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“You’re always babying me.” Minka walks on my left, her right hand wrapped in mine and her feet slow. But we make our way up the four flights of stairs inside our apartment building and come to a stop outside our door. “You undermine my authority when you take care of me in front of my colleagues.”
“I let you walk up the stairs on your own two feet.” I slip a key in the lock—though we both know I could pick it—then I push the door open to reveal our outdated, L-shaped kitchen, and on the other side of that, the back of our couch that faces a television and a pair of windows.
The entire common space is one large room, and at the end of a dark and dingy hall is our bedroom.
“I could’ve carried you up,” I finish, with a not-at-all-veiled threat. I swap our hands and instead wrap her arm around mine so I can provide more support, then slamming our door shut, I detour toward the fridge and grab the Factor pack we always keep in the middle of the middle shelf, front and center. “Carrying you would’ve been legions more embarrassing.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t.” She allows me to walk her all the way to the couch and lower her down. Then she watches as, straightening my back again, I tear open the Factor box and take out the diluent liquid vial.
It needs to be at room temperature before she can infuse, and its life inside the fridge means we have to wait. So I roll it between my palms to help speed the process along, and while I do that, I head to the kitchen to grab the kit she keeps on top of the fridge. Her tourniquet, needles, alcohol wipes, tubing, and more.
I clutch the diluent in my palm while I get everything else down, but then I set it all on the counter so I can wash my hands with soap and warm water before heading back to her.
“I don’t wanna insert the needle in your arm.” I set the kit on the coffee table just two feet from where she sits, then I take out a fresh double-sided needle and pierce the top of the diluent. Connecting it to the bottle of powder for mixing, I watch liquid drip into the bottle beneath it, transforming what was dry and useless into a life-saving drug my wife relies on. “But I’ll do everything else,” I tell her. “Including infusion. You just have to get the needle in.”
“You’re a baby.” Pushing up from the couch and shuffling toward the kitchen, her bad arm in a sling and her mahogany hair not nearly as smooth as it usually is, she flips the faucet on and washes her single hand as best as she can manage. “I’m not nearly as broken as you seem to think I am, Malone.” She switches the tap off and peers over her shoulder to meet my eyes. “However, I feel that learning how to insert a needle is an important life skill you should have.”
“I can do myownneedles.”
While she dries her hands with a paper towel, I finish mixing the Factor, setting the bottle on the table as she sluggishly wanders back in my direction.
Reaching out, I take her hand and help her back onto the couch, but when she scoots forward and starts to fight with her coat in an attempt to clear her arm, I push up to stand and take over before she tosses her sling away in frustration.
“Just the one arm for now,” I coach, freeing it from the sleeve, and pressing a kiss to Minka’s temple when she grunts in annoyance.
Sitting back down, I take her tourniquet from the table and feed her hand through it, past her wrist, then forearm, and up to her bicep. She infuses into her good arm, which means she can’t use the other to tighten the strap.
“Talk to me about work while we do this.” I snag a couple of alcohol wipes and tear their packaging open to sanitize the inside of her elbow, then I pass a butterfly needle to the hand attached to her injured arm, and feel guilty for making her manage this part herself.
But a man has his limits. It would seem that stabbing my wife is mine.
“What’d you find once you cut Kyle open?”
“I don’t feel right using that name for him.” She hisses under her breath as her needle pierces her skin. But I’ve watched her do this a hundred times without flinching, which means the hiss has nothing to do with the needle, and everything to do with the strain on her shoulder as it supports her moving hand. “I’m gonna call him John Doe until we confirm otherwise.”
Sitting back now that her work is done, she watches me secure a length of tape over the needle to keep it in, then I draw the clear medication from the bottle to a fat plastic syringe. I attach it to the tubing and slowly begin pushing it into her vein.
“I didn’t find much more than we already knew. He was healthy, and his organs were in top shape. They would have fetched a fortune on the black market.”
“Morbid.” I keep my eyes firmly on my work. But I sense her all around me. Her perfume. Her shampoo.
Chloe, our snowy white cat who Minka has an unhealthy rivalry with, wanders into the room and jumps onto the back of the couch, but still, I keep my eyes down. My attention solely and completely focused on my task.
“Lucky our perps didn’t think to sellKyleoff, piece by piece,” I muse.
She sniggers in the back of her throat. “Just saying, he’d have fetched a few dollars to leave his next of kin. Maybe he’s already provided well enough for them, though. From studying his body, I couldn’t tell you what he does for a living. He didn’t have the markers of a laborer.”
I already know what she means, but to keep us both focused on something other than the medication I push into her arm, I ask, “What kind of markers?”
“Like, his hands were relatively smooth. No calluses. No rough skin. His face showed minimal sun damage, which implies he worked predominantly inside. X-rays showed a handful of broken bones. Old breaks, from when he was a child and adolescent.
“Some were quite serious, which might indicate some kind of traumatic injury in his youth—a car accident, perhaps, or a fall from a significant height. But everything healed up as expected. Which means he received excellent healthcare and ample time to rest. That implies reasonable wealth and comfort.”
She drops her head back against the cushions and yawns. “I counted a half dozen fresh breaks, too, since I know that’s your next question. He sustained these hours or, in some cases, a day or two prior to death. Some were clean breaks, as though the perps literally snapped his arm over their leg. Others were more of a shatter, which suggests—”
“Hammer?” I guess. “They raided their tool shed for more than pliers, and smashed him up with something other than fists?”
“Mmm. Pretty much.” Exhausted, Minka closes her eyes, while Chloe’s ocean-blue stare watches her with a kind of adoration I swear she never shows when Minka’s paying attention. “I’ll narrow things down tomorrow,” she promises. “I’ll be able to give you exact types and brands of hammer. Then you’ll have a new lead to follow up.”
