A Study in Sin

by August Wainwright

  By the time we got back to the apartment, an exhaustion had set over me. Whether it was the assault on my senses from being personally confronted with what appeared to be cold-blooded murder, or my injuries and weak nerves that caused me to become so tired so quickly, I really can’t say. But as soon as I sprawled out on the cool leather couch, I was completely worthless for the rest of the day.

  I vaguely remember being half asleep and hearing Remy say something about having a few errands to run, asking if I needed anything. I may have grunted an answer; probably not though.

  My dreams were littered with the images of horrid faces and dead bodies and disgusting gorilla-people hybrids dressed in police uniforms that huddled around picking at the flies that hovered around the dead they were meant to be investigating. It was a restless sleep, one I tried to wake from multiple times. But no matter how much I knew I was dreaming, I couldn’t escape the exhaustion that had a hold on me.

  It wasn’t until early the next morning that the front door slammed and I finally woke.

  “Man, I didn’t think you were ever going to wake up,” Remy said, dropping a plastic bag on the kitchen counter.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Still early – on Thursday I mean. You slept for like fourteen hours.”

  “Shit, seriously? My nerves were acting up and my arm was bothering me when we got back yesterday, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”

  “Is the case bothering you?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe. I had some weird ass dreams about it,” I said, trying to get my eyes to work. “Are you just getting in from last night?”

  “No,” she laughed back at me, “I went out for breakfast. Brought you back a lox bagel, you like those right?”

  I did. Remy seemed oddly happy about that fact.

  “Anything new to report?”

  “Of course. You think I’m just going to sit around while you sleep your life away?”

  I didn’t usually see Remy this time of the morning. She was an early riser and rest seemed to be one of the only things that kept my twitch from acting up. I was surprised by how playful she was, floating around the kitchen, making a pot of coffee and bringing the bagel over to me. It was weird.

  “So what’s the word?”

  “Here, check this out,” she said, setting her laptop down in front me.

  It was an ad on Craigslist for a gold ring that was found on the sidewalk in Capitol Hill.

  “Ok. What am I looking at?”

  “It’s called a computer screen,” she said, trying to stay blank faced, so obviously proud of her joke, “it’s an ad I put out on Craigslist yesterday afternoon. I added it to this software that will automatically re-post it every hour under multiple different categories. I put a similar ad up on the Post’s lost and found section.”

  “And you think the killer is going to come looking for the ring that, you say, he left behind?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Yea, there’s no way in hell that’s going to work,” I said, filling my mouth with a bite of the bagel.

  “I’ve already received more than fifty emails,” she responded with a smug confidence.

  I didn’t entirely believe her. “Well, it appears you’ve won this round, I guess.”

  “Craigslist is a wealth of information if you know how to use it,” she said, ignoring me. “The seediest, most disgusting human beings in any given area migrate to one website, where they buy, sell, trade, and discuss with each other as if no one else can look in on their screwed up world, like there’s any such thing as anonymity. Sure, you can find a couch for twenty bucks, or an overpriced apartment that definitely isn’t infested, but that’s just the surface stuff. I once tracked a guy, just for the hell of it, who was attempting to rent out a goat he had for – let’s just call it nefarious purposes. His post got yanked, but I happen to know he wasn’t at all unsuccessful in his pursuit of customers.”

  I stared back at her, holding the bagel sandwich, having absolutely no idea what to say.

  “What?” she asked.

  “No, nothing. So what are the chances our killer even sees the ad? And say he does, we don’t have a ring to give him if he comes around trying to claim it.

  “Of course we do,” Remy said, pulling a gold ring from her pocket.

  “How the hell did you get that?” I envisioned her breaking into the evidence room and walking around all nonchalant like.

  “Relax. It’s a replica of the one that was dropped. Even added the inscription.”

  I took the ring from her and turned it over in my hands. The inscription “CC” was there. It looked identical to the one Lambert had shown us.

  “Still, you really think this guy is going to start looking at online lost-and-founds for a ring he dropped while murdering a man?”

  “It’s a longshot. But our only other option was to wait on Lambert and Arruda and the lab to come back with any results. I’m not going to sit on my hands and do nothing, that’s their job.”

  “But why would he put himself in the position of being found out just to come claim the ring? That’s a huge risk on his part.”

  “It isn’t though. Look at what he knows; there’s an incident between him and Mr. Cormack that leaves the latter dead. There is more than a little malice in the acts by this man. He drops the ring while hovering over the body of the victim and takes off without knowing it is gone. Later, he returns after realizing he’s lost it. He runs into Office Barrera, convincing him he’s just a homeless drunk. But so far, he has no idea whether the ring was dropped in the house, on the sidewalk, in the street, or in his car. If he does come across my ad, he’ll have no reason to believe we know anything about the murder.”

  “So, evidently none of the emails you’ve received so far are from him, right?”

  “No, not yet. I replied to each asking what the inscription on the inside of the ring said. Most never replied, a few took a shot but missed terribly.”

  “Well good luck with that. I’m getting in the shower. Let me know if anything turns up.”

  It was an hour later when I walked back into the living room and saw Remy at her laptop, beaming back at me.

  “That was the longest shower ever. I think you might be what people refer to as a diva.”

  “Fuck off,” I said, amused at her attempt to call me out.

  “While you were busy coloring your roots, I got an email from Tiny that verified exactly what I was thinking.”

  “When did you get Tiny involved?”

  “I called him when we stopped for coffee yesterday, had him checking on some things for me. And that’s not the only email I received while you were lotioning your cuticles in there.”

  “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”

  “Seems we’ve got a major hit with our lost-and-found ad.”

  “Seriously? That shit actually worked?”

  “Indeed it did, Watts. I sent off a response asking what was inscribed on the inside of the ring and here’s what I got back sixty seconds later.”

  She spun the laptop around to show me.

  If the ring you’ve found is my wife’s, then it’s a small gold ring with ‘CC’ inscribed on the inside in block letters.

  Remy smiled a catlike grin, excited at the idea her prey would soon be within reach.

  “We’re meeting at the coffee shop around the corner. I told him we’d both be there. Hey, do you own a gun? All you Air Force guys think you’re Rangers, you’ve got to have one or two.”

  “Well I never thought I was a Ranger, but I do have a HK .40. And it’s the last gun I’ll ever get registered in DC. It took forever. I was jumping through hoops for months.”

  “You’re fingerprints are on record?”

  “Yea, they have to be if you own a gun.”

  “Hmm, we’ll have to work on that. You better bring it. If this is our man, I’ll send Lambert a text and get us some backup, but you never know what a wild animal will do w
hen it’s pinned in a corner.”

  When we arrived, Remy set up at a table towards the back corner of the coffee shop.

  “No, not there,” she said. “Sit on this side with me.”

  I slid in next to her, looking around at all the skinny people drinking their caramel mocha frappuccinos and wondered if any could be our killer.

  “We’re early, he’s not here yet,” she said.

  “He could have come early too.”

  “Believe me, he’s not here.”

  We waited for thirty minutes, in which time Remy downed three huge cups of coffee. She was clawing at the seams of the booth when a woman interrupted our silence.

  “Hi, are you Remy?”

  “Yes, I’m Remy. And you are?”

  “I’m Cameron… I emailed about the ring.”

  Remy looked the woman up and down.

  “No, the email I received was from a man. I don’t know who you are, but you’re not the person I’m waiting for.”

  “My husband Hank sent you that email,” she said with an absurdly large smile to match her absurd bleach-blonde hair.

  Remy wasn’t buying it. “Please, sit then. If you don’t mind, would you tell me where you lost the ring?”

  “Yes, of course. On Monday, my friend Julia took me over to see a few houses in Capitol Hill. Hank and I have been looking to trade up – he’s getting a pretty nice promotion – and she’s an agent, so we spent the day checking out places for sale. We were over near the park on Eleventh St. –”

  “Tenth,” Remy said.

  “Yea, we looked on a few on different streets. Anyways, I realized when we got back to her office that my ring was missing. I completely freaked out. We drove back over but couldn’t find it. I called and left word that if anyone found it, I’d pay a huge reward.”

  “Why? It’s a pretty simple gold ring, couldn’t you just get another?”

  “Well it’s sentimental to me. Hank had it engraved by hand in Hawaii,” she said, flipping her hair off her shoulder.

  “Right, the inscription. Ok, well just to verify, can you tell me what the engraving says?”

  “It says ‘CC’. Cameron Carter… That’s me,” she said in a high-pitched voice, striking some goofy pose.

  “Not to be intrusive, but can I see some identification, you know, just to verify that you are who you say you are. I don’t want to have some angry guy show up after you leave because I gave away his wife’s wedding ring.”

  “No, of course not. I totally understand,” she said, digging through her purse.

  The over-the-top blonde in her too-tight pant suit dug deep into the bottom of her purse. It was taking her too long to find an ID. I reached behind my back and pulled my shirt up, fingering the HK in my waistband, waiting for her to do something stupid.

  But, she eventually pulled out her pocketbook, unzipped it, and handed over a Virginia driver’s license.

  “Cameron Carter of Springfield, Virginia,” Remy said.

  “Hopefully not for long,” she replied back. “Look, I can’t thank you enough for putting up the ad for my ring. I was completely resigned to it being lost. Anyone else would have probably pawned it. Oh, and that reward is still on the table, so you just tell me how much you want.”

  “No reward needed Mrs. Carter. Just trying to be a good samaritan.” Remy reached into her pocket and pulled out the ring, handing it over.

  “Again, thank you so much.”

  Cameron Carter stood up to leave and started to slip the ring into her pocketbook.

  “Aren’t you going to put it on?” Remy said.

  “Yes, of course I am. I’m never taking this thing off again.”

  She dropped the ring onto her boney finger and it immediately slid straight down. It was at least a size and a half too big.

  “Well I can see why you lost it, you really should think about sizing up.”

  “Just one of the problems with losing a bunch of weight, right?” she said, laughing at her own joke.

  “That, and all the trading up you’re forced to do,” Remy answered.

  Cameron smiled nervously.

  “Exactly. Well, thank you again. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

  And that was it. She turned and left, and Remy let her go.

  But the woman had barely disappeared out onto sidewalk when Remy began frantically muttering to herself.

  “She must be an accomplice… she knows… If I followed her, then she’ll lead me right to him… she has to know.”

  I waited for her to say anything that made the slightest sense, but instead, she shot a look to the front of the shop, and sprang up from her chair in an explosion of movement, running out the front door, leaving me sitting there to nod and smile at the coffee-drinking hipsters who gawked at me like I was the weird one.

  I waited for over an hour for Remy to return, but she never came back. I worried to myself that she was right and the pant-suit wearing blonde would actually lead her back to the lair of some twisted murderer, picturing her in the same rigid pose as the dead man in the rowhouse. I texted her asking for an update, but got no response.

  By this time, the light outside was already fading into the orangish-pink hue of early evening. I finally gave up and headed back towards the apartment. As I walked, I tried to put the thoughts of Remy in danger out of my mind. She was more than capable of taking care of herself, probably much more than I was. She had her own set of weapons and was trained in wielding them. I let my thoughts drift back to the day, weeks before, when Remy had kissed me. It seemed so long ago, considering she had shown little to no interest in me as anything more than a roommate and occasional confidant. But I couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t something more to discover in her. No matter how cold and calculated and robotic she could be, the looks Remy gave me when I complimented her on something were never lost on me. She seemed to need me, in a way that was different from everyone else. There was more, there had to be more; I was convinced of it. She was the most frustratingly difficult woman I had ever met but being with her felt like being home; an odd, padded-wall, strait-jacket type of home, but home nonetheless.

  The late afternoon turned to evening, and I sat at the apartment reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, comparing each musing on life and love and struggle and tribulation to my current situation. These things weren’t meant to be easy I persuaded myself. They were hard to figure out, hard to understand, and even harder to live through with any sense of grace. I turned the pages as the minutes ticked by. Why was my life supposed to be any different than Florentino’s? For the first time I can remember as an adult, I thought of my life as my own, not as a cog in a bigger machine, not as a “follow the orders given no matter what” Airman. This was who I was now, and I looked around at our apartment, happy to be sharing it with someone as unique as Remy, someone that I cared about more than I had ever realized. At that exact moment, she burst through the front door.

  “So, did you find her?” I said, glad to see her safe and back home.

  “No!” she said with a little too much force and far too much attitude.

  “What happened?”

  Remy paced back and forth, storming over to her computer, pulling up a window, before quickly turning the monitor off again. Refusing to sit down, she launched into her story.

  “I caught up to that girl and followed her to the Foggy Bottom Metro. I knew something wasn’t right with her because she walked within view of the Dupont stop on the way. She was in heels; nobody would walk that far out of their way in heels,” she said, still pacing all over the apartment. “I kept in her in my sights and joined her on the platform waiting for the next train. I imagined her leading me straight to our killer. It excited me and –” she hesitated and looked away from me, “and I made a mistake. The orange line came to a stop and I watched as she stepped on two doors down from me. When she got on, she was in a crowd of kids from the college. I positioned myself to get a better look, temporarily losing her. The doors closed
and I looked through the group as they sat down. It struck me that she wasn’t where she should have been. I looked around for her blonde hair as we started to move. A little voice pulled at me and I looked back at the platform and she was there, staring right at me, as the train pulled away. I walked back from Roslyn!” she said, kicking at a bar stool. “But, this only proves that I’m on the right path, and that this man is not so alone and desperate as I would have thought.”

  “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. Remy Moreau was given the slip by a little blond girl?” I regretted the attempt at playful mockery even before it had fully left my mouth. Remy stopped pacing and stared back at me.

  “Jay, you’re looking a little tired,” she said, “why don’t you turn in for the night.”

  “Nope, I’m not tired. And I’m in the middle of a chapter.”

  “You wouldn’t want to irritate your injury, would you? Then tomorrow, instead of helping me track down a murderer, you’ll have to drag your broken body back to your psychiatrist so you can cry about Afghanistan. Save us both the trouble and go to bed before you start twitching again.”

  Remy’s words were soft and deliberate, her intention clear. Beat at me to keep from feeling she had been beaten herself. I decided to let it go and play along.

  “Ah, you’re probably right. You know, I might even check to see if she’s got any openings tomorrow morning, just to be safe. Goodnight then.”

  As I closed the door to the bedroom, I gave Remy a quick smile, just to let her simmer. I lay awake in bed, pleased with the way I had handled her, listening to the melancholy sounds of her at the piano as she played a slow and haunting piece. I fell asleep envisioning her turning over the specifics of the case she had set herself to unravel, her hair falling into those wide eyes, her small fingers lightly dropping down onto the keys.

  Chapter 6

  Lambert Catches a Killer

  I woke the next morning and found Remy seated at her desk, busy at work on the computer. She looked disheveled, her hair a chaotic mess, still wearing the same clothes from the night before. Today she smashed away at a different set of keys, with much greater urgency, all the fiery grace of the prior night gone.