Fatal Pose

by Barna William Donovan

  “I think I remember what you’re talking about, yeah. And you’ve checked up on me, I see.”

  “Well, when someone starts coming around and accusing you of murder, you get curious about who it is that you’re dealing with.”

  “I never—” Gunnar began, feeling things would keep on working somewhat smoothly between the two of them if he at least pretended to protest her accusation.

  She cut him off, though. “No, you suggest. You imply. You insinuate.”

  “No, I just had questions about the people around Brad.”

  “But I’m certain you repaid the favor by now, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve been looking around,” Gunnar said quietly and nodded.

  “But you’ve dodged my question,” Laura insisted. “How did Erika get into…into this thing, this lifestyle we’re living?”

  “She used to be a model as a kid,” Gunnar said and drank more coffee.

  “Oh, I think I recall something about that in the article.”

  Gunnar nodded and finished the story. “She was a model and an anorexic and bulimic, and whatever other body and eating problems there are out there.”

  “Wow,” Laura said quietly. “A model. Figures something like that would happen.”

  “What?”

  “She rebels against a constraining set of standards for behavior and appearances. This is a perfect rebellion for a woman, you know. It hardly is for men, I believe.”

  Although there was a placid, contemplative look on Laura’s face, Gunnar couldn’t help but feel like he was being prodded, provoked by her words.

  “You weren’t a rebel when you started pumping iron, were you?” Laura asked.

  Gunnar shrugged. “Probably not.” Then he couldn’t help but allow a thin smile that felt painful, not so much because of what had happened in the past, but because he had to talk about it to Laura. “I was more like the slow, awkward fat kid.”

  “It’s the manly thing to do, isn’t it?”

  “I grew up in Las Vegas, and my mother was a showgirl. The powerful physiques on the guy dancers were the best a man could get, I thought. They probably had no problems impressing girls. Well, later, I realized they were almost all gay.”

  “Interesting family history, Gunnar,” Laura said with a cocked eyebrow. “You must’ve had the wildest mom on ‘bring your parents to school’ day.”

  “My mother baked cookies for ‘bring your parents to school’ day.”

  “I started lifting after my sister and I were raped.” Laura suddenly let the information drop into the middle of their banter. The silence of her brief pause was oppressive. “We were in high school, and we were brutalized by a pair of serial rapists. My sister’s been in a wheelchair ever since, and she had a mental breakdown.”

  Gunnar felt Laura’s eyes drilling into him.

  “But you know that, don’t you?” she asked at length.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I think they were following, targeting Emily. She was so beautiful. She was always the goddess—you know, the unattainable girl at school. I always wanted to be like her. That was my standard. But they attacked us both. I saw it shatter Emily, and no one could ever put her back together again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gunnar said.

  “That hatred I saw in those men. I saw that in Brad Holt. What he did, the kind of…entertainment he produced, it fed that same hatred in other men like him. But when I recovered from the attack, I decided I would never be weak again. No one would ever be able to attack me like that again. It started with martial arts. But bodybuilding was my true salvation. I would wear my rebellion on my proverbial sleeve if you will. I no longer cared about looking the part of the cute, weak, vulnerable female that fed the lusts of animals like the people that attacked me.”

  Gunnar wondered about something as Laura told this last part of her story. “And you never saw that…attitude among the guys in the gym?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “I was treated like the macho, misogynistic testosterone head back in the gallery.”

  “No,” Laura said evenly. “Most of the men in the gyms I virtually lived in for all those years—most of those guys I really felt more comfortable dating for a long time—are nothing at all like Brad Holt. They are the former fat, awkward kids.”

  Gunnar couldn’t help chuckling. “Yeah, they probably are.”

  “So, to answer your question, I’m not an across-the-board man-hater.”

  Gunnar grinned more broadly now and sipped his superb cup of coffee. “Makes me feel safer.”

  “Holt, though, was into power, the brute strength to dominate, push people around. He was like the animals that raped me.”

  “Maybe,” Gunnar said simply, and he knew Laura was probably right.

  “So why are you trying so hard to solve this case? This world is a better place without him. You know it.”

  The heart of the matter, Gunnar realized. The point of their little dance.

  “Because,” he said, “I think Brad might have known something about someone else’s crime. I think he was blackmailing someone. Maybe burying the Holt case is burying a crime that deserves justice.”

  “I see,” Laura said coolly. Her eyes seemed to be challenging Gunnar to go on, lay out everything he had.

  “There was an incident in my past that, I think, is slightly comparable to you and your sister.” Gunnar decided it was safe to be a little circumspect. He thought he needed to open up a painful wound from the past to make his point to Laura. “Well, somewhat comparable…maybe.”

  “What is it?” Laura asked.

  “Well, comparable in the sense that it makes me think about crime and punishment.”

  “Oh?”

  Time to take a deep breath and plunge in, Gunnar told himself as he was about to regret what he had just started. “There was a girl in Vegas I grew up with,” he began as evenly as he could muster. This was necessary to make a point, he reminded himself once more. “Oh, wait a minute. It’s probably more fair and accurate to say that I knew her as a kid, and I wished I could have grown up with her. Like she could have been my next-door neighbor or something. Jane McNeil. The girl I wished would have been my first sweetheart.”

  Laura smiled at him, but it was clearly superficial, condescending, actually. “You worshipped her from afar?”

  “Oh, not really from afar. I worshiped her up close, too, and I told her so. She was like…both the prettiest and the smartest girl around. She got a full scholarship to UNLV to study math—”

  “But she didn’t want you?” Laura cut in. Her voice sounded sympathetic, but there was a cold tinge to her words.

  “No. Not like that. I was after her for years. Maybe I started lifting to impress her. Didn’t really work.”

  “What happened?”

  “She got married and didn’t finish college. Old money. His family had owned a chain of grocery stores all over the state. But from what I’m told, it didn’t take Fred Gilbert long to start seeing other girlfriends.”

  “Well, you would have been a perfect gentleman, right?” This time her voice did not disguise condescension and impatience.

  “He started knocking her around when she objected. Then he beat her to death.”

  This time Laura looked truly shocked.

  “The official conclusion was that he committed suicide. He was free on bond, and the jury had already been deliberating for over two weeks. Supposedly he jumped off a bridge. The jury’s verdict, by the way, would have been guilty.”

  “It sounds like you have issues with the official conclusion about his death.”

  “There was a river under the same bridge. Kind of convenient for disposing of a body without a trace.”

  Laura didn’t say anything for a drawn-out moment.

  “That’s a tragic st
ory, yes,” she said at length. “But you said it was similar to….”

  Gunnar looked her in the eye. He wanted to see her initial, instinctive reaction to what he was about to say. “What would you do to the men who raped you?” he fired the question at her. “If you could find them?”

  Laura averted his gaze, studying the salad on her plate. “I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. Then, to keep my peace of mind, my sanity, I realized I needed to put that question behind me.”

  “If I could ever get my hands on Gilbert—because I believe he’s alive—I’d kill him.”

  Laura nodded slowly. “One of my attackers is dead today. The other one is in prison in Colorado.”

  “The police at the time thought someone, another victim perhaps, turned vigilante in Snowflake, didn’t they?”

  Laura’s eyebrows went up, but she didn’t say anything.

  “A kid called Billy Webb, someone the cops thought might have known a pair of itinerant workmen in Snowflake, got shot. Probably mistaken identity. The shooter going for some payback.”

  There was an empty smile now on Laura’s face, and she leaned forward ever so slightly. “You know,” she said, sounding almost conspiratorial, “I just realized that I really need to give you this bit of advice. And forgive me if it sounds arrogant in any way. But your subtlety needs work. And that’s important in your work, isn’t it? You have the subtlety of a sledgehammer.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Did I kill Billy Webb? That’s what your long, personal revelation has been leading up to, hasn’t it?” With every word, Laura’s features got tighter. The control she had over her rage was more startling than if she would have blown up and screamed at Gunnar. “Well, guess what? I didn’t. The cops questioned me as they questioned the other rape victims at the time, and they were satisfied I had nothing to do with Billy’s death. And Brad Holt didn’t have any secret piece of evidence that proved otherwise, and I did not kill him to shut him up.”

  Laura paused, but Gunnar did not reply. She was on a roll here, he realized, and he wanted to hear what else would come out if he let her vent.

  Laura continued, “And you and your questions and your whole, baseless case are getting tiresome. And I’m not going to have anything to do with you or Holt or any of his lowlife friends or relatives. Now, I will let you have one more chance, though. I want you to give me your best, take your shots, and ask me any last questions. Come on and ask your questions that will bring this supposed plot I’m carrying out crashing down around me.”

  “Well—”

  “Come on, Marino,” Laura goaded. “Ask me your questions! And please make them good ones because they will be the last ones you get to ask.”

  “Okay. Why did you call Brad during the intermission? I saw the call come in on his cell at around eight o’clock. A group of friends and I were talking to him when it did.”

  Laura fired back, “I needed to ask him a question about a photoshoot layout we were planning for the following day.”

  “Any photographers know about this shoot?” Gunnar countered.

  “Yes. I can give you their names. Go talk to them!”

  “Where were you when you called?”

  “In my car. Driving toward Pomona and the Fleming Psychiatric Institute. I went to see my sister. There were people who met me there. You can call and ask Dr. Marcus Collier. He’ll tell you I was up there. I also have witnesses who saw me leave the hotel. Just go back and double-check the contest videos, and you’ll see when I left! Next!”

  “When the call came in, Holt retreated up to his room. Why do you suppose he did that?”

  “He didn’t want to disrupt you and your friends. How the hell should I know?”

  “But up to his room? Isn’t that too far to go for a call on his cell?”

  “No, I don’t suppose it is. It was intermission. He was exhausted. Maybe he felt sick. Maybe he went to lie down.”

  “It is a fair supposition, don’t you think, that he could have gone up there to meet with you?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You couldn’t be seen in the building because you had already put on a good show of leaving. You walked past the video cameras and let them take a time-coded shot of you leaving. You talked to the doorman so he could vouch for the time you left. But I believe you came back to the hotel, through one of the side doors, went upstairs, then called Holt and asked that he meet you there. At that time, somehow, you poisoned him.”

  “Somehow?” Laura spat the word back at Gunnar and added a sharp, derisive bark of laughter for full effect. “Well, why don’t you go ahead and prove how! Go and prove anything. Give one single piece of evidence that I was in the building during intermission. Go ahead! And until you do that, I want you to get the hell out of my life, or I’ll press charges for harassment.”

  Laura got up as she fished inside her purse. She no longer looked at Gunnar but removed a handful of money and threw it on the table before marching out of the café.

  CHAPTER 57

  The anger pulsing through Laura had overcome her fear. This time she wasn’t anywhere near the attack of nerves she’d experienced the night before. Monty Montgomery’s…permanent absence from her life had put her back in charge of everything. Now she only had Gunnar Marino to worry about, and he, somehow, still didn’t seem like an overwhelming problem.

  He just about put everything together! a voice went off in Laura’s head as she stomped her Jaguar’s accelerator, and the car lurched out of the Marmalade Café’s parking lot.

  Adrenaline surged through Laura’s body.

  Marino might have put almost everything together, but he still lacked vital pieces of evidence to make a convincing case, Laura knew. His case was circumstantial….

  Not circumstantial! Her mind screamed.

  There was no way he could place her at the Santa Monica Palace Hotel. He might have been able to somehow guess everything she did, but he had no proof. He had no physical evidence to put her in the hotel. He still had no way of proving beyond a doubt that Holt was even murdered, much less give some sort of tangible, solid evidence that she did it.

  And as Marino might yet continue to stumble and bumble around, trying to find some legitimate clues against her, Laura realized she still had the upper hand. She knew what he was up to all the time. Or, at least, she knew what he was up to, where he was going, and what he was planning on doing while he was in his office. Monty Montgomery’s bugs were still in Marino’s office, and they were working for Laura.

  And that’s why she felt the surge of power, the surge of adrenaline and anger stoking her on. This contest with Marino was out in the open now. She had confronted him. She had laid down the challenge. There was no more bullshit, no more pretense, false courtesies, and no more façade of mutual cooperation. It was her against Marino, and he was out to take her down.

  “Go for it, tough guy,” she whispered as she gunned the Jaguar’s engine.

  While Marino fumbled his way onward in this fruitless investigation of his, Laura could take any number of steps to take him out of the game, thanks again to Monty’s surveillance equipment.

  “And I’m going to go for it, too,” Laura talked to herself again, her voice rising above the surge of her car’s engine as it sped along the Pacific Coast Highway. “One of us needs to be removed from this little game.”

  CHAPTER 58

  Gunnar lowered himself into his office chair and rested his head against its well-worn leather back. He just needed time to think, but he had already been in Diane’s employ for far too long without presenting any real hope for a solution to the case.

  He picked up his phone and called Erika at the hospital. He was going to ask her about the autopsy again. Not so much for any hopes of new information, but to hear her voice.

  “Are you absolutely sure there’s nothing at all suspi
cious in the autopsy?” he asked within moments of getting her on the line.

  “No, I’m sorry, Gunnar,” she said, “but there’s nothing here that’s pointing in any way to murder. I mean, yes, it’s still peculiar that he could have taken in the liquids and felt good enough to pose, even pose well enough to make the finals, and then die, but it’s not completely inconceivable. There’s no indication of murder beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

  Gunnar found himself sighing. Or more like deflating upon hearing Erika repeat basically what she had told him before. “That’s not what I needed to hear right now.”

  “What happened?”

  “Met with Laura. Didn’t go well.”

  “What happened?”

  “I have no evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt. She threatened to press charges for harassment if I contact her again.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “What’s next?”

  That was a question Gunnar didn’t want to deal with right now, but he had no choice but to own up to the rest of his professional obligations. “Well, it’s about time for me to get up to Lomita and the surveillance house. I need to think of a way to figure out where Holt kept his blackmail materials.”

  “Think you can do that?”

  “I’m not sure…I don’t know.”

  There was a pause on Erika’s end. “Just watch yourself in that house.”

  “Will do.”

  CHAPTER 59

  The situation surrounding the change of lookouts in Lomita bothered Gunnar, but he had agreed to it originally. Now there was no use in complaining or taxing himself with any more frustration.

  Amy had left the stakeout house early, just as she had told Gunnar she would. Unfortunately, Gunnar got there late.

  He cursed the L.A. traffic one last time as he approached the surveillance house, then commanded himself to relax and focus. There was nothing he could do about allowing Amy to leave early, and there was nothing to be done now about traffic. He had to be observant, relaxed. He had to clear his mind and allow himself to take in all of the surroundings.