Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“Computer?” she asked, her eyelids heavy, her lips in a pout, quivering, under the opium paralysis.

“Yes, Amber, a computer. Could he get into someone else’s computer?” I asked quietly.

“Carrickfergus,” she said.

“What?”

“Carrickfergus,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

She groaned, started drifting off. I didn’t have much more time.

“Ok, forget that, what about Charles?”

“Charles.”

“Yes, look, if Charles was going to kill someone, how would he do it?” I asked gently.

“He wouldn’t do it, he wouldn’t kill anyone.”

“But if he had to, if he had to kill someone.”

“He wouldn’t,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes fluttered, closed. Damn. I looked at her. That was enough, I couldn’t risk anything more, she’d remember, I’d kiss and tell her she was beautiful and say something about, oh, I don’t know, Africa, lions. In the morning it would all be jumbled up. She wouldn’t recall. It hadn’t worked or maybe it had and she knew nothing, she was as innocent as the—

“Throw it,” she said lazily from her sleep, her eyes still closed.

“Throw what?”

“Throw the gun, get rid of it,” she insisted.

“Where would you get rid of the gun?”

“Have to get rid of it, Italian gun, throw it away, anywhere, Cherry Creek. Get rid of it.”

“Why there?”

“I don’t know, the nearest river, get rid of it, get rid of it….”

She began to snore again.

She knew, then, she knew Charles had killed Victoria. She had told him to throw away the gun.

I could imagine the scene. He’s just killed Victoria, he comes back. “Oh, Amber, something awful has happened, it was an accident”—and he’s still got the goddamn gun.

Congressman Wegener’s birthday announcement is coming up, they have too much to lose. Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her. Maybe he went to confront Victoria and things got out of hand. Amber keeps a cool head. She orders him back out into the snow to get rid of the gun. He throws it in the water and it’s washed away, like what else? Her conscience. Her humanity.

I stared at her sleeping form, at — what was it Yeats said? — “that terrible beauty,” and I thought, Am I better than you? Me, who took a chance on killing you, to get that?

Had a wee while left.

I looked her over. I examined her, as if she were a corpse. That scar on her shoulder had been a tattoo she had had removed. It was about the size of a silver dollar. I could tell from its shape that it had been a harp. Working-class girl, with a harp tattoo. Shanty Irish girl, bit of a klepto, marries old-money Charles? Then she reinvents herself as patrician fabulous? She didn’t give much away. Just that accent and the way she ate pizza. I admired that. Liked that even as I hated her for what Charles did to Victoria. Hated her and wanted her, too. My muscles ached. My body writhed. I wanted a hit.

I still had time.

I forced myself to have a scout around. The predictability of the decor. What did it show? What a good job the cleaning woman did? Charles’s shallowness, Amber’s impression that this was how the other half lived. No cultural cringes, no giveaways. I went to the garage and checked their car. An E-type Jag. Had Charles killed Alan Houghton on Lookout Mountain? That’s where they’d found Houghton’s car. Charles could have arranged a meeting up there, killed him, put the body in the trunk and dumped it somewhere, a lake, a canyon, the foundation of a construction project. I popped the trunk, checked it, but it had been long since cleaned. A spare tire, a tire iron, and a Leatherman multitool.

Back to the house. That photograph of Charles playing lacrosse. But screw the murder, I wanted more about her. I searched the drawers, I smelled her underwear, I went through her things. Lingerie, fishnet stockings, tasteful stuff from a high-class boutique. But then at the back, a leather panty with an attachment for strapping on a dildo. I rummaged around. Nothing else. Kinky little minx. I went up to the bed and touched her breasts, kissed her. I watched her. I could have killed her with that dose. Thank God, she was alive, breathing easily.

Got up, searched some more. Looking for back story, photographs, but there was precious little. The past was wiped. Something to be ashamed of, maybe. Finally, in Charles’s study I found a box of college stuff. I rummaged through and found a few pictures of an Amber Doonan in a Harvard production of Twelfth Night . Further down another yearbook. No Amber Doonan, but a photograph of Amber Abendsen, a talented actress in the drama society. She had changed her name. Why? Could she have married someone before Charles?

A talented actress, the caption said.

What else about you, Amber? What else could I know about you? I found her purse and rummaged through it. Driving license, credit cards. A notebook with all the pages blank. More to know but too late now.

Too late now. I was shivering. I put the box away. I went back to her. Breathing. Lovely. I needed a hit. I couldn’t bear to look at her without a hit.

I threw the used needle in the garbage. I cleaned the vessel in the bathroom sink. I cleaned the spoon, let it air-dry. Waited, patient. I took the ketch, I boiled it, I found a vein. Alcohol and heroin do not mix, I thought as I injected myself. I stowed my kit back in my jacket, I lay down with her on the bed.

I climbed on top of her, I touched her belly, breasts. She could barely respond, but I had to have her.

I eased my way inside….

Early morning. Sunlight the color of her hair, filtering through the wooden slat blinds. She’s awake, looking at me. She smiles when she sees me wake.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi. You look great,” I reply.

“Really? I don’t feel well at all,” she says.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m just a bit under the weather, groggy.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, and look at her.

She seems a little yellow. I kiss her and touch her legs and incidentally check out her left heel. If you miss the vein you can leave a big blister, but I didn’t miss the vein and it seems fine down there.

“I don’t feel a hundred percent but I know what will help. Let’s make love,” she says.

“Ok.”

I kiss her and climb on top and we make love, but I’m still under the influence of the smack and I let her be on top and her back arches and her big breasts heave and drip sweat, and we come together and we’re happy.

I laugh and she laughs.

“Well, that’s position twenty-one in the Kama Sutra knocked off,” I say in an Indian accent.

“What did you say?” she asks, suddenly sitting up.

“I said that that’s position twenty-one of the Kama Sutra knocked off.”

She wraps the blanket around herself and rubs her eyes. Her leg moves in such a way that it is no longer touching mine. She shivers. She looks at me in the half-light with those cat blue eyes. She turns away. I’ve screwed up somehow. She yawns.

“You better go, Charles might be back soon.”

I stretch lazily and nod.

“Gosh, yes, it’s seven o’clock, you better go, we have a maid service that comes,” Amber says.

“I’ll see you this afternoon?” I ask.

“Yes. Come here, Alex, kiss me,” she says.

I lean over, kiss her. Thinking: She’s beautiful, she’s frightened, but she’s basically good, and somehow, somehow, it’s all going to be ok, it’s all going to work out for the best, for her and for me and for everyone.

Of course it is.

Denver already up. Dollars being made in oil, high tech, commerce, land spec, tourism, and the like. I noted the cars, counted the SUVs, the Jesus fish and the odd “God Hates Gays” or “Abortion = Murder” bumper sticker. At Einstein Brothers I bought a mixed bag of bagels. Carried them to the building, walked up the five flights.