I moved alongside the bed and pulled the blanket back. Andrew Stark lay there, bloody, eyes closed. His T-shirt had a picture of a grinning cartoon turkey on the front. The turkey was covered in blood. A knife was plunged deep into his chest. Stark was naked from the shirt down.
I didn’t touch anything else. I looked around the room and into the bedroom. There was a teddy bear and stuffed elephant lying back on a pink blanket. I went back into the room where Stark was lying, checked my watch, and started for the door.
The moan wasn’t loud, but it was clear and it came from the supposedly dead Andrew Stark. I went back to the body and knelt. Stark’s eyes opened and moved in the general direction of my face. I didn’t bother to tell him not to move.
I could have just called 911, but a few minutes probably wouldn’t make much difference. At least that’s what I told myself.
“You’ll be all right,” I assured him as I examined his wound.
He looked around the room as if he had no idea of where he was. He smelled of alcohol. There was plenty of blood.
“You’ll live,” I lied. “I’m going to try to stop some of this bleeding. Then I’ll call an ambulance.”
His right hand came up suddenly and gripped my wrist. For a dying man, he was damned strong. I tried to pull loose as he croaked, “Why?”
“You want to live?”
“Why?” he asked.
Since it was the same question I’ve asked myself a few thousand times since my wife was killed, I had no good answer for him, but I had the feeling that his “why” didn’t mean the same thing mine did.
His eyes began to roll. A very bad sign.
He whispered something I couldn’t hear, pain in his face…Then he closed his eyes and I leaned over to be sure he was still breathing. He was.
I picked up the phone, not worrying about fingerprints any longer, and dialed my own room. Janice answered before the second ring.
“Yes?” she said with a quivering voice.
“It’s me, Fonesca. Get down to your room fast. Leave the kids there.”
“What…?”
“He’s still alive.”
She didn’t answer and I had no time to talk to her now.
“Fast,” I said.
I hung up, checked my watch, sat on the bed, and said, “Stark, you still with me?”
His groan suggested that he was. I checked my watch. Almost a minute passed. If she didn’t show up fast, I’d have to call 911.
The knock was soft, but it was a knock. I let her in. She was a ghostly pale, beautiful vision of white and blood red. I closed the door and she walked over to Stark, who hadn’t moved.
“Andy?” she asked.
He groaned in response.
She turned to me and, voice and hands shaking, said, “I didn’t kill him.”
“You’ve got to call 911,” I said. “You’ve got to call now. Just tell them a man has tried to kill himself. Tell them where we are. Don’t answer any more questions.”
She shook her head no. I picked up the phone and handed it to her. I hit 9 for an outside line and then 911.
I could hear a voice on the other end because the phone wasn’t close to her ear, but I couldn’t make out the words.
She said exactly what I had told her to say and hung up.
“Good,” I said. “I think we’ve got at least five minutes, maybe more. I’m going to be back in my room with the kids. You understand?”
She nodded again, looking at the half-naked, bloody man on the bed. He made a series of short gasping sounds, managed to reach the handle of the knife with his right hand, and tried to pull it out before I could stop him. Then he stopped struggling and his hands flopped to his sides.
I checked for a pulse in his neck. There wasn’t any.
“You want to tell me what really happened here, or you want me to guess?” I asked. “Faster if you tell me.”
“He didn’t tell you?” she said, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking.
“He didn’t say anything other than ‘Why?’” I said, determined to be out of there in three minutes. “You said he hit you. There’s not a mark on you. You said he tried to attack you and you fought him, but the kids didn’t wake up. And your robe is bloody and I don’t see a tear in it or a button missing. You stabbed him while you were wearing the robe. You stabbed him while he was lying in the bed. You stabbed him when he was asleep. You got up, put on your robe, and stabbed him.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, crying, her hands, white-knuckled, clasped in mock prayer.
“Maybe I do. Which kid?”
“Which…?”
“You woke up and saw something. Which of your children was he going to molest?”
“Sydney,” she said wearily. “The bathroom light was on and the door open a little, a night-light. He was sitting on Sydney’s side of the bed, his hand between her legs. She was asleep. Andy had been drinking while I was asleep. I could smell it across the room. He started to touch her. Before I could get up, he came back to bed. A few minutes later when he started to snore I got up and put on my robe. I took the knife and…the rest of what I told you was true.”
“Does Sydney know what Stark was trying to do to her?”
“No, I don’t think they even looked at the bed when we left the room,” she said. “They weren’t even really awake.”
I checked my watch. Florida police had been under fire for months over not responding to 911 calls quickly enough. Time was running out.
“You came out of the bathroom,” I said to Janice Severtson. “You could tell he was drunk, mumbling. Words you couldn’t understand. Saw him stab himself. You called 911 and remembered that you had seen me, an old friend of your husband’s, in the hotel. You called me, brought the children to my room, and came back here to wait for the ambulance and police. You understand?”
“I…,” she said, looking at Stark.
“He’s been talking about killing himself for running away with you, his partner and best friend’s wife. He’s been talking about regretting things he did in the past. He’s been drinking and he got depressed when he drank. You’ve got that?”
“I…”
“Mrs. Severtson,” I said, “if you want to keep your kids out of this, you better remember. You tell the truth about what happened and why, and you lose your kids. Television news will get it and make it all very ugly. Your picture, the children’s picture all over the place, maybe network. Good-bye kids. Good-bye husband. Probably jail time. So, can you remember what to say?”
“He killed himself,” she said. “But why can’t I just say he attacked me and I defended myself?”
“That’s what you told me, and it took me about two minutes to figure out you were lying,” I said.
Stark’s hand and fingerprints were on the knife handle. Even if a smart cop thought something was more than a little suspicious, he probably wouldn’t pursue it. Stark had a record. Stark, Janice, and her children weren’t rednecks in a cheap motel room. Class still has its privileges.
“I’m going,” I said. “They’ll be here any second. You’ll be all right.”
It wasn’t a question but she answered more strongly than I expected.
“I’ll be all right.”
I moved toward the door.
“Wait,” she said.
I turned toward her. She went into the bedroom and came back almost immediately. She handed me the teddy bear, the stuffed elephant, and the pink blanket. I went out and moved fast without running toward the stairwell. Below, out of sight, I could hear the sound of voices in the lobby. I ran up the one flight and came out close to the wall where I couldn’t be seen by anyone eight flights below. I made my way to my room, opened the door, and found Sydney asleep on the sofa next to her brother, who was nodding off as he watched the end of the Dick Van Dyke episode. In her sleep, Sydney took the elephant and the pink blanket and clutched them to her chest.
Kenny looked at me. I handed him the teddy bear.
“What happened?” he asked, eyes blinking heavily. “Where’s my mom?”
“Mr. Stark had an accident,” I said.
“I don’t like him anymore,” the boy said. “Sydney doesn’t like him anymore either. He smiles, buys us stuff, but he’s a fake. We told Mom. She wouldn’t listen.”