“Is she okay?”
“Do you know the -,”
“Is she okay?”
“Uh, um,” the cop stuttered, and Jameson heard notepaper rustling. “I-I don't know. The last report I received was that she was checked in to an emergency room, still having seizures, and with an irregular, slow, heart beat and low oxygen levels. I haven't heard anything else, Mr. Kane.”
Mr. Kane. Someone should've told him my real name is Satan.
“Leave,” Jameson whispered, staring at his granite counter tops.
“Excuse me?”
“I said leave. Get out of my house,” Jameson snapped, finally turning around. The cop looked stunned.
“We have some paperwork, I need you to -,” he started to stammer. Jameson strode forward and pushed past the officer.
“The car belongs to Sanders, track him down,” he grumbled.
“But you -, sir! Sir, did you know you're bleeding!?” the cop exclaimed, hurrying after Jameson and pointing out the bloody footprints he was leaving behind him.
“Yes,” Jameson snapped back. A large man in coveralls was hovering in the open doorway, holding a piece of paper.
“Hey! Who gunnah pay for dis tow job? I need fiddy bucks,” the guy drawled in a thick Boston accent. Jameson growled again and stomped up to an end table that flanked the front door. He yanked open a drawer and pulled out a stack of money. Both the cop and the tow truck driver gaped at him.
“All of this is yours, just be off my property within the next five minutes,” Jameson said as he led them out onto the porch, all the while flinging hundred dollar bills to the ground.
“Ay, ay, no problem, buddy,” the guy said, quickly dipping down and picking up what had to be $800. He was a large guy, but he ran back to the car and had the Bentley unloaded and was driving off in his tow truck, well under the five minute time limit.
“We still have to -,” the cop started. Jameson glared at him and stepped back into his doorway.
“Call Sanders. He reported it stolen, not me. He can deal with this mess,” he snapped, then slammed the door shut.
The cop banged on the door for a while, but Jameson was very good at ignoring things. He took his stairs two at a time, his heart thumping louder than his footsteps pounding down the hall. He felt like he was going to explode. Like his heart was going to pound right out of his chest. Or rather, whatever organ it was he had in place of a heart.
Tatum.
He didn't know why he thought he'd find answers there, but Jameson went straight into Sanders' bedroom. A large walk-in closet stood open, all clothing gone from it. Sanders didn't mess around. Something had been left behind, though, and Jameson sighed as he walked up to the foot of the bed. Sitting there, stacked neatly and packed in even bundles, was $32,000 in cash. Jameson knew it was exactly $32,000 because the night before, he had taken the cash out of a safe in his own room and brought it in to Sanders' room. Brought it to her.
A note sat on top of the money. Only one word was written on it, in Sanders' neat script:
“Satan.”
At least he spelled my name right.
A light was on in the bathroom and Jameson walked towards it. Very little actually disturbed him, but the sight he took in kind of made him want to vomit. Not because it was too ugly, but because it showed him what a terrible person he really was deep down. Through and through, to his core.
Sometimes, he forgot.
All the drawers on the vanity had been pulled open, stuff hanging out of them. The mirror had a large spider-web crack on the right hand side, closest to the door. One crack shot off all the way down to the sink, and some blood and strands of hair were in the very center of the spider-web. Long, black hair. Bloodstains were smattered across the vanity top and what looked like bloody fingerprints were smeared down the whole length. Jameson closed his eyes. Took deep breaths through his nose. Went back in time.
Petrushka had cornered him in the kitchen. Said unkind things about Tate. Jameson had been angry at Tate at the beginning of the night – angry at her for over two weeks before that, but after confronting her, after seeing her reaction, his anger had started to fade away. Started to turn in to something else. Something unfamiliar. Something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Guilt.
Pet was a massive bitch who didn't even know Tate. She had come along with Jameson just to watch the fireworks. Petrushka was almost a bigger sociopath than he was; Tate didn't deserve it. Not from Pet. Jameson had treated Tatum poorly enough.
She had been so upset. Maybe, just maybe, there was the tiniest possibility that he had been wrong about her. Wrong about her relationship with the baseball player. It happened on occasion, sometimes even Jameson Kane was capable of making a mistake. He hadn't wanted to wait till the end of the night to find out; he'd sought Tate out the minute he shook Pet loose.
Jameson hadn't seen how it had started, just how it had ended. When he'd walked into Sanders' room and saw a man in a suit bent over Tate, he had thought it was actually Sanders, at first. Talk about upsetting. Sanders was like a son to Jameson, he didn't want to have to kill him.
But it wasn't Sanders. It was Wenseworth Dunn, Jameson's business partner. A man Jameson had gone to school with, a man he had known for a long time. Dunn knew that Tate was off limits. Tate knew that Jameson didn't want her to sleep with any of his friends or colleagues. Breaking rules was apparently par for the course that night. Jameson had wanted to murder them both, but he'd settled for beating the shit out of Dunn, and then kicking Tatum out of the house. He hadn't bothered to look in the bathroom. He never bothered to look at anything, ever. He didn't have to – he didn't care. Right? Right?