Laura Caldwell - Red Blooded Murder

Most of these thoughts were suppositions, guesses, but they seemed more and more like conclusions the longer C.J. held me around the neck. I began to pant with the short breaths I could barely get in. I felt my face heat. My head felt dizzy, as if the dark editing suite was swirling around me.

Don’t give up, I told myself. With a guttural groan, I pried C.J.’s fingers half an inch away from my neck. I squirmed, but I couldn’t move her grasp any farther. We struggled against each other.

“You killed her,” I gasped. C.J. yelled. No, she roared. She leapt off me at the same time. Stunned by the absence of her weight, I froze for a second. In the low light from the door’s window I saw her reaching the desk, grabbing something square and black-a small console of some kind. She held it over her head. She yelled again, and I saw the thing coming at me, felt my mouth open, felt myself scream. I kicked at her. I clamored to move away, but the suite was so small.

Then the room was bathed with light. And I was falling backward.

T here was a clamor, a scuffle above my head. I was, I realized, lying on my back in the hallway. The door had been opened, and I’d been yanked out. By Vaughn.

“Hold up, hold up!” he yelled, apparently at C.J.

I saw one of the uniformed officers draw his gun. Another pulled me to my feet. Vaughn was facing C.J. in the dark editing suite, his own gun drawn. Her glasses had fallen somewhere and her eyes darted from one officer to another.

“What’s going on?” Vaughn barked.

“Did you search her office?” I asked.

He shot a glance at me but stayed with his body toward C.J., who was still holding the piece of equipment. “Put that down,” he demanded, gesturing at her.

She complied, and Vaughn looked at me. “Now, what are you talking about?”

I poured out the whole story. “I know you’re looking for a woman, someone who was with Jane that day in her bed, someone who killed her with an Emmy, but you shouldn’t be looking at me. You should be looking at her. Vaughn, this is C. J. Lyons.”

“I know who she is. I’ve interviewed nearly everyone at this network.”

“Well, you should interview her again! And you should search her office for Jane’s Emmy. She’s got boxes of stuff in there. One is full of awards and trophies. I saw it in her office one day, and the same day she told me about the Emmy that Jane had won. She talked about winning an Emmy for a story we were working on.”

“And?” said Vaughn dismissively.

“And she was the one in a relationship with Jane, not me.” I told him my theory, my words spilling over one another. “They were together Monday afternoon, but Jane told her it was the last time. I think for the first time, C.J. knew Jane was serious.”

Vaughn gestured at C.J… “Did you have a relationship with Jane?”

“Professionally, yes.” C.J.’s eyes looked lost without her glasses, but otherwise she was composed again. “As I’ve told you, Jane and I worked together for years.”

“Nothing more than that?”

She shook her head, a short, dismissive movement. It wasn’t exactly the firmest denial. Vaughn’s eyes flicked from her to me and back again.

“You see her on Monday?” he asked her.

She said nothing.

“Were you in her bed?”

We both looked at C.J. Although her face was composed, her black hair appeared thin, her pale skin overly delicate. It seemed as if tough, strong C.J. was aging before our eyes.

“C.J. loved Jane,” I said. C.J. took a step back then, her body fading into the shadows of the editing suite. And then her knees went out from under her, and she began to fall backward as if she’d been shot.

“Hey!” one of the officers said, trying to grab her. But C.J. landed on the floor of the editing bay with a thud.

“Get up!” Vaughn barked at her.

She just sat there as if she hadn’t heard him.

“Get her up,” Vaughn yelled at his officer.

The cop bent toward her.

“No!” C.J. bellowed. “Don’t touch me!” The raw agony of her voice froze us all.

C.J. curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She began to shake her head back and forth, back and forth, as if saying no, no, no to some internal words that no one could hear.

Vaughn stared at her, his gun still pointed. He looked at me. “Where’s her office?”

I pointed down the hallway. “Maggie is there, along with another Trial TV person.”

Vaughn nodded at one of his officers. “Stay here.” He took the other officer and left.

And then in the dark of the editing bay, like a child who finally gives in to anguish they feel deep inside, C.J. put her head on her knees and cried.

I hear a knock on the bedroom door.

I try to call out, “Come in,” but my voice is hoarse from lack of use.

Another knock.

I clear my throat and sit up, swinging my feet over the side of the bed.

I look around the room. It bears a helter-skelter appearance-scattered clothes, plates of half-eaten food, mugs of half-drunk tea. A couple of prescription bottles are lined up on the nightstand. Diazepam. Halcion.

Another knock on the door and this time it opens.

My brother’s mop of curly hair enters the room first, then I see his face and an expression he doesn’t normally wear-worry.

“You awake?” he asks.

I clear my throat. “Yeah,” I croak out. “What day is it?”

“Tuesday.”

Two days since the cops searched my place, two days since I confronted C.J. at Trial TV.

It all happened so fast.

Jane’s Emmy was found in C.J.’s office, in that box. C.J. had tried to wipe the trophy clean, to make it truly hers, but one tiny speck of blood was left from the vibrant force that had been Jane Augustine. And the half fingerprint that was left matched C.J.’s. So did the DNA from Jane’s bed. That was enough to get the crime lab and the cops to agree-C.J. had killed Jane.

I was interrogated again. But the interrogation was different. Vaughn asked questions and actually listened. When I left, he stopped Maggie and me at the door.

“Got something to say?” Maggie asked, sarcastic, triumphant.

Vaughn only shook his head. But for an instant, our eyes met, and he gave me the briefest of nods. It was the closest thing to an apology I would ever get from him.

I have been sleeping for most of the last two days at my mom’s house. The prescription bottles are hers.

Just in case, she had said. You might have a hard time sleeping.

But I hadn’t needed them. Sleep had been easy. The difficult part was the moments I was awake, usually at odd hours, scrounging the kitchen for food to bring back to the guest room and trying not to be angry. I have been telling myself that Vaughn, although misguided in his suspicions of me, was just doing his job, a job he had a passion for. Such reminders haven’t worked. I didn’t kill Jane, and I live with my own passion now-a passion to see Detective Vaughn get the shit kicked out of him by me or someone close to me.

I get up, tie a robe around my waist and pick up my cell phone from the nightstand. I look at the calls that came in while I was sleeping. Theo, three times. Grady, twice. No Sam.

“He’s outside,” Charlie says.

“What?”

“Sam. He’s sitting outside in his car. He says you need to get out of the house.” Charlie gives me a once-over. I haven’t showered in days.

I stand and peek through the wooden blinds onto State Street. Sam’s car is parked half a block down. I smile and turn to Charlie. “I’ll call him.”

“Mom and Spence are at the store,” my brother continues, “and I’m taking off for a job interview.”