Kendal kept his eyes on Junior. “I’m a reporter, I go where my nose takes me.” Kendal spun around and faced me. “You know what, I don’t have to explain myself to you. Come on Junior, we’re going. We need to talk.” He took a pause for emphasis. “Alone.”
Junior put his water glass on the edge of my desk and started to follow Kendal.
I was working on my reactionary nature, but couldn’t resist throwing out one final jab at Kendal’s back. “One thing to remember, Junior, everyone wants payment. Just because it isn’t cash, well, there’s other payments. Aren’t there, Kendal?”
Kendal put his hand on the door and leaned into the doorway. He jerked his hand away and cursed. Turning back to me, he held up his cantaloupe palm.
“See what you made me do? Shit Boise, you better...” As I wondered what I’d better do, a faint whiz split the air, then a thunk as an arrow pierced Kendal through the back. An arrowhead grew from his chest, the tip red as a hibiscus flower.
I hauled Junior down as I dove to the floor. Blood spattered Kendal’s smeared handprint on the door. His left hand clawed two long fingermarks into the paint as his arm pinwheeled. A bright red dot oozed down Junior’s pale leg.
Junior’s lips parted in a soundless gasp. Kendal’s knees collapsed. His right eye twitched as his arm slid back down the wet paint, completely ruining the work I’d done. The distant smell of salt air from the harbor was instantly drowned by what smelled like a bag of wet pennies. Kendal’s breath wheezed. In-out, in-out.
I dragged him away from the door, then tried to slam it shut. The damned thing was so light, the air caught at the jam, leaving a crack. No time. Back to the wound. My hands hovered around the arrowhead.
No yanking. The head was too large. The tail had plastic feathers. How would that feel coming through the areola of his lungs? Or was it alveoli? Either way, it seemed like a bad idea. I left it. As for life-saving techniques, they had never covered arrow wounds in my C.P.R. course. Compressions were impossible, so I did the other thing they always tell you to do: call 9-1-1 and put it on speaker.
Junior rocked on the floor, legs pulled to his chest. Peeling off my sweaty, paint-stained shirt, I put pressure on Kendal’s chest at the base of the shaft while commanding him to stay conscious. I yelled the address at the phone, although it was still ringing. His eyes fluttered. They shut. My hands were slick and sticky all at once as I searched for his pulse. Nothing. The penny-smell overpowered.
I crawled to the door and locked it. Inching my head up, I squinted into the afternoon for the assailant. It was like opening my eyes underwater without a mask. A black blur that must have been a crow cawed from the rotting tree across the street. It soared into the air. Nothing else moved.
The 9-1-1 operator barked through the speaker, “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
I turned back to the phone, but my hand was stuck to the windowsill. Stuck in drying blood and paint. I tugged my hand away, leaving a red-orange handprint on the white trim.
“I have a man with an arrow in his chest. He’s just expired,” I announced between hitches.
The operator remained calm, as if this happened every day. She asked if I’d confirmed death and was completely sure. I said yes. She said the police and an ambulance were en route after I gave the address I’d been repeating over and over. She told me not to move or touch anything, then asked if anyone else was hurt. I said no, just shocked. I knelt down next to Junior after dropping my phone on the floor.
“Junior?”
Junior mouthed the words: “Is he?” His only sound was a croak.
“Who knew about you coming to meet Kendal?”
His hand jerked at the air. “I don’t know. What do you...no one. I didn’t tell anyone about coming to the newspaper. The letter from Grandma told me to keep it quiet.”
He dabbed at his nose with the crumpled McDonald’s napkin clutched in his hand. Would anyone hire me now that a reporter had been...what was the word for being pierced with an arrow? Arrowed? Run through? No, that’s a sword term.
“And who the fuck uses an arrow?” I murmured.
A film had formed on the blood puddles as they coagulated. Kendal was lucky not to be a hemophiliac. That seemed a miserable life.
Pounding on the door jamb. Ripping pepper spray from my pocket, I sprang up. My knee protested, but I barely registered the familiar pain. Walter Pickering and Robin Givens stood in the doorway, their hands raised in surrender.
Upon seeing Kendal, Pickering staggered forward and dropped to his knees beside the body. He fingered Kendal’s neck as Robin turned away and heaved into my trashcan. The room instantly reeked of urine, shit, vomit, fresh paint, and that coagulated blood iron-fist. I flicked the fan up to high.
The clock radio droned a staticky news story about the upsurge in tourism last quarter. Ten minutes had passed since I’d seen Junior for the first time.
Walter Pickering shut the door, pulling Robin inside with his wiry, ebony fingers. The man was always dressed for a wedding...or a funeral.
He turned and hissed at me, “Did you call the police?”
“Yes.” We both had our noses in the crook of our arms like a pair of Draculas. The blood on our hands added to the effect.
He turned to Robin who gazed into the street through my window and vacantly wiped her full lips with a napkin. She opened the door. Robin’s tight skirt hugged her full hips.
“What are you doing?” Pickering snapped and shut the door.
“You really think the killer’s still out there, Walter?” Robin said through gritted teeth and caked on foundation. She had a pimple on her nose that no amount of
