Matchpoint (7 page)

But my skin prickled. A new sense took over that woke me up. I became at once aware of my surroundings. It occurred to me that I was in danger, that a sadistic murderer was around, and that my face could be the next to go.

With a shaky hand, I rummaged in my purse for my cellphone. I had Spencer’s number on speed dial. He had inputted the number into my phone, saying something about Danger-Prone Daphne and succumbing to the inevitable.

I stared at Dr. Dulur’s bloody head while my hand fished around in my enormous bag. I should have gone with a small clutch like Lucy. She managed to be very organized with a tiny purse. She even had a little pocket just for her phone. Why couldn’t I be more like Lucy? She didn’t have cavities. Her life wasn’t in danger. She wasn’t staring at a man with no face.

My hand blindly reached my wallet, my brush, and my Chinese diet tea. I threw them out of my bag, trying to clear the way to find my cellphone. By the time I got to it, I had a pile of items at my feet. Dr. Dulur hadn’t moved. The only sound had been the gentle thud of my purse’s contents hitting the plush carpeting.

I pushed buttons on my phone, careful not to take my eyes off Dr. Dulur, but the phone wasn’t working. I frantically pushed more buttons. I had just charged the phone that morning before meeting Belinda, but now it was dead. A whimper escaped from my throat. I realized the cellphone company had chosen that moment to cut off my phone. I wanted to kick myself for getting the Ecuadoran Erect. I should have paid my cellphone bill instead. Now I was alone with only Dr. Dulur’s corpse and possibly a maniacal killer to keep me company.

I dropped my purse to the ground and slowly turned around, scanning my surroundings. Fluorescent lights illuminated every corner of the dental office. The large space filled with examination rooms was empty. I could easily see over the low walls to tell that Dr. Dulur and I were the only ones there. The two side room doors were open, and from what I could tell, they were empty, too.

With no immediate threat, I took a deep breath and approached Dr. Dulur. I gingerly checked for a pulse, holding two fingers against his neck. As I already knew, he was dead. My fingers trembled and slipped in the blood on his neck, covering my hand with it.

That’s when I threw up, and that’s when I heard the sound.

I stood, doubled over, and listened. It was a low guttural noise, a man. The sound repeated, getting louder and stronger. It sounded just like the movies when Jason or Freddy Krueger was getting ready to hack some unsuspecting female to death. My fight-or-flight response kicked in. I turned on my heel sharply, ready to run out of there as fast as I could. I was betting I could run pretty fast.

But I turned too sharply, and my heel got caught on the carpeting, and I was sent careening forward. I fell toward Dr. Dulur, flinging my arms around in a wild attempt to defy gravity, anything not to land on him. Like a slapstick comedy routine, my limbs took on a life of their own, swaying and circling through the air, trying to alter the inevitable. And it worked. I narrowly missed Dr. Dulur by inches, falling on all fours to the sticky, blood-soaked floor with a thud and hurting my knee again. Trying to alleviate the pain and get out of the bloody puddle, I quickly changed positions, attempting to hop up, not knowing how close my shoulder was to the dentist chair.

I knocked it with force, making it sway. My hand flew
to my shoulder, which was probably bruised, and I felt another hand clap on top of mine. I froze. I’m sure my heart stopped. I gasped for air and thought of my face—not bad, some would even say pretty, and I didn’t want to lose it. Then I heard a thud. I turned to see Dr. Dulur’s leg had fallen off the chair, and I realized it was his hand on top of mine. I swallowed a scream, and tears filled my eyes. As if in slow motion, although really fast for a dead guy, Dr. Dulur rolled off the chair, landing directly on top of me.

I probably turned green, because suddenly I was imbued with Incredible Hulk strength. Pushing Dr. Dulur off me, I scattered to my feet and ran for the exit. I got all the way to Bliss Dental’s front door, but Nathan Smith, the dental assistant, was blocking the exit. He was lying slumped in the doorway. I recognized his moaning as the sound I heard earlier. I wanted to jump over him and run for my life, but the Good Samaritan part of me interfered, and I knelt down to see how he was.

The back of his head was bleeding, and he was going in and out of consciousness.

“Nathan?” I asked. “Are you all right? What happened here?”

“I tried to get away,” he said. “But he hit me from behind.”

“You saw the person who did this?”

“A shadow. A large shadow.”

I USED the Bliss Dental phone and got through to the police after trying Spencer, whose phone was off. I stayed with Nathan and urged him to stay awake until help arrived. I was covered in my own vomit and Dr. Dulur’s blood. I had witnessed something gruesome, and according to every medical show on TV, my shivering meant that shock was setting in. Nathan gave no
more information. He was holding on through his own shock and pain. I sat by him in the doorway for no more than ten minutes before what looked like Cannes’s entire police force and fire department arrived.

Paramedics whisked Nathan off to the hospital, and after ascertaining that none of the blood that covered me from head to toe was my own, they handcuffed me, read me my rights, and shoved me in the back of a police car.

Despite knowing most of the police force, despite the fact that my photo was hanging in their processing room and they affectionately called me Underwear Girl, I was practically bathed in Dr. Simon Dulur’s blood, my belongings were found next to his corpse, and my fingerprints had to be all over him. There was the pesky problem of not finding the dentist’s missing face, but otherwise, they thought they had a pretty airtight case against me.

They looked at me differently. I thought I detected fear, but I wasn’t in my right mind, and it could have been anything: fear, fatigue, indigestion.

I forgot to tell them I was under the gas when Dr. Dulur was murdered. Frankly, I was tired, and I thought the truth would come out soon enough. Besides, I was covered in blood, and I was beyond caring about mundane problems like jail time.

I had been booked and handcuffed to a desk and left to sit, the blood drying sticky on my body and clothes, when the need to see my grandmother gripped me. I was panicked with it.

I wanted my grandma. Others would want their mother, but it was just as likely that my mother was also handcuffed to a desk in some other police station as anywhere else. And it would take more than her granddaughter being arrested for murder to get my grandmother
out of her house. She hadn’t left voluntarily since my father died years before. So I was alone.

My body trembled, on the verge of a monumental freak-out. Where was Spencer? He hadn’t come to the crime scene, and he wasn’t at the station. He was the chief of police, for crying out loud. What kind of work ethic was that?

If Spencer were around, he would make certain I was all right. Sure, he would yell at me and tell me how much trouble I was, but he would take the handcuffs off me, and he would know I had been under the gas, and he would get me back to my grandma.

I worried that I would start crying the ugly cry where my nose ran and my face contorted. The ugly cry was building in my chest. I could feel it rising, and it was only a matter of seconds until I would completely humiliate myself.

“Who did this to you?”

Holden knelt in front of me, his strong, tall body crouching easily, and looked into my eyes. He wore a leather jacket over his plaid shirt. I was dimly aware that I was surprised to see him, but he immediately calmed me, and I felt slightly warmer.

“I was under the gas,” I said. “And the dentist had no face.” I sniffed and hiccupped.

“I will be right back,” he said. He laid his hand on my arm and squeezed gently. “I mean
right
back. Only a moment. Will you be all right?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I probably wouldn’t ever be all right again. “He had no face,” I said.

I hiccupped once more and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Holden was gone, but I could hear him behind me, talking to the police sergeant I’d just met.
He must work the night shift
, I thought. Otherwise, I would have seen him before. It was getting pretty late. I must have been under the gas a long time.

Holden’s voice was scary, like a high school principal’s voice with a Mr. T edge to it. He was telling the police sergeant to take my clothes for evidence. He was threatening legal action if they didn’t release me.

Maybe he’s a lawyer
, I thought, but threw that idea out of my head. He was nothing like a lawyer. Lawyers wore suits.

The police sergeant uncuffed me. “Sorry about that, miss,” he said. “Mr. Smith at the hospital told us you were under the gas, and it was some big guy who offed the dentist.”

“He had no face,” I told him, like I was telling him that ground beef was on sale at Pete’s Market.

Cannes didn’t have a detective or a female police officer. So I was in charge of undressing myself and placing the clothes in an evidence bag. Holden insisted that I be allowed to use their shower and get some clean clothes.

I dressed in a towel, and he guided me to the shower with a gentle yet firm hand. He turned on the water and handed me the soap and put a clean towel and clothes on a hook.

“Take as long as you need,” he said. “I’m not leaving you. I will be here. Do you understand?”

I nodded, not really understanding anything but feeling the need to make him feel better about my state.

After he turned his back and started walking out of the bathroom, I dropped the towel and let the hot water pour over me. My chills grew worse, as if they were battling the warmth of the water. I hoped the water would win. I was tired of being cold.

It took a long time. I stood maybe ten or fifteen minutes before I was warm enough to start with the soap. Was it only that morning that I’d had my hair straightened and styled? Now it was sticky and matted, and I did what I could do to get it clean. Luckily, besides my
face and hands, the rest of me was clean, protected by my clothes. Still, I scrubbed, trying to clean the memory off me, I supposed. Logically, I knew that was impossible, but emotionally it was the only thing that was keeping me from screaming.

How many minutes passed, I didn’t know, but finally I turned off the shower and put on the sweats and tank top that Holden left for me. The clothes smelled familiar, like coffee and oatmeal. I called Holden in and worried for a moment that I wasn’t wearing a bra and then felt relief that I still worried about such things.

Holden took off his jacket and wrapped it around me. “Home?” he asked.

“You know what?” I said. “I want a hamburger.”

“Really?”

“Let’s not analyze it. That’s what I want, and I want tequila shots to wash it down.”

Holden drove me to a dive just outside the historic district; it was dark and warm and served drinks and pub food until two in the morning. When faced with the hamburger, I couldn’t eat, but I did manage to get three tequila shots down.

Holden was careful not to broach the subject of what happened at Bliss Dental, allowing me to determine the extent of the conversation. I was tempted to ask him all about himself, every intimate detail, but I knew in my compromised state that he would tell me everything just to make me feel better, and I didn’t want to take advantage of him that way.

He drank a hot chocolate, and when I said it looked good, he ordered me one. It turned out it was the perfect drink. I was feeling warm and cared for.

“I’m ready to go home now,” I said.

Wordlessly he paid the tab and led me out of the bar, his arm wrapped around my waist. As he drove, I laid my head on his shoulder and managed to doze. He
wanted to come in the house with me, to watch over me during the night, but I saw Spencer’s head, spying on us through the window, and told Holden I wanted to be alone. It was a lie. I never wanted to be alone again.

“I didn’t get my teeth fixed,” I told him. “I still have my cavities.”

“Don’t worry about that now, Gladie,” he said. “These are the wounds that are easy to heal.”

He kissed me good night lightly on the lips, and I noticed he smelled like meat. “No carbs,” I muttered, and opened the front door.

The light was on inside Grandma’s entranceway, giving off a warm glow. Spencer stood waiting for me.

“I just found out,” he said. “Just now. I didn’t know before.”

I walked toward him, and he took me into his arms. He squeezed me, and for the first time that night I felt whole, as if he was squeezing my pieces back together.

“I just found out,” he said again.

And finally, I cried. I wailed the pain and shock right out of me and into Spencer’s arms. And he took it all from me. And he squeezed tighter.