David Jackson - The Helper

She stares at him. Keeps hold of the door, just in case.

‘What do you mean, not much time? Time for what?’

‘I hate to tell you this, but we think the killer’s on to you. He knows where you are. We need to move you out. We’ve already got Gonzo in a car downstairs.’

‘He knows? How could he know? Detective Doyle said I was safe here.’

The man sighs. She thinks he looks embarrassed.

‘We think he must have been tipped off somehow. It’s the only way. Maybe Gonzo. . We don’t know.’

‘Gonzo? No. Not him. He couldn’t. . I mean. .’

‘Whatever, we’re taking you to separate places. Just to be on the safe side. From now on this stays with you and the police. Nobody else will know. We’re organizing a twenty-four hour guard for you. Detective Doyle has offered to do the first watch.’

She feels her heart skip a little. Doyle? Spend a whole day with her?

‘Where are we going?’

He smiles. ‘Didn’t I say? Your place. I’m going to take you back to the apartment Mrs Serafinowicz put you in. Right now it’s as safe as anywhere else, especially with police protection. Are you okay with that?’

She scans him up and down again. He looks like he could be a cop. He knows too much for him not to be a cop. He knows about Cal Doyle, Gonzo, and Bridget Serafinowicz. He even knows that Bridget put me up in a vacant apartment after Helena was killed. How could he know all that and not be a cop?

But still. .

‘I think I should call Detective Doyle. You mind if I do that first? Just to check with him?’

Another sigh. Exasperation this time. ‘All right. But can you make it quick?’

She turns away from him. Starts toward the phone. Realizes then that she doesn’t know Doyle’s number. Gonzo has it, but she doesn’t. She turns back, and sees that the detective is craning to look along the hallway outside the apartment. His hand is tucked under his jacket, as if in readiness to pull his gun.

She thinks, This is no bullshit. He’s really expecting trouble.

‘I. . I don’t have his phone number.’

The man looks at her in disbelief. He digs a phone out of his pocket and starts thumbing buttons on it.

‘What do you want? His home number? Wait, he’s probably on his way to your apartment by now. I think I got his cell number here somewhere, but we got to be real fast.’ He pauses, glances up the hallway again, slips his hand back under his jacket.

Shit. This is for real. He could have killed me several times over by now if he’d wanted to.

‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘Let me grab my stuff. Thirty seconds, okay?’

She runs for the bedroom, almost tripping over in her eagerness not to waste any more of Detective Morton’s time.

In the car, he asks her lots of questions about her life, and invents a life for himself in response to her own gentle probing. He gives himself a wife and two kids. Twins, in fact — Jesus, they can be a handful. Plus a dog which he never wanted to get in the first place, and which is tearing apart what little furniture they have, that little scamp. Which, by the way, is his name: Scamp.

He enjoys weaving this alternate world on the fly. Relishes the challenge of throwing in each new deceit whilst avoiding becoming caught in any contradictions.

But it’s obvious she doesn’t suspect a thing. Each additional fragment of his fantasy is swallowed whole. She’s building up an image of a solid, dependable cop just doing his bit to help out the poor victimized civilian. And each city block he takes her closer to her apartment only serves to reassure her that there is nothing wrong with this picture.

When they finally pull up in front of her building and he takes her bag and leads her up to the front door and invites her to open up, he senses the relief in her. The absolute trust she now feels for him simply radiates from her.

And when he follows her up the staircase, he has to smile at what he has accomplished today.

Because the clues were there, if she chose to see them.

Didn’t he tell her the killer was on his way? How much clearer could he have been?

And then there was his name. Detective Todd Morton, was how he introduced himself.

Todd, from the German word Tod . And Morton, from the French word mort . Both meaning death.

Detective Death.

What a cool name.

Bridget Serafinowicz sets down her bags of shopping with a groan. Her knees hurt, her ankles hurt, her shoulders hurt. Why does growing old have to be so painful? Why do our bodies have to go through this goddamn-awful process of becoming ever more decrepit? If we have to die, why can’t we stay healthy and fit until we do? It should be a simple case of turning the light off one night, never to wake up again. Not this. This is just torture.

But it shouldn’t be like it was for Helena either. Not violent. Life should not be ripped away from people like that.

Her stomach clenches as she thinks about what happened upstairs. Here, in her building. So close.

The reporters were here again this morning. Ringing her buzzer, trying to cajole her into granting them an interview. The vultures. She ignored them. Stayed inside until they got bored of doing their highly speculative pieces to camera and finally drifted away to sniff out more ghoulish and sensational stories.

She came out then, when it was safe. Went to lunch with her friends Golda and Phyllis, just as she always does on a Saturday. But it wasn’t the same. They were far too keen to hear the details of what exactly took place, then far too quick to cast them aside in favor of their own baseless imaginings. Bridget found the whole experience so distasteful she couldn’t finish her tuna sandwich.

The shopping helped. Again, something she has always done after lunch on a Saturday. She found it comforting to adhere to her routine, even though she had been tempted not to bother today. Being amongst all those people, none of whom had an inkling about what she had gone through, made the events seem somehow more distant, more unreal.

But it was real. Coming home again has emphasized that. It’s as though the building has been tainted with an aura of horrific violence.

She starts unloading the bags. While she puts the grocery items away she thinks about Tabitha. That poor girl. She doesn’t deserve such misery. So much death. .

She wishes Tabitha were back here with her. She would comfort her. She would put things right for her. She would do all the things she would have done for her own daughter, if she’d been fortunate enough to have one.

She hopes Tabitha doesn’t leave because of this, but she suspects she will. And when she does it will be heartbreaking. Life will seem so much emptier without her.

Bridget opens the last of her bags and smiles at the contents. A teddy bear, from the Build-A-Bear Workshop on Fifth Avenue. Dressed up as the Statue of Liberty, no less. Something to help convince Tabitha that New York has a friendly face too. That it’s not such a bad place really. That she should seriously think about giving it another chance.

Bridget locks up her apartment and forces her complaining bones up the stairs to the second floor. She takes the master key from her pocket and opens up Apartment 2B. She will make it look nice again. Even though Tabitha was in it for only a brief period and won’t have created much mess, she will make it perfect again. She will tidy and clean and polish, and she will make the bed and place the bear carefully on the pillow. For when she comes back.

She goes inside. Closes the door behind her.

But still her screams are heard right along the hallway.

Mrs Li is back in her apartment so fast she can’t remember the journey. Like she traveled faster than thought itself.