Hey Folks. A darker story for April this time. I wanted to try a BTB story, but with a twist. Where the hero doesn't magically write a best seller or turn his life around after being dumped on. It's about you and me, and what happens to us when we are shat on from a great height. There's sex, but it's more about the story than that.
Again, thanks to PennLady for the editing and pointing out where I suck. And there's a lot of that;)
He died in her arms, and she was shaking and crying frantically. She didn't even know his name, only that she owed him her life. She sat on the ground, clutching at his body, holding him, as she felt the warmth leave his body, with him staring up at her, trying to speak and only bloody foam leaving his mouth.
April had never seen anyone die before. She'd never watched the life leave the eyes, the face go slack and realize that this person, this set of memories and experiences and reactions would be gone forever.
It was cold, it was dark and it was a back alley. It probably wasn't the worst place to die, but it was probably up there in the top five.
That's where the EMTs found her: sitting on the ground, hunched over him, clutching at him desperately, crying and shaking. The attended to her, dragging her away from the body, and then attended to the other two people lying on the wet ground – it had rained earlier that day, before the sun went down, and the alley was still slick from it.
The alley itself was nothing special. Back doors to businesses, all mismatched, brick walls with graffiti on them, large garbage cans, cabling overhead. Exactly what you'd expect to find in a back alley way in any city in the world. Anonymous. Unspecial. And for one man, deadly.
The EMT's took April to the back of one of their red ambulances, to wait for the police to arrive. They gave her coffee and a blanket and recognized the onset of shock. She didn't stop shaking and asking inane questions. The EMT's were used to that – it didn't phase them at all.
Eventually the cops arrived, and with it, Detective Ambrose Hillier. Ambrose was thirty-seven, looked forty-five, was tired and grouchy and didn't want to be in a dark alleyway with a dead John Doe. He'd gone through a nasty divorce the year before and he'd only just started out dating again, and on the second date, the call had come through and here he was.
He was probably never going to see Mercy again – she'd made it clear were she thought his priorities should be – and in some ways, it was a good thing, because the life of a homicide detective meant there would be lots of missed nights, so better to find out she had no stomach for that now than later.
He pulled up his pants again –in the last year he'd lost thirty pounds and none of his clothes fit properly any more, but he was damned if he was going to wear suspenders like his colleagues. He knew he looked slovenly enough, with adding to the impression.
Looking around, he saw the EMT's helping one man who was just recovering consciousness. He looked over at one of the other bodies and caught the eye of the EMT trying to help him – it was Harry Smiles. Harry looked up, saw Hillier looking at him and shook his head. No chance there then.
Hillier looked over at the other body, the one where the girl had been found. The EMT there was still working on the body, so Hillier walked over. He put his hand on the EMT's shoulder and startled her. She looked up, not stopping what she was doing with chest compression. There was no hope in her eyes; she was doing what all EMT's are duty bound to do, just in case. In this case, there was no just in case, but she was contentious and so she was doing it anyway. He noticed her eyes were extremely blue and she had blond hair coming out of her cap that was jammed on her head. It was strange, the things you noticed in these circumstances – what leapt out at you.
He looked around and saw the girl, the victim, sitting over at the edge of one of the ambulances. She was pretty. Tall, slim, well dressed, blond short hair, cut in a page boy style. Diamond earrings, expensive shoes. Blanket that had been put around her shoulders that was now sitting on the floor. Very out of her element, he judged. He headed towards her, being stopped on the way by one of the uniforms swarming around.
"Hey, Detective," he said. It was Paul Savage. Good cop. Did the whole Blue Knight thing, knew everyone in the neighborhood and they knew him. It was nice but it didn't mean squat. No one around this particular part of the neighborhood would talk to him about things they didn't want to talk about, regardless of how he swung his truncheon. This was 2015, not 1956. Still, he was solid. If he told you something, it was so.
"What do we have, Paul? First impressions?" asked Hillier.
"Looks fairly open and shut, Detective. She," he gestured to where April was taking another sip of coffee and looking right at him, "was mugged by three ne'er-do wells. Two of them are still here, but one got away. I haven't got out of her what she was doing in an alleyway like this – rich girl like her – but according to her, these three jumped her.
"She takes some kind of martial arts and was fighting back. She took out one guy and was about to deal with another when our John Doe back there appeared. From what she says, even though she dealt with one, and was facing off against another, the third managed to get behind her, and was armed with a knife. She didn't know.
"This guy," he gestured to the body on the ground, "appeared, jumped on the guy with the knife and took him to the ground. He dropped something, and we picked it up; it's in my squad car. Just a bag of old clothes. Anyway, she belted the other guy, and kicked him the nuts. By then, our perp with the knife was up and had already stabbed this guy twice. Somehow he managed to get the knife away from him – we found it in the corner, and the guy with the knife then did a runner.
"Our John Doe tried to get the girl out of the alley and collapsed on the way. He died in her arms. She has no clue who he is. She says he just appeared and saved her life. She's pretty shaken up; obviously. That's how it's reported and frankly, it looks that way. She broke the other guy's neck, by the way. He's alive but he'll never walk again. And the other guy is protesting about how he was attacked out of the blue.
"But we've got video from two different angles," Savage pointed out two different cameras mounted on the walls, "and what's more, one of them is even an infrared camera. It's all exactly as she said. There's no incitement here; it's a clear case of stand-your-ground. We still don't know why she was here or why they jumped her, but in terms of events, it's exactly as she said," Savage finished.
"Witnesses?" asked Hillier.
"None yet. And I don't really expect any. It's late and it's a dark alley and most of these business are shut anyway. I think that's why they tried it on in the first place."
Hillier nodded.
"Well, time to talk to the lady then. What's her name?"
"She is one April Carlisle. Thirty-two years old. Works as a clinical psychologist for some think tank downtown. Single."
Savage suppressed a small smile at that last statement. Hillier saw it and didn't respond. He knew his fledgling dating efforts were watched with great amusement by the department, but right now he didn't care. This was a murder scene. Time enough for the funnies later. He just looked at Savage with a hard stare and Savage looked away.
He walked over to April, aware that she was studying him.
"Miss Carlisle?" he said.
She nodded and looked around for somewhere to put down the now-cold coffee. She couldn't find anywhere to hand, and just put it on the ground, by the Ambulance wheels.
She looked back at Hillier and he was aware of how good-looking she was. Groomed was the word. Hair perfect. Perfect application of makeup, apart from the ugly bruise on her cheek and the marks on her neck.
"Can you tell me what happened here please, Miss?" asked Hillier. At times like this, you used as little words as you could. Let them fill in the blanks and the silences. Often they said more than they meant to.
