Unleashed (A Sydney Rye Novel, # 1) (5 page)

Officer O’Conner motioned from the mouth of the alley, and Doyle headed over to him. I examined the cracked brown tracks on my thigh. I thought about the dripping hair in Toby’s mouth. The memory of that thing touching my leg as I pulled Toby out of the alley and back to the sanity of the street lurched up at me.

Sirens wailed and two patrol cars pulled up next to the horses. Officer Doyle explained that he would need a statement and to collect some evidence from me. I nodded. He went away and came back with a woman who was holding a camera and yelling at a young guy with glasses and adolescent acne to hurry up. She started snapping pictures of me and pulled my hands toward her. “Stay still,” she commanded. Her assistant, his hands in tight latex gloves, scraped some of the dried blood from my legs into a plastic bag. Then the woman took Toby’s leash from me.

“Hey,” I said, but she ignored me. Her assistant smiled apologetically. His bone-white hands started on Toby’s fur, trying to get the congealed blood into a bag while his boss’s camera clicked away. He took off Toby’s leash and collar. Doyle brought him a piece of rope, and they tied it around Toby’s neck.

“OK, we’re done here.” The woman strode away, and her assistant hurried after her.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Doyle said as I watched the photographer turn into the ally. Doyle pointed toward the end of the block. The light from a camera flash shot out of the alley as Doyle lead me away. I gripped the rope attached to Toby. The officer showed me around the corner and into the lobby of an apartment building.

Doyle spoke to a woman behind a large marble block that served as the front desk of the building. She turned and looked at me. Her eyes were a deep, warm brown and she’d painted her lashes thick with mascara. She clucked a couple of times and then took my arm. I handed Doyle Toby’s rope and followed the woman into a small bathroom.

She turned on the tap. “Come on dear,” she said, and gently pulled my hands toward the sink. The water spiraling down the drain turned from pink to clear. The woman wet a paper towel with warm water and handed it to me. I turned to my reflection.

I hardly recognized myself. Who was that thin, haggard woman in the mirror? When did I become this person? Did I ever brush my hair? Tears started down my cheeks, and I watched them as if the mirror was a TV screen—a big reflection of someone else’s fantasy.

“Sweetheart?” it was Eyelashes looking at me with dilated pupils. This was the story she was going to tell for the rest of her life. I was her traumatic tale. The sweet blond who found a dead body and went comatose in the bathroom while under my care.

I cleaned my face, rubbing my cheeks and then digging into my eye sockets. I cleaned the blood off my legs. My reflection now showed a face scrubbed clean, hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, and gray eyes rimmed with red.

Officer Doyle waited for me on a paisley-patterned couch, Toby sitting next to him, his face and paws washed. I sat down with them.

“Are you feeling OK?” Officer Doyle asked.

“I think so.” I leaned back for a moment and closed my eyes, but the gaping hole that had been a face was waiting for me behind my eyelids. I snapped my head back up.

“I spoke with the doorman briefly, and he said that your dog found the body?”

“No,” I said. “He is not my dog.”

“So how did you end up in the alley?”

I stared at him for a moment. “Oh, yes, Toby ran down there, but no, he is not my dog. He is a client’s.”

“You’re a dog-walker?” Doyle asked, a small smile crossing his lips.

“Yes.”

“If you give me his owner’s contact information, I’ll be happy to explain about the leash.”

“OK.” I found the Maxims’ phone number in my purse and gave it to Doyle.

He looked down at the information for a moment. He pressed his lips together into a tight line. Then he looked up at me, smiled, and said: “I just need to ask you a couple of questions— nothing big, just some basic stuff. It shouldn’t take long. Do you feel up to it?”

“OK.”

“What’s your name?”

“Joy Humbolt.”

“Occupation: dog-walker.” He wrote it down as he said it. He got my address and all my contact information. “Now, please tell me in your own words what happened—how you came upon the victim?”

I told him about my falling down and Toby running into the alley. I told him how I thought he was killing a rat down there and how I had called to him but he hadn’t come. I told him about how I had ventured down the alley, and then I started to get choked up.

“Take your time.”

I started sobbing. Officer Doyle put a hand on my shoulder, and I grabbed on to him as if he were a floatation device, and I was in the middle of a big motherfucking storm. He sat there, letting me hold onto him without saying a word or moving a muscle.

“I’m sorry,” I said, when I realized, quite suddenly, what an ass I was being. I backed away from him and lowered my eyes. He coughed something out about it being okay and reaching into one of his uniform’s many pockets pulled out a tissue. I used it to wipe my eyes and face.

“Thanks,” I said weakly.

“I know this is hard, but if you could just finish telling me what happened, I can let you go home.”

I took a deep breath. “When I realized that there was a dead body, I started screaming.” Doyle nodded. I sniffled. “Um, the doorman came, and when he saw the body, he threw up. I realized I had to get out of there. Toby fought me, but I managed to pull him out of the alley. He dropped the thing I thought was a rat, and it brushed against my legs.” I looked down at my legs. They were clean.

“Go on.”

“When he dropped it, that’s when I saw it was a toupee.” I looked up at Doyle. He nodded for me to keep going. “So I dragged Toby to the lobby where the doorman worked and used his phone to call the police. And then I went outside and waited for you guys to show up.”

“OK,” Doyle said. “I just want to double-check a couple of things.” I nodded. “So you didn’t touch anything in the alley besides the toupee touching your leg?”

“I might have put my hand on the Dumpster; I’m not sure. But the doorman—I know he touched the wall when he was throwing up. That’s all I can think of."

“OK, and do you know if Toby touched anything besides the toupee?”

“I didn't see him.”

“The detective in charge of the investigation may want to contact you again. Also, I’m going to give you my card in case you think of anything else.” I put his business card in my pocket.

“Can I ask you something?” I said as he stood to leave.

“Sure.”

“You ever see anything like that before?”

He nodded sadly and then gave me a crooked smile.

“But what kind of person would do that?”

“I don't know.”

“But doesn’t it seem awfully hateful to blow someone’s—" I stopped to push a lump back down my throat, “—to just wipe away someone’s face like that?”

“I would just try not to think about this anymore. Go home, take a nice hot bath, and forget about it.” I nodded absently. “Work’s another good way to forget.”

“I don’t think I’ll be forgetting anything about this day anytime soon.”

“It will probably stay with you for a while, but you’ll figure out a way to cope. Everyone does.”

He smiled at me. “You want me to walk you back to his place?” He pointed at Toby.

“I’ll be fine. Thanks, though. I appreciate you being so nice.” I picked myself up off the couch and was surprised to see how strong I actually felt. We started to leave the lobby together when O’Conner came in.

“Doyle, Detective Mulberry is here.” O’Conner said the name Mulberry as if it were a dirty word.

Doyle turned back to me. “Ms. Humbolt, thank you for your help. I hope you feel better real soon."

“I already do, thank you.”

Home Sweet Home

Blue greeted me at my door and danced around as I put down my bag and flipped off my shoes. I bent down and gave him a good petting, ruffling him behind the ears and scratching his chest. Then I noticed the feathers. There were a couple at my feet, but as my eyes moved down the hall, the number increased. I walked tentatively toward my living room, feathers swirling around my ankles. Blue’s claws clicked on the floor as he followed.

Light from the street illuminated the front room. My red mohair down-cushion couch was leaking. One of the seat cushions was ripped open, and feathers spread onto my coffee table, across the floor to the tangled nest of wires below my TV, and over to where I stood. “Destroyed the couch, huh, boy?” I asked. Blue gave no response. “Well, it was a shitty couch, anyway.”

I fed Blue his dinner, bypassing my blinking message machine, and took him out for a walk. We wandered down side streets, avoiding people and bright lights. My exhaustion turned into nervous energy, and soon I was craving a drink.

When we got back to my apartment, the door was open. Blue growled and raised his hackles. I felt the same. Marcus poked his head out. Blue let loose a barrage of barks and growls. I just stared.

“Jesus, Joy, can’t you do something about that thing?” Marcus yelled over Blue.

“Fuck you,” I responded, brushing past him into my apartment and dragging Blue with me.

“Did you get robbed, or did that darling creature destroy my couch?” Marcus asked.

“It was my couch, remember?  You gave it to me. Quiet now, Blue. Would you just leave?” Blue’s barking lowered to a deep growl.

“Have a drink with me. I want to talk.”

“About your couch?” It sounded dumb the minute it came out of my mouth.

“Come on, one drink.” He smiled, and I had a flash of him naked and on top of me. “Please.” Marcus was tall, hard-bodied, and bad for me. He smiled with a twinkle in his eyes— the same twinkle that mothers tell their children was in their dad’s eyes. Marcus took a step toward me, and I wanted to wrap myself in his arms. I took a step back. We’d broken up for good reasons. Marcus didn’t trust me. He thought I was cheating on him, which made me think he was cheating on me. A year and we couldn’t trust each other. A year of his accusing me of being someone I wasn’t. He took another step and I could smell him. Marcus smelled good. He might be a jealous, paranoid jerk, but he smelled damn good.

“Fine, one drink.”

A Mistake

We had a drink. And then another. We fought, and then we laughed, and then I was drunk. I didn’t tell him about the body until we had left the bar, and he was walking me home.

“You want to hear something fucked up?” I asked him.

“What, you gonna tell me about our relationship?” He snorted at his own joke.

“I found a dead body today.” Marcus’s drunk eyes swiveled in their sockets.

“What?” he asked.

“Yeah, a dead body. It was really fucking weird. His face was missing, and he was wearing a track suit.” I stumbled and then caught myself.

“Wait, you found a dead body?”

“Yeah, I don’t really want to talk about it anymore. I don’t want to think about it. But I can’t stop.” I looked over at him and then kissed him. He reacted quickly.

Wrapping his arm around my waist, he moved me up against the closest building and pinned me. I let my hands wander from the back of his neck down his chest.

Marcus pulled away and hailed a taxi that was speeding by. He held me tight and kissed me so that I could barely breathe as the cab raced through empty streets to his apartment. Marcus threw money at the cabby and we rode in the elevator entangled. He smelled so good and he kissed so well. And dear Jesus did the man know what to do with his hands.

Marcus opened his door with one hand, keeping the other on the small of my back. Inside, I pushed him up against the wall and pressed myself against him. He lifted me up, and I wrapped my legs around him. I bit his lip, he pulled my hair, and then I was on the floor, on my back. I was right where I wanted to be—there wasn’t a thought in my head. I was barely even human.

The Loss of My Flip-Flops

The moment it was over I knew I had made a massive mistake. We were on Marcus's floor, his arms wrapped around me. Usually when we lay like that, I felt that nothing could hurt me, that Marcus would protect me. But tonight I felt that he was holding me too tightly, that he was a danger to me, that I was a danger to myself. I had to get out of there. I needed to be alone. “I've missed you,” Marcus said. Crap. I tried to move away, but he pulled me into him tighter.

“Is something wrong?” Marcus asked, and then lightly kissed my ear. I cringed at the intimacy in his voice.

“Marcus,” I paused, trying to figure out how to phrase it. “I need to go home.”

“Hang out for a minute. Let’s just lay here.”

“I can’t.” I tried to get up again, but he held me close. I started to feel as if I couldn’t breathe. “Marcus, let me up.”

“Come on, just stay for a little while.”

“No, Marcus. I have to go home." I wrenched myself free and started to look around for my clothes.