“That’s why we didn’t go. We thought he was dead and, well, none of us was thinking straight. Did we make the wrong decision? Of course we did. But at the time Benjamin Hyatt was all I could think about. I was sure, I was so sure that if we called the police I was going to end up in jail. Or I’d be put into custody while they figured it out. And bad things happen to people in custody,” I say. “We needed to think about it. We wanted to get a lawyer first.”
“And now? Why don’t you go now?”
“Because now they’re not going to believe me.”
“They’re not going to put you in prison, Charlie. Not if you didn’t do this.”
“Won’t they? Come on, Jo, if they can’t find Cyris, then that only leaves me.”
“So what are you saying? That you want to find Cyris?”
“I’m not saying that,” I tell her, though I have been thinking that. Problem is I wouldn’t know how to go about it. “But he killed each of them in their own house, and I was in both those places too. They’re not going to believe me.”
“You think I do?”
“Don’t you?” I ask, turning toward her.
Jo looks down at her coffee cup. It’s the kind of body language only a blind person could miss. Her cup is empty, but there must be something awe-inspiring in it because she doesn’t look up at me for another minute.
“You don’t believe me,” I tell her.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then say you believe me then.”
“A year ago I would have believed you,” she says.
“Jesus, how can you make a leap from me beating up some guy who jammed his hand up your dress to thinking I’m capable of murdering two women?”
“I’m not making that leap at all,” she says, looking angry. “I’m saying that you’re not completely the man I thought you were.”
“I. .”
“I don’t doubt you had something to do with their deaths.”
I move back to the sofa. My coffee hasn’t got any warmer. “Something to do with their deaths. I can’t believe you,” I say. “I can’t fucking believe you would say that.”
“What am I supposed to think? You’ve come here out of the blue, you’re covered in cuts and bruises, you tell me you were with two dead women. If everything happened the way you said it happened, then you’d have gone to the police,” she says, summing up problem number one. I know problem number two won’t be far away. “That’s what an innocent man would do. So if you really are that innocent, then why are you deliberately making the wrong choice?”
Ah yes, the Real World. A world full of ghosts and monsters-and choices. I can’t go to the police because they’ll think I did it. Hell, even Jo thinks I did it. Cyris drove a metal stake into Luciana’s chest and then into Kathy’s, he killed each of them in their own homes. Somewhere during the night his insanity rubbed off on me. I slam my coffee cup onto the table so that its cold contents splash me. Jo jumps. “Are you deaf? They’ll put me in prison!”
“Calm down, Charlie.”
“Calm down? I am calm!”
“If you won’t call the police, I will,” she says, getting up.
I put both hands out in front of me as if to ward off her suggestion. “I’m sorry, Jo, I’m sorry,” I say, trying my best to sound it even though I’m not. “Please, don’t call them, okay? Please, not yet. I’m just. . fuck, I don’t know. Stressed. Confused. I mean hell, everything I know I should have done I didn’t do because. . I mean. . well, people can’t know what they’re going to do until they’re in that situation, and last night was. . was about as tough a situation as it can get. Please, just let me convince you.”
“Of what, Charlie? That this Cyris of yours exists? That you killed him too?”
And there lies problem number two. There lies the biggest reason for her doubt. I killed Cyris. I killed him with my bare hands and somehow that didn’t stop him. Didn’t stop him at all. Not in the Real World because there bad things happen. In that world bad people like Cyris can come back from the dead.
Of course I’m enough of a realist to know that’s not true, because the dead stay dead and that’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way the living prefer. I didn’t kill Cyris, I only wounded him, and in the process he became unconscious. I don’t know. Maybe he just played possum. I wonder what the outcome would have been if that knife had gone a few inches higher or lower. Would I be sitting here with cold coffee on my hand? Would I be sitting with Kathy and Luciana instead?
“He was a monster,” I tell her.
“Repeat after me, Charlie. There are no such things as monsters.”
I shake my head. “I’m not saying he came back from the dead. I’m just saying he’s a monster. Not the movie kind, but the real kind. Monsters are real people, Jo.”
“I’m calling the police,” she says.
“You can’t.”
“Just watch me.” She heads toward the phone.
I stand up. “Don’t, Jo. At least just let me walk out of here.”
She turns around. Puts her hands on her hips. She stares at me, and I was married long enough to Jo to recognize when she’s making a big decision. I say nothing. It takes her a few seconds, and in that time she stares hard at me before coming to her conclusion. “Okay, Charlie, you win. Just don’t involve me any further.”
“Come with me,” I tell her.
“What? Why the hell would you suggest that?”
I go to answer, but really I don’t know. It just came out.
“Leave, Charlie. Now.”
“Coming here could have put you in danger,” I say, and I say it as a reason for her to come with me, but when the words come out I realize they’re true. “Cyris will find me, and if he finds you he’ll kill you,” I say, the words urgent now. “No matter what you think, he is a monster, Jo.”
“Then I’m no safer with you, am I?”
“Are you going to call the police?”
“You’re a mess. You’ve taken a beating, your hands are shaking, you keep shouting.”
“I’m not shouting!”
“You are. Look,” she says, “why don’t you go home and we can discuss it tomorrow, okay?”
“I’m not shouting.”
“Okay, okay. Please, I want you to leave.”
“I’ll leave, but you have to promise me you won’t call the police.”
Hands back on hips. Another decision process. “I won’t.”
“Won’t promise or won’t call them?”
She tilts her head and stares at me, tightening her lips into a thin line.
I hold my hands out in front of me, this time trying to ward off her anger. “Okay. Look, I’m sorry, I really am. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m going to leave.”
“I think that’s best.”
Not knowing what else to say, I end up thanking her for the coffee, which, in the context of the evening, feels like an incredibly dumb thing to do. She walks me to the door. I stand on the doorstep and look back at her. Maybe she’s right. Maybe the police would understand. But I’m picking they wouldn’t. I’m picking if I walk in there and tell them what I told Jo I’ll never walk back out. Everybody knows the police have a way of making people look guilty when they’re not. Everybody knows innocent people go to jail, innocent people who think the justice system will work for them, innocent people who lose ten years of their life for something they didn’t do.
Only running away isn’t the solution either.
“Charlie?”
What I need to do is find Cyris. That’s the solution. It’s like what Jo said earlier. If I can do that, then the police will know what really happened. It makes sense. Perfect sense. But how?
“Charlie?”
Put an ad in the paper? Put up a blog online? Social media? And if I did find him, what then? Would I really go to the police? I think about what I did to the man who touched Jo. What would I do to the man who killed those two women?