Death at Dawn

by Arthur Day

  DIANNE

  Even at noon the traffic on I-91 South to New York was heavy. Dianne had started late after a ten o’clock showing and would likely be caught up in rush hour traffic coming back unless she decided to spend the money for a hotel. Remembering the amount in her checking account she resigned herself to a long trip back to Rockmarsh. She hoped it would be worth it. She was one of those investigators who did not have a lot of cash to invest in their profession and MJ might or might not reimburse her. Hell, after the previous day, he probably didn’t even want to see her again. Most men would be horrified to find out that she was male below the waist. She had gone through this experience before and it had never ended well. Sooner or later MJ was bound to find out, but Dianne kept hoping it was later. She scowled at the car ahead that had slowed behind a semi-tractor. So “later” was now and there was nothing to be done but she was depressed nonetheless. MJ was a good man, strong and intelligent and even sensitive. Dianne realized that she was probably more than half in love with him. All gone to shit now.

  She glanced at the manila envelope on the seat beside her. The life and times of one Jacob Warren gleaned from a computer search of public records both federal and state. Born October 1960. Raised in Compton, Connecticut. Lived in New York. Worked at Farrow & Hawkins Publishing. No arrests. Bank accounts hold about fifty thousand. Apartment rent paid to the end of the lease in two months. Not on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Behind the curve in that respect Dianne thought as she passed a long line of trucks in the right-hand lane. He had no known relatives, No Licenses and the usual blather about his astrological sign. He was not a sex offender. He did not even have a traffic ticket. Dianne slowed as the traffic approached the city and became more congested. Warren was, on the outside at least, a very average, normal man going about his life in the same way as millions of others. At some point he had met Pam and knew her well enough to be able to try and bullshit his way past Mazzumo’s office. There was nothing to connect him to Pam’s murder though. She needed more and had spent the previous evening on her phone to contacts and friends and then friends of friends.

  Melissa Robertson was the very picture of cosmopolitan chic in the big city. Tall, willowy with brown hair cut short she had thin angular features half hidden by dark glasses that she wore even inside the restaurant. She was dressed for success in a business casual suit with tan pants, a white blouse and a small, tan jacket. She wore minimal makeup but the little she wore accented her cheekbones and lips. She entered the restaurant, looked around quickly and then walked over to the table where Dianne was waiting for her. “This has to be pretty quick. I don’t get much time for lunch.” She sat down sitting very stiffly and upright almost as if she expected someone to assault her.

  Dianne signaled the waitress whom she had tipped ahead of time and the waitress hurried over and took their order. “How’s that for speed?” she asked and smiled trying to put Melissa at ease or at least less nervous.

  Melissa’s expression did not change. “Betsy Benton called and said that I should talk with you and that it did not involve me directly or my job in any way but that you had some questions about someone I knew long ago. I owe Betsy a favor so here I am. Please ask your questions. I will answer if I think that it is okay to do so.”

  The waitress brought their salads over and then disappeared. Dianne tried again. “I am only interested in getting some information on a man you knew. I will not involve you in any way so please relax.”

  Melissa sat back in her chair slightly. “Sorry. The call came out of nowhere and there were no details, so I spent this morning imagining what you might want.”

  Friend of a friend of a friend Dianne thought. Well here goes nothing. “Did you know a Jacob Warren at one time?”

  Melissa straightened up and put both hands on the table as if getting ready to walk out of the restaurant. “Why do you want to know about him?”

  “I am working with a sheriff in Connecticut who is trying to find Warren to ask him some questions about a recent murder. We know very little about him, so I am trying to get some background information about him. What was he like? What did he like and dislike? What was he like as a friend? Stuff like that. Your name would never come up, believe me. No one would even know that we even talked unless you wanted that known. Please?”

  Melissa picked up her fork and poked at her salad, clearly without appetite. “It was a long time ago,” she began in such a low voice that Dianne had to lean across the table to understand her. “We were both young. He was a rising star at the firm and I was a lowly secretary.” She stopped and stared down at her plate as if there was a script there from which she could read.

  Dianne sat patiently waiting for Melissa to continue. Sometimes silence could be a most effective tool.

  “Anyway, he stopped by my desk one day, told me that he’d heard that I was doing a great job. He thought I was wasted in that position and suggested that we get together and discuss my future. I thought he was just trying to get my pants off, but I was hardly in a position to refuse. At that time, I was sharing a tiny walk-up apartment in ABC city with three other women. The walls were so old and thin that you could hear what a person was saying or doing on the other side of the apartment, but it was a start and I was determined to make my way in the big city. So we met at Nathan’s and got to know each other, you know what I mean?

  Dianne forked a cherry tomato into her mouth. “So you got to be friends?”

  Melissa nodded. “Just friends at least at first. No benefits if you know what I mean. He arranged for me to come into his department as a junior copy editor. The pay was much better, and I was happy with the job and with Jake.”

  “But it didn’t stop there?” Dianne prompted.

  “No. We ended up sharing his apartment for a while.” She pushed her plate away with a sigh. Clearly, she did not like thinking about that time or about Warren.”

  “It didn’t work out?” Dianne tried another piece of lettuce and looked across the table at Melissa.

  She almost smiled. “You could say that. I consider myself a person with clean and orderly habits. I don’t leave stuff on the floor. I wash the pots and pans and the dishes that I use. I was brought up to take care of myself and be respectful of others and my surroundings, but Jake had me beat seven ways to Sunday. He was obsessed with every detail, you know? Everything had to be just so. If his toothbrush was in the wrong holder he threw a fit. If there was a drop of water on the floor after I finished my shower he raged at me for being a sloppy bitch. When I tried to please him by cleaning the apartment he cleaned it again the following day. It was suffocating but I put up with it because I loved my job and I thought I loved him and that time would mellow his outlook.” Melissa blew air through pursed lips. “Fat chance and not only was he a neat freak but his idea of friendship and even love could be summarized as follows: Me say. You do. He had to know every phone call I made, whom I made it to and what was said. When I had lunch with a friend he would accuse me of cheating and threaten to fire my ass unless I squared away. You can’t know what living with someone like that is like. He opened all the mail, both his and mine. He regularly went through my things looking for some proof, I suppose, that I was cheating. I could not leave the apartment without his permission unless I was going to work where he could keep an eye on me.”

  “Wow,” Dianne said looking at Melissa with a new feeling of respect. “I take it you got out of that abusive relationship. I doubt anyone could put up with that kind of thing for long.” Melissa took a sip of water but did not reply. Her face took on a closed expression and Dianne wondered what was going on behind Melissa’s dark glasses. The woman couldn’t be remembering anything good about that time from what she’d said already. Dianne was ready to get the check and call it a day before making the long drive back to Rockmarsh.

  “He was strange in other ways too. I mean not that anyone at work could tell. They all thou
ght he was great, a real gentleman, a born editor, someone who would go far in the business. He was always well dressed, friendly, ready to listen to anyone about anything but he had devils in his head like I already said about trying to live with him but there were others as well, devils from his past. Sometimes I would find him sitting in a chair staring out the window at nothing in particular and would ask him what he was thinking and most of the time he wouldn’t answer, or he would fly into a rage and go out somewhere leaving me to wonder what it was that set him off. He wanted to know all about my life and my family, but he didn’t want to talk about his. I’m not saying he was all bad. He could be very gentle and understanding. I think the dark part of him came from his time in the service in Iraq. PTSD maybe.”

  “Did he say what he did while he was over there?” Dianne asked softly.

  Melissa removed her glasses. Her eyes were large and dark, and she looked momentarily sad and a little lost as if she could not quite remember what she was doing in the restaurant.

  “He was in demolition.”

  McCAAL

  I pulled into the driveway of Billy Black’s house and sat there for a moment while the engine ticked and birds, disturbed by my arrival, settled back into their calls and flights from tree to tree to telephone wire. When I knocked on the door there was no answer. Damn, I thought, he said he’d be here. I knocked again and still no answer. The house seemed totally deserted. I got off the porch, walked around to the back where the shed was and found Black there with his head under the hood of his pickup truck. “’Hi Billy.”

  “What the..?” he raised his head and promptly banged it against the raised hood of his vehicle. “Goddammit,” he cursed and came up from the engine compartment rubbing his head in irritation.

  “Hi. I’m Mike McCaal. I called a little while ago?”

  “Oh yeah. I forgot. Friggin’ truck is a worthless piece of shit.”

  I could have told him that just looking at it, but I held my peace. I wasn’t there to criticize his truck or anything else. “If I could, I’d like to talk to you about a Jacob Warren.”

  “Jake Warren? What about him?” Black wiped his hands on a dirty pink rag and headed for the back door of his house. “C’mon in, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

  I stepped out of the shed, brought out my phone and tried Dianne again. It went straight to email as it had a half dozen times before. Damn her. Damn her to hell I thought savagely and almost threw my phone at Black’s pickup.

  I had left her clothes on her bed and gone downstairs as quietly as possible the day before and was making coffee when she appeared in the kitchen dressed and looking as fresh as if she and I had not drunk ourselves into bed the night before. “So now you know,” she began and pulled two coffee mugs from their place in the cupboard.

  “Makes no difference,” I replied trying to sound casual and sophisticated. I probably lost on both counts.

  “Sure it does, MJ. Don’t act like a complete asshole.” Dianne replied in a matter-of-fact tone that implied she’d been through the scene before. “There is no way you can feel the same about me knowing that I wanted to be a woman and, in time, became one for all intents and purposes. You fell in love with a woman and now you feel betrayed. You can’t help it any more than I can. We are what we are. Let’s get some coffee in us and then head back to Rockmarsh. I still have customers to tend to and a career to maintain.”

  I turned and looked at her standing there blowing on her coffee before taking a cautious sip, the epitome of American womanhood and yet my mind was filled with the image of my father telling me that there were lots of weird people in the world and faggots were the worst of them and should be shot out of hand to put them out of their misery since God himself had rejected them. It was a dark memory, one I did not want, and I concentrated instead on Dianne. There was a wonderful person in front of me and all I could think of was my father, and I wished that he would fry in Hell or wherever his spirit resided. I pulled Dianne to me in a hug meant to reassure her that I was not going to go off the deep end about this. I felt the warmth and fragrance of her and then she pushed away. How could such a woman be a man? It did not seem possible, emotionally or physically but I had seen proof to the contrary. . She had a woman’s voice, her figure, her hair, her walk. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck I thought, but could not bring that old saying to its logical ending. The logic here was totally foreign to me and I felt at once a stranger to her, someone who would lift a hand in passing and remark on her presence before forgetting all about her and a friend, maybe a close friend, who had run into a brick wall and was looking around for a door to get through it.

  “Stop. I appreciate that you think you don’t care and that nothing has changed but it has and until you admit that to yourself, we cannot walk the same path.”

  “Why not? We’ve been a team on this case. We’ve shared food and drink and laughter and sadness. We’re friends, at least I consider you a friend and you seem to feel the same way about me and it makes no difference to me what’s in your pants.” I ended my plea, for it was a plea, with my face inches from Dianne’s and our bodies almost touching. There was a moment of silence while we looked into the other’s eyes and then she sighed and pushed me back slightly.

  “MJ. We are friends. I hope we will always be friends in good times and bad. I think you know that I will have your back no matter what, but you want more and that’s natural. We fit together like a hand in a glove but if we did go there you would be fighting yourself, your life, your beliefs, everything that makes you the wonderful man that you are, and you would end up blaming me. I am not willing to risk that.” She turned partly away, took a drink of her now-cooling coffee and set the mug down on the counter.

  “Okay so when did you, I mean, you know, get changed. You’re a beautiful woman. Why would you want to do this?” I asked and immediately realized what an imbecilic question it was. I couldn’t un-ring the bell so I did the next best thing and shut my mouth before something even more stupid came out of it.

  “That is a typical male response to something you do not know how to deal with. I chose to change because I knew as a young boy that I was born into the wrong sex. No one believed me except my best friend, Kara and she probably thought I was just pretending as kids will do but she would nod when we played man and wife and I always was the wife. My parents were distraught and took me to several counselors and even a psychiatrist. I have no idea what they told Mom and Dad, but the feeling only got stronger as I grew older. I was teased and bullied mercilessly through school but that changed nothing except that I swore that someday I would have my revenge on all the bullies who made my life living hell. I have gone through years of counseling and doctors specializing in estrogen pills and sex change. I didn’t want to lose my sexual function but only to be a woman in all other respects. Non-op is the term for it. I don’t feel I owe you or anyone else and explanation but there you have it albeit vastly simplified.”

  “Couldn’t we at least sit down and talk about…”

  “No. There is nothing more to discuss.” She smiled to take the sting out of her words. “Drink your coffee and let’s get on the road.”

  My mind was a clotted mess filled with what I’d seen, little voices saying sinner, sinner, thou shalt descend into hell and other voices saying so what and in today’s society not only accepted in some circles but welcomed. Dianne was a tran. I remembered that was what they preferred to be called if anyone needed to call them anything that set them apart from John and Martha Six-pack. Okay. So what? We were still friends, weren’t we? I felt the same way about her today as I had two days ago, didn’t I? I wasn’t sure I could answer yes to those questions. I thought I felt the same but obviously something had changed, perhaps my view of Dianne, perhaps my view of myself. That was a truly scary thought. I was determined not to let my discovery ruin everything but that thought only seemed to make things worse. In fa
ct, when I saw her that morning lying mostly naked in the sunlight I had experienced a partial erection, a fact that I found both fascinating and humiliating. I had never been to bed with a man. I did not think that I was a homosexual or even had the slightest tendency to become one. The thought had never occurred to me. In the army and later in business I had heard that this person or that person was gay, but it had always been someone else and I found it easy to be tolerant and liberal, sometimes silently depending on the people I was with.

  Now nothing seemed easy and I found myself in the process of losing a close friend because my paradigms had been changed and I did not know what to think or how to react any more. I dialed Dianne’s phone again and again it went to email. Fuck and double fuck. My life was turning into shit before my eyes.

  “What d’ya want to know about Jake?” Billy sat down in an old wooden chair by a small, circular table where he obviously ate his meals judging from the crumbs and pieces on it and on the floor around it.

  Just to make sure I showed him the picture of Warren on my phone. “We’re talking about the same guy aren’t we?”

  Black glanced at my phone. “Yep.”

  “Did he grow up around here?”

  “Yep.”

  This was getting irritating. “Can you supply a few details before the sheriff shows up and tells you what will happen if you do not cooperate?”

  “You aint the sheriff. I cooperated plenty. Weren’t for me you’d still be looking for the vehicle the murderer used.”

  “We don’t know yet if that was the ATV that he used.” I switched to a friendlier attitude. You catch more flies with honey was an expression my mother had drilled into me at an early age. “Everyone knows you’re doing your best to help. I only called and came over because Jake’s name came up and we need to check out everyone not matter how indirectly they might be involved. We know whoever did this knew the forest around here, had to know it pretty well and I thought if anyone could help on this it would be you.” I took a sip of the coffee he gave me. It was foul. I put the cup down on the table and did my best to forget the taste.