Fatal Deception

by Russell Blake

  “That’s mean, Jeremy. He’s family. I can’t just throw my brother out into the street.”

  “I’m not suggesting the street. Just out of our house,” Jeremy said, rising. He leaned over Elizabeth and kissed her. “I’m sorry. I’m just on edge, is all.”

  “Come to bed and tell me what’s going on, Jeremy.”

  “Let me get ready for sleep, Elizabeth. Morning will be here before I know it, and I’ve got a big day.”

  Elizabeth watched her husband walk to the bathroom after tossing his jacket onto a chair. When he closed the door, she kicked the covers off her legs and stood, her sheer nightie falling to her feet. She moved to the closet, opened it, and hung up his jacket, taking care to remove his wallet and phone. The sound of running water splashed from the bathroom as she returned to the bed moments later, her eyes gunmetal gray in the soft moonlight filtering through the teak blinds as she waited for Jeremy to come to her.

  Chapter 14

  Tess was startled when her hotel phone rang at nine a.m. – nobody had ever called on the landline in her week’s stay at the upscale inn. She finished pulling on her jog bra and reached for the handset, her brow furrowed.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, Miss Gideon? It’s Lamar at the front desk.”

  “Sure. What can I do for you?”

  “There’s a Dakota Reed here, asking to be put through.”

  “Dakota?” Tess asked. “Um, of course. Put her on.”

  A series of clicks later, Dakota’s voice came on the line. “Hi, Tess. Sorry to bug you. Did I wake you up?”

  “No, not at all…”

  “I was in the neighborhood, and I’ve got an hour before class, and…well…you want to get some coffee or something?”

  Tess frowned at Dakota’s tone. “Sure. I can be down in a few minutes.”

  “If it’s any trouble…”

  “No. Of course not. Just wait for me in the lobby.”

  Tess finished dressing, any thoughts of a morning bike ride gone, and pulled a wool jacket over her loose-fitting T-shirt. When she arrived downstairs, Dakota was pacing in front of the brass and crystal door, her jeans and peasant blouse hanging off her thin frame. Tess approached and hugged her, a concerned smile in place.

  “Hey. What a nice surprise,” Tess said.

  “Yeah, well, like I said, I didn’t have anything this morning, and I felt a little guilty for blowing you off last night…”

  “You didn’t blow me off. Don’t say that.”

  “I figure I can at least make it up to you with some java.”

  “That’s a deal I can’t pass up. You have any place in mind?”

  Dakota shrugged. “There’s a Starbucks just down the block.”

  “Lead the way.”

  They emerged onto the sunny sidewalk and threaded their way through the dense pedestrian traffic. After they got their drinks and commandeered a sofa, Tess took an appreciative sip and eyed her cousin. “You were brilliant last night. Really breathtaking. Your mom must be so proud.”

  “Yeah, she’s pretty jazzed. She’s probably making everyone she knows crazy with the bragging, knowing her.”

  “You miss Chicago?”

  “A little bit, but it’s mostly homesickness, you know? I mean, compared to New York…let’s just say I understand what all the fuss is about.”

  “It’s got a lot going for it,” Tess agreed. She paused, a bit unsure of what they were actually supposed to be talking about, and took another sip of her coffee. “Jeremy seemed nice.”

  “He’d just gotten off work. He puts in serious hours – like eighty a week. Makes me look like a total slacker. You really thought he was nice?”

  “Sure. He’s handsome, seems bright, on a fast track…but the question is what you think of him, not me.”

  “Oh, I’m totally, you know…he’s just so amazing in so many ways.”

  Tess set her coffee down on the table in front of her. “How well do you know Jeremy?”

  Dakota gave her a knowing look. “Well enough.”

  “I mean besides that.”

  “Pretty well. I mean, we go out a couple times a week, we talk on the phone…he’s usually super busy, but he makes time for me, treats me like I matter, you know?”

  “So you’re happy?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Dakota said, lowering her eyes.

  “Then that’s all that counts, right?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess so. It’s just that sometimes things can be…complicated, you know?”

  “That’s the way relationships often are. What’s… is there something wrong?”

  “I…nothing, really. I mean, I’ve dated guys before Jeremy, but I really like him a lot. He’s different. Way more mature and, like you said, smart.”

  “But?” Tess said, eyes narrowing.

  “It’s just that he can have anyone, you know? Sometimes I wonder what he sees in me.”

  “You? Besides that you’re talented and beautiful and charming, you mean?”

  Dakota blushed and busied herself with her tea. “Is that enough, though? There’s the age difference…not that I care, but maybe his friends might?”

  “He’s dating a star of the American ballet. Who cares what his friends think? He’s lucky to be with you, not the other way around.”

  “Now I know you’re full of it.”

  “No, seriously. Don’t sell yourself short, Dakota. You may think he’s all that, but that’s a two-way street.” Tess hesitated. “Are you sure there isn’t anything bothering you? Did you have a fight?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. We don’t fight.” Dakota shrugged and offered a brittle smile. “I’m just tripping. I get insecure sometimes.” She looked across the room and then back to Tess. “So did your date ever show up?”

  “It wasn’t really a date.”

  “Who’s the mystery man? Come on. I realize I didn’t do anything yesterday but talk about myself. Spill the beans.”

  “He’s just a guy I met. It’s still too early to say.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s an inspector. With the police.”

  Dakota’s mouth made a silent O. “Did you meet him when…oh, I’m sorry. I meant, um…”

  Tess waved off her concern. She remembered what it was like to be eighteen, and tried to make the awkward subject less charged. “Yes, I met him when all the stuff went down with my dad. He was really supportive, and I like him. But we’re just friends.”

  “Friends that get together for drinks at eleven at night?”

  “He’s got a crazy schedule, too.”

  “Doesn’t every eligible guy in New York?” Dakota paused. “What’s he look like?”

  “He’s…I don’t know. Good-looking in a quiet way. Tall, brown hair, hazel eyes. But not anything you’d stop to stare at.” Tess wanted to say, not like Jeremy, but didn’t.

  “Are you thinking it might get more serious?”

  Tess finished her coffee. “We’ll see. You sure there’s nothing on your mind that you want to talk to me about?”

  “No…it’s just that I don’t really have any close friends here. Everyone’s so competitive in the company. So it’s not like there’s anyone I can just hang out with and talk about nondance stuff, and sometimes it’s nice to just…chill.”

  “Well, any time you want to chill, you know my number.”

  Dakota checked the time on her cell phone and stood. “Crap. I need to go.”

  “No problem. It was nice seeing you again. And whenever you want to talk, I’m around. Maybe for lunch sometime again? That was fun.”

  “Yeah. Sure. That would be cool. I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Perfect. Are you dancing again tonight?”

  “Yup. Five performances this week.” Dakota shouldered her dance bag. “Sorry to drag you out.”

  “I was just getting ready to go for a bike ride. No biggie.”

  Dakota waved goodbye and made for the door. Tess watched her depart, her face
clouded, wondering what that had really been all about. Dakota had seemed agitated and was clearly preoccupied, and the cause was obviously Jeremy. The question was, what had happened?

  Tess dropped her cup into the trash and moved to the exit, glad she was no longer a teenager, remembering the way she could blow hot and cold all within the space of an hour. Her cousin was a talented dancer, but she was still very young, and Tess knew that at her age, the smallest thing could take on crisis proportions, especially with boys.

  Dakota would figure it out, Tess reasoned. After all, she had.

  Her thoughts darted to Ron, and she smiled humorlessly.

  So much for it getting any easier.

  Chapter 15

  Night had fallen. The lights in the display windows of Gunter’s gallery, just around the corner from Delancey Street, glowed with sophisticated promise for well-heeled clients in the market for edgy, expensive contemporary art. Open by appointment only, the raw brick walls featured numerous notable works by name artists who commanded premium prices in an already hyper-inflated market, as well as European discoveries that Gunter handled exclusively in the U.S.

  This evening he was playing host to a young couple, recent transplants from Belgium. He was a wiz with a high-frequency trading firm, she an editor at a mainstream fashion magazine. They’d bought a bungalow, as they referred to their three-thousand-square-foot vacation home in the Hamptons, and were evaluating art for their recent acquisition.

  Gunter tried to disguise his disgust at the couple’s pedestrian tastes, but after an hour of discussing the merits of his offerings, he found himself speculating about future values rather than aesthetic appeal or impact – a reliable indicator that the clients knew nothing about art, as was the case with so many of the nouveaux riche who paraded their wealth around with insulting self-importance. The Wall Street wunderkind were the worst, but he’d learned to feign interest in their braggadocio, their incessant whining at the inconvenience of Aspen airport landing fees for their private jets or the impossible waits for a table at the latest hot spots around town.

  This pair had fully embraced the American ugliness of one percent wealth and eyed his pieces with indifference as he searched for any common ground with which to communicate. This was the third time they’d been at his gallery, and he desperately needed a sale, which, of course, worked against him. The rich could sense flop sweat a mile off, and Gunter had to fight to seem aloof and nonchalant as he discussed the merits of a sculpture that occupied a central position toward the rear of the main gallery.

  “It is a difficult piece. One can feel the artist’s turmoil. I’ve sold several of his others, and they’ve already appreciated over a hundred percent in just the last year,” Gunter lied, speaking the language the two rapacious collectors understood best – that of money.

  The woman considered the pair of buttocks extruding from a clenched fist, sculpted in pewter, with her hand on her chin, and then turned to her husband, whose three-day growth of beard and carefully unkempt hair reflected how little they cared for appearances.

  “I don’t know, ma chérie. It is evocative, but I don’t feel that it’s…special, you know?” she said with a shake of her three-hundred-dollar coif.

  “Yes, of course. In the end, it is just trying too hard. Its anger is contrived, no? Not so genuine. Too commercial,” the husband replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “No, Gunter, I like very much the two paintings, but we must consider it more. It’s a pity that none of the sculptures fits our vision. We’d hoped to cover all our acquisitions in one place.”

  Gunter mentally saw his quarry running back to the safety of the woods, and sighed. “You are taking a real risk, my friends. I have another collector who’s expressed interest in those pieces. I would act now, or you could lose them.”

  The woman looked at Gunter in disbelief. “This is too important a decision to rush. We must live with our choices every day. They must be exactly right.”

  “Of course,” Gunter backpedaled. “Without question. But based on everything you’ve shared, the paintings, at the very least, are perfect, are they not?” He reached to an end table for the bottle of two-hundred-dollar white burgundy he’d opened for them and poured each another generous portion. “The colors, the anger in the strokes, the use of empty space as a kind of punctuation… You, Madame, said it yourself. They are breathtaking.”

  “Yes, they are. But I need to feel that I cannot have any but them. I don’t feel that way yet.”

  The man swallowed his wine in two gulps and set his glass down. “We’re close, Gunter. We have much to think about.”

  “Yes, thank you, Gunter. We’ll be in touch,” the woman said, handing him her untouched glass with what might have been the beginning of a sneer.

  Gunter had been in the game long enough to know there would be no sale that night. He’d wasted his time if he was hoping for a fast turn. When the couple left and he locked the front door behind them, he was saying goodbye to a half million dollars of profit. Perhaps they would return. Or perhaps not. The art game was akin to chess, the adversaries both gullible and wary, each move calculated to draw their opponent out without revealing anything. Gunter was ordinarily as cold and precise as they came, but the pressure of his debts was mounting, and his increased methamphetamine consumption was doing his nerves no favors.

  Gunter swigged the remainder of the wine and then hurled the bottle at the back wall with a scream of rage. The glass shattered against the brick and missed ruining one of the paintings by inches, and he cursed as his vision clouded and his pulse thudded in his ears. He gasped for breath as he stood, shaking, and then stalked to the front entrance and exited, pulling the steel security awning closed and locking it, leaving the mess behind for the following day.

  Twenty minutes later, he was shouldering through a press of humanity. Wailing guitars shredded from the stage with robotic precision over a dub-step beat as he made his way to the rear of the club. The doorman at the backstage entrance recognized him and nodded as he slipped by. Upstairs in a private area, different music boomed, and he sat in one of the darkened booths beside a tattoo artist who was stenciling a horned goat’s head onto a young woman’s shoulder. Onstage, a transvestite in an outfit straight out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show was whipping a bald Malaysian man who was naked except for a mask covering his eyes and part of his forehead. Gunter tapped out a rock of meth into a glass pipe and lit it, inhaling the vapor and holding his breath before coughing. A rush like a freight train slammed through his body, every nerve tingling and hyperaware, and he leaned his head back as the room spun.

  The music changed, and a statuesque woman in her fifties, her nude body adorned with piercings, mounted the stage and impaled herself on the whipped man’s erection, straddling him where he lay on the platform. Another, younger woman, also naked, moved toward the couple with a strap-on, to muted applause. Gunter watched the coupling, the penetrator being penetrated, and smiled with each crack of the older woman’s palm against the man’s face.

  A young man wearing chaps and a cowboy hat approached Gunter. His torso was bare, his earlobes stretched with inch-diameter plugs, and his nose, lips, and nipples were pierced, his Prince Albert genital accessory on proud display.

  “What’s your pleasure?” he asked.

  “Bottle of Grey Goose,” Gunter said, keeping eye contact.

  “Tab, or pay as you go?”

  “Tab. Clint knows me.”

  “Name?”

  “Big G.”

  The waiter’s eyebrow rose a quarter inch, and he nodded. “Ice bucket?”

  “Yes. One glass. Unless you’re on break soon, in which case, make it two.”

  The young man looked Gunter up and down with a smirk. “Let me think about it, Big G. I’ll be right back with your bottle.”

  Gunter watched the waiter sashay away, the samurai martial scene tattooed on his back intricately detailed, and closed his eyes again, reveling in the buzz from the speed. After
several moments, he fished a small bottle from his jacket pocket, opened the top, and took a deep inhalation of the vapor. Amyl nitrate combined with meth was a powerful combo, providing him with the stamina of a bull, and his vascular system responded instantly to the volatile chemical.

  He’d deal with Paulo and the money issue tomorrow. Tonight he was a dark God, master of his underworld, and unbound by trivial material concerns. There would be time enough come daylight to contend with such niggling annoyances. For now he had more important matters to attend to, and he wouldn’t allow his troubles to interfere with the enjoyment of his earthly pleasures.

  Chapter 16

  Ron sat in Amy Silva’s cluttered office, reading a report. When he was finished, he set the folder down and frowned at her.

  “Doesn’t really leave us a lot to work with on the first body, does it?”

  Amy shook her head. “No. The problem’s the exposure. It’s difficult to pinpoint when she was killed because of her corpse being out overnight. Rigor mortis and lividity aren’t going to be as useful as with the second corpse – that one was indoors, so I can be much more accurate. As it is, we’re sort of left with the age of the insects that got to the first one, and all I can do is ballpark it. You know how that goes.”

  Ron nodded. “I was hoping you’d pull off a miracle.”

  She shrugged dispiritedly, ignoring the ping of an incoming email on her computer. “I’m afraid I used up my quota for the month.”

  Ron sighed. “It’s been more than three days since we found the second victim’s body. Which means he can’t be that far from doing another one.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I do. In my gut. Run down the details on the first corpse for me again.”

  “The first girl was between twenty and thirty years old, and had cocaine, meth, and ecstasy in what remained of her blood. She’d had rough sex recently before she was killed, but it’s impossible to determine whether that was minutes or hours before, based on the vaginal lesions. No trace of sperm, so likely with a condom. Time of death is an eight- to twelve-hour range the day before the first video hit.” Amy looked over her reading glasses at him. “Were you ever able to ID her?”