His breath was still there, scratchy, glued to the phone like a cloth that was slowly tearing. Then I heard a gasp, a dull struggle, and the call was cut off.
I stared at the black screen with an icy sensation that rose from my stomach to my throat. I scored again. Once. Two. Five. Ten. They all sent to the mailbox.
I called 911 with clumsy fingers. I explained the address, the last name, the fight, the shouting, the history. My own voice sounded old, distant, useless. When I hung up, I was already running down the hallway of the residence hall with my coat on over my nightgown and bag hitting my hip.
I hadn’t driven at night for years, but this time I took the car of a neighbor in the building, a woman whose hands were shaking as much as I was when I told her, “It’s an emergency.” He didn’t ask anything. He threw me the keys.
The city was almost empty. The traffic lights seemed to take forever to change. At each red light I imagined Clara on the floor, bleeding. At every bend I heard Julian’s voice again: Who do you think you’re calling?
When I arrived at the skyscraper, there were two patrol cars in front of me and an ambulance with the doors open. The doorman recognized me instantly and looked away, as if he knew more than he had admitted during all those months.
I got on the elevator with a young policeman who smelled of cold coffee. No one spoke.
The door of the apartment was open.
The first thing I saw was the broken vase against the wall at the entrance. Then the dark drops on the marble floor. Blood. Not much. Enough.
Clara was sitting on a chair in the dining room with a blanket over her shoulders. His lip was split, his cheek was swollen, and his gaze was fixed on an empty spot on the table. A paramedic shone a small lamp into his eyes. Julian wasn’t there.
“Where’s my son?” I asked.
The young policeman looked at me before answering.
“He left before we arrived.”
I felt a monstrous mixture of relief and terror.
I approached Clara. When he saw me, his face was broken, but he didn’t cry. I had cried too much. I took his hand. It was freezing.
“He left through the service parking lot,” he whispered. “He took my phone away. I threw it under the sofa. I think that’s why he didn’t find it right away.”
The paramedic asked me for space. He said that they were going to take her to the emergency room as a precaution. I said I would go with her. The officer took my information, then asked me quick questions about the background, about what I had seen before, about whether I was willing to testify.
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
And as soon as the word left my mouth, I understood that there was no turning back.
At the hospital, the hours became a thick mass of white lights, automatic doors and forms. They took photos of the injuries. A doctor spoke of contusion, possible concussion, bruised ribs. A social worker arrived with a beige folder and a soft voice, too soft for the size of the violence we were trying to name.
Clara barely responded. Every time a door in the hallway was closed, he was startled.
At twelve minutes past three in the morning, just as the digital clock in the room changed time, she squeezed my wrist.
“It’s going to come,” he said.
“No.”
“Yes. He always comes back when he thinks he has already lost everything.”
I told him that this time there were police, doctors, papers, photos, lawyers. I told him that it was no longer like before.
But deep down, part of me knew exactly what he meant. Men like Julian can’t stand losing control. They feed on the certainty that the house, money, fear and silence will always belong to them. When that cracks, they bite.
Near dawn, the officer returned. They hadn’t found Julian. His car was also not in the parking lot. He recommended us not to return to the apartment. Clara would be transferred to a temporary shelter as soon as she was discharged.
I nodded.
Clara shook her head.
“No,” he said, his voice seeming to come from far below. “I need to go back.”
I looked at her as if I hadn’t understood her.
“My folders. My ID. My certificates. The blue hard drive.”
“That gets picked up later.”
“No.” His gaze hardened for the first time in a long time. “He doesn’t recover afterwards. If he comes back before us, he destroys everything.”
I asked him what was on that hard drive.
It took him a few seconds to answer.
“Everything I didn’t get to tell you.”
We went that same afternoon, escorted by two agents. The apartment smelled of humidity, broken glass and Julian’s expensive cologne. A disgusting mixture. The windows were still closed. The kitchen light had been on since the night before.
Clara walked straight to the studio. He took out of a drawer several manila folders, an envelope of minutes, a passport, some USB sticks and then knelt in front of the built-in bookcase. He reached behind a row of decorative books that Julian had never read before and pulled out a small, sea-blue hard drive
