Believe Me

The car spins to a halt in the centre of the road. The man with a beard walked towards it, his gun hanging at his side, the rain beating off the shoulders of his leather jacket. He stops at the window.

The second man, sitting at the wheel of the car raises his head, eyes shut against what he knows he will see. There is nowhere left to run. 

At last, he opens the window and begs. “Please. Please. Don’t”

The gun cracks. Thunder in its barrel. The echo drowned out by the blaring of the horn as he slumps forward against it. Lighting a cigarette, the man with the gun walks away. He turns to watch the windscreen wipers clear the scene before him with each swipe of their blades. 

Blood trickles down the inside of the window. The wipers cannot clear it away. The embers of the cigarette disappear into the night. He puts his gun away and walks to his car, its blue strobe lights flashing into the night. 

The dead man’s eyes are now open. Forever. 

So are a pair of hazel eyes that watch as her father’s murderer clears a path through the rain. 

The same pair of hazel eyes wake up with an aching body. The last vestiges of the dream leave a cold sweat on her chest and a ringing in her ears. Desperately she tries to untangle herself from the covers. Air. She needs air. 

It’s early morning. The cold autumn light streams through the balcony door, the chill in the breeze shifts the curtain, flicking flashes of light into the room. The lightning in her dream. 

Shivering, Cassandra wraps the blanket around her shoulders and steps onto the balcony. Her heart rate returns to a steady pace as the light warms around her. Some days it takes longer to recover from the dream. Today is one. 

As she stands, she closes her eyes. All she sees are blue flashing lights in the night and her father’s eyes. Open and dead.

A ringing inside her apartment calls her back to the present. She knew it was coming. It comes every year, and she dreads it. She thanks the phone call for the dream and goes to answer it. 

“Hello, Cassandra?”. The voice at the other end of the line was almost ready to give up. Maybe this would be the year she doesn’t pick up. 

“Hello Detective,” she says. It is better to get it over with until next year comes around again. She closes her eyes, lungs burning for her own cigarette. 

“Actually, it’s not “Detective” anymore. It’s just Michael. Mike. I’m retired now.” His words hang in the air. The implication is not lost on Cassandra. 

“Congratulations, Detective.” She says. He will always be Detective to her. 

“It’s part of what I want to talk about...um..” He pauses. Cassandra refuses to fill the silence, to make this any easier for him. “I think we should meet, are you doing anything for lunch today? I know it’s your birthday, so you might have plans…”

Cassandra does not have plans, other than to let another birthday slip its way past her without marking the occasion. Too many have been marked with nothing to show for it. She considers making up plans, avoiding the awkward meal he proposes.

But she always makes a point of telling the Detective the truth. Always. 

“I have no plans. I can do lunch.” 

“Great. Okay, I’ll drive up and meet you at the Italian place on Stone around 2 pm?” She does not wonder how he knows that she still lives in the same apartment as last year. It is his job to know where she lives. 

It is the longest she has stayed in one apartment, but it still does not look as if she lives there. It is sterile. A veritable hotel room, ready for the next guest to arrive and make it home if she needs to move. But there is no reason to go. There has not been for 18 months. 

She leaves the apartment with enough time to walk to Stone Street. 18 minutes at a normal pace. Not fast enough to break a sweat, not slow enough to look into the windows of the shops she passes by. 

When she arrives at the restaurant, Detective Chronis is not there. She chooses an outside table. There is more air to breathe. More place to legally smoke. Lighting up, she waits for him and watches the stream of people who pass by. Rushing. Not smiling, not talking. A blend of grey and black blurs rushing to nowhere for no reason in particular on a Saturday afternoon. 

He arrives late, but not by enough time to give her an excuse to leave. He has aged more in the three years since she last saw him than in the nine years she knew him before that. But he has not put on any weight. His frame is still lean and strong. The age is in the lines in his brow. The droop of his neck. The sag in his shoulders. 

“Hello Detective,” she says, stubbing out the cigarette in the ashtray in front of her. He raises an eyebrow at her. She promised to quit the last time they spoke.

He reaches out to give her an awkward side hug and hands her the small bouquet in his hand. “Happy Birthday.”

They sit down together. Cassandra rubs her hands along her thighs. The afternoon is turning cold as the shadows grow around them. The niceties are out of the way. Cassandra knows he wants to talk to her about something, and she waits for him to say it. 

“I want to tell you that just because I’m retired, I won’t stop looking. I’ve never stopped. And I have more time now.” He smiles at her with a shrug. 

She knows she should thank him, or at least smile back. But she can’t. Instead, she replies, “What makes you think you can find him after thirteen years? Nothing’s really changed, has it?” 

He sighs, but he is honest. “No, nothing’s really changed, except that I can really focus on it now, no one to tell me to let it go. I was wondering if you’ve maybe thought of anything else that could help us?” 

“Nothing new. Unless you’d like to finally look where I’ve told you to look all along.” 

He shakes his head. “We looked into that. You know we did. We questioned and investigated every cop your father ever spoke to. Nothing.”

“The man who killed my father was a cop. Either you believe me or you don’t. But don’t come asking me for something new if you’re not going to believe what I’ve said again and again.” Cassandra looked away. Until now, she had held his eyes, but she didn’t want him to see the anger. He had seen it enough. 

“Maybe your aunt can tell us something more? Something you were too young to remember. Didn’t she ever speak about him?” The implication in his words cuts her. Too young to remember. Like she had been the night she watched the blue flashes light up the man who killed him. 

Her aunt spoke about her father all the time. She spent the nine years Cassandra lived with her trying to convince her that her father was the opposite of everything she remembered him to be. “He was a sinful man. Dragging you into that mess and playing with your life. You’d do well to forget him.” She said when Cassandra cried at night. So she had stopped crying and tried to hold on to the fragile memories her eight-year-old mind could hold.

“Nothing that would help you now,” is all she says to the Detective. He is playing with his car keys on the table while they wait for the order. He still has the plastic tree she made him when she was ten. It’s faded and scratched, but her name is still visible, dug into the plastic with a scalpel, and the precision of a drunk.

Their silence is interrupted by laughter from a group of women who walk towards the restaurant. Cassandra knows them. She shifts her gaze and lifts the wine list, hoping to escape their notice. The movement catches their eye and they walk over. 

“Hi, Lily! Whatcha doing here?” The leader calls out. “Is that your father?” The girls wave at Detective Chronis and get closer. 

“No… I uh... I worked with her father.” He saves her the trouble of answering. She thinks about his answer. Yes, you could say they worked together. He arrested her father. That counts as working. He got them new identities. He got her father killed. All in a day’s work. 

“We’re just here for some lunch,” Cassandra chimes in, waving at the girls as they retreat to the warmth inside. 

“Friends of yours?”

“Colleagues.” 

“I like Lily. It’s a good choice,” he says as their order arrives. 

They eat in silence. When they are finished, she reaches for the box of cigarettes next to her. The blue and white calling out, begging to be opened. But the detective stops her hand in its path. Taking it in both of his and holding it fast, he has her attention. 

“I’m serious, Cassandra. I will find him. I’ll do anything I can to keep that promise.” 

“Then believe me,” is all she can say. She has thanked him before. 

She walks home in the shadows of the early evening. Her breath mists out around her as she goes. A fast walk home. 15 minutes. 

Turning her key in the door to the building, she looks down at the names on the buzzers. Her own is there. Apartment 3B. L. Crichton. As good a choice as any.

She walks down the passage to her door. Halfway down the hallway, she sees it. A perfect white rectangle on the black plastic doormat. She knows what it is. She wants to freeze. To run away. To disappear. 

But icy dread pulls her forward. Each step drives a nail into the coffin of the life she has built here. Bending down, she seals it. 

But something is different. This time there is not just an envelope. There is a gift too.

She knows what the card will contain. A sentence to leave this life behind. She opens the gift first. It is wrapped in black paper, blending perfectly with the matt. 

It is a book. Greek Myths and Legends. It makes no sense. 

Next, the card. Bile rises in her throat. The acrid flavour burns as she tries to swallow it back down.

A door slams behind her. She whips around, years of preparedness telling her to run. But it is just her neighbour, Mr Stephens, putting out his recycling. The bottles clink as he walks to the bins. The sound is a comfort. 

She opens the card. It’s the same as always, a child’s card. This year a fuzzy teddy holds eight balloons and tells her to have a “Beary Good Day”. Inside she reads:

Dear Cassandra. 

Happy Birthday. 

Did you miss me? 

She no longer feels the cold. Only the blood pumping in her ears and the bitter taste of vomit in her mouth.

Mr Stephens pauses in his walk to his door. He sees the book in her hands and steps closer to look at the cover. “Oh, Greek myth is great. One of my favourites is from the Trojan War. Have you heard of it?”

She shakes her head feebly, trying to steady the shaking in her fingers and the fierce pricking in her eyes.

“It’s the story of a Trojan woman, cursed by Appolo.” Mr Stephens takes a step towards her. He can tell that there’s something wrong. She doesn’t speak to him much, but usually more than this. He carries on his story, trying to calm her down. “He sees her and struck by her beauty, he gives her the gift of prophecy. But she rejects him and he curses her. The curse is that no one will believe her. She sees the disaster of the Greeks coming to attack and no-one believes her. She sees death, and no one believes her. Do you know her name? 

She shakes her head again and takes a step backward towards her door. The story makes her neck tingle and she feels the hairs rise on her arms.

He cocks his head at her and strokes his beard as he smiles at her. A hollow lifeless grin. “It’s Cassandra.”