Unexpected
Visitor
Christopher Michaels was bothered by the insistent
buzzing of the helicopter which seemed intent on interrupting the time he had
allocated for relaxation before he headed to bed. He had
been home from a trip to the small grocery store for less than half an hour
when the noise crept into his consciousness, destroying what little chance he
had to put aside the cares of the day. Instead
of just ignoring what he considered to be a rude intrusion into his evening
routine, Christopher decided to go out on what passed for his balcony to see
what all of the hubbub was about.
“Police helicopter,” he snorted. The machine seemed to be searching for
something or someone by sending down a powerful beam of light which swept the
ground beneath it. After watching the
helicopter search in vain for half an hour or so, Christopher decided that he
had had enough. He went back inside his
efficiency apartment, turned off most of the lights, took off his clothes and relaxed
as he had intended in the first place, drifting off into a deep slumber.
The knocking on the door started as part of some
non-descript dream. Eventually, he
became aware that the knocking on the door he heard in his dream was actually
someone knocking on his door in the middle of the night. It wasn’t a demanding knock, it was more of
an insistent knock proffered by someone who, while wanting an answer to their
knock, wanted the knock to be quiet enough not to attract attention by the
neighbors.
Christopher exercised caution by slipping into a pair of
cotton briefs before throwing caution to the wind by opening the door to his
apartment without looking outside to see who might be knocking on his door in
the first place.
The woman slipped in then without a word, pushed
Christopher away, shut the door and dead bolted it.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” the woman gushed.
She was about his age, give or take a year or two by his
reckoning, dressed in blue jeans and a “Western” shirt in a muted blue
plaid. “You’re a mess – what the hell is
all this about?” Christopher asked.
“I don’t want him to see me. Look out the window. Do you see anyone?”
He took a quick peek past his curtains and out the window
to see an empty courtyard, one of many in the apartment complex where he lived
in far southwest Houston. He also
expected to be hit on the back of the head by the woman behind him – either
that or she’d slip her hands in his briefs to fulfill a fantasy suddenly
springing up in his mind.
“I don’t see anything or anybody,” he told her.
She let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks.
I thought maybe Boudreaux had finally tracked me down.”
“Boudreaux?” Christopher asked, turning toward his
unexpected visitor.
“He was my date.
No, he picked me up at Chuy’s on Westheimer. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have gone with him
and that guy he called Dave.”
“A bad date, I take it.”
Christopher sat down at the table in his living/dining area partly to
better gain his bearings and partly to cover the fact that he was growing an
erection.
“That’s putting it mildly,” she answered, sitting down in
the chair opposite his. “I’ve been on
the run for damn near an hour and a half trying to get away from
Boudreaux. Penny and I planned on going
up to Katy to do go line dancing.
Boudreaux and his buddy offered to take us. You have anything to drink?”
“Maybe a beer,” he offered. “More likely you’ll find a jug of iced tea
and a fresh jug of milk I picked up at the Mellow Mart.”
“Would that be the Mellow Mart about six, seven blocks
from here?”
“I’m in there all the time. It’s on my way back from work.”
He watched her while she got up from the table, went into
the refrigerator and extracted his only bottle of beer. He studied her face when she came back to the
table. Maybe he had seen her on one of
his many trips to the Mellow Mart.
“You were right, that was your last one. I’ll pay you back, promise.”
The girl twisted the cap off of Christopher’s last bottle
of beer and took a long uninterrupted drink.
“If you’re thirsty, the beer won’t do you any good,”
Christopher half scolded his guest.
“How do you know?
Are you a doctor or something?”
“Actually, I’m a pharmacist.”
“Oh, so you deal drugs!”
Her face lit up in a wide smile which she quenched by taking another pull
off the longneck.
“Legal drugs. I
fill prescriptions at a dispensary over on Bissonnet. Part of my training includes knowing about
drug interactions.”
“Beer’s not a drug,” she countered.
“No, beer is not a drug, but the alcohol that’s in beer
is. If you’re thirsty, the alcohol will
make you even thirstier.”
“Oh, well that’s good to know,” she said before emptying
the bottle. “So what should it be
next? Tea or milk?”
“Water would work the best. It’s on the bottom shelf in the Brita
pitcher.”
The woman got up, went to the refrigerator, extracted the
water pitcher then set it down on the empty counter next to the sink.
“You have any glasses?”
“Look in the cupboard on the far left. All I have are fast food complementary cups.”
She pulled down a cup, poured herself some water then
brought it over to the table.
“You said that you’d been running for an hour and a half
from this, Boudreaux person. Let’s see,”
he said, reaching for the cell phone he had left on the table. “That means that you – you were running from
the helicopters? Help me, I’m
confused. I heard helicopters, or a
helicopter in the area at about that time.”
“They were looking for Boudreaux and Boudreaux was
looking for me. You see, I saw him shoot
the guy and he was probably going to shoot me, too, if he would have caught
me.”
“You witnessed a murder?”
“More like an execution.
I was standing outside when I watched Boudreaux shoot this guy. Blew his head off. He then saw me, and I ran. He got off one shot and blew out the window
of the Mellow Mart, then all I remember after that was running.”
“The Mellow Mart just down the street?” Christopher
asked.
“Yeah, that one.”
“And this happened at around ten – ten-thirty?”
“About then, uh huh.”
“Damn. Just missed
it. I was there just before then. Damn!”
Christopher got up to recover a cup so that he could have
a drink himself.
“You were there?” she asked.
“I pulled out of the parking lot maybe five minutes
earlier at most…”
“Were you the guy in that old guy’s car, the four door
that pulled out of the parking space while we were coming in?”
“That was you and, that fellow you called Boudreaux who
pulled in?”
Christopher was shaking.
He had come to the realization that he could have been in the store at
the time of the killing witnessed by his unexpected guest.
“Shouldn’t we call the police and have them take you into
protective custody or something?”
“The police think I did it.”
“What?”
“I called. I hid
behind a dumpster after the copters left.
I called and the dispatcher told me to meet the investigating officer
out by the bus stop in front of the complex.
I saw Boudreaux and his buddy waiting there with a guy in uniform,
looking around. I went back around the
other side of the office and called again.
She said that officer Boudreaux was waiting for me and asked me
when I would arrive. I ditched the call
and the phone and went looking for someone who might be up. I saw your inside light on, so, I took a
chance.”
Christopher was in disbelief. He also wondered about his guest’s
story. If she was telling the truth
about her misadventure, she was the classic “damsel in distress”. If she was lying, there was the distinct
possibility that she was a “Judas goat” and that he would find himself at the wrong
end of a pistol in a mighty big hurry.
