Killing Paparazzi

by Robert M. Eversz

  ‘Actually, this is my first time.’

  He stopped, cupped the bright end of the flashlight in his fingers and lit my face with the pink glow of his flesh. ‘You’re a virgin?’

  ‘Figuratively speaking, yes.’

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t barf at the crime scene. Get as far away as you can before you let it heave. And don’t barf into the lake or some lady in Beverly Hills will have it running out her faucet in the morning.’

  Twenty yards past the coroner’s wagon a gate blocked the path where it curved down to the lake. When the gate squeaked open Cass waved me over. She stood between a video cameraman and a sound recordist in a fringe of light at the edge of the water. Four portable photofloods focused the light white-hot on the lab coat of a balding pathologist who crouched over a semi-nude male, casket ready on the grass. I put the camera to my eye and zoomed to telephoto. Thick black glasses distorted the eyes of the pathologist, who worked with such concentration I could have mistaken him for feasting. On the opposite side of the circle of light two men conferred, lips to ear, one dapper in a mid-calf trench coat the colour of fog and the other in jeans and a tan windbreaker. The smell of law drifted from them strong as meat; homicide cops probably.

  The pathologist called that he was ready for camera. His teeth gleamed in the bright lights. He removed his glasses for the filming and without them his eyes didn’t line up straight; the right one hung lower and drifted off to the side of his face like a stray marble. Cass instructed me to wait at the edge of the lake until the videotaping had finished. She stood just behind and to the right of the camera while the sound man kneeled on the grass to the flanking side. I couldn’t see much but I heard well enough. The pathologist snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves and manipulated the joints, detailing his observations while he worked. His voice sounded like his sinuses had been corked.

  Based on the body’s temperature and the warmth of the lake, he estimated the time of death at between 24 and 30 hours before the body had been found. The victim was a Caucasian male, between 25 and 35 years of age, approximately 175 pounds in weight and 6 foot in height. A preliminary examination of the teeth indicated dental work of a kind not commonly practised in the United States. A canister of 35mm film had been found between the tongue and larynx but minimal abrading of local tissues indicated that it had been placed behind the tongue post-mortem. He would have to check the lung tissue to be certain but the absence of froth in the mouth and nose when the chest was compressed suggested that death had not been caused by drowning. The depth and chafing of the ligature marks on his wrists and ankles implied he had been bound while still alive. Cuts on the palms of both hands and forearms – classic defence wounds – suggested that the victim had struggled with his assailant. At some point in his ordeal, he had been stabbed in the chest, shoulder and stomach. Though none of these wounds alone may have been fatal the combined trauma and resulting loss of blood was a potential cause of death. This was just the preliminary examination. A full autopsy and laboratory analysis would yield much richer information.

  ‘Cut!’ Cass called out. ‘Brilliantly done!’

  The pathologist beamed.

  Cass waved me over to take the stills. I’d seen dead bodies before. I was pretty sure that as long as I kept my eye to the lens the corpse of someone I didn’t know wasn’t going to bother me. Then I got my first clear look at the face. After twenty-four hours in the lake the flesh had distorted to a mask of swollen indignation. Both eyes were dulled to dead glass. Abrasions reddened the skin at the forehead and cheeks, and a wedge of flesh hung from a gash at the left brow. The sacs beneath the eyes were bruised black. The face had swollen first from a terrible beating and later with the gases of decomposition. But the face hadn’t swollen beyond recognition. It meant something to me. Something so terrible and real I was afraid that if I pulled the camera away the lens would take my eyes and I would go blind with the memory.

  ‘Can you identify this man?’ asked a voice behind me. The voice was gentle but hard.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘His name?’ The tone was respectful and professional; the tone was merciless. The voice would not tell me that people did not kill, that the sky at night was not black.

  ‘Gabriel Burns.’

  ‘How well did you know him?’

  ‘I knew him.’

  The camera dangled by its strap around my neck. I stared at the ground. The grass lay bent and twisted from the tramp of cops, individual spears struggling upright to glint in the white hot light. A wallet-sized photograph, rippled by moisture, appeared between my eyes and the ground.

  ‘Is this a photo of you and Mr Burns?’ the voice asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where was it taken?’

  ‘Las Vegas.’

  ‘What were you doing in Las Vegas with Mr Burns?’

  ‘Getting married.’

  The photograph drifted away again. The voice conferred with another somewhere behind me. The grass looked like a jungle seen from miles above. I wanted to get closer. I dropped to my hands and knees. I wanted to push my way through the blades of grass and hide in the riotous green.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ A different voice this time. ‘Get down low, get down on the grass with her.’

  The lens of a video camera descended to my field of vision. In the front element of the lens I saw myself reflected, staring into the camera.

  ‘Ma’am? Are you all right, ma’am?’

  I sprang forward to grab the lens. People yelled at me. Too late. When I felt the lens mount snap, I let go. Then I sat back on the grass again. Strong hands gripped my arms, my shoulders, my neck. I did not resist.

  13

  The room they put me in contained a table, two chairs, a door and a hidden microphone. I’d been in rooms like it before. Overhead, the acoustical tile ceiling sagged on a tired metal frame and below my feet a stained carpet curled at the corners. The furniture had been worn to splinters by others and when of no further use or comfort consigned here. The detective guided me to a chair, gave me a cup of coffee and said he’d be back to talk in a few minutes. Too many years of sitting had crushed the seat’s padding to a hard bowl and the coffee tasted like it had been scraped off the sidewalk. I moved to the chair facing the door. The detective wouldn’t be in a hurry to talk to me. He’d have lots of work to do before he was ready for that. Reading my extensive criminal record would entertain him for some time. I didn’t mind being alone. Sitting inside a small room for hours gives you time to think. I had a lot to think about. I had to be careful what I said. He could give me trouble, I knew that, even if I hadn’t done anything wrong. My record gave him the right and leverage to push my face in the dirt.

  The death of an Englishman in Los Angeles – even one so brutally murdered – would normally rate back page-news in a city where dirt naps are handed out like candy at Halloween. The detectives who’d brought me in would be digging the ground on a half-dozen cases. They couldn’t go hard and deep on each one. But the cops would be working under television lights on this one. They would dig deep and hard and if they thought I was dirty they’d bury me with the corpse.

  ‘Another cup of coffee?’ The detective shouldered through the door with a file and a chipped brown mug. A black moustache perched above his lips like the wings of a well-trained bird. I hadn’t really looked at him before. Two hours alone had sobered the shock out of me. I took notice of him then. At four in the morning he looked like he’d just stepped out of a clothes-press; his charcoal-grey slacks, sport coat and white dress-shirt hung on his frame not just unwrinkled but neatly creased. Deep lines scoured his forehead as though in counterpoint to the smoothness of his clothes. He wore his gelled hair swept back and furrowed by a big-toothed comb. When he unbuttoned his sport coat to sit he flashed a detective badge worn at his belt like a phallic symbol. His moustache dipped into the coffee mug and the thin mouth beneath it twisted to a grimace. ‘About this time of night we’re scraping the botto
m of the pot, but hey, it costs two bucks less than Starbucks, so you can’t argue about the price.’

  I said, ‘No thank you, sir.’

  ‘Call me Keith, Keith Harker.’ He wanted me to relax, forget where I was for a moment, look at him as a human being, trust him. I’d talked to enough cops to know the guy was not my friend but some aren’t your enemy the moment you step in the ring with them. He opened the manila file folder he’d brought into the room with the coffee. ‘You have a very interesting record, Mrs Burns.’ He drew out the word interesting to its full four syllables. ‘You were a model citizen up until, what, age twenty-three?’

  ‘I never got into trouble, no sir.’

  ‘Not even a traffic ticket?’

  ‘No sir.’

  He shook his head, like, isn’t that amazing, turned a page in his folder, then another page, and another. ‘What the hell happened? Looks like some kinda crime spree, I see charges of – Jesus, this is a real laundry list – murder one, manslaughter, two counts of attempted murder, multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft, unlawful discharge of a firearm and possession of explosive materials.’

  ‘I had a rough time,’ I admitted.

  ‘Murder one is certainly rough.’

  ‘I was not convicted of first degree murder, sir.’ I was not foolish enough to call him Keith.

  ‘No. You were convicted of manslaughter and one count of assault with a deadly weapon.’

  ‘Convicted, sentenced, imprisoned and released.’

  ‘A model prisoner, according to the record.’

  Not such a model prisoner. You can’t be a model prisoner where I was and keep any pride. They just never caught me. ‘I’ve rehabilitated myself, sir.’

  He shut the file folder and nodded like he was trying to believe me. ‘I’m happy to hear that. And I want you to rest assured that we’re not here to put you on trial again. You’ve served your time and it’s not in anybody’s long-term interest to put you back in jail, if, as you say, you’ve rehabilitated yourself.’

  That gave me reason to worry. Whenever somebody said they didn’t want to do something bad to me I figured he’d already made up his mind to do exactly that. Harker fingered his coffee mug and focused his eyes a hundred yards behind my head. His glance dropped to the mug, then rose to me, then dropped back to the mug again. He looked like he had something he wanted to say but didn’t know how to begin. It was a good look. I was sure he used it every day, maybe a couple of times a day, when he wanted someone to believe he wasn’t exactly sure how to say what was on his mind. He said, ‘I have to tell you I find it more than a little odd that just out of jail you married a foreigner, then didn’t live with him and from what I know didn’t even see him.’

  I told him Gabriel and I had been introduced by a friend of mine in prison. We met on the day of my release and it was love at first sight. We drove to Las Vegas on a lark, got married, had a fantastic honeymoon, then argued, said some nasty things to each other and broke up. We’d seen each other again earlier in the week and hoped to get back together. If we were a couple of movie stars, nobody would think what we had done strange at all.

  ‘How often did you do cocaine with your husband?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Of course you did. Just out of jail, looking for a good time, he takes you to Vegas, you get married, you do a little blow, that what happened?’

  I was too shocked to say anything.

  ‘I’m not going to report this to your parole officer,’ he lied. ‘I just need to know if that’s what happened.’

  ‘No sir, that’s not what happened.’

  He gave me this very specific type of stare people in law enforcement employ, like if he stared hard enough I’d break down and confess everything. ‘I’ll let that one go. I’m not really interested in whether you did cocaine or not.’ That was his way of saying he was doing me a favour, that he didn’t believe me. ‘How often did you see your husband doing cocaine?’

  ‘Never, sir.’

  ‘I don’t have to remind you of the risks you take by lying to me?’

  ‘I’m not lying.’

  ‘Your husband was a coke-head. You’re either lying or stupid.’

  I didn’t say anything to that.

  ‘Let’s be charitable and say you’re just ignorant. Did you notice your husband take frequent trips to the bathroom, seem unusually excited or nervous?’

  ‘He went to the bathroom all the time – sure, I noticed that – but most guys who drink a six-pack a day do that. And was he unusually excited? I don’t know what’s usual for him, but we made love four times in two days and that was excited enough for me.’

  That pissed him off. ‘I haven’t called your parole officer yet. Have you kept in touch with her?’

  ‘It’s not a parole violation to have a dead husband, is it?’

  ‘A green card marriage is a federal offence. That would violate the terms of your parole and slam you back in jail faster than you could pack your underwear, so don’t get cute with me.’

  I don’t react well to men who threaten me. They remind me of my father. I said, ‘If you want to ask me any more questions, start asking through my lawyer because I got nothing more to say to you.’

  He gave me his hard stare. I stared back. Tougher people had interrogated me before, and for days, not hours.

  ‘I’ve seen the wives of victims go into shock, I’ve seen them weep, I’ve seen them go wild with hysteria, but only the guilty ones show me hostility. Your husband is lying on a morgue slab right now, and you know, I don’t think you care.’

  ‘I stopped crying years ago. No point to it.’

  ‘I’m supposed to believe it was true love?’

  ‘I’m a healthy woman. I’d been locked up for five years. Try hormones.’

  ‘So you hump your brains out a couple nights. You don’t marry him.’

  ‘I’m surprised you’d make such a suggestion. I’m a very moral girl.’

  ‘Convicted of manslaughter and you have a problem with premarital sex?’

  ‘Maybe I found Christ,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t be the first.’

  ‘The story stinks and you know it.’

  ‘Everybody’s private life stinks a little bit, detective. I’d think you’d have noticed that by now.’

  14

  The morning sea curled smooth as rolling glass and splintered to shore in six-foot sheets. Beyond the wave break a wing-shaped formation of pelicans skimmed a foot above the surface of the sea, their ponderous bellies and heavy beaks acting as gravity’s counterpoint to the aerodynamic lift of wings. I ran across the sand until my legs cramped to stone. Later that afternoon wind would chop the surface. The sea would look more violent then but the waves wouldn’t swell any larger nor would the current pull more powerfully. With a stray piece of bottle glass I etched a three inch cut into my arm and washed the wound in saltwater. I didn’t cry or grit my teeth. I felt nothing. My heart was shot full of Novocaine.

  My parole officer waited outside my apartment building when I walked up the street. She stepped out of her car with a cup of Starbucks in hand. There was a store just down the street. There was a store just about everywhere, outlets multiplying like McDonald’s franchises. ‘I’m going to search your apartment,’ she announced, no smile or nod of recognition. Her eyes were swollen with sleeplessness and anger. She didn’t like being awakened at five in the morning, she didn’t like one of her charges getting into trouble she didn’t learn about first and that meant she didn’t like me. And I was just one of a hundred cases she handled on top of what I guessed was a rotten personal life. At the head of the stairs I turned and made a meek effort at resistance.

  ‘Do you have a search warrant?’

  ‘I don’t need one. I have the right to search your apartment whenever I want, as many times as I want. It’s in your parole agreement. I suggest you read it.’ Her lips tightened to a smug smile. She had been asked the same question a hundred times and knew t
here could be no argument. She had the power.

  I unlocked the door and swung it open. Before stepping across the threshold she peered carefully inside. She might assume I lived alone but didn’t take any chances. She nodded toward my arm.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I cut it. Down at the beach.’

  She walked into the apartment and nosed around. ‘Does anybody live or stay with you?’

  I told her I lived alone.

  ‘Then everything I find in here is yours, is that correct?’

  I said what little there was, was mine.

  She thumbed through the self-help books I’d bought and almost smiled at the titles. Maybe she had read some of them. Maybe she had her own problems. ‘Bathroom?’ She asked. The location was obvious. I pointed to the only other door in the apartment. She checked the toilet tank and rattled around the bathroom cabinet. I could hear her popping the tops of vitamin and aspirin containers. She came out of the bathroom with bandages and rubbing alcohol in the crook of her arm. At the sink, she poured a paper cup of tap water and passed it to me. ‘Drink, then put your arm on the kitchen counter.’

  I drank, returned the cup and laid my forearm bone-side down. She probed for grains of sand and swabbed at the cut with cotton dipped in alcohol.

  ‘You need stitches. I’ll bandage it but you should see a doctor.’

  I figured the wound would close with a scar. I didn’t mind.

  ‘This cut looks self-inflected. Is it?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘Another half-inch deeper would make it attempted suicide, is how it matters. That would be a serious parole violation.’

  She didn’t appreciate it when I laughed.

  ‘Were you trying to do something like that, maybe working up the courage?’ She pressed the wound edges together, applied gauze along the length and adhesive strips across the width of the cut. I didn’t answer. I didn’t know why I did it. I just did.