“Yeah, well, me neither. ’Cause, see, what I’m sitting here thinking is that you weren’t acting like a guy who was just mad, John. You were acting like a guy who was jealous. Now, who you were jealous of, I’m not quite sure. Are you?”
“Jealous?” John asked, as if he had never heard the word before, as if it had no place in the story he had just told. He shot a nervous glance at the camcorder, intended to convey the anxiety of someone who had just realized that a half truth wasn’t going to be enough.
“Yeah, John. Jealous. Jealous like maybe you wanted to be doing what you saw those two doing on the living-room couch.”
“Bullshit!” John hissed through clenched teeth, but he was staring at the table, sucking breaths through his nostrils, doing his best to look cornered and terrified.
“See, I’m thinking the reason you were at that house in the middle of the night is ’cause—well, you thought someone was lying to you. Isn’t that why we show up places after hours? I mean, it’s not like I’d blame you, John. There’ve been times when I’ve left the house and waited just down the street for a few minutes just to make sure my wife was really going to the grocery store like she said she was. Right? I mean, everybody’s real big on trust when it’s not someone they actually care about, when it’s not someone they’re afraid to lose, right?”
John was determined to tell a story that would send the homicide detectives in the direction of the truth, a story that didn’t put one false word in Alex’s mouth, a story they could tell Alex in a room down the hall and probably have him believing it if they were convincing enough, because it didn’t contain anything that contradicted Alex’s experience. He could think of no other way to protect the man for the time being, but to do that he had to drag Mike’s name down into the mud with his own. So finally he had arrived at a decision. That repaying his debt to Mike meant protecting Alex no matter the cost.
Forgive me, Bowers, he prayed. Please forgive me, but I can’t see a way out of this without dragging your name through the goddamn mud. But I’m doing it for what I think you would have wanted. I’m doing it for what you tried to build for yourself.
He looked up at the detective with the most pathetic expression he could muster, and the man furrowed his brow and cocked his head slightly to one side in a false pose of sympathy. John whispered, “He said he was waiting for the money.”
“Who was waiting for the money?”
“Mike.”
“Whose money, John?”
“He told me he didn’t love him,” John muttered. “He told me that he knew something Alex didn’t. Alex thought his family had cut him off, but it turned out his grandmother had named him as the second beneficiary in her life insurance policy.”
“How did Mike find this out if Alex didn’t know?”
“Alex wouldn’t go back to visit his grandmother because he didn’t want to have to deal with his mom. But one time his grandmother called the house, when she first got sick, and she told Mike about her policy, because she thought it would get Alex to come.”
It was the first lie he told that involved anyone besides a corpse, but it didn’t matter if Charlotte disputed it, because this lie would lead the detectives to a paper trail that was closer to the truth than the bullshit story he had used to get into their custody.
The detective said, “Did it, John?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“Because Mike never told him. Mike never told him he was about to become a millionaire.”
“But he told you, didn’t he?” Barkin asked. John pretended to hesitate, stared down at his lap. “John?”
“He said if he could get his hands on that money, we could be together.”
“But you didn’t believe him?”
John shook his head, stared down at the table, tried to force tears but they weren’t fast in coming, so he gave up lest he should betray his true motives. “No, I didn’t. I had to see them together. I had to see the way Mike acted around him.”
“And you saw a lot that night, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I did. I saw they were in love.”
It was the only true sentiment he had expressed since he had sat down, and the detective reacted to the power in it by wiping at his lips with one hand and allowing a silence to pass. “Why didn’t you kill Alex first?”
John pretended to need a few moments to summon his answer. Then he met the detective’s eyes. “Because he likes Marines, that’s why.” The detective didn’t get it, so John helped him along. “And after what Mike had put me through, I thought I should get paid.”
“I don’t follow, John.”
“When I realized Alex hadn’t seen the body, I saw that I could use it all to convince him that he needed me to protect him. I just had to pretend like I was straight so he wouldn’t suspect anything about me and Mike. And if that worked, if he really thought he needed me, if I did my best to protect him against Mike’s killer—well, then I might just get paid for all the pain Mike caused me.”
The detective nodded gravely, like a sympathetic teacher. He got to his feet, asked John if he wanted anything to drink. John declined, and he left the room. John prayed he was going to check on the specifics of Alex’s grandmother’s life insurance policy.
He had no idea how much time had passed before a different man entered the room. This one had a deeply lined face and a shaggy toupee and rheumy blue eyes. He set his plastic coffee cup down on the table, out of John’s reach, and said, “How’s it going, Sergeant Sodom?”
John averted his eyes as if this were an actual insult. “So, you’re a real bona fide pansy-ass faggot, are yah? Tell me. What size anal beads do you prefer? Large, extra-large, or Big Gulp?”
John looked to the camcorder. “Is that thing on?”
“Hey, I’ve weathered my fair share of discrimination suits in my day, son. But I must say that those suits involved people who were actually members of the minority they accused me of discriminating against. You, on the other hand, have cooked up some cock-and-bull story—pardon the pun—for reasons I can’t comprehend. So I’m going to take a different approach with you, Mr. Houck. We’re going to start by talking about where you dumped the body.”
A silence fell. “I’m sorry,” John said. “I didn’t hear the question.”
“Where did you dump the body?”
He met the detective’s stare, saw the cash box he had dug from the sand, saw the red ruby ring and the limp fingers of Bowers’s right hand. John was confident Duncan knew that at some point the body would surface, and one missing hand would be a strange detail that wouldn’t fit with a frame job.
“I thought you’d be more interested in hearing why I cut off his hands and feet.”
No response from the detective other than a small shift in the set of his mouth. It was enough. But the detective wasn’t willing to give any more away, wasn’t willing to take the bait John had offered him.
“My original question still stands, Mr. Houck.”
“I want a lawyer.”
A thin smile this time. “That’s real good timing, mister. If I were in the midst of screwing up a major homicide investigation with a false confession, I would want a lawyer, too.”
Another few minutes of his unnerving stare, and the detective left the room.
His cell was a good ways down the hall from the drunk tank, with an empty cell on either side. He figured they wanted to keep him isolated so he wouldn’t say anything to another prisoner that might leak to the media, who had been camped outside the sheriff’s station in full force when they had brought him in early that morning.
John lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling with the vacant gaze he assumed a remorseless killer might use. Two sets of footsteps approached the cell. He listened to their arrival, then listened to one of them depart. He didn’t make any move to acknowledge the person standing outside the bars.
Ray Duncan said, “They know you’re covering for him. I told them Bowers saved y
our life in Iraq, so they think Alex got something over on you. Maybe introduced some kind of sexual confusion that changed your definition of loyalty. They thought it last night when they got word you turned yourself in, and they’re thinking it now. So you would have had to do some real good work in there to convince them otherwise.”
John said, “Well, they haven’t told you what I’ve said, so I’d say that’s a bad sign for you, Duncan.”
“How’s that, John?”
“See, I told them I hid Mike’s body in the woodshed while I wiped down the scene, which means they probably asked you if you did a search of the area after your deputies arrested me and you would have had to tell them you didn’t, which was a fuckup on your part, which doesn’t give them anything to disprove my story with.” He fought the urge to sit up and look at the man because he knew all he would see was Bowers’s hand resting in that cash box. “I think you’ve been cut out of the investigation, Duncan. Is that right?”
A brittle silence. Then, “You haven’t thought this through, John. Don’t pretend otherwise.”
“And you have?”
“Yes, sir. I have. That’s my job.” Not quite a confession, just an inch to the right of one. “There’s still time to set this thing straight, son. Hell, I’ll even back you up. Tell them what you told me about how Mike saved your life.”
“I bet you would, Duncan.”
“Call me Ray, John. It’ll let me know you’re really hearing me.”
John rose to a seated position, swung his legs to the floor, and looked up at Duncan. Everything about the man seemed calm and settled if you didn’t notice the details. The way he held on to the bar in his right hand in a tense grip, the tension in his upper lip, and the fact that he had rolled the sleeves of his uniform shirt three-quarters of the way up his arms.
After a long silence John said, “Are you waiting for me to blink?”
Duncan said, “You know I used to be an actor?”
“I didn’t.”
He nodded and smiled, as if they had just met at a cocktail party. “I never made much of anything at it, but the first time I ever wore a cop’s uniform was on the set of a TV show. I was just some guy in the background, but people told me I was good. They told me I never broke character. Not for one minute.” John nodded at this threat but said nothing. “I went to one acting coach when I first started who told me that acting is reacting to the stimuli we are presented with. Does that make sense?” John nodded. “But really, that’s life now, isn’t it? Because we are not a product of where we came from or what was done to us. We are what we choose to be in every situation that God delivers. And that’s why when a thing of beauty enters my life, I rise to the occasion with everything I have. Some people are humbled by beautiful things, John. I’m not. I’m inspired. I go after them with everything I have. Everything.”
John took a few minutes to pretend that he was digesting this speech. Then he nodded respectfully. “Here’s what I think happened, Ray. I think she let you start boning her because her husband dragged her up to that cabin every other weekend and she didn’t want to go because it was too far from her nice clothing stores and her charity lunches and her hair salon. And I think maybe you showed her some things she’d never seen before, so she let you hang in there.
“But I think after a while you started to want more, and she always had an excuse. She started with the obvious one: her husband. Her marriage. Then he was out of the picture and you thought maybe that was your shot. But then she had another excuse, just as good, if not better: her mother-in-law’s will. She couldn’t jeopardize her inheritance. But then—and this was the kicker, Ray—this is what I think really got to you: when her mother-in-law started to get sick, she sprang a big surprise on you. She wasn’t first in line for the life insurance. Alex was and, well, you couldn’t support her in the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. I guess it counts for something that you couldn’t bring yourself just to kill him. He is her only son, after all.
“But this is where I get confused. Maybe you did it because you thought she would actually be with you once she got that money. Or maybe—and this is the part that really fucking scares me—maybe you just did it to find out whether she was feeding you a load of shit. Maybe you just did it to find out, once and for all, if you’re really just some dumb pony she likes to ride when she’s done buying new shoes.”
Duncan’s laugh didn’t get past his throat, and his strained breaths flared his nostrils. “Is that what you told them in there?” he asked. His voice was thin and reedy.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” John said. “But just for the record, Duncan, I think it’s ’cause she thinks you’re a dumb pony she likes to ride when she’s done buying shoes.”
Duncan turned on one heel and started walking away from the cell. John rose and moved to the bars, “Hey, Duncan. Has she called?” Duncan kept walking. “’Cause I talked to her last night and I thought she might have called you.”
Duncan turned, started back toward the cell. His mouth opened, but he licked his lips instead of giving voice to his fear. John said, “I told her Alex was going to try to kill you. Are you sure she didn’t call to warn you?” The answer was on Duncan’s face. “That’s a shame,” John added.
“I’ll fucking roll over you. Do you understand me? I will roll over you, son.”
“Do it right now. You want me to go down for this, then tell me what I need to tell them when they ask me what condition I left the body in. Tell me everything I need to know to convince them I did this.”
“Why the hell would you want to do that?”
“Because the longer I’m in here, the more time Alex has to reconsider blowing your fucking head off. And in my book that is a good thing. It is the only good thing. Because I care about you about as much as you cared about Mike Bowers.” Even as the words poured from him effortlessly, he wasn’t sure he believed them. What he wanted was a confession. “Tell me what I need to know to take the fall for this.”
For a long time they stared at each other through the bars. Then Duncan glanced around him, looked down at the cracked cement floor, and cleared his throat. “The body was found in a dry streambed that feeds into Nesbit Creek. The area is accessed down about twenty yards of a rocky slope, near the intersection of Nesbit Road and Old Holloway Drive.” John held on to the bars in front of him for support, worked to steady his breath as he tried to memorize all the details he would need to know to issue a complete false confession. “Facedown, arms spread on either side. Hands and feet severed by a circular saw, not left at the scene.” As Duncan delivered these details, his quiet voice took on a breathy, high-pitched quality. “Various contusions indicate he was kept inside an industrial-size freezer for several days following his murder. Contusions to the face and chest indicate that he was dragged down the slope for several yards.”
His vision of Duncan blurred and shifted. He blinked back tears, spoke to chase away the uncontrollable wave of emotion that had just swept through him. “You haven’t even read the fucking coroner’s report, have you? You just know all this is going be in there.”
“Pretty good for some dumb pony,” Duncan whispered.
“You’re never going to have her. She believed me, Duncan. That’s why she didn’t call you. She believed me.”
Duncan brought his face right to John’s and whispered, “Let me tell you what wasn’t in the coroner’s report. When Marines get cut, they don’t sound like Marines at all.”
Duncan had already withdrawn by the time John lunged at the bars and spit at his face. John thought he had missed; then he saw Duncan wipe his cheek with the back of his right hand as he walked off in the direction of the central holding cell. Nevertheless, this small burst of inadequate violence left John feeling pathetic and childlike, as if he had spit into a fan.
17
When he saw that the metal door he was being led toward was marked “Visiting Room,” his heart leaped at the thought that Patsy might be waiting
for him on the other side. Maybe once he had left the picture the police hadn’t been all that interested in her. But when the guard opened the door, he revealed a long, empty well of a room divided by a giant metal wall that cut the room into two sections and held large viewing windows. The wall stopped about six feet short of the ceiling so that guards stationed at the top of each metal staircase could look down into the entire area below.
No visitor was waiting for him. Indeed, it seemed the room had been cleared out. But a guard deposited him on the stool in the middle of the row, seating him in front of a Plexiglas panel that offered nothing more than a view of the empty stool on the other side and the metal-clad wall behind it. Instead of the telephones you saw on television, the panel had a vent of thumbnail-size holes at mouth level.
He looked up and was surprised to see that only one guard was still with him. Maybe the other had gone to fetch John’s secret admirer. The guard reached down and uncuffed him, then gave John a hard warning look. He could interpret it in only one way: the guy thought John was getting away with something, and he didn’t approve of this strange, silent proceeding. Then the guard moved back up the metal staircase they had just descended and stepped out the door. John saw part of his hulking back blocking the door’s viewing window.
For what felt like several minutes, John was completely alone. Then, on the other side of the wall, at the top of a metal staircase opposite the one John had been brought down, the door opened and a different guard stepped through. Charlotte Martin was behind him. The guard allowed her to descend the stairs unaccompanied, holding his ground just inside the door at the top. She wore a black pantsuit with a white silk shirt that had an almost metallic sheen to it. He wondered whom she had already gone into mourning for; then he reminded himself that she was the type of woman who mourned damaged reputations and lost opportunities, not human beings.
Carefully, she took a seat on the other side of the Plexiglas, reaching back to make sure the hem of her coat didn’t catch under her butt, even as she maintained unblinking eye contact with him. Then her eyes cut past him and he realized she was looking on his side of the wall at the top of the staircase, which was empty, but she could still see the guard’s back through the wire-reinforced glass window.
Blind Fall Page 22
