The Assassin's Keeper

by John McClements

  “What happened next?” he asked, though he didn’t sound like he believed her.

  “I was going to meet him at my mother’s house yesterday, when you picked me up.”

  The detective sighed, and told Drinda that she was just making things worse for herself by not confessing right away. He pulled out a small evidence bundle from the case box at his feet.

  “These are your fingerprints,” he said. “All over the car your boyfriend’s body was found in.”

  “It’s my car!” she said, exasperated. “Of course my prints are on it!”

  “This,” he said, pulling out a second bundle, “is your handkerchief, found in the footwell of the car. It has blood all over it. Can you explain that?”

  “No, I can’t. I must have dropped it in the car when Lee took me to the salon.

  “I think you murdered your boyfriend, jammed a metal comb into his neck and wiped your hands clean on your handkerchief.”

  “No, you are wrong!” she snapped. “How stupid do you think I am? Who in their right mind would wipe their hands on their own handkerchief and leaves it at the scene of the crime?”

  Potts glared at her suspiciously.

  “Drinda,” he said, trying to build a rapport. “I have been a detective for over twenty years now, and I know when a person is lying. I have an ear for it. It’s why I have such a high case closure rate. You are one of the best liars I have ever met – but you are lying to me. We have more than enough to convict you of this crime.”

  “I am not lying!” she shouted, distressed. “Someone has murdered my partner and instead of going out there and doing something about it you’re wasting your time in here with me! Nothing you have said puts me at the scene of the crime at the time Lee was killed. I know that because I wasn’t there! This is purely circumstantial!”

  “I would like my client to have a break now,” said the lawyer.

  Both Drinda and the detective stared at him; they had all but forgotten he was there.

  Detective Potts sighed.

  “For the record, this interview is being suspended for one hour.”

  ***

  Detective Potts watched the woman across the table. She had gone way beyond tears now. She was holding her head in her hands, looking as though she thought the entire world had gone insane. He had been interviewing her, on and off now, for three days, but she was sticking to her story like glue.

  He curled his lip, feeling the familiar pull of the scar between his lip and his nose, hidden by his moustache. He was a hard individual and his inability to break Drinda Tanner was beginning to irk him – and it was beginning to show.

  “Were you provoked?” he asked, the anger evident in his voice.

  Drinda glared at him.

  “I didn’t kill Lee.”

  Remorselessly, he snarled at her that she would suffer a harder sentence if she refused to confess, but his remonstrations fell on deaf ears.

  Her lawyer seemed intent on assuring him that it was all an innocent mistake – self-defence – but Drinda had other ideas.

  “Will you stop telling him that?” she exploded, after his latest attempt. “I didn’t kill Lee – are neither of you fucking idiots listening to me? You have no fucking evidence!”

  It came as no surprise to Potts that she had fired the man the next day.

  “You have a right not to speak to me without representation,” he informed her, when he saw her next.

  “What’s the fucking point?” she asked him. “You’ve already made your mind up – nothing I say is going to change your mind.”

  “No, it isn’t. I don’t listen to murderers.”

  She put her head in her hands.

  ***

  Trying to prove her innocence was the most degrading thing she had ever done. It had taken three days to persuade Detective Potts to let her call her mother and another two days before her mother had managed to find her a willing lawyer. She had, Drinda felt, finally come up trumps.

  Milan Silva swept into the interrogation room like an icy wind, dislodging the recalcitrant detective and giving Drinda the first particle of hope she’d had in days.

  “I believe you,” he said.

  I believe you. Those three words had been enough. He had looked at the evidence and he believed her. Finally, someone useful was on her side.

  Milan Silva was practically a household name. He thought of himself as a grim necessity. He was on almost every network channel these days – the face of the real crime shows. He worked on both sides – prosecution and defence – but only where he felt that justice needed a hand. He was a sort of lawyer and private detective all rolled into one and had been known to pick up investigations where the police had left off. His commercial could be seen on almost every channel.

  Business had been good for him in the last two years. He had worked to find the evidence that exonerated a well-known celebrity doctor who had been charged with murdering his wife. Silva had proved that the ‘irrefutable evidence’ was anything but and saved the doctor from the lethal injection that would otherwise have been waiting for him. He had about a fifty-percent success rate, which in terms of the work he took on wasn’t half bad.

  He went in with her mother, who was tiny and ferocious. He couldn’t help but like her, and from what he saw of Drinda, who by rights should have been a trembling mess after a week of intense interrogation, he liked her, too. She was pale, drawn, with dark circles beneath her eyes and she didn’t seem to have slept for some time – but she was holding her own. She hadn’t let them trick her into saying anything other than what he believed was the gospel truth.

  “Right,” he said, when he was sure he had her attention. “I’ve looked over the evidence and as I said, I believe you, but now you have to listen to me. I need total honesty from you – it won’t work any other way. So, tell me everything about your relationship – tell me the worst. If I know the worst then I can plan to encounter it in court, but if I’m surprised by it then you’re in trouble.”

  The abuse had come as a surprise, but she was insistent that she loved Lee and that he loved her. Silva wasn’t sure that that was entirely true, but Drinda clearly believed it. He assured her that he would work on her case and told her to try to get some sleep. He rather doubted that she would.

  He took her mother to one side after the agents escorted her back to her cell.

  “I don’t want to lie to you,” he said, fairly. “It’s a tough one. They were having money troubles and a bumpy relationship. People have killed for less. The media have turned on her, and with them, the public.”

  “There must be something we can do,” he mother had cried, aghast.

  “Well,” he said, “the cops think she did it and they let the media know. The media tell the public what to think and the public is outraged, demanding arrests and charges. So, first off we have to prove that Drinda was nowhere near the car when Lee died. If we can find someone who was, then so much the better. Two, you’ve got to keep supporting her. If the media sees you abandon her they’ll think you believe that she’d guilty. Three – if this goes to trial we’ve got to fix her image. Right now she looks guilty, even though she’d not. We want them to pity her, and that can directly influence the jury. The only thing I can tell you is that I cannot put my hand on my heart and swear that everything will be okay. I believe that Drinda is innocent, but I can’t promise to clear her name. Making rash promises like that just wouldn’t be fair. I will, however, do my best.”

  “Thank you, Mr Silva,” the tiny woman said. “That’s all anyone could ask.”

  ***

  They had let him look at all the evidence, which suggested that they felt they had an airtight case against Miss Tanner. The more he saw of it, the more he suspected that they did not.

  Thoughtfully, he took the crime scene photos down to Detective Potts’ office.

  “If you have any information, come out and say it,” said Potts, recognising the expression on his face. “There isn’t any
thing you can say that will alter my decision. Drinda Tanner murdered her boyfriend and that’s the end of it. Everything that has transpired so far proves she is guilty.”

  Calmly and without uttering a word, Milan handed the crime scene photograph to the detective. The man flicked his jaded gaze across it. He froze for a moment and Silva saw his eyes widen. Slowly, his complexion began to colour, turning ruddy. His jaw clenched, his nostrils flared and he turned away from Silva to glare at the wall.

  Silva knew he had him. If his team had missed that, then what else had they missed?

  “Let me look into it,” said Detective Potts, tersely.

  Silva simply nodded. Once pricked, the detective would make sure the investigation was done properly this time. It was a matter of honour.

  ***

  “Miss Tanner, how are you feeling this morning?” Silva asked, sliding into his seat in the interrogation room.

  “I slept,” she said, her voice gravelly and underused. “Which is an improvement. Do you have any news?”

  “Quite a bit,” he said, with a smile. Detective Potts, while not overtly apologetic, had actually made Drinda a coffee and told Silva to give it to her. He pushed it across the table. “From the good detective. I think it’s by way of an apology, but it’s difficult to tell.”

  Drinda picked up the coffee, puzzled.

  “An apology? Then…” she met his gaze. “What happened?”

  “Do you know a woman named Frankie West?” Silva asked, as delicately as he could.

  Drinda nodded.

  “She’s Lee’s boss’s daughter,” she said, and then her face darkened. “I’m assuming from your expression that she was one of the women Lee was seeing behind my back.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Silva nodded, and watched the resilient woman in front of him tip her head back in resignation. “It seems they were seeing one another for about five months last year.”

  Drinda’s face whitened and her lips grew taut, but she motioned for Silva to continue.

  “They were both involved in drugs and during an argument about drugs and money, Lee assaulted Frankie,” he explained. Drinda closed her eyes, possibly remembering all the bruises Lee had given her. “She didn’t go to the police, but her father, Michael West, found out. He couldn’t fire Lee without everyone finding out that Frankie was involved in drugs, but he vowed revenge.”

  “He killed Lee?” Drinda gasped, pressing her fingers to her mouth. “Oh God…”

  “Eventually, yes,” Silva told her. “But first he wanted to ruin him. He made it look like Lee had been embezzling money from the factory – not least by cheque fraud. He had the Federal Fraud Squad following both of you. I don’t think he expected that Lee actually would forge a cheque and cash it. It was bad luck for you that he did it the day he died. Bad luck for you, but good luck for West. He knew that the police wouldn’t look into the murder further if they had an easy suspect, so when he set up the cheque fraud scam he made sure to implicate you.”

  “Me?” Drinda looked appalled, lost. “Why? What had I ever done to Michael West? Or Frankie?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Silva assured her, with brisk sympathy. “He needed a scapegoat. Perhaps he chose you because you were convenient – he knew how Lee had treated Frankie, it wouldn’t be a great stretch to imagine that he would be the same with you – or perhaps he didn’t like you because you loved the man he loathed. Either way, he made sure you would be caught up in the middle of it. That’s why he used a hairdressing comb to kill Lee – he knew the police would come directly to you.”

  He paused.

  “Ironically, if he hadn’t been so intent on involving the Federal Fraud Squad, then the case against you might have been stronger,” he reflected. “There were two agents watching you all day on the day of the murder, and sitting outside the apartment all night. They confirmed that you didn’t leave until you walked to your mother’s house the next day.”

  He watched the hope kindle in Drinda’s face, blossoming through her pale face and lending her lips a healthier colour. He smiled. This was the part of the job that he lived for.

  “West was also pretty careless,” he continued. “He waited until Lee finished gambling with his friends and then made sure that Lee would see him. He was too drunk to drive, so West took his keys and offered to drive him home safely. Lee trusted his boss, and they think he fell asleep in the car – that’s why he didn’t notice they were driving to the opposite end of Ashton, and why he didn’t put up a fight when West killed him. He didn’t feel a thing,” he added, conscious that that might mean more to Drinda than her innocence.

  She pressed her eyelids closed for a moment and a single tear leaked out of the corner. She nodded for him to continue.

  “When he dragged the body from the front seat to the trunk of the car his wallet fell out, putting him at the scene of the crime,” Silva explained. “He reported it missing the next day, but he had no reason at all to be in that car – unlike you.”

  There was a short silence when Silva finished speaking, time he knew his client would need to digest this information. She frowned up at him.

  “So, they know I’m innocent?”

  “Yes,” he said, simply, and she burst into tears of sheer relief. “They’re just going through the paperwork now. The charges are being expunged from your record and I should be able to take you home in about an hour. Shit happens, Drinda. The world is full of whack jobs.”

  Drinda raised tearful eyes to his face and managed a smile.

  ***

  She wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting there, in the chaos of her upturned bedroom, simply staring at her own reflection. In two weeks, her entire life had been turned upside down. Lee was dead. She had been arrested for murder and exonerated. She had done an awful lot of growing up in the past two weeks. Now, though, she was simply exhausted.

  Milan Silva had taken her for lunch on their way back from the penitentiary, which wasn’t strictly in his job description, but Drinda was grateful. The food they had had in before she’d been dragged away from her life had all gone off, and she would have been starving by now if he hadn’t. She had called her mother, who had been under the weather since her arrest, and promised to go over first thing in the morning. Tonight, though, Drinda wanted to be alone. Privacy had been the first thing to go out of the window after her arrest.

  It wasn’t until she’d sat down on the edge of the bed, her possessions in disarray around her that the shock had really set in.

  Unsteadily, she got to her feet and undressed herself with shaking hands. The zip on her jeans was broken, so she kicked off her trainers and stumbled out of them. She pulled her dressing gown out from under the desk where the ham fisted detectives had left it and wrapped it tightly around her. Slowly, she cleared a space around the couch and coffee table and switched on the lamp so that a small, cosy circle of warm light spilled out around it. She didn’t want to see the chaos that lay beyond it – not yet. Suddenly freezing, she found a blanket hanging over the back of a chair in the dining room and wrapped herself in that too.

  There was no way she could sleep in their bed tonight, not without Lee. While she had been fighting for her freedom she had little time for anything else, but now... now it felt like all the grief she had been holding at bay for her lover’s murder was threatening to overwhelm her. Wearily, she lay down on the couch, wrapped the blanket around her, and slept.

  Chapter 3

  San Francisco, 1982

  Today, as on most days, Pedro was wearing his long, black jacket. It flapped when he walked, making an impression on anyone who saw him. He didn’t wear the jacket for warmth; he wore the jacket because he liked to make sure he had everything he needed to hand and a long coat full of pockets was far more convenient than a briefcase – and far less obtrusive.

  He had taken a job as an outside contractor for the CIA, an organisation which prided itself on knowing every part of their agents’ history. The thought that they�
�d missed a great deal of his entertained him greatly. As far as they were concerned he had defected from Argentina, which was about as far from the truth as you could get.

  Pedro’s line of work meant that he was never without the various little tools and tricks that allowed him to gain entry to places he shouldn’t, make copies of things that ought to remain secret and allowed him to escape detection. He always had several forms of identification on him, along with several bundles of cash, all concealed in secret pockets of his greatcoat.

  He strolled up the stairs to his office – not in the best part of town, but not in the worst, either. It was comfortably between those two worlds, as he was, and it suited him perfectly. He heard his office phone ringing as he turned to start up the next set of stairs. Pedro raced up the rest of the steps and unlocked the door, picking up the receiver just in time.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Gustavo,” said a smooth, assured voice. “We need to meet.”

  Gustavo? Pedro went silent for a moment, before he realised who he was speaking to.

  “Oh, right.”

  “Meet me at Green’s Bar on Main Street. Do you know it?”

  “I do. What time?”

  “One.”

  Gustavo hung up and Pedro replaced his receiver thoughtfully. Today had just become interesting.

  ***

  Gustavo was waiting at a small table outside when Pedro pulled into the parking lot. Pedro watched him for a moment, looking entirely at his ease. He was sipping a beer and eating peanuts from a dish he must have swiped from the bar. Pedro shook his head. There was just something about the man that annoyed him.

  “I appreciate you meeting with me,” said Gustavo, catching sight of Pedro. “Can I buy you a drink or something?”

  Pedro shook his head and joined him at the table, flipping his sunglasses down from the top of his head.