Damnable

by Hank Schwaeble

  Damn, but he’s really big. Bolting out the front door and just running until he was far away suddenly looked like a better idea.

  The big man started to back away from the freezer, forcing Brian’s hand. Suddenly fearing he was about to be seen, Brian cocked the golf club back over his head, clutching it with both hands.

  Last chance, he told himself. What do I do? Run away and take my chances? But what if he sees me? Chases after me? Or do I dive forward and bring the business end of this thing down like an axe?

  Brian made his decision, though not very decisively. Shaking and pale, he hoped he’d be able to live with it.

  HATCHER SHOOK HIS HEAD. FOR PEOPLE WHO SEEMED to have a decent amount of money, the Warrens’ refrigerator was rather bare. It occurred to him a bad marriage would probably result in lots of little things like that, minor deficiencies that added up to a miserable life. He wondered how long it had been since they had eaten together, imagined neither wanting to cook or grocery shop, each taking most of their meals on the run. There was some cake, some eggs, a few containers of yogurt, some juice. The cake looked good. Since no one seemed to be home, he thought about helping himself to a piece. It was a possibility.

  He closed the refrigerator door and opened the parallel door to the freezer. Some ice cream, some bags of frozen vegetables, chicken breasts under plastic.

  He shut that door and glanced around the kitchen again.

  Where the hell was Susan’s husband? The place seemed empty, with each footstep almost echoing in the large kitchen. He’d looked around, snooped a bit, but couldn’t find anyone. It didn’t make sense. A car matching what Susan had described was in the driveway and the front door had been unlocked. And a garment bag and clothes were on the bed upstairs.

  More important, something didn’t feel right. Years of combat had heightened his perception of foreign surroundings, honed his intuition. Sometimes survival simply meant listening to what your senses were telling you. And right now his senses were telling him to be wary. He felt alone and not alone at the same time. That was usually the vibe of an ambush.

  Hatcher exited the kitchen and stepped into the living room, stopping to take in the surroundings more thoroughly this time. The house was old and big and had been renovated at no small expense. The living room was large, with a marble fireplace and a puffy sofa. Beyond it was an open set of double doors leading to a game room with a billiard table. The place was very upper middle class. It was also dark and lifeless and cold. Hatcher could almost feel the chill. Another by-product of a bad marriage. No heat generated from the master bedroom in this house.

  Two things seemed obvious as Hatcher let his eyes wander: Brian Warren was a geek who made decent coin, and Susan did all the decorating. The rooms were tastefully furnished with a woman’s touch. Earth-tone furniture and rich wood. Bowls filled with large ornate balls. A glass-top coffee table filled with river stones.

  And an entire wall of the adjacent game room dedicated to Star Wars memorabilia. Tiny figures wielding lightsabers in a glass display case, a framed movie poster for Revenge of the Jedi, a life-size cardboard cutout of Darth Vader. A large chess table was set up in the corner with R2-D2s as pawns on one side, Stormtroopers on the other.

  How did a woman like Susan end up with a guy like this? Hatcher wondered. It seemed a pretty safe bet that Brian Warren got beat up a lot as a kid.

  This was getting him nowhere. Hatcher looked around for a few more minutes, then made his way to the front door. He stared at it, thinking.

  There were six questions every interrogation attempted to answer. Who, what, when, where, how, and why. The most important one of them in Hatcher’s mind was always why. If you could answer that one, finding answers to the rest instantly became much easier. You had a map of the terrain.

  Why was the front door unlocked when he arrived?

  If Susan’s husband had left in a hurry, that might explain it. But why would his car be here? And the unfinished packing? Planning to run, but was he called away suddenly? Or maybe taken away? Hatcher shook that one off. He could have been kidnapped, but that was the kind of scenario that required more evidence before Hatcher was willing to consider it. The sound of hoofs tended to mean horses, not zebras.

  Wrong question, he realized. Too specific to tackle at this point. It needed to be broader. Like, why are front doors ever left unlocked?

  Hatcher continued to study the door, coaxing an answer out of it.

  Because either the person leaving forgot, doesn’t have a way to lock it, or doesn’t care.

  An unfinished packing job. A car in the driveway. Brian Warren didn’t forget.

  It suddenly seemed obvious. Somebody else had left through that door. Hatcher reassessed the possibility that maybe Brian Warren really had been kidnapped. Not a lot of evidence for it, but enough to play with, to see where it took him.

  Assuming something like that, the next question was, what would a kidnapping leave behind?

  Experience taught that being observant was mostly a matter of knowing where to look. Anyone could overlook anything if his eyes were focused in the wrong direction. On Ops, when trying to clear a building or tracking a hostile, he spent as much time as he could get away with looking down. It was a simple function of gravity. Everything that wasn’t somehow stuck in or on a wall or ceiling invariably made its way to the floor. The odds were good if there was something to find, a trace of it could be found there. He could think of no reason the same logic didn’t hold true here.

  He found the nearest set of light switches, fiddled with them until he discovered the right one. The area lit up in a bright glow. He dropped his gaze to the floor and studied it. The foyer was tiled in off-white ceramic. Very clean. Not a spot on it.

  Except in front of the door to the entryway closet.

  Hatcher stooped down to get a closer look. No mistaking it. A small dot of something dark and red. He didn’t need to touch it to know it was blood.

  Standing, Hatcher placed his hand on the closet doorknob, hesitated a brief moment, then opened it.

  The door swung outward and Hatcher sprang back as a man stumbled toward him, arms raised high, holding a golf club. The man didn’t travel far before falling forward onto his face.

  Hatcher knew who it was before he rolled the body over. By then, he also knew the man hadn’t stumbled at all, rather the lifeless form had simply spilled forward, face-first. But Hatcher wasn’t focusing on any of those points at the moment. His mind was running through all the things he was going to have to do in the next few minutes, and how he was going to go about doing them.

  Hatcher stood and took one last look at the body before going through the mental checklist he’d just made, deciding where to begin, and it occurred to him whoever did this probably thought he was being funny. The head was facing the wrong way, twisted impossibly around, the mouth wedged wide open, the blade of a golf club shoved vertically between the teeth. Most significantly, the club itself hadn’t been raised over his head, it just looked that way. It was protruding from the top the skull, embedded firmly, Brian Warren’s hands clutching the shaft. The pathetic impression of a Jedi Knight by a guy who never quite stopped getting beat up.

  CHAPTER 14

  “JESUS CHRIST, HATCHER! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW this looks?”

  Hatcher yawned and wiped his face, the cuffs forcing him to do it with both hands.

  “I’m guessing not so good.”

  Wright let out a noise that sounded like a predator. Her incisors were noticeably digging into her lower lip. She seemed to be making fists with her eyelids.

  “Just what the hell were you doing there?”

  “I told you,” Hatcher said. He shifted in his chair. “I wanted to talk to Brian Warren.”

  “Yeah, no shit. What I mean is, why did you want to talk to Brian Warren?”

  “Because I had a feeling he was mixed up in this somehow.”

  “Oh, you had a feeling, huh? That’s just great. I’m not eve
n going to ask what you mean by this. You’re about two seconds away from a murder rap. Because you had a feeling.”

  “Amy, you’re not really going to sit there and tell me you think I killed him.”

  “It really doesn’t matter what I think, Hatcher. Don’t you get it? You were in the house, your brother was last seen with the man before he was killed. You admit your prints are all over the place. His blood is on your shirt. Motive, opportunity, physical evidence.”

  “I’m the one who called nine-one-one. What kind of murderer does that?”

  “No one said you were very smart.”

  Hatcher glanced over at the two-way mirror on the wall of the interview room. Most laymen, and a good number of cops, believed it was there to allow others to observe the interrogation, but Hatcher knew that purpose had been long surpassed by technology. Cameras and audio equipment could provide better, more diversified monitoring far more surreptitiously. The real reason mirrors were still in use was because they wanted subjects to observe themselves during the interview. It was a tactic the military used liberally. Watching yourself lie is not the easiest thing to do.

  He stared into his own reflection, thinking that watching yourself tell the truth wasn’t always a cakewalk, either.

  “Nobody’s in there,” Wright said.

  “I know. You wouldn’t be talking like this if anyone was.”

  “Maloney gave me five minutes alone with you. And he knows there’s something between us, by the way. I can tell. Do you realize the position you’ve put me in, Hatcher? How could you do this to me? Tricking me like that? Getting me to pull men off a surveillance? Sneaking around and leaving dead bodies for me to answer for?”

  There was no way to answer that question, since it wasn’t really intended as a question at all. Posed by Amy Wright the woman, not Amy Wright the cop. He would have preferred to deal with the cop. At the moment, at least.

  A few seconds of listening to the sound of her fingernails tapping against the table, then Hatcher said, “He’s in love with you, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Maloney. He’s in love with you.”

  She glanced away, then fixed her gaze coldly on him. “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Whatever mind game you’re trying to play.”

  “No, it’s true. He tried to warn me off. I could see it in his eyes. That helpless, desperate look of a man in love. Willing to do anything to salvage it. I just thought you should know.”

  “That’s ridiculous. And we’re talking about you, Hatcher. Not him. You. I trusted you.”

  Hatcher let it go. She was lying, of course. She hadn’t trusted him. If she had, he wouldn’t have had to pull his little ruse. But she believed she had, regardless of her actions, and her belief was what mattered at the moment. Amy Wright the woman, not Amy Wright the cop.

  “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  Before Hatcher could respond, someone knocked and the door to the room opened. Maloney stood in the doorway, one hand on the knob, the other holding a file folder.

  “Amy.”

  Wright locked eyes with Hatcher one final time and sighed with obvious contempt. She marched out of the room doing her best impersonation of Amy Wright the cop.

  Maloney let her pass without comment. He leaned back and glanced down the hall in her direction before turning his attention to Hatcher.

  “She thinks you betrayed her,” he said. He’d kept his voice low. He walked over to the table, dropped the file on it.

  “I got that. Thanks.”

  Maloney sat. Reynolds appeared in the doorway, pausing before entering and closing the door behind him. Brimming with attitude today. Attitude, and something else Hatcher couldn’t quite put his finger on. He stood in the corner, staring at Hatcher like he’d stolen the loser’s lunch money.

  “So, here we are again,” Maloney said.

  Hatcher scratched his chin, having to lift both hands. He was sporting a uniform stubble, his reflection reminding him of a vintage G.I. Joe doll. “Always a pleasure, Lieutenant.”

  “Reynolds, remove Mr. Hatcher’s cuffs, if you would.”

  The younger detective made a face, but did as was asked. He eyeballed Hatcher the entire time. There was an edge to the way he was looking at him that made Hatcher take note. It seemed Freckles the Police Clown suddenly had a hard-on for him.

  “I’ve told you all everything already,” Hatcher said.

  Maloney bounced his jaw a bit, almost nodding. “I know.”

  “Why don’t I think that means you believe me?”

  “What I believe is irrelevant. The evidence backs up enough of what you said.”

  Hatcher watched the detective in silence, waiting for him to say more.

  “Blood evidence,” Maloney continued. “The drop of blood on the floor wasn’t a match for either you or the vic. But it was a match for what we pulled out of the trap in the kitchen sink. We haven’t had time to run DNA analysis yet, of course, but the lab was able to type it and exclude the both of you.”

  “Someone else’s blood in the house doesn’t mean I didn’t do it.”

  “Is that a confession?”

  “Not the kind you mean.”

  “What kind is it, then?”

  “It’s me confessing that I know you have other evidence.”

  Maloney scrunched the side of his mouth, tilted his head, conceded the point with a flourish of his brow, then a shrug. “Cab driver says he picked you up in the city around when the ME’s office puts the time of death. Maybe not airtight, but I don’t want to waste energy on the wrong guy. Besides, it doesn’t seem like your style, anyway.”

  He was lying, but Hatcher had expected as much. “Are you letting me go?”

  “Not quite. There are still a few things I want to know.”

  Hatcher said nothing.

  “Neighbors saw someone fitting your description leaving the house.”

  “Neighbors? At that time of night? Don’t people in Long Island sleep?”

  Maloney hitched his shoulders. “Guess some people can’t. At least one person described you perfectly, said they saw you get into Brian Warren’s car and leave. A car that was conspicuously devoid of fingerprints, I might add.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  “Lieutenant, I’m the one who called you guys from the house. I was there at the scene when the first cops arrived.”

  “That’s not a denial.”

  “Because there’s nothing to deny. No neighbor is going to describe anyone perfectly at that time of night from the kind of distance away they’d have to have been. You’re fishing.”

  Maloney glanced down at the file folder. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, Hatcher.”

  “Why do I feel a threat coming on?”

  “No threat,” Maloney said, cracking a smile. “I just mean, you don’t seem to know who your friends are.”

  “Maybe that’s because everyone wants to ask me questions and nobody wants to give me answers. It was my brother who was killed, remember?”

  The lieutenant tapped the file folder on the table. “Captain Gillis wants me to transfer you back to federal custody if I don’t charge you.”

  “You and he becoming buddies now? That would be telling.”

  “I told him that you were a material witness, and that I needed you to remain in the jurisdiction. I also made it clear I’d put in requests as far up the chain as I had to.”

  “Exactly what are you trying to say, Maloney?”

  “Nothing, only that you don’t have to go back to Fort Sill yet, once you leave here. Not right away.”

  “That only matters if I’m allowed to leave here. Am I allowed?”

  “Almost. But like I said, I have some questions I still need answered.”

  Hatcher watched Maloney’s eyes, waiting. There was something about those eyes Hatcher found out of place. They were almost to
o steady. Like he was fearless. Fearlessness usually didn’t go along with lying. But at the same time, part of those eyes seemed on edge, as if there was a collection of knowledge lurking behind them that he was having to work to hide.

  “Do you think what happened to this guy Warren had anything to do with Deborah’s disappearance?” Maloney asked.

  The question surprised Hatcher, mostly because it was a really good one, lacking any pretense.

  “I don’t know. But I tend not to place much faith in coincidences.”

  Maloney stared at Hatcher for several breaths, then nodded. “Me, either. I’m assuming you believe this is all connected to your brother’s death.”

  “Is that a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course, I do. Same as you.”

  Maloney looked as if he was starting to say something, then stopped himself. He glanced down and removed a business card that was paper-clipped to the inside flap of the folder. He slid it across the table toward Hatcher.

  “Reynolds found this at the scene. It was on the floor of the closet. The Long Island boys missed it.”

  Hatcher picked up the card. It was slick, glossy. Centered on one side of it were two words, followed by what looked like an ambiguous address:

  PLEASURE INCARNATE

  FIVE BLOCKS EAST OF EDEN

  MANHATTAN

  In the top corner it read:

  FOR DIRECTIONS OR

  AN APPOINTMENT

  ASK SAMARRA

  Hatcher turned the card over. The entire back side was a partial black-and-white photograph of a woman’s eyes, and hair that seemed platinum, almost like it was the one thing in color among the shades of gray.