Detective

by Arthur Hailey

  For Patrick, Cynthia Ernst was a haven in every way. He conceded that she was far stronger than he was, and willingly became a compliant cohort, relying on her guidance more and more. For her part, Cynthia believed she had found someone she could both control and use in advancing her long-term personal plans.

  That belief was confirmed late one night when Patrick arrived at Cynthia’s apartment.

  From her bed she heard an insistent pounding on her outer door. Peering through a peephole, she could see Patrick glancing up and down the hall and running his fingers through his hair.

  When she opened the door he rushed in and said, “Jesus, Cynthia, I’ve done something terrible! I’ve got to get away. Can I take your car?” He hurried to a window and looked both ways—up and down the street below. “I’ve got to get out of here … got to go somewhere! Cyn, I need your help.” He looked at her imploringly, his fingers still rifling his hair.

  “My God, Patrick, you’re dripping with sweat.” Cynthia told him firmly, “You have to calm down. Sit down and I’ll get you a Scotch.”

  She joined him on a couch with the drink, then massaged his neck. He started to talk, subsided, then suddenly blurted out, “Oh God, Cyn, I killed Naomi! Shot her.” His voice choked.

  Cynthia inched away. As a police officer—a Homicide detective, especially—her duty was clear. She should arrest Patrick, give him a Miranda warning, and take him into custody. Thinking fast, weighing possibilities and opportunities, she did none of those things. Instead she went to her bedroom, took a tape recorder from a bedside drawer, inserted a new tape and, as she reentered the living room, pressed RECORD. Patrick was crying, his head in his hands. Cynthia put the machine on a table near him, shielded from view by a plant.

  Then she said, “Patrick, if you want me to help you, you have to tell me exactly what happened.”

  He looked up, nodded, then began, his voice still breaking. “I didn’t plan it, didn’t intend … but always hated the thought of Naomi with someone else … When I saw those two together, her and that creep, I was blinded, angry … I’d been carrying a gun. I pulled it out, without even thinking, fired … Suddenly it was over … Then I saw what I’d done. Oh God, I’d killed them both!”

  Cynthia was aghast. “You killed two people? Who was the other?”

  “Kilburn Holmes.” He said abjectly, “He’d been seeing Naomi, was with her all the time. People told me.”

  “You stupid fucking idiot!” For the first time, Cynthia felt cold fear. It was a double murder in which Patrick was certain to be a suspect, and what she was doing—assuming she continued—could cost her own career and freedom.

  “Did anyone see you?” she asked. “Was there any witness?”

  Patrick shook his head. “No one, I’m sure of that. It was dark and late. Even the shots didn’t draw attention.”

  “Did you leave anything, anything whatever, at the scene?”

  “I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “As you were leaving, did you hear noise? Was there an alarm, voices?”

  “No.”

  “Where is the gun?”

  “Here.” From a pocket he produced a Smith & Wesson .38.

  “Put it on that table,” she told him.

  Cynthia paused, calculating the risks she might be taking, weighing them against the leverage they would give her over Patrick. She saw her duty clearly, but she also saw him as a useful tool.

  Making a decision, she went to her kitchenette and returned with a plastic bag and kitchen tongs. Without touching the gun, which would have Patrick’s fingerprints on it, she placed it in the plastic bag and sealed it. Then she pointed to a T-shirt he was wearing. “Take that off; it’s got blood on it. And those sneakers, too.”

  Again, touching nothing except the plastic bags, she put the T-shirt and shoes in other bags. “Now give me your house keys and take off the rest of your clothes.”

  When Patrick hesitated, Cynthia snapped, “Do exactly what I say! Now, where was it that you killed them?”

  “In the driveway of Naomi’s house.” He shook his head and sighed.

  With her back to Patrick and blocking his view, Cynthia turned off the tape recorder. In any case, she realized, he was still too dazed to notice.

  Patrick had now shed all his clothes and was naked. He stood nervously, his shoulders slouched, eyes to the floor. Again Cynthia went to the kitchenette, and brought back a large brown bag, into which she stuffed the clothes.

  “I’m going to your house,” she said. “I’ll dump these somewhere and bring you back fresh clothes. While I’m gone, take a very hot shower and scrub yourself—use a nail brush—all over, and especially your hand that held the gun. Where did you get the gun?”

  “I bought it two months ago.” He added gloomily, “My name’s on record.”

  “If the gun isn’t found and there’s no other evidence, you’re safe. So you lost it a week after you bought it. Remember that, and don’t change that story.”

  “I won’t,” Patrick mumbled.

  As Cynthia left, he was entering her bathroom.

  On the way to Patrick’s house, taking a roundabout route, Cynthia disposed of his clothes in several different garbage cans and a Dumpster. At the house, she quickly put together fresh clothes for him to wear.

  At 5:30 A.M., Cynthia returned to her apartment and upon opening the door saw Patrick sitting on the couch, hunched over the glass coffee table with a rolled-up dollar bill in his nose.

  “How dare you do that here!” she screamed.

  His head shot up, revealing four lines of cocaine on the tabletop, which he had not yet inhaled.

  Patrick wiped his nose and sniffed. “Jesus, Cynthia, no big deal. I just thought it would help me through this.”

  “Flush it down the toilet—and any more you have. Now!”

  Patrick started to object, then headed for the bathroom, muttering, “It’s not like I’m an addict.”

  Cynthia silently acknowledged that Patrick was not, in fact, an addict. Like others whom she knew, he used the drug intermittently. She herself never used drugs, or anything else that might diminish her control.

  Patrick returned from the bathroom blustering about the two hundred bucks he had flushed away. Ignoring him, Cynthia began to label and describe the items she had placed in plastic bags, including the gun and bloodstained clothing, making sure that Patrick was watching. Afterward, she put everything in a cardboard carton, intending to add the tape recording later.

  Patrick, pacing the room restlessly, asked, “Why are you doing all that?”

  “Just to make everything tidy.” Cynthia knew it was an unsatisfactory answer, but it didn’t matter. Patrick was high now, hyper and inattentive. Dismissing the query, as she expected, he launched into a description of how he kept his writer’s notes in a similarly organized way.

  Later, after Cynthia had hidden the box of damning evidence, she would answer Patrick’s question more precisely—and in a way he would like less.

  The following evening, alone, Cynthia played back the tape. The quality was good. She had brought home another recorder and an extra tape to accomplish the next step.

  First, on the original recorded tape where Patrick described the double killing, Cynthia performed what tape technicians with a sense of history termed a “Nixon-Woods-Watergate”—erasing a previously recorded portion by running the tape and holding down the RECORD button with no microphone connected. Using a stopwatch and notes, she wiped out all traces of her own voice. Afterward, just as on President Nixon’s crucial Watergate tape, there were long gaps, but no matter—Patrick’s performance was clear and damning, as he would realize when Cynthia played it back to him. Meanwhile she made an extra copy of the edited tape for that purpose, putting the original in the carton with the other evidence.

  She sealed the carton carefully with blue plastic tape bearing her initials, then drove with it to her parents’ Bay Point house. There Cynthia had a private room on the top floor, where sh
e stayed occasionally and stored some personal effects. Unlocking the room, she placed the carton on a high shelf in a cupboard, out of sight behind other boxes. She planned to reopen the carton and remove the labels that bore her handwriting; also, while wearing gloves, she would replace the plastics bags, which had her fingerprints, with new ones that did not. Somehow, though, as time went by and other pressures mounted, it never happened.

  From the beginning, Cynthia did not intend to have anyone view the carton’s contents. She simply wanted Patrick to see her assemble and catalog the items, giving her a permanent hold over him. Then eventually, she supposed, she would put the evidence in a metal strongbox and throw it into the Atlantic Ocean, miles offshore.

  Almost at once after the discovery of the bodies of Naomi Jensen and Kilburn Holmes, Patrick Jensen became Miami Homicide’s prime suspect and was questioned intensively. To Cynthia’s relief, there were no adequate grounds on which to arrest and charge him. It was true that Jensen had opportunity and no alibi. But, beyond that, there was a total lack of evidence. She had also cautioned Patrick to say as little as possible while being questioned, and not to volunteer anything. “Remember, you do not have to prove your innocence,” she had emphasized. “It’s the cops who must prove your guilt.”

  Two minor pieces of evidence were found by an ID crew at the murder scene, but neither was conclusive. A handkerchief found near the bodies matched others Jensen owned. But nothing on the handkerchief proved that it was his.

  Similarly, a fragment of paper clutched in Kilburn Holmes’s hand matched another fragment found in Jensen’s garbage. Again, it proved nothing. The bullets in both bodies were identified as .38 caliber, and records showed that Jensen had bought a Smith & Wesson .38 two months before. But he claimed to have lost the gun a week after buying it, a search of his house did not reveal it, and, without the murder weapon, nothing could be done.

  Cynthia was also glad that Ainslie’s team was not involved with the case, which was handled by Sergeant Pablo Greene, with Detective Charlie Thurston as lead investigator. Since Cynthia was known to have socialized with Jensen, Thurston did ask her, almost diffidently, “Do you know anything at all about this guy that might help us?”

  She had answered, pleasantly enough, “No, I don’t.”

  “Do you believe Jensen would have been capable of killing those two?”

  “I’m sorry to say this, Charlie,” Cynthia replied. “But yes, I do.”

  Thurston nodded. “So do I.”

  And that had been the end of it. It clearly did not occur to Sergeant Greene, Detective Thurston, or anyone else in Homicide that Detective Cynthia Ernst, while having been acquainted in the past with someone who was now a murder suspect, could even remotely be involved.

  The reason, of course, was that the face Cynthia presented to her colleagues, superiors, and most others she met was cooperative and friendly. Only criminals with whom she dealt saw her cold and ruthless side.

  Patrick Jensen encountered that side when Cynthia next saw him, after cautiously avoiding him for several months.

  2

  For Cynthia’s next meeting with Jensen she chose the Cayman Islands, the ultimate discreet destination where total privacy is possible if that is what you want. Cynthia did.

  They traveled separately and stayed at different hotels. Cynthia’s reservation at Grand Cayman’s Hyatt Regency was in the name of Hilda Shaw. To avoid using an identifying credit card, she sent a cash deposit via Western Union and added more cash on arrival. At the check-in desk, no one raised an eyebrow.

  Jensen, obeying phoned instructions from Cynthia, made his own separate reservation at the nearby, more modest Sleep Inn. But for most of the three days and nights in Grand Cayman, he stayed in Cynthia’s room, which overlooked sculptured gardens.

  When they first met there, having been apart for three months, they seized each other, hurriedly tore off their clothes, and made violent love—so violent that when Cynthia climaxed she pounded both clenched fists on Jensen’s shoulders.

  He protested, “Jesus Christ, that hurts!”

  When they were lying calmly amid the rumpled sheets, Patrick said, “So much happened that last night we were together, I never got around to thanking you for what you did for me. So I thank you now.”

  “Thanks aren’t important.” Cynthia’s voice was deliberately offhand. “I simply paid a purchase price.”

  Patrick laughed. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I own you.”

  There was a silence. Patrick said slowly, “I suppose you’re talking about that box of tricks? You’ve got it hidden away somewhere.”

  She nodded. “Naturally.”

  “And you think that if I disobey you somehow, or offend you, you can open it up and say, ‘Hey, guys!—look at all this evidence. Now you can nail that bastard Jensen.’”

  “You write good dialogue.” Cynthia gave a small, tight smile. “I couldn’t have said it better.”

  Patrick’s face had the ghost of a smile, too. “But there’s a detail or two you’ve overlooked. Even you. Like your handwriting on those labels. And some fingerprints …”

  “All of that’s gone,” she lied, reminding herself that it was a detail she must attend to soon. “I labeled the bags so you’d remember what I was doing. Now only your fingerprints are on everything. And, oh yes, there’s an audiotape.”

  Cynthia described how everything Jensen had said in her apartment that night—his admission of having killed Naomi and her friend Kilburn Holmes—had been recorded. “I brought a copy of the tape with me. Want to hear it?”

  He gestured dismissively. “Never mind; I believe you. But I could still rope you in by explaining how you helped me hide the evidence. So if they found me guilty, you’d be fucked—an accessory at least.”

  Cynthia shook her head. “No one would believe you. I’d deny everything and would be believed. And something else.” Her voice hardened. “The evidence would be found in some place where you could have hidden it. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t know where that was until an anonymous tip-off caused the police to find it.”

  They faced each other fully then, each calculating. Paradoxically, Jensen leaned back and laughed. With apparent good nature he lifted both hands in a signal of surrender. “Darling Cynthia, you’re really a skewed genius. Well, you said you own me. I now admit you do.”

  “You don’t seem to mind.”

  “This may be some kind of perversion, but the funny thing is, I rather like it.” He added thoughtfully, “It would make a great story.”

  “Which you will never write.”

  “Then what will I do—since I’m to be some kind of pet you’re holding on a leash?”

  The moment had come. Cynthia’s eyes riveted him. “You will help me kill my parents.”

  “Listen to me,” Cynthia ordered. “Listen very carefully.”

  Moments earlier, when Jensen had tried to talk—to reason with her, as he saw it, after her shattering statement—she’d silenced him. He sat quietly waiting.

  Now, taking her time, drawing on earliest childhood memories plus details she had coaxed from her mother, Cynthia laid before him, graphically and persuasively, the whole story, sparing him—and herself—nothing.

  As a newborn … Gustav’s sick sexual obsession with Cynthia … his obscene probing … her own innocent terror, growing each day until, at the age of three, even the sight of her father approaching made her hide under the covers, sobbing, shrinking away …

  Eleanor did nothing, thinking of herself only—of her own potential shame and disgrace if Gustav’s perversion was revealed …

  Meanwhile, Cynthia’s young mind was developing, even while Gustav persisted in abusing her … Her memories, now crystallizing, would be carried with her down the years, along with fear and rage …

  The memories were monstrous—of Gustav’s ever-increasing sexual interest in his daughter, stimulated now by beatings … hard, stinging slaps and blows for trivial �
��offenses,” their nature neither explained nor understood … And more, still more “punishment”—for what? … The bruises, the burned legs … the endless lies her mother told …

  When Cynthia was six, her father first rubbed himself against her … And later, as her body grew—the ultimate perversion and humiliation—he began raping her, an act so disgusting and painful that she screamed … Gustav, obsessed with his own satisfaction, took no notice, perhaps even enjoying his daughter’s despair … Still Eleanor did nothing …

  Thus, with the stage set—finally, inevitably Cynthia’s pregnancy happened at age twelve … The horror for a child—now hidden away, shielded from outsiders’ view, knowing she was ungainly, her body expanding amid strange sensations and movement inside her … Aware, too, she was in deep disgrace, made to feel guilty, yet helpless to help herself, and with no one to talk with, to lean on, or to trust … And at the degrading, secret, painful birthing, the baby she never saw whisked away …

  The sole consolation: The sexual assaults by Gustav, which had continued through her pregnancy, somehow ceased, for reasons she never knew—until much later, when her mother reluctantly revealed their lawyer’s threat to expose Gustav if he didn’t stop …

  Then, like some evil postscript, Eleanor and her statement to the welfare woman—that official person who accepted the glib lies and never insisted on hearing Cynthia’s story …

  Eventually, and despite everything, Cynthia’s coldly pragmatic calculation … her decision to bide her time, to use her parents until her independence was assured, and then to exercise her long-festering hatred and to kill them—as they had killed so much in her …

  That retribution time was nearer now, as she began to plan … And she had her instrument …