of a sudden his plans changed, and he was collecting appearance fees from La Noche. With the mother of my child. And he’s . . .”

  His voice breaks like a wave, the words rushing from him. “He’s stabbing . . . he’s stabbing her. Because of your greed. By the time I got here, she was gone. And Ian was cutting on himself like a goddamned coward. He didn’t have the guts to finish the job. Then you showed up trying to be some kind of fucking hero. When it was your fault all along.”

  My fault. His words feed the Hydra, and guilt cripples me. I can only watch as Cooper raises the knife to strike. And Cleo’s face is Maddie is Wallace is my father.

  With a primal yell, I lunge toward him, knock him off balance. And the knife goes awry, sinking part way into my outer thigh.

  Merciful shock. I gape at it, feeling nothing but a white hot buzz in my brain.

  And when I move, the knife does too. It’s a part of me now. A dark-handled appendage.

  I scramble across Maddie’s bed to the other side, dragging my leg behind me. And down the hallway that seems to stretch on forever, unfurling like a lonely highway—don’t look back!—with Cooper’s grunting breaths just behind.

  I fling the console table into his path, sending a picture of Ian and Kate and Maddie to the floor where it shatters. Broken pieces on the blood trail I’m leaving behind. Fresh stains on the carpet.

  Cooper’s hand claws at my shirt as I clumsily spin into the master bedroom, a drunken pirouette. I stumble over Kate, her body rigid and posed like a mannequin. The splaying wound on her neck draws me in—it’s a sick red smile—and I can’t move, can’t look away. It’s still bleeding. Still bleeding. After all this time.

  Not real. Not real. Not real.

  I do it then. Even though I shouldn’t.

  I look back.

  Cooper’s gun is raised and waiting for me. And a bullet whizzes by my shoulder, glances off the dresser, and lodges in the wall before I realize. He won’t shoot me from behind. It doesn’t fit his warped little story. The one he’ll tell after I’m dead. Cleo too.

  When I blink, Kate is gone again, only the half-there carpet where she’d lain. Where her heart had beat for the last time. Days ago.

  It’s one, two, three desperate steps to the bathroom. I barricade myself inside, slam the door behind me, and fumble with the lock in the dark, my fingers wet and trembling with each thwack of Cooper’s boot. I stumble back as he fires another shot into the frame. And another. And another. And another.

  I lean against the lip of the tub. Hands shaking. Breath sputtering. I catch my own pale face swimming in the dark mirror. And stare down at my leg, my blood-soaked jeans, knowing what I have to do.

  I touch the knife’s handle and I feel it down to the bone. A radiating ache. I fold my fingers around it, suck in a gulp of air, and steel myself as the door lock splinters.

  Cooper fires another shot. The lock blisters, then gives.

  And with a guttural scream, I pull, stunned by the thing in my hand. No longer a part of me. I stare at the blade as the bathroom takes a sudden whirl around me. As a slice of moonlight cuts across the tile.

  The door yawns open, surrendering slowly. And I steady myself behind it and wait. For Cooper’s footsteps, his looming shadow.

  I take a vicious swipe at his arm, surprised and satisfied with the sound it makes. The way it cuts through his flesh. The animal yelp it inspires. So different than firing a gun. And there’s a sudden flash of Ian—teeth bared, mouth frothing with rage—punching the knife through Kate’s soft skin as easily as holes in paper. Surely, he’d felt it too. A deranged gratification.

  When the gun drops from Cooper’s hand and slides across the tile, we both charge for it.

  Cooper rams against me, my hip cracking against the side of the tub. I drop to my knees, still swinging wildly. Rip his shirt sleeve with another glancing strike.

  With my free hand, I reach beneath the tub. Although it’s too dark to see, the gun’s cold flesh teases my fingers. But Cooper’s gloved hands are there too, grabbing with the same desperation. And then, there’s nothing between my fingers.

  Nothing.

  I stumble to my feet, backpedaling to the corner. Wave the knife at him, helplessly. I stare down the barrel, the way my father must have. Looking into its all-knowing eye.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I say, cowering. My voice sounds impossibly far away. And ridiculous. As if I’m reading from a script. “Please . . .”

  Cooper does what he’s been trained to do since we were kids at the firing range staring down that paper bad guy. When we both still believed in the straight, hard line between good and bad. When we both knew which side of it we were on.

  He aims for my chest and pulls the trigger.

  ****

  “Wake up, Aves. Wake up,” Ian whispers against my ear, his eyes impossibly blue. And I’m lost at sea just looking at him. He leans down to kiss me, and I wait to be taken in, swept away by the warmth of his mouth.

  But his lips are cold. As cold as the mint chocolate chip ice cream I’d eaten every day the summer my father died and never again. As cold as death.

  “Wake up.”

  Not Ian’s lips after all. But white porcelain stained red. The bathtub cradles me like a lover, and I lie back against it.

  It hurts to move. Hurts to breathe. Hurts to be. And the wound in my shoulder is pulsing blood. I press my hand against it.

  My father’s watch counts the seconds, but time doesn’t exist here. Not in this house. Not for me.

  I close my eyes and open them again. Tick-tock. And Cooper moves into my vision. Workman-like. The knife he’d taken from me secure in his belt and conveniently covered in my fingerprints.

  As he starts to turn toward me, the room spins like a child’s top. And it’s my father there instead, sitting on the bed with his gun, sobs choking up from his throat, thick as vomit.

  I hold tight to the tub’s sill until it passes. Pinprick stars dot my vision. And I wonder if the house is on Cooper’s side. If it wants to be rid of me just as badly.

  Tick-tock.

  Cooper’s back again, dragging Cleo behind him. He arranges her at the foot of the bed and her head droops to her chest. Hair flung forward like a stage curtain.

  Tick-tock.

  And my father raises the gun to his head. He whispers to me—I’m sorry—and when the eyes we share meet, I
say it back to him. But he’s already disappeared. A wisp of smoke, a dream upon waking.

  Instead, Cleo is there in his place. Her face slack as a rubber mask. And it’s possible she’s dead already. It’s possible I am too.

  Cooper kneels before her, reverent. Readies the knife, still slick with my blood.

  I turn away, to the mirror, imagining the way it must have happened. How he’d taken Ian’s lifeless hand in his own and written my name. Not a love letter. Not a warning. Not the last wish of a dying man.

  But the perfect setup for the perfect suspect. Someone like me. Jilted. Obsessed. Sick with my own secrets. And so, so bitter.

  I’m sorry. It’s the drumbeat in my head as I run my fingers against the tub’s sticky bottom. Inked in my own blood, I write.

  Tuesday

  February 28, 2018

  The Monterey County Courier

  “Arrest of Local Police Officer, Son of Homicide Detective, Stuns Carmel Community”

  by Jackson Lamont

  The Carmel Police Department (CPD) confirmed the shocking arrest of one of their own, Cooper Donovan, on multiple charges related to the slaying of Love Doctor Ian Culpepper, as well as the attempted murders of Ava Lawson and Cleo Campbell. Police now believe Donovan was involved in an extramarital affair with Kate Culpepper and had fathered her unborn child. Text messages found at the scene indicated Culpepper had contacted Donovan on Valentine’s Day, expressing fear for her safety. Though CPD did not speculate on a motive in this case, the District Attorney issued a statement suggesting Donovan had likely discovered Kate’s body upon his arrival at the scene and reacted in a fit of murderous rage. Later, it is alleged that Donovan staged the scene and planted evidence to implicate Lawson, Culpepper’s ex-wife, and made harassing telephone calls to Lawson and Campbell using a state-of-the-art “call-bluffing” app, which enables users to disguise both their voice and the number from which the call originates.

  Officers apprehended Donovan at the Culpepper home late Saturday evening, where Donovan’s own brother, Luke, also an officer with CPD, convinced the suspect to surrender himself. Donovan remains in custody at the Monterey County Jail and has been denied bond. Both Lawson and Campbell were found to be suffering life-threatening injuries and were transported to the Monterey Peninsula Emergency Room for treatment. Campbell is listed in fair condition, while Lawson, who sustained multiple injuries, remains in critical condition.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Six

  I believe in karma. Because I’m nursing one hell of a stab wound. And a through-and-through shot to the shoulder the doctor called a lucky break. Lucky. Maybe those slots had pegged me right after all since Cooper’s bullet missed the humerus and the brachial artery. Only soft tissue damage here. But mostly, I believe in karma because I’m not dead. Unless this is heaven, and the angel at the gate looks exactly like Detective Doreen Lennox.

  “Good morning, sunshine.” She half-smiles at me from the chair in the corner, a lipstick-stained coffee cup at her feet and a blanket draped on her lap like she’s been waiting a while. The Monterey County Courier is unfurled on the table, the headline bittersweet.

  “Is it . . . morning?” The last twenty-four hours are spotty at best, a spliced film reel of needles and nurses and prodding hands. Of white coats and scrubs and a stern mouth that called me lucky. How long have I been sleeping?

  “It will be in about twelve hours. It’s Tuesday night. Do you remember what happened?”

  I take a quick survey of myself.

  Body bruised beneath the thin hospital gown.

  Massive bandage on leg—I wiggle my toes—that still moves.

  Fire ants crawling up my shoulder, stinging. But better. Better than before. When the pain had raced up my arm and across my chest like fire up a dynamite fuse.

  Tube snaking from my vein.

  And a flash of the devil in Cooper’s face as he’d raised the knife to Cleo. I shiver at the thought of it. Of what he’d intended. Of how close he’d come to pulling it off.

  “Most of it.” It hurts to talk, each word a razor scrape. “Is Cleo . . . okay?”

  Doreen nods. “Collapsed lung but otherwise intact. Her father’s here. And she’s already given us a full statement about what happened at the house.”

  The house. The thought of it looms like a slumbering giant.

  I shut my eyes and try to conjure the last moment before my mind went dark. My fingers, wet with my own blood, tracing Cooper’s name on the mirror with a futile last-gasp. And I’d seen something there, someone, another face that slips back into the shadows just as I try to reach for it. As elusive as a sailfish.

  “There is one thing.” The question even the doctor couldn’t answer when I’d mumbled it in a half-medicated haze. “Why am I alive?”

  Doreen’s laughter brightens her tired eyes. “The why you’ll have to take up with the boss upstairs, but I can tell you the how. And the who.”

  “The who?”

  “Yep. Ricky Sherman. Apparently, he’d followed you to the casino and back to Ian’s house, thinking you’d stashed some money there. Or knew where to find some. He watched Cooper go in and heard the gunshots.”

  A memory returns, then. As brief and stunning as a camera flash. The knife falling to the carpet from Cooper’s raised hands. The way it lay there in surrender.

  “So Ricky saved me?”

  “Not exactly. That coward waited the whole thing out in the car. But we’d put a trace on Ricky’s phone, and Luke pinged it. He got worried when your meet-up turned into a press junket and he couldn’t find you anywhere. Ricky’s signal showed up at Ian’s house, and he figured he’d better check it out.”

  “Luke,” I say, looking up at the empty window in the center of the door, aching with hope. Like I can summon him just by wishing it so. And Doreen gives me a sad smile I’m not sure how to take.

  “He should be back any minute now. It was mission-critical to get my hands on some real coffee. A gal can’t survive on this hospital sludge.”

  “And Jack? Is he here too?”

  Another smile, sadder than the last. “I’ll be taking over the investigation from here on out. As you can imagine, he’s got bigger fish to fry.”

  I think of my father, then. The way he’d put a bullet in the center of my life without meaning to. Collateral damage. And I know how Jack must feel.

  My shoulder throbs as I try to sit upright. To set free the words clamoring to get out. “I’m ready to talk.”

  I already know what I have to do, what I have to say. The three-word promise I’d made to myself in the house on Cortez Road where Ian and Kate had died. Where Cleo and I nearly did. All of it. Wallace and the pictures and the blackmail—and the Xanax dropped like a bomb in a bottle. I have to tell it all.

  “You really should have a lawyer present, Ava. There are still some pretty serious allegations against you. I can call Ivy Mercer if you’d like.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t need an attorney. But I want Luke to be here.”

  And later, after it’s all been spilled, the onion unwrapped right down to its ugly core, I know what I’ll say then: “There’s another murder I need to tell you about. DeAndre Mack’s.”

  Because karma may be as slow moving as a freight train, but boy does she pack a wallop.

  LA Times

  “Seven LAPD Officers Charged with Corruption”

  by W.J. Pierce

  Seven decorated veterans of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), including two Narcotics Division detectives, were relieved of their duties on Friday after a stunning investigation revealed a sordid trail of greed, corruption, and murder that began over twenty years ago. According to a departmental spokesman, the investigation began with a confidential source implicating deceased detective Jerry Lawson in a 1994 conspiracy to murder LA native DeAndre Mack—a small-time
cocaine dealer who apparently had begun working with Lawson in the 80s, offering him a portion of the proceeds from narcotics sales in exchange for protection from prosecution and confidential information regarding planned drug busts. As Mack advanced through the ranks of his criminal enterprise, so too did Lawson, who was eventually promoted to Narcotics Division Detective in 1982.

  In 1994, Lawson was hailed as a hero when he shot and killed an armed Mack inside an Artist District warehouse. The incident made national news as a record drug bust after five tons of cocaine were seized from the location, and Lawson later earned the prestigious Medal of Valor awarded to those officers who distinguish themselves through bravery or heroism above and beyond the call of duty. According to the confidential source, Lawson later admitted to his family he had planned Mack’s death and staged the crime scene, planting a handgun on Mack, who had double-crossed Lawson. An investigation by Internal Affairs implicated numerous other officers as assisting in the cover-up of Mack’s murder.

  Lawson eventually retired from service, citing personal reasons, and died by suicide in 1996. He is survived by his wife, Frances, and his daughter, Ava, who is currently serving jail time in Monterey County relating to her actions leading up to and following the 2018 slayings of Love Doctors Kate and Ian Culpepper. Though Lawson was cleared of the murder of her ex-husband, Culpepper, she pled guilty to charges of extortion, child endangerment, and food tampering. The Los Angeles District Attorney elected not to bring charges for any role Lawson may have had in the death of Wallace Bergman, the media mogul; however, she was forced to surrender her license to practice psychology in the state of California.

  Citing his desire to spare his family further anguish, Former Carmel Police Department Officer, Cooper Donovan, pled guilty to Culpepper’s murder, as well as the attempted murders of Lawson and Cleo Campbell, and was sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison. Inspired by the grisly tale, BXA President of Programming Marty Emerson recently approved production on a television series, Love Doomed, which is scheduled to debut in the summer of 2019.