24. Becci (III)
Becci woke up to the sound
of her husband’s body falling to the floor, though it would be several more
minutes before she discovered it. When
she sat up in the dark, disoriented, all she knew was that something – a sound,
a shake, she couldn’t be sure – had jolted her out of a deep sleep.
She wasn’t concerned until
she went to wake Brian and found that he wasn’t in bed beside her. Then she switched on the light and scrambled
out of bed in a panic, her nightgown twisting around her bare legs. “Brian?” she called in a loud whisper, as she
tiptoed up the hall, trying not to wake Calhan.
There was no answer, but
she could see the kitchen light on at the end of the hall. She was afraid to call out again, imagining
herself interrupting a robbery, but she couldn’t sneak back to bed without
knowing where her husband was. She
flattened her body against the wall and peeked slowly around the corner, into
the kitchen. The sight that awaited her
was so horrible, she completely forgot her quest to stay quiet and let out an
earsplitting scream.
Brian lay in a pool of
blood on the kitchen floor. It was only
once she rushed to his side that Becci saw the knife protruding from his chest.
She dropped to her knees
beside him, one hand clamped over her mouth.
Her other hand trembled as she reached out and lightly touched his
shoulder. “Brian?” she whimpered, afraid
to shake him and hurt him more. She
thought she saw him twitch, but when she looked twice, she realized it was the
knife that had moved. Its handle was
quivering. She stared at it in confusion
for a few seconds, watching the way it jerked ever so slightly from side to
side, and then she understood: The knife
was lodged in Brian’s heart.
She felt her stomach turn
and bile bubble into the back of her throat as she realized the knife twitched every
time his heart beat. The urge to vomit
was followed by a moment of relief. As
long as the knife kept twitching, it meant Brian’s heart was still beating, and
if his heart was still beating, then he was still alive…
Becci swallowed back her
bile and scrambled to her feet, running for the phone. She dialed 911 and was connected to a
dispatcher. “Yes, I need an ambulance
and the police right away,” she told the dispatcher tearfully and gave her
address. “I think someone broke into my home. My husband’s been stabbed in the chest; I
think the knife is in his heart…”
Struggling to keep her
composure, she answered the dispatcher’s questions and followed her directions. She tilted Brian’s head back to protect his
airway. She did not touch the knife, still
twitching inside his chest. She took his
hand instead and held it in hers as she waited for the ambulance to arrive.
The wail of a siren had
never sounded so sweet. “I’ll be right
back, Brian,” Becci whispered as she let go of Brian’s hand. “Help is here.” She ran into the front yard to meet the
police car that was pulling into the driveway.
Down the street, she could see the flashing lights of the ambulance
approaching.
The two police officers
who got out of the car would not let her go back into the house, insisting they
had to make sure the intruder was gone.
“But my son’s still inside!” Becci cried, struck with a fresh wave of
panic. “He’s still asleep in his crib;
he’s only one!”
“We’ll bring him to you,
ma’am. We have to secure the scene and
make sure it’s safe for you to go back in.”
She was left to watch
helplessly as the pair of officers went in without her, holding their guns out
in front of them. When the EMS squad
arrived, they, too, insisted she stay outside while they went in. Becci waited in the front yard, dressed only
in her nightgown and trembling from head to toe. She hugged her arms to her chest, as if
physically holding herself together could keep her from falling apart.
The flashing lights on top
of the two emergency vehicles cast eerie shadows across the house and yard,
bathing Becci’s world in shades of red and blue. She felt as if she were in the middle of a
waking nightmare, unable to help her husband or protect her child.
In the midst of her
nightmare, she was joined by several pajama-clad neighbors who had been
awakened by the strobe effect of the lights shining in their windows. Her voice shook as she struggled to explain
what had happened, but it helped to have them there, wrapping consoling arms
around her and rubbing her shoulders as they whispered words of
reassurance. One of them offered to stay
with Cal while she went to the hospital with Brian, and Becci was grateful.
After a wait that seemed
endless but probably only lasted a matter of minutes, one of the police
officers emerged from the house, carrying Calhan. Becci could hear him crying and felt a stab
of fear, afraid he had been hurt.
Frantic, she ran across the yard, but the officer holding him called
out, “It’s alright, ma’am! He’s fine,
just scared. I’m afraid we woke him up,”
he added, handing the screaming toddler to her.
Becci’s fear melted into relief as she clutched Calhan to her chest,
holding him tight. “The house looks
clear, ma’am,” the officer told her. “If
anyone broke in, they’re gone now. Did
you actually see an intruder?”
“No,” said Becci quickly,
“but I heard something. It woke me
up.” Something about the tone of the
officer’s voice made her feel defensive.
“Someone stabbed my husband,
and it certainly wasn’t me!” As soon as
she said it, a startling thought occurred to her. “You don’t think I did it, do you??”
The officer looked her up
and down. There was a strange expression
in his eyes, but it wasn’t suspicion.
More like… sympathy? “No,” he said
shortly. “I don’t think you did it. Don’t worry, ma’am. Whatever happened, we’ll get to the bottom of
it.”
“How’s Brian?” Becci
asked. “How’s my husband?”
“The EMTs are working on
him. They should be bringing him out
soon.”
“Can I go in?”
The officer placed a firm
hand on her shoulder. He still had that
same look in his eyes. “I think it would
be better if you stayed outside.”
When they brought Brian
out, Becci understood why. Her husband
was strapped to a stretcher, and one of the medics was straddling him, his hands
pushing repeatedly on the center of Brian’s chest, just to the right of the
knife. She could see the hilt of her
kitchen knife continue to jerk with each compression, but Becci knew what had
happened: her husband’s heart had
stopped. Just when she thought they were
in the clear, her worst fear had been realized.
Becci’s knees buckled, and
if she hadn’t been holding Calhan, she would have collapsed right there on the
lawn. As it was, neighbors’ arms shot
out to steady her, and Mrs. Holland, who had offered to babysit, reached for
her son, saying, “Here, Becci, let me take him inside. You go with Brian. Go on, honey.”
At Mrs. Holland’s urging,
Becci released Cal into her arms, planting a hasty kiss on his forehead. “Thank you!” she blurted, before she turned
and tore after the EMTs, who were loading the stretcher into the back of the
ambulance. “Please, may I ride with
you?” she begged.
“Yeah, but you’ll have to
sit up front. Follow me,” said the man
who turned out to be the driver. He
slammed the back doors shut, sealing Brian inside, and led her around to the
passenger side of the ambulance. He
opened the door and offered her his hand as she climbed up into the cab. Becci realized she’d never ridden in an
ambulance before.
A voice crackled through
the radio: “Let’s go lights and sirens
on this one.”
The driver pushed a button
to reply: “You got it. Lights and sirens all the way.” He turned to Becci. “Better buckle up.”
She did as the ambulance
drove away, its siren sounding the alarm all the way into Lexington.
***
In the emergency
department at Saint Joseph, the same hospital in which Brian had received his
new heart, Becci sat in a small room, her head in her hands, waiting for news
on her husband. When she heard someone
say, “Mrs. Littrell?” she looked up, but the man in the doorway wore a navy
police uniform, rather than a white doctor’s coat. She recognized him as the officer who had
brought her Calhan. “I know this is a
difficult time, but do you have a few minutes to talk to me?”
“Okay,” Becci agreed,
straightening in her seat as she tried to gather her thoughts. She raked a hand through her tangled hair,
sure that she looked like a mess. One of
the ER nurses, seeing that she had arrived still in her blood-streaked nightgown,
had loaned her a pair of scrubs. They
were too big, and she felt like she was floating in them, but at least she was
fully-clothed.
The officer dropped into
the seat next to her. “I wanted to ask
you more about the alleged break-in you reported tonight. You told me earlier that you didn’t actually
see the intruder – is that right?”
“That’s right,” said
Becci, rubbing her swollen eyes. “I
didn’t see anyone, but I heard-”
“You heard something,
yes. Could you describe the kind of
sound you heard?”
“I… I’m not sure.” She shook her head. “I was asleep. Whatever it was, it was enough to wake me
up.”
“Did you lock up the house
before you went to bed?”
“Yes, of course, we always
do. Why?” As she waited for his response, Becci racked
her brain, trying to remember whether it had been she or Brian who had locked
up for the night.
“Well, we checked your
house for signs of a forced entry – broken windows, torn screens, busted locks,
anything like that. We didn’t find
anything. It also didn’t appear that
anything had been disturbed or taken, as in a burglary.”
Becci narrowed her eyes at
the police officer, wondering what he was implying. “So then, who stabbed my husband?”
He pressed his lips
together in a thin line, exhaling through his nose. After a pause, he said, “I spoke with the
EMTs who transported your husband here.
They told me that the knife he was stabbed with went in at an upward
angle, with the blade turned horizontally.
I don’t want to get too graphic with you, but when a person is stabbed
during an attack, the assailant usually stabs with a downward motion, holding
the knife with its blade turned vertically.”
He demonstrated with his pen. “I
know this is difficult to hear, but in Brian’s case, the angle and direction of
the blade suggest that the wound was self-inflicted.”
Becci gasped. “What?!
You think he stabbed himself? Why
would he do that?”
The office gave her that
same look of sympathy he had outside her house.
“That’s what I want to know.”
She shook her head. “Brian would never hurt himself. We have a happy marriage, a beautiful family,
a great life! He loves his life! And he knows not to take it for granted. He almost died last year of heart failure,
but a heart transplant saved his life.
Brian wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that.”
“So there are no problems
in your marriage? No infidelity or
financial issues that you and Brian have been dealing with?”
“No!” Becci insisted, hot
tears prickling her eyes. “We’re happy! We love each other! ‘All you need is love’ – he said so
himself!” She could remember him humming
along to the song of the same title, the night of the Christmas concert. For some reason, the memory gave her a sick
feeling deep down in her gut.
The officer nodded. “Alright.
Thanks for your time. That’s all
I wanted to ask you tonight, but we’ll be in touch as we continue to
investigate. Hopefully Brian will be
able to tell us more.”
“I hope so,” agreed Becci
in a hushed voice, remembering how bad it had looked the last time she’d seen her
husband. Almost an hour had passed since
he had been whisked away from her. The
officer left her still waiting for word on his condition, but also wondering.
Why, Brian? Why?
***