Murder For Hire Read online

  Sometime later, a couple of police officers burst inside. Even without my stepmother indicating an accusatory finger at me, they moved toward me, pointing their guns at me. Naturally, I didn't resist when they arrested me. What would be the point of that, anyway?

  The officers practically had to carry me outside the house, since my legs continued to be pretty weak, as Melissa walked behind us, still shouting angrily.

  "Murderer," she accused.

  That I was. There was no point in denying it.

  "You will burn in hell for what you did!"

  I didn't know she was that religious to believe in the existence of Hell, although she used God's name in vain many times while I fucked her.

  "You killed my Carson, the love of my life, you monster."

  Despite everything, I couldn't believe she was acting this way. I understood she was in shock, but my father treated her like shit, less than shit. She should be gladder than anyone else that he was dead. At the same time, she was behaving like every other woman who was trapped inside an abusive relationship. Women like that always defended their abusers, finding excuses for their behaviors, seeing flaws in themselves as though they somehow deserved all that mistreatment.

  Regardless of how she was feeling at the moment, Melissa was finally free of him. I was too. Is that the reason I did it, to save her? came a sudden thought, but I dismissed it even quicker.

  Melissa was a broken woman, but I had no sympathy for her. It was completely possible she was feeling the loss of my father so deeply despite his abuse, yet I would not act as her knight in shining armor.

  So, if I did kill my father, I did it for myself. That notion did not make me feel better. Actually, I felt nothing.

  During the ride to the police station, no one tried to speak with me, not that I was in a particularly chatty mood.

  When I went to bed last night, I never imagined I would be waking up to such a nightmare. That was the nature of the seizures. I never knew where I would wake up or in what state. Not that I was making excuses. I killed my father. The idea still felt alien to me. Untrue.

  After taking my fingerprints and snapping a few pictures, they locked me up in a cell. Thankfully, I was alone. The whole place stank of unwashed body odors and something else, something more poignant, as though the sewage system broke down a long time ago. It was good that my stomach was empty because otherwise, I would certainly contribute to that pallet of all the bad smells.

  I was only partially confused that they immediately locked me up. They did catch me red-handed, so maybe their work was done. All the same, I thought I would end up in an interrogation room.

  With all the detectives looking at me from the two-way mirror, at the man who killed his father in cold blood as one hard-ass detective would stroll inside to have a little chat with me, make me confess. He would play it nicely at first, of course. He would be the good cop, showing compassion, offering me something to drink or smoke before turning into a bad cop when my answers turned displeasing.

  You watch too much bad TV, Dean, I thought, feeling bone tired. That was the aftermath of the seizure. It would take me a couple of days to fully recover from it.

  Truth be told, I didn't have the faintest how all of this worked since I had been a model citizen all my life without any real brushes with the law. I couldn't drive thanks to my illness, and I never drank either, taking bar brawls out of the equation as well.

  Overall, my life was pretty boring. Everything interesting that happened to me happened thanks to my seizures. If you could call a murder interesting in the first place. None of that meant I hadn't made mistakes in my life. I was far from perfect. I ended up living with my father again since I pretty much ruined my whole life without any help from my illness. At times, I was a shitty person. That did not mean I was a murderer.

  Your bloody hands from this morning kind of point you in that direction, I said to myself, and it was a point well taken. Seeing they were still in that state, I walked to the small sink and tried to wash them. The blood clung to my hands as though not wanting to be washed away. I did my best anyway.

  Not knowing what else to do since I didn't know how long I would be here, alone, I tried to prepare myself for the interrogation that would certainly take place sometime in the near future. Didn't I have a right to a phone call? A lawyer?

  I didn't have anyone to call, at any rate. I didn't have a lawyer either, especially not one who could defend me in a criminal case.

  I was so fucked.

  Banishing all that, I refocused on what I could provide during the talk with the detectives. The police would definitely want to know what happened to my father. Despite Melissa's accusations, they would need my statement, my side of the story. I wished I had a story. I don't remember anything because of my seizures felt like a weak defense even to me.

  I tried my best to remember what happened this morning, or even last night, that could make me snap in such a manner. Regardless of my feelings, I would much rather not know. I forced myself to remember. I was already in jail, so my own thoughts and memories could not be much worse than that. I was wrong.

  Last night, I'd felt really sick. That always happened at the start of the seizure, so I went to my room to lie down in hopes that it would pass without hitting. As it turned out, it didn't pass.

  How did I end up in my father's room? I strained my brain, getting a whole lot of nothing in return, so I refocused on something else. Events that transpired before I went to my room.

  I argued with someone. There was no surprise there.

  If I learned anything during my life, living with this cursed illness, it was that the seizures were always caused by a great amount of stress. And then it hit me. I had been stressed all right, and big time.

  As the events from last night started to unfold inside my head, I relived them again, which was a bad thing.

  Oh, no, not again, I thought, trying to force myself to calm down. Sadly, it was already too late. The damage was done. Sitting in the holding cell, feeling sure now more than ever that I had done the deed, ended my father's life, I started to feel the rise of another attack. That alarmed me, making me fall into the trawls of the seizure that much quicker.

  I was having another attack after just experiencing one. It's too soon! It's not possible! That was the last conscious thought that I had inside my head. I could hear a guard yelling something in the distance. I couldn't know for sure if it was meant for me or for somebody else because I blacked out.

  It went without saying that I suffered another episode, and it was even more severe than the last one. That was something that was highly unusual at my age. At the same time, I supposed that killing one's father could do that to a person.

  Chapter Three

  "Carson, stop hitting him!" She tried to stop him from expressing his wrath at me, although it would cause her to get a beating of her own later.

  "The boy needs to learn how to be a man, and you always run after him and made him weak," my father spat, hitting me again. This time, he used his belt since his hands hurt from the last time.

  Carson Andros was a semi-professional boxer in his youth, so he really knew how to throw a punch and cause maximum damage. Also, he was in his prime, and his punch carried a lot of weight. The same could be said for his skills with a belt.

  "Please stop!" My mother tried again, getting in his way, shielding me with her own body, making a small reprieve in the beating.

  No, Mama. I couldn't let him hurt her because of me. I used that small break to my advantage.

  "I hate you," I screamed in return as I lunged at him, trying to hit him back. It backfired.

  My mother screamed, "No!" from the top of her lungs.

  I was forced back into consciousness. Through the fog, I thought about my mother. I rarely dreamed of her. Miss you, Mom. I lost her at a young age, and that continued to hurt a great deal.

  She was my only ally against that monster. At the same time, she went to a better plac
e, setting herself free from his torture. Although I missed her, I was never angry at her for leaving me alone.

  Between the bad dreams and the blackouts, I really looked forward to my conscious moments. Sadly, then I remembered what I'd probably done and how I'd been arrested for it, so I had to rethink my stand on that.

  As it turned out, there was no relief from the agony that was my life. Wasn't it too early for such self-pity? Considering what was happening and the fact that I didn't have any idea what time it was, it was a moot point.

  Where am I, anyway? I wasn't in jail anymore. I knew that much. The bed I was currently lying on was much nicer than the cot provided by the local jail. Not by much, though. I was in a hospital because I'd had another seizure, I realized. Thanks to my illness and an abusive father, I'd visited enough hospitals in my life to know the difference.

  I still kept my eyes closed for the time being because they tended to get sensitive after the episodes. It must have been a pretty brutal one if they rushed me to a hospital. At the same time, since they were unfamiliar with my disease, they probably thought I was dying or something. I wish.

  My whole body hurt like hell. What did I do? Use my body as a batting ram? It wouldn't be the first time. Sighing, I decided it was time to face the music. I couldn't keep on pretending to be asleep. Doctors and especially nurses tended to notice that shit.

  Opening my eyes, I instantly closed them firmly again. Oh, fuck. I gritted my teeth. The lights inside the hospital room were too bright.

  "Is the light too bright?" a man asked me.

  I nodded in return.

  "Could you please dim them?" I heard that same voice command.

  I tried again, squinting.

  "Is that better?" a man in a white coat asked me in that polite yet detached kind of a way only practiced doctors could master.

  "Yes, thank you."

  "Could you tell me your name?" he asked me.

  "Dean Andros."

  "Mr. Andros, my name is Doctor Sven Clarkson. Do you know where you are?"

  Hell? It was a silly question, yet I understood why he was doing that.

  "In a hospital. I had another seizure."

  "Yes, you did."

  As he continued to ask me random questions and I tried to answer them to the best of my abilities, I realized how strange my voice sounded. At the same time, the tongue in my mouth felt strange as well. They must have given me some seriously powerful drugs while I was out. That, or I held a private opera concert during my blackout.

  The doctor proceeded to check my vitals, and the first thing he did was stick that damn penlight into my eyes. I instantly went blind. Motherfucker. I hissed since the pain paralyzed me for a second.

  "Can you state your date of birth?" he proceeded.

  I suspected he only asked that to distract me from the searing pain the light caused me. "Twenty-third of May," I replied through my teeth.

  "Do you always suffer from photophobia after the seizures?"

  "Sometimes."

  "I see. Any other symptoms?"

  How long do you have? "Some." I listed the most common. "How long was I out?" I asked in return.

  "Three days."

  Three days? Wow. That was the longest period I was out, not counting that one time I was in an induced coma.

  Eventually, the doctor realized how nothing was wrong with my reasoning or my brain, apart from the obvious, and said as much. Although I wished that weren’t the case. I continued to struggle to believe I’d actually killed my father. Maybe I never could. To me, it was unfathomable imagining a world without him.

  Did that mean that on some subconscious level I had doubts about my killing him? There was a sliver of hope inside me that bloomed and instantly got squashed. Yeah, keep dreaming. Denial was a powerful thing. I should know. I wrote a damn book about the subject.

  "My opinion is that you recovered nicely from your last seizure, considering you had two almost back to back."

  That made me frown. How did he know that? That was when I noticed we were not alone in the room. A woman was standing close by the door, looking intently at me, and by the way she was dressed, I knew she was not a part of the medical staff.

  "If you say so," I grumbled in return, not feeling like I’d accomplished anything by waking up three days later.

  Apart from the woman, there was also a police officer guarding my door. I was under arrest, I reminded myself. So, it really shouldn't come as a surprise that I was tied down to the bed. It did. It made me feel beyond depressed. I couldn't believe my life was reduced to this.

  Needing something else to distract myself from my own despair, I refocused on the woman as the doctor wrote some notes in the chart. By her demeanor and by the way she was dressed, with her hair firmly tied at the back of her head in some way, I was sure she was a cop. The gun holstered on her right hip was a dead giveaway as well.

  Seeing me looking at her as well, she turned toward the doctor. "Can he talk?" she asked.

  I was only mildly insulted that she was talking about me as though I weren’t there. As someone who’d pretty much destroyed his entire life prior to being caught at the crime scene with blood on his hands and arrested, I didn't have much dignity left. Or at all. So, I waited for them to finish their chat, knowing that soon enough, I would have the floor, so to speak.

  "Yes," the doctor replied, putting the chart away. "Keep in mind that stress is the trigger, so Mr. Andros needs to remain calm," he advised.

  "All right."

  "I'll give you some privacy," he said before leaving the room without sparing me a second glance. That was not to suggest he was rude or disgusted by the fact that he had to treat a criminal. It was only that his work here was done for now, and doctors didn't linger if they didn't have to, always having more work elsewhere.

  The cop approached the bed. She looked really determined, if not slightly relieved, that her time had finally arrived. I didn't know I was that popular. Somehow, I did not find that particularly amusing.

  "Mr. Andros, my name is Detective Valerie Michaels," she introduced herself, offering me her badge, "And I'm here because I’m the lead officer investigating your father's murder."

  What is there to investigate? Aren't I the killer? Of course, I bit my tongue before I could say all that. I simply nodded in return because saying something like nice to meet you in a situation like this felt completely ridiculous, if not insane.

  Detective Michaels was on the small side, although she still looked tough. In a fight, she would totally take me out, without a doubt. Her hair, professionally tied down at the moment, was fiery red, a color that couldn't be natural, and her eyes were light, as far as I could tell.

  She came even closer as though hearing my thoughts. Her eyes were sea blue, I noted.

  "Do you remember getting arrested?"

  "Yes," I replied simply.

  "You have the right to have an attorney present during this interview."

  I liked how she used the word interview like this wasn't an interrogation. "I don't have an attorney," I said with a small shrug.

  "One can be appointed to you if you can't afford it," she explained, all businesslike, almost coldly.

  Money was not the only issue. I shook my head. "I don't want a lawyer at the moment. I will answer all your questions without one." I had nothing to hide, and at the same time, I was sure Detective Michaels wouldn't be too pleased with my answers since I did not know anything.

  "All right," she continued, taking a small writing pad and a pen out of her back pocket.

  I didn't know detectives actually did that in real life. For some reason, in this day and age, the gesture felt old-fashioned but not out of place, if that made any sense.

  "What do you remember regarding your father's murder?"

  "Nothing at all. I completely black out during my episodes."

  "The doctor explained those to me. So, you have no memory at all?"

  "None."

  "Could you walk
me through the events that transpired on the sixteenth of February, the day of Carson Andros's death?" she clarified as though I needed a reminder due to my condition.

  As though I could ever forget that.

  "I don't remember anything before I got arrested," I replied.

  She simply looked at me as though not impressed with my answer.

  I realized this was not personal. She must get that a lot from all the other suspects she was dealing with. I don't remember and I'm not guilty are the greatest hits among that type of people. It didn't matter that I was telling the truth. Does that also mean you’re not guilty? My former college roommate used to say we were all guilty of something. So, I tried again.

  "As I said before, I don't remember anything regarding an actual murder since I was in the middle of my episode." And how convenient is that? "As I'm sure the doctor told you, I suffer from a congenital illness that manifests in a form of severe temporal lobe seizures, a rare type of epilepsy."

  "You are saying you had one on that day?" she asked for additional clarification while taking notes.

  I was sure she would Google the condition later to make sure I wasn't making all this up. I would definitely do that if I were in her place.

  "Yes. I started seizing sometime during the night and woke up the next morning in my father's room."

  "By that time, was your father dead or alive?" She looked at me with those piercing blue eyes as she asked that.

  I felt like she could see right through my soul. "He was dead," I forced myself to say. And I was covered in blood was implied. "And before you ask me, Detective," I continued, anticipating her next question, "I honestly don't know whether I killed my father or not."

  After a small pause, she opened her mouth to speak. "Good," she replied, taking me completely by surprise.

  Chapter Four

  "Good?" I repeated the detective's statement as a question since for the love of me, I couldn't understand what she meant by that. How was me being unsure if I did or did not kill my father a good thing?