by Paul Cleave
“How long have you known him?”
“I heard his son killed himself.”
“Has anybody checked his hotel?”
“Where else can he be staying?”
“How many do you think he’s killed?”
“And you knew him.”
“And you had dinner with him.”
“And you were working with him.”
They’re looking for Calhoun. Hunting him. I close the door to my office. I’m only alone for ten seconds before Schroder knocks and walks in.
“Morning, Joe.”
“Morning, Detective Schroder.”
“Have you heard?”
I shake my head. “Heard what, Detective Schroder?”
“When was the last time you saw Detective Inspector Calhoun?”
I think about it. “Yesterday at work,” I tell him. “Didn’t you see him, Detective Schroder? He’s the guy with the gray hair.”
“Did he say anything to you yesterday at all? Anything out of character?” I think about our conversation, his description of killing Daniela Walker. “Not that I can think of.”
“You sure?”
“Umm. .” I give my thought process around ten seconds, which is a long time when someone’s staring at you. I’m going for that dramatic effect thing, and then finally I repeat my original answer. “No, Detective Schroder. When was the last time you saw him?” I ask.
“Let me know if you think of anything,” Schroder says, ignoring my question.
Without waiting for an answer, he turns and hurries off, as if he needs to be everywhere else at the same time. He doesn’t tell me why they’re looking for Calhoun.
I start my working day by cleaning the toilets, which is one of those jobs that makes anybody reflect on the decisions they’ve made in life. By the time I finish, over half the people on the crowded fourth floor have gone. The rest are paying no attention to me. Are any of them checking the house where I left him? Apparently not. Why would they? Because he left two victims there?
With plenty of officers out there searching, with plenty of detectives thinking of places for them to go, it’s possible they’ll stumble across him. And if they do, what will Calhoun tell them? Can he risk telling them about me? No, he can’t, because then I’ll tell on him. I take some small relief that the police are thinking he’s in hiding, probably planning on leaving the country, not reminiscing about his crimes by hovering around old scenes.
I lug the vacuum cleaner into the conference room. The room is a mess. Folders, photographs, statements. Cigarette butts squashed into full ashtrays, food wrappers balled on the table, empty take-out containers stuffed into the trash. Files litter the floor, and among them-lying in the center of the huge table-are two murder weapons. The first is mine, which Melissa used. The second is from Calhoun’s hotel room. Both are covered in a thin, white powder.
I look up at the composite drawing Melissa detailed for them a few mornings earlier. Pinned up next to it is the photograph of Calhoun. It’s a stretch to find any real similarity between the two, but that doesn’t matter, because they have fingerprints now, and that’s as good as a confession at this stage in the game. His absence today only helps make him look guiltier. He knew the murder weapon had been found, knew he had to get the hell out of Dodge.
I sit at the table, pick up each of the plastic bags in turn, and study the knives. I don’t take them out, rather just admire them through the bags. Actually, admire is the wrong word. What I do is remember. Mine has a history. Calhoun’s has a story. Short story, perhaps, but oh so important.
After cleaning the room then grabbing my cassette recorder (not just the tape), I go back to my office and have lunch. The rest of the day is hectic for everybody but me. For me, it’s only stressful. I watch every person as though they’re watching me, ready to put me under arrest because they’ve found Calhoun tied and taped to a chair in Daniela Walker’s house.
At four thirty, making sure nobody is looking, I hide the parking ticket with Calhoun’s fresh fingerprints on it behind his desk. I can’t just put it in one of the drawers-the desk will have been searched already. This way it could have been overlooked, and when they search his cubicle again, they’ll find it. If not, I’ll find it when I vacuum and hand it to Schroder. I let it slip out of the evidence bag without touching it.
I’m twenty-five minutes into my stroll to the Walker house, on what is becoming a lovely Friday evening, when my cell phone rings. It plays a small tune that makes me cringe. I slip it from my pocket and flip it open.
“Hello, Melissa.”
“Hello, Joe. Having a nice evening are you?”
“I was.”
“Oh, come now, Joe, that’s not very nice. I’ve been thinking about you, you know. Thinking I’d like to take you back to the park once more and show you the other half of a good time.”
“What do you want?”
“My money. Have you got it?”
“Not all of it.”
“No? Well, that’s not really good enough, Joe, is it? I said a hundred grand. Anything less is wasting my time.”
“I’ve got eighty, and I can get the remaining twenty next week,” I lie, knowing it sounds far more realistic. She goes silent for a minute. That’s okay, she’s paying for the call.
“Eighty grand will do for the weekend, Joe, but since you’ve let me down, it’s going to cost you another forty next week.”
“I can’t get forty.”
“That’s what you said about the hundred, and look how well you’ve done.”
“Fine.”
“Where do you want to meet?” she asks.
“You’re leaving it up to me?”
“Of course not. I just wanted to give you some hope. That’s all.”
“I’m not leaving it up to you. If you want the money, then it’s on my terms.”
“If you don’t want to go to jail, Joe, then the terms are mine.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you too, Joe.”
Look at that. Just like a married couple.
“Listen, you’ve got my gun,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t be too concerned with where we meet.”
“I don’t trust you, Joe.”
“It’s a house where I killed somebody.”
“They still there?” Her voice picks up an octave. I shake my head, even though I’m on the phone.
“Previous victim. The place smells like death, though. I can even give you a guided tour.”
“Is this the place you took the whore to the other night?”
“That’s the one,” I say, knowing she followed me there and killed the hooker I had in the trunk of the car while I was inside.
She seems to like this idea. “I’ll meet you there at six o’clock, Joe. Don’t make me wait.”
She hangs up. Damn it, that doesn’t give me long. I catch the bus. Don’t want to steal a car. Of all the times to be caught, today would be it. I can sense it. The day is warming up, as if summer is making one last stand and it’s doing it this evening. Christchurch weather. Schizophrenic heat and all that.
I reach the house and enter my final evening as the Christchurch Carver.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I decide to pass the house and keep walking. It’s five forty-five. I walk to the end of the block, then come back. I don’t spot any odd-looking vehicles. No signs of a stakeout. No Melissa. It’s suburbia at the height of normalcy.
Walking the front path to the doorstep feels like coming home. I’ve been here so many times over the last few weeks it’s becoming a regular part of my life. The husband of the dead woman will probably start charging me rent. At least this will be my final time here. I take the sights in without any feelings of nostalgia. No tears to be shed.
The house is still warm. Seems it will stay that way until winter kills off every green thing in sight. If the police have been here today, now will be the time they burst in to apprehend me. Not that they will, of course. They’re not h
ere. I’m sure of it. However. .
I close my eyes. Wait. Count off a slow minute in which I listen to every sound in the house and in the street. A lawn mower, some woman shouting to her son to hurry up, a car moving by. Inside all I can hear is my own breathing. If the cops are here, I’ll tell them that I thought it was part of my job to clean this place. That I thought it was an extension of police headquarters since dozens of detectives have been here a few times now. I’ll mispronounce extension and pause for a few seconds looking for a replacement.
I open my eyes. Nothing. I’m still alone.
When I reach the bedroom I move straight through to the bathroom and smile at the man bound to the chair inside. At some point during the night, or perhaps today, he has pissed himself. The room stinks and he’s a mess, the whole scene is somewhat sad and pathetic.
I meet his eyes and see the hatred I saw last night. They’re red and puffy as though he has been rubbing them, but I know he hasn’t. He looks like he hasn’t slept since I saw him yesterday. His shirt is hanging out, and the collar is stained with blood. His arms are red from trying to break the tape and rope. Even his short hair looks ruffled. Flecks of blood have dried on the surface of the duct tape. The right side of his jaw has turned a dark gray. A large bump has risen on the front of his forehead. He must know they’re there, since he can get a good view of himself in the mirror.
“No, no, don’t get up,” I say, putting out my hand. He doesn’t laugh, or for that matter, even attempt to make conversation.
“Okay, Detective Inspector, here’s the deal. Twenty grand buys your ears and your mind, okay? Just don’t forget I have the gun, and I also have a tape of last night’s conversation.” I show him the tape recorder that’s been living inside a potted plant for months. “You try anything, or anything happens to me, that tape goes to your colleagues. Nod if you understand.”
He understands.
“Here’s the thing. In another,” I glance at my watch, “five minutes, we’re going to have a visitor. She’s going to be coming up here, and she’s going to be blackmailing me. However, like you, she’s also a murderer. I imagine you’ll recognize her. It’s your job to remain quiet here in the bathroom. Once she’s confessed, I’ll open up the door, she’ll see you, and she’ll be just as incriminated as you and I are. What we’ll have then is a three-way stalemate. Agreed?”
He grunts.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Another grunt. He shakes his head, perhaps seeing a problem with the plan, but it doesn’t matter. I close the door, then wait on the edge of the bed with my briefcase and without the eighty thousand dollars.
Ten minutes later I hear the front door downstairs open. I stay where I am. She’ll find me without too much difficulty.
This is it. This is where my phases and plans have led me.
I hear Melissa walk into the kitchen. The fridge door opens. Then it closes. Are we really that alike? I hope not.
A minute later she comes up the stairs.
“Damn hot up here, Joe.”
I shrug. “No air-conditioning.”
“I’m surprised there’s still any power to this place. That the money?” she asks, nodding toward the briefcase.
“Uh huh.”
I keep staring at her. She’s more beautiful than the night we met. More beautiful than the day she blackmailed me. Her black miniskirt is showing long, tanned legs. She’s wearing a dark purple jacket, which matches her purple shoes. Her blouse is silky black. She is going for some type of power dressing look, and succeeding. She steals a look at her expensive-looking watch. Once again I wonder what she actually does, and how she gets her money. Maybe she really is an architect.
“Got a date?” I ask.
She laughs. “You can always make me smile, Joe.”
“I try.”
“Actually I was just seeing how long it was going to take you to cut the crap and give me my money.”
I lean back on the bed. “I still have some concerns.”
“Oh, is that so. Well, poor little Joe, tell Melissa all about it.”
“Once I give you the money, what’s stopping you from going to the police anyway?”
“I’m a lovely person, Joe. I’d never lie.”
Yeah. Damn lovely. “You lied to me.”
“You’re lie-worthy.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Come now, Joe. What you’re buying here is trust. What kind of world is this if we can’t all trust one another? Once I have the money, everything I have on you, Joe, goes in a safe place so if something should happen to me,” she waves her hand around in the air, “oh I don’t know-maybe something along the lines of having my throat cut-then what I have on you goes to the cops. And only then.”
“And how do I know you won’t keep coming back for more?”
She shrugs. “I guess you don’t.” She lets her words hang in the air. She’s thinking she’ll be back for more money at some point.
“So how does it feel to be up here,” I ask, “in the presence of death?”
“There’s nothing dead up here.”
“There was.”
“Where did you kill them?”
I stand up and walk to the opposite corner, so now I’m standing along the same wall as the bathroom door, but at the other end. “I killed each of them on the bed,” I say, taking the credit for Daniela Walker’s death.
“This bed?”
It’s unmade, the blankets and sheets wrinkled from use. You can still see dried drops of blood. “That’s the one.”
She makes her way toward it. I can clearly see the Glock in her hand. My Glock. Even as she studies the bed she keeps the weapon pointed at me. Steadily.
“How did it feel?” she asks.
“You ought to know.”
She turns to me and smiles. “That’s true, Joe. You know, sometimes I feel as though we have something special between us.”
“Blackmail?”
“No.”
“We’re both killers?”
She shakes her head. “No, not that either.”
“What then?”
“I think it’s our love of life.”
“Poetic.”
“If you insist.”
I haven’t insisted on anything. “So how did it feel for you, Melissa?”
“How did what feel?”
“Killing.”
“I’ve done it before.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Only a couple of times. Nothing as fun as the other night, though.”
I have to agree. “They are kind of fun, aren’t they?”
“See? We’re sharing. We aren’t so unalike, Joe.” She begins rubbing her free hand over the bed, as if she’s trying to feel the death that took place here, trying to soak it up into the pores of her skin.
“I think we’re more similar than you really know.”
Hand still on the bed, she turns to face me. The gun is still pointed in my direction. “And how’s that?”
“Because I also find you lie-worthy.”
She straightens up, glances at the briefcase.
I nod toward it. “Go on, open it.”
Keeping the gun on me, she reaches over and snaps the left clip, then the right. Looking back to me, she opens the lid, then turns to look inside.
“What the hell are you up to, Joe? Where’s my money?”
“You’re not getting any money, Melissa.” She looks genuinely surprised. It seems she never thought I wouldn’t actually pay her. “If that’s the way you want to play it, then I’m going directly to the police.”
“Oh? And how are you going to explain your involvement?”
“I won’t need to.”
“Think again, bitch.” I nod toward the bathroom.
“You got a video camera set up, Joe? Come on, don’t be so childish. I’ll just take the tape with me now. Then I’m going to shoot you in the balls. Oh, what I mean is ball.”
“What I have is even better than a video camera. Why don’t you check it out?”
She moves toward the bathroom door, keeping the gun pointing ahead of her. When she reaches it, she opens it slowly. She peers inside, then laughs. Maybe she thinks I’ve bought her the ultimate gift.
“A cop? You’re going to kill a cop?” she asks.
“I’m not going to kill him. He’s too valuable for that.”
Behind her, I can see Calhoun’s eyes wide open in surprise at seeing Melissa. He recognizes her from the station. His eyes dart from left to right, deciding which of us is more dangerous. This is the woman who gave him a description of the killer. This is the woman who has me at gunpoint, yet I’m the man who knocked him out and tied him up. What in the hell, he’s wondering, is going on? And when will he be getting his money?
I can also see the thoughts going through Melissa’s mind. She likes collecting police things, and she’s wondering if she can collect this guy. She’s measuring him up to see if she has room for him in her house. Perhaps the corner of the living room, or next to the fridge.
“I don’t understand what you’re playing at, Joe,” she says.
“He’s my witness to what you really are.”
“Oh? And what do you have on him?”
“Enough.”
She looks around the room. It’s obvious that she hates losing. Slowly she begins shaking her head. I can hear her teeth grinding. She looks angry. “You’re forgetting one thing, Joe.”
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t need him.”
Before I can react, she grabs a knife from my briefcase and runs into the bathroom. She stands behind Calhoun and his eyes widen in fear because he knows as well as I do what’s about to happen. The chair jerks beneath him as he tries to pull away, but it’s no good. She holds the knife to his throat and watches my eyes. I look from the eyes of the detective, who has just become as still as stone, to the eyes of the woman behind him. Hers reflect amusement, a sense of enjoyment. Not for what she’s about to do to the cop, but what she’s about to do to my witness. I’ve hardly taken a step, but now I don’t dare move any closer.
“Think about this, Melissa,” I say, my words almost flustered. I put my hands ahead of me, palms outward. “Think about what you’re doing.”