Chapter Eleven
October 18, 2004 – (12:13 a.m.) Brooklyn, New York
Within a heartbeat, Robert Goren was out the door to find his Eames. Fuck trying to lock his troublesome door. There was no time for details.
His body was running on pure adrenaline now. He paused briefly outside the elevator. Should he use the elevator? For the second time this evening, he counted backwards from ten to one in his head; it was a technique he'd learned early on – one that always seemed to help him focus in times of crisis. Using the elevator would be faster than walking down all those goddamned stairs, and he was fucking exhausted. He quickly considered both outcomes, but what if tonight was the night the elevator jammed? (And if Nicole was involved?) He shook his head and opened the door to the stairwell.
When he reached the ground floor he decided to slip out the side door, which promptly swung sharply behind him, nearly clipping his side. Like many city doors, it was constructed of solid materials and "heavy as all get out," ready to spring back into the closed position as a standard safety precaution.
The night air was crisp and cool, and just as he was catching his breath from doubling down the flights of stairs, the air stung at his lungs and he felt compelled to cough. Clearing his throat, he continued his double pace towards the Vietnamese restaurant; wishing now that he would have remembered his wool toque, scarf and gloves. His ears and fingertips were already starting to feel the cool bite of the mid-October evening air.
The familiar apartment buildings and street-level stores seemed to float by his peripheral, indistinct at best, but only because his eyes were trained in the direction of the restaurant.
Without warning, he remembered that she would have dropped off his dry-cleaning first (shit) he was now headed in the opposite direction. If he was going to work this situation in the same methodical manner he approached his every-day profession, he would need to shadow each of her steps. He turned around immediately and headed for the cleaners.
As his eyes were finally adjusting to the low light, he walked a pace slower, scanning the street-side for any movement as he neared his apartment building. Save the car that passed in either direction of the street, there was very little human activity. During the warmer months, his street would see more action even at this hour, but on this October night, the cold weather and shorter daylight hours appeared to have the opposite effect.
Finally, he was within range of his building, passing the now empty pizza parlor on his left, and then the alley between the parlor and the first apartment building on his block. It was within a few feet of the first apartment building that he noticed something was out of place; or rather something was not quite right.
He'd walked this same route home everyday, so yeah, even in low light, he had a general sense when things were out of place. Tonight the chain on one of the chain-link gates was unlocked and slightly ajar. For a few years, his neighborhood had recently taken to locking up the entry way to the alleys during both night and day to keep the many homeless individuals out of the trash bins. He puzzled momentarily as he hadn't noticed that minor detail on his first jaunt down the sidewalk - perhaps it was because he had his tunnel vision set on the restaurant.
When he edged his way through the gate opening, and took a few steps in, he saw it: the human-like form that lay crumpled on the ground. It was still too dark to see the details, but easy to recognize that the form was human. As he edged closer, he saw what appeared to be a bag of garbage to the right of the body.
His heart skipped a beat with each step, his bag of dirty clothes? Eames?
Suddenly, all he could hear was his own breathing, he heard nothing else, his heavy breathing and heartbeat drowned out any other sound. His eyes were transfixed as time slowly grinded to a halt.
How many dead bodies had he seen in his life? How many had been dumped in various unremarkable locations? This wasn't the first body he'd investigated in an alley. But Eames? In a fucking alley in Brooklyn?
The arms of the body formed the letter "S." The right arm was held high and curled above the head in a defensive gesture, the left arm curled downward in the opposite direction, (only a few feet from what he now recognized as his dry cleaning bag), as if the victim had refused to let go.
Suddenly he was aware of a warm tear trailing down his left cheek. "Why didn't you let go Eames? Why didn't you protect yourself?"
He knelt down to get a closer look, her eyes were mercifully closed, and in the low light, her pale visage looked as if she might be sleeping.
He hesitated slightly before taking an even closer look: there was no visible bruising or cuts that he could see - no sign of a struggle. He wanted to touch her face, but he was deathly afraid of the information that could be obtained in doing so; he'd then have an idea of how long she'd been lying in this godforsaken alley while he was upstairs in his apartment catching some fucking z's.
Her jacket was parted slightly, so he lifted the right side gently to see if she'd had her weapon at the time of the attack. Nothing. Eames had taken her piece off. The holster was off, which made fucking sense, she was off-duty, and she'd probably taken off most of her gear at the hospital and left it in her SUV.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered, when his hand brushed the side of her slight little frame, "Jesus Christ," he spoke again aloud, her body was no longer soft, warm, and full of fucking life. This was real. This was fucking real. He rested the weight of his right hand on her thigh, and it was cold, cold and already slowly starting to go into rigor. He felt another tear follow the curve of his right cheekbone, only to fall onto his neck, the liquid already shockingly cold due of the temperature.
"Eames," he whispered, "what happened?"
He spoke to her quietly, as if she were still with him, as if this was just another casual conversation at the scene of yet another crime. He steadied his shaking hand, and deftly lifted up the rest of her jacket and that's when he saw it.
Nicole-Fucking-Wallace. The hypodermic needle was still hanging loosely to Eames' mid-ribcage. It had gone through the thin stylish brown sweater, the tiny cotton blue dress-shirt, past her dermal layer and into her deeper tissues nestled between her ribs.
That's when the tears started streaming fast and furious, his vision was blurring, and he felt more helpless than he'd ever felt in his entire fucking worthless life. He brushed away the tears so he could remove the syringe, he worked his fingers under the two layers of clothing to see if he could get a look at the puncture, the light was so low, yet there was a little discoloration around the area in question. He carefully ran his index finger up and down the area, enough to feel the infinitesimally small hole where the needle had pierced Eames' side.
"Oh god, Eames," he moaned painfully, "she got you."
He sat down from his kneeling position and pulled her shirt back down before carefully buttoning up her pea-coat. He brushed a few errant hairs out of her eyes while quietly mumbling through tears, "She must have surprised you Eames. She must have stalked you out here. Did she lure you? She knew your weakness to help all those in need. Did she pose as a victim? Did she call you for help?"
And it was by laying out question after question to his non-responsive partner that his brain finally registered that he should stop being a detective, he should stop asking her questions. Eames was gone. And with that level of comprehension, he turned inward - only to find himself reaching for the faith of his childhood; a faith that was seeped in prayer and ritual. He was reminded that Eames had been raised Catholic too.
"Hail Mary, Full of grace - " but he choked on his own saliva before he could finish the prayer. His fingers fumbled in his jacket before he found the pendant Eames gave him for Christmas. He carefully strung the chain around her neck. His fingers, now surprisingly steady, worked carefully to open and close the clasp; albeit they were wet with his tears and hence burning from the cold. He placed a kiss on her forehead. There was something about the way her skin felt under her lips, a finality in it all that made something break inside of him. That's when he really lost it.
"Oh Jesus, it's okay," he heard it again and again, but he was out of control, the sorrow and the horror of what had transpired gripped him to the bone.