A Fatal Affair

by Pamela Crane

  With a final killing blow, he thrust the blade forward, but this time she didn’t feel it slide into her tissue. She only felt the lightheaded presence of death grip her, and knowing what she now knew, she welcomed its embrace.

  **

  “Can I help you with that, sir?” a stewardess offered as I struggled to fit my luggage into the overhead compartment. The damn things were never quite tall enough.

  “No thanks, ma’am. I think I got it,” I said with a tight grin as I gave one final successful push. The bag slid into place and I shut the door and took my seat against the window.

  Hardly anyone occupied the plane at this hour, which I was thankful for. The last thing I wanted was to spend the red-eye next to some chatty businessman who didn’t know when to shut up. A momentary visual of John Candy in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles prompted a smile. I understood exactly how Steve Martin must have felt. But on this night of all nights, I especially needed quiet.

  Although my thoughts haunted me, I wanted to reflect... perhaps deflect was a better word. The white noise of the whirring air vents created a solemn atmosphere where I could rest my brain and hopefully purge the last twenty-four hours from my memory. I couldn’t bear to harbor the images of Susan anymore... I wanted a fresh start, and Westfield would give me that.

  As the stewardess prompted the meager passengers to turn off all electronic devices, I resolved to shut off my relentless worries, focus on the future, and find a new, revised happily ever after.

  Now that things were falling into place—my acceptance for the teaching position, a class full of eager students awaiting me, my room and board secured in Westfield—my anticipation climbed. Maybe I would meet a nice girl, fall in love, and start a real family. Perhaps one of my students would be that rising star in my life. The potential for true love was out there; I just needed to move forward and find her, leaving Susan in the dark, unspoken past.

  Chapter 9

  March 2009

  Haley Montgomery. The name tore through my heart as I envisioned her not more than three hours ago walking away from me in the airport terminal, never to look back. We were supposed to have a future together, but like Susan, Haley betrayed me for another. I couldn’t let her go like I did Susan.

  No, Haley was worth fighting for. I would come up with some sort of plan to win her back, I assured myself. Patience was a virtue, and I sure needed to earn some virtue.

  As the plane taxied down the runway, nearing the gate, my stomach roiled at the sight of my former homeland—Los Angeles. The skyscrapers clouded in smog, the congested traffic clogging L.A.’s cavity, but most of all, the dreaded history that lingered here—it all gave me the creeps now, a mere few weeks after leaving. Perhaps it was folly that drove me to return as the prodigal son to my father Showbiz, but I couldn’t leave it behind. I needed it as much as it needed me.

  The aircraft glided from the tarmac up to the gate, and soon a flood of passengers departed, bidding the pilot farewell as each one passed. I thanked him and headed down the hallway, dragging my carry-on behind me.

  When I entered the airport hubbub, I was surprised to see two uniformed officers standing aside. What surprised me more, however, was their approach.

  “Allen Michaels?” one asked as he swung his arm out against my chest to stop my gait.

  I was tempted to say no, but I didn’t.

  “Yes, sir, that’s me.”

  “We need to speak with you about the murder of Susan Michaels. If you’ll allow us to escort you downtown to the police station, we can sort things out.”

  My jaw dropped. “Murder? What are you talking about?”

  “We found her body, and we need to talk to you about it. Please come with us, Mr. Michaels.”

  “Wait a minute. Her body? What the hell are you talking about? She’s dead?”

  “Sir, you are not under arrest. We simply need you to come with us so we can answer your questions and get any information from you that may help us find the perpetrator.”

  Suddenly I felt woozy, and the earth rotated to the left a little too fast, then swiveled back to the right. A familiar frightening pang jolted my heart, like a fist clenching the muscle—was I about to have another heart attack?

  “Are you okay?” a voice asked me, but I was too disoriented to see whose lips were moving.

  I shut my eyes before I could pass out, sucked in a deep breath, and exhaled.

  I regurgitated the facts: Susan was dead. They thought I had something to do with it. They were here to take me in for questioning. And I had no idea what I would tell them. That I drugged, abducted, and bound her but freed her in the end? That the last thing I saw was her unconscious body very much alive, free of the bindings, laying on the floor of my Tujunga home? Would they even believe that?

  I was screwed.

  Deny, deny, deny.

  Denial was the only thing that came to mind, but could it save me?

  Not from everything.

  Chapter 10

  July 2009

  My cell was a 13x7 rectangle of cold white stone, the walls riddled with testimonies of its previous inhabitants. Some graffiti, mostly art—which I found surprising, given the types of people who dwelled here over the years. Criminals. Thugs. Degenerates.

  This particular domicile was creatively sketched to give the occupant the illusion of being in an apartment. Nightstands with lamps, end tables with flowers. The penciled bay window opened to a vista of distant mountain ranges, drenched by a comically large sun.

  The view through the panes was split down the middle by the bole and boughs of an oak tree growing directly outside this portal to nature, so close that none of the foliage was visible from this perspective. At the topmost junction, where wood decided to part ways and create their own paths in life, determining their own individual futures, was perched a screech owl, his gaze pinched and unpleasant.

  Maybe the artist’s decision to place him there, with the sun closely approaching the noon hour overhead and clearly out of his natural element, raised his ire. I can relate, Mr. Owl.

  The window was escorted on each side by solitary portraits. A man on the left, woman on the right, reminiscent of the old black-and-whites one might see of their grandparents. Above the metal plate, welded to the wall, which served as a desk, a bookcase was roughly sketched. Many books, but no titles adorned their bindings. Perhaps the sketcher could not bring any titles to mind, or—as I like to think—he purposefully left the spine blank for the future tenants to fill in with their own imaginations.

  Many hours I spent sitting at that desk on its metal, tractable stool next to a graphite fichus, chewed pencil in hand, writing with an abbreviated version of its larger cousin—a less refined shiv-approved form of what you use to keep score at miniature golf. Until the pencil was worn down to a useless stub.

  My only reprieve from boredom disappeared with that last strip of lead. Entertainment now consisted of a pictorial television sitting atop the dresser at the foot of my bed displaying a boxing match. Two men standing in the ring, eternally touching gloves to begin a fight that would never be.

  My bed was a concrete slab, running the width of the back wall. It had taken a few days before I realized there was supposed to be a mattress in the cell. An oversight by the wardens. Though, the addition of the plastic-coated, worn padding granted little comfort to the accommodations.

  The lengthwise wall of the cell was where the artist decided to place our living room, adorned with a full-sized couch that I lusted for. He even felt inspired to include a framed painting above the couch—four faces, intertwined, each sharing half of its face with its neighbor. An interesting concept in both symmetry and negativity.

  Unfortunately, this entire homely scene was sullied by our illustrator’s decision to include a naked woman sitting on this couch. Arms stretched to either side across the backrest, knees spread wide to the point where they almost touched the armrests.

  When tastefully depicted, nudity can be a beaut
iful concept in art, but the graphic detail in this portrait was clearly not artistic expression, rather that of lewdness and unfulfilled testosterone.

  As much as I hated to deface this man’s work, I also could not stare into this woman’s depths for my entire tenure here. Upon scouring the room, I found the other half of my pencil stub where a chunk of pink eraser remained. For a moment I wondered if it may have been the same utensil used to grace me with my new living quarters.

  The eraser apparently lost all function after years of neglect. It only smeared the image, so after half an hour spent freeing the graphite from its wooden tomb and fashioning a tip by scraping it against the sharp edge on the underside of my hardened stool, I was finally able to edit my living room companion to something slightly less offensive. Well, that was actually the second thing I did after honing my only outlet to the tedium of this place.

  The first thing I did was write sideways, right at my waking eye level, “Good morning, Daddy. I love you.” It was a dream that still haunted me—my elusive family. The one I had hoped for with Susan, then with Haley.

  So back to my “cellmate,” so to speak. I began by attempting to illustrate a bathing suit to cover her, but the process quickly dulled my pencil, and my scribbling across the rough surface did little to mask the deeply engrained renderings. It was then that I discovered that with the application of a little water, the filaments would combine, making a crude form of ink. Ink that could delve into crevices of the stone that even the most persistent sketcher could not reach. Applying this technique, I was eventually able to outfit her with a new, black two-piece, completely obliterating all traces of her former lack of attire.

  Satisfied with my work, I turned to the task of cleaning my “paintbrush,” a thoroughly blackened thumb. After basically rubbing through the center of the already ridiculously thin, prison-issue disc of soap, I forfeited to the makeshift paint still deep within the recesses of my thumbprint.

  I then decided to try my hand at my own attempt at art, using a single concrete block as my canvas, the mortar as my frame. I quickly discovered that my poor hand for drawing was not improved by the corrugated surface. All you have is time in this place, so I continued with my feeble attempt. A crescent moon in a star-splattered sky, reflecting off a lake below. The lake lined by tall grasses and reeds.

  A cobblestone path led up to a small farmhouse, where the front porch runs the entire length of the house. Only one light illuminated the guts of the house, in the upstairs room, casting a glow on a section of porch roof directly below it.

  A lone silhouette stood in the window frame, a darkened shape staring out into the night. Lonely. Afraid. But hopeful that one day the sun would again shine on that frail figure with the freedom of truth.

  Chapter 11

  October 2009

  Brett Copper sat in the living room of his five-bedroom, five-bath Los Angeles mansion flipping through the channels on his modest 80-inch LCD television mounted inside his wall. A 200-gallon saltwater aquarium gurgled behind him as clownfish, bicolor angelfish, a porcupine puffer, and yellow seahorse swam blissfully ignorant of their containment.

  His wife had taken off for her weekly shopping spree, so he had hours to kill. He considered calling Candy, his latest twenty-two-year-old starlet-wannabe prey, for a booty call, until something familiar flashed across the screen on a local news channel. A name. Susan Michaels.

  It had been a while since he last heard that name grace the television.

  His index finger remained steady as his channel surfing ended there.

  As far as he knew, Allen had been arrested months ago and was as good as convicted, making Brett a free man. He reveled in his ingenuity at framing Allen for Susan’s murder—the bloodstains left on the floor of Allen’s Tujunga cottage, the weapon wiped of fingerprints and tossed in Allen’s apartment garbage dumpster, and the motive clearly being Susan’s affair and unfair divorce demands.

  Nothing tied Brett to it, and he felt invincible... a feeling not all that uncommon for someone of his position and wealth.

  Images of Allen Michaels in handcuffs bowing his head in shame had caused Brett to chuckle out loud at the big-screen when the news had initially covered Allen’s incarceration. As the reporter stood with the Los Angeles Police Department looming behind her, Brett hoped it was finally over—and his ass covered.

  As KTLA covered the latest information on the Susan Michaels murder and trial, Brett leaned forward with keen interest, his rear slightly lifting off of his white microfiber couch. He almost wanted to celebrate this moment with a beer in hand, but it could wait until after the broadcast. He didn’t want to miss a thing.

  “Recent evidence on the Susan Michaels case has exonerated her husband, producer Allen Michaels, from being a suspect in her stabbing,” the anchorwoman said.

  “A wristwatch at the scene of the crime that belonged to the victim revealed the time of death, an oversight that nearly caused a wrongful conviction. Michaels’ alibi showed him to be in Westfield, New York, during the murder, further proving his innocence. Furthermore, DNA tests revealed that Ms. Michaels was pregnant. Forensics analysts are currently investigating who the father is, which could lead to the killer. Authorities are looking into all possible suspects as they search phone records and e-mails, along with other leads provided.”

  Brett dropped like dead weight back into the cushions. If they researched phone records, it would eventually lead them to his door. Months of illicit calls, and then there was that very last call—right before her death. He was as good as caught if they got a hold of his DNA and discovered he was the father. And even if they couldn’t convict him, he was certain his wife would ruin him...

  What could he do?

  Susan had won.

  Even in death the bitch had taken him down after all, just like she threatened during their last phone call. And if Allen had any idea that Susan had been seeing him, he could create a whirlwind of gossip that would devastate his reputation. Again, he would be linked to her death.

  No, he hadn’t been convicted yet, but it was only a matter of time.

  Perhaps a trip was in order.

  Brett turned off the television and sat in stunned, horrified silence.

  A knock at the door startled him out of his anxious haze.

  He tentatively rose and walked to the door, apprehensively opening it.

  “Yes?” he said warily.

  “Are you Brett Copper?” a man asked gruffly.

  “Yes. And you are?”

  “I’m with the Los Angeles Police Department. You have the right to remain silent...”

  As the officer continued blandly stating Brett’s Miranda rights, turning Brett around to snap cuffs on his wrists, Brett chuckled. It wasn’t a mirthful laugh, but one of mere incredulity.

  He should have known that the news was always several steps behind... and apparently so was he.

  Chapter 12

  December 2009

  For the first time in months I stepped foot in my condo, an eerie reminder of my former life—before the trial, before Haley Montgomery, before Susan’s betrayal. A time when life was simpler, purer... far from perfect, but at least endurable.

  “Any publicity is good publicity”—that’s what my lawyer had told me to lift my spirits after the murder charges were dropped and Brett Copper was found guilty for Susan’s murder.

  What a joke.

  Publicity couldn’t earn me anything of value. And since my jaunt in prison, my values drastically changed. While serving time for the abduction—a mere slap on the wrist, my attorney said—it dawned on me that no one cared about me. Not one visitor, not one pity letter. I was utterly friendless.

  Until literary agents—my new “best friends”—started showing up talking book rights, movie rights... the whole shebang. Although I’d lost my credibility and position in society once the damning details of my role in Susan’s abduction came out, eventually my attorney’s words offered some hope. The hefty advanc
e for the book deal I’d just signed would at least keep me from becoming homeless. Somewhat of a fresh start, I suppose. But not what I really wanted.

  Once upon a time I had money, fame. But no companions.

  With weighty steps I ambled to the middle of my living room, the gravity of my loneliness spiraling around me.

  I needed air.

  Balance.

  Purpose.

  I could no longer resume my old existence.

  But then a flicker... an idea. Hope, maybe. I had truly enjoyed teaching eager pupils. They seemed to appreciate me, dare I say even like me.

  Mentoring. Was it my calling? As they say, if you can’t do... teach. And I had been blacklisted from doing, so what was left for me?

  The day I found Westfield, New York—or perhaps Westfield found me—resurrected in my memory. Was a new small town in my future? Was that the answer to my desperation? It sounded like just what I needed... a fresh start. Nice people in a nice town, with no sinister agenda, no disturbing baggage. A place that treasured honesty and kindness, where I could be the man I wanted to be. Maybe even meet a genuine woman who could appreciate me for me, not for what I could offer.

  As I stood there, eyes engaging the hung television, modern art, and overpriced décor, I loathed the old me who once esteemed this Hollywood materialism.

  No more.

  It was time to begin anew. All I needed was a place to call home, to settle down and write my heart’s story, to finally build relationships.

  Friends and family.

  I sighed.