by P. J. Vernon
“Okay,” she relents. “Let’s say it is Haus. That you’re positive, and you were there. The fact remains they were unable to produce documentation.”
“Unable or unwilling?”
“At this point, either means the same thing.”
Another thought crawls through my mind like a spider. I told myself on the Metro that Kristian didn’t have time to memorize my address. Not with a bleeding face and all the ruckus.
“You need to go back. You need to go back to Haus. Nine zero three. That was my locker number. And the room, I don’t remember which one, but I hurt Kristian. Badly. I sliced his cheek.” My voice escalates. “There must be blood. Even if they’ve scrubbed the whole place, no way they cleaned it all. They can’t have. There could be a bloody fingerprint. Or DNA, there’s always—”
“We’re looking at everything,” she says before I unravel into a full-blown rant. “Is there any reason to believe the record of your visit wouldn’t be there? I’ve got to follow up on this. Two different reports from the same victim? Doesn’t look good, Oliver. If I can’t even place you there—”
“He’s taken it,” I whisper.
“What?”
“He’s taken it. The copy of my ID. He stole it. I know one was made. The front desk made it. The guy, he even assured me it’d never be shared.”
Time to steal the copy. Kristian had plenty of that.
“The receptionist doesn’t recognize you. He was working the front door that night and says he never saw you.” The statement slices me open like a scalpel. “He admits it was dark but doesn’t recall the incident you described. He doesn’t remember helping anyone open a locker. Or seeing anybody run out in a panic.”
“He has to.” Disbelief grips my throat as tightly as Kristian had. I bite back tears. “He has to remember.”
Silence on her end. The sound of everything coming apart. I’m telling the truth, but if anything, it’s making me look like a liar.
“Court order’s working its way through the pipeline,” Detective Henning says. “It’s possible the establishment is obfuscating. Nothing shutters a place quite like violence, but places like Haus? A fire there will burn itself out at no public expense. So they might do anything to avoid it.”
Like Haus? Would she prefer to see this fire burn itself out? What happens to me then?
“But if what you say is true, if Kristian’s got that copy, then we need to react appropriately. If he has your address, your photo, your license number, then you are vulnerable to stalking.”
I’m vulnerable to stalking. Meaning I’ve drawn a dangerous man onto streets where the privileged make their homes. The Haus fire has leapt so suddenly into leafy Georgetown that the public’s at risk. Well, the segments of the public that matter most. Is this why she cares?
“We’re doing what we can. Surveillance cams, canvassing. But Haus was built for privacy, as I’m sure you appreciate.”
So much so, it feels like I’ve swallowed sandpaper.
“All things considered—considered and true,” she qualifies, “we’re dealing with a dangerous person. I’d like a marked car outside your place until we get more information. Remember what I said? About patterns?”
“They repeat,” I say. They wouldn’t be patterns if they didn’t. “Do you think there are more? Guys like me?”
“A patrol car out front for a few days is a good idea.” She leaves my question unanswered. “That okay with you?”
How will I explain a parked police car to Nathan? I’ll have to make something up. Detective Henning hasn’t given me much choice. “Sure, yeah.”
“They’ll be by later today. They won’t approach you or the home without a good reason. No need to interact with them either. Understand?”
In the corner of my eye, Kimberly walks past reception, Teal-framed glasses and a snow-white coat. “I’ve got to go. Will you message me if you find anything else? If you locate him?”
“I’ll keep you posted,” she says, and clicks off the line.
Kimberly speaks, but I don’t hear it. Not well enough to answer. I stare at the blinking cursor on the screen of my computer, open to today’s calendar.
“Oliver?” Kimberly repeats, and her studied face comes into tight focus. She’s leaning down, eyes grazing my bruises. “These neck abrasions, they look violent.”
“Hi. Good morning.” The phone cord still wraps around my index finger, purpling its tip. I hide my hand under the desk. “It…Yeah, it was.”
“If you locate who?” she asks.
“Huh?”
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.” A brief pause. “Were you talking about Nathan? On the phone just now?”
“Oh. No, something else. Nathan’s home from New York.”
“I reached out to him after your email. He never called me back.” Kimberly is, of course, Nathan’s friend before mine. “How’s he doing with all this?”
“Okay, I think. Overreacting, but—”
“Has he looked at your injuries?” she asks with what could be mistaken for suspicion. Though of what, I can’t be certain. “You sound hoarse. Is your larynx tender?”
“He looked everything over.” I skirt her question and hope she doesn’t bring this up to Nathan if and when they chat. “It looks far worse than it is. Was.”
Lips parted, she seems to want to ask further, and I don’t blame her. She closes her mouth and smiles. “Why don’t you take a half day. It’s a light schedule. The nurses can cover for you.”
“Thanks.” Bile scales my throat, and I swallow. “I’ll do that.”
She gives my shoulder a squeeze and makes for the chart room. My eyes fall back to the blinking cursor. The tiny, flashing line becomes the point on which I focus my thoughts. The anchor to reality I grasp with whitened knuckles.
How long can I keep this up? Police cars. Missing records. Liars. Stalking.
How long before it all comes apart like rotten wood?
* * *
• •
No point bothering with headphones on the trip home. The voices screaming inside my skull drown out everything. Kristian’s taken my ID. The Cheshire Cat lied. His bottom line more important than my safety and that of his customers. Or patrons or clients or whatever he calls us. That man couldn’t have forgotten me. Not the horror in my eyes or my strangled words.
His is a cowardly omission that might cost lives. My life. Tiny spiders skitter down my arms, my shoulders.
Nathan aside, a big part of me is grateful for a cop car by the house. Until we get a handle on things, as Detective Henning suggested. A police presence must be a deterrent, right?
I emerge from the Metro like a locust. An entirely different creature, and the air shimmers. Heat wafts off the sidewalk like gasoline fumes as the sun bears down with oppressive vigor. The back of my neck reddens, and my pits grow wet.
I undo a second shirt button as corner stores and bodegas and laundromats give way to apartment buildings and rows of stately townhomes. The vaulted branches of hundred-year-old oaks, verdant and full, form a ceiling of shade, and my eyes relax.
When I round the corner onto my street, I’m jarred.
Wide yellow tubing, papery and collapsible, snakes from a parked van. It winds through our open front door and inside. Darryl’s gotten started like he promised.
The relentless hum of an engine in the van’s hold grows louder. A man props the rear door open with one hand and smokes a cigarette with the other. Leather boots flecked with paint. Stains streak his jeans. His white tee’s sweat-wet and entirely see-through.
He nods and I inhale his secondhand smoke. A habit ever since I quit. I step into the foyer in time to catch Darryl coming downstairs.
“Hello there.” He adjusts the bill of his Clemson cap. “Didn’t expect anyone home.”
“I left work ea
rly.” I clutch my throat to mask my neck abrasions, as Kimberly described them. “Wasn’t feeling great.”
“Sorry to hear that.” He smiles. “We’re just cleaning up. All done for today. In fact, I suspect we’ll finish by tomorrow or Thursday. Not so bad once we opened everything up. A day to dry, then another to put it all back together.”
The tube’s sucking moisture left from my mistake. If only it could suck the poison out of all the others.
“That’s good news.” I set my things on the entryway table and take a deep breath. I’ll take good news wherever and however I can.
“I’ll bring the boys over same time tomorrow. Just leave the key out like usual,” he says, making his way past me and outside. Footsteps stomp across the ceiling before appearing by the second-floor balustrade—paint-spackled work boots like the other guy’s. Their owner collects and spools the hosing on his way down the stairs.
Behind prisms from the foyer chandelier, the boots take one slow step at a time, careful to keep the tubing untangled.
Knee-torn jeans next. Sweat-soaked wifebeater. He’s nearly to the bottom before I catch a glimpse of hair. Face pointed down, long bangs hanging loose. I give him a wide berth to leave through the front, and he lifts his chin.
The stitched wound on Kristian’s cheek seems to smile.
14
NATHAN
A tiny washroom serves the suite of offices in the trauma department.
Soaping up shaky hands, I appraise myself in the mirror. Whispers of gray hair look even grayer, and bloodshot eyes even bloodier. Red like marbled meat—which is no surprise. All night, lucid dreams struck with horrifying clarity. A vague recollection that I hadn’t pulled that writhing scorpion out, that it’s still somewhere inside. Burrowed deep in the lining of an organ, spooling sinew through its pincers.
I exit and—making for my own office—find a person standing by the door. Dark jeans, casual blazer, and my gut clenches.
The scorpion stirs. Spindly legs skitter beneath my sternum.
“Hi there.” The woman investigating Oliver’s assault squares her shoulders and smiles. “Nathan, right?”
She appears pleasantly surprised to have caught me. She flashes a badge. I brush wet palms on my white coat, take her outstretched hand. “Yes. Dr. Klein.”
“Detective Rachel Henning. We met briefly at the police station.”
“I know.” An odd reminder. Does one often forget such encounters?
“Your admin said today’s your desk day, so I thought I’d…” She hesitates, eyes narrowing enough to register as suspicion. “You okay?”
“Tired.” I puff my cheeks. “Work is always work, but home’s been better. As you know.”
“I do,” she replies. “And I hate to be a bother, but I’d like to chat for a minute. If you’re okay to?”
“Of course.” I reach past her to open my office door. A tremor rattles my hands. Partly nerves, partly the hangover. I’d gone a bit too far last night, but today’s all paperwork, no procedures, and I didn’t sweat it. Only so many ways to blunt the combined edges of both Oliver’s attack and his lies. But now, Detective Henning tracks my hands in the way all people do in a surgeon’s presence. The unsteadiness she sees can’t inspire much confidence.
Breathe, Nathan. In through your nose, out through your mouth.
The detective claims a chair in front of my desk. I make for the beverage cart against the far wall. A sleek antique that adds a slice of civilization to an otherwise sprawling, brutalist hospital. “Coffee or tea?”
“Tea would be lovely. Something fruity if you’ve got it.”
“I do.” I couch my reply in pleasantness, but I’m bothered by her word choice. It feels both deliberate and degrading. Something about her presence skews everything in my office toward hostile. The teakettle hisses like a tightly coiled viper. The room lists. The wallpaper and warm desk photos of Oliver and Mother and Father and Tilly seem to melt like hot wax.
I tighten my jaw, tip the kettle over a porcelain teapot.
“Have you learned anything new?” I ask.
“Can’t say.” Detective Henning sounds genuinely apologetic. “Open investigation.”
“I’m his husband.”
“Actually”—she tilts her head as if offering charity—“you’re not.”
“Right.” I grin, but my plaster veneer is undoubtedly cracking. “Milk, sugar?”
“A spoonful of sugar’s perfect.”
Office air is never refreshing, but it somehow grows even staler. I stir a cube into her orange pekoe. “What would you like to chat about?”
“I have a few questions.” She cups the scalding tea with both hands.
I’ve turned my back to her, like Oliver and I have done so often to each other. My motions are deliberately slow as I fix my own drink. I’m not eager to face Detective Henning because she reminds me of, well, me. Cunning always recognizes itself. The question is, what’s her agenda? “Fire away.”
“I appreciate you being so supportive of Oliver. Bringing him down to the station. Really speaks to your character.”
“I love Oliver.” The tip of my tongue burns. My cautious sip turned into a hot gulp, and I hope she didn’t notice. “What happened to him, it broke my heart.”
“He’s very lucky. To have survived and to have you.” Detective Henning’s gaze has taken on a studious quality when I finally turn her way. She’s unpacking my appearance, my demeanor. “For support. Given he never called Victim Services.”
“Excuse me?”
“Social workers, therapists, they help people cope in the wake of these things. A sliding pay scale for folks who can’t afford it.” She motions to the art gallery of framed degrees and certificates behind me. “Not that you two need it. In any case, Oliver never reached out. But at least he has you.”
“He does.” I nod but recall zero talk about social workers or therapy. Oliver and I were together the whole time at the station. Had Detective Henning spoken with him since? And if so, why haven’t I heard about it?
“I can’t imagine enduring this alone.” Detective Henning’s approach seems to soften. “Oliver has no family. No friends either, it seems. Nothing undoes a person as efficiently as loneliness.”
Her words, the irony in them is rich. Loneliness, the urge to feel alive again. Wanted and loved and like I still had a life worth being lived. One Oliver was capable of loving. It seems I’ve been undone by all of it.
I expect our tea party talk to continue—but it doesn’t. An unnerving quiet as Detective Henning stares, eyes tightly focused. She runs a nail on the rim of her cup, and metallic notes pinch my jaw like sour candy.
“Do you trust him?”
“What?” I clear my throat. The question’s a wild departure by itself, but her tone has also turned. It’s almost accusatory.
“Oliver. Do you trust him?”
I scoff. “What kind of question is that?”
“Look, Dr. Klein, I’ve been at this awhile.” Her cup strikes the desk with a thump, and she steeples her fingers. “I’ve engaged with just about every personality out there. This gives me a certain kind of talent. I can read people. Quickly and in most cases, accurately.”
“And?”
“I’m not sure I trust Oliver. Not entirely, but nobody knows him better than you. So naturally, I’m curious.”
“Yes.” No. “What reason would I have to distrust my—my partner?”
“What happened to him, it’s quite serious.”
“Got that right.” No question, she’s working an angle. Does she suspect Oliver of something? I was decidedly and empirically hundreds of miles away; she can’t be here to interrogate me.
“Oliver strikes me as a guy that keeps secrets.”
“I’m having trouble following you, Detective Henning”—despite my
best efforts, my chest swells with heat—“and comprehension isn’t typically a challenge for me.”
She grins. “For self-defense, to cope, whatever the motive, my take is that Oliver’s default is to withhold truth. Do you agree at all?”
“You know what he just went through?” My heartbeat quickens. “Can you even imagine how—”
“Nathan—”
“Dr. Klein,” I correct. “Oliver grew up closeted in a very conservative community. Of course his default is to hide. It’s how he survived. For years.”
“Just wanted to get your read,” Detective Henning says. “That’s all.”
“I have absolutely no reason to distrust Oliver,” I lie.
“You two been together for a while?” Detective Henning reaches into her blazer for a notepad.
“We have.”
“How are things?” She clicks the butt of a blue pen. “Lately, I mean?”
Why does she care? She saw my boarding pass, my expense receipts. It made sense to request them, because if Oliver’s been assaulted, statistically I’m the most likely to have done it. Rising discomfort meets my headache from last night’s liquor, and the truth carelessly spills: “Things have been better.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Detective Henning’s poised to write. “Mind sharing?”
Her predictable reply spikes my pulse. Do I tell her about my own suspicions? The high likelihood Oliver’s cheating? That my only remaining questions are how many, how often, and who, exactly? I opt for a vaguer track. If she wants details on the do-not-resuscitate status of our marriage, she’ll have to pull them out with pliers. Tooth by bloody tooth. “A rough patch. Not unusual. Nothing special.”