Austin Camacho - Collateral damage

Damn. How could he have been so stupid? To trust that monster to behave rationally was a huge mistake. Self-loathing rose like bile into Hannibal’s throat. He was the reason Janet was now in danger. And worse, Cindy was in that same room standing in the path of onrushing destruction..

Hannibal forced himself to his feet and staggered forward through a cloud of floating blue dots. His apartment had never seemed so long, but he pressed on toward the light at the end of the tunnel and the human locomotive standing there.

Hannibal was still out of focus when he reached the kitchen. He stepped to the right, moving around Isaac’s huge frame to a point where he could lean on the table. Now Isaac stood on his left, with Cindy on the other side of the room facing him, and Janet to his right with her back against the sink. While the husband and wife ignored him, Hannibal gathered his strength to try to deal with Isaac when he finally made his move. Too late he realized he should have stopped on his way through the apartment to pick up his gun. It would have made everything so much easier.

Isaac looked down at his wife cowering against the sink and said, “I need you home. Let’s go. Now!”

Hannibal crouched slightly, preparing to leap. He knew Isaac would reach out at any second to grab Janet and drag her out of the room or maybe to slap her a couple of times first to make her more cooperative. Cindy was frozen next to the refrigerator, and he could understand that. Until you share a room with one, you don’t realize just how big a professional football lineman is. But Hannibal thought once Isaac took a step he would be off balance enough that a diving man, even one Hannibal’s size, might be enough to bowl him over.

Then Isaac’s head moved back slightly, his brows lowered in surprise. Something had changed. The air in the room was charged with a different electricity. A glance to his right showed that Janet was standing just a bit straighter. Something had snapped inside her, something wound so tight it had to spring back hard. Her jaw was thrust forward just a little. And her right hand had curled around the handle of his carving knife.

“No,” she whispered, but then repeated more loudly, “No! That’s enough. I don’t need to take any more of this.” Her arm eased around to the side with the knife’s blade rising out of the top of her fist. Her breathing deepened, the way a person’s does when they’re working themselves up for something. Hannibal wondered how many years of rage and frustration she was focusing.

It was obvious to Hannibal that Isaac didn’t get it. “What are you going to do now?” he asked with a derisive grin. “Going to cut me?”

His arms opened wide as if in invitation. Shock showed on his face when Janet emitted a low coarse growl, raised the heavy knife overhead and dived toward him. Her rage drove her into the air so that for a brief speck of time her eyes were actually above his. Isaac’s mouth dropped open but he didn’t move, didn’t even raise an arm in defense as the edge of the blade arced downward toward his neck.

Hannibal leaped a split second behind Janet. She was slashing at a forty-five degree angle down and across her body. The blade would lay the right side of Isaac’s neck and throat open. Except that Hannibal’s back slammed into Isaac’s chest and her right wrist smacked into the space between Hannibal’s crossed wrists.

They fell to the floor together, Hannibal on his left side, Janet lying on her right. The knife rolled free from her fingers and she lay still. Janet’s eyes were glazed over and she gazed at Hannibal as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened. He was feeling very vulnerable as he turned to face Isaac, but his concerns appeared groundless. Isaac stared at his wife for a few seconds, and then flopped into one of the kitchen chairs. His mouth had not closed in that time.

“You would have cut me. You would have cut me bad. How could you?”

“Oh my God!” Janet screamed. She worked her way to her knees and again lunged for her husband, but this time she held her arms wide. She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her face in the space between his head and his right shoulder. In her loud sobs, Hannibal could hear hate, fear, anger, frustration, all of the negative emotions pouring out at once. A tiny light appeared in Isaac’s eyes, perhaps a light of understanding. He raised his huge arms in slow motion and enfolded Janet in them. Then, at last he said the right thing.

“Oh, God, baby, I am so sorry.” Then his eyes filled with tears and he joined his wife in pouring out all the bad.

Sitting on the floor, Hannibal suddenly saw something too. Something obvious that he had missed. He turned to Cindy, sudden excitement brushing away his fatigue.

“Did you see that? Old Doc Roberts was right. Francis didn’t kill Dean’s father. Or Oscar. Our murderer’s a man.”

Tuesday

Isaac Ingersoll looked up from his plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs and said, “I owe you, Hannibal. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

The aroma of fried bacon still hung in the air and Hannibal suspected it helped everyone’s appetite. Janet and Cindy had whipped up quite a feast out of simple ingredients. Hannibal pushed more eggs up on his fork with a slice of toast.

“If you really feel that way, you know how you can pay me back,” Hannibal said. “Accept the counseling we talked about and get serious about overcoming your problem.”

“I swear I’m turning over a new leaf,” Isaac said. “Guess I never realized how much I was making my Janet hate me. I can’t stand to think I could lose her forever.” As he spoke, he covered her hand and most of her forearm with his palm.

Hannibal had to admit that Janet looked cute in Cindy’s robe. The four of them sat around Hannibal’s kitchen table enjoying some quiet time. Janet had slept on Hannibal’s sofa while her husband stayed across the hall in Hannibal’s office. Last night’s action seemed to have made an impression on him, and he was docile now.

“I’ll be going in to the office a little late,” Cindy said. “If you guys will work with me here I’ll get on the phone and set up some counseling sessions for you through an agency that won’t charge you much. You’ll have to live apart for a while, but I think if you can be honest with yourselves and make an effort, the professionals can make your relationship work again.”

“Okay, honey why don’t you work with these folks in here?” Hannibal said, pushing away from the table. “I want to take a closer look at those pictures you brought me.”

“They’re out in the living room,” Cindy said, already reaching for the wall phone. Hannibal picked up his coffee and a table knife before shuffling off to the front room. Warm and comfortable in his sweat suit he wanted to do some relaxed thinking away from the Ingersolls’ problems. Besides, he was expecting company.

Plopping down on the sofa, Hannibal clicked on the television and tuned in CNN. Then he slid a set of 8” X 10” photographs out of the manila envelope Cindy had left on the coffee table. Early sunlight over his shoulder spotlighted the pictures of two men who had never met but were inextricably linked in death. One of those links was the focus of the pictures. Each man had received a single vertical knife wound, just above his collarbone. Forensic scientists had studied these pictures too and told their bosses that they were the same width, the same length and almost certainly the same depth. Made with the same or extremely similar knives. It would not be hard to convict the same person of both murders.

Thinking of his own violence-filled life, Hannibal realized he was glad his mother would never be presented with this view of her son. Considering his violent life, Hannibal fully expected his last photo to be posed by a police forensics scientist examining a knife or gunshot wound. By leaving ahead of him, Hannibal’s mother was safe from this shock. It reminded him of a couple of small debts he owed to two mothers he had spoken to in the last week. Francis Edwards, now Irons, had trusted him and was now in jail for that trust. He owed it to her to prove her innocence. And he owed Ruth Peters two things. First, the identity of her son’s killer. Also, he must return Oscar’s high school yearbook to her. He was foolish not to give it to her right away. It might be her last, most valuable keepsake of her lost son.