Naive by Charles Royce (world best books to read .txt) 📕

He thinks about trying to get up again, to search for his phone, to call 9-1-1, to do something. but he’s exhausted. He rests his head on Lennox’s chest and pulls his husband’s arm around his own. He closes his eyes. As he lies there on top of his partner, his frantic efforts shift to peaceful resolve.

The day they first met.

The fight.

The wedding day.

A loud beep brings him back to his current situation. He opens his eyes just in time to see a series of three blinking red lights flashing from the corner of the room.But the flashing red lights do less to confuse Micah than snap him out of his trance. He jolts up, remembers his phone is in his back pocket, pulls it out and dials.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

Micah is winded, trying to come up with the words. My husband is dying, or My husband is dead? The anger of his confusion and desperation boils and explodes in a frantic display.

“Please help me! My husband! Something’s happened here! I tried to save him. He was alive. Oh God, please come, please! Maybe you can help him!”

“Sir, please slow down. Did you say something’s happened to your husband?”

“Yes! I got home, and he was just lying there.” He looks down and utters, “Blood.” Micah stares at his hands and arms, his chest and legs, all saturated. “Oh my God, I think he’s dead! Please hurry!”

“Sir, what is your location?”

“142 Henry Street, #7, corner of Rutgers.”

“We have an ambulance on the way, sir, and police are very close.”

He unclenches his grip on the phone. Micah looks back at Lennox, lying in what is a river now. As the adrenaline subsides, reality sets in. Micah begins to wail.

“Oh God, how did this happen? I don’t understand!” Micah hears himself talking out loud, but he’s still on the phone.

“Now, I need you to calm down, okay? Is there anyone else in the house?”

Micah pauses in mid-breath. “What?”

“Sir, could the person who did this still be there?”

Throughout the ordeal, this is the first time the idea has even crossed his mind. The killer could still be here.

“Oh my God, I have no idea.” Micah’s voice is now softer.

He looks around their condo. Lennox loves this place, Micah remembers. The century-old brick walls that perfectly frame the twenty-two giant vertical windows on all four sides, the Manhattan skyline visible to the west and northwest, the two-hundred-year-old church with the bell tower (which they both had secretly wanted to climb) resting peacefully in the windows to the north, the fire-red brick apartment building to the east, and of course the magnificent views of the Manhattan Bridge over the East River to the south and southeast. Lennox had always wanted a full-story condo, with an elevator that opened right into the middle of his home. He was overjoyed when he found one in the Garfield Building, a little-known landmark from the 1800s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Micah had come to love it, mostly because it had made Lennox so happy.

“Do you have a neighbor or a nearby friend you can go to right now, until help arrives?” The 9-1-1 operator, impatient for Micah’s safety, interrupts his memories.

“I think I’m okay.”

“Just to be safe, could you find a place to hide, maybe lock yourself in a bathroom, please sir?”

Micah thinks the idea atrocious. After all, he has just tried CPR on his dying husband, now he’s supposed to hide? His friend Jenna lives just across the street, next to the church with the bell tower. She could be on her way home by now, he remembers, having just left her at the event they were both attending earlier in the evening.

“Yes, I have a friend who—”

The doorbell interrupts him. He looks toward the security system, a sleek metallic-chrome console, which is now reflecting the red-and-blue lights flickering through the front windows.

“I think they’re here,” Micah says to the operator.

He hangs up and rushes to the call box next to his elevator door. As usual, the video is not working, but the audio is. Micah presses, and by rote he mumbles, “Come on up.”

Micah presses to listen, only to hear shards of the building’s front door glass falling to the ground. Micah releases his finger from the buzzer, noticing his own bloody fingerprints wherever he touches. Seconds later a giant boom right next to him makes him jump.

They’re trying to bust open the elevator.

He presses the elevator OPEN button so no more damage will be done to the place. Lennox will not be very happy.

Lennox.

Two police officers try to enter as the elevator opens, but only one makes it through first.

“He’s right over there,” Micah says, pointing to the far window behind the sofa. He places his finger in his mouth to bite the nail but is startled by the metallic taste. He closes his eyes in disbelief at what is happening. He tries to catch his breath. He feels like he’s suffocating. He wrestles his blood-soaked tuxedo jacket from his thick arms and throws it on the floor in front of him.

The first police officer, a heavyset woman, ignores Micah, steps over the jacket, and walks in the opposite direction of Lennox’s body. She begins to secure the rest of the house, pushing Micah into the wall that houses the security mechanism and the light switches as she bulldozes by. She puts on her gloves, walks into the first bedroom and begins to check the closet, then under the bed. Micah leans forward to track her while keeping his vantage point from the elevator in the center of the room. After all, there’s a possibility Lennox could still be alive.

The second policeman, Officer Mateo Palino, a burly six-foot-two Italian-looking fellow, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a set of blue rubber gloves. He walks past Micah toward Lennox, who is lying still on the floor. He turns around.

“Do you have a code that unlocks your private floor, sir? EMT is