Night Kills

by Ed Gorman

  "Well, that's good, because I do care about you."

  And then she sat back on her haunches, holding her hands in his lap, and she said, "I'd really be honoured to shovel your walk. Really."

  "Boy," Greg said, "I've got to remember this for future reference."

  "Remember what?"

  "That whenever I want to make you happy I don't have to buy you anything or give you compliments. All I've got to do is ask you to shovel the walk."

  She laughed. "Now who's being the smart-ass?"

  So, while she got bundled up and grabbed the shovel from the back porch, Greg got on the phone to call Brolan and tell him all about the mysterious visitor they'd had in the middle of the night, and how said mysterious visitor was desperate enough to knock unconscious a sixteen-year-old girl-

  26

  "MR. BROLAN?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm Tom Dodge with the Minneapolis Police Department." The men shook hands.

  "Is there somewhere we could go to talk for a little while?"

  "Sure."

  "It shouldn't take long. In case you've got another appointment, that is."

  "Right down here."

  Brolan led the detective down a short corridor to where three small conference rooms were housed. It was lunchtime, and two of them were open. In the third two art directors were projecting a slide show and making notes on which slides had to be replaced. These were the two resident agency wise guys.

  They could turn anything into dark humour. In general they were very funny, and all the funnier because they were often the butt of their own jokes.

  Brolan opened the door on conference room number two, flipped on the overhead light, and then stepped back for Dodge to precede him.

  "I can get us some coffee if you'd like a cup," Brolan said.

  He was well aware that his voice was about half an octave higher than usual. He was also aware that beneath his undershirt was a glaze of cold sweat

  "No, thanks," Dodge said. "Coffee makes me want to smoke cigarettes. My kids convinced me to give up smoking about six months ago. I still haven't been able to go back to coffee." He glanced around the room. "This is a very nice place. I haven't seen this much mahogany since the days when my grandfather had his law offices."

  "So, you come from a tradition of law?"

  Dodge shrugged. He was a trim man with short hair going grey. His blue blazer, white button-down shirt, Oxford-stripe red tie, and grey flannel slacks had the air of a uniform. He looked fifty, perhaps, and very bright and very composed. He also looked enigmatic. His dark eyes and somewhat tight mouth gave no indication of what he might be thinking. Brolan imagined this was damned useful to a cop. "I guess I never thought of it that way before. The tradition of law, I mean."

  "You work out of downtown?" Brolan asked. He was aware he was chattering. He didn't know how to not chatter.

  "Yes. Criminal investigation division. Homicide."

  "Really? Homicide?"

  Dodge smiled slightly. "Homicide. Really."

  "And this has something to do with me?" Brolan's voice was going up again.

  "Would you care to sit down, Mr. Brolan?" He smiled again. "I guess I shouldn't be asking you to have a seat in your own place but-"

  "Of course," Brolan said. "Let's sit down right now."

  They sat down. At one end of the conference room was a

  folding table loaded down with video playing equipment. Somebody in production was taking inventory of all the electronic stuff the agency owned. Presumably it would all be traded in on better stuff.

  "Have you heard the news this morning?" Dodge asked.

  "Afraid I haven't."

  "There was a murder last night. A prostitute."

  "I see." Brolan had been dreading the man's mentioning a freezer and a house in the suburbs. What was this all about?

  "Do you ever spend time with prostitutes, Mr. Brolan?"

  "I want to be as co-operative as possible, Officer Dodge."

  "Sergeant Inspector Dodge. That's my official tide anyway."

  "Thank you." He gulped some air. "I want to be as cooperative as I can be."

  "I appreciate that, Mr. Brolan."

  "But I don't know why you'd ask me a question like that."

  "About visiting prostitutes?"

  "Yes."

  "I didn't mean to offend you, Mr. Brolan. There was a good reason for me to ask you that."

  "Really?"

  "Really. One of your cuff links was found at the crime scene."

  "My cufflink. My God."

  From his pocket, Dodge took a small oval piece of platinum inside a clear plastic evidence bag. From where he sat Brolan recognized the cuff link.

  Dodge held it up. "Is this yours?"

  "Yes."

  "You don't need to look at it more closely?"

  "No. I can see my initials inscribed from here. The cuff links are real platinum. My ex-wife had them made for me at Enrique's in St. Paul."

  "Enrique's was one of the jewellery stores we called in trying to track this down. They gave us your name."

  "I see."

  Dodge then told him about the killing. The woman had been stabbed in the eye then savagely cut up. Dodge described the area where the body had been dumped out. "Have you been in or around there lately?"

  "No."

  "Think a moment. Think back a month or two. Are you sure you haven't been in or around that area?"

  He thought a moment. "No."

  "When was the last time your wore these particular cuff links?"

  "I'm not sure. Months at least. Maybe years."

  "And being in that vicinity?"

  "Maybe never. I just wouldn't have any reason to be out there."

  "So, you weren't out there last night?"

  "No. Absolutely not."

  The detective sort of nodded. Brolan still couldn't read anything on the man's face. He sat there in his cold sweat, hoping his hands weren't twitching. It was like being afraid of farting at a fancy dinner party. You knew you were a weird and twisted wretch; you just didn't want other people to know that.

  "Here's a photograph of her," the detective said, reaching inside his sport coat pocket and taking out a small photo and handing it over.

  Brolan realized now that the detective did not necessarily believe his denials. No, I don't know any prostitutes. No I don't go out to that area ever. Fine, Mr. Brolan, why don't you take a look at this photo anyway?

  Brolan took the photo and studied it. A fleshy woman in a cheap green dress stood by a ten-year-old Chevrolet on a sunny spring morning in front of a crumbling three-storey apartment house. She gave you the impression that these were her Sunday clothes and that she'd just come from church. Her cheeky, middle-aged face also gave the impression of a kind of weary sorrow. Even at a distance the smile revealed dentures, and the hair revealed an unnatural henna tint, and the belly and hips revealed an iron girdle. She might have been somebody's slightly boozy maiden aunt except for a certain coarseness around the mouth, a coarseness put there (or so Brolan imagined in his somewhat moralistic way) by too much loveless sex. It was a mouth that had told and laughed at too many feeble dirty jokes for the pleasure of too many feeble johns.

  "Not familiar?" the detective asked as Brolan handed the photo back.

  "Afraid not."

  The detective put the photo away. "Are you married, Mr. Brolan?"

  "Divorced."

  "Lady friends?"

  "I wish I could say yes. I'm afraid my lady friend and I are splitting up."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Thanks."

  "So, you don't have any idea how your cuff link could have gotten there?"

  "No."

  "And you keep your cuff links where?"

  "In a small leather box with some other stuff-tie bars and things like that-in a bureau drawer in my home."

  "You live alone?"

  "Yes."

  "Does anybody else have access to your place?"

  "By a
ccess, you mean, do they have a key?"

  "Right."

  "No. I'm the only one with a key."

  "Have you had any suspicion lately that somebody might have broken in and taken things?"

  "No."

  "So, you can't account for this cuff link being where we found it?"

  Brolan tried a smile. "Obviously I wish I could." He hesitated. "I take it, this cuff link makes me a suspect."

  "Not necessarily, Mr. Brolan. It could be a freak coincidence. Maybe somebody did break into your home recently, and you just weren't aware of it."

  "That happens?"

  "Certainly. Some thieves don't call any attention to themselves. They come in and take very specific things. Jewellery, for instance. The owner may not notice that anything is missing for several days. This gives the thieves a real advantage. They're way down the road before we even know that they took anything."

  "So, this thief could have taken my cuff links and-what? Dropped them at the scene of the crime on purpose?"

  "Perhaps. At this point we can't be sure. All we know is that, for some reason, one of your cuff links was found at a murder scene."

  "And somebody could have dropped it there on purpose or by accident?"

  "Right."

  "And that could have been a thief. Or-me."

  "Right."

  "I wasn't there," Brolan said. "I wasn't there, and I don't know the woman. Never saw her before. I want to be emphatic about that."

  "I can see that, Mr. Brolan."

  "And I certainly don't want to be a suspect in a murder case."

  "Nobody does, Mr. Brolan," the detective said. He sat up on the edge of the chair, obviously getting ready to leave. "But if you should remember anything, I'd appreciate it if you'd contact me. I'll leave you my card."

  "Remember anything?"

  The detective stood up-as did Brolan-and extended his hand. As they shook, the detective said, "Remember anything you might have forgotten to tell me." He stared directly into Brolan's eyes. "Maybe later on you'll recall that you actually met the woman somewhere previously. Maybe you just didn't recognize this particular picture. That happens sometimes."

  "But I don't know her, and I'm sure of that."

  "Well," the detective said, "just in case anything like that does come up, please feel free to give me a call."

  He handed Brolan a small white card with very unfancy typeset information on it.

  Brolan nodded and took the card and right then realized that somebody had very crudely-but very effectively-framed him for murder for a second time.

  "Talk to you again, Mr. Brolan," the detective said as he was leaving.

  27

  HE WAS FOURTEEN YEARS OLD the first time he ever hurt a girl. The funny thing was, he hadn't planned on it happening at all.

  Next door there was a twelve-year-old named Jessica. He'd known for a long time that she had a crush on him. She followed him everywhere and wrote him letters and was always asking him to join various neighbourhood clubs she invented. She also frequently asked him to come over when American Bandstand was on and dance the twist with him. This was in the summer of 1961. Later he would try to figure out why he did what he did, if there were some certain inspiration for doing it. But he could find none. It was a typical summer, a humid and furious green in the wealthy neighbourhood where he lived, and a pastel blue where his family had a cabin and sailed-blue water, blue skies.

  There were woods two miles from his house, and sometimes he'd ride his bike over there and go hiking. He liked the woods, the secret hiding places, especially, where he could sit and watch people walk by on the trails below that ran along the edge of the river. The secret hiding places made him feel powerful, and he needed that sense particularly this summer. His parents were getting a divorce.

  They'd always fought, but now there was violence. His mother had a lover. His father could not get over this fact. Several times he'd seen his father very savagely slap his mother.

  Curiously, though, it was his father who always cried after such violence, never his mother. She went downstairs and had a drink of bourbon and smoked several cigarettes and stared out at the vast rolling lawn kept in shape by a coloured man none of them quite trusted. His father always disintegrated, going into the den and sobbing, the way a boy would sob. He always wanted to go in and put his arm around his father, but he couldn't because his mother would get angry and accuse him of taking his father's side and not hers.

  Sometimes he would go downstairs and talk to his mother before she got drunk. "You don't have to go away with that other man, Mother. You can stay here. Things can be like they were. We can be happy again, just the three of us."

  "Oh, baby," she'd say, touching his face gently, "baby, you're just too young to understand. But Dad loves you," she'd say. "Dad loves you. That's the only reason he hits you." Then she'd smile and say, "You've got to give Gil a chance. You'll like him once you get to know him. He played for the Vikings one year; did I ever tell you that?"

  "You tell me that all the time, and I don't give a shit. I don't want to live with him!"

  "Baby, you hurt me when you talk like that; you really do."

  Then he'd go upstairs and stand outside the den and listen to his father stretch out on the leather couch. Usually his father would fall asleep. It was as if he could no longer face consciousness, and he'd just tune out.

  By nightfall, she'd be dressed up and gone, moving through the summer dusk in the aqua Thunderbird with the white hardtop.

  He'd make his father dinner. Oh, no gourmet dining to be sure-usually a chili dog with potato chips and maybe baked beans, the sort of stuff they always ate at the cabin. Then he'd take it up to the den, and he'd knock softly and his father would wake up and let him in. His father's law practice had pretty much gone to hell over the previous four months. He'd heard his father arguing bitterly with one of his partners on the phone about how his father wasn't carrying his load.

  So, in the den they'd eat and watch TV shows, such as Perry Mason and Lawman and the Jack Benny and Andy Griffith programs. Both his father and he were big fans of Don Knotts. Whenever Don, as Barney, was called upon to hold down the fort while Andy was off doing something else, you just knew it was going to be a great episode.

  And his father would try to explain. Ultimately he understood or thought he understood anyway. Impotence. "Do you know what that means?" his father would ask. "Sorta," he'd say. "Sorta."

  They'd been to doctors, and they'd been to psychiatrists, and they'd tried all sorts of methods and techniques, but it hadn't seemed to help. His mother started drinking then and saying that in some way it was her fault, and then things just kept getting worse and worse until now.

  Sometimes his father would start drinking, too, and that was the worst, because his father was an even worse drinker than his mother. After several drinks he was like a stranger, angry and violent-his handsome face distorted in rage-smashing things up with his fists and always ending up on the couch crying, crying.

  When his father got like this, all he could do was watch. His father's temper was so bad that he was afraid to go up to the man. Afraid of really getting hurt. Sometimes the booze would make his father more or less unconscious. When this happened, he'd turn off the light and stand in the doorway listening to his father snore and then he'd say, "Good night, Dad. I love you." Then he'd close the door and go to his own room.

  He usually didn't sleep till his mother got home. Deep into the rolling black night he'd hear the T-bird's engine on the drive below and see the wash of its headlights across his window, and then he'd hear the automatic garage door go up.

  She always came in and kissed him goodnight. She always smelled of hard liquor and what he would later recognize as the moist scent of sex. He always pretended to be asleep. He didn't know what to say to her. He wanted to say, "You whore, you whore." But he wasn't sure that was true. He didn't know if it was her fault his father was impotent… or if it was his father's fault.

>   Six weeks before school was to start, his father made things easy for everybody by driving his new Chrysler straight into a bridge abutment at more than ninety miles per hour. Officially the word was accident, but of course he'd been drunk, and of course he'd meant to do it.

  Three weeks later the incident with Jessica took place in the woods.

  He had no idea how she'd found his hiding place near the clay cliffs above the water. He was sitting in the shade of a clay overhang, trying to escape the ninety-six-degree heat, when he looked up, and there she was. Dressed in a T-shirt and cutoff Levi's and a pair of white tennis shoes. Hands on hips. Very bold.

  "You probably didn't think I knew about this place, did you?"

  He shrugged. "Guess not."

  "Well, there're a lot of things I know."

  "Oh."

  He closed his eyes, willing her out of existence. The air was heavy with humidity and butterflies and mosquitoes and bluejays and wrens and robins. Close by, the air smelled of spruce and maple and redbud; of wild ginger and ginseng and bloodroot. He often wished he were a deer and could bound through the bluffs and caves and mineral springs; the lakes and gorges and forests. That was his most profound wish-even more than being like Steve McQueen or Marshall Matt Dillon-to be an animal, to appreciate nature and know nothing of the human heart.

  "Is it all right if I sit down?" Jessica asked.

  "Guess so."

  As she took two steps toward him, he realized again that Jessica was blooming suddenly. Small but distinct breasts played against the white cotton of her T-shirt, and her summer-tanned legs were getting long and shapely. Even her blue eyes had changed somehow-were more knowing, inscrutable. She used to be just a kid. But now she was something more than that, even if she wasn't quite a woman yet.

  She brushed sand from a nearby rock and sat down. "I haven't told you how sorry I am about your father."

  "Thanks."

  "I know how much you loved him."

  "Yeah."

  She watched him. "You don't want to talk about it, do you?"

  "Guess not."

  "Are you mad I came here?"

  "Guess not."

  "I'm not trying to bug you."