Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

I had said something. Given myself away.

But what, what had I said? Not the time. Think about it later.

“John,” I moaned, and found that I was weeping.

I went back into that terrible room.

His head was resting on the window ledge. He looked so uncomfortable I lifted him and put him on the bed. I was utterly drenched with blood now. His eyes, horrifically, had opened again.

I closed them a second time. Sat there. Stunned. Frozen. Minutes went by, perhaps hours.

“Poor Areea,” I said.

They had stabbed John at the door and he had crawled down the hall and Areea had screamed and we had heard her. She had held him and as he gasped for air, she had opened the window and then she’d heard me coming in.

She’d been frightened, thought it was the killer coming back. Hid.

It had all happened in a couple of minutes. Even if she hadn’t been panicked, frozen by fear, and managed to call 911 immediately they couldn’t have helped him. A puncture wound in the heart.

Where was she now? Downstairs, cowering in her apartment, showering, composing a story that she had been there all night.

What to do? I was dripping blood, making everything worse.

Pat.

I went to the bedroom, stared at John, sat down again. I kicked off my bloody shoes, grabbed a pair of sneakers and put them on. I carefully made my way across the bedroom and skirted the blood trail. I walked to Pat’s and knocked on his door.

He opened it. He took a look at me, staggered back into the apartment, dropped the remote control.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said. “What the fuck happened?”

“They murdered John,” I said.

“Oh my God.”

“They killed him,” I said.

“Fuck. Who? Who murdered him? Are you ok?”

“I’m ok.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pat said.

“Areea was in there, she’s downstairs, hiding, I don’t think she saw anything,” I said automatically.

“Alex, who killed him?” Pat asked.

“Charles,” I said.

“Who’s that?”

“The guy I’m after,” I said.

“You better tell me everything,” Pat said, “but first we’ll go down and see if he’s really dead. You civilians don’t know shit.”

Pat followed me along the corridor. John was really dead.

“You should never have moved him,” Pat said. “The cops will book you for sure.”

“I didn’t do it, Pat,” I said.

“I know. Charles did. Whoever the fuck that is. Ok, ok, what are we going to do? Ok. First things first. Are we calling the cops? We’re not calling the cops, is that right?”

“I don’t know, Pat,” I said.

“They’ll book you, Sonny Jim, better tell me who Charles is, what you got on him.”

I took a breath and told Pat everything. Everything. From the very beginning. Me, the peelers, the ketch, Commander Douglas, Victoria Patawasti, Klimmer, the lacrosse team, Maggie Prestwick, Charles and Amber Mulholland. I was good at giving a précis, it only took five minutes.

“You’ve no proof of any kind?” Pat asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s my fault, Pat,” I said.

“It’s not your fault. It’s ok,” Pat said, trying to digest all the information I had thrown at him, trying to think. His face was alert now. He held himself upright.

“Jesus, Pat, it’s a nightmare,” I said.

“So you’re an ex-cop, huh. I knew you were something. And John’s dead and Areea’s terrified, right, ok. Ok, what do we do?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Ok, ok, this is what we do. You get up and go to my apartment, go straight to the shower, don’t touch anything, get in, take a shower, take your clothes off in the shower, leave them there. Shower and get the blood out and when you’re really clean, do it all again. Use a towel to dry off and leave it in the bath with the bloody clothes. When you’re done, pour yourself two fingers of gin. Ok? You did good not getting any blood down the corridor.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going downstairs to talk to Areea, she’s bound to be messed up. Talk to her, talk to her family. Tell them it was a burglar but if we want to keep the cops out of it, we gotta take care of this ourselves. They don’t want the cops as much as we don’t want the cops. They’ll get questioned, passed on to INS, deported. We gotta take care of this in-house. Tonight.”

“What do you mean, Pat?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about a thing, we’ll take care of this, no one else involved,” Pat reassured me, suddenly becoming stronger before my eyes, taking on something of the old DFD lead paramedic, someone with responsibility for other things than himself. But even so, I wasn’t convinced.

“I just assumed we’d call the cops,” I said.

“Alex, listen to me, they will arrest you, they’ll say you were jealous of John and Areea, you’re covered in his blood, you have motive, opportunity, I swear to you, there’s a very good chance you’ll go to prison.”

“If I tell them about the Mulhollands….”

“They won’t believe you…. Christ, Alex, you should know that, the cops want simplicity, there’s a simple explanation for everything. This isn’t a big fucking conspiracy, this is a simple case of homicide. You can get those knives anywhere.”

“I have an alibi, a witness.”

“Who, me? Come on. You were his roommate, he was fucking the girl you loved, you killed him with your own knife. At the very least, you’re going to jail. I suppose you don’t have fifty grand for bail?”

“No.”

“Alex, listen to me. You’re fucked.”

I nodded, too tired to debate it, too tired to see if it was the right thing to do or not. I went to Pat’s, stripped, soaped myself, showered. Sobbed up against the wall. Found one of Pat’s robes, put it on, went down the hall. Walked back into the apartment. No one there. The smell of blood, vile, pervasive.

I trudged downstairs. Knocked on the Ethiopians’ door.

It was open. I went in. Pandemonium. The whole family up. Pat talking to Mr. Uleyawa, the sons beside him, aghast, afraid, Simon translating what Pat was saying. Areea, wrapped in a blanket, curled on the sofa in the fetal position. Her hair soaked. She had showered or bathed. She’d been terrified but she wasn’t stupid, she’d gotten that blood off her.

A bucket sat beside her, she had been throwing up. Her mother and grandmother stroking her hair as she shivered and wept.

She gasped when she saw me.

“Areea,” I said.

“Get out of here, Alexander,” Pat said, “I’m taking care of things.”

I walked over to Areea. She backed into the cushions, afraid of me for a moment. The grandmother tried to stop me from touching her. I knelt by the sofa. I could smell blood on her still. Or maybe that was my imagination.

I touched her hair.

“It must have been terrible,” I said.

She sobbed. I let her cry for a minute. The conversation in the room ceased.

“Areea, I’m sorry about this, I’m very sorry.”

“Alex, don’t,” Pat said, cautioning me about saying anything.

Areea put her arms out and I leaned in and hugged her. No, not blood. She smelled of shampoo and skin, she had been scrubbed raw. We held each other for a minute. Her wet hair dripped down my back. Pat began speaking to Simon again in low tones, Simon translating it for his dad in singsong Ethiopian.

“Areea, listen to me, listen to me, did you see anything?” I said. “Did you see who did this?”

Areea shook her head.

“Tell me, tell me what happened.”

Her mother gave her something to drink from an opaque glass. She swallowed it. She looked at me and tried to smile a little.

“John and I were in your bed,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “What happened?”