Mia stood at the corner of the warehouse, her arms shaking as she held her hairbrush pointed at the man. When she watched him clamber over the fence with Jack right behind, she had just enough time to wrench the brush from her purse and step into the beam of the one security light.
She felt a flush of heat as she watched the man turn slowly to face her. His eyes glanced down at the brush in her hands. By then the sounds of Jack coming over the top of the fence filled the air between them. The look on the man’s face—white with fury and frustration—triggered her next move. She flung the brush at him and turned to run, a scream coming out of her before she could stop it.
The impact as the man hit her from behind punched the air out of her. She felt the night world swirling about her as he whipped her around. Her legs gave out, but he held her up, his face close to hers, his breath labored and smelling of onions and fish.
The icy prick of a knife blade brought her back to the world and she struggled to stand on her own.
“Get the fuck back in your car or I kill her,” he snarled into Mia’s hair. She realized he wasn’t speaking to her.
“Let her go.”
“You’re trespassing. People get hurt when they trespass.” The man shook Mia, his supporting hand snaking up her back to hold her securely by the hair. He tugged her head back, exposing her throat more. The knife pinched into her skin. She felt his fear where he touched her, sliding over like a writhing cottonmouth.
“Don’t make it worse,” Jack said. He sounded closer now. “Nobody gets the needle for grand theft.”
Mia’s squeezed her eyes shut. Her captor’s panting was all she could hear. Suddenly he released his grip on her hair. She brought her chin down a fraction when she felt herself being pushed away. The ground flew up to smash her in the face.
The audio in her world muted as she huddled on the ground, waiting for the grassy field to stop spinning long enough to look around. It felt like hours that she lay there, staring at the grass, when she started to hear noises again.
Terrible noises.
The sounds of fists pummeling flesh, over and over again. She lifted her head and twisted in the direction of the noises and saw the two of them on the ground, Jack on top, punching, hitting. Mia shook her head, but the motion caused a roiling in her gut and she vomited down the front of her jacket.
“Jack,” she said weakly. “Don’t…kill him.”
*****
As Jess turned on the porch light she reminded herself the important thing was that Mia was safe. And Jack, too, of course. She still held the cell phone in her hand following Bill’s hurried call to her. Everybody safe. That’s all the matters.
She went back to the couch and tucked her feet under her, setting the cell phone down and picking up the remote control. Mia’s little dog, Daisy, curled up next to her and Jess put a hand on her, feeling the warmth like a soothing balm. It has been such a pleasant night before the phone call from Jack came. Bill had his jacket on and was walking out the door before he even heard all the details.
Jess smiled. That was so like him. Her smile wavered and then dropped. She turned off the television. It wasn’t going to be possible to be distracted by it tonight. The edge that had slipped into the evening—the first time Jess ever remembered feeling it between them—was subtle and pervasive, and sharp as a scalpel.
Was Mindy correct in her assessment that her father was obtuse when it came to communication? Jess had never seen it before, but tonight was a startling revelation in that way. How could anyone spend two hours over dinner and not realize something was wrong?
Did he really not know? He wasn’t an intuitive, that was true, but she’d never thought him insensate.
Mindy was, of course, expecting Jess to share the phone conversation with her father. For that reason, if no other, Jess hesitated. If I don’t talk about it, did it happen? If I don’t tell Bill, he doesn’t have to confront Mindy, and if she’s having second thoughts about making the call, perhaps we don’t have to start our relationship off in damage control.
Isn’t it best when someone puts a foot wrong to avert one’s eyes and pretend it didn’t happen? Wouldn’t Mindy thank her for that going forward? She was sure it was best not to tell Bill. He looked so happy tonight. So complete. Which brought up the bigger question once more…
Why didn’t he know there was something off tonight?
*****
Now Mia knew what people meant when they said a scene looked surreal. Here’s how an everyday picture of a simple field next to a parking lot can look like something out of an episode of The Twilight Zone—sinister and full of evil.
She sat with a blanket around her shoulders on the steps of an ambulance, a bottle of water in her hands. The police had marked off the crime scene and carted away the guy’s knife in a little plastic baggie—as well as Jack’s gun, although he never drew it.
The assailant was carted away too
In a coroner’s wagon.
Every time she relived the moment of watching Jack step away from the guy’s body, she started to shake. He’d come to her to check that she was unharmed, and then he called the cops. They sat together in silence, the body in front of them, and waited.
How did this happen? How did things go so wrong?
Now she watched Jack in the distance talking to two detectives. He wasn’t in handcuffs. Yet. Another car drove up and snapped its headlights off. Mia recognized the SUV and the man climbing out of it. She was glad he’d come alone. Her mother didn’t need to be here.
Maxwell walked over to where the detectives and Jack were talking.
Good. The chief will get things sorted out.
Won’t he?
Mia tried to push the image out of her mind of Jack straddling the man. It was her fault. If she hadn’t tried to do an impromptu survey of the area, she wouldn’t have bumped into the perp after he’d climbed the fence.
Why couldn’t she just have come straight back to the car?
Jack was probably asking himself the same thing.
Maxwell turned and walked toward her. That didn’t seem like a good sign. Mia peered over his shoulder and, sure enough, Jack was getting into the back of a police cruiser. Mia jumped up, the blanket falling from her shoulders.
“Chief! Where are they taking him? Are you serious? Is he under arrest?”
Maxwell held out his hands as he walked up to her, wanting to calm her before reaching her.
“They just need to finish asking their questions downtown,” he said.
“Downtown? You mean before they book him? Chief, you can’t let them do this.”
“Mia, stop it,” Maxwell said sternly. He was wearing jeans and a heavy cotton pullover. The call had caught him in the middle of a homey evening snuggling on the couch with her mother. A needle of guilt pierced her chest.
“They’ll be wanting to question you, too.”
“Me, why? I didn’t see anything!”
“Mia, a man died here tonight. You’re a witness.”
“Chief, this is Jack. Whatever he said happened is what happened. What is he saying happened?”
“That the man died as he was ‘questioning’ him.”
Mia sucked in a short breath. That almost sounded like a confession.
“What happened here tonight, Mia?” Maxwell handed the blanket to one of the EMTs, who were packing up to leave. He put his arm around Mia to lead her back to his car.
The cruiser with Jack in it backed up and drove away.
“We…we were watching for the guy—”
“What guy?”
“An employee of our client. He thought he was stealing stuff.”
Maxwell nodded. “They recovered a box of new fire extinguishers out front. Go on.”
“I had to go to the bathroom so I went to use the one at the Jiffy Mart about a half mile down the road.”
“Alone?”
“Well, someone had to stay to see if our guy was going to show tonight.”
Maxwell opened the car door and Mia slipped in. She supposed Jack’s car would be towed. Her stomach wrenched when she thought back to the early evening when she and Jack had made such hurried, mad, urgent love in that car.
Just a few hours ago.
The chief started the car. “And so you came back to the car and found Jack gone?”
This was the part where she got to confess it was all her fault. Only it wasn’t going to change the outcome or make Jack any less guilty. It was just going to show how, once again, she had screwed up and made someone else pay the price.
A heavy exhaustion crept over her. It must be past one in the morning. Maxwell cranked up the heat in the car and she could feel his attempt to rein in his impatience as he waited for her to answer.
“I thought I’d do a quick reconnaissance of the surrounding area on foot,” she said quietly.
“Go on.”
“When I approached the far side of the cement building I heard the fence clanging like someone was on it, and when I came around the side of the building I saw a guy jumping off it—Jack on the other side. He’d obviously been chasing him.”
Maxwell still didn’t speak but his finger tapped the steering wheel.
“It was my fault, Chief,” Mia said, her voice low.
“What did you do?”
She took in a long breath. “I pretended like I had a gun and told him to stop. Stupid. I didn’t think. I don’t know what made me say it. He…he grabbed me and he had a knife.”
“He held you at knifepoint,” Maxwell said, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel. Clearly, he’d already heard this part from Jack.
Mia nodded. “And then Jack climbed over the fence and was talking to him, telling him to put down the knife.”
“And then?” Maxwell’s voice was tight.
“The rest is hazy. I somehow got shoved away and I…guess I kind of blacked out.”
There was a brief pause. “Are you going to tell me you didn’t see what happened?”
“I didn’t see what happened.” Mia looked at him. “What do the cops think happened? Do they think Jack killed him with his bare hands?”
“Jack was armed.”
“But he didn’t pull his gun.”
“I thought you didn’t see any of it.”
Mia looked away. “He was just trying to protect me,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. How could this have happened? If she’d just come back to the car like she was supposed to! If she hadn’t tried to grandstand or be a super-detective, Jack wouldn’t be in the back of a cop car right this minute.
“I know,” Maxwell said. They didn’t speak the rest of the drive back to Jessie’s house.
*****
Jack stayed downtown the rest of that night. Maxwell wouldn’t allow Mia to go to him and so she waited in her mother’s house, drinking decaf until she finally fell asleep on the living room sofa. When she awoke, Maxwell and Jessie were having coffee in the kitchen.
Mia staggered into the room, hair tousled, her mascara smeared and glued to her cheeks.
“Did they book him?” she blurted.
Maxwell sighed and put his mug of coffee down while Jessie hopped up to get a cup for Mia. He looked immaculately dressed, as if he’d had a good night’s sleep and hours to shave, shower, press a knife-edge on his slacks and de-lint his jacket. The truth was, he had still been up when Mia fell asleep.
“They did,” Maxwell said. “Manslaughter. I’m going now to post bail.”
Mia sat down hard on one of the kitchen chairs. “Manslaughter,” she murmured. “The guy was trying to hurt me. He had a knife. Jack was unarmed.”
“He wasn’t,” Maxwell said.
“But he didn’t pull his gun,” Mia said, jumping up. “Did the guy die of a gunshot wound? What the hell does it matter if Jack had a gun if he didn’t use it?”
“She has a point, dearest,” Jessie said to Maxwell as she slid the mug of hot coffee across the table to Mia.
“Unfortunately, it’s an irrelevant one,” Maxwell said.
“Well, what did the Medical Examiner say the guy died of?” Mia asked.
“We don’t have his full report yet.”
“I don’t give a shit about how many enzymes he had in his stomach! Give me the fucking CliffsNotes version. How did he die?”
“Mia, please. Language,” Jessie said, frowning.
“He bled to death,” Maxwell said, standing and straightening his shirt cuffs. “From a ruptured spleen, the result of blunt force trauma.”
Mia shook her head. This was unbelievable. Jack ruptured the guy’s spleen?
“Nothing else?” she asked weakly. “Was there no other possible reason he could have died?”
“The ME said he bled out and died within minutes.”
Mia stood. “Give me five minutes to get dressed.”
“I will,” Maxwell said, “but you’re not coming downtown with me. I’ll drop you off in Atlantic Station.”
Before she could protest, he put up a hand. “Last word on the subject.”
“No time for breakfast?” Jessie asked.
“I’m sure Jack will appreciate it if, just this once, we skip it,” Maxwell said, leaning over to kiss her.
After Maxwell dropped her off at her condo, Mia spent the rest of the morning cleaning house. It was already tidy but she needed to keep busy until Maxwell brought Jack home.
It was my fault. I know that’s what Jack is thinking and he’s right.
Vowing to confess responsibility the moment he stepped across the threshold, Mia wiped down the inside of the refrigerator, mopped the kitchen floor and started a load of laundry. Jack liked to kid her about how non-domestic she was, so Mia hoped he would see these out-of-character efforts as testimony to how serious she took her responsibility in last night’s events.
Because she was in the laundry room with her head in the dryer, she didn’t hear them come in. Jack’s voice came down the hall ahead of him. “I’m not doing a fucking plea. That’s the end of it.” Mia dropped the laundry basket and ran to the living room. Jack was on the phone and didn’t look at her when she entered the room. Maxwell stood staring out the living room window.
“Because I’m innocent, how about that?” Jack said into the phone. “Does that work for you?” He hung up and turned to Mia. He gave her a tired smile and opened his arms. She slipped into them and held him tight.
“Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, kissing her hair.
“If it wasn’t for me…” She pulled back to see his eyes. “If I had just come back to the car.”
“Woulda shoulda coulda,” Maxwell said, as he turned from the window. “I’m heading back. You need anything else?”
Jack disengaged himself from Mia and shook hands with Maxwell.
“Thanks, Chief,” he said. “I owe you one.”
“All right then,” Maxwell said. “Take care of our girl here and keep me apprised of your case.”
After he left, Mia turned to Jack.
“What did they say? What happens next? Do you…do you still have your gun?”
He shook his head and ran a hand over his eyes. It occurred to Mia he probably didn’t sleep last night.
“No, nor my PI license either. At least temporarily.”
“Who were you talking to when you came in?”
“My lawyer.”
“That was fast. You were arguing. He wants you to plead guilty? Why did they charge you?”
“Basically, they say I used undue force for the situation.”
“They know the guy had a knife to my throat?”
“They do. They believe, since I disarmed him, that he should still be alive.”
“Why…do you know what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know…why he isn’t? I didn’t see any of it, Jack. I don’t know what happened.”
Jack let out a long sigh and shrugged. “Do you mind if I don’t do this again right now? That is literally all I’ve talked about for nine hours.”
“No, of course not. Why don’t you go take a shower while I make sandwiches?”
“Sounds good.” He stood up slowly and groaned.
“Want some company?”
He smiled but shook his head. “Maybe next time.”
Mia watched him leave the room, his shoulders slumped. She turned back to the kitchen, a feeling of foreboding vibrating up her spine.
He had never passed up the opportunity to get naked with her before.