* * *
When Nora woke up again, it wasn’t yet morning. The house was still, the darkness in the room heavy with the final hours of night. And yet, something had woken her. She didn’t have to pee; a little jostle confirmed that. She looked across the room to her brother’s bed, but he remained fast asleep. At least from what she could tell. Something was blocking the upper half of the bed. Nora tried to focus her eyes, but they were still too filled with the weight of sleep, the darkness too thick to make sense of what she was seeing. She tapped her watch, the little light setting her wrist aglow and efficiently blinding her in the process. The only thing she could make out through the spots of light now dancing across her eyeballs was the glint of something raised just above Charlie’s bed. A glint of something polished, and sharp.
“Knife,” Jessica squawked, echoing Nora’s own fuzzy thoughts. The word set both parrot and woman into motion, Jessica flapping wildly, Nora attempting to untangle herself from the covers that presently bound her legs.
By the time she’d freed herself, the holder of the weapon was out the door and thundering up the stairs. Nora flopped to the floor, and Jessica hitched a ride on her shoulder as she bolted afterthe intruder, but it was too late. She reached the top of the danger stairs to find the back door gaping open, the night sheltering the knife wielder in its boundless black.
“Did you see who it was?” Nora asked the parrot, struggling to steady her breath from both the panic and the exertion.
Jessica didn’t reply.
“Holy shit, holy shit,” said Nora.
“Holy shit, holy shit,” Jessica agreed.
They trudged back down the stairs, Nora defeated, Jessica bobbing her head. The lights were on when they got back into the bedroom, Charlie hunched over a mess of bedding.
“There you are!” he said.
“Yeah, I—”
He scooped Jessica off Nora’s shoulder. “I was looking all over for you, beautiful.” He gave the bird’s head a smooch and turned back to Nora. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, sneaking off with my little sweet pea in the middle of the night?”
Nora just stared at him for a moment, words lost to her in the wake of everything that had just occurred. She’d barely had time to realize how close she’d come to death in an effort to protect him from a similar fate. That thought alone sent the ability to speak far from her tongue. Instead she kicked his shin.
“Ouch, what the fuck?”
“Charlie,” Nora said, words returning to her. “Someone just tried to kill you.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t hear anything just now?”
He shook his head.
“Unbelievable.” Nora took a sharp inhale. “Charlie. Someone was just in here with a knife. I tried to chase them down, but—”
“You what?”
“I’m trying not to think about it. The point is, someone wanted you dead. Not just your file this time. An actual human being. With a knife. And I—wait. Your file.”
Nora dove for the manila folder on the floor beside her bed. The ink cloud beside “cause of death” had not changed shape.
“S-T-A. It wasn’t the stairs that were going to kill you, Charlie. I was wrong. You were supposed to be stabbed.”
“Why the hell would someone stab me?” Charlie asked. “I haven’t been here long enough to piss anyone off yet.”
“I don’t know, but we need to find out quick. Because according to your file, they’re not done with you.”
13
Case # 10452
Toni Jackson
Age: 48
Cause of Death: Stabbing
