Prime Suspect

by A. W. Gray

  Her car was parked in between a Ford Bronco and a brown Mercury Marquis. Henley held back while Morrison took Nancy in between the Bronco and the Mustang to the Mustang’s driver’s side. The big blond cop stood with his hands in his pockets, a half-grin, half-leer on his face, as Nancy fumbled for keys. Finally she found it, a long silver key with a personalized head, the Ford symbol superimposed over a cursive N. She unlocked and opened the door, and drew in her breath. Morrison was whistling softly between his teeth.

  Suddenly, moving faster than she would have dreamed possible, Nancy tossed her purse into the back, clambered behind the wheel like a petite gopher into a hole, slammed the door and hit the lock button. The plungers engaged with two simultaneous thunks. Morrison moved as if in slow motion, his jaw dropping, reaching for the door handle from outside. As he yanked, the cop’s features twisted in rage. The door didn’t give a fraction and the Mustang rocked on its springs. Morrison yelled something that Nancy couldn’t understand and pounded his fist on the Mustang’s roof. Her heart thudding as though it would tear through her ribcage, Nancy groped the key into the ignition, and twisted the key so hard that pain shot through her thumb. The starter chugged briefly; the engine caught and raced. Visible in the sideview mirror, Henley was now coming forward, his eyes hidden behind dark lenses and his lips set in a rigid line. Nancy popped the lever into reverse and floored the accelerator. Rubber squealed as the car leaped backwards. The two cops flashed by on Nancy’s left. She was in the aisle now, rolling back, her neck popping as she shifted to drive and the Mustang reversed directions. The two detectives were now coming at a dead run, clutching at the holsters on their belts.

  God, would they shoot her? Would they? Nancy pictured bullets smashing through the windows and drilling into the sides of the car, and gave a nervous giggle as the death scene from Bonnie and Clyde flashed through her mind, the old touring car rocking on its springs while the bodies of Faye Dun away and Warren Beatty danced like grisly marionettes. Nancy shut her eyes tightly as she floored the accelerator. The Mustang careened forward with Nancy fighting the wheel, very nearly sideswiping the rear bumper of the Mercury in the next parking space, straightening the Mustang’s forward path, leaving the two cops in her wake. Henley and Morrison, pistols drawn, were now framed in the rearview mirror. Morrison actually leveled his gun at the Mustang as Nancy held her breath. Henley grabbed his partner’s arm, stopping him, and the two cops sprinted for the elevators. They disappeared from view as Nancy rounded the turn, the Mustang’s nose slanted downward, and headed for the exit six floors below. Concrete beams flashed overhead like ties under a speeding train.

  She barreled downward, fishtailing as she rounded the sixth-floor turn, and passed the elevators. She dared to glance at the lighted panels above the cars.

  One elevator was stopped at the lobby, another on three. The third car was in motion upward, passing the sixth floor, headed for seven, so it would be a few seconds before the cops boarded the elevator. Nancy returned her gaze to the front, pressed on the brakes just before the Mustang nearly rammed a concrete barrier, and careened onto the fifth level. Two women in business dresses stepped from the row of parked cars. Nancy jammed the heel of her hand against the Mustang’s horn; the blast of the horn vibrated through the parking garage as the women leaped back to safety and mouthed curses as Nancy sped past them. The lighted fifth-floor panel showed that the elevator had stopped on seven and reversed its direction, the cops were now passing the sixth level.

  Nancy steered the Mustang through the fourth floor and down onto the third. A panel truck was backing out into the aisle directly in her path. She couldn’t stop. No way could she stop. She whipped the Mustang to the right and went around the panel truck, missing its bumper by inches; the panel truck’s horn blasted and, visible in Nancy’s rearview mirror, the truckdriver shot her the finger. The lighted panel told her that the cops’ elevator had stopped on the fifth level, and she pictured Henley flashing his badge and stopping other stunned passengers from boarding. Nancy careened onto the second level. Only two more turns to go, she thought. Two, God, two more.

  As she wheeled past the second floor with walls and beams flashing by in a series of dull gray blurs, she thought for the first time that she might actually be going to make it. When she’d made the snap decision to run from the cops, she’d acted out of sheer desperation and had been certain that her plan would never get off the ground. But now it was possible. One more turn. More than possible, it was . . .

  Nancy made the final turn at ground level and threw on her brakes. Her heart sank into her belly, and any hope that had been building within her flew out the window like winging sparrows.

  The three exit booths were busy, and a line of four or five cars waited before each drive-through slot. The drivers were taking their time about it, the daily parkers fumbling for their money, and monthly contract people holding plastic cards out their windows. Nancy checked the first-floor panel on her right; the detectives were passing the third level. In moments the door would slide open and out they would dash, guns drawn, the big blond bastard with a smirk on his face. Nancy wasn’t giving up. No way. As she firmed up her mouth and scanned the three exit lines, a small red foreign car—a Z or a Porsche, Nancy didn’t know one from the other—pulled to a stop behind her and tooted its horn. The detectives were passing the second level. Nancy had a few precious ticks of the clock, no more, before they’d be on her.

  She had stopped in the neck, at the place where the slanted drive widened into three exit lanes, and the booths were perhaps thirty steps from the Mustang’s nose. The left-hand booth was flush against a concrete wall, but on the right of the three lanes—sweet savior, on the right, Nancy thought—there was clearance. Not much, fifteen feet at the most from the right side of the Ford Taurus, whose driver was now passing money to a bored attendant, to the door marked “Employees Only” which led to the interior of the building. And the fifteen feet wasn’t level, either, a few feet to the right of the Taurus was a raised curb. Beyond the booths the drive exited onto Throckmorton Street; visible through the yawning portal, cars, trucks, and buses crawled in a rush-hour hodgepodge. On Nancy’s right the elevator opened and the detectives came out. Henley headed straight for the Mustang with his pistol ready; Morrison stopped in his tracks and showed Nancy a crooked grin through the windshield. She curled her lip. Behind her, the little red car tooted its horn a second time.

  As though acting on its own, Nancy’s small foot jammed the gas pedal to the floorboard. At the same time her hands twisted the steering wheel to the right. The Mustang leaped forward and hesitated, and for a heart-stopping instant Nancy was sure that the engine was going to stall. Then the Mustang screeched ahead, tires burning rubber. Henley’s slender body and bald head flashed by on her right. Nancy crossed the thirty steps to the exit booth in what seemed milliseconds. Heads turned in her direction. A toll booth attendant—a Hispanic girl who looked to be around Nancy’s age—let her mouth drop open and her gum come out and roll down her chin. The steering wheel jolted in Nancy’s grasp as the Mustang jumped the curb; the Mustang’s left side clipped the Taurus with a protesting squeal of metal.

  And all at once Nancy was clear of the exit booths, fighting the wheel as the Mustang fishtailed among the rush-hour traffic on Throckmorton Street. A small blue pickup loomed in her path; Nancy whipped the Mustang to the left, dodged the pickup, and did a forty-mile-an-hour squeeze between a yellow city bus and an old Riviera with less than a foot to spare on either side. She risked a glance at the rearview mirror; Morrison and Henley charged from the parking lot onto the sidewalk to stand with their hands on their hips. Seen over the Mustang’s hood, the light at the intersection of Throckmorton and 7th switched from amber to red. Nancy held her breath as she ran the light, turning left on 7th with a squeal of rubber and a cloud of flying pavement dust. Pedestrians who had started to cross the street leaped backwards and shook angry fists.

  Five minutes later, Nancy stoppe
d at the traffic light where 7th crossed University and joined at an angle with Camp Bowie Boulevard. No one was staring at her, not the bald man in the Cadillac on her right nor the white-haired lady in the Imperial directly behind the Mustang’s bumper. No sirens sounded in the distance and no red rooflights flashed. Ahead of Nancy and to her right, two teenage kids stood before the box office at the 7th Street Theatre glancing furtively around. Directly above them, the marquee advertised The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

  Nancy Cuellar rested her forehead against the top of the steering wheel and gently closed her eyes. She was shaking like a leaf and her pulse was racing like a Geiger counter at White Sands.

  16

  Percy Hardin wondered whether it was doing it in her dead sister’s bedroom that turned Betty Monroe on. Christ, that had to be it. Anywhere else—in the luxury suite at the Green Oaks Inn, on the daybed in the back of Percy’s customized van, even once at midnight in the froghair around the seventh green at Colonial Country Club—he’d found Betty to be only a slightly above average piece of ass. But here, Christ Jesus, here in the canopied four-poster with the scent of burning incense filling his nostrils, Betty was something else. She bucked and strained against him, her lips pulled away from perfect teeth in an earthy grimace, her long legs tightening around his midsection as though she was trying to squeeze the very breath from his lungs. He pounded into her, tried to hold back but couldn’t, groaned as he spurted semen and she screamed lusty screams. Christ, it was good. Christ, it was . . .

  They lay intertwined as their breathing subsided. Finally Betty said, her face just inches from his, “Was it different with her?”

  He rolled from on top of her and sprawled on sweat-dampened sheets. “Different? Christ, yes.”

  “Better or worse?” Betty said. She favored Daddy Ross more than Marissa had, Betty’s features sharper, her complexion lighter. In the past few years Marissa’s increasing resemblance to Mama Luwanda had made it more and more difficult for Percy to get it up.

  “Oh, better,” Percy said. “Yes, hell, yes, better.”

  “A whole lot better?” Betty rolled onto her side and raised up to lean on her elbow, her small, well-formed breasts drooping toward rumpled silk sheets. Tell me how good I am. Christ, Percy thought, that’s all she wants to hear.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” Percy said.

  “Until I believe it.”

  “Well, if you don’t believe it by now, you may never.”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Even when she was alive? I know I’m better now.”

  Christ, what a morbid sense of humor, Percy thought. “Better than then,” he said.

  “Than when she was alive? Say it.”

  Did he have to? Christ, he already knew the answer to that one. She’d keep after him until he did. “Better than when she was alive,” Percy said.

  “That’s more like it.” Betty got out of bed and pranced naked over to the vanity. She sat down, picked up a tiny spray bottle with a gold-colored bulb and read the label. “Daphne,” she said. “I sent it to her from London. Did she use it before you two fucked?” She squeezed the bulb and there was a tiny hiss. Betty sniffed the air like Bambi. “Did she?”

  “Christ, Betty, I don’t know. What makes you so obsessed with it?”

  “I just want to know.” She crossed her legs and twisted her head to look at him. A crease formed in the skin on her slender back. Her brown hair was center-parted and at the moment disheveled. “A guy I knew in England, it turned him on.”

  “Probably it was you that turned him on,” Percy said. “Not the perfume.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe I’ll go back over there. Would you like that?”

  “I doubt it. I wouldn’t try to stop you.”

  She swung her legs around and pointed her knees in his direction. “Probably you would like it. It would solve part of your problem.” Her shoulders hunched closer together as she gripped the edges of the bench on either side of her thighs.

  “What problem is that?” Percy said.

  She lowered her head and looked at him from underneath long brown lashes. “That someone knows.”

  He stood and picked his Jockey briefs up from a chair. “You’d know no matter where you were. Jesus Christ, are we going to talk about it again?” He stepped into his underwear.

  “Again?” she said.

  “What’s done is done. Why keep bringing it up?”

  She showed a peeved smirk. “I’ll talk about my sister if I want to.”

  He was pulling up white cotton slacks and buttoning them. “Suit yourself.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you that I know?”

  “Why should it? It was your idea.”

  “Having an idea, that’s nothing,” she said. “I didn’t do anything.”

  He zipped up his fly. “Christ, what is it with you? Before, you didn’t even want me to mention her name. Now she’s all you want to talk about.”

  She stood and did a little pirouette, examining her body in the vanity mirror, pressing her fingers tenderly into a purplish mark between her hip and ribcage. “I’m bruised. I just don’t want you to forget what I know.”

  “I can’t believe you people. Your whole family. Couldn’t you just fake some sorrow or something?”

  “No different than you, dear one,” Betty said.

  “I had a reason not to like her. I had to sleep with the woman every night. The rest of you, she was your own flesh and blood.”

  She found a second small bruise, this one on her fanny, and poked the bluish-purple spot with her index finger. She made a sour face. “You want to know something?”

  “What’s that?” Percy said.

  “I think my father knows, too.”

  He put his hands on his hips. “Jesus Christ, did you tell him?”

  “Of course not. I can just tell. I think you’re going to hear from him once you get the money.”

  “I expect to,” Percy said. “Everybody that comes into any money hears from old Ross, he’s trying to get his hands on whatever he can. If he finds out you’ve got any money, look out. That doesn’t mean he knows anything about . . .”

  “He knows that you’re broke,” Betty said. “I’ve heard him say.”

  Percy froze with his arms through the sleeves of a blue knit golf shirt. “Say to who?” He lifted the collar over his head, shrugged and wriggled, and adjusted the shirt’s hem around his hips.

  “I don’t know. Somebody over the phone.”

  Percy found his Piaget watch on his dressing table and slipped the band around his wrist. “My financial situation is temporary. Only temporary.”

  She snickered. “It wouldn’t be if you hadn’t—”

  “Betty.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t.”

  He sat down, lifted his knee to pull on one white cotton sock. “If Ross knows I’m broke he knows more than my banker.”

  “Dummy. It’s Merlyn Graham that told daddy you had to borrow the premiums for Marissa’s life insurance,” Betty said.

  “Christ. Well, I’ll sure take that up with Merlyn.”

  “Daddy’s a bigger customer than you are,” Betty said. “Merlyn Graham tells daddy everything about his relatives’ business. You having to make sure the insurance was paid up, that’s how daddy figured out what you did.”

  Percy jammed his foot into one spotless white Reebok and snugged up the laces. “As long as he doesn’t know it for a fact.”

  “Aren’t you afraid he might have you killed or something?” Betty pulled up black bikini panties and adjusted the elastic at her waist, and modeled the panties in the mirror, softly touching her own long thighs.

  “Ross?” Percy said. “If I’d beaten him out of some money, maybe. Not just over his daughter. If he knew it for a fact, though, had some proof, he’d probably hold it over my head so he could get his hands on some of the insurance money.”

  She picked up a wispy black bra, shrugged into the shoul
der straps, reached behind herself to fasten the clasp. “You think he’d mind if he knew you were fucking me?”

  He pursed his lips. “Well, yeah, come to think about it. I can’t figure out how a man can worry so much about one daughter and not give a shit about the other. Or seem to.”

  “She started it,” Betty said.

  “I know all about that. Christ, that was fifteen years ago.”

  Betty tossed her head and picked up a hairbrush from the vanity. “She exposed him. He never forgets anything like that.”

  “Jesus Christ, Betty, the man was screwing around with his daughter’s college roommate. He deserved to be exposed. What I don’t understand is, why did it turn Luwanda against her?”

  She sat and brushed her hair with firm strokes. “You don’t know? You should. Besides, what’s the difference between his daughter’s roommate and your wife’s sister? Are you saying somebody ought to expose you?” Betty’s accent was back-East Greenbriar with just a hint of Texas twang mixed in.

  He ignored the barb. “What don’t I know that I should?”

  “Daddy’s been screwing around ever since I can remember,” Betty said. “I knew it when I was five years old. Mother knew it, too, but she didn’t want anybody throwing it in her face. Especially not her own daughter. He made it with a girl I knew in Italy, I didn’t come running to tell mother about that. Marissa should have had more sense.” She laid the brush down and went over to lean on the windowsill and look down at sculpted hedges, at pruned Chinese elms, at aqua water shimmering in a pool shaped like a teardrop. “Three o’clock in the afternoon and we’re up here doing it. About the same time the guy was doing it to Marissa.”

  “No, Betty. No, earlier. Around one in the afternoon was when it happened. Even earlier, before noon. I was making my eleven-thirty tee time, remember?”

  Betty undulated back to the vanity, picked up khaki Jamaica shorts and stepped into them. “Next time we’ll have to do it earlier, then.” She buttoned and zipped the shorts, and reached for a T-shirt that had a cartoon of Bart Simpson on its front.