Kim Baldwin - The Gemini Deception

Just to be completely sure the poor bastard wasn’t home and in pain, she’d do a quick check of the bedrooms upstairs. If he wasn’t there, she’d leave a get-well note with the flowers and go. She’d never intended to charge him, anyway. These were on the house because he was such a good customer.

Convinced now that no one was home, she hurried up the stairs to ease her conscience and be on her way. She walked down a long hall, bypassing an office and then a kids’ bedroom—bunk beds, toys and baseball gear on the floor, posters of athletes and racecars on the walls. Tim had never mentioned having children.

At the end of the hall, she knocked on the only closed door. “Tim, it’s me. Ryden.” She waited several seconds, her ear to the door, before trying the knob.

The bedroom’s heavy curtains were closed so it was too dark to see much, but the ambient light streaming in through the sides of the windows allowed her to make out a silhouette on the bed. “Tim, are you all right? she asked louder. No response, and the figure didn’t move. “Shit,” she mumbled. Tim was either an extremely sound sleeper or something was very wrong. Skimming her hand over the wall, she found the light switch and flicked it on.

She blinked a few times, so shocked she was unable to fully register the scene before her. When she finally realized the magnitude of the horror, dizziness washed over her and she had to fight to keep upright. “Oh, my God.”

Tim was naked and facedown on the bed. Countless stab wounds all over his back explained the widening pool of blood on the sheets and floor.

She was going to be sick. With her hand over her mouth, she ran headlong for the adjoining bathroom, only to trip over something on the floor just inside the dark room. Scrambling to her feet, she inhaled a vaguely metallic scent and was aware her hands were wet as she reached for the bathroom light switch.

She was standing over another naked body, this time that of a woman she didn’t recognize. This victim had also been stabbed, but she was lying on her back. Blood still oozed from her wounds onto the tile.

“Jesus fuck.” Ryden realized for the first time that the killer might very well still be in the house, and her urge to vomit vanished, replaced by the need to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible. She bolted down the stairs and out of the house, not stopping until she reached the middle of the street. Breathing hard, she reached for her cell phone, only then seeing the blood on her hands, jeans, and jacket. She was shaking so much it took three tries to successfully dial 911.

Chapter Three

Later, Ryden would have no clear recollection of the police arriving or be able to say how long it took them to get there. But not long after they did, a tall plainclothes cop who introduced himself as Detective Johnston took her back into Tim’s house and asked her to sit in the living room. Two uniformed cops and another in a suit stood by watching her, and she could hear more moving around on the upper floor.

The detective sat down beside her and pulled out a small notepad and pen. “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me everything you remember from the time you arrived here until you called 911. Take your time. You never know what kind of detail might be important.”

As Ryden told him the story, more cops arrived—a quartet from forensics, she guessed, since they immediately began gathering trace evidence and dusting for fingerprints. One of them, a woman about her age, was summoned to take Ryden’s prints once she’d finished relaying what she could recall.

“I need to take samples of the blood on your hands as well as samples from under your nails,” the forensics tech told her as she pressed Ryden’s fingers one by one onto an ink pad and then a white card. “And we’ll need your jacket and jeans for evidence.”

“My clothes?” Ryden asked. “What for?”

“They’ll be returned to you,” the detective said. “We’ll take you home when we’re finished here, and a female officer will accompany you inside to get them. It’s just standard procedure.”

While the tech swabbed samples of the blood on her hands and under her nails, the detective went to consult with the other plainclothes cop, who’d spent much of the preceding minutes on his cell phone. When Johnston returned to the couch, he had new questions for her. “How did you know the Laudens?”

“Laudens?” Ryden repeated. “Was that Tim’s sister?”

The detective studied her face. “You didn’t know her?”

“No.”

“Ex-wife,” he said. His gaze drifted to the mantel over the fireplace, behind where she was sitting, and Ryden turned to see what he was looking at. Among the photographs was one of a much younger Tim and the redheaded woman she’d tripped over. Other photos told her the couple had two boys. That explained the kids’ room—apparently the couple shared custody.

Over the course of the next half hour, she was asked to recall everything she knew about Tim. She started from his first visit to the flower shop and ended with his phone call asking her to deliver the flowers that rested on the coffee table in front of them.

Then the detective started in on her, asking her about her life, work, family background, and marital status. By the time she was done, Johnston and the other complete strangers in the room had more information about her than anyone she’d ever known. Ryden had about as much need to talk about herself as she had interest in other people. The shock of her experience was rapidly turning into weariness under the endless questioning. She hadn’t eaten anything since that morning and was beginning to feel weak and dizzy. She could see Johnston’s mouth move but couldn’t register what he was saying.

“Foster homes never work out,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“What’ll happen to the children?”

He looked surprised. “Relatives usually rise to the occasion.”

“Yeah. Relatives might work.”

“We’re almost done, ma’am.” He sounded concerned.

Ryden just wanted to get the hell out of there. She needed the safety of her home and a stiff drink of anything. The cop asked her something else, but she didn’t hear that, either, too distracted by a sudden flurry of activity by the stairs. Two men with MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE written on their windbreakers came down carrying someone in a body bag. She wanted to look away but couldn’t. She wanted to run but didn’t.

The detective droned on.

“Excuse me, what?” she asked.

“I said, you can’t leave the state until we have more answers.”

“I didn’t intend to, but…I had nothing to do with this.”

“We’re pretty sure you didn’t, ma’am,” Johnston replied, “but we might have more questions for you.”

“Yeah, sure. I understand.” She didn’t expect to hear from them again because she didn’t have anything to add to what she’d already told the detective. She knew next to nothing about Tim except his taste for flowers. “Can I go now?”

“Yes. Officer Walker will see you home.”

She was driven the short distance to her apartment, where she handed over her bloodstained jeans and jacket. Once the officer had gone, she went directly to her shower almost on autopilot. She stared blankly at the red suds as they disappeared down the drain, wanting to believe she was stuck in a bad dream, but the blood washing off her body told another story.

*

Next afternoon, December 18

Ryden sat in the back room of the flower shop drinking her third cup of coffee as Magda waited on a customer. She’d slept little because of yesterday’s events, and this day had started out poorly, too. She’d spent nearly an hour searching for the wallet she seemed to chronically misplace, before finding it at the bottom of the laundry hamper. And her late start had thrust her into the worst of rush-hour traffic.