What Doesn’t Kill Her

by Max Allan Collins

  Yanking her laptop from her backpack, Jordan said, “Cool. Then let’s get started.”

  Kay, clearly apprehensive, nonetheless nodded.

  Logging on, using her cell phone as a hot spot, Jordan said, “Levi showed me how to access the police file. I’ve read it and there’s not a lot to it.”

  Shaking her head, Kay said, “I tell you, they were happy, Walt and Katherine. I knew they were. Walt had no reason to do anything like that.”

  “The only thing that really jumped out at me is the lack of any sign of struggle. If the police assumptions are correct, your sister just stretched out on the bed and let her husband shoot her.”

  Kay shuddered. “I can’t imagine that happening. I don’t think it’s possible Katherine would do such a thing. The police insist these… these complicit murder-slash-suicides are more common than you’d think.”

  Jordan nodded. “That sometimes people just give up.”

  “Yes. But even so, to die by gunshot? I always thought a couple that decided to die together took sleeping pills and maybe went to their garage and turned on the engine and.…”

  Kay began to weep. Tissues were already waiting on the coffee table—the woman had prepared for the occasion. Jordan waited politely, feeling uncomfortable but resigned.

  Finally Jordan said, “Is it possible they were having some sort of trouble—like you said, health or money or something—and Katherine just never told you?”

  “Katherine told me everything.” A sad smile touched the tortured face. “Too much, sometimes. I had to hear all about how Walt was such a great lover and how big he was and this and that that they did in bed. You can’t un-hear such things, you know.”

  Tell me about it, Jordan thought.

  “But that’s something positive in their lives,” Jordan said. “Maybe if it was something negative, she wouldn’t be so quick to bring it up—like… an affair?”

  “Never.”

  “Or a terminal condition?”

  “Katherine enjoyed sharing any medical woes, her own or those of her friends. No, I’ve racked my brain for a cause that might be behind it. If it’s there, I haven’t been able to find it.”

  “Okay. Financial problems?”

  “No. Walt had a brother who is pretty well-off and would have helped out, in any case. And after we sold the house, Walt’s brother and I split up everything.”

  She obviously got the Hummels, Jordan thought.

  Kay was saying, “There were hardly any outstanding bills. Just utilities, that kind of thing. They were a rare couple who lived within their means.”

  Jordan changed tactics. “Let’s go back to the beginning. Sorry to ask, but you need to take me through this again.”

  Kay told the tale of going into the house and finding the two bodies. By the finish, tears had returned, and the box of tissues proved handy. But Jordan didn’t know any more than she had before.

  “They were on the bed,” Jordan asked, “side by side?”

  “Yes.” Kay was winding a tissue around her index finger, as she had at the group meeting where she’d shared the same story.

  Jordan had the police report up on the laptop screen now. “The autopsy indicates no sign of drugs in their system.”

  “They took good care of themselves. No recreational drugs, no smoking, very little drinking. Even very little prescription medicine, just over the counter. And if there was an autopsy, wouldn’t any terminal condition, like cancer, show up?”

  “Probably, but not necessarily. They would be looking to make sure Walt and Katherine weren’t deceased before the gunshot wounds.”

  Kay blinked at her. “How would that be possible?”

  “If someone killed them by some other means, poison maybe, and tried to cover it up as a faked murder-suicide.”

  “I never thought of that.”

  Jordan was scrolling down the screen. “No crime scene pictures on the site, just the final report. That’s standard.”

  Kay was just listening.

  “So,” Jordan said, sighing, smiling, “I’m afraid I need you to re-create the scene for me. Are you up to that?”

  Kay drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and nodded.

  “You need to picture it in your mind. I know it’s nowhere you want to go, Kay, but please. Put yourself there. Shut your eyes, if it helps.”

  Kay nodded again. Closed her eyes.

  Jordan said, “You’re in the doorway.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it a big bedroom?”

  “Master suite. King-size bed.”

  “Where’s the bed?”

  “On the wall, opposite the door.”

  “What else is in the room?”

  “Bookshelves to the right. Left of the door, a double-wide dresser with a TV on top. Facing the bed, and beyond that, bathroom door. Wall on the left has a narrower bookcase and a big window onto the backyard.”

  “The window’s locked, right?”

  “Not sure.”

  “The police report says no sign of forced entry.”

  “The room’s clean, pristine. Katherine is an immaculate housekeeper.”

  “Do you look in the bathroom?”

  “When I realize what’s happened, I go in there, not to look. To be sick. Before I call the police.”

  “But do you see anything else in the bathroom? Unusual or out of place?”

  “No. I just go in and get sick and flush it and come out to call the police.”

  “Do you see anything unusual in the bedroom? Is there anything else that strikes you as odd?”

  “I see nightstands on either side of the bed. Nothing unusual about them.”

  “Katherine and Walt are on the bed, holding hands?”

  “Yes. They are.”

  “You’re facing the foot of the bed from the doorway, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are Walt and Katherine?”

  “On the bed.”

  “No, their relative position from where you’re standing.”

  “Katherine is on my right, Walt on my left.”

  “Can you see the gun?”

  “No, no… yes.”

  “Where are you standing now?”

  “I’ve walked around to Walt’s side of the bed.”

  “Is that Walt’s usual side?”

  “What?”

  “Is that the side he usually sleeps on? Or is that something you don’t know?”

  Kay was thinking, and then her eyes popped open.

  Jordan asked, “What is it?”

  “They were on the wrong side of the bed. I never thought about it before…”

  “Keep going.”

  “Walt always slept on the other side of the bed, near the phone, to take work calls that could come in at all hours. He was left-handed. Katherine slept on the opposite side from where I found her, near the alarm clock. Even as a little girl she always slept next to the clock.”

  “How long had they been married?”

  No hesitation: “Seventeen years.”

  “Can you think of a reason why, after seventeen years of sleeping together, that they would change their accustomed sides of the bed on the very day they decide to kill themselves?”

  “Well, of course, there isn’t one,” Kay said, excited. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What about this for a reason—Kay had no need for a clock, and Walt wasn’t concerned about a work call. Not at the end.”

  “Jordan, that’s just stupid. That’s silly. Habit would override such thoughts, even if they had them.”

  “I agree. Yet that’s the only explanation for it—a bad one.” She scrolled down the screen. “The police report says they were both shot in the right side of their heads.”

  Kay, shaken by the wrong-side-of-the-bed information, didn’t pick up on the significance of Jordan’s comment.

  Jordan tried again: “Why would a left-handed man shoot himself in the right side of the head? The gun in his left hand doe
sn’t preclude him from shooting his wife on her right. But… was Walt ambidextrous?”

  “No,” Kay said firmly. Her expression turned oddly hopeful. “Does that mean Walt didn’t do this thing?”

  “Not necessarily. Not definitively. But it is definitely weird. And I don’t see any gunshot residue test in this report, which would tell us which hand he used.”

  “That’s sloppy police work, isn’t it?”

  “I would say so, but with investigators who didn’t realize that Walt was left-handed? And that he and his wife were on the wrong sides of their bed? They would just see the convincing surface of a murder-suicide.”

  “Jordan, this is a breakthrough. You’re wonderful.”

  She ignored that, scrolling farther. “The report says that the pistol was unidentified, serial number removed. Says here your brother-in-law was a parole officer.”

  “Yes.”

  “Dangerous work. Did Walt carry a gun?”

  “No. He didn’t own a gun, not a licensed one, at least. The police said he probably bought that from one of his… uh… clients after he decided to.…”

  Jordan would ask Levi if there was a way to track when the gun was stolen and from where. Nothing in the report on the Gregory “murder-suicide” indicated the police had tried to pursue that.

  “Wrong side of the bed, right-hand wound by a left-handed man,” Jordan said. “There are things here that simply don’t add up.”

  Kay looked hopeful. “Enough to get the case reopened?”

  “Possibly,” Jordan said. She shook her head. “Where’s the motive? If it’s not health or an affair or money.”

  Kay shrugged. “There just isn’t one.”

  “There’s nothing in the report about motive, other than ‘Male victim known to have suffered depression.’ What did the police say on that score?”

  “They found an old bottle of Xanax that Walter had in the medicine chest. He’d been treated for anxiety attacks once, and his doctor gave him that for it. An officer named Grant, I think it was, told me ‘confidentially’ that the police assumption was that Walt had been deeply depressed and didn’t want to live, and Katherine didn’t want to live without him.”

  “And you’ve never bought into that?”

  “It’s ridiculous. Walt wasn’t ever depressed—anxiety attacks aren’t clinical depression! Jordan, I’m a nurse at a women’s health clinic. They would have talked to me. They would have gotten help.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Excuse me, won’t you?” Kay asked, rising, dabbing away tears and straightening her blouse and skirt.

  Jordan gave her a small nod. While Kay disappeared to the front door, Jordan continued studying the police report. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but they’d already found enough out of whack to keep reading.

  Voices at the front door were too muffled and faint to be audible, but Jordan sat up straighter as she heard the screen door open and someone enter the house. The door closed, and Jordan rose as she heard two people approaching.

  Kay’s voice grew louder as she said, “Coincidentally, I was just discussing my sister and brother-in-law’s case with a friend… Jordan! This—”

  “I know who it is,” Jordan said, looking into the blue eyes and boyish smile of Detective Mark Pryor. “Detective, we were just discussing the inadequacies of the Cleveland PD.”

  Kay, at Mark’s side, looked from one to the other in surprise. “You young people know each other?”

  She gave him a smile that had her upper lip curling over bared teeth. “I thought we had an understanding that you were gonna stop fucking following me?”

  “Oh dear,” Kay said.

  Freezing in midsmile, Mark’s eyes went almost comically wide, though Jordan remained unamused. “No, Jordan, please. I… I was coming to see Ms. Isenberg.”

  That slowed her momentarily, then she went on the attack again. “Why?”

  “Why do you think?” he said. “To talk about her case.” He shook his head. “When I saw your scooter parked at the curb, I knew I should have come back another time.…”

  “That’s right. You should have known that.” She was in his face, and not in the way he might have hoped. “What happened to Kay’s family happened long before you made detective—how did you even know about her case?”

  Obviously, Mark didn’t like being on the wrong side of flying questions. “I heard about it from a source.”

  “What source?”

  “A confidential source.”

  Kay said, “You two should get a room.”

  That stopped them; they both turned to her.

  “The chemistry is simply palpable,” Kay said with a pleasant smile. “Whether Detective… Pryor? Whether Detective Pryor followed you here, or if this was just a happy accident, does it really matter? Jordan, this is an opportunity to discuss with a police detective what you’ve come up with this afternoon.… Detective, this is a remarkable young woman. Really quite brilliant. Let’s sit down. Coffee? Iced tea? Soft drinks?”

  Jordan and Mark declined the beverage offer, but the wind was out of their argument and they followed the older woman’s instructions and sat, Jordan back in the chair, Mark with Kay on the couch. Jordan, with a few helpful interruptions from Kay, shared what they’d discussed, in particular the wrong-side-of-the-bed and left-handed victim issues.

  When she had finished, Jordan looked expectantly at the young detective.

  Mark only shrugged. “This is very interesting. It’s what I’d call… suggestive. But I can’t go to my captain with that. At least not yet.”

  Jordan frowned. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a closed case.” He gestured with widespread hands. “With our current caseload, he’s not going to let me reopen it on the grounds that the shooter was left-handed, and what side of the bed each was on.”

  “What would be enough?”

  “Something concrete. Something that puts someone else in that house at the time of the shootings.”

  “What about the gun? That might put someone else in the room.”

  “The gun was the weapon in the murder-suicide, and was near Mr. Gregory’s hand.”

  “But there was no gunshot residue test!”

  “Just because it’s not in the report, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. And even if not, it’s too late. Even an exhumation wouldn’t… I’m sorry.”

  Kay had begun to cry again. She waved it off, as if they shouldn’t be concerned, but she was crying, and Mark and Jordan exchanged concerned glances, on the same page for once.

  Mark said to them both, “This isn’t to trivialize what you’ve come up with. I would encourage you to keep digging.”

  “Gee,” Jordan said, “thanks.”

  “I’ll help you where I can,” Mark said. “But the department just isn’t going to allot resources for a closed case.”

  “You can use a phrase like allot resources,” Jordan said bitterly, “when we’re talking about what happened to Kay’s family?”

  “I don’t like it any better than you do. That’s why I’m looking into your family’s case on my own time. The CPD has a budget like every other city service. Money’s only going to get spent on open cases.”

  “And my family is an open case?”

  “Jordan, you know it is. The case is unsolved. Kay’s sister and brother-in-law is a closed case.”

  Why was he talking to her like she was a child? She wanted to kick him. Or slap him. Or something.

  “The major problem remains,” Mark said, “that there were no signs of a struggle.”

  Kay, confused, said, “Why is that an issue?”

  Mark didn’t answer her directly, instead turning to Jordan. “You are obviously more conversant with the file on this than I am. Is there any mention of them being drugged in the police report?”

  “No,” Jordan said.

  He glanced from her to Kay and back again. “Then, for the new information you’ve found to be impactful,
we must assume that two healthy, sane people let a third person march them into their bedroom, go along with instructions to lie on the bed, and simply hold hands and allow themselves to be… I’m sorry, Ms. Isenberg… to be executed, one at a time, without either victim putting up any kind of fight.”

  Mark put a hand, very gently, on Kay’s shoulder.

  “Ms. Isenberg,” he said, “does that seem possible to you? Does it sound like Walt and Katherine?”

  With a tiny shake of her head, Kay said, “No. No, it doesn’t. But I suppose, at gunpoint, it’s hard to know what someone might be able to force you to do.”

  “Did Walt love your sister?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would he have sat still for that?”

  “… No. No, you’re right, young man. Absolutely not.”

  Mark shrugged. “And, actually, anxiety attacks are a form of depression—perhaps not severe depression, but in this case severe enough for a doctor to prescribe medication.”

  Kay said nothing.

  Mark turned to Jordan. “Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one.”

  She wondered if she’d be dragged back to St. Dimpna’s or maybe tossed in the county jail, should she bonk this obnoxious dipshit with her cycle helmet.

  Restraining that impulse, she asked, “Why did you come to see Kay?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mark said. “That’s police business.”

  Seething, Jordan closed up her laptop and dropped it into her backpack. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

  Mark smiled sickly. “Are we… still on for tonight?”

  The question made Kay smile.

  Jordan said, “Yes, goddamnit!”

  Climbing onto her Vespa, Jordan wished she could be a fly on a Hummel’s nose in that living room. Mark had not come to talk to Kay about a closed case, that much was obvious.

  So was one other fact: he had better bring her one hell of a pizza tonight, and if it wasn’t sausage, she would kick his ass.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  On this clear, cool spring night, an apprehensive Mark Pryor approached Jordan’s apartment building, his only defense a Salvatore’s jumbo sausage thin-crust pizza and a six-pack of Coke Zero. He knew she was unhappy with him, the way she had stomped out of Kay Isenberg’s place this afternoon. If the two women had spoken since then, she might be ready to stomp all over him.