Bitch Slap

by Michael Craft

  “Turns out, my meeting with the cabinetmaker was a breeze; I was in and out within thirty minutes. He’s located on the outskirts of the city, so I drove downtown and found a used-office-equipment store, where I bought an old typewriter, the Royal, for practically nothing. Then I went to a supermarket and bought stationery and envelopes. Next, I stopped at a drugstore and bought latex gloves. Finally, I found a quiet park, where I wrote the letter at a picnic table.

  “Driving back from Green Bay, I tossed the typewriter into a weedy ditch along an empty stretch of rural highway. Arriving back in Dumont shortly before five, I mailed the letter at the post office, confident you’d receive it the next morning. Then I came home—and helped you and Todd fix dinner.” With his story told, Neil flopped back on the bed, nesting in the pile of pillows that had been disarrayed by our foiled attempt at lovemaking.

  Wryly, I noted, “You were quite the busy boy yesterday.” Though I was dismayed and shaken by my knowledge of what had happened, I had to admit that he’d planned his strategy well and executed it deftly—the merger had come to a crashing halt, and I’d been clueless to his role in it.

  He locked his hands behind his head, grinning up at me. “Proud of me?”

  “Neil,” I reminded him, “Gillian died.”

  “I mean, the rest—the letter and all.”

  “It’s all kind of … complicated.” Sitting there like a baby wrapped in a blanket, I couldn’t find a more explicit word, an expression sufficiently neutral, to convey the maelstrom of concerns and emotions that cluttered my mind.

  “The important thing is”—he pulled me down next to him—“we’re back on the same page again. You were so right, Mark. We did need to clear the air.” He gave me a kiss.

  “Talking is good,” I agreed vaguely, feeling inane.

  He pulled the covers up around us, tucking us in for the night. “You haven’t answered my original question. So tell me: How did you piece it together?” Reaching over to his nightstand, he turned off the light.

  I felt eerily adrift in the blackened room, as if bobbing on a dark, vast sea. Clearing my throat, I attempted a casual laugh, asking, “What makes you think I was able to piece it together?”

  “Well,” he recalled, “when the sex didn’t happen, you said it didn’t matter because you knew what was on my mind. You encouraged me to talk about it.”

  “Neil”—I turned to face him in the dark, resting my hand on his chest—“it seems we both had our signals crossed. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I thought you were upset that Todd came on to Doug at dinner tonight.”

  “Why would that bother me?”

  I didn’t want to explain that I’d been laboring under the mistaken notion that Neil had been considering Todd’s proposed three-way—clearly, I’d been off by a mile—so I simply told him, “When Todd got flirtatious with Doug tonight, that’s when you became quiet and withdrawn.”

  “Ohhh. No, Mark, I barely noticed what was going on between Todd and Doug. Just before that, Doug had been talking about the anonymous letter. He said he’d concluded that it was written by the killer. He said they’d determined the exact model of Royal typewriter the killer had used. And he expressed his intention to track down the actual machine. That’s why I clammed up. I’d been having those worries all day.”

  It all made sense. Feeling foolish, I rolled onto my back, staring up toward the ceiling I couldn’t see. The issue of Todd Draper’s bedtime inclinations, which had weighed so heavily on my mind, now struck me as very minor indeed.

  “Hey … ,” said Neil, sounding suddenly wary. “Then you really didn’t know—about Gillian, about me.”

  I swallowed. “No, Neil. I had no idea.”

  “But you do understand, don’t you?” He sat up.

  “Understand what?”

  “Why I did what I did—you understand that, right?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  “Mark”—he leaned over me, grasping my shoulders—“tell me I can count on you to keep the writer of that letter anonymous. I can trust you, can’t I?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  PART FOUR

  Controlling Interest

  JUSTICE ON TRIAL

  Executive’s death must not be dismissed

  as payback for deceit

  by MARK MANNING

  Publisher, Dumont Daily Register

  OCT. 24, DUMONT, WI—Disturbing developments of the last two days have taken a toll on Dumont’s business community, stretching our emotions in opposing directions.

  On Wednesday, the untimely death of Ashton Mills executive Gillian Reece, killed in an apparent accident at her new home, sent shock waves through corporate offices throughout the county. Not only had a major local industry lost its shining star, but a long-awaited merger between Ashton Mills and Quatro Press was dashed.

  Then, on Thursday, receipt of an anonymous letter (as reported on the front page of today’s Register), revealed that Mrs. Reece had concocted a heinously greedy scheme that would effectively destroy Quatro Press and a significant portion of Dumont’s economy. Further, the letter persuaded Sheriff Douglas Pierce that Mrs. Reece’s death was anything but accidental, and he is now in the midst of a murder investigation.

  The temptation might be great to shift Wednesday’s sympathies for the deceased Mrs. Reece to the author of the letter received Thursday. Some might perceive the anonymous writer as a hero, a contemporary Robin Hood who has exposed and slain an enemy of the community.

  To lionize a killer, however, is to abandon every notion of law and due process, which must remain cornerstones of any society deemed civilized. The taking of human life is the greatest of wrongs.

  Gillian Reece is to be memorialized today in a private service for family and close business associates. In laying her to rest, it must be remembered that her failings do not justify her tragic end.

  The age-old maxim has never rung truer: two wrongs don’t make a right.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  During my quarter century of practice as a professional journalist, I’d had my fair share of brushes with unexplained death. Working on the assumption—or the knowledge—that a wrong had been committed, I had understood that my role as a communicator was to work in tandem with law enforcement, but apart from it, assisting the investigation in any way possible while taking pains not to intrude upon it. In that way, the public’s “right to know” has always been best served. Such is the traditional function of the press, the so-called fourth estate.

  From a journalist’s perspective, my career had been inordinately fruitful in that I had often landed news assignments whose outcomes carried a measure of social import. Like so many other eager students pursuing journalism in college, I had been inspired by the intrinsic romance of the profession. My goal had not been simply to be involved with reporting, but to be challenged by reporting that matters. Few news stories capture the public interest more readily than an unsolved murder. I’d been lucky—many such mysteries had carried my byline.

  By most accounts, I had handled those stories well, both in their writing and in the background research that had brought them to print. I had quickly learned that stories of mysterious death follow a predictable pattern. It begins when a body is discovered, and it ends only after a laborious process of interviews, digging, and deduction, when the culprit is finally named. There had been little variation to this routine.

  Sometimes the killer had been identified on the basis of hard evidence, with no wriggle room. At other times, when the evidence had been compelling but sketchy, I had coaxed or even tricked the suspect into a flummoxed admission of guilt. Never, though, had the responsible party taken me unawares by gushing a spontaneous, detailed account of the victim’s death, as Neil had done on Thursday night. His confession was all the more remarkable because he had delivered it while lying naked with me in bed.

  There is indeed a first time for everything.

  Now, Friday morning, as I walked downstair
s from our bedroom, I struggled to reconcile my future course of action with my new knowledge of what had happened to Gillian Reece. For me, suddenly, the central question of the case was no longer whodunit, but how to deal with it.

  My every instinct told me Neil was bound by principle to come clean, but he had flatly rejected that option, arguing that the expediency of remaining silent far outweighed the ethical niceties of submitting his tangled circumstances to the scrutiny of blind justice. Though I could understand his reasoning, I found it difficult to accept. So the great, looming question was this: If Neil was not inclined to go public with his admission, and if I failed to convince him otherwise, would I be morally compelled to take matters into my own hands? In other words: Would I rat on my own lover?

  I, after all, was the guy who played by the book and followed the rules. Not two days earlier, I had scolded the local sheriff for driving ten miles over the limit. Just a day ago, my features editor had chided me for being too principled to tell a white lie about being on deadline. My sense of decorum would not allow me to stand naked in my own bathroom—proper, priggish me. And now, this morning, the entire town was reading my high-minded words demanding that Gillian Reece’s killer be brought to justice.

  There was a moral in there somewhere, but as I crossed the front hall toward the kitchen, I was damned if I could see it.

  “Hey, Mark! Morning!” said Doug as I entered the kitchen. He looked chipper and freshly showered, sitting at the table with a big, gooey kringle he had picked up on his way from the gym. Next to the pastry was the latest edition of the Register, folded open to my editorial. Tapping the paper with one hand (the other held a flaky wedge of kringle, bleeding raspberry jam from its edge), he told me, “Strong stuff. You didn’t mince words. Well said.” With a nod of approval, he chomped the tip off his Danish.

  Neil turned from the counter, where he was pouring coffee, and gave me a smirk—he’d read the paper.

  “Well,” I waffled, “it may have been a bit heavy-handed. I wrote it late yesterday in the heat of the moment.” For Neil’s benefit, I added, “Didn’t mean to come across as such a hard-liner.”

  Doug squinted at the paper, then at me. “Nothing wrong with a hard line—especially when you’re dealing with murder.”

  It wasn’t murder, I wanted to tell him. I didn’t even think it was manslaughter. But I couldn’t tell Doug such things without telling him the rest, and although I had given Neil no absolute assurance that his secrets were safe with me, he could reasonably assume my loyalty, so I said nothing. Besides, I hadn’t had my coffee yet. If I was going to tussle with a moral dilemma in my kitchen that morning, I needed to have all cylinders firing.

  Neil brought three mugs of coffee to the table. Adroitly shifting topics, he asked me, “Any stirrings upstairs?”

  “Not yet.” Joining them at the table, I told Doug, “Todd stayed up late last night, reading.”

  At the mention of Todd’s name, Doug’s face brightened. “What a great guy—but I wish he hadn’t paid for dinner. Thanks for introducing us.”

  Neil grinned. “It seems you two … hit it off.”

  “Oh?” asked Doug, trying not to sound too eager. “Did he say anything?”

  “Not much,” Neil fibbed. “But I think he had a good time.”

  “Know what? So did I. Todd’s so … interesting. I mean, a curtain designer. Who’d have thought?”

  Dryly, I answered, “Surely not I.”

  Neil flashed me a dirty look, then told Doug, “Sometimes people just click. There’s no predicting when you might fall for someone—or who it might be.”

  Doug nearly choked on his coffee. “Hey,” he said, setting down the mug, “who said anything about ‘falling for’ anyone?” His embarrassed smile admitted the very assertion he sought to deny.

  “Oh, brother.” Neil reached for a slice of kringle, telling Doug, “Your bluffing skills could use a little work.”

  “Well,” he admitted, sounding a tad giddy (this was totally out of character for our butch local lawman), “let’s just say Todd took me by surprise. I was expecting dinner with friends, which is always pleasant, but nothing unusual. I wasn’t quite prepared for what … ‘happened.’”

  Good God, I realized, something had indeed “happened”—something like unforeseen chemistry.

  As Doug and Neil pattered on in this vein, it was apparent that Neil was not the least bit troubled by Doug’s interest in Todd; in fact, he was actively encouraging it. Now that I knew I’d been ridiculously off base in interpreting Neil’s recent distracted behavior, I reminded myself that the Todd issue was resolved. Neil had no interest in him sexually, so it was time for me to dismiss those thoughts as well.

  But it wasn’t that simple or logical. I was dealing with other emotions that Neil didn’t share. Namely, my years of unspoken attraction to Doug had provided an agreeable fantasy that still bubbled at a slow simmer just below the surface of our friendship. In a sense, Neil’s friendship with Doug was purer than mine, untainted by that whiff of lust, so he could easily—eagerly—step into the role of matchmaker. I, on the other hand, found myself egotistically peeved that Doug’s affections were being boxed up, bound in ribbons, and handed over to the hunky, sandy-haired curtain maker from Chicago.

  These feelings were shameful, I knew. Rationally, they couldn’t be justified, but emotionally, I couldn’t shake them. I was still dealing with Neil’s revelations of the previous night, so my unresolved concerns about death and culpability merited far more brain space than my niggling hots for either Todd or Doug. I could deal with them later.

  For the moment, I decided, our breakfast conversation would serve a more pressing purpose if it focused more on Doug’s investigation and less on his swooning.

  “So, Doug,” I said, moving my coffee aside and leaning forward on the table, “where are we with regard to Gillian Reece?”

  Both Doug and Neil were instantly sobered. Neil got up and stepped to the counter to get the coffeepot. Doug said, “We’re making some progress on the typewriter front.”

  “Oh?” asked Neil, returning to the table, pouring for each of us.

  “Maybe ‘progress’ is an overstatement, but now, at least, we have a solid plan for pursuing that aspect of the case.”

  “Last night you said the typewriter was probably stashed in the culprit’s attic.” Neil set the pot on the table and sat again.

  “That’s still a good possibility, and if so, we’ll never find it—I can’t get a search warrant for every attic and basement in town. But there’s another possibility. Suppose the killer got hold of an old typewriter for the specific purpose of creating an ‘untraceable’ letter. Where would he get it, if not from his own attic? A garage sale, maybe. Or an antique shop. Or a store that sells used office equipment.”

  Neil glanced at me.

  Doug continued, “We know the letter was written sometime Wednesday between eleven, when the victim was killed, and five, when the letter was postmarked. We determined there were no garage sales in Dumont on Wednesday, so we checked local shops that might carry old typewriters. Not only had no one sold a typewriter in Dumont lately, but no one had even had one in the store.”

  Neil noted, “It sounds as if you’ve hit a dead end.”

  “Probably, but think about it—just because Gillian was killed in Dumont and the letter was mailed in Dumont doesn’t necessarily mean the letter was written in Dumont. There was a six-hour window during which the killer could have easily left town. The way I figure, he could have driven anywhere within a two-hour radius, leaving plenty of time to buy the typewriter, write the letter, and drive back to mail it. The only cities of any size within that radius are Appleton and Green Bay, so it’s worth making a check of shops in those towns.” Doug swirled the coffee in his mug, then took a swallow.

  Neil looked dazed and ashen.

  Through a ticklish cough, I told Doug, “Sounds like a long shot.”

  “It is, but if anyone sold a forties
-model Royal two days ago, they’re sure to remember it and can probably give a good description of the buyer. That alone wouldn’t stand up as hard evidence, but I think we could build a strong circumstantial case around it.”

  Neil was speechless as Doug detailed his plans to identify both the machine and the person who had written the letter that said Gillian Reece deserved to die.

  I felt tongue-tied myself, at once both sympathetic to Neil’s dilemma and annoyed that he had let it mushroom out of control. It was upsetting enough that he had played a role, unwitting or not, in Gillian’s death. But it was worse that he had not immediately owned up to it—and worse still that he had concocted a cloak-and-dagger scheme to justify the incident through an anonymous letter, a ploy that Doug seemed poised to blow wide open. I was tempted, then and there, to halt the discussion and to prod Neil, point-blank, to tell Doug everything he knew. I reasoned, however, that Neil’s interests would be far better served if he arrived at that conclusion himself and voluntarily came clean with Doug.

  So I waited. But so did Neil, saying not a word.

  I was getting antsy, squirming in my chair. What’s more, I had begun to feel dizzy and light-headed—I was probably hyperventilating—either that, or I’d had too much caffeine. I had to say something. If Neil wasn’t going to straighten out this mess, I felt ethically compelled to do so myself. At what point, I tried to decide, did my civic duty take precedence over my loyalty to Neil? Did my silence not make me as guilty as he? And what exactly, I wondered, was he guilty of? Slapping a woman? Not signing his mail?

  Doug was saying, “But that’s not the only development.”

  Now what? My shoulders slumped.