by Blake Banner
A voice came to us in the negative. He smiled at us like he’d done something real clever and he knew we were going to be mad about it. I studied his face for a moment, trying to decide whether he knew what was coming next.
“Mr. Gonzalez, I have some news which you may find upsetting. Would you like me to give it to you here on the doorstep, or may we come in?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Come on in, Detectives.” He walked away from the door, talking over his shoulder. “You like my house so much, why don’t I make you up a room so you can move in?”
We stepped into the large, warm living area where the huge fire was burning in the hearth. Sandy Beach was sitting curled up on the sofa, holding a glass of wine, where the flames were reflected in rich orange among the oxblood red. She glanced at me as we came in, looked embarrassed and turned away. Dehan closed the door and Giorgio went to the fireplace. The mantelpiece was a huge beam of driftwood. He leaned his elbow on it and spread his arms wide. “So, Detective Stone, what is your sad news. I have to tell you, I am a happy soul. It is no easy to make me sad. But give it your best shot.” He looked at Sandy and grinned. “Eh, Sandy?”
She didn’t answer him, but looked at me and then at Dehan, waiting.
Dehan said: “When was the last time you saw Fernando, Giorgio?”
“We are on first name terms, now, Detective? Or should I call you Carmen?”
“Just answer the goddamn question.”
He winked at Sandy and chuckled. “Yesterday. He came over and we had dinner. Then he went home, maybe midnight. Is that OK, Carmen? Is that obedient enough for you? You like men to be obedient, Carmen…?”
“He’s dead.”
He went very still, narrowed his eyes, frowned. “What?”
“Fernando is dead. He was murdered. Probably this afternoon. Did you kill him?”
The approach wasn’t subtle, and it wasn’t one I would have chosen right then, but I studied his face carefully. What I thought I saw was incomprehension, but it was hard to be sure. He was a performer. He could have been acting. Sandy had gotten to her feet. Her hands had gone to her mouth and her glass fell and smashed on the wooden floor, spilling the red wine among the jagged shards. “Fernando? But that’s… No… That’s absurd! Why?”
I ignored her and kept watching Giorgio. He frowned and shook his head, like somebody looking at an equation that doesn’t make sense. “Fernando is dead? Murdered?”
Dehan almost snarled, “I asked you a question, Giorgio. Quit dodging my questions. Did you kill him?”
“No!” He was looking at her like she was crazy. “Why the hell would I kill Fernando? We were like brothers!”
“Where have you been since we saw you this morning?”
“Here! I told you! With this weather… Oh my God…”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
Sandy stepped forward. “I can. I’m sorry. I am in shock. I’m not thinking. After you left, I came over…” She gave me an apologetic glance. “I wanted to see if Giorgio was all right. We spent some time talking and he kindly asked me to stay for lunch. I’ve been back and forth a couple of times, but not long enough for him to go any significant distance.” She smiled again. “We have spent practically the whole day together.”
Giorgio went and sank onto the sofa. He covered his face with his hands and started to sob, strange, long, wailing sobs. I spoke while watching him.
“I’m afraid you can’t stay here, Ms. Beach.”
“Why in the world not? He needs my support now more than ever. I can’t leave him alone.”
I turned and frowned at her. “Ms. Beach, you need to snap out of it. Whoever killed Fernando might well come after Giorgio next. And believe me, this is one brutal son of a bitch. If he finds you in the house, he will not hesitate to kill you too. You cannot risk being here.”
She went very still, like she was trying to grasp what I was saying, but it wasn’t real to her. I went and stood over Giorgio. All the arrogant flamboyance was gone. He was staring up at me with wet, swollen eyes.
“Why…?”
“You tell me. Listen, Giorgio, we are not vice. We don’t give a rat’s ass what kind of games you get up to, but you need to understand that Fernando was just stabbed in the heart and gutted like a fish, and the same might happen to you if you don’t level with us. Are you trafficking?” I pointed around the house. “You’re not affording this on art lessons, right?”
His eyes were staring and his lips kept trembling. “A bit of dope, a bit of coke, but we’re not in the big league. We don’t owe nobody…”
“I’m going to put a couple of cops here for the night.” I pointed at him. “Step outside to get the paper off your mat and I will put you away for cocaine trafficking. The closest you’ll get to a piece of skirt for the next ten years will be when you get screwed in the showers. Do I make myself clear? Do not step outside your house.”
I turned and pointed at Sandy. “You, go home. Do not come near this house again. I am not asking. Come near this house and I will prosecute you for obstruction of justice. Now scram!”
She gathered her dignity about her, gave Giorgio a last, tender look and made for the door. I turned to Dehan. “Go and get Santos and Clay in here, will you?”
She followed Sandy out. I moved the drape and saw Sandy go to her house and let herself in, and Dehan walk to the car, say something to Clay and start heading back. Without looking at him, I said, “Sandy seems to care for you. You going to treat her the same way you and Fernando treated Sue?”
He spoke in a wet, swollen voice: “We was just playin’ games, man. It wasn’t nothin’ serious.”
I let go the drape and walked over to him. I knew Dehan was a good forty-five seconds away, maybe longer in the snow. It was ample for what I had to do. The back-hander caught him on the right side of his head and rocked him. His eyes were staring wide and the pupils were dilated. The open right hand caught him across the ear and knocked him half on his side. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to his feet till his nose was less than an inch from mine.
“What about Melanie, you piece of shit? What about the girls in New Mexico, Texas and Arizona? How many others are there who didn’t go to the cops? Was that playing too? Was that your sick, goddamn game? To beat up on girls who couldn’t defend themselves? Was that what you planned for Sue at the party that night? Well I got news for you, pal. I’m going to be having a quiet talk with Tony, about how you beat up his girl and how now you’re looking to do a deal and turn state’s evidence by giving up your contacts in the Jersey Mob. There are two classes of scum who don’t deserve mercy as far as I’m concerned, Giorgio, and they are men who hurt children and men who hurt women. I guess you pulled the short straw, huh?”
I threw him back down on the sofa as the door opened and Dehan came in. She gave me a curious look. “Everything OK?”
“Dandy. Giorgio has promised to cooperate, and to stop answering our questions with stupid questions of his own, isn’t that right, Giorgio?”
He swallowed and nodded.
Dehan raised an eyebrow at me. “Good…”
Santos, six feet of solid, athletic muscle, came in making small hops, like a frozen kangaroo. Behind him, Clay, six foot six of genial brutality, came in slapping his arms and stamping his feet. I pointed at Giorgio. “This guy is under protective custody. He has confessed to trafficking cocaine and marijuana, and he may be the target of a hit. Sit on him till you hear from me. Don’t let anybody near him, or him near anybody. I’ll talk to Inspector Newman and have you relieved by morning if we haven’t taken him in by then. Any questions?”
Clay said, “Yeah, I got a question.”
“What?”
“Get the hell out’a here, man! We got this.”
Dehan narrowed her eyes. “That’s not a question, Clay.”
“I know that!”
“Come on.” I took Dehan’s arm. “We have work to do. Let’s go.”
We
went out into the snow and made our way carefully back to the Jaguar. The sky overhead was black, densely freckled by falling flakes. I wiped the windshield clear with my hand. Then we climbed in. Dehan slammed the door, shutting out the night and the cold, and I turned the key in the ignition to start warming up the car. The engine roared for a moment, then settled to a rumble.
Dehan raised both hands. “Stone, just hold on a second, will you? I am so confused. What the hell is going on? What the hell was that back there? Did you just beat up a suspect? He didn’t kill Fernando. He couldn’t have. What the…” She hesitated. “What the fuck is going on, Stone?”
I gave her a moment to settle. “First of all, of course I didn’t beat up a witness. If I had, there would have been a lot more blood and weeping involved. Second, what that was back there was me providing us with an excuse to take Giorgio into custody, partly for his protection and partly so that we could question him. Third…” I grinned. “You said you were going to work it out for yourself. Well, my dear Dehan, you know my methods, apply them! Ha!”
She eyed me resentfully. “Jerk!” I moved off carefully, moving back toward Soundview Avenue. “At least tell me where we’re going.”
“The game is afoot, Watson! We ride to hounds! Tallyho!”
She sighed. “Jerk! You are such a jerk sometimes…”
Sixteen
We crawled along Lafayette to Castle Hill and then joined the procession north on the long, slow, slippery drive toward the Jacobi, stopping and starting at one set of lights after another, with a thousand exhausts turning the freezing air into fog, and the icy sludge on the windshield turning the lights to a multicolored haze. Time crawled, cold and wet.
“OK, Dehan,” I said at last, as we were approaching East Tremont. “I will tell you this. There are a couple of things that you have been overlooking from the very start.”
She adjusted her woolen hat and sniffed. “There are?”
Her face said she wasn’t happy, but I nodded. “Yes. You developed the idea that Cyril had had consensual sex with Sue, and that Sue had been murdered by Fernando and Giorgio. In doing that you overlooked, and ignored, the fact that Sue was actually raped.”
She was quiet for a bit, thinking, then said, “We assumed she was raped because the sex and the murder were almost simultaneous…”
“No. They weren’t almost simultaneous, Dehan. They were simultaneous. You have been focusing on the semen and the distribution of the semen, but the ME’s report said other things, remember? The abrasions around the groin that were consistent with forced intercourse, the bruising and scratches around her legs and hips, and above all the fact that she was being choked. It was all consistent with rape.”
“But the only person who was with her was the guy who turned up after Fernando. Who we assume was Cyril. She let him in…”
“I’m pretty sure it was Cyril, and I hope we will find out for sure a little later tonight.”
“How?”
“One thing at a time. Keep going. Let’s assume for the sake of the argument that it was Cyril.”
I turned right into East Tremont, where the traffic was not so heavy, and we moved at a steady twenty miles per hour toward Silver Street. Dehan sighed.
“OK, for the sake of the argument. We know from Xara, the hooker that Cyril used to visit, that he could not achieve an erection. So how could he rape Sue without one?”
“But you yourself said that he might be able to with Sue.”
“If she was nice and loving to him! But to rape her?”
I sighed and shook my head. “Sex is not an act of love, Dehan. We have discussed this before. It is strictly an act of procreation. It is a very intimate act, so it lends itself to loving feelings, but at its core it is an act of domination and subjugation, where one animal inseminates another.”
“Jesus, Stone!”
“Don’t get personal, Dehan. This is a murder investigation. We deal in brutal truths. What we may bring to the bedroom, or the kitchen table, is our personal business. But murder, rape and sex are intimately connected at the organic level. You know that.”
“I guess…”
“So it follows that violence and domination can be just as sexually arousing as love and affection.”
“So you think Cyril raped and murdered Sue? It doesn’t make much sense, Stone. What about leaving his job and his house? Handing in his notice? The trip to Geneva? His suicide? There is a whole pattern of behavior there that is not consistent with his raping and murdering her.”
“No. Again, it is not consistent with your view of how and why he would rape kill her. It’s different. You are trying to make Cyril Browne behave like Carmen Dehan. You have to ask yourself, what motivates Cyril Browne?”
She was very quiet while I turned up Silver Street and crossed the Williamsbridge Road. Five minutes later, we were pulling off Seminole Avenue and parking outside the Van Etten Building. She opened the door and a blast of icy air entered the car and made me shudder. “OK,” she said, “so what motivated Cyril Browne?”
“His mother,” I said.
I climbed out and we made our way unsteadily toward the entrance. “But surely,” she said, holding onto my arm and trying not to pull me over, “if Sue was like his mother, that would be an overpowering reason not to kill her!”
“Things may become a little clearer for both of us in a moment, Dehan.”
We found Frank at the autopsy table. On the table was Fernando, looking a little yellow, with small purple patches all over his body. He was face down now, but I didn’t enquire as to how they had stopped his insides from moving outside in the process. What I could see was a large, ugly wound at about the height of his fifth intercostals. It was about one and a half inches long and the edges had inflamed and curled up like labia. Frank didn’t bother with greetings. He pointed at the wound and said, “That’s what killed him. He probably used a kitchen knife, judging by the shape of the wound: it is deltoid, slightly wider on one side than the other, two inches long and about six inches in depth. Probably had it concealed in his sleeve. Interesting thing…”
He led us around the table so we could see the left side of Fernando’s neck, and pointed to a purple bruise in the shape of two closed brackets. I said, “A love bite?”
“Mh-hm,” he nodded. “The saliva was still wet and abundant, which, given this weather, is hardly surprising. Nothing dries in this. Our house is full of wet washing, even with the dryer. I have sent it off for DNA profiling.”
Dehan frowned. “You sent your washing for DNA profiling?”
“The saliva, Carmen. Try to keep up. This killer has either never watched CSI or just doesn’t give a damn about being caught.”
I glanced at Dehan. “Remind you of anything?”
Frank answered. “Your Sue Benedict case. But the two murders are quite different. The gutting was postmortem, as you had surmised. He bled out quickly and copiously from the wound in his back, which had pierced his heart. With Sue Benedict, the killing was strangulation, from the front, during rape. And the post mortem mutilation was a frenzy of stabbing. Plus, she was obviously killed by a man. This murder, and the post mortem mutilation, were brutal, but cool and calculated, and could well have been committed by a woman. Probably were, I would say.”
Dehan scratched her head. “Why?”
“Well, amongst other things, because there are traces of lipstick on his neck, around the love bite. I know in our modern, rainbow society men also wear lipstick, but in my experience, statistically, it is more likely to be worn by a woman.”
I asked, “What about the blood on his hand?”
“Not his. Look…”
He showed me his right hand. There were no cuts. But there were bruises on the inside of his index and middle fingers. I nodded. “That’s what I thought,” I said.
Dehan swore softly. “An earring. He had her face cupped in his hands. She stabbed him in the heart. He went into spasm and tore her earring from her ear.”
Frank grunted. “Thankfully not my department.”
I rested my ass against one of his benches and folded my arms. “Speaking of departments, what about the stuff I left with you?”
“Things are a lot quicker these days, thanks to the Panasonic-IMEC developments, but we still can’t perform miracles. I have the results on some of it.”
Dehan was frowning, looking from Frank to me and back again. “What stuff?”
Frank said: “The thread.”
“What thread?”
I smiled. “Remember the splinter I had in Elk Grove?”
“Yeah, what was that?”
“I saw the needle had been threaded, but she hadn’t started embroidering with it yet. So the tail end of the thread was still there. What do you do just before you thread a needle?”
“Nothing. I never sew.”
“What did your mother do, just before she threaded a needle?”
Her face lit up. “You are smart, Stone! She would suck the thread to make a point, so it would go through the eye.”
“Exactly, and then tie it in a little knot. I asked if I could have it. She agreed and so I lawfully removed a sample of her DNA. What was the result, Frank?”
“I have it in my office. I’ll send it to you later by email, but I can tell you that there is a very close family relationship, such as brother and sister, between Mary Browne and the man who raped and murdered Sue Benedict. He was her brother.” He shrugged. “If Cyril was her only brother, then Cyril killed Sue Benedict.”
“Holy cow, Stone!” Dehan stared at me with wide eyes. “So that’s it, you solved the case…”
I shook my head. “Not quite. There are a lot of loose ends to be tidied up. Like why Fernando was murdered, and by whom. We are not there yet.”
“Well, he clearly wasn’t murdered by Cyril. You figure a woman, Frank?”
