Last Seen Leaving (33 page)

I stayed quiet, my eyes scrunched shut, pain spearing through my core with every violent beat of my heart, as if there were still maybe some fairy-tale chance he could decide there was no one else in the apartment after all; that perhaps an intruder had already come and gone, leaving behind a pair of shoes as a courtesy. The place was tiny, and although there were plenty of places to hide drugs and diaries full of criminal confessions, there were only a few spots big enough for a human male with size 10 feet, and he would check them all in short order—whether before or after calling the police, I wasn't sure.

Then, as his steps starting pounding decisively in my direction, the same direction as the bedroom, I remembered the gun in his nightstand. I couldn't let him get to it, or I would never walk out of there alive.

There was no time to think, to plan, to consider, only to act. Just as he passed the closet, turning to enter the bedroom, I shoved the door open and yelled, “
Stop!
”

Cedric whirled around, his eyes wide with alarm, and when he saw me, he did a double take. Fear was quickly joined by confusion, surprise, and an obvious trace of anger. “
You!
How did you get in here? What on earth—How
dare
you break into my home!”

“The game is up, Cedric,” I announced, quoting every single private-detective movie I'd ever seen. It sounded like a joke, but I was too scared to think straight, too rattled to come up with my own words. My jaw was actually chattering as I spat out, “I know what you did. I know everything!”

“This is … I won't stand for this kind of harassment,” Cedric blustered, although he didn't move. “Creating a disturbance at my rehearsals is one thing, but
this
 … I shall call the police!”

“Good—do it! You'll save me the trouble,” I shot back, realizing at the exact same moment that the threat had been a double bluff. He'd caught me burgling his home red-handed, and I should by all rights be begging him
not
to involve the police; by doing the opposite, I'd made it clear that I really did know something—that I was, perhaps, truly dangerous. The wariness that crept into his eyes as he regarded me anew made me certain I'd screwed up again. Nervously, I continued, “In fact, why don't you call them right now?”

“You are becoming quite intolerable, Mr. Doherty,” he informed me, after a brief pause, his voice suddenly cold and flat, “and now you are a home invader—a juvenile delinquent, a common thug.”

“It's better than being a
rapist
,” I returned savagely, “and a
murderer
.”

His face twitched, but he stifled the reaction quickly. “That is an outrageous allegation, and you had better not repeat it if you—”

“It isn't an allegation, it's the truth! You raped January, and then you killed her when she threatened to tell—and when Reiko confronted you about it, you killed her, too!” I stepped forward, anger blasting through me like a gust of hot desert air. “I had some time to look around before you got home, you sick psychopath, and I
know
.”

“I—I don't have to stand here and listen to this kind of slander,” Cedric stammered, his face flushed and his jowls trembling. He inched backward. “I am going to call the police right now, so you had better stay where you are!”

He spun around and started moving again, but not for the phone sitting on the edge of the desk—instead, he was making a beeline for the nightstand. My nerves snapping taut as a leather strap, I played my ace card in desperation, screaming out, “
Where did you get this?
”

The tone in my voice made him stop, turn, and look at what I was holding in my hands, what I'd stolen off his wall. It was a portrait of January, so startling in the exactitude of its sure, delicate strokes that when I'd seen Reiko creating it, I'd been amazed by her profound talent. It was the very drawing FBA told me the girl had wanted to complete for January's memorial the night she'd stayed late at the theater—the night she'd been killed. And I had found it in Cedric's bedroom.

His eyes were huge and troubled, his face an unhealthy shade of vermilion. “That's mine! You … you put that down this instant!”

“You took this from Reiko,” I accused furiously. “You killed her, and you stole it, and then you put it on your
wall
—”

“You have no idea what you're talking about,” he spluttered, making a grab for the portrait.

Jerking it back out of his reach, I screamed, “You bought a frame for it! What the hell is wrong with you?”

A thick square of glossy black wood, inset with an ivory matte, now surrounded the carefully penciled face of my ex-girlfriend. The picture was heavy in my sweatshirt-covered hands, and kept slipping as I tried to maintain a hold on it without letting it touch my bare fingers. Panic finally flashed across Cedric's face, and he gasped, “Be careful with that, it is
fragile
!”

“Tell me how you got it,” I ordered him. “Admit it!”

“She … she gave it to me. Reiko. She knew how much January meant to me, how special our bond was—”

“
Liar!
” I roared. “You filthy, disgusting
liar
! You didn't have any ‘bond'—she told me you were a creepy old pervert! She felt
sorry
for you.”

“That isn't true. It simply isn't true! We had a … a special…”

“You forced yourself on her. You
attacked
her, and then you killed her to keep anyone from finding out about it, because you wanted to make sure nothing stopped you from doing it again, you disgusting, twisted—”

“THAT ISN'T TRUE!” he screamed, his chest heaving, and I recoiled, startled by the vehement outburst. “She was special—she was different. From the very beginning there was something between us, something
real
. I don't expect you to understand that. You're too young, too immature, to comprehend—”

“She was
fifteen
, you sick fuck!”

“She had an old soul,” he said piously, and I nearly vomited on his carpet.

“It wasn't her
soul
that you roofied—”

“I don't have to explain anything to you!” he interrupted, incandescent with hate. “You know nothing, can prove nothing, and I am done listening to your—”

“I know what happened at Hazelton,” I barked acidly, “and when the police hear about it, they're going to be real interested in you. You and this portrait and your sick collection of memorabilia.”

He froze, his mouth dropping open, and the color drained from his face. His mouth moved a couple of times, but he didn't make a sound. And then, without warning, he spun on his heels and started sprinting for the nightstand. The sudden movement caught me by surprise, and the distance he had to cover was so short that by the time my reflexes kicked in, it was already too late for me to beat him there—too late for me to make it out the door, down the hall, and all the way to the stairs before he could manage to put a bullet in my spine. So I did the only thing I could; I took the heavily framed portrait of January and threw it at Cedric's head with every bit of strength, determination, and anger I had left.

It revolved in the air, and then—to my amazement—actually caught the man behind his left ear with a satisfying
crack
. The portrait ricocheted to the floor, its glass shattering on impact, while Cedric fell to one knee and pitched forward against the nightstand, propelled by his own, prodigious body weight. Everything on top of the little unit smashed to the ground, and the man landed hard among the debris, sprawling sideways onto the carpet with a sharp cry.

I was on top of him before he had a chance to right himself. Blinded and deafened by wrath, I have no idea what words came out of my mouth, and only a vague notion of how many times I must have hit him. When I became aware of myself again, my arms were sore, my knuckles raw and tender, and my throat ached from screaming obscenities. Blood was smeared across Cedric's broad, puffy face, leaking from his nose and a gash above one eyebrow, his glasses were smashed, and his meaty forearms were flung over his head in self-defense.

“Where is she?” I shouted hoarsely, my eyes swimming, my hands clutching his collar and shaking him as hard as I could. “What did you do with her?”

To my complete surprise, he began to laugh—a bitter, contemptuous laugh that rattled in the back of his throat like gravel pouring down a metal chute. “You're a pathetic child. You think you're a hero, some sort of Galahad defending his fair maiden's honor? You have no idea what she was!” His eyes flickered brightly, gazing up at me from his blood-streaked, sneering face with a kind of manic delight. “She was a temptress, a succubus, and I only gave her what she wanted!” I punched him again, and his lip split open like a rotted peach, the blood rushing over his yellowed teeth making his malicious grin twice as gruesome. “How pitiful you are. A sniveling, snot-nosed
boy
. You would never have been enough for her, you—”

I hit him again, in the side of the head, but the blow landed wrong; after a sudden, sharp twinge, my hand went numb, and I could tell instantly that I'd hurt it seriously. Incensed, I grabbed his throat with my other hand, saliva dripping from my bared teeth as I spat, “She was just a
girl
.”

“She was a Venus mantrap,” he retorted, unmoved by my ferocity, “a siren, determined to lure me to my ruin. I knew it. I knew it from the moment I set eyes on her, but I was powerless to resist. I knew exactly what she was, what was inside of her, but still I loved her. So help me, I really and truly loved her. She
made
me do those things! I had no choice. No choice at all.”

“She was going to be a scientist.” I was crying and exhausted, and if I could have hit him again, I would have, but my right hand was immobilized, a distant ache beginning to throb rhythmically within it. “She was going to move to California and study astronomy and
be
someone, do something important, but you took all of that away from her! From her and Reiko, both.”

He came alive then, his face darkening with rage, and he growled, “Don't you dare compare January to that little Japanese
bitch
!” He shoved me off him with such force that I practically flew across the room. I landed on my ass, my head striking the doorjamb so hard that light strobed briefly behind my eyes. Struggling to his knees, Cedric glared at me through a mask of blood, his eyes glowing like hot brands. “There was
nothing
special about that girl, nothing enchanting! She was a vile, foulmouthed
shrew
, who didn't understand January and me any more than you do!” Panting, he spat a streak of pink, bubbling slime onto the carpet. “She threatened me! She came to me spewing filth, accusing me of things in the most appalling language—this … this offensive, unladylike
bilge
—and she expected me to grovel, to show her some sort of
respect
!”

“Is that why you killed her?” I asked groggily. The room was tilting madly, and my hand was rapidly turning fat and purple. “Her ‘unladylike bilge'?”

“She claimed that she would destroy me, that she would tell the police a number of terrible things she said January had told her about me. I couldn't let her do it, could I? My career would have been over. My
life
would have been over.” He grinned again, evilly, and his body shook with smug, proud laughter. “So I stopped her. I begged her to stay quiet—
begged
her, if you please—and once she thought she had the upper hand, I put a screwdriver through her throat and cut out her vulgar, spiteful tongue!” His grin spread wider, bursting with madness, and he began shuffling backward, eyes on me as one hand groped through the air for the drawers of the nightstand. “And now I think it's time I did something about you.”

I tried to get up—whether to run away or to attack again I wasn't sure—but the floor wouldn't stay put under my feet. I fell back down with a thud, the room Tilt-A-Whirling around me in a nauseating square dance. At the same time that Cedric took his eyes off me, turning to the nightstand, I heard a distant, frantic hammering at the apartment door. Then my name, shouted with utmost urgency: “Flynn!
Flynn!
”

The door crashed open, feet pounding through the entryway, while Cedric fumbled the gun out into the open, crammed bullets into it with panicky fingers, and jerked back the hammer. He had just managed to take aim when Kaz appeared in the doorway beside me, drawing up short and turning gray from the collar of his peacoat to the roots of his rain-slicked hair as he beheld the tableau in the bedroom.

“Oh, thank G-God someone came!” Cedric stammered unconvincingly, the gun pointed directly at my chest. If he so much as flinched, I would be dead. “This boy, this … this thief, he broke into my apartment and attacked me! I was very nearly killed! Please call the police—there's a phone in the living room.”

“I've already called them,” Kaz reported mechanically, his voice a quaking half whisper. He stood in the doorway like a pillar of salt, transfixed by fear.

“Oh.” Cedric's eyes shifted as he recalculated, his mouth jerking into a smile of false gratitude. “Good, thank you! You had best wait in the hall for them. This young man is quite dangerous, and I don't want anything to happen to you.”

“I told them—” Kaz's voice choked off, and he went silent. For a weighty moment, he stared blankly at Cedric's weapon, eyes wide and glazed—and then he looked over at me. I saw something shift in his expression then, and he swallowed hard, his voice barely steady when he spoke again. “I told them you asked Flynn to come here. I told them he learned about what you did at Hazelton, that he called you to give you a chance to explain, and that you asked him to come to your place. I told them that I was afraid, that—that I thought you were going to hu-hurt him.”