by Blake Banner
He grunted. I ate in silence for a bit while he thought.
“The problem is,” I said when I’d finished my steak. “It’s a nice, simple theory that doesn’t explain everything it should explain.” I reached for my glass, drained it, and refilled it.
He was nodding, staring at the tablecloth.
I went on, “Like what the hell she was doing in that room, and who the hell got shot in the bedroom at Solitude.”
“The difference between a policeman and a soldier,” he said, unexpectedly, “is how you view killing. Soldiers kill because they are told to. Their motive is simply that it is their job. You kill a man, or a woman, simply because they are your enemy, even though you may not know why. But a policeman knows that outside of the army, people kill for one of two reasons, sex or money. And the motivation is either loss or gain. You want to avoid losing sex or money, or you want to acquire sex or money.”
I thought about that. Soldiers killed so that other people could get more sex and money, usually fat men and fat women in suits. I said, “Yeah, and people usually want money so they can get more sex, so maybe Freud was right after all. It’s all about sex.”
In Sarah’s life, it seemed to be looming large.
He sighed. “You and Hays are trying to protect Sarah’s reputation. That is very noble of you, Lacklan, but I am not stupid. I have been around the block a few times. If she was seeing men at her studio, at Solitude, it is more than possible that one of her lovers got shot there, and most probably dumped in the bayou along with the mattress and the bedding. With the flooding from the storm, the chances of finding that body, or the bedding, are negligible.”
I said, “She’s with a lover, Ivory finds them and kills the lover. He leaves and she goes home. For some reason she goes to the master bedroom. Maybe she’s in shock from the killing and needs comfort. Perhaps the horror of what has happened has driven her back to her husband. But he’s out having dinner. Ivory arrives intending to kill him, for reasons as yet unclear, and kills her by mistake.”
He stuck out his lip and nodded. “That’s a very plausible theory. Now you just need to prove it. Have you told any of this to Jackson?”
I shook my head. “I don’t trust him.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What I am good at.”
He frowned. “What’s that?”
I treated him to a very small smile. “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.”
EIGHTEEN
I closed the door to my bedroom and pulled off my jacket and my shirt. It should have been cold, but it was warm and the humidity was off the chart. Even with the door closed, I could hear the drumming of the deluge on the awning they’d stretched across the central patio. The wind rattled the shutters and dashed rain against the window.
I looked at the shirt in my hand, and for the first time became aware of the blood on it. I dropped it in the wastepaper bin and opened the tall French windows onto the small terrace that overlooked the street out front. The flowing water was spilling onto the sidewalks and, down the road, it had got into one of the street lamps and was making it buzz and flicker on and off. It didn’t look like the apocalypse. It looked like something else, something more final, more hopelessly terrible.
I picked up the phone and called room service. It rang for a long time before he answered.
“Bring me a bottle of Bushmills, will you?”
“Of course, Mr. Walker.”
“I’ll be in the shower. Just leave it by the bed.”
“Of course.”
I pulled off my boots and my jeans and went into the bathroom. There, I stood under a hot shower for ten minutes, trying to wash away the filth of the day: the mud, the cruelty, the lies and, above all, the blood.
I had killed four men as a matter of course. I had done it efficiently, without passion, without hatred. I hadn’t even done it to survive, it had never crossed my mind that they would take me down. I had done it because it was expedient. They were the enemy, so I killed them.
It was the reason I had left the SAS. Somewhere inside me, almost out of earshot, my soul, or what was left of it, was calling out, warning me, that I was losing my humanity. Life and death were losing their meaning. And when life loses its meaning, what’s left?
As I stood under the hot jets, letting them cleanse my skin, I realized I had lathered my head, my face, and my body for the fourth time. I stopped, tried to relax, and let the streams of clear water wash away the tension in my muscles. But the voices in my mind would not relent, and the pictures kept rising up again and again in the darkness of my mind, the astonished eyes of one man after another as they realized they were going to die.
By my hand. By my killing hand.
And I had not even done it for Marni. I had left my small home in Wyoming, come back to the world, returned to the killing, for what? To honor a promise to my father, and to protect the only woman I had ever really cared for. But this, what I had done tonight, I had not done for them.
I had done it for Bat Hays, and for the Regiment.
I turned off the water and stepped out of the cubicle. I grabbed a towel and dried myself. I was suddenly exhausted and craving sleep; and a large Irish to numb the aches in my body and in my mind.
She was sitting on my bed with a glass of whiskey in her hands. She didn’t say anything smart or witty. She just watched me. For a moment, I thought about sending her away. For a moment, I thought that I wanted to be alone. But the words died on my lips and I knew that what I really needed was to hide in her warmth, in her skin, and hold her in the darkness.
She held out the glass to me and I saw that there was another on the bedside table. I took it.
“What are you doing here?”
“The storm has arrived.”
“I noticed.”
“I need to talk.”
“I need to sleep.”
“We can do both.”
Her smile was hesitant and I could see I had hurt her. I sighed. I took a swig of whiskey. It burned, but it felt good. I pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and finally said, “I’m sorry. It’s been a hell of a day.”
“You want to talk?”
I walked over to the small balcony and stood looking out at the flood. Cool rain spattered my face and my bare feet.
“Do you miss her?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, there was only the hiss and the incessant splatter of the water falling on the road. Then her voice came, quiet, subdued.
“Sometimes, it hurts so much I think I’m going to go crazy. Other times it’s more like something is missing, something familiar. Like when you’re a kid and you lose one of your teeth. You keep expecting it to be there, but there is just an empty space.”
“Is that why you’re here, to fill an empty space?”
Again the silence, filled only by the rain.
“What if I were? Would that be a bad thing?”
I shrugged, shook my head and took a drink. “That would be fine by me.”
“Is there anyone, Lacklan? Anybody you need?”
“I forgot how.” I turned to face her. I gave a smile that had no humor or happiness in it. “You know what Sinatra said, ‘I’m for anything that gets you through the night.’”
She gazed into the bottom of her glass. “Lately it’s felt as though it were night all the time. I don’t believe it will ever end, Lacklan.” She looked at me for an answer, but I didn’t have one. “Are you any closer?”
“To what?”
“To finding who did it?”
“Maybe.”
“What will you do when you find him?”
“Make him confess. Get Bat off the hook.”
“What if he won’t confess?”
I held her eye a moment, considering the unlikelihood of what she was suggesting. “He will.”
“Will you torture him?” She looked a bit sick.
“If I have to. But with most people, the threat of torture is enough.”
> “You are ruthless, aren’t you?” She said it with no particular inflection, just stating a fact. “Will you kill him?”
“You want me to.”
It wasn’t a question and she looked away, as though she felt ashamed.
I sat in the chair by the window and took another pull on my whiskey. I swallowed and enjoyed the burn. After a moment, I said, “Somebody else was killed that night. Do you know who it was?”
She looked at me sharply. “What are you talking about?”
“At Solitude, in her bedroom, in her bed. Somebody was killed.”
“That night?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m guessing.” I raised an eyebrow and smiled. “That night surprises you, but not the possibility of another body? Who was it?”
She seemed to squint at me, like I was crazy. “How the hell should I know? What makes you think there was one?”
“The bedding was pristine, the mattress, and the mat under the bed were brand new. I told you about the cigarette butts…”
“It’s hardly conclusive!”
“…and there was a .38 slug under the bedside table.”
“Jesus…! A .38?”
“Yeah. I’m waiting on ballistics, but it’s probably from the same revolver that killed Sarah.”
She was frowning. Her eyes were abstracted and seemed to dart back and forth between images she was seeing in her mind. “So, he finds somebody in her bed, kills him, then goes to her house and kills her…”
“Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? If she has a lover in her bed at Solitude, what is she doing in…”
Something made me falter a moment.
She was watching me carefully. “What?”
I stood and went to refill my glass. When I was done, she held out hers for me. I poured in a measure. She was still watching my face. As I put down the bottle, I said,
“She wasn’t in her room, Simone.”
“What?”
“She was in the master bedroom. In their bed.”
“No. That’s impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?”
“It’s just… She wouldn’t!”
I felt a flash of anger and irritation that surprised me. I was suddenly half shouting at her. “Come on, Simone! Get real! It happens! People are fickle!”
“Shut up!”
“You want to know what happened?”
“Shut up!”
“She loved you! You freaked her out when you tried to kiss her! She was confused and it was like you said, she projected her love for you onto a string of men. None of them satisfied. They lasted one or two nights and she moved on to the next one, looking for satisfaction. Looking for the love she felt for you, and the sexual fulfillment she wanted from a man. But she never stopped to think!” Suddenly, a rage was building inside me that I knew had nothing to do with Simone or Sarah. “She never stopped to think, the way nobody ever stops to think, of the pain they might cause the people they play their games with!”
Her eyes fastened on mine. We stared at each other a moment, my breathing was harsh and my heart was hammering on my chest.
“She didn’t stop to think about how her sexual rampage might hurt you! She didn’t stop to think that, even if for her it meant nothing, some of those men, those toys, might be capable of love! Might develop feelings for her! Well, Hays did! Hays fell in love with her! Because Bat Hays is a man with a heart and a soul! And the way she used him, hurt him! So how many others did she hurt? This saint? This angel of yours?”
“Stop it…”
“I’ll tell you what happened. She was fucking some poor schmuck in her bed and one of her other male, black harem walked in, was enraged, and shot him. She fled, cured of her sexual fantasies by a powerful dose of reality. So she ran back, looking for the loving arms of her husband, because all of a sudden she was in love with him again! Not you, not the string of sexy studs she’d been playing with, but with the man who gave her security!” I spat the word at her, like it was her fault that human beings sucked. “Well here’s a news flash, sister! People kill over sex. They do it all the time. And this animal followed her home and…” My voice, like my anger, trailed away. “And killed her, in her husband’s bed…”
I turned and went back to the window. The wind was howling like a damned banshee. By contrast, the room was still and silent. I expected at any moment to hear the door close as she left, but it didn’t.
“That’s a lot of bitterness, a lot of anger, Lacklan.”
“Yeah?”
“Who betrayed you…?”
“Save it. I’m not looking for a therapist.” I turned to face her again. “What happened that night, Simone? The truth.”
“I told you. We talked. She left.”
“Why did she wind up in her husband’s bed? Who was killed at Solitude?”
“I don’t know, Lacklan. Please believe me. If I knew, don’t you think I would tell you? I want her killer caught—perhaps more than anyone.”
I sighed. She put her glass down on the floor, stood, and came over to me. She took hold of my shoulders and smiled at me.
“Lacklan, she may have been flawed, damaged, confused…” She shrugged. “Who isn’t? You should know that better than anybody. But she was an angel. There was no cruelty or unkindness in her, and if she hurt people, she never did it intentionally. Don’t judge her.”
She stroked my face and stepped past me. She went to the balcony and leaned against the wall, looking out at the storm.
“You know what her dream was?”
I took a sip and felt the warm spirit burn my lips and my tongue. “What?”
“The Sara Bayou Park.”
“The what?”
“The Sara Bayou Park. She owned a large stretch of forest and marshland on the banks of the bayou. It stretches from the studio for about a mile along the river, and for about half a mile to either side. She wanted to convert it into a nature reserve, a park, to protect the fauna of the bayou, alligators, snakes, birds… and encourage research into how the natural habitat is suffering from climate change and urban encroachment.”
It sounded familiar. I asked, “What stopped her?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. She was in talks with the State and with the university, to start the Louisiana Regeneration Project.”
“How’d Carmichael feel about that?”
She shrugged. The light from the flickering lamps outside touched her skin. “He loved her for it. He wanted to be involved. She said he wanted to take over.”
“Is that why you are contesting the will?”
She looked me over, then back out at the rain. “Yes.”
“You hate him, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to kill him?”
She smiled, but she didn’t look at me. “No, not enough for that.” After a moment, she added, “Most of us, don’t you know. It takes a special kind of man to kill somebody.”
I turned out the light. The rain glowed silver outside and gave her black skin a strange, luminous sheen. I went and stood close to her, turned her around to face me. Her eyes were huge and dark. Slowly, deliberately, I started to remove her clothes.
NINETEEN
When I woke up in the morning, she’d gone. I wasn’t sure if I felt relieved or if I missed her. I made my way to the bathroom and stood for five minutes under the shower, switching from scalding to cold and back again.
When I felt awake, I stepped out, toweled myself dry, dressed, and went down to the dining room for breakfast. It was eight AM and Hirschfield was already there, eating eggs and bacon. He was looking at his tablet beside his plate and breaking a bread roll as I came in. He waved at me without looking up, like he had eyes in the top of his head, and pointed to the chair next to his.
I told the waiter, “Black coffee and toast,” and made my way to his table.
As I sat, he said, “The wifi keeps cutting out and the internet is patchy to say the least, but I have news f
or you.”
“Good.”
“Ballistics, we’ll have a full report in time, but I have the preliminary results. The bullet you found at Sarah’s studio, Solitude, is a match for the bullets that killed her.”
I grunted. “No great surprise, but at least it’s a solid fact.”
“Yes, indeed, and it tells us that the situation is not as cut and dried as Jackson would like us to think.”
I nodded. “I just wish we knew when that slug was fired.”
“Hmm…” He devastated one of his eggs with his knife and fork, speared a chunk of toast with bacon on it, and stabbed savagely at the yolk before stuffing it into his mouth. He chewed methodically and dabbed his lips with his napkin. “And at whom. That would be a useful piece of information. Nobody, as far as I am aware, has been reported missing.”
“I know. I grilled Simone last night, but she seems genuinely to know nothing.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, but said only, “Indeed.” He drained his cup and refilled it. “One thing seems to be clear, Lacklan, and I can’t help feeling it is time you discussed it with Carmichael.”
I made a question with my face, but I knew what he was going to say.
“It seems pretty clear that you are right, and she was not the intended victim.” I studied his face a moment. He spread his hands and raised his eyebrows. “Somebody was killing off the competition!”
The waiter brought my coffee and a basket of toast. I filled my cup and glanced at Hirschfield. “That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
He gave a complacent shrug. “All human stories boil down to one of two situations, Lacklan. Somebody is trying to get hold of something, or somebody is trying to get rid of something. It’s one or it’s the other. Often, it’s both. What can I tell you? In this case, it looks like somebody was trying to get rid of the competition, maybe so they could get Sarah. Either way, I think you need to bring it to Carmichael’s attention.”
I bit into my toast. “You’re right. I’ll go over there this morning. How bad is the storm?”
“The rain is a diluvium, but the winds for now are just gale force. The power keeps failing, so it is hard to know what is happening in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, but if it’s this bad here, it must be terrible there.”