Slash and Burn

by Valerie Bronwen

  “You sure you didn’t see or hear anything suspicious?”

  “Pretty sure.” I closed my eyes and replayed my trip up the indoor hanging staircase, walking along the inside hallway to the open door to the outdoor stairs and hallways. I’d been aware of the coming storm, the coldness of the wind, and trying to stay dry once the rain started. There hadn’t been anyone around that I’d seen after I passed the receptionist in the entry hallway. Had I heard someone—something—before I knocked on Demi’s door? I honestly couldn’t say. “I don’t remember, Detective. I’m sorry, but I don’t think so.”

  He pulled out a business card from his shirt pocket and passed it to me. “I know I gave you one of these the other day, but in case you lost it, here’s another one. If you think of anything else…” He started to rise as I took the card from him, but then sat back down. “Can you think of any reason why this Demi woman would give you the flash drive?”

  “No. It doesn’t make any sense to me.” I gave a half laugh. “I’ve been trying to figure it out myself ever since I saw the pictures on there. To be honest, when she gave it to me, I wasn’t really paying any attention to her—my mind was somewhere else.” I felt my face starting to flush. “A personal issue had come up that I was dealing with—when she asked to speak to me, I was glad for the excuse to get away from the problem and think? She was just my escape…I wish I’d been paying more attention. And once she gave me the envelope and left the hotel, I put it in my pocket and forgot about it as I went back to dealing with the problem.” I took a deep breath. He was looking at me inquisitively. “I ran into an ex in the bar, Detective, and it was a pretty bad breakup.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “That makes sense.” He scratched his head. “But you can see my problem here, right?” His voice was soothing, well modulated, almost like he wanted my sympathy. “Why would she give this evidence to you, someone who’s practically a stranger?”

  I shrugged. “I’m a mystery novelist. Maybe she thought, I don’t know, that I was working on the case or something? That I had some kind of police connection? I don’t know why people do things, Detective.” I held up my hands. “Believe me, I wish I had a better explanation for you.”

  “You have to admit it, it looks a little weird.” He smiled softly, his eyes wide open. “I mean, the woman was killed by her laptop—that’s how it looks anyway, and you have this flash drive of information she had on her computer…”

  “Surely,” I said slowly, trying very hard to keep my temper in check, “you aren’t implying that I came by, killed her with her computer, and stole her flash drive? Only to come by this morning to discover her body and turn the flash drive over to the police? That doesn’t make sense, Detective.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He smiled at me, but his dark eyes glittered coldly. “Like you said, you write mysteries. You study crime, you study police procedure to make your books look more real, don’t you?” He gave a little shrug. “Maybe you figured it would look better if you were the one to come back and find the body, and happened to turn over the flash drive after deleting whatever it was that was incriminating on it? That would be pretty smart, don’t you think?”

  I started to fire off a smart-ass answer, but stopped myself. That was probably what he was hoping for. I tapped my fingers on the armrests of the chair. After a few moments of silence, I replied sarcastically, “That might work as the plot of a book, Detective—do you mind if I make a note of that? I’ll be sure to thank you in the acknowledgments.” I pulled out my phone and typed myself a note, slowly and deliberately. When I finished, I dropped it back into my purse. “As for reality, Detective, I am pretty smart. I do have two doctorates, after all. But I’m not a murderer, and I’d like to think if I was, I’d be even smarter than that.” I gave him a very cold smile, knowing I shouldn’t say it but did anyway. “I’d like to think if I killed someone I’d be smart enough to never be caught.”

  To my surprise, he laughed and stood up. “Yeah, didn’t think so—but it didn’t hurt to put it out there.” He stretched, and I heard his back crack. “Don’t lose my card, and be sure to call me if you remember anything.” He paused at the door. “I downloaded one of your books Thursday night and started reading it. You’re pretty good, you know.”

  The door shut behind him.

  Chapter Nine

  I sat there for a little while in the dimly lit room, a little shocked. Detective Randisi had actually seemed almost human. My phone beeped in my bag, and I grabbed it. There was a text message from Dani: On my way down.

  I replied, Pick me up at Maison Maintenon.

  After she replied, I got out of my chair and got another cup of coffee, musing as I walked out of the room and toward the hotel’s front door. It was still raining, so I stood in the open doorway, waiting for Dani.

  That’s when it hit me—How did the killer know Demi had the pictures?

  She had to have told the killer—which meant she knew the killer, whoever it was.

  She’d recognized him from the blurry pictures, and she must have confronted him about it after giving me the flash drive. I thought back to the conversation we’d had, sitting on that sofa in the lobby of the hotel. No, she hadn’t said anything that I could recall that would be of use to the police. I shivered, standing there in the doorway. I considered going back upstairs and talking to Pat more, asking her some more questions about Demi and who else at Angels and Demons she might have known. I tried to remember what the two men in their group looked like, tried to compare my memories of them with my memories of the pictures, but it was useless. I hadn’t been lying when I said I really didn’t notice men all that much. I noticed their faces, but their bodies not so much. The only way I’d recognize the man in the pictures in real life was if he was in front of me and the pictures were, too.

  This is why I am not a police detective. I prefer my crimes to be fictional.

  It’s much more fun when you know already who the killer is from the very beginning.

  Cars were crawling by on the street, which was filling slowly with water. There was more lightning and thunder, and it was getting darker out. A cab pulled up in front of the door, and I stood aside so the passengers could dash by, hauling their luggage behind them. Come on, Dani, I thought impatiently, resisting the temptation to start tapping my foot. I glanced at my watch as my stomach growled. That’s not going to make her get here any faster.

  To pass the time, I decided to make the case an intellectual challenge for myself: If I were writing this book, who would I have made the killer?

  I always started with the crime when I was writing, so when I started outlining and planning the book, that was my foundation: X killed Y, this is why, so who else wanted to kill Y? How did X do it?

  Well, for one thing, I could never get away with having someone kill Antinous—Diana—over her online antics and churlish online trolling. The only way that could be a valid motive for murder in a book would be if the killer was mentally unbalanced—which was unfair and a cheat to the readers—or if it was done in the heat of the moment, and a killing over online trolling could never be a crime of passion. That was the beauty of being an online troll: You could be as hateful, venomous, and monstrous as you could find it in your shriveled little soul and pay no consequences. Even if your anonymity was blown, no one would ever take the time to track you down and kill you—the target of your venom would forget your horrific behavior almost as soon as they turned off their computer. And even if you made it your stock in trade, as Diana / Antinous seemed to have done with her “review” website, surely no one would stockpile grudges over a period of time and leap at the opportunity to get even?

  Especially over book reviews. There was a reviewer in San Francisco who despised every single Laura Lassiter novel I’d published. The first time I’d really been hurt and upset—it was my first book, I was so proud and happy to have gotten an agent and have a book published, the initial reviews from industry journals and major reviewers had
been so generous and kind that this nasty review was like getting a two-by-four in the forehead. After I read the clipping, I wondered why my editor had bothered to send it to me. The reviewer, a woman named Andrea Shapiro, spent about seven hundred and fifty words shredding my book, and me personally. The nicest thing she said in the review was a very third-rate rip-off of Sue Grafton.

  As I stared at the nastiness, I noticed that my editor had included a sticky note in the envelope that had fallen off the review. I picked it up and started laughing.

  This one fairly reeks with the stench of failed author, doesn’t it?

  Andrea Shapiro’s nasty reviews became something of a running gag between me and my editor over the years, even though we had both moved on to different publishers and hadn’t worked together on a book in years. Every once in a while she’d give me a call and we’d laugh about Andrea Shapiro, who never gave out a good review when she could write a nasty one. I’d been tempted, after one particular hatchet job, to send her some roses with a card reading, Thanks for the review, third-rate Dorothy Parker!

  So, no, it was hard to believe anyone would have hunted down Antinous / Diana specifically to kill her for her online conduct. Sure, when someone trashed one of your books—and you—unfairly online, you wanted to kill them in that moment. God knows I have. I have wanted to hunt down some assholish reviewers, disembowel them, and set what was left on fire as a public service. But to actually do it? I found it really hard to believe. Even the nonsense she’d spewed about poor Anne Howard wasn’t really enough to drive someone to commit murder.

  And now the killer—whoever it was—had killed twice.

  Of course, I was assuming that the two crimes were related—but what were the odds that they weren’t? Pretty long, I would think. Neither crime had been a robbery—surely Randisi would have mentioned it had someone robbed Diana’s room, and as far as I could tell the only thing out of place in Demi’s had been the body and the destroyed laptop. The killer, whoever it was, had taken care of Antinous / Diana and thought he’d gotten away with it. No witnesses, no evidence, nothing—only to find out that Demi had unknowingly taken pictures of him outside Antinous / Diana’s room. Once the killer knew that, Demi was doomed. The killer had disposed of her at the first opportunity, and again seemed to have gotten away with it. Maybe someone in the hotel had seen something or someone suspicious, but for now, the killer had to be breathing a sigh of relief.

  Until, of course, the killer found out about the flash drive.

  Then it hit me.

  There had been no sign of forced entry into her room—just like with Diana. So, both Diana and Demi had not only known their killer well enough to open their doors to him, but felt safe enough with him to let him into their rooms.

  Neither one of them had recognized that they were opening their doors to death.

  Surely there weren’t that many men at Angels and Demons that both women knew that well? Diana / Antinous was from England—whom could she possibly have known in the States?

  That was the key, I was sure of it.

  The more I thought about Demi’s behavior in the hotel lobby, the more I remembered she seemed agitated and nervous—but more surprised than scared when she saw whoever it was that had so unnerved her she’d run out. Maybe she’d run out after whomever it was she’d seen.

  Maybe she had walked back to her hotel with her killer.

  You don’t know she wasn’t scared—are you rewriting and revising your memories to fit a new theory? At the time you thought she was afraid, that was your initial reaction. You didn’t really know her at all. Your first instinct was probably the right one. You read her as scared, and why would she have chased after someone she was afraid of?

  But if she was afraid, why did she run out of the hotel?

  My head was starting to hurt again.

  This is why I do not try to solve crimes I am not completely in control over—best to just leave this all to the police.

  Besides, I reasoned as lightning struck nearby and thunder set off car alarms, you’re not getting paid to solve this. Leave it to the pros and finish writing your own damned book.

  The rain was still pouring down, and there was now about three inches of water in the middle of the street. The gutters were full of water and the curbs were submerged. The lower parts of the city were probably flooding. Some drenched tourists ran by, holding soaked newspapers over their heads in a vain attempt to keep their heads dry. A blast of wind drove some rain at me, and I backed through the doorway onto the black-and-white parquet floor of the main hallway of the Maison Maintenon. I sighed, annoyed that I hadn’t thought to buy an umbrella on the way over here. It had been overcast, and as a New Orleans native I should have known that meant it was going to rain. I was going to get soaked running the short distance from the door to Dani’s car when she got here, and my teeth were already starting to chatter.

  But at least she was coming to get me—otherwise my only option would have been to wait out the rain before heading back to the Monteleone, or get drenched running back over there and risk catching a cold in the arctic climate inside the hotel. My stomach growled, and I remembered I hadn’t had any breakfast. It was now past noon. My next panel wasn’t until three, so there was plenty of time for me to eat something at the Monteleone restaurant.

  A young man came running down the sidewalk toward me. He was holding a newspaper over his head, but his white T-shirt was soaked through and was clinging to his skin like clear wrap, and his khaki knee-length shorts clung to his legs. His black Keds splashed through the water on the sidewalk as he reached the bottom of the steps below me. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I knew him from. He tossed the newspaper aside once he was in the shelter provided by the entryway, and he stood there for a moment, wringing out the bottom of his T-shirt. He smiled at me before turning away and once I got a look at his profile, I knew where I’d seen him before.

  He was the guy in the book room who was turning Antinous’s books around, the kid that Ted chased away.

  “Hello there,” I said pleasantly. “Didn’t I see you yesterday at the Monteleone, in the book room?”

  Startled, he turned and looked at me. “Hello,” he muttered. Even though he was on the bottom step, our eyes were almost level, which meant he was a lot taller than I had originally thought. He let go of his wet shirt, which slapped against his stomach. He hadn’t shaved and there was stubble scattered over his cheeks, chin, and neck. Water was running down his face from his hairline. He had a slight underbite, so his lower lip was larger and stuck out a bit. He didn’t smile back at me. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  “Yes, I know I did,” I held out my hand, smiling. “I’m Tracy Norris.”

  He looked at my hand for a moment before taking it. His hand was rough and enormous, swallowing mine. “Kenny Simon.”

  I kept staring at him. Yes, I’d seen him in the book room, but that wasn’t it. He looked so familiar…I knew I’d seen that face before, somewhere else. “Sorry I’m staring, but I’d swear I know you from somewhere besides the book room. Your face is so familiar…”

  The scowl disappeared, replaced by a smile that lit up his entire face. “Well, I model,” he said, shyly looking down at his feet and shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “I’ve been on a couple of book covers, and I’ve done some print work.” His face began to slowly turn red.

  And in that moment, I saw it. I knew exactly where I’d seen him before. Rather than the short dark hair, I pictured his oval face and pronounced cheekbones surrounded by long sausage curls and a silk shirt with billowing sleeves, opened to expose a smooth chest with enormous nipples.

  “You’re on the book cover for The King’s Sword,” I said slowly.

  His smile faded immediately and was replaced by a scowl. “Yes,” he said abruptly. “I posed for that cover.”

  “Why were you turning Antinous Renault’s books around in the book room the other da
y?” In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought. “So you couldn’t be seen on the cover?”

  His face flushed, and he chewed on his lower lip for a moment before saying, “It’s complicated.”

  There was no sign of Dani or her car yet, so I smiled and said, in my most sympathetic voice—the one I used to get students to open up to me, “You want to talk about it?” I gestured out at the pouring rain. “I’m not going anywhere, and it might make you feel better if you get some of it out.”

  “It’s embarrassing—really embarrassing. I mean, I…” He flushed even darker and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his long neck. “I’m so stupid.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re not stupid.”

  “That’s because you don’t know how stupid I really am.” He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “I mean, I really—I really thought the author photo was, you know, her. Him. Whatever. You know what I mean.” He swallowed. “You know she pretended to be a man, right? Well, I was stupid enough to believe her.”

  “A lot of people did,” I replied, making my voice soothing, like he was one of my students sitting in my office having a meltdown. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of. She and her publisher did a really good job fooling people. Why wouldn’t you believe them? I mean, seriously, Kenny. Who would do such a thing? I use a pseudonym, but I don’t pretend I’m another person. I use my own face in my jacket photos.”

  “Yes, well, she sure fooled me, the fucking bitch.” He made a sour face and slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand. “I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea.” He sighed. “I found one of her books at a gay bookstore back home in Atlanta. The Minstrel’s Song. Have you read it?” His eyes got a little dreamy. “It’s about Richard the Lionheart and Blondel the musician. Do you know the story?”