Defensive Wounds

by Lisa Black

  “With the effort it took for my colleagues to get into the vehicle in the first place, I wasn’t going to ask them to get back out. I just slammed the door and hailed the next one.”

  Frank hesitated. The cab company hadn’t said anything about a single fare immediately following the first, but then he hadn’t asked. And there were several major cab companies in the city, as well as minor ones. He considered bluffing Britton—considered it very briefly.

  Besides, he had more. “Then there’s your destination. The Crazy Horse remembers your four friends—not that they’re the only ones in history to walk in drunker than they walked out, but still memorable—and remember only four. No fifth.”

  “As I just explained, I arrived a few minutes later.”

  “Got lost in traffic?” As if traffic would be a problem, downtown after dark with no ball games scheduled.

  “It took me a few minutes to find a cab.”

  Again Frank considered bluffing, then abandoned the idea. No one in the dim lighting and cacophony of the Crazy Horse would remember a single man in a business suit, not unless he tipped with hundred-dollar bills, and Frank suspected that Britton would not. “Just letting you know that your alibi has some potential holes. You’re sure you didn’t walk two blocks back to the Ritz for a quickie with Marie?”

  “Positive.” Britton was watching Angela, but not in a flirtatious way, more like a disapproving mother watching a child as she slowly circled the purplish car, as tense as if he had a body stuffed in the trunk. It said “Stutz” on the radiator and “Bearcat” on the grille. Frank hoped his partner would make the mistake of touching the immaculately painted body, so that just once he could see Britton discombobulated.

  “You sure about that?” Frank pressed.

  “Asked and answered.”

  “Because I’m kind of wondering who left the sperm in Marie, if it wasn’t you.”

  This got Britton’s gaze back from Angela, if only momentarily. An odd expression crossed his face—a flash of anger that immediately turned pensive, then to something Frank would not have believed possible from this man. Sadness.

  “Was she raped?” Britton asked, without the trademark smirk. “They’re saying she was.”

  Frank let him stew for a bit before answering. “There’s no sign of it.”

  Relief. “Oh. Well, I don’t know who the sperm belongs to. I haven’t—hadn’t—seen Marie for at least a week. I mean other than at the convention, where we were both too busy to shed our clothing.”

  “Would you give us a DNA sample?” Angela asked, her hip perilously close to the Stutz’s right fender.

  “Not on your life.”

  “Just for elimination purposes?”

  “And trust you to throw out my profile when the case is over, that it won’t be ‘accidentally’ retained for eternity? As if.”

  “Okay. Then help us figure out who it might belong to, and maybe he’ll give us a sample.”

  Frank took it up. “What about Marie’s other ‘friends’? What about the club?”

  Britton snickered. “The defense attorneys’ S&M sex club? That’s the focus of the police department? Maybe you should leave investigating to that bright little cousin of yours.”

  Frank curled his toes and focused, mightily, to keep his voice level. “People are usually murdered for one of two reasons: sex and money. No one stood to gain monetarily from Marie’s death. Therefore we look at sex partners. Including you. So tell us about her. Did she enjoy sadomasochism?” Frank really didn’t want to ask, didn’t want a reason to have to picture Britton naked with Marie Corrigan. The idea made him distinctly nauseous.

  “Marie thought that life comes with enough pain. Why add more?” Britton watched Angela, and not just because she’d finally moved away from his precious Stutz. “At least not with me.”

  “And with others?” she asked, cool and unruffled. Britton could leer at her all he wanted, Frank realized with an odd sense of pride. Angela Sanchez would never blink.

  “I wouldn’t know, would I? Marie was a chameleon that way, able to be different things to different people. Look.” Britton suddenly straightened up, leaning both hands on the car’s fender under its protective cloth, but he didn’t seem angry. Perhaps he felt cheered by his work on the fender. “We all need a rest period from the shark tank once in a while. But nothing leaves the four walls once you pay the motel clerk. Besides, we’re still not nearly as incestuous as your little clan. You cops marry, divorce, and remarry one another so quickly that I can’t keep up. Tell me you two aren’t sleeping together.”

  It became Angela’s turn to burst out laughing, saving Frank the necessity of a reply.

  Though she didn’t need to laugh that hard. “You said supposed to stay within the four walls. Did Marie leave the past in the motel room?”

  This caused Britton to fiddle with his tools, picking them up and carrying them to a box the size of a refrigerator. It was one of three in the garage. “I don’t know. She would tell me things she probably shouldn’t have, that So-and-So wore a girdle for his potbelly and that this guy messed up by blowing off a depo, and this guy is screwing a judge. But she probably only told me these things, not anyone else.”

  “Because you were special,” Angela said, in a tone of patent disbelief.

  “That’s right.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I own the most lucrative law firm in town, and Marie would have told me anything to come in as a partner.” He said this briskly, oh so sophisticated, but the low tones in his voice told the truth: The sexiest woman in town hadn’t hopped into bed with him because of his looks or personality. “And I think we’re done here.”

  Angela pressed. “Let’s assume Marie didn’t shoot off her mouth with you but with other … friends as well. Who might have taken offense?”

  “Enough to kill her? I can’t believe that. We’re lawyers. We’re used to getting stabbed in the back.”

  “Who had she spoken of recently?”

  “Lovely grammar,” he commented, “but there’s no way I’m going to tattle on my fellow colleagues with once-removed hearsay. And I’ve told you all I can. You can see yourselves out.”

  “Marie is dead,” she reminded him.

  “And there’s nothing I can do about that. And don’t pretend you’re motivated by compassion or justice or anything other than an opportunity to dig into the people you can’t stand. You couldn’t care less who killed Marie. You’re only glad she’s dead.”

  Frank was getting used to hearing that. “So you think we’ll let her killer slide?”

  “I don’t think you’re going to look too hard.”

  “Meaning that when one of your clients goes to jail, it’s because you didn’t care enough?”

  Frank turned on the ball of his foot, making his escape while still able to celebrate the victory of having had the last word with Dennis Britton.

  But before he made it to the outside world, the door opened and a woman entered. She wore an all-white pantsuit that swished gently as she walked, and she had the firmest belly and blondest hair that money could buy. The lady of the manor. She glanced at the detectives without surprise or interest and spoke to her husband. “Time to go.”

  The amused sneer had returned to Britton’s face. “These detectives probably want to ask you what time I got home on Tuesday night, Taylor.”

  Without any change of expression, due to either surgical procedures or utter disinterest, Britton’s wife said, “About one A.M.”

  Frank said, “Thank you. And what about last night?” Raffel’s ex-wife had told them that the man had spent Tuesday evening with his sons, staying well into the evening and leaving only when she’d insisted that they go to bed, school night and all, but without a concrete time of death on Marie a window still existed. The idea that Bruce Raffel had killed Marie and Britton had taken revenge seemed far-fetched to Frank, but stranger things had happened. Besides, he liked watching this woman’s magnificent cheekbon
es as she spoke.

  Husband and wife looked at each other before answering, but then married people often confer in silence. She said, “Dennis brought some of his convention people back to the house for dinner and drinks. They were here from—what, six P.M. to about midnight?”

  He nodded.

  “And then you drove them home?” Frank asked Britton.

  “No,” Taylor Britton answered. “They had their own cars. After they left, we went to bed—and yes, together.”

  Frank wondered what this icily beautiful woman felt, if anything. Did she care enough about the Marie Corrigans in her husband’s life to resort to murder? Perhaps he should ask where she’d been on Thursday night. But that wouldn’t explain Bruce Raffel, and no doubt both deaths would have been contracted out anyway. She didn’t do her own dishes, laundry, or nail filing—why would she commit her own murder?

  “Go ahead, Detective,” Britton said.

  “What?”

  “You’re dying to ask my wife if she knew about me and Marie Corrigan. So go ahead.”

  The City’s Greatest Defense Attorney, reading people like a hastily written brief. Frank turned to Mrs. Britton.

  Apparently Botox hadn’t completely robbed the woman of the ability to show emotion, because right now she looked pissed as hell. Having an open marriage was one thing. Flaunting it to the hired help, quite another.

  But damned if she would let that show. “Yes, I had been aware of her existence—and of her complete unimportance as well. Good day, Officers.” To Britton she repeated, “Time to go,” and accompanied it with a look that spoke volumes. Most pages of which would have read, “Upon pain of death.”

  Britton appeared pleased with himself, having once again completed his trademark move of ticking off everyone in the room. “Satisfied?”

  “No,” Frank said.

  “Not remotely,” Angela said, and they left.

  The two detectives did not speak until they had cleared the sweeping driveway and found their way back to I-271. Then Angela asked for his thoughts.

  “I really want it to be him, because I hate the guy,” Frank admitted, certainly not telling her anything she didn’t already know. “And because it would seem like justice to me, two sharks fighting each other to the death. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword, that kind of thing.”

  “You want to believe that karma really works.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you don’t like him for it.”

  “Why kill her? Maybe she got a little too loose-lipped about their relationship, maybe she got something on him and pressed for that partnership. Maybe she even wanted him to leave his wife. But then why tell us about her tendency to gossip? He’s had plenty of secret meetings with Marie Corrigan—why not kill her in some no-tell motel or in a dark corner of the Metroparks? Why wait until they’re in the Ritz-Carlton?”

  Angela said, “Hotels have that anonymity that dinner at 1890 doesn’t. And the convention provides a handy group of suspects.”

  “If you want to hide an enemy, hide it in a forest of enemies.”

  “You’re awfully philosophical this evening, but yes. Anyone can walk into a hotel. It would be an easy place for an enemy to get to her, easier than her law firm or her apartment at least.”

  “Then how did this enemy get a key to the Presidential Suite?”

  His partner sighed. “I don’t know. I’m just throwing out the idea that if Marie died on an average day in Cleveland, he would be the big fish in our suspect pool. But the convention muddies that water. The problem is, nothing says ‘premeditated’ to me. It still looks like someone broke into the Presidential Suite for a little nookie with Marie, and they had a fight. A crime of passion, pure and simple.”

  “She inspired a lot of passion, and not always the nookie type.”

  “But that still takes me back to Britton, who had a history of quickies with the victim, who—despite his openness just now—needed to keep them discreet or his wife might lock him out of his garage. But this convention begins and he and Marie are surrounded by hotel rooms. Wouldn’t the temptation—”

  Frank said, “But why wouldn’t Marie just rent a room? Why break into the Presidential Suite?”

  “Because she’s cheap? Because she’d have a line of suitors—slash—potential witnesses outside her own door? For the same reason anyone uses that suite—to impress people? Who knows?” Angela slumped her head against the headrest as she drove. “But I’m with you. I’d really like it to be him.”

  Frank chuckled. “Why?”

  “Because karma should count for something. Do you know what kind of car that was?”

  “The Stutz or the Corvette?”

  “The Corvette. It’s a ’63 split-window coupe with a 327 four-speed.”

  Frank stared at her as they passed the Chagrin Road exit. “You a closet pistonhead, Sanchez?”

  “Don’t know a cylinder from a valve stem. What I do know is that ever since I got satellite TV, my son spends most of his viewing hours watching Mecum’s auto auction. Point is, Britton was doing his own bodywork on a car that is easily worth a hundred thousand dollars. More if it’s all original, which I doubt. Not in that color.”

  “If I paid that much for a car, it had better do my laundry and make me pancakes.”

  “If you paid that much for a car, would you fiddle with it if you didn’t know what you were doing?”

  “Britton is the type of guy who always thinks he knows what he’s doing.” Frank reached for a cigarette, remembered they were inside a city-owned vehicle, and put the pack back into his pocket. “But yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, I have not forgotten how Dennis Britton’s first wife died.”

  CHAPTER 19

  *

  Theresa found Don in his usual lair, the small DNA-analysis room at the back of the building. A tall man with brown skin, half of which came from his black father and half from his Hispanic mother, he stood settling microtubes into their niches in the Perkin-Elmer Profiler Plus. It would analyze the short tandem repeats in each DNA sample and report them on a chart. Unlike how it goes on TV, the computer monitor would not light up with a large banner that said “Match!” but Don managed to enjoy his job even without such dramatics. And Theresa enjoyed everything about Don but, again, wouldn’t admit it, even to herself.

  “You,” he said to Theresa.

  “It’s not my fault.”

  “Fourteen samples? Fourteen?”

  “They’re hotel rooms. You know what they’re like.”

  “I didn’t want to. I really wanted to be able to have some plausible deniability in my mind, but now I’ll never stay in another one again. If I don’t have a relative in town that I can flop with, I’m not going. Besides, that’s nearly all my sample kits for the week. We’ll have a pile of cases backed up by next Friday waiting for a shipment. So everyone else’s murder and suicide and death and rape will be put on hold for friggin’ Marie Corrigan.”

  “I take it you were no more a fan than anyone else.”

  “Of her—body, sure. Of her personality, no. Not since she asked me if I could have switched the DNA samples here in the lab.”

  “On the stand?”

  “Yeah, in front of the jury. Not saying I did, of course, merely asking if it would be possible. I said sure, I’d risk my career to frame your poor innocent client, whom I don’t know and have never met, in order to avenge the murder of some other person I didn’t know and had never met.”

  “Wow. What happened?”

  “The judge sent the jury out and yelled at all of us. Me more than her. I guess he didn’t care for the ‘poor innocent client’ comment. Thought it was prejudicial, with all that sarcasm dripping from my voice. But it was okay for her to practically accuse me of a felony for no reason whatsoever.”

  “And you’re normally so easygoing,” she teased. “You weren’t at the Ritz-Carlton on Tuesday night, were you?”

  “No, but I’d have been
happy to hand that guy the two-by-four or whatever he used on her head.”

  “A chair. Would you really?”

  Don leaned against the counter and rubbed some of the shine off his forehead. “No, not really. Just don’t expect me to shed a lot of tears over that grave. So what can I do for you? And it had better not be more DNA samples.”

  “No, though it does involve Marie Corrigan. I need you to cast your mind back about three years. Sixteen-year-old white girl in Westlake, found bludgeoned in a schoolmate’s house, a boy, same age.” She didn’t bother with the names or the exact date or address or anything like that, because details like that tended to slip out of the mind almost as quickly as they enter. Only the story remains.

  “Yeah … yeah, I remember. Little girl, head beat in. I didn’t really do much with that one—had no DNA. Either she wasn’t raped at all or the guy must have had a vasectomy.”

  “A teenage boy would hardly have a vasectomy.”

  Don snorted. “Some should. But it didn’t do much for the prosecution’s case, as I recall.”

  “Where were the parents?”

  “Whose, the boy’s? Out of town, I think—no, out of the country. Someplace hoity-toity, like Paris or something. I had the impression they had money.”

  “Who called the cops?”

  No reaction. Don checked the colored lights on the Thermocycler and straightened a stack of printouts, then said, “No idea. I can’t remember another single thing about the case. Just sitting on the stand while Marie Corrigan asked if DNA had been obtained from the possible semen. She phrased the question a little differently each time, but emphasized the word ‘possible’ quite consistently. She was right, of course, with a weak acid phosphatase reaction and no sperm, it could have been heavy vaginal secretions and not semen at all. After about five times, the judge finally said, ‘I think the witness has testified there was no foreign DNA found.’ ”

  “Were you surprised at the verdict?”

  “Verdict?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember that now. You talk to the prosecutor?”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. He couldn’t explain the verdict but didn’t complain about it either. Usually they’re a little bit bitter when they think someone got away with murder.”