Revelations
Spinelli shifted uneasily under the dead weight pinning him to the bed. He had been aware of all the nights that Jason had come into his room, his touch and his consoling presence enabling him to finally slip into a true sleep. Yet, he was always relieved when he would wake the next morning and Jason would be gone so that they could both pretend mutual ignorance about the nocturnal visitations. It seemed that whereas previously their relationship had been built on openness and trust, an unspoken camaraderie which he had never before known and had so deeply treasured, now it was all predicated on secrets, uncertainty and the facades that they each wore around the other.
Tonight was the first night that Jason purposefully accompanied Spinelli upstairs and lay in bed with him as part of the unspoken agreement that they each needed companionship. This was the only one of the recent deaths which had impacted Jason as much as it had Spinelli-perhaps even more so. After all, Jason had known and loved Sam before he ever met Spinelli. They planned on raising her daughter together and when that hope, that future was ripped from their grasp they reinvented themselves as lovers which was the incarnation during which Spinelli first encountered them. He also bore melancholy witness to their catastrophic break up, the way they verbally and even physically viciously tore one another to shreds.
Still, during these last months they seemed to be beginning to find their way back into each other's lives. Spinelli had formed his private investigator partnership with the adventuresome and kind brunette who always held a special place in his heart even when they hadn't seen much of each other. He secretly nurtured the hope that Stone Cold and Fair Samantha would once again feel the prick of Cupid's arrow. He though now, that they were both older and wiser, they might strive to perhaps form a more mature and lasting bond.
Since Maxie's death he was sunk so deeply within his own enervating ennui that he hadn't pondered anyone else's happiness except perhaps Lulu's. Yet, there appeared an aloofness, a disinterest in Stone Cold's attitude towards Sam of late, at least whenever Spinelli happened to witness an interaction between them. So perhaps Jason's grief was colored by guilt that he hadn't treated Sam better and now she was gone and there was never going to be an opportunity to offer her recompense for his indifferent attitude toward her.
Spinelli tried to shift Jason's arm off of him and when that didn't work he began to wriggle out from under it. He managed to escape the suffocating feeling of being trapped and was beginning to slowly edge off the bed when a voice spoke out of the darkness. "Where are you going?" The words were mild, the tone quietly inquiring but still a tremor of fear tingled up his spine.
"Stone Cold, the Jackal regrets awakening you from your well earned slumber."
He paused as he anxiously racked his brain, trying to devise a plan to hide his true intentions from his all seeing, all knowing mentor. The bottom line was that Spinelli was not sure if he could maintain an aura of casualness as he attempted to treat Jason's interrogation as an example of the new normal between the two roommates. 'Roommates literally now,' he thought to himself without humor, an edge of hysteria creeping into his thought processes. He had to make this work, he just had to, he knew it would most likely be his only chance to pursue the mystery that was keeping him from sleeping.
"I…I," he stammered for a moment before he managed to dredge up a modicum of calm and forcefully dampened his rampaging pulse rate. "That is the Jackal," he was always more comfortable, more centered when speaking of himself in the third person, "Needs to use the facilities." It was brilliant, a stroke of genius, not even Jason could be suspicious of such an excuse and like the best of subterfuges it also happened to be the absolute truth.
Jason just uttered a half sigh as he replaced his head on the pillow, "Don't be long…" fluttered out of his lips, as he drifted back to sleep exhausted from the night's excursion.
Slowly and with careful precision Spinelli turned the interior handle on his bedroom door; he tried to make absolutely no noise as he unconsciously mimicked Jason's entry into the penthouse from earlier that very evening. The door opened obediently and soundlessly as he carefully edged his way through the narrow aperture created, casting one final cautious glance back into the darkened room. His dark adjusted eyes did a final sweep of the room, lingering on the unmoving form occupying his bed. He couldn't make out much more than the large mass that was Jason dimly limned by the glow from his bedside clock. He was still, apparently undisturbed by Spinelli's movements as he exited his bedroom. He pulled the door closed but didn't shut it, not willing to risk the loud distinctive sound of the latch clicking home in the stilled hush that gripped the penthouse.
His heart beat so loudly that he was concerned he couldn't hear anything else. He crept slowly and painfully down the penthouse stairs and to the front door where he reenacted the feat he had performed on his bedroom door only moments ago. Any minute now he expected to feel the iron clad clasp of Jason's large hand on his shoulder and his voice asking him in its deceptively soft way, that couched danger within each syllable uttered, what exactly he thought he was doing. He even jumped convulsively once so convinced was he that the event would occur, had actually occurred but there was nothing to be seen or heard except the wild pounding of his own heart.
He was out on the street, his breathing ragged as he ran through the shadows, staying out of the light pooled at the base of streetlamps. Anyone observing him would have taken him for a criminal. He frequently stopped and checked back over his shoulder as though anticipating pursuit, choosing to travel solely through the back streets and alleys of the slumbering city.
He had questioned Jason, forced him to tell him how and why it was that Sam died. Jason resisted his interrogation, protesting that he didn't want to engender more nightmares in his roommate. Yet, Spinelli was obdurate and for the first time ever the grasshopper managed to sway the Master. His eyes-lost pleading pools of jade-compelled Jason to speak of the phone call he received.
"Sam called," he spoke hesitantly, his voice thick with doubt as he wondered if telling Spinelli what had happened was the right thing to do. "She said that she had been following someone as part of a case and that it had turned bad. She was trapped down by the old cannery, under fire and asked if I could come help her."
"When did she call?" Spinelli kept his tone neutral. He needed information and he knew if he aroused Jason's suspicions in any way he would simply shut down, stop talking and order Spinelli to bed.
Jason paused in his narrative flow, his head tilted and his eyes sharply focused as he stared at Spinelli. "What does it matter?" He challenged him and when the younger man dropped his eyes and shrugged, he sighed thinking he had overreacted. "I don't know, late I guess," he admitted. "She was panicked and I could hear the sound of gunfire. I just reacted."
"While you were out?" Spinelli wasn't to be denied, he possessed an innate thirst for each detail, "That's when she called, when you were out?"
"Yeah," Jason shrugged, "I'd gone for a walk to clear my head. It's funny," he gave a strangled laugh, "I was actually thinking about Sam, about how she had suggested it would be good for you to go back to work as a P.I. I was going to drop by the office, talk about a slow entry back into the job for you. You seemed so happy, with her, that day I found the two of you together…" He reached over and gently pushed Spinelli's hair back, away from his eyes, his gaze was wistful, reminiscent. "I wanted to see you like that again and if working with Sam would achieve it then so be it. I was on my way to the offices of Jackal and McCall when instead she called me."
Spinelli looked at him narrowly, watching Jason's every gesture, each expression, trying to gauge the truth of his story. "McCall and Jackal," he corrected his mentor automatically. "So, what happened then, when you got to the cannery?"
Jason sighed, "Spinelli, what good will hearing this do you? It won't change anything, it won't bring her back."
"I need to know," Spinelli insisted, "With Maxie, with Lulu-there were so many questions, so many unresolved issues and what ifs. They invade my dreams, they give me no peace. I can't go through that again, Stone Cold, I can't! You were there this time, you saw what happened, you can tell me, you must tell me!"
He had lost his reasoning tone, he was pure anguish as he practically begged Jason to explain to him what happened. He couldn't accept that someone else was dead, especially someone so alive and vibrant as Sam was. It was as though he was cursed and if Jason could say something, relate to him some little fact that could absolve him then maybe, just maybe some tiny portion of this all consuming grief might in some way be alleviated.
Jason was torn, Spinelli could see it in his face, in the way his hands sought each other out as they always did when he was troubled or wrestling with a decision. He held his breath, petrified to speak in case a single word from him would sway the balance against his favor making Jason unreachable, as he refused to speak anymore about what transpired this dreadful night.
Spinelli's reticence was rewarded. Jason looked down at his hands unwilling to look into his roommates eyes but he continued on in a dead, defeated tone. "Sam was against a wall behind a crate and I began shooting to help shield her as soon as I arrived. She…was low on ammunition," he was struggling with the story, reliving those awful moments down on the dock when he had fatally failed his friend, his one time lover. "I slipped in next to her so that we were together. You know there wasn't much that Sam and I couldn't take on as a team…just not tonight."
His voice faltered and at any other time Spinelli would have taken pity on him, would have insisted he stopped speaking and tried to comfort him but not tonight. He needed to hear everything, to know what his friends suffered in their last battle together, how it came about that Stone Cold could not protect his Fair Samantha this last fateful time. "Go on," he was insistent, his tone almost cruel. Jason looked up at him momentarily startled by the transformation in the young man. Spinelli's face was set, his eyes resolute and it was clear he wouldn't leave the subject alone until he heard the entire tale.
Jason swallowed, his mouth was dry and he longed for some water but he needed to finish telling Spinelli the whole story first. He ran the palm of his right hand over his face wearily and continued, "I don't know how it happened. I thought that we were evenly matched, two of us and two of them. Sam was at the edge of the crate, I was further back behind it but I didn't think it mattered because the shooters were to our right, she should have been safe where she was…Maybe there was another shooter, maybe a ricochet…I don't know, it was dark we were firing at each other based only on muzzle flash. At first it was going well, I hit one of the other gunmen and so now the odds shifted in our favor. Sam hadn't fired in the last several seconds and I thought she was taking a break but then I turned to look and she…" Jason suddenly surged forward on the couch, his hands covering his face as he began to cry, great racking dry sobs which shook his whole body.
Spinelli had never seen Jason like this and he immediately forgot his quest to discover what had happened to Sam as he tried to find some way to console his mentor. "Stone Cold," he put a tentative hand on Jason's arm knowing how much Jason disliked physical contact outside of romantic relationships and interactions with children. "I am sure you did all you could to ensure Fair Samantha's safety, sometimes there are unforeseen contingencies for which we are simply unable to prepare." His life over the past year had certainly been living proof of that reality he thought to himself dully. "You should not blame yourself, I do not, Fair Samantha would not. She called you because of her faith in you and you came, you did not fail her. It was fate that did so, it was those that killed her who are culpable not you, never you." Spinelli spoke his words of reassurance almost automatically. Yet, he was disconcerted to find that he wasn't sure that he actually believed in everything he was saying to Jason.
"I didn't save her, the situation wasn't that extreme, nothing I haven't dealt with a thousand times before but she was shot. She was lying there all curled up and so small." Jason was talking again, the only evidence of his recent loss of control was a sheen of moisture occluding the brilliance of his eyes as it reflected the flickering light from the television screen. "I killed him, the last shooter but it was too late to help Sam. I went to her, picked her up, held her…there was blood, so much blood and her eyes…" He shook his head as though that would dislodge the memory and save him from ever having to see it again but the delicate chemical tracery between the neurons of his brain had already been sketched and it was now an indelible part of his mind. "They were blank, she was gone just like that…one minute she was firing her gun and the next…there was nothing just silence." He wasn't stone cold, he wasn't invincible, he was just a man who hadn't managed to protect someone who asked for his help and she paid for his negligence with her mortality.
"You stayed with Fair Samantha, kept watch over her." It wasn't a question, Spinelli was just affirming what he knew Jason would have felt honor bound to do.
"Yeah," Jason leaned back into the couch cushions, his arm stretched along the sofa behind Spinelli. "I called it in." The concept of Jason Morgan being the person to report a crime scene in Port Charles, particularly one he had been involved with, clearly illustrated to Spinelli how skewed his world had become during these last few months. He was beginning to feel like a permanent guest at the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland while the Queen of Hearts perpetually screamed 'off with her head!'
"The police believed your story?"
Obviously they had or Jason wouldn't now be sitting next to Spinelli. Yet, he felt like there was something off about what Jason said, what he described. There was a distinct flatness to his voice, even his unexpected emotional outburst possessed a calculated aspect to it as though he meant to distract Spinelli from questioning him too closely. He couldn't quite articulate what was bothering him and he thought perhaps he was just looking for answers where there weren't any, wanting to discover that there was some meaning behind Sam's death besides random violence. Still, he knew Jason so well, better than almost anyone, and he thought his roommate was holding something back but he couldn't determine if it was because he was trying to protect Spinelli or himself.
"It turned out that the man Sam had been following went to the docks to meet his dealer and they made Sam and that's when the shooting started. Both the dealer and the buyer were known to the cops and the scene supported what I said. They took my gun for ballistics elimination and let me go." He laid his head back against the couch and closed his eyes, his face drawn and exhausted looking. Spinelli was startled at the sudden feel of Jason's right hand on the back of his neck gently rubbing and squeezing. "I'm beat," he whispered huskily, never ceasing the massaging motion, "Let's go to bed, see if we can get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a long day."
Spinelli sat paralyzed, unsure of how to react to Jason's atypical behavior. He shivered as Jason's hand unexpectedly moved away from his neck and began kneading his tense shoulders, alternating between them with an almost painful pressure. He knew without being told that Jason meant for them to go to bed in the same room, in the same bed and that this time there would be no subterfuge about it, merely the raw pretext of grief. Spinelli felt as though an iron band was wrapped around his chest constricting his breathing and for an instant he almost gave into the impulse to leap off the couch and dart for the front door to try and escape the penthouse which had gradually and without his awareness metamorphosed from a home into a prison. Yet, with an internal discipline he was mildly astonished to find he owned, he managed to sit passively, accepting Jason's unsought attentions while he fought to control his racing heart. He knew he had neither the physical strength nor the emotional will to contest Jason and so it appeared that his only option was to submit.
Together they ascended the staircase, Jason's arm wrapped securely around Spinelli's shoulders forcing him to walk in perfect tandem with him. There was the briefest pause in their progression as Jason eyed his own bedroom door but then he continued on toward Spinelli's room, the hacker as much in unwilling thrall to his mentor as the moon to the earth. Jason sat Spinelli down on the edge of his own bed and kneeling down untied his shoelaces and removed his tennis shoes. Then he rifled through his bureau drawers and pulled out a pair of sleep pants and a soft, worn cotton t-shirt.
"Put these on," it wasn't a request but a command. Spinelli complied, hunched over in miserable embarrassment as he hastily exchanged shirts while attempting to minimize the exposure of his bare chest. He pulled his jeans down and pulled the sleep pants on over his underwear. He turned back toward the bed and saw that Jason had stripped off his own t-shirt and jeans and was now only wearing a pair of boxers.
Jason pulled back the covers and with a quick dip of his head indicated that Spinelli should lie down. Reluctantly the younger man crawled onto the bed where he lay on his back, rigidly still, his eyes fixed unswervingly on the ceiling as he tensely awaited Jason's next move. Jason climbed in next to him and pulled the sheet and blanket up over both of them, leaving the bedspread at the foot of the bed. Spinelli tensed as Jason reached across him stretching to turn off the light. It was as though the absence of light immediately magnified every one of Spinelli's unknown and unarticulated fears. He remained frozen, his body in stasis, barely breathing as he anticipated Jason's next move.
A warm arm snaked out of the darkness and curled under his back tugging at his inert body until he rolled on his side so that he was now facing Jason though all he could see was a vague silhouette, denser and darker than the surrounding air. Jason's hand reached up and stroked through his hair in the same calming gesture he had used all the previous nights he stayed with him. "Get some sleep, Spinelli. Don't worry about anything. I'm here to take care of you."
Relief coursed through Spinelli's body as he realized that Jason intended nothing more than for the two of them to sleep. He lay perfectly still not moving a muscle while Jason's rhythmic caresses began to falter as sleep overtook him. Spinelli intentionally slowed his own breathing to mimic Jason's, their synchronicity of inhalation and exhalation lulling his mentor further along the pathway to oblivion until finally he rolled over on his back deeply and completely asleep.
Spinelli edged away from him, keeping his movements controlled and gradual until they were entirely separate with precious inches of open space between the two of them. He lay sleepless, staring unseeingly into the darkness of the room as he contemplated the alterations in his life which culminated in his present predicament. Jason was restless and uneasy in his sleep, muttering unintelligibly. He raised his right arm as though to ward off an attacker and flung it wildly across the bed effectively pinioning Spinelli who hadn't anticipated the movement.
Jason's unsettled dreams were indicators to Spinelli of a troubled mind or conscience. The younger man was tormented by more than just grief since Lulu's death. Jason's changed attitude toward him, toward Sam had been an underlying source of disquiet which after the terrible events of this night was beginning to coalesce into suspicions that he could no longer choose to ignore. His heart didn't want to accept what his more analytical mind was beginning to theorize about his mentor, that he might be culpable of deeds of unthinkable depravity. Spinelli could no longer afford to indulge his denial and there was only one place he could think to go that might help answer his questions and hopefully prove his doubts groundless, just the fevered imaginings of an overwrought mind.
Panting, Spinelli stopped short, he was here. The alley at the rear of the old cannery was entirely dark, no light penetrated the narrow, foreboding space. He stood still for a minute scenting the air as he waited for his heartbeat to slow and his lungs to stop laboring. His eyes already accustomed to the night made out some vague outlines of objects which he presumed were the crates Jason and Sam had taken ineffectual refuge behind. He reached into the pocket of the light jacket he had thrown on over the clothes he had worn to bed and pulled out a slim flashlight that produced a powerful, penetrating beam when he shined it around the confined area of the alley.
It took a moment for him to get his bearings as his pupils constricted in response to the brilliant light after the dimness of the night. The first thing that caught his eye was the bright, almost obscenely cheerful, yellow police tape cordoning off the area around the crates. It swayed gently in the slight breeze that was coming in from the harbor and Spinelli swallowed uneasily as he steeled himself to duck under it and observe what lay beyond it.
There on the rutted and gouged remnants of the paved surface of the alley roadway was inscribed the final marker representing Sam McCall's existence outside of her grave. The chalk outline was stark, the crudely drawn lines were angular and impersonal and except for the exceedingly small shape illustrated had nothing in common with the lovely, vivacious woman it commemorated. Both inside and outside of the diagram were blotches of dark red indicating where her life force was inexorably pumped out of her body by a valiant heart attempting in vain to counteract the damage caused by high velocity metal projectiles.
Spinelli felt nauseated, he fought hard to keep from vomiting as he stared at the scene of Sam's death. He hadn't realized there would be such a graphic reminder of the violence which transpired in this alley mere hours ago. He scanned the area carefully with his flashlight as he looked for confirmation of Jason's story so that he could allay his own worries and fears. It appeared that there was no evidence to support either his innocence or guilt. In fact, there was nothing there but the crates and the forlorn drawing on the ground.
He turned away with a sigh, "It was foolish of the Jackal to come here and risk incurring the wrath of Stone Cold for the attainment of such meager knowledge. It was to be expected that the police would have removed such evidentiary material as was to be found."
He was mumbling to himself as he reluctantly started back towards the street. As much as he wished to find something exculpatory so that he no longer need suspect Jason, he was also simply enjoying being outside and on his own as he breathed in the chill, pre-dawn air. He missed the uncomplicated freedom of being able to walk around without feeling the solicitous, or oftentimes censorious, eyes of his roommate monitoring his every move.
Spinelli was back out on the side street getting ready to return to the penthouse where he fervently hoped Jason was still soundly sleeping when he stopped abruptly. He stood there biting his lip, his eyes unfocused and glazed as he ransacked his brain to discover what was disturbing him. There was some fact which his conscious mind had missed but his subconscious had noted and filed it away and was now sending out a neural memo that he did indeed have within his grasp information to help him once and for all remove his uncertainty about Sam's death.
He spun around on his heel and headed straight back into the alley, his flashlight again in his palm as it once more lit up the crime scene tape, the crates and the chalk outline. He stared transfixed for a moment and then tears spontaneously formed in his eyes and began to trail down his cheeks. At that precise instant, Damian Spinelli's innocence, battered thing that it was, utterly evaporated never to be reclaimed.
"Ah, Fair Samantha," he moaned as grief and guilt warred within him. This time he couldn't control the urge as he turned and vomited though what he produced was little more than bile as his appetite of late had been sacrificed to his constant ongoing state of misery.
Spinelli rested his forehead against the clammy, wet stones of the cannery wall. His eyes were squeezed shut but it was to no avail as his brain insisted on running a full color re-enactment of what he now knew for the truth of what occurred during the shoot out in the alley. He fully believed that Jason intentionally pushed Sam out into the line of fire and his proof was twofold.
At first glance, it appeared where Sam's body had fallen was consistent with Jason's story that she was unprotected from a shooter with a different line of sight or perhaps a ricochet shot. The diagram and the positioning of the crate both supported what he said but Spinelli noticed something else. It was the faintest of clues and he wasn't surprised that the crime scene unit overlooked it. After all, this was one time they hadn't suspected Jason of a crime and Spinelli knew that there would be no ballistics evidence to counteract their analysis of the shoot out.
On the far side of the crate Jason and Sam sheltered behind was an area of crushed leaves and dirt that ran in a straight line as though the debris had accumulated against some object in its path. The crate itself was several feet away from the windblown material and the actual ground around the edge of the large wooden box was free of any such equivalent detritus. It was an insignificant factor when measured against dead bodies and shell casings, which is why at first Spinelli's mind had noted the anomaly but hadn't really registered it as anything of importance. Yet, if events had transpired in the way Spinelli now thought they had, then the disconnect between where the crate had once been and was now currently situated indeed became a most damning indictment of Jason's guilt.
Spinelli was sure that Jason had shoved Sam out into the line of fire, probably right after they fired off rounds themselves so he could be sure there would be a series of retaliatory shots. Then, afterwards, when Sam and the last shooter were dead, Jason surveyed the scene with a practiced cold calculation that caused shivers to erupt along Spinelli's spine as he visualized it. Jason had seen that the position of the crate would give lie to his story of Sam being partially covered but still fatally exposed. It would have been too far away from where she lay to match up with someone just falling forward as a natural response to being shot.
Spinelli closed his eyes and fought down a further uprising of bile, "There was nothing natural about what had happened to Fair Samantha," he thought to himself bitterly.
He could envision Jason calmly repositioning the crate and looking around the area appraisingly. He had killed off the second of the shooters and was now the only survivor of the original quartet. He hadn't actually killed Sam and so he was secure in his innate ability to convince the responding police that his version of what took place in the alley was the correct one. Jason Morgan was famous for being cool and collected under fire and if he then tinged his story with one iota of the break in composure he had falsified in front of Spinelli earlier that evening the investigators would have been doubly convinced of his innocence. The young hacker was sure that it had doubtless been an Oscar worthy performance.
Even Mac Scorpio in his fervor to catch and convict Jason Morgan of any crime would laugh at the idea of a line of undisturbed dirt as evidence of a homicide. Spinelli himself knew it wouldn't stand up in court. Still, it was really only the first piece of evidence which persuaded him Jason had indeed set Sam McCall up to be killed. The second factor was something which hadn't registered, at least not when Jason initially mentioned it, not until he had come down to this God forsaken alley and seen it with his own eyes, it was the blood.
"I went to her, picked her up, held her…there was blood, so much blood…"
Stone Cold had been right, there was so much blood. Spinelli had seen it for himself and that meant if Jason had picked Sam up, had clutched her to him in an agony of grief, there was absolutely no way the sticky, viscous, crimson fluid wouldn't have transferred itself to his hands, to his clothes, to his face. Yet, when Spinelli saw him after he returned directly from the crime scene in his usual uniform of jeans, t-shirt and leather jacket there hadn't been a speck of blood on his skin or clothing never mind the amounts that truly would have been produced as Sam bled out. She hadn't been in the arms of her ex-lover Jason when she died. No, she had breathed her last lying at the satisfied feet of Jason Morgan, mob enforcer, as he coldly watched her expire. Then after shifting the crime scene around to his satisfaction, he pulled out his cell phone and called the police.
Spinelli was sure that was how the homicidal drama enacted here had played out tonight. He knew though he possessed no tangible proof of his undaunted certainty. If patterns of leaves and dust weren't evidence how much less was the absence of blood on Jason any type of corroboration of his culpability. Anyway, Spinelli was willing to bet that Jason had only told him about holding Sam as she expired in order to embellish his tale, to engender Spinelli's compassion for what he endured. He had no verification, no basis to support his suspicions or to enable him to go to the police. Even if he did have something more substantive to offer, he wouldn't accuse Jason.
How could he? Jason had done this because of him, because of Spinelli and his connection to Sam. He shared in the encumbrance of guilt equally, she was dead because of both of them. Spinelli turned around, his back now against the wall as he slowly slid down it. His knees buckling and his head spinning he sat on the filthy ground of the alley his legs pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them. He rocked back and forth, he didn't know what to think, who to turn to, or where to go.
"Maximista," he groaned, the single word bouncing off the opposite wall and echoing as it died away. He wanted her presence, needed her common sense advice delivered in a rapid fire cascade of words at the end of which she would turn and smile gloriously at him, her regal pronouncements binding law to her eager serf. If only she hadn't died, he could face his fears and doubt if she were just there to share the burden, to place her tiny hand in his and say, "Here's what we'll do…" and they would.
He passionately hated the anonymous pharmacy clerk who had misread the prescription and given her the wrong tablets. Spinelli was crying now, his head resting on his knees, the sobs welling up from deep within him, his grief at her absence was just as tender as though he was hearing of her death anew.
"I guess…it was something to do with her medication…it was the wrong type or dosage or something…" Jason's voice reverberated through his skull and Spinelli put his hands up to his ears in an effort to block it out but it was a useless gesture for the sound was trapped within his mind.
Suddenly he stopped swaying back and forth, he reached up and dashed his tears away, it couldn't be, it simply couldn't…He assumed that Jason knew about the medication that night when he came to tell him of Maxie's heart attack because Lulu told him. She was in Manhattan with Kate and Maxie, she observed the paramedics' futile attempts to resuscitate Maxie. Spinelli thought they must have asked for her medications and found the pill container she always carried with her and determined the error then and there.
That isn't what happened though, it wasn't until days later that the coroner issued his autopsy report which stated that she died of a heart attack induced by high blood pressure. The medication she took to prevent rejection of her heart had undesired side effects one of which was an increase in blood pressure. So, she was prescribed additional drugs to counteract the elevation. Yet, the actual pills which were in Maxie's possession weren't the right type and so she died. The official verdict was accidental death. The pharmacy the drugs had come from was cited for negligence though they claimed their records showed they had dispensed the correct medication during Maxie's last refill.
Spinelli remembered the day the coroner's report was released, Lulu showed up at the penthouse in tears. She told him how Mac came to the apartment she and Maxie had shared. He was drunk and as he stood there weaving in her doorway, refusing all her efforts to get him to come in and sit down before he fell down, he told her about the findings. "She died because of a fucking, incompetent pharmacy tech who couldn't read the writing on a prescription and made the decision to go ahead and fill her prescription with what he thought it was instead of checking with the doctor or the pharmacist." His voice was full of bewildered rage as he contemplated the tragic loss of the second of his two daughters. "Maxie died because someone put the wrong kind of little pink pills in a bottle. She's dead…" Lulu called Robin to come get Mac who by then was huddled on the floor of the hallway, crying. Then she, in her turn, had run to Spinelli to take or offer comfort, probably both really.
Spinelli had absorbed her words, felt the growth of loathing swell in him as he learned why Maximista had died, how unnecessary it had all been. He and Mac had one thing in common, they both adored Maxie and they were equally devastated by her pointless, untimely death. Jason came in just as Lulu was leaving and he could tell that something momentous and shocking had happened to Spinelli. When the hacker told him the coroner's findings, his face hardened but his voice was even as he attempted to soothe his roommate, to try and get him to eat something or to sleep.
Now, in the bleak emptiness of the alley where Sam had died, Spinelli realized that the only possible way in which Jason could have known about the problems with the medication so quickly after Maxie's death was if he was the one responsible for exchanging the pills in the first place.
His hands tugged ruthlessly at his hair and he understood why people in paroxysms of grief rent their clothing and pulled out their hair. The only way to relieve this spiraling black hole of intense grief which threatened to crush him was to hurt physically, better perhaps simply to die. His eyes were swollen from crying, his throat hoarse from the piercing sobs he emitted as he keened his grief to the vast, uncaring, night sky.
Finally, exhausted, he could cry no more. He sat hunched over, a mute figure betrayed and lost. He was swamped by guilt and grief and the awful sense of having been entirely blind. Maxie, Sam and was that all? His mind skittered away from the repulsive thought, those two deaths alone placed him directly in unmitigated hell. If there were even more how could he possibly exist with the culpability of all that loss on his conscience? He was finding it impossible to continue to ignore the interior voice of suspicion which he had managed to successfully squelch for months now. Here at this instant, in this alley, there was only him and his stained soul. There was no television, no i-pod to distract him and prevent him from thinking too much. He didn't have to assuage Jason's concern by pretending to eat and sleep and feel better. No, here it was just him and the wraithlike spirits swirling through the night air, caressing him with ethereal fingers as they called his name, demanding that he finally concede his responsibility in their deaths.
"Lulu!" The word was a ragged croak from his parched and inflamed throat. Her death was the first he wondered about. He incessantly pondered the coincidence of Jason being at the Metro Court the night the elevator cables severed plunging her to a terrifying death. It was time that he acknowledged it, at least to himself. "Stone Cold killed them all-Maximista, Fair Lulu and Samantha." It was a stark statement and he knew it to be both factual and improvable.
He sat there staring unseeingly across the alley, his inner eye full of images of the people he had loved and lost. Why had Jason done this? That was the unbelievable part. Jason Morgan was a killer. Spinelli had always known it, accepted it as an abstract theorem with a few intrusive moments of reality making their way into his everyday world. For instance, there was the time he had almost shot Trevor Lansing at the penthouse and he would have if Spinelli hadn't intervened. Still, Jason only killed the guilty, the heinous ones, so that he could make the world a safer and better place for the people he loved and cared about. He never harmed innocents, that was his code and it was the single reason why Spinelli could manage to exist in the gray, compromise ridden surroundings which comprised his mentor's sphere of influence.
Spinelli knew this to be a fundamental truth about Jason's honor. So why and when had all that changed? Georgie…it couldn't be. He felt as though his heart was gradually metamorphosing into a piece of dull, lifeless stone. He didn't know if he could survive another revelation, especially not about such a beautiful girl who was so entirely pure. Yet, he had always been puzzled by that particular killing of Diego's. It was the one out of all of them which was counter intuitive. If there was a single person on the planet who had been kind and good and giving to Diego Alcazar-it was Georgie Jones. He didn't need to kill her. After all, if he had seen it was she and not her sister Maxie standing on the park steps, he could merely have melted away into the concealing darkness.
Spinelli could never forget that day. He recalled Stone Cold telling him how he believed Georgie Jones liked him-Damian Spinelli-the Jackal. He was shocked, dazed, disbelieving of the revelation until he began to feel the tiniest stirrings of hope. He planned to seek her out, to test the theory his mentor had proposed. That is until he stumbled across her cold lifeless body in the park and his world suddenly shattered. Jason had picked up the pieces back then as well. He was gentle with Spinelli, protecting him from the intrusions of the police investigation while also supporting him through his dark hours of loss as he grappled with his merciless self flagellation at being only moments too late to save her. He discovered Stone Cold was correct about Georgie's feelings for him. The police found unsent e-mails on her computer. They described her feelings toward him and Spinelli cursed himself for his perennial insensibility to her subtle signals and gestures of romantic interest.
"If Sweet Georgie was the first," Spinelli had switched to analytical mode but his brain was rusty, it hadn't been called upon to do much cognition recently. "Why was there such a time delay until the next…death?" He was a coward, he knew it, but he couldn't bring himself to use a fraught word like murder. "Because…" his mind was picking up the threads, making sense of them as a picture began to form of the pattern involved. "After Georgie's death," he mused to himself, "The Jackal was mostly solitary, he dallied but briefly with Nurse Nadine and though he lost his heart to the charms of the fair Maximista, the reciprocal was not true." He banged his head against the wall in frustrated anguish, welcoming the pain it caused. "If she had only stayed aloof, she would yet be a warm and luminous presence on this earth."
It was all clear to him now. Jason killed them when they became too emotionally close to Spinelli. For some reason he was threatened when others cared for him and the pathology was escalating. Georgie's death had been nearly two years ago. Maxie and Lulu had perished in the last six months and Sam just this evening. Jason had also been gradually isolating Spinelli from the outer world all the while he was making overtures of a physical nature. Spinelli was ensnared in a trap of Jason's devising and like all the best traps he had been entirely unaware of its existence until it was sprung.
Galvanized by his realizations, he shot up off the hard, cold ground. "The Jackal must flee!" The words were frantic and panic stricken.
He looked around the alley wide-eyed as though expecting Jason to leap out of the shadows at any moment. Spinelli ran for the entrance to the alley and when he reached the street he turned in the opposite direction from which he had previously come. He kept running, the adrenalin in his system propelled him forward until an unseen crack in the sidewalk caught the toe of his shoe and he only avoided crashing to the ground by managing to grab onto the railing of a nearby brownstone.
Spinelli swung himself down on the steps, clutching at the ornamental wrought iron as though it was a lifeline, his sole connection to reality and sanity. He sat there panting, his mind racing as he considered his unthinking, terror catalyzed flight. "I can't do it," he wiped his running nose on the sleeve of his jacket, "I have no money, the Jackal is without his cyber companion and he can not disappear without appropriate resources. Stone Cold would surely follow his grasshopper and he is unhinged, liable to harm those who unknowingly provide aid and succor for the Jackal in his flight."
He stood up, his legs were trembling with a combination of fatigue and stress. He looked around the street, amazed to see it was just an ordinary city street locked in its late night somnolence. The only visible signs of life were the moths fluttering in vain around the beguiling light halos of the streetlamps. Everything that transpired tonight, all he had unwillingly learned and begrudgingly accepted as the truth, it was all so momentous and life altering to Spinelli. Yet, here on this street lined on either side with venerable brownstones, there was no acknowledgment of his predicament, no caring hand or heart on offer. There was nothing but the dead silence of unconscious indifference. Never before had he so entirely understood how insignificant an individual's life and death concerns could be when measured against the larger scheme of things.
"There is no recourse for the Jackal, no help to be found," he whispered to himself in resigned recognition. "Whatever shall be done in the future, whatever path is to be chosen, it shall be a solitary one. The Jackal has but one ironclad resolution from this moment on and that is no one else's life shall be placed in peril simply because they are acquainted with him. It is my solemn vow." His words died away unheard, carried off into the night by a light wind which caused him to shiver as it brought a subtle reminder that summer was waning.
Wearily, his shoulders slumped and his feet dragging, he walked down the steps and headed back in the direction from which just moments ago he had been recklessly fleeing. Now his only concern, his fervent hope was to make it back into the penthouse without his absence being detected by Jason.
He was in luck. Spinelli breathed a soft sigh of relief as he soundlessly cracked open the front door to his shared residence, there was no looming figure with a disapproving face carved from granite awaiting his return from an unsanctioned late night excursion. It meant he would escape having to parry awkward questions that he wasn't emotionally capable of answering just yet. If he were really fortunate, he might never have to answer them simply because the need wouldn't arise.
He was suddenly totally and entirely exhausted. His system crashed as the adrenalin which had enabled him to function throughout the night's horrific discoveries evaporated leaving him shaking like a leaf. His eyelids drooped and he desperately craved oblivion. He hung the jacket he had been wearing in the closet, careful to put it deep into the interior where it couldn't easily be seen. It along with his pants and shoes were filthy, the result of contact with the walls and road surface of the alley. They would be dead giveaways to Jason's observant eye that Spinelli had been out when he was supposed to be sleeping. He took his shoes off and tucked them far under the couch, he would retrieve them at some point when Jason was gone. Then he slipped out of the sleep pants and put them back on inside out. Finally, he went into the kitchen and grabbing a bottle of water from the refrigerator drained it in a few large gulps.
Spinelli hadn't turned a light on since he had been back in the penthouse. Now he stepped out of the kitchen and peered up at the darkened stairs as an atavistic shudder of fear and repulsion coursed through him. No matter how suspicious it might appear in the morning, there was absolutely no way on earth he was capable of climbing back into bed with the man who had systematically murdered four of the most vital people in his life. Tomorrow would be soon enough to resume his mask of complicit ignorance but for the next few hours he would remain alone as he attempted to absorb all of the ramifications of what he had learned tonight.
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