by Lisa Black
Theresa opened her mouth to say something, couldn’t think of anything that would help, and shut it again. She tried to remember Diana’s hands, typing, gesturing, stirring her Diet Coke with a straw.
‘I know I screwed up. I wasn’t giving her the attention that she needed. I spent too much time with my buddies and my crack. But I loved her. I never stopped loving her.’ His eyes filled with water, and his voice trembled. It seemed impossible not to feel sorry for a man in such pain, though at the back of her mind Theresa wondered if love could ever overcome the handicap of beginning a marriage with a stolen ring. ‘You have to believe me.’
‘Okay.’ She didn’t know what else to say. Besides, believing that he loved her did not at all imply believing that he might be innocent of her murder.
‘I didn’t kill her. But I got her killed. I drove her away. I pushed her to another man. He knocked her up, then killed her to keep her from having his baby.’
‘That’s the part I’m not quite getting,’ Theresa admitted. ‘Diana was pregnant?’
‘That’s what we argued about. On account of it wasn’t mine, since we … Anyway, we argued.’
Another man’s baby. If anything would send a husband into a jealous rage, that would be it. How many women had died that way?
‘She said how I need to leave her life, me being a loser who would never make good … Maybe she was right about that … Point is, now you need to tell me who that man is.’
‘I don’t know.’
He gazed up at her from his seat on the bench, his pose deceptively casual. ‘That’s the wrong answer, Theresa.’
‘She didn’t tell me she was pregnant! She certainly didn’t tell me she was having an affair. I – thought it was you.’
Confusion made him pause. ‘Me?’
‘Making her happy. Because she did seem more light-hearted that last month or two, more—’ Excited, Theresa thought, but didn’t think it prudent to say. ‘But she never said anything to indicate a boyfriend. And she couldn’t have been pregnant.’
Though, in a way, it made sense. Pregnancy would explain the glowing skin, the saltines and folic acid on her kitchen counter; it would explain why Diana excused herself from lunch one day and came back from the ladies’ room pale and sweating. Not because she’d been angry, only nauseous.
And yet—
‘I read the autopsy report, James. There’s no mention of pregnancy.’
This didn’t seem to concern him much. ‘She couldn’t have been more than a month along.’
‘That wouldn’t matter. They – they dissect the uterus, James. The doctor would have seen it.’
His face clouded, either at the image of his wife being cut up like a high school biology project or at this blow to his theory of the murder. ‘But—’
‘No,’ she insisted, as gently as she could. ‘That’s not something Dr Reese – especially Dr Reese, he took great pride in dotting every I and crossing every T – would miss. Pathologists check every female for— There are obvious signs inside the uterus, no matter how early the pregnancy is. They couldn’t have made a mistake about that.’
His frown deepened as he listened to her. ‘But why would she lie to me about that? Especially when she knew how angry I’d get?’
How angry did you get? Theresa wondered. ‘Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe she thought she was pregnant. She might have simply missed a period and assumed the worst. She wouldn’t be the first woman in history who’d made that mistake.’
He appeared to give that careful thought – always a good thing, in her opinion. Anything that kept him from getting agitated bought her time and improved her chance of survival.
Finally, he shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t really change anything, whether she was or wasn’t. She thought she was, which means she had been getting it on with somebody and that somebody might not have wanted to be a daddy. You cold?’
‘What?’
‘You got goosebumps.’
I’m standing on the shore in nothing but a T-shirt. In April! ‘Um … a little.’
He smiled, but with a curve of the lips that did nothing to warm her. ‘Then let’s go.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To the scene of the crime.’
TWENTY-TWO
The sun still hovered just above the horizon, and tall trees along the backs of the houses cast the neighborhood in to a deep gloom. The small ranch home at the end of the street seemed almost swallowed up by the darkness.
‘It’s empty,’ James said, in the seat beside her. They had parked in the driveway, most of the other houses blocked from sight by the ranch.
‘Since the murder?’ Theresa asked.
‘No, just since last month. Owners moved out, realtor can’t find a buyer yet. She has to disclose the history, I guess. Some people are superstitious. Stupid – Diana would never haunt that house, she loved it. But then maybe that makes her more likely to stick around, I don’t know.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Theresa didn’t know the rules for haunting. She did wonder what the rules were for driving around town while restrained and under duress. But every moment she spent with James kept her co-workers safe, and he did not seem eager to harm her – despite the fact that he clearly believed her insistence that she knew nothing about Diana’s affair was a lie. He had simply shelved the topic for now. Perhaps he thought Diana’s ghost would give Theresa permission to spill her secrets. ‘Do you have a key?’
He gave her a look designed to make her feel foolish for asking. ‘Of course not.’ Then he got out of the car, not caring that the slamming door reverberated through the quiet area, and waited for her to join him. He did not threaten or prod, and she did not plan to run, scream, or fight. No option would end in a good way, and besides, she had begun to feel curious about Diana’s last day on earth.
That soporific feeling evanesced when James broke out one of the glass panels in the back door with a brick from the flower bed. The broken pieces tinkled on to the linoleum inside, and again he didn’t seem concerned about the noise. Theresa supposed with several murders hanging over your head, a B&E charge wouldn’t give much pause.
He had the door open in no time. ‘Go in.’
She moved slowly over the threshold, walking into the pitch-dark interior of a home where this man had murdered the last woman with whom he had been there alone.
Or had he?
It seemed vaguely familiar, from the crime scene photos, though all the accouterments of a home were absent. No table or chairs, no canisters lining up on the counter.
No body on the floor.
He watched her, his very large, very dark shadow blocking the exit. She wondered if he were even breathing.
On the other side of the counter the room opened into the living area. The uncurtained picture window let in a small amount of ambient light and showed the peaceful picture of the neighboring homes. But even they seemed ghostly, ominous, and certainly uncaring. She had been left on her own.
The silence grew oppressive. ‘Tell me what happened.’
It took him a moment to begin. ‘I came home to get some cash. It was in the afternoon – I don’t know, four? Diana was washing dishes, I remember that. Right at that sink, there. She – she was so beautiful …’
‘Came home from where?’
‘The bus stop. My car wasn’t running.’
‘But where had you been?’
Even in the dim light she could see him squint at her. ‘Why you asking that?’
‘Why did you bring me here?’
‘Because I want you to see I didn’t kill Diana.’
His thought process finally clicked for her. ‘And investigate who did?’
‘Yes!’
‘Okay. Then that’s what I’m doing – getting as complete a picture of Diana’s life as I can. Where did you come from?’
His shoulders slumped an inch, looking decidedly sulky, and he rubbed his side again. ‘I’d been with my crew.’
‘Crew? What crew?’
‘Look … I did a lot of stuff back then—’
‘Oh. You were doing drugs?’
‘That don’t matter!’
‘Fine. So you had been taking drugs during that day, and you came home to get more money so you could do some more. That about sum it up?’
‘Why you going on about that?’
‘I told you – if you want me to investigate, then I need to create a picture of that day. What time did you arrive home? You said four?’
‘I guess four. Maybe five, I don’t know. It was still plenty light out, I remember that. It was still summer, and the days were longer.’
‘And what did Diana say when you came in?’
He shrugged, his form becoming easier to see as the sky lightened outside. ‘She glared at me. She knew where I’d been. We argued about the money—’
‘Wait – before that, did she say anything else? What she’d done that day, if she planned on going out, having company over—’
‘I don’t remember. I think I picked up her purse and she got mad.’
‘Did you take something out of it?’
‘I think so, maybe a couple of bucks. That was all she had,’ he admitted without a note of regret in his voice. But, to be fair, he seemed to be concentrating mightily on recalling as many details as he could. Without much success.
‘What was she wearing?’
‘Wearing?’
‘Yes, James. What clothes did she have on?’
‘I dunno. A shirt – pink, maybe? Jeans?’
In the crime scene photos Diana had been wearing a blue T-shirt with white shorts. ‘Okay. Then what?’
‘I went into the bedroom.’
‘Can you show me?’
Again, no reason other than delay. He seemed more grieving than agitated, for the time being, and not yet provoked into any sort of homicidal rage. Surely, the police were looking for them, perhaps the car’s real owner had just called in the theft, perhaps the nosy neighbor still lived next door and would notice action in the supposedly empty house? Shephard knew his killer had to be James Allman. Wouldn’t he have assigned a patrol to keep an eye on his former home? Or would they reason that, for a man who had been out of jail almost six months, this would hardly be the time for a stroll down memory lane?
She felt a momentary nostalgia for Shephard. If only he were there, with his cop’s training and his cop’s weapon. He would make sure nothing happened to her.
This time James led the way, and she followed. Without a cop’s training or a cop’s weapon.
The bedroom, about ten by ten, had fresh light-colored carpeting and nothing else. James crossed it to the far wall and gestured lightly with one hand. ‘Our dresser was here. Her jewelry box sat at this end. I took the sapphire ring and, I think, a plain gold bracelet. It was real thin.’
‘Did it occur to you that that was her engagement ring?’
‘Huh?’
She repeated the question. It was as if he’d been transported back to that day completely and didn’t see why any sort of sentimental attachment should have an adverse effect on his drug habit. ‘I think so. I knew what it was. I think I thought that if she wasn’t going to wear it, was going to wear that other one, I might as well sell it.’
The utterly self-serving justification of an addict. ‘What else did you do?’
He moved to the other wall, where a long set of doors were slightly ajar. ‘I think I went through the closet. I might have been checking her pockets, or old purses. Sometimes I did that. Sometimes I checked my own.’
‘Where was your jump rope?’
‘My what?’
‘Your jump rope.’
He blinked at her as if she had suddenly asked about the international price ratio. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Where did you keep it?’
A shrug. ‘We had some weights and stuff in the other room, with the computer and the bookshelf. It was probably in there.’
‘Okay. Then what did you do?’
‘I guess I went back into the kitchen.’ He moved past her to the hallway.
She asked if he had entered the spare bedroom. He didn’t remember, didn’t think so, and didn’t pause on the way back to the kitchen.
‘I told her I was leaving – I mean, leaving the house,’ he added to Theresa. ‘Not like I was leaving her. But she must have saw the jewelry in my hand and got mad. She said I wasn’t going to leave the house with her engagement ring.’
Theresa stood by the room opening, very still. ‘And then what?’
‘I said I was leaving … I think I said I was. And then I guess she yelled some more.’
He thought, he guessed, he couldn’t remember. Theresa wondered if that entire afternoon or day or week or year had been one drug-hazed blur. ‘Try and tell me specifically what she said. And what you said.’
‘Just shit. Yellin’, and – wait, and then she stopped and said that I might as well get rid of her engagement ring. I remember this because she said it real cold and snappy, like making every word super-clear. I might as well get rid of it because this marriage was over.’
‘I see,’ Theresa breathed.
‘But she said that all the time,’ James warned her, with the carelessness of someone who had made a lousy spouse. ‘So I just turned to go. But then she said, “I know it’s over because I’m in love with someone else. Not you.” Real clear.’
Theresa had to prompt him … softly, as if poking a sleeping bear with a stick. ‘And then what, James?’
‘I said something like no, you’re not, and she said she was. That she was pregnant with his baby. That she was going to have the four kids with him instead, the private school, the clothes and the shoes, some shit like that. I think I stood here – right here, by the door, for the longest time. I thought I should hit her, but it seemed like too much work just then, you know what I mean?’
‘Sure,’ Theresa said, when he waited for a response.
‘I’m pretty sure I said well, if you’re knocked up, then it’s a good time for me to say adios and sayonara. And I left.’
‘That was it?’
‘I walked out the door. I mean, I could have said some other stuff, but then I walked out and across the lawn and went to the bus stop. I – that was probably the bills and change I took from her purse, what I used to get on the bus. Then I went to the pawn shop.’ He shrugged, as if it felt lighter, somehow, to have relived that day and gotten through it.
‘And you didn’t come back?’
‘I couldn’t. The cops picked me up somewhere, I think it was on Prospect, about two the next morning. I don’t know how they found me.’
She considered this. ‘And you had pawned the ring?’
‘Yeah. I went to that place a lot, it’s over on Eighty-Second.’
‘And … that day when you left, the kitchen table was here?’
The change in topics visibly perplexed him. The sun had risen all the way, and she could see him plainly. The house no longer seemed so inimical, simply empty and a bit forlorn.
‘Yeah.’
‘And chairs?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And Diana’s body was found …’ She purposely didn’t finish, but neither did he. Finally, she asked, ‘Did you see the crime scene photographs?’
‘No. My attorney didn’t want to show them to me.’
‘That was probably best. She was here.’ She waved her hand over the linoleum boxed in by the counters. ‘Right about here.’
James stayed by the door, but straightened. ‘You’ve seen the photos?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you see the ring?’ He moved over to her so suddenly that she backed up in alarm. ‘Did you see it?’
‘No! No, you – her hands were at her sides, with the palms up. I can see she’s wearing rings but not what they look like.’
‘But how many?’
‘I – I don’t remember,’ she admitted, though she had looked at the photos only, what, sixteen hours previou
sly? But she hadn’t paid attention. She hadn’t thought it was important. ‘I’m sorry.’
His shoulders slumped again, but he didn’t back off.
Frankly, that had been an error by the crime scene photographer, Theresa thought. Getting a close-up picture of both the front and the back of the victim’s hands was Crime Scene 101. No one from the medical examiner’s office had come out, though, which was another bow to the personal feelings of the staff; the police officers had processed the scene instead.
A musical tinkle of children’s laughter interrupted their tableau. James glanced out the dining area windows and she followed suit, to see the woman next door ushering two impossibly small girls out of her side door. They wore matching pigtails and pastel-colored sweaters, and were heading for a slash of school-bus yellow at the edge of her field of view.
James grasped her arm. ‘Come on.’
She didn’t argue, assuming he meant to leave before witnesses spotted them in the supposedly empty house. They could get to the car and still stay out of sight of the woman’s side door. But instead of turning toward the driveway, he began to drag her in the opposite direction, across the dewy grass between the two houses, where she would be sure to see them. He paused only to remove his hoodie and drape it across the cuffs, spreading it out to hide the pink pads around her wrists.
‘What are you doing? James!’
She felt a sharp point at her back, just to the right of her spine. ‘Stop squirming and play along, unless you want this blade in your lung.’
‘But what are you—’
At the end of her driveway, the woman waved goodbye as the bus released its air brakes and started to move. As soon as she turned she spotted them, of course.
‘Hi,’ James said, in what he must have believed was a friendly tone, but Theresa could hear the strain. ‘We were just looking at the house next door.’
After the slightest pause, the woman – long dark hair, about thirty, dressed in pink pajama bottoms and a tank top without a bra, arms crossed over her chest to avoid flashing her daughters’ classmates, bare feet, a tattoo covering one shoulder and the hint of a limp from an old injury – continued her path toward them. Yes, it might be bizarrely early in the morning for house-hunters, and their different ages and races made James and Theresa seem an odd couple, but still, the house was for sale, and one always wanted to check out potential neighbors. If one liked their looks they would be told the house and neighborhood were solid and healthy. If one didn’t, they would be told about the kennel on the next block, how the power went out frequently, and that there had been a ‘boil water’ notice three times in the past year. Oh, and someone had been murdered there.