Alvin studied his longtime friend and saw that his face was presently clouded in such a way that only a fool wouldn’t keep their distance, just by instinct. However, Alvin figured now was as good a time as any to talk things out with him. And in his resolve to have a word, he left his rubber ball spinning like a top on the couch cushion.
“Charlie’s going to need you,” he said as soon he came close to Simon. “Imagine the kind of hell it is for her now.”
If Simon did acknowledge his presence near him, he soon turned his back to walk out of the conversation. But Alvin wasn’t done with him.
“If you feel like hitting someone,” he said, “then by all means, do it. I’m standing right here.” Simon halted and made his hand into a fist. Alvin went on. “Look, you have every right to be angry. But be angry at me, not her. It wasn’t her fault.”
After a moment of internal debate, Simon huskily said, “I know. It was mine.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I broke it off; I pushed her away––I did that.”
“Then do something about it.”
Simon undid his fist. His back was still to Alvin. He half turned his head as if to look at his ex-best friend over his shoulder.
“The two of you––” he started, “how long … how long have you…”
“It was just that one time,” Alvin said with difficulty. “She visited me and it was late and––hmm … and I don’t know. Look it was clearly a lack of judgment on both our parts. But it happened only once.”
“You have feelings for her?” Simon turned to face him. “And don’t bullshit me.”
“I won’t get in the way if that’s what you mean.”
“So you do have feelings for her.” His gaze suddenly grew even more sullen. His eyes were furious. “Since when?”
“No––it’s not like that. And it doesn’t matter. Look, you’re my best friend and even more than that. Don’t let this thing come between us.”
At once, Simon turned his back on him again, saying, “It already has.”
And he walked away, leaving Alvin alone with his conscience.
III
When he was finished calling 911, Max returned the cell phone to Simon, sat down and just waited it out. Meanwhile, Tara’s kitty cat had intuitively made for the furniture behind which lay the crime weapon. It was now actively trying to paw the knife right out from its place of discovery. Tara came over and cut it out with a grunt. Seeing this, Dom accosted her carefully but she still gave him a cold reception.
“What do you want?” she asked him, shooing the cat off.
“Yeah––I know; I’d be pissed at myself too,” Dom said.
But she would have none of his ice breaker line. She pushed past him.
“Come on, Tara, I got a little excited back there. Don’t know what got into me.”
“You couldn’t just help yourself, could you?”
“Yes I couldn’t.” Dom grabbed her arm. “And you want to know why? Because I got you too deep under my skin, and that’s the problem. You think I’m proud that I trashed that poor Peter the way I did? You think maybe that I enjoyed it? I’m not like that and I don’t want to be that kind of guy.”
“So what are you going to do? You’re going to tie me up to a chair in your room so no other man ever talks to me?”
He could see that she was trying hard to be angry, but Tara wasn’t the kind who held a grudge for long.
“Well,” he said, “if I could I would.”
She shot him with a piercing look. But then it dissolved slowly to give way to an involuntary smile. “You can be really stupid sometimes, you know that.”
“I know… Look, I’m sorry. From this moment on, I’ll try to behave, all right? Will try my best. Can’t guarantee I’ll be good though, but I’ll try.”
“That’s all one can hope for.”
He tickled the palm of her hand with his thumb.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see how Max is doing.”
IV
In good conscience, Alvin joined Charlie in the kitchen and she didn’t seem to mind the intrusion. By the way she was slanted, shoulders sagging, elbows leaning on the edge of the countertop, he surmised that she’d been tearful. She didn’t try to conceal it as he pulled closer.
“You know,” he said casually, “I may have discovered a side of Max that I didn’t know about before, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t define the person he is. I mean that’s not going to change the way we see him today.”
She half smiled; he could see she was forcing herself and waited a moment till the smile faded and she got real.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” he asked her. Strangely enough, he felt nervous around her now.
“Tell you what?”
“If the test came out positive.”
Charlie let out a heavy sigh and straightened back up.
“I don’t know,” she said. “God, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“No it doesn’t.”
Charlie’s head came up slowly. She felt Alvin’s gaze rove on the curve of her shoulder blade and she looked at him.
“So much has become tainted in such a little time,” she said. “We used to be good friends, didn’t we?”
“We still are.”
“Despite what happened between us?”
“Yeah.”
“Despite what happened today, that soap opera in the living room?”
“Yeah,” Alvin said again, “despite all that.”
There was a mutual silence.
Then he added, “If you need me, I’m there. I mean, I can’t even imagine how you’re going to get through this.”
“Have to call my mother. She’s going to trip––”
And saying so, Charlie headed out to the living room, thinking about a thousand ways to break the news of Max’s eventual arrest to her mother. She was a hardnosed woman and Charlie thought she’d have to choose her words carefully, if there were even such words. Her mother would want to be run through the events and the sequence in which they had occurred. And all that over the phone. And in her fashion, she would want to lay the blame on someone. Charlie was already cringing at the sound of her long-winded lament:
“Why didn’t you tell me he was off his meds? You said he was fine, Charlie… Why the hell didn’t you say something?”
Charlie was still freaking over being the bearer of bad news to her mother when something happened, something that made her mind’s gears work. And it happened like this:
In the living room, Tara’s kitty cat took to the couch by way of its folding stairway. And as it comfortably settled on its spot on the cushion, it accidently shoved Alvin’s rubber ball off the couch and down the stairway.
Charlie was intrigued by the ball’s wheeling motion. She carefully observed as it progressed down the four-step stairway in a drooping trajectory. As soon as the ball touched down, Charlie looked up at the living room ceiling and her eyes suddenly lit up.
“Oh my God!” she shouted as realization hit.
Alvin mirrored her action and looked up, though in utter confusion. Seeing nothing of interest on the drywall ceiling, his gaze dropped back to Charlie. “Are you alright?” he asked her.
She was still looking up.
“Now I get it,” she said to herself. ”It makes perfect sense.”
“What are you talking about?”
Charlie didn’t reply. In two or three long strides, she got to the rubber ball and picked it up from the floor. She held it out to Alvin and said, “This is how it all happened!”
At that point, everyone’s attention had already reverted to Charlie’s little display.
“What is it?” Tara asked her. “What’s going on?”
“I think I know how the head of the victim got into the apartment.”
V
Alvin’s eyes popped in disbeli
ef.
“What?”
Dom shared a similar disbelief.
He said, “But I thought––”
“—Just hear me out,” Charlie interrupted him. “Please.”
“Charlie,” Jen said, “we’ve been over it already.”
“Let’s hear what she has to say,” Carol said patiently.
Charlie’s brain was now working fast; she was mentally racing to catch up with her thoughts, fearing to lose them in the lapse before their translation into spoken words. Outwardly, however, she remained self-possessed, her eyes never betraying any sign of neuronal excitement.
It was as such that the others, in their state of puzzlement, perceived her when she declared: “Maybe something did happen to Max while he was out, but I still believe he doesn’t have anything to do with our victim.”
Someone anxiously remarked, “But the facts––”
“Right, the facts… Let’s take some of them and let’s see if they all fit together. When we found the cardboard box, it was duct-taped, right? Then there was the blood on the lamp. About half an hour later, Max came out of the laundry room, all covered in dried blood. The last piece of evidence we found was the knife––a meat cleaver. And remember, only the blade was stained with blood.”
“Okay.” Jen nodded thoughtfully. “But what are you getting at?”
“This. Why was there blood only on the blade of the knife? I mean, to use a cleaver, you must hold it by the handle, right?”
“Yeah,” Alvin agreed. “But the handle was spotless though.”
Carol said, thinking aloud, “Maybe he had gloves on or something, to protect his hands…”
A couple pairs of eyes fastened on Max and he timidly said, “I don’t know. I doubt it––but I don’t know for sure, I can’t tell.”
“When we found him, the back of both his hands was all bloodstained,” Charlie said. “That wouldn’t make any sense then, that he had his hands protected with something while he was supposedly cutting the victim to pieces.”
She paused to let this logical deduction work on the listeners. Then she added:
“But that’s not just it; something else has been bugging me a lot since the onset of this case. Max slept in the laundry room, right? And the only blood trace we found was on that lamp there sitting by that window, several feet away from the laundry room door. Which means after Max pulled inside the apartment, he crossed it to get to that spot.”
“Yeah, that’s about where I found the box,” Carol commented. Her forehead was furrowed because of all the thinking she was doing. “But I see––there was no blood on it either. So Max didn’t carry it there.”
Tara lifted a hand. “Alright, if, according to those inconsistencies, Max couldn’t have brought the cardboard box into the apartment, then who do you think did?”
Jen felt compelled to point out, “I was the first to wake this morning and the front door was locked. It was locked, meaning whoever put that thing in here must have the keys to the apartment because they locked the door behind them. I don’t know about you, but this scenario just seems improbable.”
“I agree,” Charlie said, her voice calm and sure. “That’s why I don’t think someone brought it in here either.”
VI
Charlie’s statement threw everyone off indeed. A sort of heightened incomprehension was zooming up their frozen faces, making them look like grotesque mimes.
“What do you mean ‘no-one brought it in here’?” Carol asked, with a jerk of the head. “It certainly didn’t get in here on a flying carpet.”
Charlie said, “Well, not exactly…”
Her turn of phrase didn’t really help dispel the confusion which reigned over her audience. And so she thought it best to show them so they could understand the way she understood how the whole affair had gone down.
“Tara,” she called, “do you still have the diagram of the apartment complex, the aerial one?”
“Yeah––why?”
“Could you fetch it, please?”
Tara blacked out her next question and obediently moved off to her bedroom. Max anxiously approached Charlie.
“What is this all about?” he whispered. “What are you trying to pull here?”
“Listen, I don’t know what you think you did last night but you didn’t butcher that man, okay? Trust me on this.”
“But the blood … the cardboard boxes scattered on the road?”
“Maybe they’re just incidental, I don’t know.” Charlie patted his arm. “But better exonerate you for this crime first.”
“I’ve already called the police,” Max said, his voice tinged with panic. “They’re on their way––”
“We still have time to get to the bottom of this, Max.”
And with another warm pat, Charlie willed her brother to keep his head up.
And he did.
IX
Tara came back into the living room carrying an ink diagram of the apartment complex layout seen from an aerial viewpoint. Tara had worked it for her urban design class a long time ago. The putative shape of the complex was that of a dragonfly. Nine buildings in total made it up. The head building, which also happened to house management offices, was a whit bigger than the others. Off each side of it, two buildings stood in as the forewing and hind wing of the actual insect-like shape. And at the back of the head building was a row of four buildings which made up the abdomen. Two additional buildings joined the row at the middle. And at the end of the row passed a 20-foot tall fencing wall that separated the complex from the St. John River. The diagram was clearly labeled and included the dimensions of the various rooftops. It looked something quite like this:
Charlie and Tara set the diagram up on a chair so that all could see it. The rest of the group was very attentive. None of them could yet fathom the idea behind this exhibit. It sure was the thing to have to make the living room over into an official crisis room.
At last, Charlie pointed to the four aligned buildings (the abdomen), singling out the rooftop of the one that was directly connected to the head building. She started:
“This is the rooftop of our apartment’s building. And as you can see, it’s surrounded by a lot of roofing, here, here and here… Now, because of the close-set buildings layout of the complex, some windows, in certain apartments, like ours for instance, may overlook the rooftops of adjacent buildings. Now look what will happen if I should do this…”
Charlie stepped up to the inward-swing window by the couch behind which Carol had found the cardboard box. Then she tossed Alvin’s rubber ball out the window. The ball zoomed out across the portion of extraneous roofing that was visible, and a few seconds later, it rolled back toward the window and, instead of re-entering, pressed against the outer sash. The sash presented a roadblock for something as small as the ball and so Charlie had to reach out to recover it.
Suddenly gripped by a new understanding, Tara exclaimed in astonishment, “Wait a minute––Are you saying the box got in here through the window?”
Charlie nodded.
She said, “The slope on the roof must have facilitated the slide.”
Carol said, in a skeptical tone, “But wouldn’t we have found the window open had the box come through the way you’re suggesting it did?”
“Yeah,” Jen quickly agreed. “Just like the front door, all windows were closed this morning. How do you explain that?”
“I agree,” Charlie replied. “You should’ve found the window open. You didn’t simply because Max closed it when he got home. He must’ve noticed that it was open and, just like a reflex, he closed it. This explains why he crossed the living room, leaving in his trail the blood spot on that lamp.”
Charlie’s reasoning was beginning to set pretty well with many members of the audience.
“Yeah, I think that’s possible,” Alvin concurred.
“No, no, no––” Jen shook her head, not buying into that. “Th
is is crazy. I mean body parts don’t just happen to fall out of the sky!”
Charlie’s coolness and confidence didn’t suffer from this rebuttal.
“Let me ask you this,” she said to Jen with a compelling voice. “Suppose you live in this building and, for whatever reasons, you have body parts in your apartment. You have to get rid of them. What’s the first disposal method that pops into your mind?”
“The St. John River,” Tara answered instead. “It’s quite close. I’d go to the river and dump the body parts out there.”
“Right.” Charlie turned to the diagram. “The apartment complex is built near the St. John River, so that makes it the ideal location to dispose of a body. Because then it can drift away with the currents and wash ashore somewhere else, making it difficult to determine the original drop site. Now look—” Charlie’s forefinger pointed at a small window situated across the head building’s pitched rooftop. That window faced towards the river “—I was in the attic once; it’s actually above the top floor of the head building. But it’s also accessible from this building, through a connecting door that’s right upstairs. Anyway, I was there once and I can tell you that it has a little window that overlooks almost every rooftop of every building in the complex. Basically, a two-year-old could squeeze through that window, hop on the rooftop and walk above our heads, from one building to the next. And you see, this row of four rooftops here almost creates a slanted path that ends right on top of the St. John River. A practical water slide and a natural plunge pool––”