by David Martin
“Paul—”
“Remember what I asked you to remember.”
“What?”
“Remember what I asked you to remember,” he repeated before lowering the pistol and relaxing his shoulders. Paul even managed a sly grin that revealed a blood-ugly space where a tooth had been knocked out.
Days later Camel would recall thinking at the time that Paul was about to say he was sorry, he never intended to shoot anyone. But what he actually did, he suddenly raised the pistol and turned its muzzle up to his own mouth … Camel rushing those last few steps, getting a hand on the revolver’s cylinder but not in time to stop Paul from squeezing the trigger all the way this time, the bullet blowing out his remaining front teeth, exploding into his mouth, exiting the back of his neck in a showy spray of blood, tissue, and bone.
23
Elizabeth Rockwell lived in a modern one-story brick house of the type commonly seen abutting golf courses though this one didn’t. A garage was attached, shrubbery hugged all four sides of the house, and though it was only April the yard grass had already been forced by chemicals to be nice. Large sandstone rocks were placed in a manner thought to be artful here and there on the front lawn. Designed for easy living, insulated like a thermos, clean and efficient, Elizabeth Rockwell’s house was without charm or eccentricity.
Not so its owner, a tall big-boned woman of fifty-four … if you saw her astride a horse you’d consider her strapping. She was dressed this Monday evening in black silk slacks and a white silk blouse and open-toed sandals. She wore a lot of jewelry and her grayish blond hair was expensively coiffed … Elizabeth one of those distinguished women who didn’t leave the bedroom without looking her best.
She came from old money which her parents frittered away before she was of an age to appreciate it … forcing Elizabeth to live like a commoner on talents and scramble. She made money in real estate.
Many years ago she also carried on a liaison with a local squire, J. L. Penner, and assumed he would eventually make her mistress of Cul-De-Sac. But when J.L.’s niece Hope showed up, Elizabeth was displaced by the teenage girl who possessed an almost super-natural ability to charm men … Hope also played chess brilliantly, the piano beautifully, and fucked like the proverbial. Elizabeth didn’t reconcile with J.L. until after the niece was murdered.
Hope’s death broke something in the old man who spent his remaining years selling land and accumulating money, never again sponsoring any of the political fundraisers or elaborate theme parties or late-night, closed-door, special invitation-only sessions for which Cul-De-Sac had once been alternately famous and infamous.
Elizabeth earned a percentage of the Cul-De-Sac estate when she served as executrix of J.L.’s will but the only thing she inherited from him directly was a minor chess set from the large collection he had amassed to please and impress his niece.
Hope and J.L. played chess together very nearly every day, she always said she played best on the most expensive sets … J.L. eventually spent millions of dollars buying sets from all over the world. After Hope was murdered, J. L. Penner never played another game of chess and, to Elizabeth’s knowledge, did not even look at his collection of sets, eventually bequeathed to the Humane Society.
Elizabeth Rockwell was thinking of none of this, hadn’t thought of it in years, when the kitchen doorbell rang the first few notes of “Some Enchanted Evening.” She got up from the table where she’d been drinking coffee. Wondering who was calling this late in the evening, seeing no one standing outside the door, Elizabeth opened that door … Growler stepping from the side where he’d been hiding to put one booted foot on her threshhold.
“Elizabeth … how kind the years have been to you.”
He had expected her to be as terrified as the others but after registering an initial surprise Elizabeth Rockwell smiled and spoke his name with complete composure, “Donald.”
“Shall I come in?” he asked, smiling but showing no teeth. Back at Cul-De-Sac he had primped for her and changed clothes … dark suit, white shirt, red tie … and now like a suitor he looked both hopeful and nervous. His black hair was greased back and although his eyes were bloodshot and weary he otherwise made an elegant presentation not counting those heavy steel-toed boots.
“Are you escaped?” she asked.
“Released.”
“Surely not.”
“Afraid so.”
“I’ll have to write the governor and express my dismay with our penal policies.”
“I have some penile policies that would dismay the shit out of you.”
“Donald you always were common, shall I call the police or will you leave?”
“I told you, I didn’t escape—”
“But now you’re trespassing so please leave.”
When she started to close the door Growler pushed his way in.
“Oh dear, you are going to force me to call the police.” Elizabeth’s voice was softly mocking.
He remembered that voice with a special poignancy. When Growler stayed at Cul-De-Sac and Elizabeth was the tall sexy lady squired by Uncle Penny, Growler lusted for her with the fervor of an adolescent. Instead of ignoring him or putting him off gently she would mock him exactly as she was doing now. She once followed him into a storage room at the back of Cul-De-Sac and, reaching past Donald as if he weren’t there, pressed her bosom to him as she stretched to get something from a shelf … the young Donald gripped by such hormonal frenzy that he impulsively grabbed a breast. Elizabeth didn’t deign to remove his hand, she just looked him in the eye and threatened to tell his uncle … as she was now threatening to call the police.
He glanced around the kitchen. “Nice digs.”
“You know how it is for the modern woman, we have to make our way in the world.”
“How would I know anything about modern women, I’ve been in prison.”
“Society does frown upon murder.”
He flashed those large black eyes. “Think about me a lot have you?”
“Never.”
“Come on.”
“Yours is an acquaintance I don’t dwell on, believe me.”
“Well fuck you very much.”
She appraised him cooly. “If you really have been released I assume you’re on probation. One phone call and I’ll have you back in prison before morning … if you don’t leave this house immediately.”
“Such a fucking dragon lady.”
“You’ve coarsened even beyond what you were as a boy.”
“Seven years in hell will do that.”
“What do you want Donald?”
“You ever see the Raineys, good old Judy and Lawrence?”
“No.”
“How about Kenny Norton, I got your address from his book, the two of you must’ve kept in contact.”
“No.”
“Well if you’re expecting to hear from them, the Raineys or Kenny, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“What do you mean?”
This time when he grinned, those big teeth were revealed.
“Good Lord, Donald, what have you done to yourself?”
He quickly brought his lips together and muttered something.
“Pardon me?”
Shaking his head he looked at her with an expression absent any playfulness. “I thought maybe you and the Raineys and Kenny got together occasionally to gloat.”
“No dear … I haven’t seen them since your trial.”
“How much did Uncle Penny pay you to frame me … is that how you financed this house, that Cadillac in the driveway?”
“Listen darling the hour is late and talking with you is proving tedious as always. I wasn’t compensated for testifying against you … I would’ve paid for the privilege.”
He was surprised she continued being so haughty considering what he had in store for her, couldn’t she guess his intentions?
“Hope might’ve been a little slut,” Elizabeth continued, “but no one deserves to die like that.”
Elizabeth laughed at him. “This was all covered at the trial.” “I was framed.”
“We wuz robbed,” she said mockingly.
He stepped close enough she could smell his breath when he spoke. “I’m going to kill you right here in this kitchen … make a joke out of that why don’t you.”
When she turned to leave, Growler corraled her against the big bronze refrigerator. “You know about the elephant don’t you?”
Elizabeth feigned a bewildered expression but Growler caught the truth in her eyes. “Where is it?” he asked.
“Where’s what?”
His turn to smile mockingly, pressing Elizabeth to the refrigerator’s double doors. “Tonight you’re going to treat me like you did Uncle Penny … I remember how you’d look at J.L. when the two of you were having dinner together, locking onto his face like every word out of his mouth was a gold coin … a snake watching a rat … Jesus I wanted you to look at me with that kind of fascination, just once. Maybe we can arrange it tonight.” He brought a hand down to cover her breast.
She didn’t remove his hand this time either. “I pity you.”
“You’re the one going to need pity,” he promised.
“Donald—”
“I want you to do to me whatever it was you did to Uncle Penny after the two of you finished dinner and went upstairs to the library, closed the door, locked it … I used to stand out in the hallway listening, what did you do for him Elizabeth, spank his bare butt with a hairbrush, there was a lot of whimpering coming from that room.”
“Is that what you want Donald, someone to spank you?”
“No I want you to get down on your knees and blow me, that’s what I want.”
“People in hell want ice water.”
He laughed, squeezed her breast.
“You’re hurting me.”
“Tell me about the elephant.”
“Donald—”
Tearing at the blouse until all the buttons popped, he pressed a forearm to her neck and held Elizabeth hard against the refrigerator.
“Donald please …”
He clicked his teeth together right in her face. “Where’s the elephant?”
“When we—” Growler’s forearm nearly crushing her throat, Elizabeth was unable to continue until he eased off. “When we inventoried J.L.’s collection, during the appraisals, that’s when we discovered it had been switched.”
“Where’s the real one?”
“We never found it.”
He looked at her and was surprised to see she was telling the truth.
“You stole it?” she asked.
“I would’ve thought Kenny and I would’ve been prime suspects.”
“The fake wasn’t discovered until after your uncle died last year, you’d been in prison for six years by that time … no one made the connection.”
“Maybe you didn’t want the connection made, ’cause you found the elephant, the real one and—”
“No.”
He continued looking at her intently, their faces only a few inches apart. “Will you kiss me?” He was totally, pathetically serious.
Elizabeth considered the request and then, like a bidder at an art auction, used a subtle expression to indicate consent.
He actually closed his eyes, which was when Elizabeth lunged forward and bit him hard on the right cheek.
He jumped back more from surprise than pain, covering his cheek with a hand as Elizabeth ran from the kitchen.
He caught up in a carpeted hallway, bringing her down then sitting on her stomach, pinning both hands to the floor … she could see her teethmarks like a set of parentheses high on his right cheek.
“It’s going to be a terrible night for you,” he promised. “Scared?”
“Of course I’m scared, I know what you’re capable of Donald … I saw what you did to Hope.”
“I didn’t do that!”
“Then who?”
“Goddamn it Elizabeth you were part of the conspiracy—”
“There was no conspiracy, at least I wasn’t part of one. I testified to the truth … I did find Hope’s head in your room, you did assault me that time in the—”
“Assault you? I grabbed your tit because you were pushing it in my face—”
“The Raineys saw you going into Hope’s room the day she was killed and Ken Norton testified that—”
“THEY LIED!”
“Well I didn’t lie at your trial Donald, you have no reason to be doing this to me.”
He released her arms and sat upright. “Did you see those photographs Hope took?”
“No.”
He slapped her.
“I didn’t. Your uncle mentioned them once, this was after he got sick … he indicated something about having Hope’s photographs, keeping them as insurance, that’s what J.L. said but I never—”
“Whoever’s in those pictures with Hope, that’s who killed her.” “I never saw them.”
He slapped her again. “Goddamn it who was in those pictures?” “Murray!”
Which completely bewildered Growler. “Who?”
“Murray!”
But now he saw where Elizabeth’s hazel eyes were looking and he heard footsteps and he realized too late she hadn’t been referring to the photographs, she’d been calling to the blond giant who was just then descending upon Growler.
Picked him up by the shoulders, threw him on the floor, stood over him in muscled glory … six-two, 210 pounds of perfectly proportioned, twenty-five-year-old manhood, a hard-bodied, rippled-stomached young specimen with long blond hair tied in the back with a red ribbon. He wore a tight white T-shirt that stretched tightly to cover his pecs, baggy gray shorts reaching below his knees. Murray was barefoot.
Elizabeth got off the floor and backed away, pulling the white blouse together and holding it closed with one hand.
From the floor under this colossus’s legs Growler laughed. “Hired yourself a hot young stud, have you, Elizabeth?”
She was still too shaken to speak.
“Personal trainer,” Murray said.
Growler laughed again. “This time of night, what kind of training you call that?”
Murray looked over at his mistress. “What’s going on, Beth?” The young man’s slack-jawed duh-diction revealed that his superb training had been limited to the physical.
“Beth?” Growler rolled his eyes. “Tell me, Murray … Beth pay you by the hour or the inch?”
“Huh?”
Having regained a degree of composure Elizabeth said, “Donald if you’re telling the truth, if you really didn’t kill Hope, then I’m truly sorry—”
“Sorry? Sorry doesn’t cut it you rotten bitch—”
“Hey,” Murray grunted, putting a bare foot on Growler’s neck and pressing down.
“What was I to think?” Elizabeth asked. She stayed well back from the two men. “All that testimony against you, those animal heads you kept in your room.”
“I didn’t kill Hope!” Growler knocked Murray’s foot away and sat up.
“What’s he talking about Beth?” Murray whined as he stepped back and held himself like a wrestler ready to grapple.
“Something that happened a long time ago dear.”
“You want me to beat him up?”
She came to stand close behind her big boyfriend, laid a long-fingered, age-spotted hand on his massive shoulder. “We’re going to hold him for the police.”
Growler was still sitting on the floor. “When you helped send me away to prison Elizabeth I might’ve been a sissy … but seven years in hell made me one mean cocksucker.”
“Really,” she said.
“It’s going to take more than Baby Huey there to hold me for the police.”
“Hey buddy,” Murray said, “anytime you feel froggy …”
“Yeah?” Growler asked getting to his feet.
Murray couldn’t remember the rest of it.
“This is
for you Elizabeth,” Growler said, pulling from his suit coat pocket the garrote made from guitar string and broomsticks. “Go through me first buddy,” Murray said.
Elizabeth patted him on the back. “You keep Donald here, I’ll call the police.”
She went to the kitchen and was just picking up the phone when she heard them fighting in the hallway. Worried Murray might be getting the worst of it Elizabeth left the phone and walked quickly to a cabinet drawer where she kept her little silver .32 semiautomatic.
When she returned to the hallway Murray was on his stomach, Growler kneeling on the young man’s broad back, the garrote around Murray’s neck … and the only reason he hadn’t already been decapitated, Murray had managed to slip his right forearm between the wire and his neck.
“Let him up,” Elizabeth said leveling the automatic at Growler. He looked at her, gauged her seriousness, then slowly got off Murray. The defeated Adonis stayed on the floor and rubbed his neck. Growler still held onto one broomstick handle, the garrote dangling from his left hand.
“Whatever that nasty thing is, put it down,” Elizabeth commanded.
But Growler didn’t, he simply turned his back on Elizabeth and her fallen knight, walked the length of the hallway, and exited her front door.
“Ain’t you going to shoot him?” Murray asked as he regained his feet.
“I guess not,” she replied, lowering the .32. “Are you okay?” His feelings were hurt. “Beth, he fights dirty.”
She comforted him with the hand that wasn’t holding the pistol. “I know he does, sugar … I know he does.”
24
Camel had been in rooms like this hundreds of times … ten by twelve feet, furnished with a wooden chair and a sturdy metal-legged table covered with some kind of gray linoleum vinyl soft enough you could make an impression with your thumbnail, from the looks of it a lot of people had done exactly that. A video camera on a tripod stood in the corner and one wall carried a panel of smoky, reflective glass that hadn’t fooled anyone since Dragnet. The other three walls were painted light green from the floor to halfway up, the top half was white, the line between the two colors wavered. The beige carpeting was napped as thin as hope, the ceiling was acoustical tile. In periods of long silence the fluorescent lighting produced an incessant hum so faint you could start thinking it came from inside your head. The room smelled of air that had been used and reused too many times, breathed in and out of hundreds of lungs, you could also smell stale smoke, though ashtrays weren’t in evidence, and old sweat and the general stink of anxiety left behind by troubled people. All these odors were overlayed with Lysol and you kept wanting to open a window but of course there were no windows, no views, no fresh air. Camel’s memories of these rooms from his days as a homicide detective were made sharp and new this early A.M. hour, his debut as a suspect.