Twisted

by Steve Cavanagh

  Droplets of blood on the floor. The staining looked circular, with tails dotted around the outside in an even pattern denoting the drops fell vertically, probably at ninety degrees.

  ‘Funky old answering machine,’ said Bloch, pointing at a black cassette deck that sat beside the house phone.

  ‘I used to like those machines. If someone left you a message and you didn’t want to return their call, you could always say the tape got chewed up,’ said Dole.

  The cassette in the machine was new, and unused. No messages. There was also a record player in the other corner and a stack of vinyl records beneath it. Dole figured Maria or Paul Cooper were into their retro devices. He turned away from the living room, looked down the hall.

  The kitchen held all of the secrets.

  Going in first, Dole made his way around the kitchen toward the refrigerator to give Bloch space to examine the area where they guessed Maria had been attacked. The ripped-up dust sheet which contained most of the congealed blood had been removed and preserved as evidence. Dole had watched it being taken away. That’s when he’d found the hammer when it slid out of the plastic. One set of fingerprints on the handle. By taking comparison prints from the house, and the door handles of Paul’s car, they were reasonably sure the prints on the hammer belonged to Paul Cooper. As well as the hammer, two of Maria’s fingernails fell out of the plastic as the techs took it away. Dole insisted they be placed in the evidence bag too.

  With the bloodied, ripped dust sheet removed they found some blood-mist staining on the sheet behind it, covering the back wall, some staining on the floor, and blood on the porch doors, but apart from that this was a scene of someone who had just begun to redecorate. Cans of paint in one corner, with one of them opened and a test patch on a wall, rollers, brushes, everything you might expect to see. A toolbox lay in the corner of the kitchen, a screwdriver beside with a paint-stained tip.

  After a few minutes of Bloch looking around the kitchen, they both went upstairs. They looked through closets, they looked under the beds, checked every drawer. Satisfied, they headed back to the kitchen.

  Sliding open the porch doors, Bloch went outside and shielded her eyes from the sun as she gazed down toward the beach. She came back in, nodded and said, ‘I think Paul Cooper is our man, but I don’t like it.’

  ‘It’s nearly always someone close to the vic. A dollar gets you two that’s his fingerprints on the hammer. DNA should confirm it,’ said Dole. ‘What’s not to like?’

  She shook her head. ‘I know there’s no real need for a motive in a domestic, but this feels planned.’

  Dole folded his arms, leaned against the kitchen counter and said, ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘We know from the receipt in her purse she bought all of this. And we have her shopping list left on the counter. It could be redecoration, but it’s a hell of a coincidence. The dust sheets will keep paint off the surfaces, but they’ll also keep a crime scene clean from forensic traces. It’s too … convenient.’

  ‘I don’t like convenient,’ said Dole.

  ‘I can tell,’ said Bloch.

  ‘There’s a toolbox over there. Maybe they argue, it gets way out of hand and he picks up the hammer? What’s planned about that?’ asked Dole.

  ‘The plastic sheets make it the perfect opportunity. And he uses them. Wraps her and the weapon in a sheet.’

  ‘Why leave her here?’ said Dole.

  She sighed, looked out the window toward the clear blue ocean and said, ‘He got waylaid. He wasn’t planning on leaving her here. If he was going to get rid of the body there are only a couple ways to be sure. He takes her out to the car, puts her in the trunk and drives somewhere remote. Risky. Even with the dust sheet there could be leakage in the trunk leaving more forensics. Look out there. You want to dump a body – there’s a million miles of ocean on your doorstep.’

  The storm had passed, and the water looked inviting.

  Dole said, ‘If he put her in the trunk and drove to the marina, he still has to get her from the car to the boat. Lot of ways that could go wrong. All it takes is one passer-by. Easier to bring the boat out here. The shelf only goes out about three hundred yards then there’s a deep channel. He could swim ashore, but how does he get her to the boat?’

  ‘The dead float,’ said Bloch. ‘He could tow her body from the back of the boat if he didn’t want to risk taking the sheet on board, then dump her in the deep blue nothing. Nobody will find her except the fish.’

  ‘If he does it at night, no one will see him. The house is clean and this is just an accident at sea.’

  There were no security cameras at the marina. They had no information as to when Paul Cooper left in his boat, or why it sank.

  ‘There was no distress radio call,’ said Bloch. ‘If your boat starts sinking, first thing to do would be to get on the horn. Cooper didn’t. He trigged an emergency beacon, but that might have happened accidentally if he was putting on a life vest. Plus, there’s a suitcase missing from a set of three matching luggage items upstairs in the closet and his passport is sitting on the counter. Maria’s passport is still in the drawer upstairs. Only one person was leaving,’ she said.

  ‘The plan fell apart big time when his boat sank and Maria woke up?’ asked Dole.

  ‘Like I said, it makes sense of what we have here but …’

  ‘But what?’ asked Dole.

  ‘Bill Buchanan,’ said Bloch.

  Dole hung his head. He’d wanted this case wrapped up. Husband attacks wife, husband has an accident at sea and is found dead. No trials, no media – a simple form of natural justice. Nothing would have given him greater satisfaction. Trouble was, he couldn’t help but see the flaws in this story. Now Bloch had seen them too. Perhaps that’s what he’d needed. If one person has an idea it can remain in an ill-formed cerebral fog. When two people have the same theory it begins to take more of a physical shape; it’s tangible and much more credible.

  Pushing off the counter with his arms, Dole curled a finger at Bloch and she followed him out of the house, up the driveway to the mailbox. He didn’t wait for Bloch to spell it out, he spewed that fog of ideas straight from his head and watched them solidify in her eyes.

  ‘Bill Buchanan has blown the case wide open. The mailbox post has been knocked over. A passing car, right? No, I don’t think so. To hit the post so cleanly, it would have to be either a blow to the box or to the post. The wood is split low down on the pole, which could only happen if the car drove straight over it. Happens all the time. Except there are no tire marks on the grass.’

  He watched a light bulb flare behind Bloch’s eyes, and her gaze then fell to the grass and scanned the area. No tire marks.

  ‘When we were here the other day, and you talked to Cooper, the mailbox wasn’t damaged,’ said Bloch.

  Dole led her back to the front door.

  ‘How did Bill get inside? This is what bugs me,’ she said.

  ‘Exactly. He didn’t get in through the porch doors, because there was no blood on his shoes. Paramedics found the front door wide open. If the mailbox hadn’t been damaged Bill wouldn’t have any cause to go near the front door,’ said Dole.

  ‘If Paul Cooper thought he’d killed his wife, and was coming back to remove her body, you’d think he’d close the damn door so no one could wander in and find her. The door is in good condition – no sign of forced entry. The window is still broken in the study, but first responders found the study door locked. Bill didn’t get into the house that way. Only way he gets inside is through the front door and there’s not a scratch on it,’ said Bloch.

  Shifting his weight onto one leg, Dole put his hands on his hips and said, ‘Only reason the killer would damage the mailbox and leave the front door open is because they wanted Maria Cooper’s body to be found.’

  For a time, they said nothing. The only sound came from the wind in the grass, the muted tumbling of the surf and the occasional car passing on the coast road above them.

  ‘Our atta
cker may be alive?’ said Bloch.

  ‘Uh-huh. I’ve asked a Bay City forensics team to look at the mailbox. I doubt they’ll get anything from it, but they’ll be here sometime this morning to pick it up. Let’s wait inside. For now, Paul Cooper is still our main suspect. We just need to be open to the possibility that it might be someone else. Or maybe we’re reading too much into this,’ said Dole.

  ‘Maybe. What’s the plan for the rest of the day?’

  ‘Once the Bay City team has left, I say we go see Maria. God, I hope she pulls through. Maybe she can tell us something.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Paul never much cared for noodles. They certainly never featured on the menu for breakfast. In his weakened state he didn’t complain.

  The fisherman had introduced himself as Daryl that morning. He asked Paul if he was hungry, and then set him down a bowl of steaming instant noodles in pale brown broth. He didn’t even taste the first bowl. They were hot and soft and they slid down his throat all too fast. The second bowl followed the first just as quickly, but this time he tasted chicken from the broth. He sat over the third bowl for some time, enjoying the taste. Four glasses of water didn’t even touch his thirst.

  ‘Take it easy. You’ve had a serious knock on the noggin. You’ll throw up if you don’t slow down,’ said Daryl, taking away the empty bowl from the table and refilling Paul’s water.

  Sure enough, Paul felt an uneasy sensation in his gut. The hunger pains had gone. The nausea remained in a mild form. He turned his attention to the laptop, opened on the dinner table in front of him. Daryl had signed him into the laptop as a guest user. Paul hit the back button, and read the next news report about him and Maria. The Google search had thrown up over a thousand relevant entries. He’d narrowed the search terms and was on the fifth page of the results.

  With every news item he read his gut felt tighter.

  Tentatively, he touched the bandage on the side of his head and felt a sharp stinging sensation. The walk up the basement stairs had been precarious. Until he’d tried to stand he had no appreciation for just how weak he’d become. With deep breaths, and a rest stop halfway up the staircase, he’d managed to make it to the dining-room chair, and the noodles, and the laptop and the water.

  He was dressed in a pair of baggy sweatpants and an old white tee that was worn thin from too many wash cycles. Eventually he would have to ask about his clothes, but that morning he couldn’t face it.

  What if the memory stick had fallen out of his jeans?

  He suspected the worst. Until he was feeling more like a human being, Paul didn’t want to face another blow. A year’s worth of work on a novel was no easy thing to lose. Still, it was the least of his worries right now. He didn’t give it another thought.

  Not after reading about what happened to Maria.

  Some of the articles, from the more low-end tabloid news sites, described her injuries in greater detail. Fractured skull. Blunt instrument believed to be a hammer. Severe brain injury.

  Wrapped in a plastic sheet and left on the kitchen floor to die.

  Two of the articles claimed to have unnamed sources inside the Port Lonely Sheriff’s Department, and those sources said that Paul’s fingerprints were on the hammer. Of course they were, he thought. It was his hammer.

  Reading it made him feel like he was drowning; that he’d fallen into black water and everywhere he turned it filled his mouth, his throat, his lungs and his mind. A cold darkness that suffocated him. He thought maybe that’s what he deserved. Perhaps he should never have gotten off that boat. Maybe he’d be better off in the deep. In the dark. This was why he’d wanted to stay quiet, stay hidden. And when he’d been exposed he knew he needed to run.

  If only I’d gone sooner, he thought.

  Daryl interrupted his thoughts. ‘Mind me asking what you’re planning on doing about all this? Maybe talking to the cops ain’t such a bad idea.’

  Oh, it was a real bad idea from where Paul was sitting. He was the number one suspect. He would be arrested and probably charged with murder one.

  For sentient beings in the US of A, there were three things they feared above all others. A terrorist attack. A school shooting. And the American justice system. Not necessarily in that order. Because Paul was missing, even if he handed himself in he probably wouldn’t make bail. He could be locked up with America’s most violent criminals for two to three years before he even saw the inside of a courtroom. And the cost of a lengthy criminal trial could run into seven figures even with a mediocre law firm. The best representation might save him, but at what cost? And how long would he have to sit in a cell with a murderer while his lawyers ate lunch on him and charged him six hundred dollars for the hour plus the tip. He could be free in two years, if he survived custody, and the man who hurt Maria would be long gone.

  ‘The cops think I did that to Maria. I can’t go to the police. It’s way too risky. I need to find the man who did that to her on my own,’ said Paul.

  ‘How are you gonna do that?’ said Daryl.

  ‘I have plenty of money. I can buy information. A private investigation firm would cost a fraction of what I’d pay a team of lawyers just to try and keep me out of a life sentence for attempted murder.’

  The timer on the coffee machine clicked, and Daryl poured a cup for Paul and then made one for himself. He put the coffee on the table in front of Paul and stepped back, leaned against the counter and said, ‘I think you’re forgetting something.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Paul.

  ‘You don’t have any money. Not no more.’

  At first, Paul thought this was some kind of bad joke. Or something more sinister. A threat maybe. He sat very still and watched Daryl’s passive expression. The silence became uncomfortable. Paul dared not break it. This was a man who only hours before had held a gun, which he was willing to use.

  ‘Don’t you get it, Paul?’ said Daryl. ‘You’re basically dead. They’re calling off the search. You’ll be declared deceased and your money will go God knows where.’

  He relaxed, at first, but for an instant, as he realized Daryl wasn’t issuing a threat. Then the reality kicked in. If he didn’t go to the cops, or the Coast Guard, and thereby avoid arrest, he would be allowing himself to be declared dead. That had consequences. Daryl was right. And it wasn’t like Paul could transfer the money remotely. The account had strict security protocols. Not a single dollar could be moved without a personal signature and a twelve-digit code entered manually at the bank itself.

  ‘If I go to the bank, I could be arrested. The cops are looking for me. If they find out about the money, then I’m done. The police will set an alert on the account. Monitor it. The bank will report me as soon as I set foot inside the place. They have to.’

  ‘Cops are pretty smart,’ said Daryl. ‘You can assume they’ll find the money.’

  Paul pushed the coffee aside, placed his hands on either side of his head and smiled at the ridiculous fucking mess that was now his life. Nothing he did was without consequence.

  Come forward – preserve the money and take his chances in court.

  Stay hidden – Maria inherits twenty million dollars she knew nothing about and he has to trust that Maria could give him enough to track down the bastard who attacked her. A lot could go wrong with that plan. Too many variables. He had hurt her enough. Whatever happened, he had to keep his distance from Maria. She was too precious. His presence in her life had been a black mark – one that nearly killed her.

  A third option – stay hidden and leave the money.

  No, no way. Option three wasn’t any kind of option at all, the way things were going – he had someone on his tail, someone willing to kill. If he was to go into hiding, and then try to find out who hurt Maria, he needed that money. The money was life. For him. For Maria. How long would she live before the attacker came back to finish the job? He had to end this to save Maria, and himself. He couldn’t let another die because of him. It was essential he
get that money. There was no way to finish this and outrun the law without it.

  ‘You’re in some kind of fix, pal,’ said Daryl. ‘Hard to know what to do.’

  ‘I need to get that money, I know that,’ said Paul.

  Daryl sipped his coffee. Paul held his head together with his bare hands. Neither spoke. The sound of the water lapping at the shore outside became a clock, ticking rhythmically. A metronome of water and concrete, and time, with birdsong high above it like a clarinet on an opening movement.

  ‘You know, there might be a way around this,’ said Daryl.

  Paul’s hands fell away from his ears and settled softly on the table while he gave Daryl his full attention.

  ‘Only thing is, it ain’t exactly legal,’ said Daryl.

  ‘Go on,’ said Paul.

  Whatever was about to pass Daryl’s lips came abruptly to an end as he clamped shut his teeth, shook his head.

  ‘No, on second thought it probably won’t work. Too risky,’ said Daryl.

  ‘I’ve taken risks before. Whatever it is, let’s hear it. I need options here. I don’t have much choice.’

  ‘No, I meant it’s risky for me,’ said Daryl.

  ‘Just tell me, please,’ said Paul.

  The two men exchanged a look. Daryl’s skeptical eyes met Paul’s eager, pleading stare.

  ‘Fine, but I’m telling you it won’t work,’ said Daryl.

  For the next five minutes, Daryl laid out a possible way out of the situation for Paul. One where Paul got his money back.

  When Daryl was done, Paul reappraised him anew. Here, he thought, was one smart son of a bitch.

  ‘It just might work,’ said Paul.

  ‘Nah, like I said, too much of a risk. I got a good life here, man. No hassle. I sell what I catch and it just about pays the bills. I got no one coming after me, and I don’t owe nobody nothin’ so … you know … I feel real bad about what happened to you and your lady, but I’m not about to risk the little I have. No offense, but I don’t really know you well enough to put myself in that kind of situation.’