S.V. Redkin – The Great Conductor (страница 12)
When the Great Conductor told him that his mother had to go, Sebastian took some time to realize that it was okay. In fact, he was surprised by how ready he was for this change in his life. He wished it had happened sooner, much sooner, so that his father could still be alive and well.
Why had he been waiting for so long? The answer was, despite everything she had put him through, the connection he had with his mother through music. However critical she had been, she understood his passion for music. She understood how Bach or Shubert could make him feel. This was something beyond his father’s reach.
Was he really able to do it now, though? As a little bird that was ready to fly on its own, Sebastian became, according to the Great Conductor, “an accomplished musical entity” who did not need anyone’s help anymore. When Sebastian had heard that, the realization of that notion had come so organically and entered the fabric of his mind like a musical movement, a part of a much bigger and more complex piece. It had freed him.
Sebastian remembered the night two weeks ago when he entered Lydia’s room and watched his mother make loud snoring noises. She had had a lot of drinks that evening and went to bed almost as soon as they finished dinner. Another made-up meeting had got canceled—
He stood there wondering what she might have been dreaming about. Did she ever dream about Sebastian? Did she ever experience pure joy from being a mother or wife? He almost felt sorry for her—what a waste of life! He needed to put her out of her misery and send her to . . . Sebastian remembered thinking about where her soul would go. As he took an extra pillow and approached Lydia’s bed, Bach’s Suite no. 5 came to mind. It was nice, peaceful music that seemed appropriate. He paused for three minutes and fifteen seconds until the music ended and made one more step. Then he had a thought and played one of his father’s favorite songs—“Here Comes the Sun”—and mused about the significance of what he was about to do. It was the beginning of a new era, and it felt both exhilarating and terrifying.
Could he really do it—end his mother’s life? He started to breathe faster. It felt like he had forgotten to breathe and now he desperately wanted to fill his lungs with oxygen. For a moment, he had an out-of-body sensation and could see himself standing there with the pillow in his hands.
He saw himself taking another step closer to the bed.
Just when the song finished in his head, Lydia started making strange gurgling noises, and her half-digested dinner started coming out of her mouth in disgusting dark bubbles. Sebastian, now feeling back in his own body, took another step toward Lydia intending to turn her over so she wouldn’t choke on her vomit—and then realized he still had the pillow in his hand. He stopped and watched the natural struggle of the human body with an excessive amount of alcohol inside doing its job, finishing the mission for him. His breathing returned to normal.
When the convulsions had finished and the room was quiet, free of discordant choking sounds, he moved on to the next part of the suite. He stood by her bed for four and a half minutes, enjoying the energy and emotion of Bach’s music. It felt like celebrating the divine intervention that freed Lydia. Despite everything, he felt happy for her, even though she’d left this world in a strange and ugly way. After putting a pillow next to her motionless body, he left the room.
That’s what happened.
Now, Sebastian looked around the room once more and decided that it was clean enough for his new colleague if he decided to stay over. Despite the pictures on the wall, Sebastian didn’t feel Lydia’s energy in the room anymore.
It was time to wear that dress shirt.
Chapter 12
The phone rang in the middle of the night. Christine grabbed it off the bedside table and listened to a report from a police patrol officer she knew well—a hit-and-run, possibly a homicide, involving a black pickup truck. She had arranged with some friendly officers to let her know if there were any cases similar to her parents’ accident when she became a detective.
As she was getting the details, Christine picked up her notebook and jotted down some information about the case, frowning as she asked about the investigating detective. She thanked the officer for the update, got up, and got dressed. There was no time for breakfast, so she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and was out the door ten minutes after receiving the call.
By the time Christine arrived at the crime scene, the ambulance had already left with the two victims—a young man (dead) and a young woman (in critical condition). The investigating officer had interviewed several witnesses who happened to be nearby when the incident occurred. A CSI officer was taking pictures of the scene, which was located a few blocks from popular city nightlife areas, right across from a nightclub that looked like it had been closed for a while. The massive wooden front doors needed a fresh coat of paint, and the rather long name of the club—This Is Where I’m At—in neon tubes above the entrance was broken in a few places. The only vehicle parked on the street was a heavily scratched black Chevrolet Traverse, with the driver’s door open. Not wanting to be noticed by the detective investigating the case, Christine went directly to the police officer who had contacted her.
“Hey, David,” she said to Officer McCain, who was busy making sure that no one would get through the police yellow tape to the scene.
“Detective Heart,” David said and smiled.
Christine came closer, gave him a cup of coffee she had bought on the way, and looked around. “Who are the victims?”
“The guy who just bought that shithole.” He pointed to the club. “Apparently, he came to check it out with his girlfriend when a big black pickup slammed into his truck.” He took a sip. “Thanks for the coffee.”
“You bet. They came to check his closed club at 3:00 a.m.?”
David shrugged. “The two dudes who were drinking on the other side of the road”—he pointed to a redbrick apartment building with two lit windows on the second floor—“were having a smoke and saw the Traverse pull over. The man got out and went to see something in the club while his girlfriend was chatting on the phone in the car.”
“They heard her chatting on the phone?”
“One of them saw her face lit by her cell phone. These things are pretty big and bright these days, aren’t they?”
“True. And?”
“And the man came out of the club, went to his car, said something to the girl, then they heard an approaching vehicle. The man ran to the driver’s seat but couldn’t make it. The pickup hit the car, pinning him to the hood, and drove away. The whole thing took seconds.”
Christine nodded. “What was—”
“Well, well. Look who decided to visit us at this ungodly hour,” came a raspy voice from behind Christine.
Christine looked around without enthusiasm. “Hello, Charles.”
Detective Charles Kozminsky was one of Christine’s least favorite detectives, if there was such a thing as favoritism among detectives at all.
More than twenty years in homicide, Detective Kozminsky was not ambitious or sly enough to make it to any respectable rank at this point but had a thick enough skin to seem immune to the side effects of the profession, a quality that he enjoyed enhancing with strong alcohol after work. The latter was killing his liver and had already destroyed his marriage, but it was boosting his presumptuous belief in his superiority in detective skills over any newcomer, especially if that newcomer happened to be a woman. Or was it specifically Christine he had that sort of “affection” for?
Being quite overweight and out of shape, Detective Kozminsky knew better than to parade his skills in front of his seasoned male colleagues, but youngsters and women were fair game to him. Even if he had not been a total jerk, it would have been highly unlikely that Christine could form any rapport with the man—she did not like unshaven slobs who constantly needed a shower.
“Were you asleep when you suddenly had a—I don’t know—a sixth sense or something and decided to check what’s happening on the night streets of Baltimore?” He saw the coffee in David’s hands and added: “I guess they had only one cup left, huh?”
Christine ignored the coffee comment. “Do you need any assistance? I can—”
“The only assistance you could give me is not to interrupt the investigation I’m in charge of. Besides, this ain’t Sherlock—it’s shovelin’ shit.” He gave her a humorless smile.
“It’s all yours,” Christine said, walking away and nodding goodbye to David. She wasn’t a fan of crude remarks and did not have any desire to deal with Kozminsky, who was partly the reason she had to go to her anger management sessions. She tried to concentrate on the positive side, which was the absence of the other asshole from her department, Detective Walter O’Hara, who happened to be the man she had slapped for his obnoxious comments about her and other women.