Page 54 of Swerve
“I’m calling 911,” Helmer says. I hear him asking for an ambulance at this address just as we reach Madison’s door. Helmer bangs hard on the knocker, but there’s no answer. He turns the knob. It’s locked. “Stand back,” he says, and then rams the door with his left shoulder. It doesn’t give the first time, so he moves farther back and then rushes the door again. This time, part of the frame breaks, and he reaches inside to turn the lock so that it swings open.
“Madison!” Helmer charges in, glancing left and right as he heads for the kitchen, calling her name again. I’m right behind him so that when he comes to a complete stop just short of the doorway, I barrel into him. He reaches back to steady me, and I step to the side, gasping at the sight before us.
Madison is lying on the floor in front of the stove, a gaping wound in her chest, blood staining her white blouse red. Helmer drops to his knees beside her, feeling for a pulse in her neck. Her lids flutter open, and she stares up at us both, her blue eyes welling with tears. “I . . . I should have told you I knew him.”
“An ambulance is on the way, Madison. Hold on, okay? Who did this to you?”
“Ser-Sergio.”
“Why?” Helmer asks, not hiding his shock.
“I . . . told him you were asking . . .”
“Shh,” I say, dropping down beside her and taking her hand between mine. “Save your strength. They’ll be here in a minute, and you’re going to be fine.”
Madison’s gaze drops to the blood on her blouse, the blood pooled on the floor around us. I glance down to see that my jean-covered knees are now also red. When she looks up at me, her voice is barely audible when she says, “I didn’t think he would do what you said. About your sister. He was good to me . . . gave me stuff.” She stops there, her lungs audibly gasping for air.
“Don’t,” I say. “You can talk later.”
“Madison,” Helmer says, tipping her chin toward him. “I’ll find him. He won’t get away with this, but I need you to tell me everything you know. His last name? Where he lives?”
She stares up at him, and I cringe at the sound of her struggling to breathe.
“Detective,” I say, “please . . .”
But he ignores me, imploring Madison to answer. “His last name, Madison.”
“Sokolov,” she manages to get out.
“Where does he live?” Helmer pushes.
“I don’t know,” she says on a whisper. “We always came here.”
A siren wails in the distance and then the sound grows closer outside the building. “They’re here, Madison,” I say, squeezing her hand again, as if I can infuse my own life force into her. Her face blurs before mine, and I’m seeing Mia, watching the life fade from her. Is there someone there for her? Panic rises inside me, and I’m leaning over Madison, pleading with her to hold on. The girl’s eyes flutter, and a gurgling noise sounds in her throat. Blood oozes from the left corner of her mouth.
I start to cry.
Helmer puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezes hard. “Emory,” he says, and I latch onto the crazy question of whether this is the first time he’s said my name.
Footsteps pound on the stairs outside Madison’s broken door. Two paramedics rush through, calling out that they’re here. But I look down at Madison’s still body, her open blue eyes, and I can see that they are too late.
Knox
“I am both worse and better than you thought.”
?Sylvia Plath
KNOX GIVES THE officers on the scene all the information he has about the driver of the Range Rover, the name he believes he goes by and the photo of the license plate.
Randall Macintosh, a uniformed officer he’s known since joining the force, takes down everything Knox tells him. “What was your interest in Madison Willard?” he asks, his head swinging from Knox to Emory Benson.
Knox glances at Emory and then says, “I’m doing some private work for Dr. Benson. Her sister and her sister’s best friend recently disappeared from the Spring Jam Festival. In reviewing the festival’s security footage, I saw a man who appeared to be following them. I believe he might have bought the hat he was wearing at the store where Madison worked. We went there earlier tonight to ask her some questions. She indicated she didn’t know who he was, but I had a feeling she wasn’t telling us everything, so we waited for her to get off work. The suspect picked her up outside the store, and we followed them to her apartment. They had barely gotten inside the building before he was coming back out again, and my phone rang. She could hardly talk, but she was asking for help.”
“You think she told him about your questions, and that’s why he shot her?” Macintosh asks.
“I don’t know what else to think.”
The officer’s phone rings. He answers, listens intently, before clicking off, and then says, “The plate on the Range Rover was stolen. Belongs to a woman in Maryland who reported it a couple of weeks ago.”
