Final Breath

'Rikki phoned me, too, about ten minutes ago,' the woman said. 'She sounded horrible. She mentioned something about expecting her son this afternoon. Then it sounded as if she'd fainted or something.'

Sydney took her cell phone from her purse, then dialed 9-1-1.

'I'm trying to get inside the apartment of a very sick woman,' she told the operator. 'She's not answering her door. I think she might need an ambulance. I'm at...' She glanced at Arlene. 'Um, what's the address here again?'

The old woman told her, and Sydney repeated it for the 9-1-1 operator. The ambulance would be there in five minutes, the operator said. Sydney had a feeling they were already too late.

Putting away her phone, she pulled her wallet from her purse and dug out a credit card. Her hand shook as she tried to jimmy the lock. She kept jiggling the doorknob at the same time. She wondered if this was all in vain. Maybe Rikki had dead bolted the door. 'Rikki? Rikki, are you in there?' she called.

She felt the credit card slip through, and she turned the knob. A click sounded.

As she opened the door, Sydney was hit with a wave of heat and stench. The window blinds were open, and sunlight streamed into the messy living room--catching all the dust floating through the air. Several magazines and newspapers littered the stained beige carpet around a well-worn easy chair. The chair seemed aimed at the television, and beside it stood a cluttered TV table and a bathroom wastebasket with a rose pattern on it overflowing with garbage. Flies buzzed around the room.

The counter that separated the kitchen from the living area was full of dirty plates and glasses. Most of the food on those plates remained uneaten. Empty frozen food boxes, microwave trays, crumpled napkins, and a barrage of prescription bottles also cluttered the counter.

'Rikki?' Sydney called. She tried to hold her breath. The place smelled of sour milk, rotten fruit, and shit.

She realized the source of that last smell when she stumbled into the dark, sweltering bedroom. The shades were drawn. Sydney almost ran into a wheelchair. Beyond it, an emaciated Rikki lay motionless on top of the bed in a soiled nightgown. The bedsheets were covered with excrement. Flies hovered around her.

'Oh, my lord,' the old woman gasped. She was standing behind Sydney. 'I had no idea she'd gotten this bad...'

On Rikki's nightstand were three water glasses, some prescription bottles, and a telephone with the receiver off the hook. The pulsating alarm tone could be heard across the room.

'We're too late,' Sydney murmured, approaching the bed.

Rikki's eyes were closed, and her mouth was open. A fly landed on her lip. Her face looked like a skeleton's head with gray-tinged skin stretched across it. Sydney could see right through the thin mousey-brown hair to her scalp. Rikki's hands and arms were bony with signs of decay already eating away at the flesh.

Sydney tried not to gag. One shaky hand covering her mouth, she reached toward the nightstand with the other. Picking up the receiver, she replaced it on the phone cradle. Then she turned to glance once again at the corpselike thing on the bed.

Rikki's eyes opened.

He found something. He'd been sitting at a computer desk between racks of newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals in the central library's reference room for forty minutes now. Eli was using the digital scanner to search through the microfilm files of old Seattle Post-Intelligencers starting on November 1, 1974.

The last time he'd looked at the clock, it had been 2:50, and the next bus to Madison Park was at 3:07. He was already in a heap of trouble.

Maybe if he apologized enough to his uncle for being late, all would be forgiven. Or maybe Kyle would forget about the three o'clock check-in. Was that too much to hope for?

In fact, Eli had been about ready to give up any kind of hope when he spotted the headline on page 2 of the Monday, November 11th edition:

MURDER-SUICIDE SHOCKS MADISON PARK RESIDENTS

Teenage Boy Slain While Sleeping, Mother's Shooting Self-Inflicted, Police Say

Eli studied the grainy newspaper photo of Loretta Sayers posing with Earl in front of a church. 'HAPPIER TIMES,' said the caption. 'Victims of what police call a 'possible murder-suicide,' Earl Sayers and his mother, Loretta Sayers, celebrate her wedding to Robert Landau of Seattle on May 26, 1973. Sayers and Landau separated earlier this year.'

Loretta looked attractive in her frilly white dress, with a crown of flowers in her hair. Her shoulder-length hair appeared blond in the black-and-white picture. She had her arm around Earl, who was as tall as his mother. His hair was the same light shade as Eli's--only it was long and messy. His outfit was pretty goofy-looking, too: a dark suit with a dark shirt and a fat white tie. Earl grinned as if he were about to laugh. Eli could see a resemblance between Earl and himself--if he had a real dorky haircut.

He couldn't help thinking about reincarnation. Didn't Marcella mention something along those lines? Is that why he felt this weird connection with Earl?

He anxiously scanned the article:

SEATTLE: An elegant, lake-view town house apartment in affluent Madison Park became a grisly death site early Sunday morning as police discovered the bodies of residents, Loretta Sayers, 38, and her son, Earl, 15, in an upstairs bedroom and bath. The teenage boy was stabbed while sleeping in his bed. His mother was found in the bathroom with a fatal gunshot wound. A revolver, registered in her name, was found near her body. Police discovered a bloodied knife in the upstairs hallway by the boy's bedroom...

Eli kept reading. Except for saying Earl had been 'stabbed,' the two-page article was pretty close to what Vera Cormier had told him. He figured maybe they didn't want to say 'throat slit' in the newspaper. Either way, it was still a laceration.

Loretta's estranged husband--and Earl's stepfather for less than a year--was fifty-three. Robert Landau had three children of his own, their ages ranging from eighteen to twenty-six. Landau's first wife had died in an auto accident. Eli wondered if Robert Landau had done something to his first wife's car. Maybe he'd 'staged' the car accident the same way he could have staged the murder-suicide scene later. Or had Loretta Sayers indeed killed her son and herself?

The article quoted a friend of Earl's, Burt Demick, sixteen. He must have been the one who had often parked in the driveway, blocking Vera's car. He'd had dinner with Earl and his mother in the apartment just one night before the supposed murder-suicide:

'Earl's mom seemed to be in a good mood that night,' said Demick. 'She made lasagna, then we ate in front of the TV and watched 'Sanford and Son.' All of us were laughing and having a great time. I just can't believe they're gone. I don't think Mrs. Sayers could have done what people say she did.'

Eli figured if Robert Landau was still alive, he was now eighty-seven. He wondered if Landau or any of his children were still in the Seattle area. He wondered the same thing about Burt Demick.

Eli glanced at his wristwatch: 3:15. 'Oh, shit,' he muttered. His uncle would kill him.

He deposited a quarter in a coin slot at the side of the scanner and pressed COPY. The machine started to make a humming noise. While Eli waited for the printer to spit out his copy of the article, he glanced up at the library's ceiling and the glass-and-steel angular walls.

A shadow passed over the room as dark clouds filled the sky. It was almost surreal how the sudden weather change outside altered the lighting in this room. It had been so bright in here just a moment ago. Suddenly he noticed the illuminated computer screens at the other desks and the overhead lights. The tall shelves displaying magazines and newspapers seemed darker. Through the open shelving, he could see silhouettes of people on the other side of the periodical racks. Eli's gaze rested on one of them--a man, only a few feet away. Eli could glimpse only the top half of his face through the opening between the shelves.

The man stared back at him with his one good eye.

'Eli McCloud, Eli McCloud, please meet your uncle in front of the beach house!' the lifeguard announced into his bullhorn.

Swimmers were making their way to the shore in droves. Dark gray rain clouds swept over the lake, and the temperature dropped five degrees within minutes.

'Eli?' Kyle called over and over, roaming around the beach's family area as the crowd rapidly thinned out. People were rolling up their blankets and gathering their kids. Some food and candy wrappers fluttered past him as