Putting Lipstick on a Pig

by Michael Bowen

  He took the paintball gun over to the garage door opener, pried the ring part of the clip-ring far enough apart to worry it through the trigger guard, and then closed the ring snugly against the front of the trigger. He raised the barrel of the paintball gun to about a thirty-degree angle. With his left hand he tossed the remote over to Melissa. Startled, she managed to catch it anyway.

  “Press the remote while I’m holding the gun in place.”

  “That looks like something that could cost you a finger,” she said.

  “A small price to pay for advancing the frontiers of technology.”

  Warily, she raised the remote and pressed its bar. The garage door opener’s motor hummed. The chain jolted into motion. It pulled the clip-ring with it. The ring pressed against the paintball gun’s trigger. Rep held the gun against the chain’s tug. The trigger moved. The gun spat the leaden lump from its barrel. The lump landed about twenty feet away.

  “Whattaya know?” Rep said, unable to keep a hint of delight from his voice. “Looks like Newton was onto something.”

  “Your point being,” she said, “that Ken could have faked the shooting in the parking lot.”

  “Exactly. I didn’t hear a shot or see a muzzle flash. Ken said he did and I believed him. Why wouldn’t I? I thought he’d just saved my life. When I drove up he looked like he was dictating, so I assumed he was holding a Dictaphone. I didn’t look closely at it—why would I? But it didn’t have to be a Dictaphone. It could have been the remote control for a garage door opener.”

  “Where was the garage door opener itself, in this theory?”

  “Concealed in the bed of a nearby pickup truck, along with the paintball gun. Say he’d fired a bullet from the Smith and Wesson sometime before into a pillow or a tub or water or something and retrieved the slug. Then say the paintball gun was wired in place and pointed at a high enough angle to get the bullet that he’d put in its chamber over the tailgate. Push the remote, and bingo. The noise of the garage door opener wouldn’t stand out over the sound of passing traffic.”

  “And because the ballistics on that bullet matched the ballistics on the bullet that killed Levitan,” Melissa said, “his little stunt would make it look like you and he were the only people in the City of Milwaukee who couldn’t possibly have committed that murder.”

  “Right.”

  “But how could Ken be sure the officers who came to investigate wouldn’t look in the bed of the pickup truck and spot the gun?”

  “Ken sent me around the corner to call the police from a pay phone. While I was doing that he had plenty of time to retrieve the paintball gun, stash it in a FedEx mailer he’d already addressed, and drop that mailer in a FedEx pickup box on the parking lot. When I came back from making the call, in fact, he was walking away from that pickup box, back toward my car.”

  “Didn’t Indianapolis cops find evidence of an intruder on Ken’s estate?”

  “Yes—and I’m betting that Ken planted the evidence they found.”

  “Okay,” Melissa said. “But what you’ve just proven is that he could have faked the shooting—not that he did.”

  “True. Other things could explain the established facts. Pelham Dreyfus could have written down my mother’s business phone number even though he had no use for it. Roger Leopold could have decided to take a shot at me to try to frame Pelham Dreyfus for Levitan’s murder, even though the frame would have fit a lot tighter without the shooting.”

  “Paging Doctor Occam,” Melissa said. “We need your razor, stat.”

  “Right. The Ken theory is straightforward and any alternative explanation requires a lot of French pastry. We’re never going to be absolutely sure, but my confidence level now is bumping up against ninety percent or so.”

  “You mean you’re ninety percent sure that he faked the shooting at the strip mall,” Melissa said. “How sure are you that he somehow found a way to drop Vance Hayes through an ice sheet into Lake Delton?”

  “Eighty-six point five.”

  “Reppert, beloved, this isn’t a particularly good time for flippancy.”

  “I’m not being flippant. Well, maybe a little. Faking the shooting doesn’t make any sense unless Ken murdered Levitan. The only reason for him to kill Levitan would be to cover up his murder of Hayes.”

  “But Ken made it sound just as logical that Leopold killed Levitan because he thought he could blackmail Ken and didn’t want Levitan competing with him,” Melissa said.

  “Ken was a good lawyer, so he stuck with the truth as far as he could. But his story fell apart when he tried to make Levitan into a blackmailer. Leopold thought he needed information from Levitan to blackmail Ken over Hayes’ death. He was right. Levitan, though, refused to collaborate with him. I’m betting that Leopold had Dreyfus bring the calendar to Sue Key’s attention just as a way of showing Levitan that Leopold would seriously mess with him if he didn’t play along.”

  “But the plant manager at Cold Coast took stuff out of Levitan’s files because he thought it made Levitan look like a blackmailer,” Melissa pointed out. “He clearly was after some guilty information. If Levitan weren’t planning on blackmailing Ken, why did he have it? Why did he try to find out what Hayes had told the Judiciary Committee?”

  “Because he wanted justice done for Vance Hayes, and he figured that what Hayes had told the committee was the motive for his murder. Hayes stood up for the working class stiffs who went to ’Nam and never came back. To Levitan, who made sure a POW/MIA flag flew outside Cold Coast every day, that made Hayes a hero. He was trying to build enough of a file to take to a cop. If Levitan had been after a payoff, Ken would have given him one. Levitan died because he couldn’t be bought.”

  “But this all assumes that Hayes was murdered,” Melissa said. “And I’m a little hazy on the nuts and bolts part of getting Hayes through the ice.”

  “That’s because you’ve never been ice fishing.”

  “Neither have you.”

  “True. But I’ve sat in a bar in a place where ice-fishing is a big deal. I’ve heard locals make fun of flatlanders who can’t quite grasp the concept of cutting fishing holes in the ice.”

  “I see your point,” Melissa said tactfully. “But wouldn’t cutting a hole big enough to squeeze Vance Hayes through be a daunting, time-consuming, and somewhat conspicuous task, even in the small hours of the morning, if you were doing it with his dead body nearby?”

  “I think Ken cut the hole ahead of time. You can rent small, prefabricated shelters to use for ice-fishing. Ken could have sat in one of those things by himself for an entire day, cutting an ample hole in the ice and making it look jagged instead of symmetrical. No one would have seen the hole, and no one would have thought a thing about it. He could have clopped Hayes in the back of the head with a block of ice—I can tell you from recent and personal experience that one of those babies will work just as well as a billy club. Then he could have taken the body out under cover of darkness and dropped it through the hole. The cops would attribute Hayes’ head wound to the edges of the ice-hole he supposedly fell through instead of the ice-club that Ken used.”

  “But the wound’s indentation wouldn’t match the edge of the ice-hole.”

  “Which the police would quite sensibly attribute to water working on the ice-hole edge during the lengthy time it took to retrieve Hayes’ body.”

  “I suppose,” Melissa said listlessly.

  “That sounds more like a grudging concession than an exhilarated catharsis.”

  “I’d be devastated if I thought I’d gotten him killed because I was wrong,” Melissa said. “Being right isn’t devastating, but I can’t be very elated, either.”

  “I understand, treasure.” Rep’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. He put his hands on her shoulders with a tender, first-date awkwardness. “You took on a terrible moral responsibility. A lot of people wouldn’t have had the guts to do it, and a lot of others would have shrugged off the mo
ral issue, if they thought about it at all. But if you hadn’t done what you did you and I would be dead or in mortal danger.”

  “I think you’re right about that part.”

  “That seems like a pretty important part to be right about.”

  “About which to be right,” she said, smiling briefly and wagging her index finger at him in school-marmish mockery. “What’s bothering me is that it turns out I am a cold-blooded predator, just as Ken said I was.”

  “Self-defense isn’t predation.”

  “How much of it was self-defense and how much was convenience? I deliberately did something to get Ken killed even though I wasn’t anywhere close to certain that I had to do it to keep myself and you alive.”

  “And we know now that if you’d waited until you were certain, we’d probably both be dead.”

  “I generally know I’ve done the right thing because it feels right, not because I’ve worked the problem out logically. Conscience should be instinctive. You’re not supposed to have to think about it.”

  “Sometimes there are close questions. Today was one of them.”

  “Right. By getting Ken killed, I kept him from killing us. But I also kept him from telling what he knew about you and your mom, or from making us collaborate with him in framing Roger Leopold for Levitan’s murder.”

  “Two birds with one stone,” Rep said.

  “Too convenient for me to feel comfortable about it. Ken read me right. He told me that if I thought he was a threat to you I’d kill him without a flicker of remorse. And that’s exactly what I did. I killed him just as surely as if I’d gotten him in my sights and squeezed the trigger myself.”

  “What you’re going through right now sounds a lot like remorse to me.”

  “I am feeling bad about it,” Melissa said. “But if I had it to do over, I’d do it again. At least in the Catholic Church that doesn’t count as remorse.”

  “Maybe not remorse, but at least regret. If it’ll make you feel any better, we can practice perfect Acts of Contrition on the way back.”

  Grinning gamely at him, Melissa punched Rep lightly on the bicep.

  “If you didn’t exist, we’d have to invent you. Thanks for being a lover and a lawyer.”

  Her head snapped up. Out of the corner of her eye she saw their Sable pulling into the rest area, with Gael at the wheel. She waved at the car and began walking toward it. Gael pulled into the first parking space she could and jumped out.

  “Has something happened to Rep or one of his friends?” Gael asked, her voice worried and puzzled at the same time.

  Melissa sprinted over to the older woman so that she could talk to her without raising her voice.

  “No,” she said. “It’s Ken.”

  “What? Ken? What’s happened to Ken?”

  “Gael, I would give anything on earth not to be the one who has to tell you this. Ken was killed in a hunting accident this morning. He was running through the woods near the cabin, and a deer hunter shot him.”

  Gael’s face registered utter incomprehension.

  “Near the cabin? That’s impossible. He was supposed to be in Chicago. I was going to call him there this afternoon. What would he be doing up at the cabin?”

  Melissa hesitated. Her lips moved soundlessly a couple of times.

  “I can’t be absolutely sure about that. But he was there. I saw him. I talked to him, and then I saw his body after he was killed. I am terribly, terribly sorry, but he’s dead, Gael. Ken is dead.”

  Her mouth half open, Gael shook her head slightly in mute denial. She mouthed the word “no” without speaking it. Then she spoke it in a voice low in volume and shrill at the same time. Then she screamed it.

  “NO! NO! Oh, God, no! Dear sweet Jesus no!”

  She collapsed into Melissa’s arms and Melissa hugged her as she would a child while Gael shook with panted sobs. As gently as she could, Melissa maneuvered her into the Sable, sat beside her on the front seat, and closed the door. Again she hugged the shaking and suddenly frail woman to her breast.

  Rep watched from about thirty feet away, guilt gnawing at him. He felt guilty because he was glad that the comfort Gael in her grief needed from Melissa had for the moment displaced Melissa’s own self-doubt and moral agony. And he felt guilty as well because he knew that he himself should be feeling sorrow a lot sharper than the hot tightness in his throat and the hollow pang in his diaphragm. He’d lost a friend in a million—and he’d lost him a long time before he knew he had.

  Rep walked toward the rest area’s service building to get three cups of lousy coffee. At the moment, that was the only remotely useful thing he could think of doing.

  Chapter 33

  “Mr. Kuchinski, please step outside while Ms. Pennyworth and I talk.”

  “No can do, deputy. I’m her lawyer.”

  “You’re also a possible witness,” Deputy Sheriff Howard Oldenberg said, gazing steadily at Kuchinski. “I’d think that would make it ethically improper for you to represent anyone involved.”

  “Well, I left my copy of the Code of Professional Responsibility back at the office. If you’d like to postpone this interview until I can track that point down, I’m sure Ms. Pennyworth won’t mind.”

  “It’s OK, Walt,” Melissa said, looking over her shoulder from the hearth. “I don’t need a lawyer. Even if I had something to hide, all you could tell me is to shut up—and I’m not very good at that.”

  “If this weren’t a new shirt I’d rend my garments at such blasphemy,” Kuchinski said as he strode toward the door. “Deputy, you’re interviewing a witness who’s still in traumatic shock and you’re doing it over the objection of her lawyer. Proceed at your peril.” A loud door slam punctuated his exit.

  Melissa poked at the listless fire. She had spent nearly an hour with Gael at the rest area while Gael wept herself dry. Then they had agreed that Melissa should come back alone in the Escalade while Rep drove Gael back about a half-hour behind in the Sable.

  “My opinion of lawyers just went down,” Oldenberg said. “And I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “What can I help you with, deputy?” Melissa asked, husbanding a yellow tongue of flame that was trying bravely to wrap itself around a fresh log.

  “Why were you running and why was the decedent chasing you?”

  “I was running because I was afraid,” Melissa said. “Your next question is what was I afraid of, and I don’t have a very good answer. I heard strange noises on the property this morning. I had the feeling someone was watching the cabin from hiding. I had no idea Ken was anywhere in the area, and I was startled when he suddenly appeared. When we talked I got the idea he was obliquely trying to warn me about something. I overreacted, panicked, and ran.” Every word literally true and, taken together, quite deceptive.

  “What did you think he was trying to warn you about?”

  “About a guy named Roger Leopold. There, I think that fire may finally be in good shape.” She rose and found a perch on the couch. “Deputy, why don’t you sit near the fire? You must be chilled after tramping around in the snow all day.”

  “Tell me about this Leopold character,” Oldenberg said, as he accepted her invitation. Melissa gave him a thumbnail sketch of the theft from Sue Key’s apartment and the events that had followed from it.

  “Ken seemed to be saying there was something to the Leopold story that the police weren’t getting at,” she said then, “but he didn’t really say what. He just implied that my husband and I needed to be very careful.”

  “What were his actual words?”

  “The gist is what I just told you.” Wood crackled and Melissa felt a burst of warmth from the hearth. “I can’t remember his comments verbatim. Maybe they’ll come back to me after I’ve calmed down a bit.”

  “Why was Stewart chasing you?”

  “I’d say he was running after me, rather than chasing me. I suppose it was because he thought I was behavin
g oddly and he was worried about me.”

  “I see,” Oldenberg said. “You say you were surprised when the decedent showed up here. We found a lightweight survival tent and a sleeping bag about twenty yards into the woods off the east edge of the property. Would you know anything about that?”

  “No. If they’re Ken’s it doesn’t make any sense. This is his client’s cabin and he’d arranged for us to use it. He’d obviously be welcome here.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense unless he didn’t want you—or his wife—to know he was here,” Oldenberg said.

  “But that doesn’t compute either.”

  For almost a minute Oldenberg said nothing. His eyes glinted with a simultaneously wary and expectant expression. As the seconds ticked by, Melissa felt an almost overwhelming urge to speak, to blurt something out just to fill the silent void. She suspected that the reason for Oldenberg’s studied silence was to create that very pressure. She held her peace.

  “Ms. Pennyworth, how much do you know about firearms?”

  “I can talk a good game because I have to read a lot of crime novels in my work, but I’ve never actually fired a gun. I could tell you, for example, that a lot of professionals these days favor something called a Sig Sauer. If you showed me five handguns right now, though, I couldn’t tell you which was a Sig Sauer and which were something else.”

  “Well, what I’m about to show you isn’t a Sig Sauer. It’s a Ruger.”

  Oldenberg extracted an unhandy bundle wrapped in an oily cloth from a backpack at his feet. Laying the thing on the floor, he unfolded the cloth to expose the largest handgun Melissa had ever seen—something that might be bought by a guy who had some serious compensation issues. It was a nickel-plated revolver. The barrel had to be eight inches long. A thin bar ran along the top of the gun. Mounted on the bar was a telescopic sight.

  I’m finally sure. I almost wish I weren’t. Almost.

  “That looks very formidable,” she said.