There was not much I could say about her really. I hardly knew her. She was young, she was beautiful, and stood up in bed and took her medicine like a good girl. For all I knew, she may have enjoyed it, but now she was dead.
Unconsciously, I put the milk in the fridge, dumped the papers, full of old news that no one would read, and lit a cigarette. I knew what it looked like. My junk was all over her, and all through the blood stained bed. There was enough evidence to try and convict me even before the cops had been called. I needed to think.
I stubbed my cigarette out on last night’s dinner plate, walked back to the bedroom and leaned my body into the doorframe, as much for my own support as to keep me from entering the room. The wounds were neat, precise and calculated. Almost certainly 9mm, soft tipped, hollow points. The amount of blood in the bed told me without the need to look that the exit wounds would not have been so neat, and were a whole lot bigger. The puff of black powder on her forehead spoke of the point-blank coldness of the hit and the economical pattern of a shot to the head and a shot to the heart was as good as a calling card from an Eastern European military college: "belt and braces Comrade."
Whoever had done this had been in no hurry and did it with a deliberate, steady hand, looking her in the eye as they pulled the trigger. This was not some junky robbery, they knew what they were doing and had done this type of thing before. There would be no fingerprints. There would be no DNA and there would be no ballistics. The gun would have no history and he will have picked up and taken both bullet casings, just as he was trained. To the extent that you can make a living by killing, this guy was a professional.
The three draws of the bedside table were lying upturned on the floor, their former contents looking more violently assaulted than Helena, who despite the carnage around her, lay much as I left her half an hour ago on the bed. An angel on a red cloud. On 'my side', near the window, the late morning sun revealed a similar assault on the top draw and its contents. The second draw ajar, hung like a broken jaw, open only far enough for someone to get out of it what they had been looking for and leave. I knew what they were looking for. I just didn't know why.
Another siren screamed by on the street outside. In a third rate hospital on the other side of town my mother was been eaten alive by cancer. Meanwhile, in a neighbouring state my wife and my creditors were in a race to Court to file their writs; hers for divorce, theirs for bankruptcy, and I was due back in Kazakhstan in less than a week.
