Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

“His sister-in-law is Miss Kruger?”

“That’s what he said. He could be lying. I’ve never seen him here before.”

The police took turns asking her questions. “Did you see the woman who normally lives there…this Miss Kruger?”

“No.”

“Did you ask him about his injury?”

“He said it was an accident. He said he was a doctor and would take care of it once he was inside the apartment.”

Exasperation was writ clear on the policemen’s faces. “Did this doctor threaten you in any way?”

“No. He was polite…but he shouldn’t be here if Miss Kruger isn’t here. I’ve never seen him before. He frightened me.”

The policemen exchanged glances. Another snoop with too much time on her hands. “We’ll have a word with the gentleman. Did he, by any chance, give you his name?”

The woman frowned.

“Stay here, ma’am.”

Jonathan stood in the bathroom, chin raised high, studying his neck. The gash had begun to congeal, the torn flesh slowly hardening into place. In the field, he saw injuries like this on a daily basis. The only way to repair it without permanent scarring was to reopen the wound and stitch it closed when the hurt was fresh, but that wasn’t an option today.

He poured himself a shot of the buffalo grass vodka and drank it for courage.

“Keep still,” he whispered to himself, bringing needle and thread to his throat.

Drawing a breath, he set to work. The needle wasn’t bad for something he’d found in a sewing kit. Reasonably sharp. Reasonably sterile. He’d worked with worse. Using the fingers of his left hand to hold the folds of the cut close together, he drew the stitch.

It had been a lie from the very beginning. Emma wasn’t Emma. To some degree, his life had been a charade. A play directed by some unseen director. Surprisingly, he felt more liberated than disappointed. The blinders had been removed from his eyes, and for the first time he could see things as they really were. Not just what lay in front of him, but what existed on the periphery. It was a damning vista. Jonathan as pawn. Jonathan as puppet. Jonathan as a government’s ignorant, enthusiastic marionette.

Who was it? he wondered. Who put her up to this?

He drew the third stitch. The thread chafed, making his eyes water. He tugged the needle and drew the suture clear.

Angry. That’s what he was. Angry at Emma. Angry at Hoffmann. Angry at whoever had had a hand in stealing his life from him and fashioning it to achieve their ends. It was theft of an unforgivable order.

And the rest of it? The part of his life that was just the two of them. Was that an act, too? He was tempted to anoint their private moments as special, divorced from Emma’s higher duty. Their lovemaking. The secret glances. The touch of her hand and the moments of unspoken connection.

Eight years…how was it possible?

He lowered the needle, throwing a hand onto the sink for support.

He lifted his eyes to the mirror. You just don’t get it. She never told you her real name. She saw to it that they moved around Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, so she could do her job. She had an entire secret life. Look at this apartment. Look at that itty-bitty dress. She brought men here. She drank vodka with them. She seduced them.

He looked deep into his own eyes and faced the truth.

Numb to the pain, he completed his work quickly and diligently, tying off the thread and cutting it with the vanity scissors he’d found in the sewing kit. It was a good job, all things considered. He dabbed the sutures with alcohol, then put a Band-Aid over the wound. Picking up his shirt, he walked into the kitchen and poured himself another shot of vodka. He made a mental note to look for the brand in the future. Zubrowka. Polish for “dumb trusting asshole.”

He threw on his overcoat and dropped his hands into the pockets of his trousers. His right hand came up with the wedding ring. He made a promise to carry it at all times as a reminder. He turned off the kitchen lights and strolled into the living room. He turned a circle, surveying the apartment. All of it was an illusion. No more than a stage.

Just then, a fist pounded on the door. “Police. We’d like to speak with you.”

Jonathan froze. It was the woman from downstairs. She must have raised the alarm. He imagined how events would unfold. A request for identification. A routine check for outstanding warrants. The response would be immediate: Dr. Jonathan Ransom wanted for the murder of two police officers. Suspect to be considered armed and dangerous. They’d have him cuffed and spread-eagled on the ground in the blink of an eye.

More pounding on the door.

“Police. Please, Herr Doktor, we know you are inside. We’d like to speak with you about your sister-in-law, Miss Kruger.”

Jonathan had come too far to give up. If he was in it, he might as well be in it all the way.

Running into the bedroom, he pried open the French doors onto the balcony. He looked from side to side, up and down. The closest balcony was two floors down. The wall was flat and featureless. There was no way he could lower himself.

The pounding on the door grew angrier.

He returned to the living room, then ran to the office, the bedroom again, and then the kitchen. He stopped, angered by the futility of his efforts. There was nothing to find. The only way out was through the front door.

If he couldn’t get out, he had to force them in…

He walked to the kitchen. He was no longer hurrying. Never once did he look behind him or consider responding to the increasingly violent knocks. He went directly to the oven. It was a modern convection unit, with stainless-steel frontage and touchpad controls. No use there. The range, however, was a gas appliance. He pulled off the burner rings. Taking a knife from a drawer, he bashed in the pilot light. Then he turned the knobs on all five burners to high. Gas hissed from the main, a faint, sickly sweet scent filling the room.

The pounding had stopped. Heated voices drifted from the corridor. The doorknob jiggled. A moment later, there came the scribbling of metal on metal. The police were trying to pick the lock.

“I’m coming,” called Jonathan. “Give me a moment.”

“Please hurry,” came the response. “Or we’ll enter by force.”

“One minute,” he yelled. He closed the pocket door to the kitchen and hustled to the office. He found some paper on the desk and rolled it into the shape of a cone. In the bathroom, he stuffed toilet paper into the cone. Setting the cone to one side, he took a large bath towel and ran cold water over it. He wrung the water from the towel, folded it, and carried it over one arm. He found a book of matches in an ashtray in the living room.

The pounding started up again. Through the door, he heard the squawk of the policemen’s two-way radio.

By now, gas was seeping from under the kitchen door. One sniff forced him to recoil. Taking up position with his back pressed to the wall outside the kitchen, he draped the towel over his head and shoulders, struck a match and lit the paper cone. He waited, holding it away from his body until it blazed like a torch.

Now! he told himself.

Opening the pocket door, he tossed the torch into the kitchen and threw himself to the floor.

A billowing fireball exploded inside the confined area, blowing the stacked china off the counters, shattering glasses, breaking windows and roaring like an express train through the doorway into the living room, before being sucked right back into the kitchen.

Jonathan crawled across the floor to the entry and hid in a closet next to the front door. Barely a second later, a gunshot sounded. The door was flung inward on its hinges. Two policemen entered the apartment, guns drawn, rushing the source of the conflagration. All this Jonathan watched through the crack of the closet door.