Two of the ceiling lights at the far end of the kitchen, over the counter near the stove, had been hit with arterial blood spray. The end of the room dripped and glowed an eerie vampire-cavern red. Blood dripped onto the body below, thickly, silently, the drops absorbed by its clothes. A pool was spreading from its upper arm. Brachial artery. The boning knife was lying next to the gleaming, slow-moving pool. Henckel. Dishwasher safe.
The purple-green glisten of intestines protruded beneath it. Belly, too. Like a pig.
“Thank God, thank God,” Therese said from the column by the dining room entrance. She clamped a hand on my left arm and tried to pull me into the dining room.
“Stop,” I said, “stop. Don’t move, not even an inch.” I was reading the pool of blood on the floor, the smears and spatters, the little lake on the counter, already dripping off the edge, the streak along the kitchen wall to the dining room, sorting story lines, angles of arc, possibilities. “You mustn’t move anymore,” I said absently.
“But Sandra—”
“Can wait thirty seconds. If we’re to save her, I need to think.”
After a moment, I nodded. “Sandra,” I said, “come here.”
“She can’t—”
“Therese, be quiet now. Get Sandra from the dining room, bring her here. Right now, Therese.”
Sandra’s skin was pale, paler than I’d ever seen it, but apart from the blood there were no marks on her face and hands that had not been there at the last class.
“His blood’s still coming out!” Therese said. “He’s alive. He’s—”
“Not really,” I said. No medical facility on earth could save this man: this was simple hydrostatic draining, not the vivid spurt of a pumping heart. His blood levels had already fallen below the crucial forty-percent level. Even without the gaping belly wound, he was dead. “Have you called the police?”
“No,” Therese said. “No, I suppose I should. I just didn’t…” She trailed off and looked at me.
She just didn’t want it to be real.
“Where are the children?”
“I don’t—”
“Sandra, where are the children?”
“Sunday school.” She sounded quite composed.
“When will they be back?”
“At seven-twenty.” It was a little after six now. One less thing to worry about.
“Your husband—”
“That’s not my husband.”
I breathed out slowly, deliberately. “This man on the floor is not your husband?”
“My husband is dead.”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s dead, and we have to do something about that.”
“That’s not my husband,” she said again. “That’s George.”
In. Out. “This man on the floor, with all the blood, is not your husband. He’s someone called George.”
“That’s right.”
“But you killed him.”
“He’s dead?”
“He is.”
“Then, yes, I guess I did.”
Therese was giving me urgent signals. “Sandra, you sit down again in the dining room for just a minute. Don’t touch anything.”
“I don’t have to do what you say. I don’t have to do what anyone says anymore.”
“Just for the next five minutes. Five minutes.”
She nodded and sat. I looked at Therese. “Please tell me you know what’s going on.”
“Her husband’s been dead two years. That’s George, her sister’s husband. ”
“He’s the one who beats her?”
“And more.”
“Her brother-in-law.”
She nodded.
“This is going to make it harder.” I turned back to where Sandra was sitting patiently at the dining room table. Pale wood, ash. Never liked ash. Back to Therese. “She called you?”
Nod. “She said, ‘You better come, I need you to be my friend.’ I knew by the way she said it that it was something terrible, that she, that she meant…”
We both knew what she meant. I’d given them the idea: a good friend’s number on your cell phone, help out the truth a little.
“Was anyone with you when you got the call?”
“No.”
“Good.” Back to Sandra. “Sandra, do you want to go to prison?”
“No.”
“Then you’re going to have to do exactly as I say, even though some of it will be unpleasant. Do you agree?”
“All right.”
That was the closest I was going to come to informed consent. “Come here. Stop when you get to the edge of the carpet. Now, see the knife?” Nod. “I want you to take one step in, one careful step, and pick up the knife, then turn to the sink and rinse the knife.” She moved like a sock puppet. “Good. Now give it to me.”
She held it out. “You’re wearing gloves!”
“Yes. Now where were you when he, when you slashed him?”
“Right here, by the sink, washing the knife.”
Perfect. “Tell me what happened.”
“He came in, said he didn’t have long, that Betts thought he was stuck in traffic on I-20, that what the fuck had I done with the front hedge, he’d told me not to hire a yard boy, they always fuck up, then he pushed me against the sink, here”—she touched her midriff—“so I couldn’t breathe and it was going to be like last week, last week when the children saw some of it, and I don’t know, I’d been practicing, you see, the way you taught us, so I turned around and cut him, on his arm, and he looked all pissed, like he was going to hit me, so I slashed him again. He always made me keep the knives sharp. Nothing ticks a man off more than he should fumble at his meat like a goddamn pussy in front of his family, he used to say, he didn’t keep food on the table and a roof over his wife’s nephews and nieces to be treated…” Her eyes were dry. “Well, that won’t be happening anymore. ”
“No. And then what?”
“And then…” She frowned. “I don’t remember.”
“You called Therese.”
“Yes, yes, I guess I did.”
That was her story, I couldn’t see superficial evidence to contradict it, and there wasn’t time to dig deeper.
“Stand here. Yes. Very good. Did George have any diseases?”
“Diseases?”
“HIV, syphilis, that kind of thing.”
“No.”
I nodded. “You’ll want to make sure you get antibiotic and tetanus shots anyway.” I hefted the knife. The edge glittered like a ruby scalpel under the weird light. Sharp, as she’d said. I laid it against her forehead and traced a thin line. Therese gasped. I ignored her. “You’re right-handed, yes?” I asked Sandra.
“Right-handed. Yes.”
“Put your left hand on the counter.”
Blood was beginning to well from the slit on her forehead. She didn’t seem to feel it. She did as she was told.
I took her little finger, imagined the fifth interpharyngeal joint, made sure I had it firmly, and then jerked. I felt the metacarpal snap cleanly.
She gasped. Blood ran in a thick sheet down her face.
“Therese, call nine-one-one. Tell them two people are badly hurt. That’s all. Hurt. Blood everywhere. They’ll want you to stay on the phone, but just pretend to panic and put the phone down. Go.”
“But her hand, her face.”
“Go.”
Now Sandra’s white skin was tinged with the grey of shock and her breathing was harsh. Exactly what I needed. A woman demonstrably in shock, covered in blood, hand swelling. Documented abuse. Clearly self-defense.
She swayed. “Don’t faint, Sandra. Take this.” I gave her the knife with her blood on it. “Touch it to George’s arm, where you cut it before. You can tread in the blood, it’s all right. Just try not to splash. Touch the blade to the cut in his arm if you can. Now, while you’re bending down, put the knife in his hand. He’s left-handed?” Therese was talking and crying on the phone: blood, hurt, hurry. Her voice shook and it sounded as though her nose was running. Shock was taking her, too. “Wrap his hand around the handle, get his prints on it. Now you take it again and drop it where it was on the floor earlier. No, no, leave it there. It’s close enough. Now step out to the dining room. Yes, don’t worry about the footprints.” The blood was still draining, still spreading. It was going to cover a multitude of sins. “Sit down. No, don’t faint. Don’t faint.”