by Don Winslow
“I don’t know,” Nichols says. “I didn’t look at my watch. Until we went to bed. Eleven o’clock?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“He told you he didn’t know, Detective,” Burke says, “and I’m not going to allow him to speculate.”
Of course you’re not, Johnny thinks, because it’s a critical issue.
The 911 call from the neighbor had come in at eight-seventeen; the black-and-white responding to a “shot fired” called at eight twenty-four. The responding officers kicked in the door and found Schering, in a bathrobe, already dead on his living-room floor.
Johnny got the call at eight thirty-one; logged on to the scene at eight forty-seven. He interviewed the neighbor and had Boone’s van at the scene, but the neighbor couldn’t recall if it left before or after he heard the shot, just that this van had been “lurking” around the neighborhood recently.
The ME hasn’t established time of death yet, and it would be nice to pin Nichols down to a time after which his wife’s testimony won’t help him. Personally, Johnny thinks Nichols shot his wife’s lover before this heart-to-heart talk ever happened, if it happened at all, but it’s possible that he slipped out afterward, and wants to leave that door open.
Burke isn’t going to let him narrow it down, so Johnny has to press the offensive a little harder. “Is this possible, Mr. Nichols? Let me run this scenario for you, and you tell me if it’s possible. Daniels calls you, tells you he has definitive proof that your wife is sleeping with Schering. You go over to confront your wife’s lover. I get it, I totally get how you’d be angry . . . hell, furious . . . the guy has been doing your wife—”
“That’s enough, Detective,” Burke says.
“And you get into an argument. I mean, who wouldn’t? I know I would, Harrington here certainly would.”
Harrington nods sympathetically. “Hell, yes.”
“Any man who calls himself a man would, and you argue and things get out of hand and maybe you pull the gun. Just to threaten him, scare him, I don’t know, mess with his head. Maybe he reaches for it and it goes off.”
“Don’t respond to this fiction,” Burke says.
Which pisses Johnny off, because he’s using the “fiction” to lure Nichols into putting himself at the scene. Once he does that, Johnny will use the gunshot forensics to jerk the “self-defense” rug out from under him.
He keeps at it.
“You’re freaked out,” Johnny says. “You never meant for anything like this to happen. You panic and drive away. You drive straight home and when you get there you’re so shook up you can’t hide it from your wife. She asks you what’s going on and you tell her. Just like you said, you tell her you know about the affair. You tell her about the terrible thing that happened when you went to Schering’s house. She says it’s going to be all right, you’ll both say you were home the whole evening, working on saving your marriage. Is that possible, Dan? Is it just possible it happened that way?”
He looks closely into Nichols’s eyes to see if he can discern the flicker of recognition. “No,” Nichols says. “It didn’t happen that way.”
“How did it happen?” Johnny asks. Softly. Empathetically. Like a therapist instead of a cop.
“I don’t know,” Nichols says. “I wasn’t there. I was home with my wife.”
Burke looks at Johnny and smiles.
90
“Boone who?”
It’s a little scratchy over the cheap intercom speaker, but clear enough.
“I’m sorr——”
The intercom clicks off.
He hits the button again.
“I’m about to call the police.”
“Funny thing,” Boone says. “Speaking of the police—”
Dead.
He hits it again.
“Go away, Boone.”
“I was picked up on suspicion of murder.”
A pause, then she buzzes him in.
91
The wife’s story matches.
Almost too well.
Her husband came home, she doesn’t remember the time, and was clearly upset. He told her he knew about her affair with Philip Schering. She admitted it. They sat and talked for hours, but she doesn’t recall what time it was when they went to bed. The next thing she remembers is hearing a discussion and going downstairs to find Mr. Daniels there. That’s when she learned about Phil’s death.
“This is awkward, Mrs. Nichols,” says Johnny, “but were you seeing Mr. Schering?”
“You already know that I was.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Yes,” she says. “I was.”
“And did you have sexual relations?”
“We did.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Last night,” Donna says. “No, I guess it was the night before. I don’t know, what time is it now?”
“It’s early in the morning,” Johnny answers. “Where were you last night?”
“At home.”
“Alone?”
“No, my husband was with me.”
Johnny asks, “When did he get home?”
“Early,” Donna says. “Seven, maybe?”
Nice, Johnny thinks. She has him home by seven, the shot isn’t heard until shortly before eight-seventeen. While someone is pumping a bullet into Schering’s head, the Nicholses are at home doing Dr. Phil’s Relationship Rescue. Funny how life works.
“You said your husband confronted you with the evidence of your infidelity,” Johnny says.
“I didn’t say that,” Donna snaps. “I said that he told me he knew. There was no ‘confrontation.’”
“Did you ask him how he knew?”
“Yes.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That he had hired a private investigator who had me under surveillance,” Donna said. “Who had tracked me to Philip’s house.”
“Did you deny it?”
“There didn’t seem to be a point,” she said. “Obviously, he knew.”
“So your husband had Schering’s address.”
“I suppose so, yes,” Donna says. “But my husband isn’t a violent man. He couldn’t have done this.”
Yeah, but he did, thinks Johnny, who’s not a big believer in coincidence. On the same day a man finds out his wife is fucking around, the fucker gets killed. That’s motive, not coincidence. And now the wife, guilty as hell about the affair, colludes with the alibi.
“Do you know what an accessory is?” he asks.
“Don’t patronize me, Detective Kodani.”
“Your husband is not a practiced criminal,” Johnny says. “Sooner or later—I’m betting sooner—he’s going to confess to this killing. When he does—not ‘if,’ Mrs. Nichols, ‘when’—your lying about this alibi will make you an accessory. You can write each other from your respective cells.”
“Should I retain an attorney?”
“That’s entirely your choice, Mrs. Nichols,” Johnny says. “Shall we break off this interview so that you can make a phone call?”
“Not just now, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She’ll fucking kill on the witness stand, Johnny thinks. Cool, beautiful, sympathetic. Contrite about her affair. Burke will lead her through her testimony and the jury will believe her. Then women will want to be her and the men will want to do her. She’ll pull her husband right out of the shit.
It’s good to be Dan Nichols, he thinks.
If you can afford to marry a Donna and hire an Alan Burke, you get away with murder.
92
Petra, an uncharacteristically ratty terry-cloth robe wrapped around her, is standing in the open doorway of her condo when Boone gets off the elevator.
“Murder?”
“I didn’t do it.”
She ushers him into her apartment. It’s nice, one of those old warehouse conversions that came along with downtown urban renewal when the new ballpark was built.
It’s the new, hip, trendy area—which suits her, Boone thinks, because she’s hip and trendy.
Except for that robe. Maybe I got the booty call thing wrong.
“Murder?”
Boone looks out the window. “Hey, you have a view of the park.”
“I hate baseball. Murder?”
“Right. Cricket is probably more your—”
“I hate sport. Murder?”
“Hot dogs taste better at the ballpark,” Boone says. “You have to put a lot of mustard—”
“Boone!”
She’d fallen asleep on the sofa, waking up only when he buzzed her number. When she heard “murder” she let him in and then ran into the bathroom for the robe to disguise the sexy negligee. The right side of her hair is all mushed from the sofa, but the makeup that she had put on so carefully is intact.
He sits down on the sofa, she sits beside him, and he tells her about the whole Nichols thing. There’s no confidentiality issue, because as an associate at Burke, Spitz, and Culver, she’s also Dan Nichols’s lawyer.
“So the police put you at the murder scene,” she says.
“It wasn’t a murder scene when I was there,” Boone says. “It was more of a porno scene.”
“Right,” she says. “And you were never in the house.”
“Right,” Boone says. “Look, I’m really sorry. I thought of calling you when they first picked me up, but calling a lawyer would have looked bad, and then I got all torqued and then going to see Nichols—”
“I understand.”
“You do?”
“Of course,” she says. “Look, can I get you something? Coffee, a drink, something to eat?”
Dave the Love God is a false god, Boone thinks. A mere wooden idol, a Wizard of Oz. He knows nothing of women. At least, not this woman. “You know, I am a little hungry.”
“Right.”
She gets up and walks into the kitchen. He follows and looks over her shoulder as she opens the refrigerator, which is virtually empty.
“Let me see,” she says, “I have yogurt . . . and . . . some more yogurt . . . and . . . Oh! Cottage cheese.”
“How about just some coffee?” he asks.
“Good, right,” she says. “Except that I don’t have any, actually. I have tea. A very nice herbal tea I get at this special shop down on Island. Imported from Sichuan.”
Drinking herbal tea is like sucking dew off a lawn, Boone thinks. Which he has done, after a Mai Tai Tuesday at The Sundowner, but it doesn’t sound so good when you’re not horribly drunk and desperately dehydrated. Besides, herbal tea is one small step removed from yoga, leg warmers, and spa treatments. Boone says, “Maybe just some water.”
She gets him a glass of water and then says, “Crackers! I have crackers.”
Petra had hosted a little predinner wine and hors d’oeuvres thing a few weeks ago and had some crackers left over. She searches the cabinets and finds the box, then looks for an appropriate plate on which to set them.
“The box is just fine,” Boone says.
“Really?”
“Sure.”
She hands him the box and sits down on the counter. He stands beside her and they eat crackers and drink water as Petra starts breaking down Boone’s situation. Boone was at the house but not in the house, but at what point in time? And has the medical examiner established a time of death? Obviously, that would be key.
Boone’s listening but not really listening. He’s not all that concerned with being a “person of interest” in the Schering murder anymore, as he’s been willingly bumped off that platform by Dan Nichols. He looks at the little crumbs that cling to the corner of Petra’s mouth, which, with her tousled hair, give her a very attractive air of imperfection. And the robe has slipped a little on her left shoulder, revealing the spaghetti-thin strap of something blue and silky and . . .
How do you kiss someone with crackers in your mouth? Is it “how,” he wonders, or “should,” as he casually takes a drink of water and tries to swish it around his mouth nonchalantly to clear it of the cracker yuck.
Petra’s going on about . . . something . . . when Boone leans over, brushes a crumb off her lips with his finger, and then kisses her. If she’s surprised, she’s pleasantly surprised, because her lips do that fluttery, butterfly-wing thing and she brings her hands to the back of his neck and pulls him in a little closer.
Her lips are freaking incredible, Boone thinks, so soft and surprisingly full, and the kiss lasts a long time before he breaks it off to kiss her neck, where her skin is so white and delicate it seems almost fragile, and he likes it when she turns her head a little to open more of her neck to him.
Her perfume is unreal. Sunny was never a perfume girl. She was more of a sun-salt-and-air-are-nature’s-perfume girl (which certainly worked, salt and sun being aphrodisiacal to him), but Petra is definitely a girlie-girl, with the negligee and the perfume, and he finds he likes it, really likes it as he works his way down her neck and then back up and then gently nudges a strand of her black hair out of the way and kisses her ear.
“If you do that,” she says, “I can’t stop you.”
“I don’t want you to stop me,” he says.
“Good. Neither do I.”
So he keeps kissing her ear, and she starts to kiss his neck, and Boone feels like he’s happily drowning in her perfume and she doesn’t stop him when he reaches down and pulls the knot on her thick terry-cloth robe, and it slides open and he feels the smooth satin and her flat stomach and starts kissing his way down her chest when he hears her say, “Kitchen-counter sex.”
“Uhhhh . . .”
“I don’t want our first time to be kitchen-counter sex,” she says, kissing along his collarbone. “Can we go to the bedroom, please?”
Oh, yeah, Boone thinks, we can go to the bedroom, please. We can totally, absolutely go to the bedroom, please. He lifts her off the counter. If he’d tried to lift Sunny in anything but a fireman’s carry, he’d be on the way to the e room, but Petra is petite, light as air, as he swings her off the counter and walks toward the living room.
“Are you going to carry me into the bedroom?” she asks, laughing.
“Uhhh . . . yeah.”
“It’s a tad Neanderthal, isn’t it?”
He pushes the bedroom door open with his foot. “You don’t approve.”
“No, I approve.”
He sets her on the bed and lies on top of her. Her negligee rides up on her thighs and he feels her against him. So does she, because she murmurs, “Hmmm, nice,” and reaches down and fumbles with his belt. He lifts his hips to give her an easier time and she gets his belt loose and then pushes his jeans over his hips and they’re kissing again, she darting just the tip of her tongue in and out of his mouth as she feels for him, finds him, and—
The phone rings.
“Ignore it,” he says.
“I am.”
They both try to ignore it as it jangles three times, her crisp British tone on the answering machine announces that she can’t come to the phone just now but please leave a message, and Alan Burke’s voice comes over the speaker: “Petra! I’m at the police station. Get your ass out of bed and get it down here. Now.”
She tries to go back to kissing Boone, but it doesn’t work and she sighs and says, “I have to go.”
“No, you don’t,” he says, but it’s a feeble try at best because they both know the moment is over. Some waves are like that—they build and build and you think you’re in for the ride of your life and then they just . . . flatten.
“Wavus interruptus” is what Dave calls it.
“Yes, I do,” she says.
“Yes, you do,” Boone says, rolling off her.
“I am so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
“For me as well, I mean.”
She gets up, slides open a closet door, and starts taking down clothes. Then she disappears into the bathroom, to emerge a few minutes later the Petra Hall that he�
�s familiar with—cool, professional, efficient.