A Killer's Kiss

by William Lashner

  “That was cute,” he said.

  “You think so?”

  “Which is which?”

  “I am an officer of the court, Detective.”

  “You’re also incapable of telling the truth.”

  “Not this time.”

  “So he identified the wrong one?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Then I assume that you are quite proud of yourself for tricking a servant of the people.”

  “Quite. But I didn’t have to trick him, he tricked himself. You heard what he said. I have a reputation. But my client wasn’t selling anyway. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Just like you,” he said as he dropped something onto the table.

  I looked down, felt my nerves fizzle.

  It was the Daily News, the chronicle of high crimes and low misdemeanors of the residents of our fair town. And spread across the front page was the picture of a fine stone house and the headline mansion of death.

  I hadn’t had time to check the papers that morning, so I paged through it quickly, stopping at the article. It gave a few details of the Denniston murder and mentioned that the doctor’s wife was still in police custody. A statement about the investigation was made by Detective Augustus Sims, who simply confirmed that the wife of the deceased was being held for questioning. And the paper also quoted Julia Denniston’s attorney, Clarence Swift, as forcibly denying that Julia had anything to do with the tragedy and urging the public to come forward with any information about the crime. “In my modest opinion,” he was quoted as saying, “as the investigation continues, the evidence will completely exonerate Mrs. Denniston.” My name was conspicuously absent. I must say I was a bit surprised to find that Sims had honored his word and kept me out of it. Maybe he was more trustworthy than I supposed?

  Nah.

  I closed the tabloid, tapped the cover. “Nice house.”

  “Did you have anything to do with it?” said McDeiss.

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Stop it. Of course I didn’t.”

  “That’s what I thought. Guns aren’t your style.”

  “Still, you sent Sims and Hanratty over to my place in the middle of the night.”

  “I remembered your connection to the dead man’s wife. I brought it up to the captain, tried to use it to get assigned the case.”

  “Really? To protect me?”

  “To ensure justice and promote domestic tranquillity.”

  “You wanted to nail me personally, huh?”

  “Like a toothache. But the captain didn’t let me anywhere near the case and gave it to Sims.”

  “Just my luck. What can you tell me about him? Nice guy?”

  “Watch yourself.”

  “Why?”

  “Just be careful.”

  “I’m more concerned about Hanratty.”

  “Hanratty’s okay.”

  “He thinks I’m somehow involved.”

  “Of course he does. Any cop worth his salt would. But he’ll find out what really happened one way or the other. That’s all he cares about. With Sims you never know. He plays to his own agenda. Sims is more politician than cop.”

  “And we all know how well politics mixes with truth.”

  “Hey, did you really not have sex with her?”

  “Word gets around, I guess.”

  “We all got a laugh out of it. And it’s too bad, since she’s quite nice-looking for a killer.”

  “You sure she killed him?”

  “Sims seems to be sure. You still have feelings for her?”

  “We have a past,” I said.

  “I understand. But the reason I came over is to give you some friendly advice. Sims is a bulldog. He’ll sniff here, sniff there, take his time in figuring out who he wants to charge with the murder, but once he’s got his teeth into your leg, he’s impossible to shake off. And funny thing about his cases, when they start getting shaky, evidence starts popping up as if from nowhere.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “So here is my advice. Don’t let your unresolved feelings from the past betray you into doing something stupid. Stay the hell away from this case, Victor, at least until Sims decides who to charge. Right now he’s focusing on the wife. But if he starts focusing on you, then, boy, you might think you know what trouble is, but you’ll find out you were underestimating it all along.”

  7

  Generally I am disinclined to follow the advice of those in authority. I think it comes from the difficult relationship I have with my father. Either that or I am simply a dope. When I am told, repeatedly, to stay the hell out of a thorny situation, I find myself somehow compelled to get involved.

  But not here, not now.

  Both Sims and McDeiss had advised me to stay away from the Wren Denniston murder case, and I was fully disposed to follow their advice. It wasn’t because they had badges—I don’t heed no stinking badges—it was because something inside me was screaming the exact same thing. The suspicion that had gripped me as soon as two hard homicide dicks trooped into my apartment and gave me the third degree had only grown thicker as I learned the details of the crime. Reclaimed love had turned to outright paranoia in the flash of a gunshot.

  So I would not be visiting, not be investigating, not be aiding in her defense. Despite our promises one to the other to maintain silence, I had already told the police everything I knew. And now, going forward, I would not be a valued support in Julia Denniston’s time of utter need as Sims worked like a bulldog to build a case against her. She had betrayed me in the past; I was going to abandon her in the present. It seemed a fair enough trade to me. But she had a right to know.

  I could visit her in the prison, tell her the way I was feeling, advise her that she was on her own, but that would require an actual modicum of bravery and class. So I decided instead to write her a letter.

  Dear Julia,

  Or should it have been “Dearest Julia”? Or “My Dearest, Dearest Julia”? Or “You Murderous Skank”? It was hard to get a grip on the proper address for a former fiancée who was soon to be indicted for murder. Where is Emily Post when you need her?

  I want you to know how important these last few weeks have been to me.

  I liked the tone of that, a sharp, clinical detachment, like we were working out the details of a business transaction rather than performing our little tango.

  In a way we were able to recapture something that was lost so long ago, when you betrayed me and married that urologist asshole whom you have most recently murdered.

  So much for detachment. And was it oxymoronic to call a urologist an asshole? I crossed out everything after “so long ago.”

  I know that this is a most difficult time, and I very much would like to be by your side as you pass through it.

  Did that sound a little bitter, as if I would enjoy the spectacle of her disintegration?

  But the exigencies of the situation make that impossible. As a material witness, I have been repeatedly ordered by the authorities to stay away from you and your defense. I believe it is imperative for both our benefits that I do so.

  That was actually pretty good, precise and filled with legal nomenclature while still making my cowardice appallingly apparent. I considered it sort of a noble gesture on my part, my spinelessness undoubtedly making the whole abandonment thing less painful for her. Sometimes I’m so noble I can’t stand myself.

  I’m sure you are in excellent legal hands and that your attorney will do everything possible to ensure a just result.

  This was actually a lie. I was pretty sure that Clarence Swift, whom I had never yet met, was in over his head, but there was nothing I was willing to do about that. And the “just result” thing was a double-edged sword, wasn’t it? If you are innocent, I hope you get off, and if you are guilty, may you rot in jail.

  Look me up if you beat the rap, and maybe we can resume precisely where we left off.

  The sentiment was true
, absolutely, I could still feel her warm flesh, but I’d have to rewrite that a bit, don’t you think?

  Sincerely,

  As opposed to “Sardonically,” or “Cynically,” or “With All Due Self-Preservation.”

  Victor

  At least that part I got right. The rest needed some work.

  I opened my desk drawer, pulled out another sheet of paper so as to give it a second go. When I pushed the drawer closed, it caught on something.

  Not a surprise, really. While that drawer is not normally an exemplar of neatness, it was now an unholy mess. The contents had been rifled, as had the contents of my bureau and clothes closet, my kitchen, my linen closet and bathroom. They had taken the sheets off the bed, the towels off the rack, had swabbed the shower, had taken apart the drain of my bathroom sink and pulled out all the gunk in the elbow. It wasn’t hard to figure out what they had been looking for: They had been looking for blood, Wren Denniston’s blood.

  And with all that rifling, they had obviously pushed something in the way of my drawer slide. I reached in, felt nothing that would stop the drawer from closing, tried shutting it again, and failed. I could either work on the letter or solve this mystery once and for all, and working on the letter was proving more difficult than I expected. So I slid the drawer all the way out of the desk and reached inside, and that’s when I felt it. Something, yes. Something smooth and soft.

  I grabbed hold and pulled it out.

  A little purse, zippered shut. Red. Leather. Coach. About the size of a small hand, Julia’s hand, zippered shut to hide everything inside.

  When I realized what I had found, I dropped it onto the desktop as if it were burning my fingers. It sat there, red, on my desk, like a warning fire.

  Dear Julia, you sly little minx,

  She learns her husband has been murdered. She collapses to the floor in anguish. After a few moments of dazed reminiscence, she goes into the bedroom to prepare for her rendezvous with the police, and what does she do? She dresses, and packs, and stuffs her red Coach purse behind a desk drawer, stuffs it in so cleverly that a team of Crime Scene Search technicians executing a search warrant don’t find it. That told me all I really needed to know about the guilt of Julia Denniston.

  I should give it to the cops, without delay, turn it over like a good and honest citizen, an officer of the court. Yes, I should. Except that Julia wanted desperately to keep it from their prying eyes. It was one thing to answer questions truthfully and then wash my hands of her, it was quite another to voluntarily turn over evidence to those trying to imprison her for the rest of her life. I am a defense attorney as much by instinct as by choice.

  I picked up the purse, felt its weight, a few ounces maybe. I rubbed my thumb across the leather and felt something underneath, something hard and cylindrical, like a fancy pen. But what pen was worth hiding from the police? Montblanc? It would be nothing to unzip the purse, peek inside. It would be nothing to uncover the secret she was trying to maintain.

  I drew my hand away, shook my head. I should give it to her lawyer, Clarence Swift. She wanted to keep it from the cops, and by giving it to Swift I would be facilitating that choice. Then it would be up to Swift to decide what to do with it. He could examine it closely, learn its secret, decide what to turn over, what to keep hidden. With him it would have protections of the attorney-client privilege that it could never have with me. Except that if Julia wanted Swift to have it, he would already have come knocking. She had hidden it from him, too.

  I reached my hand once again toward it, gently rubbed the tips of my fingers over its supple red finish. It was worn and soft, like flesh. Like Julia’s flesh in those few rare moments before the cops came knocking, warm and yielding, hungry, ecstatic.

  Stop, I told myself. Toss it, burn it, chop it with an ax and drown it in the Schuylkill River. If I did it right, no one would be the wiser. Whatever was inside, whatever evidence, whatever clues to the murder of Julia’s husband or the state of Julia’s soul, would disappear right along with the supple leather.

  Yet even as I plotted on how to rid myself of its dangers, I could feel it drawing me toward it. I leaned close and smelled its scent, an aphrodisiacal combination of leather and expensive French perfume. For a moment I lost myself in the erotic promise of the bouquet. Hints of fine oil, champagne, the French Riviera, balsamic and vanilla, musk and passion. And as I breathed it in, as deep as my lungs would allow, I knew, quite simply, that I wouldn’t give it to the cops, or give it to Clarence Swift, or render it unto ash. I had thought our old-lovers’ tango had reached its sordid conclusion, but of course, as usual I was dead wrong.

  Whether I liked it or not, I was in the middle of Wren Denniston’s murder. My neck was on the line, and the more I knew, the more I found out, the safer I would be. I wasn’t the type to let evidence disappear, to let secrets lie fallow, to let the soul of an old lover remain hidden from my view when there were clues right in front of me. No, I wasn’t the type. But it wasn’t only that.

  Did I still have feelings for her? had asked McDeiss. Of course I did. Old love doesn’t disappear; it is too potent an elixir for that. Instead it burrows deep into bone, like a parasite, waiting until just the right moment to reassert itself and sabotage your life. It arises like an ache in the middle of the night. It crawls up your throat with the taste of bile when you kiss someone new. It grips your soul and shakes you senseless.

  It turns you stupid.

  I picked up the small Coach purse, gently grasped the red leather pull of the zipper, yanked it open, and in that one sudden movement I was suddenly all in.

  8

  The knocker on the big green door was a bronze coiled snake, with its forked tongue sticking out. I lifted it and dropped it twice.

  Knock, knock.

  While I was waiting for the “Who’s there?” I looked around at the poorly lit front lawn, at the large dark BMW parked in the circular driveway, at the brick and white-pillared arbor off to the side. The stone house was big all right, not quite a mansion, like the papers were calling it, though the “of death” part was surely accurate. In the gloom of night, it had a forbidding mien, like a cantankerous old man in a wheelchair, legs covered by a tartan blanket, with money in his wallet and evil in his heart.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  The door opened a crack. “I heard you the first time,” came a voice, creaky and slightly Southern. “What you want in here?”

  “I’m looking for Wren Denniston,” I said.

  “Don’t be a fool,” came the voice. The door opened a little wider, and I could see her there, tall and thin with short gray hair and raw hands, a trim white-and-blue dress. “I spent all day dealing with reporters banging on the door and crawling through them bushes. I’ve heard more lies than a priest in confessional the last three days. I don’t need to hear yours, too.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I’m just looking for Wren. He told me to stop on by when I got to town. This is his house, isn’t it?”

  “I never said it wasn’t.”

  “Then I’m at the right place. Is he in? Can you just tell him that I’m here?”

  “What you say your name was?”

  “Taylor, Anthony Taylor. Wren will know me as Tony.”

  She cocked her head, narrowed an eye. “How do you know the doctor?”

  “We were at Princeton together. In the same eating club.”

  “You look younger than him.”

  “He was a couple classes ahead of me, and I live clean. If he’s not in, just tell Julia that Tony is here. She’ll know me.”

  “Julia, huh?”

  “His wife.”

  “You really don’t know.”

  “Know what?” I said.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Columbus,” I said. “Just got in this afternoon.”

  She stepped out, wagged her head left and right, and then pulled me through the doorway before shutting the door behind us both. “Maybe you should have
a seat,” she said. “In the living room, Mr. Taylor. I have some terrible news.”

  Her name was Gwen, and she was a lovely, dignified old woman who had worked for Wren Denniston for years, starting when he was a boy, and she’d worked for his parents in this very same house. Her eyes welled as she broke the brutal news of his murder to one of Wren’s old college pals. I patted her hand, and gave what comfort I could, and I felt like a cad the whole time I was doing it, but I’ve done worse in my life. And I had good reason to be there.

  When you need to find the truth about a murder, there is no better place to start than the killing ground. Except I didn’t need the cops to know I was snooping around, or Julia to know either, for that matter. So I wasn’t Victor Carl this night. Instead I reached into the sad history of our city’s baseball past, pulled out one of the few names that still shone, and became Tony Taylor, Princeton grad. I sort of liked the sound of that: Princeton grad. Maybe I should have actually studied for my SATs.

  “I came back and found him myself,” said Gwen as she poured me some tea out of a fine china pot. I was sitting on a green couch in a cavernous blue living room stuffed full with French-style chairs and couches. She was sitting across from me, holding the pot with a steady hand. “All that blood and him lying there, pale and dead with that black mark on his forehead and the back of his head gone. It was horrible, Mr. Taylor, just horrible. Would you like more pie?”

  “Yes, thank you. I have to say, Gwen, this is the best pecan pie I’ve ever had.”

  “My cousin sends me the pecans from back home, fat and fresh off the tree.” She cut a slice from the thick brown pie sitting next to the teapot on the coffee table. “Fresh pecans make all the difference. When I saw the doctor lying there, I just screamed and screamed, which was silly, since there was no one to hear it. But I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Of course you couldn’t.”