Authors: Daniel Kalla
Lights off, I sat in my living room. The room was lit by only the dim glow from the solitary streetlight and the flash from the occasional passing headlights. A slight autumn chill drifted in through the open window. The beer bottle dangled in my hand like a dead weight, never nearing my lips. A revved engine or braking tires disrupted the silence from time to time, but I didn’t turn on the stereo; I’d learned last time around that music only intensified the sense of loss.
In the weak light, I could barely make out the eerily beautiful black-and-white sketch,
Bather with Her Back Turned
, over the mantle. Drawn by an “up-and-comer” in the Seattle art scene—or so I was told—I thought Emily could have just as easily sketched the desolate figure. Maybe that’s why it resonated so strongly with me.
The numbing shock of Emily’s murder had receded. Sorrow welled in its place. No surprise. I knew the memories would be skewed and unbalanced—summer weekends at “our” bed-and-breakfast in Anacortes, mornings frittered away at Pike Place Market, meals playfully improvised in the kitchen, those long showers together…I’d expected to relive all of that usual romantic bullshit and none of the misery—the volatility, the missteps, the betrayals. What caught me off guard was how many memories of Emily also included Aaron.
With or without one of a string of transient girlfriends, Aaron’s presence was a constant in our relationship. But my closeness to my identical twin never threatened my sense of identity. We were very different people. And despite his weaknesses, I always looked up to Aaron. After all, born four minutes before me, he was my big brother.
Staring at the sketch, I realized that not only had I lost Emily but that her death made me relive the loss of my brother.
The ringing phone startled me. I bobbled my bottle, spilling a few drops of beer on the cloth sofa Mom had helped me select. I glanced at my watch: 10:11
P.M
. I steadied the bottle on the coffee table and picked up the cordless receiver.
“You okay?”
The question threw me. For a moment, I wondered if the whisperer had called to torment me again, but then I found my bearings. “Alex,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Hmmm,” Dr. Lindquist sounded unconvinced. “What are you up to now?”
“Nursing a beer.” Then I added the truth: “In the dark while I reminisce about Emily and Aaron.”
“You call that fine?”
“What can I say?” I said. “I have boundless capacity for self-pity.”
Hearing Alex’s soft staccato laugh lifted my mood. “You sure you don’t need company?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Dad’s staying over with Talie and me. She’s asleep. And he’s too proud to get a hearing aid, so the TV is cranked up to rocket-launch decibels.” That explained the distorted echo in the background. “I could use a change of scenery.”
I wanted nothing more than for Alex to come over, if only for a break from the cascade of memories, but I knew it risked a complication I couldn’t face at this point. “Alex, it’s a sweet offer, but I think I’m better off alone right now.”
“Okay,” she said breezily. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
Hanging up the phone, my own words—
“better off alone”
—sunk in. Having grown up with a twin, I’d never before thought of myself as much of a loner, but I had to concede that during the last few years, since my engagement crumbled and Aaron disappeared, the description had begun to fit. I had my work, a few intermittent relationships, and a small circle of friends, most of whom had either moved afield or had become understandably preoccupied with their growing families. Alex Lindquist was the closest I had to a best friend. And we had almost capsized the friendship that drunken night in San Francisco.
Through the rumor mill at St. Jude’s, I’d heard how rocky Alex’s marriage was. Her husband’s business travel had proven too tempting for a guy with an incurable wandering eye. His affairs grew habitual; I’d even once caught him trying to prey on Emily. Marcus and Alex were already separated when she discovered she was pregnant with Talie. The pregnancy led to a revival of their marriage, but word was that if anything, Marcus’s philandering only worsened.
Alex had too much dignity to share the details. But as she sat on the bed in my hotel room with a glass of red wine precariously tilted in her small hand, I knew exactly what she meant when she said, “Marcus’s latest business venture has kept him in New York for weeks on end.”
I sat down beside her on the bed, straightening her wineglass. Then I rested a hand on her shoulder. “I wish things had worked out better for you.”
She viewed me with a smile, then tilted her head and nuzzled my hand with her face. I understood that the contact was more than friendly, but I left my hand where it was.
Alex looked up at me with her almond-shaped brown eyes and then leaned her face closer to mine. Her breath warmed my lips. I got a whiff of wine. “I should go back to my room,” she said.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “You should.”
She stared at me a moment. Then she inched her lips to mine. She touched my lips so slightly with hers that the pressure barely registered. I kissed back, harder. I squeezed her shoulder. She wrapped a hand behind my back and pulled me to her. I felt the wetness of her lips part and her tongue on mine. I guided her back on the bed, our bodies side by side, pressing into each other.
Alex dropped her hands to her waist and slid off her top. Then her fingers reached for my shirt buttons. She moaned into my mouth. Our kisses grew more urgent as her small hands moved steadily down my shirt front. She slid her hand over my shoulders and peeled off my shirt, the smooth steady pressure electric on my skin.
I broke off the kisses just long enough to pull off my shirt. I hesitated, only for a moment, but when I moved for Alex, she turned her face away from mine. She sat up on the bed. “I should go,” she said, subdued. She groped the bed for her top, snatched it up, and pulled it over her head.
Instead of bolting, she sat where she was and stared at her feet. She was so silent that it took me a moment to notice the tears running down her cheeks. I sat up beside her and wrapped my bare arm around her. “Alex?”
“This wouldn’t be fair,” she said hoarsely.
“To Marcus?”
“Talie.”
“And you?”
She shook her head. “She’s only five. She needs a stable home. I can’t do this to her. Not now. Not with the way her father flies in and out of her life.”
“It will be okay.”
She buried her head in my shoulder. “Ben, I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I said and stroked her lustrous hair, the eroticism of my contact replaced by concern. “We’re both a little mixed up.” I paused. “Actually, I’m a lot mixed up. But we stopped in time.”
“I wonder,” she said into my shoulder.
Time had sanitized that evening for me, so I could recall it without guilt; it had become almost an innocent pleasure, like my first sixth-grade kiss. But since that night in San Francisco, things had changed for us. We stopped going out for dinners or movies after shifts. Our restraint wasn’t born from awkwardness or regret, but rather the mutual realization that next time temptation would prove too strong.
A soft rapping from my front door drew my attention back to the moment. I stood up and headed for the door.
More than his late-night presence, I was shocked by the appearance of my cousin, Kyle. Wearing a T-shirt and jeans, Kyle looked even more gaunt and pale than when I’d last seen him three months earlier. He used to be the incarnation of health and vigor. Even when my brother and he were heavily into drugs, Kyle carefully maintained his cut physique and bad-boy good looks. I knew Kyle was lucky to have survived the aggressive leukemia, but I had yet to adjust to his chronically sickly appearance since his bone marrow transplant more than two years before. Pale and balding, not only had he lost his natural ruddiness but his once smooth complexion now always seemed to scale or erupt with various rashes—today’s variation was a line of dried, encrusted sores over his right eyebrow.
“Ben.” He threw his arms around me and squeezed his bony frame against my body. “Damn, Ben, I’m so sorry about Emily.”
I nodded. “Beer?”
“Don’t do beer, not anymore.” He grinned. His eyes lit up, shaving years off his face. “But if you have some Coke lying around…”
With a sigh, I turned for the kitchen. I knew he meant the soda, not the powder. Kyle had been clean since his bone marrow transplant, but neither beating cancer nor finding God had claimed his irreverent sense of humor.
After I dug out a can of Coke from the back of my fridge, I flicked on the lights and we headed into the living room. We sat across from each other on the couches in silence. For appearance’s sake, I sipped my beer, indifferent to its warm flat taste.
“How long?” Kyle asked.
“Wasn’t it at Uncle Len’s seventieth birthday in June—”
“No, jackass.” Kyle sighed and then flashed one of his contagious half-mocking smiles. “Not us! I mean, when did you last see Emily?”
“Last week.”
Kyle cocked his head. “You two stayed in touch, huh?”
“In fits and spurts,” I said.
“Yeah. You and Emily were together for what…” Kyle squinted up at the ceiling, doing the math. “Four years?”
“Five.”
“She was so beautiful, wasn’t she?” He brought the can to his lip thoughtfully. “Inside and out. One of those people who could turn on a room.”
I swallowed away the small knot in my throat. “But way too often she needed chemical help.”
“Or thought she did.” Kyle nodded. “I used to be like that, too, Ben. Always wanted that edge I got from the blow, the crystal, or the E.”
I sighed heavily. “Emily and Aaron never really managed to kick the junk. You were the only one.”
“And I was the biggest lost cause of the bunch.” Kyle folded his arms over his chest, but there was nothing defensive in the gesture. “What can I say?” He shrugged. “Leukemia saved my life.” And I knew he was serious, too.
I leaned forward in my seat and pointed to Kyle with the neck of my bottle. “The other guy killed at Emily’s place. I think it might have been her dealer. His name was J.D. Ring any bells?”
Kyle unfolded his arms. He nodded. “Porn star looks? In his twenties?”
I nodded.
“Yeah. I used to know him.”
“And?”
“J.D. was never the sharpest knife in the drawer. But he was a smooth talker and knew some of the right people.” He cleared his throat. “Kind of established himself as a supplier for the downtown coke-and-martini set.”
“He was Emily’s dealer, wasn’t he?”
Kyle nodded.
A breeze blew in from the window. I glanced out to a passing car on the street. I had a sudden urge for a long night bike ride. I turned back to Kyle. “The Homicide detectives wonder if J.D. was involved in Emily’s murder.”
A fleeting glint passed his eyes. “If so, J.D. hit upon the alibi of
all
alibis.”
I smiled in spite of myself. They wonder whether the murderer double-crossed him after killing Emily.”
“J.D. always struck me as a kind of harmless, but…”
I waited for him to finish the sentence, but he didn’t. “You ever heard of a lawyer named Michael Prince?” I asked.
Kyle nodded. “A big hitter criminal defense attorney here in Seattle.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“When you’ve been on the wrong side of the law as much I have, you get to know the names.” He fingered the writing on the can. “Why do you ask?”
I described J.D.’s ascension in the world of legal representation and then asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know who J.D. was working for?”
Kyle only shrugged.
“Any guesses?”
Kyle’s face creased into a frown. “Ben, the people who employ the J.D.s of the world tend to prize their privacy. Why don’t you leave those questions to the cops?”
“J.D.’s boss may somehow be directly connected to Emily’s death.”
“That’s not your problem.”
I slammed my hand on the coffee table, upending my empty beer bottle. I took a breath and fought to keep the emotion out of my voice. “I loved her.” I held up a palm. “Kyle, you wouldn’t have wanted to see what they did to her!”
Kyle viewed me with a sympathetic nod.
“The same person or persons might be responsible for what happened to Aaron.”
“We don’t know what happened to Aaron,” he said softly.
I just stared at my cousin.
He held my eyes for a moment and then dropped his chin and sighed. “Back when I was in the racket, J.D. was working for a guy named Philip Maglio.”
“Is this Maglio still around?”
“Oh, yeah.” Kyle nodded. “He owns some real estate and a few legit businesses, too. Like all the successful ones, he knows how to squeeze a dime from the wrong
and
right side of the law.”
Kyle read my expression. “Ben, don’t even think about it. Philip and his kind can be very dangerous. Say—for the sake of argument—he was involved in what happened to Emily or Aaron, and you show up poking around…”
“I’m not going ultra-vigilante here. I just want to pass along anything that might help the cops.”
“Okay,” Kyle said, but his frown was rich with skepticism.
We sat quietly for several moments. “It wasn’t that long ago that the four of us were all celebrating Em’s MBA,” I said. “Now, look how we’ve all ended up.”
“Life is one twisted road,” Kyle said.
“Yeah.” I looked down at my tapping foot. “I don’t know what more I could have done for Emily, but Aaron…”
Kyle leaned forward in his seat. “You’re not still beating yourself up over that?”
“Of course I am,” I snapped and then forced the edge from my tone. “Kyle, I gave him his very first taste of coke.”
“I was there, too, remember? Besides, if not then, Aaron would’ve been introduced to it somewhere else.”
“Maybe.”
Kyle brought a hand to his chest. “And how about me, Ben? I kept your brother in a healthy supply of all that junk. Then I pulled him into the business. How about that for culpability?”