Come Out Tonight

by Bonnie Rozanski

  “You could see her when Henry sees her.”

  “It’s not the same. Henry’s such a chickenshit. Sherry never liked him.”

  Sirken laughs. “But she liked you.”

  “She loved me. I’m the one she loved.”

  “How did she tell you apart?”

  “In fucking bed,” he says with a grin.

  “Do you love her?” Sirken asks.

  Henry onscreen laughs like he thinks this is hilarious. “Nah. But she banged like a screen door in a tornado. She was some great fuck, that Sherry.”

  I can’t stand it anymore. “Wait,” I shout. “Stop the tape!”

  Sirken stops the tape, Edward’s mouth caught in mid-laugh. “What, Henry?”

  “That bastard did it!” I cry.

  “Damn right,” Sirken says.

  Jerry shushes me. “Don’t make this worse than it already is, Henry.”

  “But it wasn’t me. It was him,” I whimper. Jerry puts his arm around my shoulders as I cry. I suddenly understand what Sherry saw in me: Edward. Jerry motions for her to turn it back on. The screen moves again.

  “Then why did you want to kill her?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I think you get angry when you don’t get your way,” Sirken says.

  “Think what you fucking like.”

  “Okay, I will. I think every time a woman gets too feisty, too independent, she ticks you off. I think Sherry wasn’t happy when she found out about Jessica.”

  “She never found out about Jessica,” Henry-onscreen says.

  “Well, about Alicia, then. Those panties with the red A we found in your drawer. I think she confronted you with them. Asked for an explanation.”

  “Which I gave,” he says.

  “Which she didn’t like. I think she was also tired of having you knock her around.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “She liked you to abuse her?”

  “Let’s just say she liked it rough.” Henry-onscreen looks into the detective’s eyes at this point, this little curve of a smile on his lips. “I think you do, too. I see how you look at me, Sweets. I can see it in your eyes.”

  Sirken-onscreen does the slightest double take, but her eyes are glistening. “Do you?” she says.

  “Fucking right I do.”

  “Anyway,” Sirken-onscreen says, clearing her throat. “Hitting her with a wooden statue is a little over the top, even in rough sex.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah, strangling is more your style. What made you kill Jessica, Edward?”

  Henry-onscreen smiles the most evil-dude smile I ever saw. Never mind it’s on my lips. That smile is nasty. “You’ve got nothin’ on me,” he says.

  Stalemate. Sirken’s looking so tired. “Yeah, it’s true, we don’t have enough to convict you of murder. All we can bring is a charge of attempted murder. Willful, deliberate and premeditated attempted murder. You know that premeditated attempted murder brings a punishment of life in prison, Edward? We have enough on you without murder to put you away for a long, long time...”

  I take a look at myself onscreen. That evil-dude smile is still there, but fading.

  “...The whole time without Somnolux, Edward. You know what it’s going to be like without Somnolux? You’ll be locked in Henry’s body forever, without time off for good behavior. You’ll never be able to come out. Ever. It may be life imprisonment for Henry, but it’ll be purgatory for you.” She’s smiling now, but it’s a cold smile; the pupils in her eyes are little points of hate. “It’ll be a fate worse than death.”

  Henry-onscreen’s smile is gone. For the first time he looks scared, really scared. “Fucking shit,” he says. For a minute or so you can see the wheels turning in his - my - head, figuring out the angles. Finally, he leans forward, says, “Yeah. Better death than being locked in that chickenshit’s body forever.”

  Sirken looks shell-shocked for a second but recovers quick. “You’re willing to waive your right to counsel?”

  “Yeah. Who needs Jerry anyway? I bet he got his law degree on the fucking Internet.”

  “Hey!” Jerry shouts to me. “That’s not true!”

  Sirken pauses the tape.

  “I didn’t say it,” I tell him, but he’s still glaring at me. Then it occurs to me what the hell is really happening. Forget Jerry. He’ll get over the insult of being a shitty lawyer. The only reason he’s insulted in the first place is because he is a shitty lawyer. Meanwhile, DAMMIT, I’m the guy who’s going to pay. Edward - whoever he is - is selling me out. We’re going down together. He confesses, guess whose body gets the chair? “What the hell!” I shout. “Is he confessing?”

  Sirken nods her head.

  “But what about me?” I cry. “I didn’t do it! What about me?”

  “Oh my God,” Jerry says, finally getting the point. “I’ve never had a case like this. Does Edward’s confession apply to Henry?” He pauses. “Is Edward my client, too?”

  “Good question,” Sirken says, pushing play.

  Onscreen, Sirken turns on the CD player, as if she’s going to record his confession. I guess she didn’t want to alert him - me - to the fact he was already on video. “Okay,” she says.

  Edward’s got this faraway look in his eyes. “Henry always wanted to break away from that tight-ass family of his. He wanted to do all these outrageous things, but he’s just too much of a fucking chickenshit for that. He finally moved away to his own apartment, but even then, here he goes and proposes to practically the first woman he sees. He says he wants fucking freedom, but then he goes and ties himself right down again. The guy’s a real screw-up, you know?”

  Sirken-onscreen’s nodding, like she agrees.

  “Shit!” I say. “Don’t go and agree with him!” but no one’s listening to me.

  “But that’s what set the stage for me, I guess,” Edward’s saying. “I’m all the parts of him he couldn’t act on. Somnolux shut the chickenshit parts off, but left the action parts on. Fucking perfect for me. Nine months ago, ten minutes after he takes a shot of scotch on top of the Somnolux, I come out. It was fucking sweet, let me tell you. Suddenly, I have my own dick. I can do anything. Can go anywhere. Of course, I just go hunting pussy big time. Do all the fucking stuff Chickenshit wouldn’t dare do. Fucking freedom for once.”

  Sirken doesn’t dare interrupt him. She just lets him run.

  “Yeah, well, Sherry was already there by the time I came on the scene, so she became my major fuckbuddy. But Sherry wasn’t really my type. She had this ambition to be a Nobel Prizewinner or something. It really got on my nerves. She thought she was so smart. She was always arguing with me - with Henry really. When I was around, most of the time we weren’t arguing, if you know what I mean. But if Henry had married her, she would have been hell to be around.”

  Sirken can’t help herself. “The night of April 30th...,” she says.

  “Yeah, well, she came late, after Henry was in bed. I mean, she didn’t want to have to deal with him. She just came for the sex, so she waited until she knew I’d be there. Of course, she thought I was Henry: Henry with two sides. But she was waiting for the moment when Henry was randy, and that happened around midnight.

  “But that night she was fucking irritable. She’d just come from this fucking birthday dinner with her parents, and her father was on her case again about how she’d screwed up royally at Vandenberg. All she wanted to do was talk about Vandenberg. She kept saying how totally unethical and illegal and sexist it was. How the whole Somnolux thing was her idea, but they never gave her any credit. How she was going to tell the fucking world about what went on behind closed doors, no matter what anyone said.

  “Yadayadayada. It just got on my nerves. I guess I wasn’t being fucking supportive like she wanted. What she really wanted that night was Chickenshit, not me. Anyway, so she started accusing me of everything under the fucking sun - that I was a man, and men are clueless and stupid. How her father never l
oved her. Whatever she did for him was wrong. She went on and on and on like a fucking broken record. It just made me mad. And finally I just grabbed the first thing I could and hit her over the head with it. She looked pretty dead. I didn’t really mean to kill her; I was just trying to shut her up, if that counts for anything. Anyway, I figured there was no rush: she’d still be dead in the morning, so I just wiped the totem pole off where I’d been holding it, messed the room up a little, and went to bed.”

  “But she wasn’t dead.”

  “Yeah. So when Henry woke up, he went nuts and had to call 911 to save her.” Edward looks up and shrugs. “Wasn’t worth it. Now she’s a half-wit.”

  “Half-wit? You piece of shit!” I shout. What the hell. I’m arguing with myself.

  “So, that was Sherry. Jessica. Yeah, well, I told you how we met at Ryan’s. Jessica was a good fuck. She liked to try new things, too. Like we tried some sadomasochist shit, and she liked it. She said she never had had such a fucking orgasm like she had when I cut off her windpipe like that. Except sometime in July...”

  “July 6.”

  “Yeah, don’t interrupt me. July 6. I must have gone too far. She was struggling, but hey she always did that. I mean, your body can’t help fighting if someone cuts off your air supply. It’s fucking natural. So, I didn’t realize it meant she was really trying to tell me something. When I finished banging her, she just lay there. I wiped off every fucking thing in her apartment that night. Took the sheets with me so they couldn’t get me on my DNA. Tiptoed downstairs and out the door.”

  “Damn!” I shout. “That’s where those sheets came from.”

  Sirken pauses the machine and turns to me. “You still have them?”

  “Yeah, but I washed them,” I say.

  Sirken sighs, presses play, and the figures on the screen go on talking.

  “Arlene must have seen me coming in,” Edward says, “but she didn’t fucking see me coming out. Anyway, that was Jessica. What else? Oh, yeah. Diego.”

  Sirken-onscreen is sitting there rapt. She can’t believe what she’s hearing. It’s a perfect, CLASSIC confession. She’s going to make Detective First Grade.

  “Yeah, well, I met Alicia one night when I stayed at Henry’s parent’s house overnight.”

  “Henry’s parents’ house?” I say. “Aren’t they his parents, too?” Jerry, watching the screen, waves at me to shut up.

  “...Yeah, he had some Manischevitz wine or something and then the Somnolux, and I popped out in Queens.” He laughs, Sirken’s eyes widening. “So, I snuck out of the house and walked around the neighborhood. What a stupid place. It’s all fucking immigrants. So, I see this woman smoking a cigarette in front of this house. She’s fucking hot, in a Latin way, you know? She’s got on these gold hoop earrings, and this tight skirt and a bodice that pushes her booties up. Those Latinas fucking know how to dress. Anyway, so I go closer. She has a black eye; I can see that right away. She’s crying a little. I come over, and right away she backs off. But I come on sweet and after a little while she comes around. She ends up going home with me, and I fuck her up, down, and sideways. She leaves me her panties to remember her by.”

  “Diego found out?” Sirken asks.

  “Yeah. Alicia said she was going to fucking leave him, anyway, so she must have told him. But Diego always had that Latino machismo thing. He couldn’t let her leave. He didn’t really want her, but when she said she’d found someone else, he fucking wanted her again. Go figure.

  “And he kept getting in my face whenever we were together. I mean, he wasn’t worth bothering about, but he’d start shit with me all the time. One time he threw a punch at me in a bar, and I had to fucking break his arm. I told Alicia to leave him, but he told her not to leave the fucking house or else. So, half the time we’d do it in Diego’s house when he wasn’t there. Just a matter of time until he fucking came in and found us in bed. He went for the gun in the bed table, but I got there first. End of Diego.”

  “We talked to Alicia. She said she wasn’t even there.”

  “Yeah, right. Alicia’s a lying Latina bitch. Don’t believe a fucking word she says.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t get that sense from her...”

  “Hey, a little respect, woman. I just fucking confessed to two murders and you don’t believe me? Well, fuck you.” He’s got the evil-dude smile back on.

  “Okay, but...”

  “I’m done,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “Shut off the recorder.”

  Sirken pushes stop, and the recorder stops. “Like we fucking needed that,” he says, standing up. He saunters over to the mirror and starts to talk to it. “Henry,” he says. Shit, he’s talking to me.

  “Hey man, sorry that I got you in this jam, but you gotta understand. No way am I gonna rot away in your sorry body for life. No way. It’s just not gonna fucking happen. Anyway, if I have to die, you might as well, too. Too bad, Chickenshit.” He looks at Sirken, laughs an evil-dude laugh and says, “Got what you wanted, Bitch?”

  She glares at him one long second, goes to say something, but doesn’t. The video ends. We never get to hear if she tells him off.

  DONNA

  The phone was ringing. In the dark I could just make out the empty side of the bed, blanket uncreased, pillow plumped – no one there. I groped for the phone and picked it up.

  “Sirken here,” I barked, half asleep.

  “Detective,” Koslowski was saying. “We’ve got him!”

  “Who?” I asked, still out of it.

  “Jackman, that’s who! We caught him in the act of trying to smother the daylights out of his girlfriend.”

  It worked! Sherry told him she remembered who did it, whether it was a true memory or not. And once she did, Jackman knew he had to get rid of her before she could tell anyone else. “What happened?” I asked.

  “Oh, he got in the back door, which we had left unlatched, as you suggested. He didn’t see the stake out in the corner. Sherry Pollack was out cold, of course. Jackman just walked over, would you believe, singing, “’Sherry, Sherry baby, Sherry don’t you come out tonight,’ then grabbed the pillow out from under her and stuffed it over her face.”

  “Don’t you, not won’t you,” I mused. “I wonder whose benefit that play on words was for….”

  There was a short pause on the line, while Koslowski puzzled over what the hell I was talking about. “Well, the girl was out cold, of course,” he said. “And the shades were pulled, so he couldn’t have seen us in the corner until we turned on the lights.”

  “Is Sherry all right? She’s breathing?”

  “Absolutely. We grabbed him the moment he jammed the pillow over her face. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen seconds she was under.”

  “So tell Jackman I’ll be right down.” I chuckled. “This is one session with him I’m actually looking forward to.”

  “Actually, Detective, it can probably wait till morning,” Koslowski said. “The strangest thing - the moment we stuck him in the holding cell, he lay down on the cot and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.”

  “Somnolux!” I almost shouted into the phone. “I knew it! Ralph, how did Jackman seem to be acting when he smothered her?”

  “How did he…? Normal, I guess. For a psycho. Like, he was smiling as he stuffed the pillow….”

  “No,” I cut him off. “I mean, did he seem to be sleepwalking?”

  “Sleepwalking? Really?” Koslowski replied, laughing. “Could he even do that? I mean, the guy was singing, for Chrissakes!”

  “Stranger things have happened, Bill,” I said.

  “Well, maybe, during the act, but I don’t know. Gee, I don’t think so. Anyway, by the time we got him into the station, Jackman had to be awake. I mean, he congratulated us on catching him in the act.”

  “That was big of him,” I said. Damn. From what Koslowski had said, Jackman certainly sounded conscious. I could have sworn that Somnolux was the answer, but maybe not. I wondered wheth
er there were any examples of people singing, much less murdering someone, in their sleep. I yawned. Tomorrow would no doubt clear up the whole thing.

  * * *

  Henry Jackman was already in the interrogation room when I walked in the next morning. He seemed a little scared, a little rumpled, but, as always, feisty. He called me “Detective Shitken,” and when that didn’t intimidate me, he demanded his lawyer. I told Henry the guy was on his way. We sat there for a few minutes, Henry looking suspiciously at the two-way mirrors.

  I pointed out that he couldn’t deny we had caught him in the act.

  “In the act of what?” he asked, all innocence.

  “C’mon,” I said. “You acknowledged that last night.”

  “I did not,” he said. I wondered again whether he could actually have been sleepwalking through the whole thing. It seemed a stretch.

  At this point Jerry Sussman entered: his clothes just a little too flashy, his accent just a little too Noo Yawk, exactly the sort of backwoods lawyer I might have imagined his parents would engage. Neither he nor his client was going to be any match for me. In any case, this was an open and shut case. After all, we’d caught the guy in the act.

  “So,” I said to Henry once his lawyer had sat down. “Why were you trying to kill your girlfriend?”

  Sussman objected, but Henry talked right over him. “I wasn’t even there last night.”

  “We caught you red-handed!” I countered.

  Even his lawyer told him you can’t deny something when they catch you in the act, but Jackman went on denying that he was there. It was bizarre, but I figured I’d just move on to Jessica Finklemeyer. A fact, after all, is a fact.

  “I wasn’t there,” he said again. No, it was his doppelganger.

  I informed him that the first floor neighbor had ID’d him. She insisted that he was Jessica’s boyfriend and swore that he was there the night she was killed.

  “Arlene,” Henry said, giving a name to the neighbor I’d not yet named. Sussman told him to shut up, but he wouldn’t. Yeah, he’d talked to Arlene, Henry said, but she’d said she wouldn’t tell anyone. Meanwhile Sussman was looking disgusted because he couldn’t muzzle his client. No, he didn’t know Jessica, Henry went on, volunteering a whole slew of information in the process. When I brought it back around to the night that Sherry was attacked, I got Henry to admit that he slept through the whole thing and that he didn’t call the cops until he had sprayed his apartment with Lysol. It didn’t look good for him.