Night Kills

by Ed Gorman

  "I just don't like thinking of her in a freezer," Wagner said.

  "I don't, either. But I don't have much choice. Not until I find out who killed her."

  "You may have killed her, Mr. Brolan."

  Brolan stared at him. "Do you really believe that?"

  "I'm not sure yet" He paused. "Do you have any ideas?"

  "One very good one."

  "Who would that be?"

  "A former boss of mine named Richard Cummings."

  "Why would he kill Emma?"

  "So he could blame me. He hates me."

  "Why?"

  "I took one of his biggest accounts. We both own ad agencies."

  "For that he'd kill a woman?"

  "You don't know Cummings."

  As he spoke, Brolan watched as Wagner straightened himself in the chair. The pain inherent in the movement was obvious on Wagner's face. When he was straightened out, Wagner said, returning Brolan's blunt stare, "Why don't we get it over with, Mr. Brolan?"

  "Get what over with?"

  "Your questions about my condition."

  Brolan felt his throat constrict. "Why would I ask questions like that?"

  "Because right now a part of you thinks I'm a freak, and the other part of you is wondering why I talk so normally. For a freak that is."

  "No, I-"

  "I was born this way. Spina bifida."

  Brolan sighed. He could imagine the struggle life had been for this man. "I'm sorry."

  "So am I. Maybe if I'd had a body like yours, Emma would have fallen in love with me."

  Brolan laughed sourly. "I haven't done so well with women, believe me."

  Wagner offered him a grin. "You've probably done a little better than I have." He pulled himself up slightly in his chair. "There's no cure at present and very likely won't be one in my lifetime. I've gone against great odds just by living this long. I'm thirty-two, in case you're interested." He smiled again politely. "I'm sorry if I'm making you uncomfortable."

  "Well-" Brolan said.

  "If I irritate you, go ahead and get irritated. If you feeling like patting me on the shoulder, don't be afraid to touch. What I have isn't contagious, Mr. Brolan. And if you make an innocent slip of the tongue and say something you think might hurt my feeling-it probably won't. Not if it's innocent. I remember a next-door neighbour I had once. She was always saying why didn't I 'run over' and have a piece of cake. And then apologizing profusely because, of course, I can't run over. Not literally, anyway."

  "You're a hell of lot braver than I'd be. I'd be complaining all the time."

  "No, you wouldn't, Mr. Brolan. Because if that was your attitude, you would have died in your teens. If not before." Brolan nodded.

  Wagner sat up and raised his glass again. Brolan could hear the carbonation fizzing. "Shouldn't drink this stuff. Really eats out your stomach."

  Brolan patted his own stomach. He drank too many carbonated beverages himself. "You said I could ask you a question."

  "Yes."

  "Why the hell'd you get me over here, anyway?"

  "I'm going to believe you, Mr. Brolan. That you didn't kill Emma. And therefore I'm going to use you as my surrogate." Wagner nodded to a charcoal portrait of Charlie Chan. "I watch a lot of detective movies, especially the ones with very elaborate puzzles. Charlie Chan, for one. Have you ever seen the Hildegarde Withers pictures?"

  "Afraid not."

  "They're very good."

  Brolan grinned. "Believe me, there's nothing I'd rather be doing right now than watching a movie."

  Wagner hoisted the glass to his mouth. Ice rattled. As the fake gun had, the glass looked almost too big for his small hands. But he handled it dextrously. After setting the glass back down on the end table, he said, "You're the most likely suspect."

  "I wish I could disagree with you."

  "Somebody hired Emma to walk into that bar the other night and start some trouble with you."

  "You're sure of that?"

  "It's on her computer." He then explained how he was able to hack into her system.

  "But she didn't give the name of the person who hired her?"

  "Afraid not, Mr. Brolan."

  Brolan stared at him. "You seem to have known her pretty well."

  "As I said, I was in love with her."

  "I see."

  "And she was kind to me, too. Kind in a way that was never patronizing. She accepted me, Mr. Brolan, for what I am and for my limitations. I can't tell you how good that feels."

  Brolan nodded.

  Wagner picked up his glass again. He stared straight at Brolan. "You really didn't kill her, did you?"

  "No."

  "It was very unlike her to do what she did the other night.

  Walk into the bar and bump into you that way. Obviously she needed the money; obviously somebody hired her."

  "If I knew who hired her, I might know who killed her."

  "I agree, Mr. Brolan. And so I have a deal to propose."

  "A deal?"

  "Yes." He sipped his Pepsi and set the glass down again. He rolled his wheelchair farther into the living room, closer to Brolan. "I'm a very smart man, Mr. Brolan."

  "I don't have any doubt about that."

  "And I know a great deal about Emma."

  "I know that, too."

  "But what I don't have is a body that enables me to pursue her killer."

  Brolan found himself drawn deeply into this conversation. "Go on."

  "You could be my body, Mr. Brolan. You could go all the places I'd go, ask all the questions I'd ask, chase down all the people I'd chase down. Then you'd be off the hook, and I'd have her killer. How does that sound?"

  "Very reasonable."

  "You'd be willing, to do it? Work together on this?" Brolan laughed unhappily.

  "I don't have much time. I need to come up with answers fast. You can help me."

  "But there's just one promise I need from you."

  "Oh?"

  "When you catch the killer-male or female, it doesn't matter-you turn the killer over to me."

  "For what reason?"

  "My own reasons, Mr. Brolan."

  "I'm not sure I like the sound of that."

  "I need your promise, Mr. Brolan."

  Did Brolan have any choice? "All right. You've got it."

  "Good. Now we can get to work."

  Brolan was confused. "Work?"

  Wagner rolled his chair over to the computer. When he turned it on, it made an electronic whining noise for an instant; then an orange flare exploded in the centre of the screen.

  "Why don't you come over and join me, Mr. Brolan? I'll need your help. We're going to make computer profiles of all the suspects we have on hand."

  Brolan smiled. That was the first good idea he'd heard since finding a dead woman in his freezer the previous night.

  Wagner said, "Why don't you go get us a couple more Diet Pepsis, Mr. Brolan?"

  10

  THEY WERE DRIVING ROUTE 494, out by the airport, when he took an exit abruptly, hitting first an access road and then a gravel road.

  "Where we going?" the girl asked.

  "Nowhere in particular."

  "I'm kinda hungry."

  "How about afterward we go to a Perkins'?"

  "Can you get pancakes this late?"

  "Far as I know."

  "I love their pancakes," she said. It was the first time she'd sounded enthusiastic about anything.

  She fiddled with the stations. Trying to get the very best rocker. He wondered about her taste. So far she'd tuned past Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and Elton John. Whom did she like anyway? Then a soul group came on-a pretty good soul group actually, though he had no idea who they were-and she settled back and closed her eyes and gave herself over to the music. He saw her slight body sway in rhythm to the radio. He felt his erection stiffen. Definitely an erotic little trick. Definitely.

  In ten minutes they were driving past a new housing development. It was one of those project
s that looked as if it had been hurled up over the past twenty-four hours-boxy designs and low-pitched roofs and asymmetrical front facades. Its lights seemed obstinate against the rolling prairie night. Then it was gone, a dim fluttering light on the horizon behind, and they were once again in headlight darkness, dust rolling up and coating the car a rough silver.

  It was probably going to be much like the other night. He had the same knife, same tarpaulin. Only this time Brolan wasn't going to get a chance to do anything with the body. Fucking Brolan. Smart-ass. Or thought he was, anyway.

  He pulled off the road onto a hard mud path where tractors were driven through a gate in the surrounding fence.

  "I thought I was going to do you while you were driving."

  "Changed my mind," he said.

  She looked around. An owl sang lonely on the night. "I don't like it out here. Creepy."

  "I think it's pleasant. No hassles."

  "You going to let me see your condom?"

  "Sure." He reached in his rear pocket and took out his wallet. Three Trojans in red cellophane crackled as he took them out. He waggled them at her. "See?"

  "Okay," she said. She shrugged. "You want to-uh, do it or what?"

  "Why don't we just kind of hold each other first?"

  "Sure. I like it when people hold me. Sometimes I even have daydreams about it. People just holding me, I mean. Sort of like my mother used to."

  "I'll bet she was a nice woman."

  "She was real nice." Denise sounded as if she were going to cry.

  He reached across the car and brought her to him.

  She kissed incredibly well, her little tongue moving quickly inside his mouth. He took her right hand and guided it to his erection. She took it with a hard, professional grip, beginning to stroke him immediately through the material of his trousers. He began gently bucking against her. It was as if she'd grabbed his joy stick and was literally steering his body around the car.

  It was difficult to concentrate on what came next. While they were still kissing, while the thought of orgasm began to have overwhelming appeal to him, he brought his hands up from behind her back and fixed them quickly on her throat.

  She knew at once what was happening. She tried to say something, to call out, perhaps.

  But his hands were tight on her throat-he could feel the muscle and bone of it-and he knew that only after he had killed her would the sex be truly satisfactory.

  She startled him by getting one of her small hands up free and raking her fingernails across his throat.

  This time it was he who cried out. little bitch.

  He heard the door open behind him-he hadn't thought to lock the doors, a very bad mistake-her taking advantage of the moment when she'd stunned him with her nails.

  Then she got her knee and foot into the action, finding enough purchase in the car to start kicking him as he continued to strangle her.

  He paused long enough to slap her very hard across the mouth, to reassert his domination, but she continued to kick, and her kicks were starting to hurt-on the shin and two or three times in the stomach.

  Then she was free.

  Screaming.

  Falling backwards out of the car.

  Panic blinded him for a moment And paralysis.

  He looked down and saw her hit the dirt path they'd pulled onto. But before he could move to do anything, she was scrambling to her feet and running down the road in the direction they'd just come.

  Little bitch.

  Jerking the car into reverse, whipping around so he would have a straight shot at her, he started down the road.

  She looked as if she were crazy. She ran with her arms flailing and her voice so shrill, she was probably giving herself a sore throat.

  He knew then what he'd have to do. He aimed the car to the left-hand shoulder of the road, directly at the point she was running. Even a glancing blow from the car would stop her. Maybe not kill her. But stop her. And he could finish the job himself. Hell, at this point, given all that she had done, he wanted to.

  She was smart, the little bitch.

  Just as his hood ornament matched up with her spine, she surprised him by pitching herself straight down in the gully running beside the road. She vanished.

  He had to fight with the brakes to keep the car from going down into the gully, one of those slow, fishtailing, stomach-turning halts that you're not sure will work till the very last second.

  In the splash of his headlights, he saw her scrabbling up the dusty gully on the other side. When she reached the top, she grabbed on to some rusty barbed wire, crying out as her hands were cut, then hurling herself through the strands of wire. She landed with a dead thump he could hear all the way from where he was. But then she was on her feet and running across a cornfield.

  He whipped the car as close to the edge of the gully as possible, killed lights and engine, and took off, running.

  Down the gully, up the gully, through the barbed wire (not cutting himself as she had), and then into the cornfield proper. With the stalks all dead and lying on the ground, he had no trouble seeing her. His first impression was that she was running to nowhere in particular. Just running to escape him.

  But as he bore on-chest heaving, heart pounding, a million vile words for the little bitch filling his mind-he finally saw what she obviously saw.

  The twinkling lights of a farmhouse on the low, dark horizon.

  Only then did he begin to notice the wind and the rain that was fast becoming sleet

  Only then did he begin to notice that she was outdistancing him very badly.

  Only then did he begin to notice that he would never catch her.

  Bitch.

  Fucking bitch.

  Exhausted, he fell to his knees in the dead cornfield, stalks crackling beneath him like snapping plastic.

  Sleet washed his face; wind took the sweat from his scalp. He took off the wig and the beard then, right there in the cornfield.

  She would report a man with dark hair and a Vandyke beard. She would also report a car that within the hour would be returned to the rental agency.

  Nothing to go on.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Then he felt in his back pocket for the wallet he'd planned to plant near the murder scene (just far enough away that it looked accidental). It was gone.

  And then, there in the cornfield, he started laughing. There was panic in the laugh and frenzy, but there was also ironic satisfaction.

  The little bitch had taken Brolan's wallet.

  11

  IN ALL, BROLAN AND WAGNER spent five hours working through the files on Emma's machine. What emerged there-for Brolan, at any rate-was a portrait of a very lovely but very naive farm girl who had soft, private dreams of being some sort of princess. Her writing was filled with references to the great Disney animated movies, Snow White and Cinderella and The Lady and the Tramp. She rented these for home video and watched them again and again. These movies-and the old copies of Photoplay and Modern Screen from the thirties that Wagner had loaned her-seemed to be her principal reality. About the men she went out with she had little to say. This or that man might be "nice," this or that man might be "nervous," this or that man might be "rude," but beyond that they had neither faces nor souls. They were just what she did for a living and nothing more. A few times she talked about the possibility of getting a venereal disease or even perhaps AIDS but she confided to her diary that she knew that "God just wouldn't let that happen."

  Most of the names were there, most of the meeting places. It was a mosaic of the Twin Cities-occupations ranging from department-store head to doctor to policeman. Meeting places that included the Walker Art Centre, the Civic Centre, and the St. Paul Cathedral. Mention of bitter winter, soft spring, fiery summer. A compliment here for a certain after-shave, a compliment there for a well-cut suit. There was a man named Mr. Pinkham for whom she developed a great affection. He was mentioned at some length at least thirty times.

  Around four o'clo
ck in the morning, Wagner having fixed them eggs and toast, they came to a file marked Advertising. Brolan's eyes did a cartoon-pop. Advertising? What the hell could that be all about?

  "You're getting excited," Wagner said.

  "Damn right I am."

  "I'm hurrying as fast as I can."

  "I know, I know," Brolan said, leaning over Wagner so he could read the screen.

  The first two pages were prose. She talked about how glitzy she expected the advertising world to be. But for all its surface glitter, she'd found it a noisy, vain, empty world, people strutting around in dinner jackets at ceremonies where ad people constantly gave each other awards for their so-called creativity. John had set all this up. She said this three times. John had set this up.

  Brolan said, "Who's John?"

  Wagner paused. "Her… friend."

  "Her pimp, you mean?"

  Wagner said, "I was hoping we could be a little gender, Brolan. She was a decent woman."

  Brolan noticed two things: (a) that he was no longer "Mr" Brolan, and (b) that he'd hurt Wagner's feelings.

  "I'm sorry," Brolan said.

  Wagner looked up at him and smiled. "You try awfully hard to be an asshole, but you can't quite seem to make it, can you?"

  Brolan laughed. "I guess that's a compliment."

  So they went on. More adventures in advertising. One executive had her get underneath his desk and do him while he was talking on the phone. Another executive had her do a striptease behind a huge blow-up of himself which had been used in an awards ceremony, asking her to kiss the blow-up and push herself against it. A third executive had asked her to let him beat her. She had refused.

  It was somewhere in this sad melange of hired sex and kinky turns that the name Tim Culhane first appeared. When he saw it, Brolan's heart started pounding.

  "Tim Culhane!" he said.

  "You know him?"

  "He's one of our art directors." He was the man Brolan had looked at videotapes with that afternoon.

  "Let's see if there's anything else about him."

  For the next twenty minutes they combed the files for any reference to Culhane. Brolan felt a giddy exhilaration born of exhaustion and desperation.