The Thomas Blume Series

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Cold caller.

Of course, Amir couldn’t see me all the time. Not when I sat in my dank little apartment with a fridge full of beer and two nearly full bottles of whiskey. I also knew that he was the responsible type who left for home at a decent hour … so if I decided to become better acquainted with Jack or Johnnie, there was no way he’d know.

Cheating on the little commitment I had made stirred up more guilt, but that was okay. By then, remorse and I had become so close, I doubt I could have functioned without it.

I didn’t feel too bad about the situation with Amir, though. I was going to find my family’s killers. It was just the drinking part I had told a little white lie about.

Acting out on that lie, I knocked back my fourth beer of the night—which was probably my seventh or eighth of the day—when someone knocked on my door. It was after ten at night, and having a visitor was strange. Hell, having a visitor at any time was strange. Curious, I stood … too quickly. I had forgotten about the couple of shots of whiskey I’d downed. It caught up to my legs, and I damn near fell in a heap.

I steadied myself, waiting for the knock to come again. “One minute,” I hollered, totally surprised by my swirling head. Not completely wasted yet, but quickly tipping over to that side.

I gathered my momentum and headed through my office for the door. I reached to turn on the dust-covered lamp that should have retired itself decades ago. My balance betrayed me as my feet swayed one way and my shoulders overcorrected. I stumbled hard, crashing into the side table that held the only source of light in this part of the room.

For a split second, I felt suspended in freefall, too late to steady the course. My thigh screamed out in pain as it hit the corner of the hardwood table, but my shoulder took the brunt of the force, slamming against the thin wall.

“s**t!” I cried out, too buzzed to care if the visitor on the other side of the door heard me. If they cared about manners they would have called first, or at least arrived at a respectable hour.

I looked down as the lamp landed on the padded carpet with a dull thud that mocked me. I squinted into the darkness to see if my shoulder had damaged the wall but couldn’t see a thing.

Instead, I propelled myself forward again, this time with my arms spread wide in front of me, in part to avoid slamming my face against an unexpected wall, but mostly to maintain some semblance of balance. Feeling foolish, like a child mimicking a tightrope walker, I took the three remaining paces. Arriving at the door still upright was a small miracle.

Perhaps fifteen seconds had passed since the knock. I opened the front door slowly, still uncertain who could be coming to visit at such an hour, but the hallway beyond was empty.

When I stepped out and looked over the rail to the street below, the light was bad and my vision blurry. The shadows blanketed everything, and the weak glow from the streetlamp at the end of the road did nothing to help. Faintly, I caught a glimpse of a woman’s figure halfway along the sidewalk. She looked to be in a hurry. As there was no one else on the street within the immediate vicinity, I assumed she’d been the one to knock on my door.

I nearly called out to her, but my tongue was far too thick from the booze. Instead, I watched her slink out of view, swallowed by the shadows. I made a “huh” sound as she slipped into a black Audi parked at the curb. She didn’t even look back in my direction as she started the engine and drove off. Her headlights flicked on, pointed further along the street. Then she turned the corner and was gone, leaving behind nothing but darkness and the patter of rain.

Who was she and what did she want with me?

I shrugged and closed the door. Sure, an unexpected visitor at such an hour was strange, but it wasn’t enough of a mystery to keep me awake … or sober.

Indoors the following day, I holed up in the apartment, staring blankly at what passed for daytime entertainment on the scuzzy TV set I had found in the closet when I moved in.

My late-night visitor was still a mystery. The only thing I could figure is that maybe Anthony’s wife had found out where I lived. Maybe she had come by to give me a piece of her mind and then chickened out when she heard someone stumbling towards the door.

The real question was why she had knocked on my door only to run away before I could answer. Isn’t it obvious, you drunk? I asked myself. She heard you stumbling around in here and had second thoughts.

The stream of ideas came and went, fading in and out during the day. It was what Sarah would have called a Wasted Day—one of those days when you have big ideas but get little done. It’s a waste of time, a languid sort of nothingness.

Before I realized it, night had fallen. What had happened to the day? I sort of recalled eating lunch, and I know I had a dinner of god-awful mac and cheese. I had considered heading to the pub, but I hadn’t drunk anything all day, and I figured what the hell? Maybe I could give my promise to Amir the old college try after all.

I’d spent the wasted hours thinking about Sarah and Tommy. I recalled the details of their case files. There were photocopies of the files in my closet—a gift that the Metropolitan Police didn’t know I had—and knew I could go to them anytime. But I also knew every line by heart, every gruesome heartbreaking detail. Every Photograph.

The Blackened room. Sarah’s ruined body sprawled on the sofa. Tommy, face down on the floor, right hand outstretched clutching his favorite orange toy gun.

There were no answers to be had there. If there were, then I was apparently not a good enough cop anymore to figure them out.

I headed to bed early. Maybe a restful night’s sleep would help to re-orient me. A good sleep, a huge breakfast … and then perhaps the next day I would do as I had told Amir. I’d start really working on the case, interviewing their old neighbors or Sarah’s former co-workers again. Then, after some real, sober police work, I might find myself with some kind of lead.

Heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I caught a flicker of light outside of my grimy living room window. Someone had pulled to the side of the street to park and—

I froze for a moment in front of the window. A vehicle was there, just visible in the scant light from the lamppost. It was the black Audi from the previous night—the same car the woman had gotten into after retreating from my door. If she was trying to be sneaky, she was making a God-awful job of it. I stood at the window and watched her, waiting to see if she would get out. If she did, the interior light would kick on, and I’d get a good look at her face.

But she didn’t. In fact, I don’t think she even bothered to kill the engine. She apparently changed her mind about meeting me, again. She pulled away from the curb less than thirty seconds after parking. I watched her taillights fade away in a swirl of red, reflecting in the rain.

I retired to bed as I had originally planned, but sleep took a long time coming. I kept seeing those red taillights.

What the hell did this woman want?