Kick (The Jenkins Cycle Book 1) (29 page)

“What, you mean like prison? Erika actually had a good idea, for once: we’re gonna say that furniture mover did it. What kind of alibi could an illegal have that’d stand up? After you died, he left the wedding presents here—like he shot you and got scared and took off.”

It took me a moment to realize who he was talking about, and when I did my eyes widened. They wanted to pin this on Enrique? All he’d done was move Erika’s ugly furniture, dammit.

I glanced down to where Erika had fallen off the bed but couldn’t see her from my angle. She’d been quiet the whole time. Out cold. I considered our earlier conversation, when she’d asked who
that Mexican
was, referring to Sheila. She’d obviously recognized Sheila’s companion, Enrique—remembered him from the moving day but hadn’t let on. And here I’d thought she was just some ditzy, psychotic sex fiend.

Briefly, I wondered if Rob had any idea who he’d partnered with.

“No Rob, I’m not talking about prison. I’m talking about Hell, or something like it. Whatever it is, you don’t wanna go there.”

Almost sadly, Rob said, “Shit, Nate—I’ve been in Hell my whole life, I wouldn’t know different if I saw it. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Then he shot me.

It felt like someone had stuck a giant spike in me, pinning me to the bed like a bug. Painful, sure, but I couldn’t breathe, and the animal fear of suffocation rendered any pain a mere distraction.

I’d been shot a few times. This one caught me in the side of the chest, about halfway down. Maybe it hit the lung, I don’t know, but I knew it for a kill shot because of how weak I felt almost immediately and how much blood Nate was losing. Like those other times, I experienced the creeping sense of doom you get before you die. Despite my intimate knowledge of death and the reality beyond, I became aware of an entirely human sense of doubt, whispering to me,
This is the end, there is no more.

When my vision cleared, I looked up at Rob and saw his face widen with surprise as he clutched his arm. In my confusion, I’d missed hearing the first round from Erika’s gun go off, but I heard the next two. I watched in slow motion as the rounds struck home—one in the shoulder, the next one in the face, dropping Nate’s murderous brother like a stand of rotting timber.

Erika stood on her knees clutching a small pistol close to her body, shooty end pointed up.

“
Babe
yourself, pig,” she said. When she turned to inspect me, her lips formed a smile. Then she winked. “I think you’re dying, Hun Bun.”

I couldn’t stop panting. Between breaths, I managed to say, “Looks like… all the money… yours now …”

Ignoring me, Erika got to her feet and picked up her purse—and then put it down again. She looked at the floor immediately surrounding her, then very deliberately dropped the gun.

“… buy… a new… G-string… for college!”

I became overcome by a tremendous laughing fit that hurt so much it made me laugh even harder.

“I’m glad you’re having so much fun,” she said, pretending it didn’t bother her.

I took a few moments to gather my strength… and then Erika was shaking me awake.

“Hey,” she said, loudly. “I’m going over to Rob’s to get my little confession video. I don’t think you’re gonna be here when I get back. If you are I’ll have to fix it, so don’t try too hard, ok?”

“What… about the baby?” I said. I thought I knew the answer but I wanted her to confirm it.

Erika snorted in her piggy way and said, “Oh lord, you’re so dense it’s almost cute. I’ve been on birth control since I was old enough to talk to strangers. There is no baby.”

She turned my face toward her, carefully, so as not to get any blood on her.

“You should know, I’m going to kill Tim with Rob’s gun,” she said, casually. “He’s just a little too smart for his own good. The cops’ll think it was a big revenge thing that ended while we were having our kinky wedding night. This worked out so awesome. Who knew Rob was so messed up, huh?”

“Leave Tim alone, just take the money,” I said, with more force than my body should have been able to muster, and then immediately regretted it as color and light swirled down a dark funnel in front of me.

Erika shook her head.

“They can figure out the time of death to within a few hours, so I need to go. In another time and place, maybe you and I could have been something real. Sorry, Hun Bun.”

Then, gently, for the second time that night, she kissed her fingers and touched them to my lips. In her own way, beneath all the evil I’d seen from her, I knew she’d made her peace with me.

And I thought I was stupid.

Lunging forward against the chains, I took both fingers in my mouth and started chewing with everything I had left in me. I heard a crunching sound and then a loud snap. Weak as I was, my efforts set her shrieking like a banshee with a swollen abscess and lousy insurance.

Because I’d been holding my breath when I bit her, I blacked out. It was Erika’s swearing that brought me back. My mouth was empty, so I hadn’t taken any fingers, but she’d have to explain her blood in my mouth and Nate’s teeth marks when the cops finally showed up.

“You piece of shit!” she screamed, clutching her bleeding fingers. “God dammit! God
dammit!
”

“… explain blood… the cops… leave any at Tim’s!” I said, swooning with the effort. It wouldn’t be long now.

She stood there with tears streaming down her face, clutching her bleeding hand, inspecting it. When she looked over, I winked at her.

“Nice try,” she said, mustering a bitchy sort of composure. “I’ll tell the cops you went into convulsions and I was afraid you might bite your tongue. It can happen.”

“Right hand… bloody… both… powder …” I couldn’t finish it, I felt so weak. And thirsty.

She’d have to shoot with her other hand now. What I’d tried to tell her was,
How will you explain gunpowder traces on both hands?
I wanted to throw every possible doubt I could at her so she’d leave Tim alone.

Erika started to swear, though I couldn’t tell if it was because she understood me or because she was still upset about her hand.

During my last few seconds of consciousness in Nate’s ruined body, I couldn’t help recalling the last time I’d died in someone’s bed.

Chapter 32

Dan has a key to Sandra’s dorm, secretly copied before she made him give back the original, and he uses it to get in. He had watched her leave ten minutes ago with her best friend Suki and a few others, on their way to the big KDR party. He knows they aren’t likely to be back until after midnight.

He looks around, frowning at the differences from the last time he’d snuck in, a month ago. New books and magazines, a new throw on the couch… and a goddamned fish tank. How come she didn’t tell him she bought a fish tank? He knew all about fish, had grown up with them his whole life. He could have helped her. Briefly, he considers breaking it, but only for a second. After all, he still likes fish.

Dan slips into her roommate Grace’s room and looks around. There’s not much to see. Apparently she likes the color pink and posters of shirtless, sweaty rock stars. But he’s never gone in before and, though curious, he doesn’t look through her stuff.

Sandra’s room is another story. This time he searches through her closet and dresser, something he’d started to do last time before chickening out. And of course he finds her toy
, and that really gets him angry. What, he wasn’t good enough? Was this his replacement? He leaves it on top of the dresser as a message of some kind.

Dan sits on the bed. At one point he starts to cry, but stops almost as quickly and begins to move in an angry, rocking motion. Closing his eyes, he lies down for a while, lost in the smell of her hair on the pillow where she lays her head every night. Minutes later, he gets up, heads to the bathroom and removes a bottle of aspirin from his pants pocket. He pours a cup of water, opens the bottle and dumps out about ten of the rough white pills. Then, one after another, he swallows each of them. His intent is not to overdose on aspirin—that’d be a pretty embarrassing way to die. No, he’s been researching this night for a while and knows that, despite what you saw on TV, simple coagulation following unconsciousness often ruins these kinds of suicides. Dan doesn’t want to wake up brain damaged in a hospital somewhere. How pathetic would that be?

He tries to wait the full twenty minutes he’s planned but only makes it to five. He needs to get it done before he loses his nerve.

Dan takes the razor from its protective cardboard sleeve, bunches up his shirt collar and bites down. Then he makes a hard, deep, vertical cut in his right wrist.

The act of cutting is painful, but afterward it only stings a little. Trembling from the shock of seeing his blood spurting out of him, he finds it hard to hold onto the now-slippery razor, so he uses Sandra’s bedspread to get a better grip on it before cutting his left wrist. By now there’s blood everywhere: on the pillows, pooling in the sheets, and dripping onto the floor.

Dying doesn’t take too long, and in these final minutes he feels content. He knows Sandra will never forget him for as long as she lives. She’ll think about it every day—about him—and he knows she’ll realize she could have avoided all this by staying with him. This is his last communication with her, a powerful statement whose meaning is clear: “Though you choose not to love me, know that I will always love you and that it is your fault I’m dead.”

***

So that’s what happened, way back at the beginning of all this. I consider it the worst thing I’ve ever done to anyone, and coming from me that’s saying a lot. It’s something I can never forgive myself for.

Afterward, on my arrival in the Great Wherever and my horror at learning what I’d become in my final days, I fell into a marathon self-loathing of a kind that can exist only in that place. As bad as my memories were, they paled in comparison to the imagined scene of Sandra—poor Sandra—walking in from her party to find me lying in her bed covered in blood.

I found myself appreciating her once-hated friends and hoped they’d tell her I was a selfish nutcase who didn’t deserve her grief. For once, I could see them for what they were: good friends of the thick-and-thin variety who would be there for her however long she needed. I’d never been her friend, and in the end I could finally see the honest, sorry truth of it.

Since then, I’d been jumping from ride to ride pretending I was off on vacation while, deep down, trying my best to make up for the horror I’d put her through. And if the ride never stopped, I counted it a fitting end for a wretch like me.

***

Since dying in Nate’s body, I’d done everything to avoid thinking about the mistakes leading up to the innocent man’s death. I couldn’t live with myself and I couldn’t die. Instead, I mentally watched back-to-back episodes of my favorite sitcoms over the years. Presently, season three of the Emmy award winning TV series,
Cheers
.

What I love most about
Cheers
is that, no matter how much anyone in the show argued with or ragged on anyone else, you always knew that deep down they loved one another. Why else would they return every weeknight at eight o’clock?

If there were a bar in America with people like the cast from
Cheers
, I’d go there every chance I could. I’d laugh at Diane’s jokes and delight in her witticisms. I’d hit on Carla, the tough-as-nails barmaid with the Brooklyn accent, and bask in the ensuing insults. I’d throw it back and forth with Cliff about the… er… many horned Swallowtail God of the… ah… Trobriand Islands and its significance in… eh… modern day horticulturalism. When I wasn’t doing that, good ol’ Norm and I would think up new wisecracks about his much maligned, though deeply loved, wife Vera. I’d even drink beer.

Watching reruns from memory was almost as enjoyable as watching them the normal way. Well, sure, I remembered every part, so I never felt surprised. Still, I have to actively try to remember something to recall it, just like anyone else. The memories arrive quickly, but in a linear fashion, so there’s always a small pause between absorbing one memory and experiencing the next. So when Norm delivers his zinger at the beginning of every episode during his hallmark swagger to the bar, it almost feels like seeing it for the second or third time. It sure beat the hell out of hating myself for wasting time at the movies and coffee shops and driving around in Nate’s goddamn sports car.

Poor Nate. He’d had a terrible childhood. In the week of my stay, all I’d learned was he had bad luck with women and good taste in junk food.

Then there was Erika. If the Great Whomever decided to let me return to Earth again, then I’d fulfill my bargain and drop a line to the minister. Maybe if I gave him the details he could try to implicate the homicidal stripper—trip her up somehow—but I didn’t hold out much hope. If she managed to get that tape from Rob’s house then that was pretty much it.

It could have been worse. The chances were good I’d successfully thrown Erika off her original plan to kill Tim. She didn’t need to kill him, she only wanted to. With a bleeding hand and time a-wastin’, it would have been too complicated to get the tape and kill Tim and return to the house in time to report a fresh murder.

You tell yourself stuff like that.

On returning to the Great Wherever, I finally recalled that dream from my childhood—only this time with Erika in it, staring at me with hatred. An obvious message from my subconscious and I’d missed it.

Oh… that’s right, I hadn’t just missed it. I’d gone back to sleep.

If I’d listened to the minister and my own conscience and insisted on playing cold fish when Erika threw herself at me, Nate might be alive today. Instead, I’d ignored that message too.

I marveled at the strange vision I’d had of Jill, handcuffed in that house with that maniac, Stump. That should have been enough for me to quit the bed with Erika and collect my wits. Then we’d have gone on our honeymoon. Rob said Nate wasn’t afraid of heights. And despite knowing I’ll never truly die I
am
afraid of heights, so unless I wanted to kill myself I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near that cliff she’d wanted to throw me off.