EDDIE
The house on Franklin Street looked quiet. There was an old van parked outside. I glanced through the rear door windows of the van and saw boxes stacked inside, and something else, too. I stood for a second in the night air, listening. The city was quiet for once, just the distant traffic.
I approached the house. The front door was open. Even so, I knocked on the door and hollered a greeting as I came inside.
The hallway had a lamp burning on a side table. I called out again, and moved forward until I saw the kitchen and lounge.
Sofia stood in the lounge, in semi-darkness, the light from another lamp burning on the table caught in her eyes, making them look ablaze.
'Eddie, what are you doing here?' she said.
In front of her, on a coffee table, was a chessboard. The pieces laid out as if a game was in full flow.
'I came by to see how you were doing.'
'How did you know I was here?'
'There was no answer at your apartment. This house is yours now, I guess,
and I thought you might be here. I saw a van outside, are you moving in?'
'I thought I'd move a few things into the house. I wanted to keep busy,' she
said.
'Is that your chessboard? Did I interrupt a game? Is someone else here?' I
asked.
'No one else is here. Yeah, this is my board. This is my sister's game. The
game we played when we were kids, and didn't get to finish.'
She reached down, moved a knight.
'And now it's over,' she said. 'I've won.'
The light seemed to move deep into her eyes, making them luminous, like a
predator caught stalking its prey in the moonlight. The frightened, meek Sofia was gone. Her sister was awaiting sentencing for Frank's murder, and Sofia was in the clear. She no longer had anything to fear. Her confidence all but glowed around her like a halo.
'You definitely won,' I said, nodding. 'You must really hate Alexandra.'
'I hated her long before she killed my father. She took everything from me
when she pushed Mom down the stairs,' said Sofia. 'It was an accident. A stupid accident. She didn't mean to kill her. I wasn't angry at Alexandra for taking our mother away. It's that it happened too soon. I hated my mom. I wanted to beat Mom at chess one day. I wanted to grow up, and for my mom to know I was better than her. Better than Alexandra, too. I wanted to hurt Mom, and she took that away from me. I couldn't hurt her in death, even though I tried. Then Dad sent us away. I lost him, too. She deserves to rot for what she did.'
There was a seismic change in Sofia. She looked and held herself differently. I felt like I was really seeing her for the first time. Things were beginning to make more sense. The real reason for the hatred between her and Alexandra was clear now. When she said she'd tried to hurt her mother in death, I knew exactly what that meant. Alexandra pushed Jane at the top of the stairs, but it was Sofia who bit her after she was dead.
Sofia shook her head, as if coming out of a dream. 'Do you want some coffee?'
'Thank you, that would be great. There's been some developments and I wanted to fill you in.'
She led me to the kitchen, turned on the rest of the lights. There was a new coffee machine sitting on the counter, fresh out of the box that lay beside it. Frank never drank coffee, she told me. He preferred tea toward the end. She filled the bun flask with water, plugged in the machine, filled it with fresh grounds and set it to percolate.
'Killers always make mistakes,' I said.
'And you found one?' said Sofia, her tone even and inquisitive.
'I found two. She left a witness alive. Someone who could identify her.'
She opened a cupboard, looking for coffee mugs. There were none.
'They took all the mugs,' she said. She opened more cupboards, found
nothing.
'I guess coffee is off the menu,' I said.
'Looks like it. Sorry, what were you saying about a witness?' She came
around the small breakfast diner in the center of the kitchen, and stood just a few feet from me. She still wore a long coat and boots, even though the house felt warm.
'The guy she paid to put the drugs in Frank's food. He used to work in Jimmy's restaurant.'
'Oh my god! And what did he tell you?'
'He's talking to the cops, right now. He told me he was paid to do it.' She looked down at the tiled floor while she processed this.
'I still can't believe she did it. She's my sister,' said Sofia.
'That wasn't her only mistake.'
'Really?'
'Yeah, but you don't need to worry about it. Honestly. It's over now, Sofia.
You're not in danger anymore. I just wanted to come by, make sure you're okay and then I'll leave the rest to the police.'
'Are you sure you don't want to go and get something to eat? Or we could stay here and have a bite?'
'I'm sure,' I said, approaching her. 'I'm glad it's over. I was so worried that if you got convicted you wouldn't make it inside. You can move on from this. I know it will take time, but you can do it. You're a millionaire now. You have everything.'
She held out her arms as she approached me. I walked toward her and embraced her. I'd left the front door open, and now I took a moment to listen, hard. I could hear sirens in the distance.
'Thank you,' she said.
I patted her arm, and we released one another.
'I'd better get going,' I said, backing away.
The coffee machine started to gurgle a fanfare, to announce it was ready. 'What was the other mistake? You said you found two? Just out of curiosity?' I heard a faint screech of brakes from a car pulling up outside. 'The 911 call,'
I said.
'What about it?'
'Well, when somebody takes a life, there's a lot of emotions flying all over the
place. Adrenaline spikes, blood coursing through your veins, that kind of thing. It's easy to make a mistake right in that moment. See, when she called 911, she said she could tell her sister was in the bathroom. Said she could see shadows of feet beneath the door. I got a text from a friend about twenty minutes ago. Turns out, from your father's bedroom, you can't see any shadows of feet or legs at the bottom of the closed bathroom door. Not even when someone is standing on the other side of the door, turning the handle. So how did she know her sister was in there?'
Sofia's face changed. What had been a warm, contented expression, morphed into something else. Her eyes narrowed, her lips drew tight across her teeth.
'It wasn't Alexandra who said that in the 911 call,' she said, stepping toward me.
'I know. You knew Alexandra was in the bathroom because you watched her go in there. Then you called 911. Harper took a photo of the bathroom with the door closed and light on inside. If we had examined that picture we would've seen there's no light cast beneath the door. That's why you killed Harper before
she looked at those pictures more closely. And Little Tony P didn't pick out your sister, either. He identified you.'
I stepped back, said, 'You can take her now.'
Detective Tyler came around the corner into the kitchen, followed by Soames. 'Sofia Avellino, NYPD. Turn around right now and put your hands on the
counter,' said Tyler.
I stepped back, waited.
Sofia shook her head, and said, calmly, 'This is bullshit. Utter bullshit. I've
already been acquitted of my father's murder. You cannot put me on trial again – that's double jeopardy.'
'Ma'am, turn around and put your hands on the counter, right now,' said Tyler, reaching to his side arm.
Sofia put her hands in the air, slowly turned around, and placed them on the counter.
Tyler let go of his gun, approached Sofia and said, 'I have to search you – do you have any weapons on your person?'
'No, I don't.'
Tyler put his arms out and placed both on top of Sofia's shoulders. He began feeling through the fabric of her coat, then moving his hands down her back, searching for any hidden knives. While he searched, he read Sofia her rights.
'I'm arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Afzal Jatt, Penny Letterman, Hal Cohen, and Elizabeth Harper. You do not have to say anything—'
'That's a crock of shit. There's nothing to link me to any of these murders. Nothing. The word of some coked-up short order cook isn't enough. You've got nothing.'
'We've got this,' said Tyler as he pulled something shiny from Sofia's coat pocket.
A gold crucifix on a cheap gold chain. There were bloodstains still on the cross. Harper's blood. At least, they had still been there when I planted the chain in Sofia's pocket thirty seconds ago.
'No,' she said, when she saw the chain in Tyler's hand.
Soames kept his distance. He was happy for his younger partner to do most of the physical parts of the job. He turned to me and said, 'Thank you.'
'No need,' I said. 'Just do as you promised, and everything will be fine. Also, the van outside. There's some packing boxes in the back, but there's something else too. A black motorcycle.'
Tyler took a step back, and put his other hand into his coat pocket, searching for an evidence bag into which he would place the chain.
Soames turned to me to say something, his mouth opened, but before he could
speak there was a terrible crack.
It didn't sound like any kind of gunshot, or even a gas tank going up. It
sounded wet and hollow.
Tyler had turned toward us, his back now to Sofia. And his face had almost
gone. Something splashed on my cheek. Something hot, that burned.
Sofia dropped the handle of the bun flask. It was all that remained of the coffee pot. The rest of the glass was in Tyler's face. While she dropped the handle, she fell to her knees, pulled at Tyler's jacket and then crawled, fast,
around the other side of the dining table.
I turned to Soames who was wiping frantically at his face. He must've caught
more of the splash of hot liquid than I did.
Another sound, and this time it was a gunshot.
Soames fell back. I ducked, put my head down. The first thing I saw was a
gun hitting the floor, followed by Soames. He'd taken one in the stomach and he was bleeding badly. He'd tried to draw his gun but had dropped it. Too far away for me to reach.
Footsteps.
I looked up and saw Sofia holding Tyler's gun. It was pointed at me.
'Alexa, play my song,' she said.
A sibilant voice erupted from somewhere in the kitchen, electronic, and cold.
'Playing "She" by Elvis Costello.'
The music started up, and Sofia smiled.