I replied, “Yes, well, now that you’ve run off like a guilty man, it’s probably a code word for throwing your ass in the slammer. But doing it in the most dignified way possible. Is that okay with you?”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Suzanne demanded of us both.
“The police want to speak with Bill about the death of Adrienne Maxwell, is all,” I told her.
“Why? Do they think he killed her?”
“Well, Carol does,” said Bill. He just about had the line of balls where he wanted them, and now it was time to stand back and watch them to make sure they didn’t go nuts. He said, “She wants me to turn myself in for causing nine of my clients to kill themselves.”
At this point Suzanne must have decided to stop asking questions. She folded her arms, pursed her lips, and didn’t look at either of us specifically.
Bill put his hands to the edge of the pool table and glared at the balls. I knew what was going on here: the same thing that always happened to Bill when something in his life scared or overwhelmed him. Escapism is a human trait. Some of us drink; some of us turn violent; some of us retreat into fantasy; some of us watch a lot of television; and some of us, or at least one of us, became obsessed with some kind of ritualistic behavior that closed out the possibility of any other coherent thought. I wasn’t blind to the comfort in what he was doing. When the world surrounding him threatened disorder, he took comfort in creating extreme order in a very confined way.
If I wanted to talk to my boss, I had to break him out of this.
“What’s the matter with the balls, Bill?”
“I can’t stand the sound they make when they clack together.”
“But they don’t clack together unless someone is playing with them.”
“No, but they could. All it takes is a vibration through the floor, a breeze going through the room, something bumping against the table. Then they clack together.”
He didn’t elaborate further, but I knew there was more to it. For example, he could not bear the thought that he might leave this house altogether and these shiny colored balls would be left to their own devices, free to clack and clack and clack. Like the details of a murder investigation, these pool balls might come together and make noise.
I went to stand beside him, surveying the line of balls. “Would it work if we put them each in a different drawer or something?”
“I tried that,” said Bill. “I put them on those shelves, one to a shelf. They wouldn’t be still.” He was referring to the shelves across the room where Suzanne had an impressive assortment of collected exotic beer bottles, board games and sports-related memorabilia, and he meant that the balls wouldn’t be still in his mind, no matter how perfectly still they might be on those shelves.
“What about pressing them all together tightly, like in a sack?”
He visibly shuddered. “No, no, that’s…that’s even worse. They rub together and make this sound.”
“And what about Suzanne’s idea, of throwing them out?”
He shot Suzanne a very dark look, which caused her eyes to widen in anger and her lips to press more tightly together. She was one of those women who get more and more quiet, the greater her anger becomes.
“Okay, then.” I studied the problem for a minute, trying to think of how to keep these balls from mocking my insane boss. When Bill broke his pose to reach for the white ball, ready to begin forming a new line around the next corner of the table, I stopped him with an upraised hand. “Wait,” I said. “Let’s play Twenty Questions.”
“I can’t. It’s too awful.”
“Bill!” I said in exasperation, but he was already off and running, and Suzanne threw her hands up in fury and stalked up the staircase, stomping her feet as loudly as possible.
But she was back a moment later, saying, “Did you actually bring the cops with you, Carol?”
I hadn’t heard many more welcome words in my life. No, I hadn’t brought them, but I could see easily enough what had happened. Charlene had done the smart thing and told someone my idea and where I was headed; she had done what I should have done before stepping in here.
“Where are they?” I asked.
“Parked outside and heading for the door.”
On cue, Suzanne’s doorbell chimed through the house, and Bill, pausing in the middle of his ritual, put his hands to his face and rubbed violently.
“Okay, go answer it,” I told Suzanne calmly, “and stall them for just a couple minutes.”
“Stall them!” exclaimed Suzanne. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Anything except that Bill is down here.”
My boss peered at me from between his fingers. “I thought you wanted me to turn myself in.”
“I do. And you’re going to. But not like this. We’re going to do this the right way, not with you freaking out about pool balls in the basement. You’re going to walk upstairs and politely agree to go wherever they want you to go.”
“I can’t; I can’t…”
The doorbell chimed again, and Suzanne turned to hurry back up the stairs.
I called after her, “Tell them I’m here. Tell them I’ll be up in just a minute. Say I’m in the bathroom or something.”
The bathroom was my big excuse for the day. Hadn’t I already used it a couple times? Bill, more shaken and desperate than ever, plunged back into his ball-lining ritual. On an impulse, I raced upstairs after Suzanne.
In her kitchen, I searched hurriedly through her cabinets. I could hear her in the living room, speaking to the police officers at the door. I figured I had maybe two minutes to fix Bill’s craziness. This crap was definitely not in my job description, and I’d have felt entitled to a pay raise if not for the fact that I had probably been fired.
I found what I wanted in the fifth cabinet I’d searched—shortening. I grabbed the can, relieved to discover that it was nearly full, and hurried back downstairs. Bill watched me in horrified fascination as I tore off the lid and began scooping handfuls of shortening out on the pool table—Suzanne was going to hate me for this. Then I took the balls in my grease-covered hands and stuck them in the shortening and then, as best I could, buried them in the stuff until I had sixteen mounds of shortening surrounding sixteen colored balls. I’ve tried to think of a simile to describe what this looked like, but for the life of me, nothing in the world looks like sixteen pool balls stuck in sixteen mounds of shortening. And really, nothing should.
“That’s gross,” said Bill. “That’s going to ruin the felt.”
“Will you just, please,” I said slowly, staring at my shortening covered fingers, “please, just let me do my job, Bill?”
Now that I’d ruined his game, if one could call it a game, he said, “Carol, I just want to go back to work.”
“I’d like that too. Though I don’t think I actually have work anymore.”
“What happened?”
“We don’t have time to talk about it right now. Right now, what you have to do is let me take you upstairs.”
“So I can be arrested for causing women to kill themselves.”
“Well, I think that’s what they believe has been happening.”
“Even though I never laid a hand on anyone.”
“If you’re innocent, Bill, just say so. Give them an alibi. Give them the information they need.”
“But you said,” Bill hissed, “you said the evidence was overwhelming. That everything pointed to me.” He paused and stared up at the ceiling as if doom awaited him. “I tried so hard to find a way that it wasn’t my fault. As soon as you showed me that list, I knew something was terribly wrong and I just hoped it was all in my head. That’s why I sent you to the library—to find the proof that widows kill themselves. That there wasn’t anything I’d done to cause it. I never tried to lie to you or distract you, Carol, honestly. But it all just pointed back at me, didn’t it?”
“Only if you look at it all in a certain way.”
“I don’t have ali
bis. I don’t go places. I don’t know people. I don’t have anything to prove I never hurt anybody.”
I put my hands on his shoulders and made him look at me and fully focus before I spoke again. We stared eye to eye as footsteps clomped overhead. They were coming to get us.
“I believe you,” I said to my boss. “Overwhelming evidence be damned.”
Bill drew back, straightened his shoulders. He didn’t look unburdened, but he did look better. “Thank you, Carol. That means a lot.”
There were voices at the top of the stairs, two I did not recognize and one that I did.
It was Gus. He said, “Carol, are you down there?”
“Yes, we’re here. Bill and I are both here. There’s nothing to worry about. We’ll come upstairs together now.”
“Great,” said Gus’s voice from above. “As you’re doing that, I think you and Mr. Nestor should both keep your hands where we can see them.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and I nudged Bill on the arm. Bill called up, “Yes, Detective.”
“When you get up there,” I said softly to Bill, “and when you talk to them, don’t start in with your spiel about somehow causing their deaths. Your actions do not cause people to be murdered, Bill. I know you like to believe in the synchronicity of all things, but the police are looking for a confession and that sounds like one.”
Anxious as he was, he managed to smile self-deprecatingly. Yes, we both knew how he could get. We mounted the stairs together, and I kept my hands where they could see them, covered with shortening. I got some very strange looks from Suzanne, from Gus, and from the two officers who had come to the door with Gus. I recognized them. They were the two who had sat guarding my house the night before.
They did not handcuff Bill. Nor did they read him his rights or anything else that I had come to expect from my vast television experiences. Gus told Bill that he was being asked to come voluntarily to the police station for questioning in connection with the suicide deaths of a formidably long list of women. I got the idea that if Bill refused or made a fuss, warrants and arrests might come into play, but Bill looked exhausted, defeated. He agreed meekly to go with them.
“Detective Haglund,” he said, on his way to the door, “I’m sorry about yesterday and avoiding our lunch meeting.”
“Our lunch meeting?” Gus replied, raising his eyebrows.
“Code word,” Bill said, of course not making much sense to anyone but me. “Anyway, when something causes me stress, I tend to react badly by engaging in ritualistic behavior. I’m not fully under control when that happens.
I wished Bill would shut up about his mental problems in front of these three police officers. I saw glances exchanged among them. And what’s worse, I could see what came next, after Bill got into an interview room, like the little claustrophobia-inducing cell I’d been imprisoned in the day before, and after they started coming at him with questions about dead clients. Would they be able to control the resulting Bill Nestor brand of insanity? I said, rather too loudly, “Maybe I should come along. To see if there’s anything I can do to help.”
Gus stepped between me and the door. “Not this time. We’ve got this under control.”
I looked up at him beseechingly. He was so handsome when he got stern. He had on a very nice jacket that day, light summer linen in navy blue that made his eyes turn that dark oceanic color. I wanted to go to the station almost as much to be with him as to protect Bill. But there was no reason for me to be there, and the police didn’t let people come to interviews just because they wanted to.
“I can help,” I insisted, knowing it was pointless.
“Carol,” said Gus with a patient sigh, “this is really twice now that you’ve overstepped your bounds and put yourself in possible danger.”
“Danger!” exclaimed Bill and Suzanne at the same time in the same incredulous tone.
Gus ignored them. “And though I appreciate your situation, you’ve got to back off. We will be in contact with you when we need your help again.”
“Hey, now,” said Bill, from the front door of Suzanne’s house. “There’s no need to bark at Carol about this. This is my fault, for panicking yesterday. All she’s done is tried to be a good secretary to me.”
That remark, kind though it was, made me feel like a first-class heel. I looked over Gus’s shoulder (not an easy task, even on tiptoes) and said, “No, it’s my fault it’s happening this way, Bill, and I’m sorry I didn’t handle it better from the very beginning.”
“Well, it’s not the kind of thing that comes with a manual,” Bill said kindly, though I suppose Terry Bronk and Mr. Miller and Junior Gestapo Brent back at the office would have been willing to argue the point. Then Bill was led away to the police car. Not in handcuffs, but with the two huge officers flanking him, he might as well have been.
“Listen, why don’t you go home?” Gus said to me in a softer tone. “If you keep doing all my work for me, you’re going to make me look bad.”
“Call me later?” I asked, hoping despite the evidence.
“I’ll try.” Under the circumstances, it was about the best answer he could give me. He then looked down at me with a curious frown and asked, “What the hell is on your hands?”
“It’s shortening,” I said. “I had to immobilize some pool balls.”
Gus did an admirable job of pretending like this answer explained everything. “I see,” he said. Then he turned and strode away. Moments later they left, carting Bill away as my heart sank. I realized I’d been left alone with Suzanne, as opposed to being in a car with my perfectly nice boss and an adorable detective, and my heart sank even lower.
“Sorry about that,” I said to Suzanne, sounding lame. “Also I should warn you that the felt on your pool table may need cleaning. You can send me the bill.”
Suzanne went to a nearby sofa and collapsed onto it. “I am confused, and I have a headache.”
“Yeah, me too. Mind if I wash this off my hands, and I’ll get out of here? I have to take Charlene’s car back.”
“Charlene’s car?”
“Mine is at Bill’s place. He stole my keys yesterday when I was trying to get him to turn himself in.”
“Oh, naturally, I should have realized.” Suzanne grimaced, rubbing her forehead painfully. “So everyone thinks, what? That Bill had something to do with Adrienne Maxwell killing herself?”
“It’s a long story, and I’m not sure that I’m supposed to discuss it any more. I got keelhauled at work this morning, and most likely I’ve been fired by now. Maybe if you call Donna she’d tell you.”
“Well, I’d certainly never ask you to violate your trust with Bill. Since apparently you’re his sworn protector.”
“Yeah, that’s one of the bullet points on my mission statement.” I was in no mood to engage in the battle of favoritism with Suzanne, who was lashing out for a whole new set of reasons besides just disliking me. Having her dearest crush-monkey escorted from her house by cops, after a night of pool ball escapades, had doubtless left her feeling cranky.
I left her to her grumbling, went to her kitchen sink in the next room, and began the laborious process of cleaning my hands without making a greater mess. Not an easy task. Shortening is a terribly sticky, clingy, greasy substance. Perhaps I shouldn’t have volunteered to foot the bill for cleaning.
When I returned to Suzanne’s front room she asked dully, “Are you going back to the office now?”
“Yes, I have to return Charlene’s car.”
After a moment she said, “I knew Bill had problems. I already knew. It shouldn’t matter.”
She did not seem to be speaking directly to me. I murmured, “So…I’d better go. And sorry again for your pool table.”
But you’ll notice that I didn’t volunteer to go down there and clean it up myself.
As soon as I got the hell out of Suzanne’s house, I expected to feel triumph and relief. I had achieved what I’d believed to be my goal: getting Bill safely into police cust
ody. But of course this was what Junior Gestapo Brent would call a “short-term goal,” which should only be “a building block leading to success of the long-term mission.” In Junior Gestapo Brent’s world, for example, a short-term goal might be to limit secretaries to one cup of coffee per day to cut down on bathroom break times, and the long-term mission would of course be to completely eliminate any excuse we had for walking around the office, lest we speak to each other, smile or enjoy ourselves. My short-term goal had been safe police custody, yes. Now I recognized my complete dissatisfaction with the outcome of the morning and realized with great dismay that my long-term mission was somehow proving that Bill hadn’t hurt anyone.
This was a significantly larger task. In fact, it might well be a task I wouldn’t be allowed to perform. Or able to perform, come to think of it. What was I going to do, uncover DNA evidence with my home lab kit? I couldn’t even properly sand a chair.
I drove back to the office, barely noticing what I did, caught in the throes of a fairly unproductive brainstorm. As far as I could see, I had one advantage over the KCPD, their crime labs, and their adorable detectives. I knew the people who worked at MBS&K. And I knew this too: that despite Bill’s being the most likely suspect to have contributed to the suicides, he was not the only possibility. Bill’s files were open to any employee of the firm who cared to look at them.
I recalled a little venomously the strange jealous attitude of Suzanne Farkanansia. Who would be more likely to see Bill’s files than the paralegal who had worked with him for most of the years he’d been there? I had a hard time imagining anyone I knew being capable of murder, and yet Suzanne was so needy of Bill’s time and attention. I had supposed she was just lonely, and that Bill filled a certain space in her life. He filled a space in my life, too, you know, and I didn’t get insanely jealous about his dealings with other women.
Of course, I wasn’t twice widowed.
Suzanne Farkanansia was, though.
*****
With Bill Nestor having been found, the police state at the office was diminished. I let myself back into the building’s garage and returned Charlene’s car to her parking space without anyone asking questions. In a haze of thought, I pocketed Charlene’s things and walked to the elevator. I was prepared to go back upstairs and give her stuff back, but I faltered as my finger reached for the “UP” button.
My Boss is a Serial Killer Page 22