“I’ll be all right.” She took the shotgun.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You saved my life, Letty. I’ll never forget it. Now go.”
Five days later, at 6:01 P.M., Chase Rochefort stepped off the elevator, dressed to the nines in a light gray Coppley and a cobalt Oxford, engaged with his iPhone as he breezed through the lobby of the neo-gothic Jackson Building, whose twelfth floor housed his law practice—Rochefort, Bloodsworth and Sax, LLC. The stunning redhead followed him out onto the street, sprouting her umbrella against the drizzly Friday evening. Trailed him along South Pack Square to North Market, and then several blocks to the intersection with Woodfin, where Rochefort entered the Sheraton Hotel.
He sat at the corner of the chophouse bar, letting his Chilean sea bass turn cold and drinking double Powers on the rocks with twists of lemon like his life depended on it. Halfway through his sixth, the barstool beside him opened up and Letty claimed it and ordered a glass of Merlot.
While the barkeep poured her wine, Letty reached over, patted Chase’s hand, and asked with faux empathy, “How you holding up?” Searched his face for some tell of the preceding weeks’ stress, but no indication presented aside from a darkness under his eyes that had mostly been erased with concealer and the blush of Irish whiskey.
He worked up a glassy-eyed smile, slurred, “We know each other?”
“Well, I certainly know you.”
The barkeep returned with her wine. “That’s ten dollars. Would you like to start a—”
Chase tapped his chest. “My tab.”
“Of course, Mr. Rochefort.”
Chase banged his rocks glass against Letty’s wineglass and threw back the rest of his whiskey. “Have I sued you before?” he asked, excavating the lemon from the melting cubes of ice, crunching the rind between his back molars.
“No, you haven’t sued me.”
“Good.” He grinned. “I’ve sued half the people in this town.”
The barkeep arrived with a fresh double Powers on the rocks and swapped it out for Chase’s empty glass.
“But I was curious about something,” Letty asked, letting her left knee brush against his leg.
“What’s that?”
“I’ve read the Citizen-Times cover to cover for the last five days and there’s been no mention of it.” He sipped his new drink, Letty wondering about the depth of his intoxication, how much of this was sliding past him. “I’ve called your home. Never got an answer. You and Skyler have been living out of this hotel all week, and you come down here and drink yourself into a stupor every night.”
His face paled slightly through the Powers glow. “Who are you?”
“I was there, Chase.”
“Where? What are you talking about?”
She leaned over, whispered in his ear: “Room 5212 at the Grove Park Inn when you met with Arnold LeBreck and hired him to murder your wife. I was in the closet. I heard everything.”
He drew back, the noise of the chophouse swelling—thirty separate conversations intermingled with the clink of glassware and china.
She said, “Last Sunday morning, I went to your house in Montford. I told your wife everything—”
“Oh Jesus.”
“—and when I left, she was holding a shotgun on Mr. LeBreck and on the verge of calling the police. I should never have left her . . .
“But as I just mentioned, nothing in the papers. No sign of Daphne. So I’m sitting here wondering what happened, but before you answer, let me tell you that I’ve written a letter to the Asheville Police Department providing a firsthand account, and it will be delivered tomorrow by a friend of mine should I become scarce.” This last part was a lie. She’d only just thought of it.
Chase drained his whiskey in one shot and slammed the glass down on the bar.
“Why won’t you go back to your house, Chase? What did you do there on Sunday morning after I left? What did you do to your wife?”
Chase grabbed the side of the bar to steady his hands. He closed his eyes, opened them again. The barkeep set another Powers in front of him and took away his cold, untouched dinner plate.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” he said.
“I’m going back to your house,” Letty said. “Tonight. Am I going to find her dead? Why won’t you tell me, instead of sitting here in denial, pretending none of this has happened?”
Chase stared down the length of the bar for a full minute, then rubbed his palms into his eyes, smearing a bit of eyeliner.
Another greedy sip of Powers and he said, “I met Daphne after my first wife died. Skyler was two, and my parents kept him for a week, made me take a trip. We met in Oranjestad. You know Aruba? She could be so engaging when she wanted to be.
“We’d been married a year when I caught the first glimpse of what she really was. Friend of ours had gotten divorced and Daphne was consoling her on the telephone. It was a small thing, but I suddenly realized what she was doing. My wife had this way of talking to you so you’d think she was comforting you when she was actually salting your wounds. I saw her do it again and again. Even with me. With my son. It was like the pain of others attracted her. Filled her up with this black joy. Please,” he slurred. “Don’t go back there. Just leave it alone.”
“So it turns out your wife’s a bitch after all, and you want her dead. That’s so original.” Letty had a strong desire to take the Beretta 84 pistol out of her purse and jam it into Chase’s ribs, make him come along with her, rub his face in whatever he’d done. Instead, she climbed down from the barstool, said, “Have a wonderful night of freedom, Chase. It may be your last.”
Letty parked her 4Runner in the cul-de-sac and walked up the driveway toward the Rochefort residence. The rain had further dissolved into a cold, fine mist, and all she could see of the Victorian was the lamplight that pushed through a row of tall, arched windows on the second floor. At the front door, she peered through a panel of stained glass, saw a sliver of the lowlit hallway—empty.
She knocked on the door and waited, but no one came.
The third window on the covered porch slid open. She lifted the shade, saw the living room illuminated by a sole piano lamp on the baby grand. Climbed over the back of the upholstered sofa and closed the window behind her.
“Daphne?”
The hardwood groaned under her footsteps as she moved through the living room and up the stairs. The bed in the master suite looked slept in, covers thrown back, sheets wrinkled, clothes hanging off the sides.
Letty went downstairs into the kitchen, and as she stared into a sinkful of dirty dishes, noticed the music—some soothing adagios—drifting up from a remote corner of the house.
She walked around the island to a closed door near the breakfast nook.
Opened it. The music strengthening.
Steps descended into a subterranean level of the residence, and she followed them down until she reached a checkerboard floor made of limestone composite. To the left, a washing machine and dryer stood in the utility alcove surrounded by hampers of unwashed laundry that reeked of mildew.
Letty went right, the music getting louder.
Rounded a corner and stopped.
The brick room was twenty by twenty feet and lined with metal wine-racks, the top rows of bottles glazed with dust.
Beside an easel lay a Bose CD player, a set of Wusthof kitchen knives, and boxes of gauze and bandages. Hanging from the ceiling of the wine cellar by a chain under her arms—Letty’s eyes welled up—Daphne.
Then the lifeless body shifted and released a pitiful wail.
Letty recognized the tattoo of the strangling hands as Arnold LeBreck painfully lifted his head and fixed his eyes upon Letty, and then something behind her.
Letty’s stomach fell.
She spun around.
Daphne stood five feet away wearing a black rubber apron streaked with paint or blood and a white surgical mask, her black hair pinned up except for a few loose strands that splayed across her sh
oulders.
She pointed a shotgun at Letty’s face, and something in that black hole suggested the flawed philosophical underpinnings that had landed Letty in this moment. No more hating herself, no avoiding the mirror, letting her father whisper her to sleep, no books on learning to love yourself or striving to become something her DNA could not support. She was facing down a shotgun, on the verge of an awful death, not because she was an evil person, but because she wasn’t evil enough.
Letty thought fast. “Oh, thank God. You’re not hurt.”
Daphne said through the mask, “What are you doing here?”
“Making sure you’re okay. I ran into Chase—”
“What’d he tell you? I warned him to let me have a week with Arnold, and then I’d be out of his life.”
She was facing down a shotgun, not because she was an evil person, but because she wasn’t evil enough.
“He didn’t tell me anything, Daphne. That’s why I came over. To check on you.”
Arnold moaned and twitched, managed to get himself swinging back and forth over the wide drain in the floor like a pendulum.
“That man was going to kill me,” Daphne said.
“I know, honey. I saved you. Remember?” The smell was staggering, Letty’s eyes beginning to water, her stomach to churn. “Well, I see you’re okay, so I’ll slip out, let you—”
“You shouldn’t have come back.”
“I didn’t see anything in the papers about your husband or Arnold. I thought something had happened to you after I left last Sunday.”
Daphne just stared at her. The face mask sucking in and out. At last she said, “You think what I’m doing is—”
“No, no, no. I’m not here to . . . that man was going to kill you. He deserves whatever happens to him. Think of all the other people he’s murdered for money.”
“You saw my painting?”
“Um, yeah.”
“What do you think?”
“What do I think?”
“Do you like it?”
“Oh, yes. It’s . . . thought-provoking and—”
“Some parts of Arnold’s portrait are actually painted with Arnold.”
Daphne’s arms sagged with the weight of the shotgun, the barrel now aligned with Letty’s throat.
“I saved your life,” Letty said.
“And I meant what I said. I won’t ever forget it. Now go on into the wine cellar. Just push Arnold back and stand over the drain.”
“Daphne—”
“You’d be a lovely subject.”
Letty’s right hand grazed the zipper of her all-time favorite score—a Chanel quilted leather handbag she’d stolen out of the Grand Hyatt in New York City. Thirty-five hundred in Saks Fifth Avenue.
“Get your hand away from there.”
“My BlackBerry’s vibrating.”
“Give it to me.”
Letty unzipped the bag, pulled out the BlackBerry with her left hand, let her right slip inside. Any number of ways to fumble in front of a gaping shotgun barrel.
She tossed the BlackBerry to Daphne, and as the device arced through the air, Letty’s right hand grasped the Beretta and thumbed off the safety.
She squeezed the trigger as Daphne caught the phone.
The shotgun blasted into the ceiling, shards of blond brick raining down and Daphne stumbling back into the wall as blood ran in a thin black line out of a hole in her throat.
Letty pulled out the pistol—no sense in doing further damage to her handbag—and shot her three times in the chest.
The shotgun and the BlackBerry hit the limestone and Daphne slid down into a sitting position against the wall. Out from under her rubber apron, blood expanded through little impulse ripples whose wavelengths increased with the fading pump of her heart. Within ten seconds, she’d lost the strength or will to clutch her throat, her eyes already beginning to empty. Letty kicked the shotgun toward the washing machine and walked to the edge of the wine cellar, breathing through her mouth; she could taste the rotten air, now tinged with cordite.
She looked at Arnold. “I’m going to call an ambulance for you.”
He nodded frantically at the pistol in Letty’s hand.
“You want me to . . . ?”
He let out a long, low moan—sad and desperate and inhuman.
“Arnie,” she said, raising the Beretta, “I’m not even sure you deserve this.”
Letty walked down the long driveway toward the 4Runner. The rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking up, a few meager stars shining in the southern sky, a night bird singing to a piece of the moon. For a fleeting moment, she felt the heart-tug of having witnessed a beautiful thing, but a crushing thought replaced the joy—there was so much beauty in the world, and in her thirty-six years, she’d brushed up against so little of it.
At the bottom of the driveway, she took her BlackBerry out of the ruined handbag, but five seconds into the search for Chase Rochefort’s number, powered off her phone. She’d done enough. Much more than enough.
The alarm squeaked and the 4Runner’s headlights shot two brief cylinders of light through what mist still lingered in the cul-de-sac. Letty climbed in behind the wheel and fired up the engine. Sped away from that house, from lives that were no longer her problem. Felt a familiar swelling in her chest, that core of inner strength she always seemed to locate the first night of a long bit when the loneliness in the cell was a living thing.
And she promised herself that she’d never try to be good again.
Only harder, stronger, truer, and at peace, once and forever at peace, with her beautiful, lawless self.
Copyright © 2010 Blake Crouch
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FICTION
ET TU, VALENTINUS
R. T. LAWTON
Art by Kelly Denato
Yarnell felt guilty about having the thin guy from the mortuary sleeping in his front closet. As he’d explained to his wife Patricia after she went to get her overcoat the next morning, his and Beaumont’s Halloween night break-in from the storm sewer into the basement of the jewelry store hadn’t gone quite as planned. There had been a slight miscalculation in measuring the distance from the manhole in the alley over to the correct spot to knock a hole in the sewer wall, and they ended up in a mortuary and if it hadn’t been for the assistant undertaker sleeping in a coffin because his wife cleaned him out in a divorce settlement and he couldn’t even afford rent on a park bench, they wouldn’t have made a dime on that job.
“The Thin Guy,” continued Yarnell, “opened the office safe for us on the condition that Beaumont and I cut him in on the loot, plus we now have to teach him how to burgle so he can make some quick cash on the side. Guess you could say me and Beaumont got us a protégé.”
“And he’s sleeping in our closet because . . . ?”
This was part of what Yarnell felt guilty about. “Because the owner of the mortuary didn’t know his assistant was hiding on the premises, waiting until after the business got locked up for the night. That’s when the Thin Guy snuck out of his hiding place and slept in the only comfortable spot he could find. But, after our burglary, the Thin Guy didn’t think it wise for him to sleep in their coffins anymore, so he needed a new place.”
“And he picked our closet?”
“Well,” replied Yarnell, “we’ve only got a one-bedroom flat and your worthless nephew is crashing on the living room sofa, not that I’m complaining, understand, but it doesn’t leave much else. Besides, this guy’s used to sleeping in tight places.”
“Why didn’t your partner take him in?”
Yarnell rubbed the upper edge of his hand over his chin.
“You know how bad the economy is right now. Turns out Beaumont had a short month and a long payment. He had to borrow a little cash from somebody who knew somebody, but then things didn’t work out so well on the repayment plan. Now Beau changes residence every time his hallway floor squeaks.”
Yarnell nodded. “Bent Nose Tony from Seventy-ninth Street, one unforgiving individual when it comes to monetary matters, if you ask me.”
“So we end up with a permanent guest? Where am I supposed to hang my coat?”
“As soon as the guy makes enough money which he doesn’t have to declare on his income taxes,” Yarnell replied, “then he’ll move out.”
Patricia kept her arms crossed tightly over her chest, as the toe of her right shoe beat a grim funeral march on the kitchen linoleum floor. Yarnell hoped she was merely contemplating how to cope with circumstances concerning their new boarder. A wordless silence dragged out between them. Then her left eyebrow arched.
“What’s with the guy’s pinstriped suit?” she finally inquired. “Makes him look more like an old-time gangster than an undertaker.”
“He bought it out of the trunk of a Cadillac down on lower Fifth Avenue. Only place he could afford to shop after the divorce.”
“Now that’s something to think about,” said his wife.
Yarnell’s sinking feeling caused him to throw his arms out in surrender. “Look, babe,” he exclaimed in desperation, “I’ve got a little extra money saved up and I was thinking maybe we should take a cruise for our wedding anniversary a few months down the road. You know, that being Valentine’s Day and all. We could get away for a few days. Forget about this other stuff, leave all our problems behind.”
He had no idea if this diversion would work, but then Patricia surprised him by immediately jumping on the suggestion. Turned out she’d been reading magazine articles about couples taking various romantic cruises, but always thought it beyond their current budget. And that was how, almost three months later, Yarnell found himself on a downhill run in the Atlantic Ocean headed toward, as the brochure said, tropic breezes, sandy beaches, waving palm trees, exotic rum drinks, and snorkeling over the reefs. Since his knees hadn’t seen the sun in almost thirty years, he figured he’d skip anything having to do with swimming suits, bobbing up and down in salt water, and the risk of becoming potential shark bait. He’d already seen enough movies and documentaries on TV about large, hungry fish to figure he’d be nothing more than a floating hors d’oeuvre waiting to be gobbled. Nope, he’d stick with the on-board casino and their tall, tulip-shaped glasses with tiny bright-colored umbrellas leaning out the top and small chunks of fresh fruit impaled on sword-shaped plastic toothpicks. Better to be the consumer, rather than the consumed. That was the plan.
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 03/01/11 Page 10
