Dreams
Chapter 8
"You've reached 457-845-6643: I am unable to take your call at the moment. If you can't remember to leave your name and number in the message, don't expect me to remember it either." The phone beeped and Kerry opened her mouth to talk but no sounds emerged from her lips. She sniffed once and hung up, tossing her phone away from her.
It sat there, and she stared out the windshield of her car, chilled. Luke was talking to another police officer in the doorway in front of the morgue, and Kerry wondered why sharing this with him, drawing comfort from his solid shoulder, just wasn't enough.
She couldn't catch her breath.
A moment later, she reached across the passenger seat to retrieve her phone and dialled again. The stupid, insulting message replayed, and this time she was able to find her voice, though it was scratchy from her effort not to cry. "Michel, it's Kerry," she said, breaking all the rules. "There's another body, it's... I'm sorry," her voice broke. "I can't."
Kerry hung up the phone, clutching it tightly in her hand as spasms ran down her body, her stomach clenching tightly in anguish and fury. Her emotions were unravelling, her breath coming in short, choppy spurts as she hyperventilated, but she didn't cry. The bright mid-afternoon light shone through her windshield window, its presence a parody of safety. She felt as though the world would never be right again, and both grief and fear gnawed on her insides. This was her fault, she realized. She should have investigated quicker. She should have warned everyone around her of the dangers.
She bowed her head over the steering wheel, her body physically shaking. Tears weren't running down her cheeks, but her eyes and sinuses felt on fire from the effort of keeping them inside. She worked on controlling her breathing, listening to the steady in and out of air from her lungs. Kerry started, jumping backwards in her seat and her neck snapping back as someone rapped on the window next to her head.
"Are you alright?" Luke asked.
"I'm fine," she told him, giving him her most reassuring smile. It was less convincing than usual, but she wasn't in the mood to give it an honest try.
He put his head to the side, observing her. He looked convinced that she was telling the truth, and almost critical of her because of it. "I expected you to be more upset," he told her. "You're not crying."
"No," Kerry said, battling the urge to laugh hysterically. It was true, she wasn't crying, but it had absolutely nothing to do with lack of emotions. He was her boyfriend. He should know that by now. "I'm not crying. Do you know why I'm not crying? It's because I barely ever cry. Dr. Roberts deserves more than a few tears from me. He deserves respect and he deserved his killer to be found. Shedding tears is just a waste."
"You are upset," Luke observed.
"Of course I'm upset!" Kerry railed against him. "He was my friend. I'll never visit him in the morgue again and watch as he does an autopsy, chatting about nothing in particular, or how odd the size of his patient's liver was."
Luke got an odd look on his face. "I never understood why you went there. It was creepy."
"It was creepy?" she screeched. "You did NOT just say that to me."
Luke gave her a beseeching look, one that said he didn't quite understand why she was yelling, but he was willing to take the blame so long as she stopped.
Kerry drew in a ragged breath. "I can't deal with you right now," she told him, starting her car.
"Would you like me to drive you back to work?" he offered.
"No," Kerry said curtly, pressing her foot to the gas. She wasn't going back to work. She could feel her tenuous grasp on her emotions breaking, and she needed to be home alone when it happened.
x.x.x
Kerry awoke to fingers lightly brushing against her cheek. The touch was gentle and caressing, removing the hair stuck against her wet skin. She obstinately kept her eyes shut, not wanting to rejoin reality just quite yet. At first, she assumed it was Luke, though he was rarely that gentle, and she frowned at the memory that she was still angry at him. Then her face relaxed when she recognised the coolness of the touch and the strength in the finely shaped fingers.
Pianist hands.
Kerry opened her eyes to see Michel kneeling beside her bed, one of his strong forearms braced along her mattress in front of him. His other hand was tickling along her hairline in an unconscious movement.
"What happened to make you cry?" he asked, brow furrowed in sincere concern – or at least a perfect mask of worry.
Kerry found she couldn't look at him, worried he would draw her into his gaze. Her eyes caught the time on her bedside clock, and she was surprised to find it only a few minutes after sunset. "Did you get my call?" she asked.
Michel gave a sharp nod. "Who was the latest victim? Someone in your family? Your boyfriend?" She could still hear him ask what had happened that would cause her to shed tears, and she was thankful at least he understood.
Kerry shook her head at both. "Dr. Roberts," she said quietly, glad she didn't have to raise her voice for him to hear.
"I'm sorry," he said earnestly. "I know you were friends with him."
Kerry nodded again, giving him a smile where her lips turned down more than they did up. "He was... a good man," she told him. "When I... when you... eight years ago he had the police officer in charge of my case bring me into the morgue and he forced me to see Marsala's body. He terrified me, going on and on about my DNA being under my victim's fingernails, and forced me to show him the bruises on my arm. At the end of the interview, he turned to the cop and said 'It was self-defence. I'll put it in my report. Don't arrest this one, officer Atherton.'" Kerry finally looked Michel in the eye again, her voice now breaking due to her grief. She was going to cry again. "He knew," she told him. "He knew there was something wrong with my story, but he backed me up anyway."
"Go ahead and cry," Michel said, stroking her hair. "It's ok."
Kerry shook her head. "It's not ok. I haven't cried since—" she broke off, not wanting him to know the last time she had cried. Her pride wouldn't allow her to even hint that it had been because of him.
"Go ahead," he urged gently.
It was too late, she was already crying.
"He was a good man," he reiterated. "A good friend to you."
Kerry sobbed, her chest heaving with the effort to breathe. She barely made any sound, but her face reddened and nose started to run as she cried wildly into the crook of her elbow and her pillow. She had pulled away from him, and he had removed his hand from her hair. She couldn't seem to get enough air into her lungs. Blindly, she groped for Michel's hand, twining her fingers with his.
"Shhh," Michel soothed, sliding on the bed and gathering her in his arms. She cried on his shoulder, the weight on her chest loosening as she relaxed, and she finally stopped crying altogether. His hand was still stroking the back of her head, and he was mumbling words of support and encouragement to her as she drifted in a state of post-weep lethargy. "Don't you feel better?" he asked.
"No," she mumbled with a pout, drifting off to sleep with the sound of his masculine chuckle in her ear.
x.x.x
Michel never stayed the night. Every time he arrived at my place he would be there for an hour, three at the most, and then leave as I was sleeping. It became to be a norm, something I just took for granted. It changed the night I was hit by a car.
I had been following a lead. I was wearing my black outfit and it was dark out, so dark the car didn't see me and I was so focused on getting answers, I barely saw it in time to dodge.
The bumper hit my leg and I flew up onto the hood of the car, my shoulder stopping on the windshield. Someone was screaming, people on the sidewalk and other cars started to crowd around. As I laid there, stunned and unable to breathe for moments, I thought that it would be just my luck if I died young.
It just wouldn't be tonight.
It took the emergency personnel seven minutes to respond. I was incredibly glad I hadn't been lying there, dying, or I probably would have bled out while they were finishing up that one last glazed donut or whatever it was that kept them from attending to me immediately.
I knew I would be ok when my first thought was that someone should investigate this and make sure that any problems with the ambulance response service were brought to light. I'd write up the article myself, I reflected as the flashing lights finally arrived at the scene. By this time I had rolled off the hood of the car and was sitting on the curb. I could feel the chill down to my bones, and my injured leg stiffened painfully.
I managed to get up and move towards the back of the ambulance when the medic asked me to.
The EMT shone a light in my eyes, poked at my ribs, and told me my leg wasn't broken. They cleaned up the cut on my hand that could only have come from the car hood and recommended I go to the emergency room to see a doctor.
"No thanks," I told them, hopping off the back of the ambulance and heading for the nearest bus stop. My hip felt like it was on fire, and I couldn't tell if my entire leg was numb or if it was one giant drumstick of throbbing pain. Still, I gritted my teeth and tried my best not to hobble obviously as I made my way home.
I really desperately wanted a bath, a handful of painkillers, and a good night sleep. In that order. Instead, I opened my door to find Michel sitting on my couch, one of my US Weekly magazines in his hands.
"Did you know Brad Pitt left Jennifer Anniston for Angelina Jolie?" he asked in mock horror.
"Yes, well, that magazine is a bit old," I told him as I stepped into the room.
I could see his knuckles tense and the pages of the tabloid crinkled around his fingers. His face was still hidden from me, but I could tell he was suddenly on the alert.
"What happened to you?" he asked quietly.
"I got hit by a car," I responded nonchalantly. "EMTs say leg's not broken. They didn't see reason to take me to the hospital themselves, so really it's nothing."
Michel threw the magazine to the floor and stood, his eyes furious. "And you didn't insist to see a doctor? You could have some serious internal bleeding."
"I'm fine," I promised him, unable to help the fond look my eyes gave him at his concern. "All that really hit was my leg. The car wasn't going very fast."
"There's extensive bruising," he told me, kneeling in front of me. His fingers hovered gently over my hip before moving down my leg. "The car hit you here," he told me, focusing on the painful area right above my ankle. "The bone is probably bruised. And then you landed here," his focus was once again on my hip and the side of my thigh. "Pretty hard, at that."
"I know. I was there."
He inhaled deeply, his nose around my stomach area. "No internal injuries that I can tell." He stood and looked at my eyes, his fingers holding open my eyelid as I tried to blind at him. He then felt around my skull. "Did you hit your head?"
"No."
Of course, he didn't take my word for it. "You have no idea the number of people who walk away from accidents every day because they think they're ok and then drop dead later."
"I'm fine!" I promised him as he clinically assessed my head and then my neck. "But you know what, I did just think of something more relaxing than a bath..." She gave him a meaningful look and a smirk.
Michel stood back, looking slightly incredulous. "You're injured!"
"I'll live," I promised.
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked stern. "You're taking that bath. It would do you some good, even if I have to put you there myself."
And he did. He ran the water and helped me into the tub, turning off the light so I could relax. He took care of everything, including giving me a cold glass of water to chase down the painkillers he found in the medicine cabinet. And then the miraculous happened: I awoke three hours later to find him in bed beside me, an open book held on his chest right above the arm I had curled around his waist.
That was the first time he spent the night, but it wasn't the last.
x.x.x
Kerry inhaled sharply, awakening almost immediately. Her cheek was pressed against a familiar shoulder, and she could feel his arm tighten reflexively around her as though it belonged there. Her heart tightened in her chest at the novelty of finding him still by her side, and she stretched against him with a slight grin on her face, moving in the way he likened to a panther. He enjoyed it when she did that, brushing her toes against his and lifting her face towards him for a kiss, pressing her entire body suggestively alongside his. Kerry opened her eyes when he didn't oblige her and found him observing her with a disconcerting frown on his face.
"Oh my God," Kerry gasped, pulling away from him and rolling off the other side of the bed. She stood, staring down at Michel in surprise. Not because she hadn't known it was him, but because she had reacted that way even though she was perfectly aware of who was next to her. "I'm sorry. For a moment I thought we were still... it was still four years ago. I didn't mean to provoke you like that." She pulled her arms around her middle, feeling her whole world crumble around her. For a moment in his arms, everything had been right again. If it was four years ago, she reflected, none of this would have happened and Dr. Roberts would still be alive.
"If I thought you meant it, I would have kissed you," he informed her as he gracefully rolled out of bed, his movements not hindered by human awkwardness. He gave her a concerned look. "Why don't you go back to bed? I'll get you a glass of water and a sleeping pill."
"I'm not tired," she said stubbornly, her voice unnaturally quiet.
"Hence the sleeping pill," he told her, an amused smile pulling at the sides of his mouth.
"I'm not tired," she reiterated more shrilly, feeling his humour was entirely inappropriate for the situation. "And I'm not being overly emotional either. I want to find Dr. Roberts' killer, and I want to find him tonight. No more flirting with me, no more fooling around. Either you get serious, or you leave."
"Okay," he said with a shrug. "No more pretences. Tonight we go hunting."
"I want to be bait," Kerry told him, yanking open the nightstand drawer so hard the contents scattered across the flood. She ignored the lubricant and condoms and went straight for the gun. "Do you see the ammo anywhere?" she asked, and when he picked the box up off the floor with no comment as to the other contents strewn around them, she knew he would keep his promise.
"No arguments for that, either?" she asked, handing him the gun as she moved into the living room and grabbed her jacket. This time she opened her own door, barely waiting for him to grab it from her before she let go and continued down the hall.
"You've always been bait," he told her. "Though in this instance I'm not sure you'll attract someone hunting middle aged men."
Kerry pressed the button to the elevator in her building, though she rarely ever used it, and stood impatiently waiting for the doors to open. "I figure I'll just sit alone on a bench looking helpless," she told him.
"I'd go for you." At her look, he hid a smile and continued, "I'm saying that purely as an evil being who hunts young girls. You'd be an ideal target. But once again, I'm not sure the person we're hunting will take bait like that."
"Well you certainly aren't a middle aged man, either, and there is no way I'm putting my father in danger." Kerry snapped. "Do you know anyone who could help? Oh gee, I used to know Dr. Roberts, but he's dead now."
Michel sighed as though he knew this wasn't going to go particularly well and followed her on the elevator. "You aren't going to do anything suicidal, are you?" he asked.
"No way. In fact, if you see someone approach me you can just shoot first and ask questions later, that's how not suicidal I am."
"I most certainly will NOT," Michel expressed. "But if I see someone trying to rip half your neck off, I'll make sure to act."
"Congratulations on once again being proactive," Kerry sniped sarcastically. "I'll be sitting on that bench over there if you feel the need to hold up your end of the bargain." Kerry moved away from him, sitting on the cold bench as her breath turned foggy on the cool spring evening air. She was fuelled by anger and grief, and stayed still on the one spot due to pride. As the signs of life in the town began to dwindle, each bedroom light turning out and passing cars becoming infrequent, she tried to block out the cold and the isolation and remain focused. An hour after sitting down, her phone rang. Kerry jumped, not expecting the interruption in the quiet air.
"What?"
"You're angry at me," Michel said softly. She couldn't see where he had gone and had taken it for granted that he had left her to her foolishness.
"I'm not," she denied.
"You think I could have done something to save Dr. Roberts."
"You promised him," she hissed. "You said you'd keep him safe."
"I said I'd try to keep him safe, and I was talking about with vampires capable of rational thought. I don't see how you expected me to foresee something like this!"
"It's pretty frigging obvious that he fit the profile and was deeply involved in the case. You should have had Dave or someone keeping an eye on him." Even as she said the words, the pit in her stomach grew because she hadn't seen it either, even as she accused him. Rationally, Kerry knew that it was all her fault. If she hadn't killed Marsala, or if she hadn't come back to live in Brockport, or if she hadn't brought Michel to him, then Dr. Roberts might still be alive. So she became more furious with Michel, since he was the driving force behind all those "ifs."
"I'm not superman," Michel snapped back. "I don't know where you're getting this idea that I'm here to serve you. You made it impossible for me to ignore the situation when you called and made it my responsibility, and instead of resenting you for it I tried to work with you. I'm done!"
"Fine," Kerry snarled. "You're right. I never should have called, and I certainly shouldn't have—" She cut herself off and hung up, getting up off her bench and marching for the front door of her building without finishing her sentence.
"Kerry!" Michel called out, popping up from behind the bushes next door. She ignored him as she wretched open the heavy doors of her apartment building and stalked inside. This time, she took the stairs up to the third floor, getting even more furious once she realized he hadn't followed her inside. That's it, Kerry decided, she couldn't deal with the rollercoaster ride of Michel anymore. She was just starting to feel as though they might make it as friends, after all, when he had to go say she was a nuisance and he wasn't there to actually help but only because he didn't have a choice.
"Bugger," Kerry muttered, arriving at her apartment slightly winded from the climb. She still wasn't tired, and though regret and grief gnawed at her stomach and raced through her mind in an unending circle, she knew she was all cried out. Instead, she grabbed her BlackBerry out of her pocket and hurled it across the room, watching in satisfaction as it slammed into a vase of faux silk flowers on one of the end tables and caused the entire thing to shatter and cascade over onto the floor in a waterfall of fake flowers, decorative sand, and glass. Kerry inhaled and then exhaled, feeling marginally better as she stripped off her jacket and headed into the bathroom for a hot bath, her feet crunching satisfyingly over the shards of glass.