by John Moralee
She yelled this time. Definitely awake.
I went downstairs with Tony and made breakfast for the three of us.
Beth shuffled in wearing her bathrobe, eyes half shut. “Dad, you didn’t have to wake me like that.”
“How should I have done it? With a nuclear bomb?”
“Ha. Ha. Real funny. Where’s Mom?”
“She’s on an early shift.”
Beth ate her cereal with her eyes closed, complaining about how bright the day was. Tony watched the TV, dripping milk on his T-shirt as merchandising-related monsters battled for the universe.
And I thought of Lucy Ash.
*
Last night had been the worst of my life. I was hoping it had not happened, that I’d dreamt it all. But I knew it was real because even the most vivid nightmares have the accompanying sensation of them being false on the subconscious level.
When the breakfast was finished, I got the car out of the garage while Beth and Tony got ready. I dropped Tony at the kindergarten, then headed for the high school. Having her dad work where she went to school embarrassed Beth. She cringed in her seat as I pulled into the parking lot.
“Dad?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Who was that woman?”
“What woman?”
“The one I saw in your car yesterday.”
I looked at her and saw the fear in her eyes.
“That was just an old friend,” I said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“So Mom knows about her?”
No, I thought. “I might have mentioned it. I just gave her a lift, that’s all. It’s not important. Why?”
Beth blinked away tears. “Nothing. As long as Mom knows.”
“Come here,” I said, giving her a quick hug.
“Not here, Dad! Jeez!”
I watched her hurry from the car, joining her friends. I put a hand under my shirt and felt my heart thudding. Beth knew! What had I been thinking? Why had I risked everything by seeing Lucy Ash?
*
I never ate lunch in the high-school cafeteria. I’d loathed the food when I was growing up and it had not improved much since, so I always went out, usually with some teachers in the music department, but that day I went alone. On the walk to the Choca Mocha coffee-house, three police cruisers passed, sirens wailing. There was something going on in the park by the bandstand. Maybe arresting a drug dealer, I thought. They did hang out there when the kids got out of school, trying to sell dime-bags of coke. The Chief of Police was on a crackdown – no pun intended. I could see a crowd of civilians being held back by police. The police had sectioned off a square around the bandstand. I crossed the street and joined the crowd, stopping at the line of yellow tape.
“What’s going on?” I asked a man in his eighties. He was holding the lead of a yapping terrier.
“Some woman’s been strangled.”
“She’s dead?”
“Very.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Like I know? What am I – an encyclopaedia? Ask the cops.”
But I didn’t have to. The paramedics were moving the body onto a gurney to be taken away in their ambulance. I recognised the blonde hair and stylish clothes.
“Oh, Lucy …”
“What’d you say?” the old man said.
“Just thinking out loud,” I mumbled and backed away from the crime scene in a daze. The body looked like a doll, a life-size Barbie, not a real human being, a dead human being. Her dress was ripped, torn away from her chest. From this distance I could see a dark line around her pale throat, which was bruised purple. My own throat closed up as I imagined being strangled, knowing I was dying but unable to prevent it. I guessed strangulation was one of the worst ways to die. It was personal, ugly, and it lasted minutes. Lucy’s body was placed inside the van, the doors closed, and she was on the last trip of her life, to the morgue.
There was a detective looking at me. He was a big man with severe glasses and a buzz-cut hairstyle. I held his gaze for a few seconds, then he turned to a colleague.
Now the body had gone, the crowd broke up.
I wondered if I should tell the cops about yesterday.
I decided to think it over. You heard frightening stories of innocent people ending up on Death Row. I’d need to consult a lawyer before volunteering for an interview (or was that interrogation?)
I thought about during the afternoon classes. My students had heard about the murder in the park and they were just as distracted as I was.
Carson was waiting in the parking lot after classes. He was leaning on my car like he owned it. “Brody.”
“Carson,” I answered.
“Lucy Ash is dead,” he said.
“She was the woman in the park?”
“Yep. Some detectives stopped me in the mall right in front of my boss. Asked me questions. Real embarrassing. They wanted to know everything.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I saw Lucy at the bus station.”
“And?”
“That was it.” He grinned then, a cold sneer. “They didn’t ask me if I’d told anyone else. Like you, for example. But that doesn’t mean they won’t ask me some more questions. You didn’t come to the poker game, did you? Where were you?”
“Carson, what are you implying?”
“Me? I’m implying nothing. Just asking. Me, I don’t care about Lucy Ash one way or the other. But you had a thing for her. Did you use your thing on her last night? Maybe get a bit carried away?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
Carson shrugged. “Well, then, I’m sure you’ve been an upstanding citizen and told the cops about being in a bar with her?”
“How did you know that?”
“The cops had a description of a guy sounded roughly like you. Seems he was in The Haven with Lucy for a couple of hours. Then they left. You left. And now Lucy shows up with a seriously sore throat. It doesn’t look good, Brody.”
I wanted to punch him. “What do you want?”
“You figure out what my silence is worth, buddy. You know where to find me, when you’ve decided.” Carson patted the roof of my car. “This would do, I reckon.”
He walked off towards his old, dented Ford, laughing and laughing.
*
Nina was in the kitchen, drinking a glass of cranberry juice. She heard me come in and looked up from her Nora Roberts paperback. “Did you hear about the murder of Lucy Ash?”
“Yes,” I said. I hung up my coat and took a seat. “I need to tell you something. Something I should have told you yesterday. I saw Lucy last night.”
“You saw her,” she said. “Dead?”
“No! Alive. I … I had a drink with her. We talked. And then we left and something happened.”
Nina pushed her paperback aside, her mouth wrinkled at the edges, half-smile, half-frown. “I think … I think you’d better tell me everything.”
*
The Haven was quiet and dark and anonymous, the sort of place where nobody remembered anyone’s name. Maybe I didn’t want anyone to see me with Lisa and come to the wrong conclusions. I wasn’t thinking about having an affair, but I was in a crazy, disconnected mood, as though I’d been lost and had just found a sign directing me to civilisation. Just seeing Lucy Ash made me feel young again. And I was curious about her life. What had she been doing? Where had she gone? We sat at a table in the neon-lit gloom and I only had one beer because I was driving, but she had one tequila slammer after another. She looked very unhappy. You don’t drink like that if you’re not. She needed to talk and I needed to listen.
“Do you find me attractive?” she asked.
“You’re beautiful,” I said, not knowing where the conversation was going, but liking it and feeling guilty for liking it.
“Beauty is a curse,” she said, and stared at her drink. “I’ve always been doomed, Brody. Because of this.” She waved her hand in front of her f
ace. “People expected so much of me. And demanded so much, too. Too much. Always too much.”
I asked her what she meant. She looked at me as though I were a little kid with no idea of how the world worked. Compared with her, I guess I was.
“Do you want to know why I left?”
Somehow I knew I wouldn’t like the answer. The Enigma of Lucy Ash would be destroyed if I said yes. But I was curious. “Yes.”
“I was always prettier than the other girls,” she said. It was not a boast or conceit, but the truth. “Men could not resist my looks.” She paused. “Not even my own father.”
She let the words drift across the smoky room. Father. Father. Father. The beer in my mouth tasted sour.
“You’re father abused you.”
“Since I was eight or nine. He would creep into my bedroom and make me do things, horrible things. I was so afraid of him, I could do nothing. He got what he wanted. And I taught myself to let it mean nothing. It was just my body he was using. Just this beautiful body.”
“That was why you stole his car and disappeared?”
“I thought of running away many, many times. But I knew he’d find me. So I waited until I was eighteen. I stayed long enough to take what mattered to him – his money. I cleared out his bank account, cancelled his car insurance, then I took it all with me. And I took out several large loans on his house. He owed me.”
I recalled Terrence Ash had died in poverty about six months ago. After Lucy went away, he had lost his house, his wife, his job … everything. At the time people had assumed it was because he couldn’t cope with the loss of his daughter. Now I knew the truth.
“You couldn’t come back until he died?”
“Yes. Not while he was living. I hope he felt guilty for the whole of his life, but I doubt it. Maybe having no money hurt him, though.”
“What did you do with the money?”
“I went to Las Vegas. I bet it all on a single spin of a roulette wheel. I bet on black.”
“Did you lose?”
“No, I won. Maybe if I’d lost, I would have left Vegas. But I stayed, gambling. The money lasted about three years … then I earned it in other ways. I now have $400,000 in the bank. I’m thinking about buying a nice house in a nice neighbourhood.”
Other ways. That sounded sinister. I wanted to ask what other ways, but she was pretty drunk. Looking at my watch, I saw I was late for the poker game. It was about nine-thirty and it was dark outside.
I started driving her back to the B&B, but on the way she kept putting her hand on my thigh. I moved her hand away each time, but she persisted. Her hand managed to elude me while I was driving. She caressed my chest, undoing a button so she could slip her cool, silky hand under my shirt. I could hardly concentrate on staying on the road, but I extricated her hand from my chest.
“Lucy,” I said. “No.”
But she wasn’t listening. She spoke in a husky, sexy whisper. “I know you always wanted me, Brody. I would like to sleep with you. All it will cost you is $500.”
$500. It was like being stabbed in the heart. “You’re a prostitute? God, Lucy, what went wrong?”
She folded her arms, staring at the road. “What went right? What went right? Jesus – stop the car. I want to get out. Now!”
“I’m taking you home.”
“No! Stop here.”
We were passing the park. I knew it was dangerous at night, but Lucy grabbed the wheel and forced me to brake. She opened her door and the internal light lit her once beautiful face in yellow. I could see the make-up on her neck and the lines around her eyes. Suddenly she looked her age. Suddenly she looked like a middle-aged woman who had thrown her life away.
She got out and walked into the park, swaying her hips in a provocative way.
I called out to her, but she didn’t answer.
The next time I saw her, she was dead.
*
When I finished telling Nina, I waited for her response. She was expressionless except for her watery eyes, which stared into mine, every few seconds her focus changing from one of my eyes to the other, as though she were striving to read the honesty of my words. Her breathing was short and tense.
“What did you do then?”
“I drove around a while, then I came home.”
“You didn’t kill her?”
“No.”
She accepted it with a slight nod. “Brody?”
“What?”
“If she hadn’t been a prostitute, would you have slept with her?”
“How can you ask that?”
Nina pursed her lips. “I need to know. I’m not oblivious to the fact you haven’t been very happy recently. Would you?”
I shook my head.
“Say it.”
“No. I would not have slept with her. Betraying you would have destroyed me, Nina. You have to believe that because I love you. Maybe I didn’t realise how much that meant until I saw Lucy Ash again, saw through the stupid dreams. I would never have an affair. Never.”
Nina released a long sigh. She looked relieved. “Okay. I believe you. But the question is, will the cops?”
“They’ll have to. I’ll do a lie detector if they want.”
“Those things aren’t reliable. Good liars can pass, and nervous honest people can fail. So much time has passed since she was discovered that coming forward now would look suspicious. Like you’ve been thinking up an alibi.”
I knew that. “But Carson knows. If I don’t tell them, he will. Unless I bribe him.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I know.”
Nina said, “Who else knows?”
“The police have a rough description of me in the bar. Beth knows, too.”
“Our daughter knew before me?”
“Yes,” said a quiet voice in the doorway. Beth was standing there. She must have listened to our entire conversation. Her eyes were red and puffy and her throat was swallowing over and over. “I saw daddy with her at the park. I was in the arcade with my friends. I saw you drop her off, Daddy. And I thought … I thought you’d done it with her. And I got so mad at her that I followed her. I followed her until she stopped, where she was waiting for a client, I suppose. She looked so arrogant, so beautiful. I just wanted to frighten her. I had my scarf in my coat and I thought of a movie where this man strangles a girl. I sneaked up on her and put the scarf around her throat. She was taken by surprise. I pulled it tight. I wanted to scare her. I wanted to hurt her, too. It seemed to last a minute. Then she stopped struggling. I sort of snapped out of it then, realising I’d gone too far and killed her. I didn’t mean to. I left her there, not knowing what to do. I’m sorry, Daddy. I just didn’t want her to break up my family.”
Beth held out the scarf and I took it, the murder weapon. Then she fell into her mother’s arms, weeping. Nina looked at me over her daughter’s shoulder. There was panic in her eyes.
“What are we going to do, Brody? What are we going to do?”
Beth was sobbing and so was Nina. I’d caused this, I knew. It was my responsibility.
“I’ll take care of this,” I said. “The only thing connecting Beth to Lucy is the scarf. I’ll get rid of it.”
Before Nina or Beth could say anything, I went out to the garage and took down a can of kerosene that I used for our summer barbecues. I carried the scarf and the kerosene out into the back garden, which had a tall fence so the neighbours could not see in. I was about to douse the scarf when Nina came out.
“Don’t,” she said. “Beth wants us to take her to the police. She can’t live with a lie.”
“This is my fault,” I said. “I have to protect her.”
Nina was stern. “It’s the best way, Brody. She has to do it. For herself. We’ve always taught her to be responsible for her actions. We can’t be hypocrites now.”
I wished I could take back the last 24 hours. “What if they charged her with murder?”
“It’s her decision.” Nina was holding b
ack tears.
I picked up the scarf and walked inside.
The three of us drove towards the police department, Beth sitting in the car without moving, just staring at her own hands.
I felt sick. I was taking my daughter to the police to be arrested and charged with murder. We arrived and a detective agreed to see Beth in an interview room, with us present because she was a minor. Beth told him her story, which he recorded on tape. He didn’t ask any questions.
“Well, I have some good news and some bad news.”
“What’s the bad news?” I asked.
“The bad news is Beth will have to be charged.”
Nina let out a moan.
“What’s the good news?” I said.
“She won’t be charged with murder.”
I was surprised and confused. “She won’t?”
“No.” The detective continued, explaining what he was talking about. “We received the autopsy report. It revealed two things. The first is that Lucy Ash was strangled until she became unconscious. She wouldn’t have bruised as much if she’d been dead. Dead bodies don’t bruise. The second thing is she died of a stab wound at the base of her spine. We kept that a secret until we got the killer. We got a confession just a few minutes before you came here. The killer was a junkie crack dealer called Spenser. He hangs out in the park. He found Ash in the bandstand, recovering from what your daughter did. To him, she was just a drunken whore he decided to rob. She was quite alive until Spenser robbed her of $600 and her credit cards. She woke up when he was robbing her. He stabbed her for giving him trouble. He immediately spent the money on drugs and used her credit cards at an ATM, which was why we found him so easily. We caught him with the knife and the credit cards. He’s been charged with homicide.” He looked at Beth. “You’re very lucky, miss. Very lucky indeed.”
