by Gayle Wilson
The room at the end of the entrance hall was lighter. The den or great room or whatever people were calling it now. But the light she had seen from the first was coming from the kitchen. She headed across the den to the left, remembering white, glass-fronted cabinets, and a lot of hanging brass. It had been a nice blend, new and old elements, clean and open.
It, too, was deserted, looking ordinary and functional in the cold fluorescent light of the above-the-sink fixture. Nothing scary here. The wide windows that surrounded the breakfast table were uncurtained to let in the morning sun. The neatly landscaped backyard and the subdued underwater lights of the pool they looked out on were beautiful in the moonlight.
She turned around, looking back across the kitchen, back the way she had come. Nothing was wrong, her brain reassured. Gut reaction? Kahler had asked. And her gut reaction right now was that something here was very definitely wrong.
Lew’s office, she remembered. He had been very proud of his new computer system the night of the last party. A relatively recent convert to the wonders of technology, at least home technology, he had dragged anyone willing to be dragged back to the office to examine the equipment, delighted to show it off.
The study was on the other side of the den. She walked back to the doorway of the kitchen and looked across the shadowed den. The door to Lew’s office, almost directly across from where she was standing, was closed. There was a thread of light under the bottom, just visible between the mahogany and the thick pale peach of the den carpet. As she started across the room, the phrase from childhood games of hideand-seek intruded. Getting warmer. Much nearer to whatever was going on, she thought, when she was standing before the door. “Lew?” she called. There was no answer She waited a moment before she repeated the word. She raised her hand and tapped against the solid wood as she spoke. “Lew?”
Then, as it had at the entry door, her hand made its own decision, reaching downward to touch the knob, which turned easily under her fingers. She pushed the door open, her eyes seeking the big antique desk that dominated the opposite end of the room. The light she had seen under the door had come from its green-shaded lamp.
The reason Lew hadn’t responded to her repeated calls was apparent. Behind the spread of equipment, she could make out his body slumped forward, his head pillowed on his right arm that was resting on the top of the computer system’s printer.
Working too late, she thought, smiling in sudden compassion. And no one to miss him upstairs. She debated leaving him, but given his cramped position among the electronic peripherals on the crowded surface of the desk, she knew he’d pay the price tomorrow. A sore neck. A short temper. Some price.
“Lew,” she said again, relief making her voice stronger. She took a farther step into the room and then stopped. All the images from the devastation in Austin burst into her head. This was a different devastation, but even in the play of light and shadow, there was no doubt, now that she was this close. Lew Garrison wasn’t asleep. There could be no doubt about that either, given the fact that the back of his head…
Retching, she turned away, stumbled across the small office and out into the den. She had enough presence of mind to realize she had to get out of the study. Not just because of the horror it contained, the splatter of blood on the wall behind the desk, the smell hot and strong and distinctive as no other smell, but because whatever she touched would be contaminated.
Crime scene. The familiar words were in her head, their importance fighting her natural inclinations to go to Lew, to make sure of what she already knew. And fighting also that other inclination. The one that screamed at her to run, as far and as fast as she could manage. To get the hell out of this house.
She stopped in the middle of the expanse of expensive peach carpeting and made herself take a couple of calming breaths. Her head swam sickeningly when she closed her eyes, so she opened them and held them open by sheer will to look for a phone.
She knew she couldn’t go back into Lew’s office, even if that was the most likely place to find a telephone. She couldn’t go upstairs, into the unknown darkness where, perhaps, whoever had killed Lew was hiding. How could she be sure the killer had left? she thought, the panic building again.
She fought it down, knowing that what she had to do was call the cops. No one had known she was coming here. It had been impulse. Lew’s murderer wasn’t waiting for her. He was long gone. Her rational mind knew that. She was reacting like a child and not like an adult. Not thinking, just feeling. But when she began to move again, it was toward the light, toward the pleasant openness of the white kitchen.
Thank God there was a phone on the wall. She dialed 911, trying to remember Lew’s exact street address before the operator picked up. She had looked it up in her address book before she’d gotten on the interstate, so the numbers were still in her head, despite the fact that she’d left her purse in the car.
She had to repeat her story a couple of times, and then she did exactly what she had been told to do. Despite all her instincts screaming at her to get out of the house, she stood in the kitchen, waiting for the patrol car they had promised was on the way. But she never took her eyes off the doorway.
IT WAS PROBABLY half an hour after the first police car had arrived that Kahler got there. She had told the cops she believed Lew’s death had something to do with Jack and had urged them to call Detective Kahler. The men she had talked to were so calm, accustomed to dealing with violence and its aftermath. Once she would have claimed that after her years on the paper, she was pretty acclimated to man’s inhumanity to man, but Austin had taught her better. And tonight.
They had sent her out onto the patio that surrounded the pool. One of the cops had stayed with her, taking notes on what she told him and then probably staying just to keep her company. Eventually, with her repeated assertions that she was fine—just as false as those she’d made the day in the office when the fake bomb had gone off in her lap—he’d gone back inside.
Through the glass of the patio doors, she had watched Kahler arrive and disappear with the forensics people into the study. She was still watching when he came out and posed his questions to the cop who’d taken her story. The cop pointed to the backyard, and Kahler looked up, his eyes meeting hers through the glass.
She watched him cross the den and open the patio door beside the fireplace and walk over to stand in front of her. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and then, as she had once before, she moved into his arms, which opened automatically to enclose her.
Kahler held her tight, safe and protected. “What the hell made you decide to come over here tonight, August?” he asked.
She could feel the words rumble through his chest, his breath stirring against her hair. She knew she should step away, formulate some kind of answer, quit hiding, but it was physically impossible to move. All her reserves of strength had been sapped by the realization that Lew was dead, so she answered with her cheek still resting against the starched blue oxford cloth that covered Kahler’s shoulder.
“The message he left on my machine. I couldn’t get it out of my head—the thought that finally Lew might have found something. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, so I went back to the paper. Lew had left about eight, but that didn’t make any sense to me. So, I decided to come over here on the chance he might still be awake.” She shivered, remembering her initial reaction to the body.
“Why did you come in?” Kahler asked, his lips against her hair. His hand was making comforting circles over the tightness in her shoulders. Relaxing a little of the tension and the fear.
“There was a light. I thought…” she paused, trying to recreate exactly what she had thought. “I rang the bell and no one answered, and then I opened the door. It wasn’t locked, Kahler, and I knew it should have been. I looked around, and when I remembered Lew’s study, I went back there.”
“It’s all right,” he said, apparently feeling the shuddering force of the breath she took. “Everything’s okay.
I’m here. Nothing’s going to happen to you, Kate. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
An official promise maybe, but his tone had not been very official, she thought. Definitely not. She was infinitely grateful for his personal attention, grateful for his kindness, and especially grateful for that assurance.
“Did you touch anything?” he asked.
“The phone in the kitchen. The front door. The door to the study. I can’t remember touching anything else “
“Good girl,” he said, his voice warm, complimenting.
“I went about halfway into the study. I thought he was just asleep. Then I went in far enough to see…”
“It’s all right,” Kahler said again. His voice was still calm, soothing her obvious distress.
“Whatever he found out,” she said, leaning back from his embrace far enough to see his face, “it was enough to get him killed, Kahler. Something pretty damned important.”
He nodded, agreeing with her, still comforting.
“Was there anything on the desk that would give you a clue to whatever…?” she began and saw the quick, denying movement of his head.
“We don’t know yet. We have to wait for the lab boys to finish, let the coroner remove the body, before we can look for anything like that.”
“Oh, dear God,” she said softly, finally feeling the tears begin to slip out past her control. She raised her head, looking upward into the night sky, biting her lips to keep from letting it all pour out. The body. Maybe to Kahler, long inured to this, Lew was just “the body,” but to her he had been a friend. Someone who had died perhaps because he had asked the questions she had wanted him to ask. Her questions had gotten him killed.
Kahler pulled her against him, his hand on the back of her head, pushing her face into his shoulder. He was only a little taller than she, and she buried her head and let the tears come. The words he whispered while she cried weren’t official either, but right now she needed what he was giving her, needed to feel the strength of his arms holding her. Very human comfort.
Eventually she cried it all out, her mind drained by the shock of what had happened. The ugly sobs lessened, and she had presence of mind enough to think what a female thing crying like this had been. Someone who broke down into hysterical tears wasn’t exactly the image she had always had of herself, certainly not the one she wanted to portray to the world. She pushed away from him to wipe her nose, and then using the back on her hand, she tried to rub away the evidence of her tears.
Kahler pulled out a handkerchief and began to clean the mascara off her cheeks. He worked gently, with steady concentration, and she found herself really looking at his face for the first time. Thinking about him as a man, and not a cop.
Not the flashy good looks Thorne Barrington had, maybe, but a nice face. Strong. She especially liked the lines around his eyes. He looked up from the mess she’d made of her makeup to find her eyes on him, and he smiled at her.
“Thanks,” she said, embarrassed to have cried and to have been caught studying his face, maybe her own revealing what she’d been thinking.
“My pleasure,” he said, and the corners of his mouth lifted again, the small creases around his eyes moving. “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested.
She was a little surprised that he wanted to leave, would be willing to walk away from the scene. Somehow she had thought Kahler was as obsessed with this case as she. “Now?” she asked.
“I need to get you home,” he said.
The small sound of protest she made in response to that idea was automatic. Her apartment was the last place she wanted to be. Trying to deal with Lew’s death, with her guilt over her role in it, and remembering that damn confetti in her bed. She knew that she’d be wondering all night how it all was related.
“My place?” Kahler suggested.
Ordinarily, she’d never have agreed. It was a bad idea, considering what she believed about Kahler’s feelings, but right now it felt like an answer to prayer, so she nodded.
“Please,” she said.
“Let me tell them inside. I’ll be right back. We won’t go through the house. I’ll take you around. Wait right here.”
She was more than willing to follow his instructions. More than willing to let Kahler make the decisions. More than willing to let him take care of her. And she realized that it felt pretty good to have someone take care of her for a change.
KAHLER FIXED HER the bourbon and Coke she had asked for, a taste left over from college, and seated her on his oversized sofa while he disappeared into the back of the apartment to make a couple of phone calls. She imagined they were related to Lew’s death and that he knew she didn’t need to hear them right now.
She sat on the couch, shoes off, feet up, sipping the sweet, smoky darkness of his good bourbon, and let her eyes wander around the room. It was masculine, dark colors, massive, comfortable furniture. There were some nice prints on the walls, well-framed and well-placed, and a lot of books. There was only one photograph, a small, maybe five-by-seven-inch print in a wooden frame. Because she was curious, she got up to look at it, fighting the lethargy of the bourbon and the emotional trauma.
It was a photograph of a pre-adolescent Kahler, the strong features distinctive, even given the difference of more than a couple of decades, and a pretty little girl, maybe three years old. She had the same hair as Kahler. Same shape eyes, but darker than his, more chocolate than hazel. He had told her he grew up with his mother and sister. Obviously, this was the sister. She hadn’t realized the difference in their ages. She was still holding the framed photograph in her hand when Kahler came back into the room. She turned to smile at him, and his eyes flicked to the picture she held and then back to hers.
“Is this your sister?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I didn’t realize there was so much difference in your ages.”
“Nine years,” he said. He walked to the counter where the bottle of bourbon stood and poured two fingers into the bottom of a kitchen glass. He leaned against the counter, watching her as she set the photograph back in the spot it had occupied on the small desk. He was rolling the bourbon around on his tongue, obviously more a connoisseur of good whiskey than she. He had probably thought the concoction she was drinking a sacrilege.
She went back to the couch and put her feet back up. Making myself right at home, she thought, taking a sip of her drink.
“You want to talk about this or wait a while?” Kahler asked
“About Lew?”
“You can come down to the office if you’d rather. I just thought it might be easier for you if…”
“If I just told you.”
“Whatever you want to do, Kate. There’s no hurry. You can just sit here and get soused, if you feel like it.”
“That won’t make it go away.”
“You’re right about that,” he acknowledged.
He took the last of his bourbon into his mouth and set his glass down on the counter. He walked across to take the chair opposite the couch she’d adopted. Despite their closeness earlier tonight, she appreciated the distance. Appreciated his recognition that this wasn’t the time or the place for moving in on her. She didn’t need that kind of pressure right now.
“Let’s get it over with,” she said finally. “I’d rather talk to you than someone else.”
“Then start with the message on the machine. Garrison said, ‘I did what we talked about.’ What did he mean?”
“I couldn’t even remember what he’d said. I tried to think, but I couldn’t remember, and I’d already erased the message.”
“What had you talked about?”
About Thorne Barrington, she thought. About Lew asking questions about his injuries, talking to his friends. That was something she knew Lew had done, but telling Kahler that was going to be hard. It made it sound as if Thorne must be involved in Lew’s death, and she didn’t believe that. Besides, Barrington hadn’t been the only thing they’d discussed.
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“I’d just gotten back from Mays’s house. I went to tell Lew where I’d been because he’d been out of the office when I left. I wanted to run what Mays had said by him, to get his reaction.”
She hesitated, trying to remember exactly what had been said. It was the kind of conversation she and Lew had had a hundred times. She couldn’t have known, of course, how important what had been said might prove to be. Or that it would be the last conversation she’d ever have with him. She cleared that thought from her mind and concentrated on remembering.
“We talked about Mays. I told him what Mays thought of Barrington.”
“Did you tell him you didn’t feel Mays was Jack?”
She shook her head. She hadn’t made that decision until Kahler’s question had forced her to, after she’d talked to Lew.
“He asked me if Mays had any association with any of the hate groups,” she said, remembering. “I didn’t know, so Lew said he’d ask around, talk to you about that. Did he call you?”
Kahler shook his head.
“He probably didn’t have time to get around to it,” she suggested. She racked her brain trying to think what else had been said. Now was the time to tell Kahler that Lew had had time to do the other thing she knew they’d talked about. He had made inquiries about Barrington’s injuries. It felt so wrong to tell the police that, but just because she knew Thorne had nothing to do with Lew’s death didn’t mean she could withhold evidence.
“Lew told me he’d check on the possibility…” she paused, realizing how awful her idea would sound in this context. It hadn’t sounded so brutal when she’d believed Thorne might have had something to do with the confetti bomb, but now, with Lew’s murder, it sounded…incriminating. “About the possibility that Barrington had some brain damage. From the bomb. If it could make him do things that were…out of character.”
