Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets (18 page)

“I knew
it
,” Dodge gasps.  “I
knew there was something going on with him.”

“They were both attacked,” Broonzy adds.  “She was stabbed, he was decapitated.”

“Stabbed … what do you mean, stabbed
?” he asks, pulling himself together.

The truth is, he doesn’t understand what happened when he was there, how Siobhan ended up dead – it happened already by the time he hit the door. 

“Samurai sword,” Broonzy says, totally matter of fact.  “It’s either you, or it’s over drugs, or some kind of kinky sex thing. 
He was w
earing a woman’s robe.  Lot of cocaine around.
”

Dodge feels like a bastard, betraying Siobhan like this, letting the police think this kind of weird shit about her, but what they’re thinking about him is worse.

“Something’s not right here, Dodge,” Broonzy tells him.  “I know you were out of the country last night.  Passports don’t lie.  But that don’t mean you didn’t have this done.”

The gauntlet is thrown.

“Yeah,
Broonzy,” Dodge snaps at him,
at the absurdity of the accusation, given the facts Broonzy has.  “I
sent my ninjas after them
.”

End of conversation.

There’s not much left for anyone to say after that.

*****

“You were amazing,” Jaime assures him, caressing his ha
ir and cradling him in her arms on the sofa in his office.
  “You totally did it.”

Dodge just shudders, unable to believe what he’s gotten himself into.

But Jaime is determined to keep those thoughts banished, and
holds him against her
and kisses him lightly on his neck and strokes his arms and his head
.

Dodge in jail does her no good right now.

This is her life to
o.

“I just can’t believe I killed Siobhan,” Dodge moans, holding his head in his hands, forcing Jaime to stroke his stomach instead.

“You didn’t kill her,” she
reminds him softly
. 

If anyone did, it’s herself
, she thinks, a
wave of guilt making her ill
. 

“Yo
u killed the man who killed her – what anybody would do.
”

Or she hopes.  She doesn’t know what really happened, only what Dodge told her.  She doesn’t think Dodge would kill Siobhan; she knows - better than a
nyone - how much he loved her - thinking of
all the times she tried
to steal
him
away
.  And what that labor has now produced.

Shame. 

A deep and horrible shame.

“Maybe I should just turn myself in,” he contemplates.  “Temporary insanity.  Justifiable homicide.”

“There’s no such thing
as justifiable homicide,” she snaps gently.  “It’s called revenge killing.  And that’s what this is going to look like.  You shouldn’t go to jail for what that asshole Dressler did.”

“I know,” he groans.  “But this is only going to be worse if the truth comes out.”

“You have an alibi,” she assures him.

She doesn’t deserve his trust; she has betrayed him in the worst way.  She pray
s
he never figures out what she did, she can only try to protect him now.

“They can’t place you at the crime scene.”

“You shouldn’t be helping me,” he tells her.  “I don’t want you to end up in trouble too.  None of this is your fault.”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” she promises, squeezing him tighter
. 
“You’re in my hands now.”

Her words,
and the soft touch of her hand
s on his head
,
calm him, reassure him this can work.  He doesn’t know what he would do without her
, thanks God she is there to get him through this.
He’s never treated her right, he realizes.  She loves him, he know
s
that for sure - he would never even have known Siobhan was having an affair without her - and all he ever did was take advantage of her love.  In a moment of weakness
- one drunk, impulsive
moment, he betrayed Jaime’s love, Siobhan’s trust, and himself.  And after going ahead and taking
advantage of
her
that
one time, just because he could, he continues to use her, to lean on her, to take from her, and give nothing back.

He d
oesn’t deserve her, he realizes
. 
He loves her, now more than ever, but it’s just a selfish, unfair love. 

But still, her hands caressing him
, he knows
how
she feels too. 

Sees their future together written in the stucco patterns on the ceiling.

And starts to wonder why not now.

She must see the look in his eye
s, the sudden change, the idea
.  H
olding his head between her hands,
she
stops him.

“Dodge,” she whispers.  “Not now.  Not for this reason.”

“I love you, Jaime,” he tells her, not insistently
, not pleading.
 

Just sincerely.
  Just so she knows.

“I know,” she
says.  “I love you too.  There’ll be a
time for us.”

“I know,” he tells her, some happiness penetrating his grief.

She leans toward him
and kisses him lightly on his lips. 

For a moment, she
thinks maybe they should just get on with this
. 

But no, she has to think longer term.

*****

Chuck
sits at the computer at Siobhan’s office.  He’s still hiding out at work for the most part, not exclusively, but feels the safest there.
  Between fits of paranoia and anguish, trying to get a mental grip on what went down in Amsterdam, he gets bored, though, and kills time rifling through Jaime’s desk and Siobhan’s office.

Opening the Internet browser on Siobhan’s computer, hanging out in her chair like he owns it,
Chuck
g
oogles Jaime’s name, clicks on links that mention her, finds a face shot photo in an article from her high school years.  He saves the image to his jump drive.

Since she walked into his office the other day, he can’t stop thinking about her.  The way he bosses her around.  With all his newfound confidence,
even
after his
rendezvous
in Amsterdam, he still can’t show her the
way he feels.  He doesn’t
want to
just
follow her around forever.  And as much as he wants to forget her last visit, he doesn’t want to forget her.  He doesn’t even really want to forget her last visit; he still pictures her in his
little mail room, wishes he’d kept her there.

He tries to access her Facebook page, to find more photos, but she keeps it private.  He wonders if he makes a page if she’ll let him friend her.  Some people just accept every friend request, he hears.  He quickly sets up a profile, not even having a picture to post.  Even he has to admit it looks like a little creepy when he sends it, and immediately regrets it. 

He laughs at himself that he’s now freaked out about cyber
stalking her, when he stalks her in real life all the time. 

Somehow, it feels creepier online.

Frustrated, unable to find any good
photos of her, he goes instead to
Craigslist.  He hears things about Craigslist.  About things people can find on there.  They say you can find anything on there.  He surfs around in the adult personals, wondering if he can find someone, anyone, who even looks remotely like her.

Even if he has to pay.  A stranger.  Just to pretend.

He wonders if she’ll take a credit card.

*****

Dodge is driving up the T
hruway.  Something’s eating at him.  The question of what Siobhan was really doing at Dressler’s.  He went to catch them in the act, to have proof they were having an affair.  But it didn’t look that way, really.  It looked like she wanted to leave.  If they were having an affair, she wouldn’t have struggled, he wouldn’t have killed her.

Now, in the wake of her death, when all of their problems seem pretty trivial, and he thinks even of the
ir last moments together, that they were happy.

And he can’t bear to think that she died
thinking he had cheated on her -
if she had really found out, as Jaime feared.  And that Siobhan had died cheating on him.  This just doesn’t feel right, but Dodge knows that things in life don’t always feel right.  Sometimes they are all wrong. 

These e
vents might not all end with the tidy
, happy ending everyone wants.

The universe isn’t fair to human consciousness.

It doesn’t need to be. 

Siobhan dies while th
eir relationship is in a bad moment
, and he doesn’t know what she knew, or what she was doing.  And might never.