she was in shock. “I need you to have a seat, right here, and not touch your back. The ambulance is on the way.”
She left Kate where she was and moved as fast as she could, located a bathroom, and pulled a towel from a rack. Returning, she was relieved to see that Kate had stayed where she was, her hands primly on her knees. “It’s Corbin,” she said to the passing detective.
“Who is?” Detective James asked while pressing the towel against the blood flow from the neck.
“He is. That’s my cousin, Corbin Dell. He was trying to save me.” Her voice was far too calm, the voice of someone speaking in their sleep.
James held the towel in place as it turned dark and damp from the blood. At least the knife hadn’t severed the carotid artery, or he’d be dead already. Still, he had lost a lot of blood. She looked at his face; it did look like the pictures she’d seen of Corbin. His eyes were glassy, and she said, “Corbin, hang in there.”
She thought she saw some comprehension in his eyes.
“Is he dead?” Kate asked.
“No, he’s still alive. The ambulance will be here any moment. Tell me what happened.”
“Corbin woke me up and made me hide in a closet. He was trying to save me. I should have stayed in the closet.”
James heard a distant siren and silently prayed that it was the ambulance coming for them. She pressed two fingers underneath Corbin’s chin. If there was a pulse, it was very, very faint.
“You saved her, Corbin,” she said, in case he was listening.
“Hi, Sanders,” Kate was saying, and James spun her head. A white cat went up to Kate and rubbed against her leg. Kate stroked its back, leaving a streak of blood on its pristine white fur. The siren got louder.
Six hours earlier, Detective James had entered her condo in Watertown, a little bit relieved that the FBI was officially taking over the Audrey Marshall homicide. She calculated that she’d slept a total of maybe twelve hours since the body had been discovered on Saturday. It was now Tuesday evening. She poured herself a Famous Grouse on the rocks and changed into the tank top she liked to sleep in and the Celtics pajama shorts she’d gotten for Christmas from her parents. She liked them, not so much because they were emblazoned with the Celtics logo, but because they were comfortable, and even in the coldest stretch of a Boston winter, she hated to sleep in full-length pajama bottoms. She lay down on her sofa and held the lowball glass on her stomach. The pajama bottoms weren’t the only Celtics-related item she’d received this past Christmas. She’d gotten a mug, as well, from her niece who always got her a gift, and a pink long-sleeved T-shirt from her sister with the Celtics logo on it. It was clear what she was becoming—that relative who was only associated with one thing. She’s a Celtics fan, so get her something Celtics if you can’t think of anything else. She was like that old uncle who liked golf, so all he got was golf stuff. And the message from her sister was also very clear; the fitted pink shirt was suggesting that it wasn’t too late to snag a man.
She sat up a little and took a sip of her scotch. Why was she thinking about this stuff? Because I’m exhausted, she told herself.
She closed her eyes. The image of Audrey Marshall on the kitchen floor, butchered like a piece of meat, swam immediately into her mind, as it had been doing, regularly and without mercy, for the past three days. She sat up on the sofa, had another sip of her drink, and stretched her back out, listening with satisfaction to the small popping sounds coming from her spine.
Her cell phone rang, and she knew instinctively that it was her captain before she even saw his name on the screen.
“Thought you’d like to know that we got an anonymous call right after you left. It came from a pay phone in the South End, from a man who claimed to be one of Audrey Marshall’s friends, but he wouldn’t give us a name. He said that Alan Cherney is the killer, and that Alan has a bloody knife in his possession.”
“Jesus. How did he know that?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Probably knew because he planted it on him.”
Mark laughed, and as usual, laughing made him cough. “Thought you’d like to