Time Release

by Martin J. Smith

  It was attributed to John the Baptist. Christensen read it again. “This mean anything to you?” he said.

  “Not really.”

  “No idea who sent it?”

  “No.”

  “And you don’t know why?”

  “No.”

  But it scares him, Christensen thought. Maybe it was meant to. Like an innocuous videotape. Like a threat.

  “Can I take this? I think Grady Downing should see it.”

  Sonny turned toward him. “Why?”

  He ignored the question and didn’t wait for Sonny’s permission, figuring he’d just slip it casually into his jacket. Remembering the care Downing used in handling the video, he became suddenly worried about destroying evidence with his fingerprints. He pulled his ski gloves back on and tried to fold the paper back into the envelope. It looked about as casual as open-heart surgery. Sonny watched, saying nothing.

  Christensen tried to divert Sonny’s attention from the note. “How do you feel about all this stuff?”

  Sonny stared into the misted windshield. “Like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff.”

  “But how does it feel?”

  “I don’t like heights.”

  “Scary? Dangerous?”

  Sonny nodded.

  “Can you still come in the evenings?”

  Sonny nodded again.

  “Tomorrow, then. Six-thirty. You’ll be there?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “But you’ll come?”

  Sonny nodded. Christensen opened the car door. Cold air rushed in. As he shut the door again, he saw Sonny pull the thermal blanket a little tighter around his shoulders.

  Chapter 29

  Christensen shoved a toothpick into the tiny hole. The butter churn was looking good. Annie’s whole “Long Ago Days” diorama project was looking good, if he did say so himself. They’d put most of it together at Brenna’s a couple hours earlier. Annie cut a picture of a stone fireplace from one of Brenna’s Architectural Digest magazines and pasted it to the back wall of the shoe box, then stapled some chintz curtains over the hand-drawn windows. They’d made a writing desk from heavy cardboard and created a tiny journal to sit on top. The coup de grace was a pillow feather scissored into the shape of a quill pen and stuck into a reasonable facsimile of an inkwell.

  The butter churn was his idea, hatched during the drive home after the girls were safely in Brenna’s foldout sofa bed. After he double-checked the house, as was becoming his habit, he made a tiny churn out of shirt cardboard and glued it to the floor of the shoe box, figuring he’d explain what it was when he picked Annie up the next morning. He lost himself in the project until someone rapped sharply on the front door. The wall clock said 11:20.

  The rest of the house was dark, as was the front porch. He looked around the kitchen, his fingers still crusted with Elmer’s glue. Did he have the stomach to grab a knife? He pulled a meat mallet from the utensil drawer and held it behind his back, then circled into the front hall through the dark living room so he wouldn’t be silhouetted against the light from the kitchen. Through the living room window, he could see a solitary figure waiting at the front door, a pinpoint of orange at the face. The cigarette’s glow was the only significant light, and it wasn’t enough. Staying out of sight, he reached around the hall wall and found the porch light switch, counting one, two, three before snapping it on.

  Downing waggled his fingers through the glass. The grinning bastard.

  “Figured you’d be up,” he said when Christensen opened the door. He crushed out his smoke on the porch deck, leaving the smoldering butt beside two others. How long had he been standing there?

  Against his better instincts, Christensen let Downing in. “I’m totally puckered here, Grady. You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Thought you’d want the print results from the videotape as soon as we got them back,” he said. “But it can wait until tomorrow.”

  The detective rubbed his bare hands together as he wandered into the living room. He picked up knickknacks, flipped the pages of Molly’s Renaissance art coffee-table book, arranged sofa pillows. Something was wrong. Downing’s toxic personal charm was intact, but he seemed nervous.

  “Cut to the chase, Grady.”

  Downing stopped, like he’d suddenly remembered why he came. “Got nothing. Only prints on it were yours. Nothing on the wrapper, either. Local postmark, though. Highland Park.”

  Christensen stared. “Damned good detective work on that postmark, Grady. I can read, too. Some reason you couldn’t have waited until tomorrow to give me that enlightening information?”

  “Yeah, well.” Downing wiped dust from an end table, rearranged a stack of unread New Yorkers.

  “Something else on your mind, Grady?”

  Downing walked to the picture window and closed the miniblind.

  “Grady, what’s going on?” A terrifying thought. “Are the girls okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re acting like something’s wrong.”

  “It’s not the girls, at least as far as I know. They still staying at Brenna’s?”

  Christensen’s heart was pounding. He wanted to shove Downing out the door. “It’s late, Grady. If you want to chitchat, I’d appreciate—”

  “I need to tell you about something. Somebody, really. I haven’t been as honest with you as I probably should’ve.” Downing settled onto the couch, waiting. “You should sit,” he said.

  “I’ll stand.”

  Downing fidgeted with a button on his trenchcoat. But he left it buttoned. He stared at it, moved to another button, stared at it, too. If Christensen had to guess the underlying emotion, he’d pick remorse. And that made him really, really nervous.

  “There was this woman,” Downing said. “Carole Carver. Nobody you know, I’m sure.”

  Christensen nodded and sat down in the wing chair across from the detective, purely by instinct. Downing was about to share something difficult and personal for the first time he could remember, and Christensen was trained to listen to people in pain.

  “It’s funny,” Downing said. “You go through life thinking you’re happy. Love your work. Love your wife. Love your kid. Things are great, all in all. Then you see someone who makes you wonder. They don’t do anything outright. They just are. And you suddenly realize that person is your missing piece.”

  Could be a late night, Christensen thought. “You fell in love,” he said.

  “Wham! I realized I’d lived most of my life as a half, and this person, Carole, was the half that was missing. Two halves of a whole, you know? Deep down, I knew that everything up to that point had just been holding her place until I found her again.”

  “Again?”

  “Long story. We knew each other for four years in college.”

  Christensen realized Downing was staring at the meat mallet. He tucked it into the chair cushion. “When did it start up again?”

  “Ran into her in February 1984. She was standing under the Kaufmann’s clock, one of the only times in my life I’d ever walked along that sidewalk. Pure chance, fate, you know. Hadn’t seen her in thirty-four fucking years. That’s when it started again. I knew right away. We were like two railroad cars coupled, headed down a track that only goes one place.”

  Christensen turned on a lamp beside his chair, suddenly aware that the living room was very dark. “Every guy runs into old girlfriends from time to time, Grady. You share a few memories, a knowing glance or two, then get on with real life. Sounds like you were ready to turn your life upside down. Maybe she just happened along at the right time.”

  Downing smiled. “It’s hard to explain. The physical attraction was as strong as ever.”

  Christensen glanced at his watch.

  “
She died in late ’86,” Downing said suddenly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “So you were, what, when the relationship started again? Fifty? Fifty-one? Kind of late for a midlife thing.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Sorry. The symptoms just sound familiar.”

  “This was different,” Downing said. “Trix and I had been through that, anyway, back in our mid-thirties. Even separated for a while to work it out. I was just stupid back then, thinking with my dick. Trix knew that and took me back, eventually. But Carole, something else was happening there.”

  “So you took the chance.”

  “You figure it out,” Downing said. “Career going great guns. Our daughter ready to go off to college. But I’d put a part of myself away all those years of raising her and being a decent husband, the spontaneous part that liked to skinny-dip in daylight and fuck in the backyard, the part that likes to go for a dog and fries at Dirty O’s at three a.m., then go watch the produce trucks unload in the Strip until dawn. That’s not Trix. Never was. So I just sort of, you know.”

  “Put it away for a few years? So that’s the half that was missing?”

  Downing nodded. “Trix and me were plowing along just fine. Maybe a little bored, but comfortable as ever. She’s great, you know. My best friend. She’s—”

  “Dull?” Christensen wasn’t going to waste these late hours mincing words. He wasn’t sure where Downing was taking this, but he wanted him to get to the point.

  “I’ve never been more comfortable with anybody in my life.”

  “Interesting word choice, Grady. ‘Comfortable.’ Like this chair. Like the pants you wear both days on weekends.”

  “It’s true, though. Trix and I had a great partnership.”

  “Had?”

  Uncertain smile. “Another story. We’ll work it out.”

  Long silence. Christensen looked over Downing’s shoulder at the clock above the fireplace. “Grady, what’s really on your mind?”

  “It’s a complicated story.”

  Christensen was losing his patience. “What story, though?”

  “About Carole.”

  “Sorry. Lost track there.”

  “It wasn’t just about sex.” Downing sounded defensive. “Maybe in college it was. Christ. Fight like dogs, fuck like rabbits, we used to say. But later, it was more than that.”

  “You saw her as everything your wife isn’t, right? Beautiful? Glamorous?”

  “Trix looks great for her age and for having a kid.”

  “There’s a qualified observation. Face it, Grady. ‘Looks great for her age’ wasn’t working for you at that point in your life. Nothing to be ashamed of. You were rediscovering a part of yourself through this other woman.”

  “Carole. And the thing is, I’d reached a point in life where everything made sense. Us meeting again after all those years. Her being single again after her divorce. Life was gonna be what it was supposed to be all along.”

  “You’d decided to leave Trix?”

  “Wasn’t a decision. Had no choice. Tried to fake it with Trix as long as I could, but I was already gone, mentally. She knew that, even if I never told her I was leaving, or why.”

  Christensen was confused. “So you never told her, then?”

  “Never told anybody. Not a soul. Didn’t want Trix hearing it somewhere, because I knew it was gonna hurt her bad. Not kill her; she’s stronger than that. But I kept imagining how her face would fall. Her bottom lip would tremble like it always does just before she cries, then she’d tell me to go jam a telephone pole up my butt and walk out. Worst part was, I knew she’d hate me. After everything we’d shared, she’d still hate me. Forever. I walked through the scene dozens of times, blocking it out the best I could to cushion the blow. And I was just about ready when Carole—”

  Downing adjusted the arm cover on the couch.

  “When she died.

  Downing’s head snapped up. “She was murdered.”

  Christensen felt a chill at the sudden shift in the conver­sation’s tone and direction. “What do you mean?”

  “It was like, well, nothing you could ever imagine. Pain like I’ve never felt, and I’ve been shot three times. Actual physical pain. Like someone took a dull knife and carved out whatever it was that made me, you know, feel.”

  “Grady, I’m sorry. But I think right now I need to know what happened to her more than how you felt about it. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but—”

  “Ron Corbett.”

  Christensen swallowed hard, trying to make sense of it. “She was one of the six?”

  Downing nodded, said something under his breath. “The only one—”

  “Pardon?”

  “I said the only one that wasn’t random.”

  Christensen stood up, dizzy, then fell when his leg gave way. He pulled himself up on the arm of the wing chair and made it to the hall bathroom just before he vomited.

  The bathroom coasted slowly to a stop. Christensen opened his eyes. He was sitting on the toilet, head in his hands, reviewing the elaborateness of Downing’s deception. He’d lied from the start about Corbett, about the risk. If Corbett was capable of locating and killing Downing’s secret lover in 1986, surely he was capable of finding out where he and Brenna went for privacy, or where Annie and Melissa spent their afternoons. And if he killed Downing’s lover at the height of the Primenyl investigation, it was probably the act of a man who thought the detective was closing in. Christensen felt his stomach churn again. Nonspecific multiple murderer, my ass.

  Downing knocked lightly. “Jim?”

  He couldn’t talk. He wanted to walk out of the house, pick up the girls, and drive straight to California. Start over as far away from this nightmare as he could manage.

  “I’m sorry, Jim.”

  Christensen yanked the door open. Downing was leaning against the doorjamb. His red eyes immediately found the floor.

  “You son of a bitch, Grady. You had no goddamned right.”

  Downing backed away. “I had my reasons for not telling you the whole story.”

  “Fuck your reasons. You don’t sucker somebody into working on a case against their better judgment without telling them what they’re in for.”

  “You know what we’re dealing with. I told you that.”

  “You told me the Primenyl killings were random. You told me the FBI was looking for a nonspecific murderer, not somebody capable of what you just described. Big goddamn difference. You think I’d put my kids in that position if I knew?”

  Downing smiled, a nervous, sad smile. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you. I need your help.”

  Christensen grabbed the nearest thing, a porcelain vase on the front-hall table, and threw it with all his might. Downing ducked and the vase shattered on the mantelpiece, spraying the living room with tiny shards. “You had no goddamned right!”

  “I’m here to tell you the story, Jim. It’s late, but I’m here. But I can leave now if you want.”

  “What? There’s more?”

  “Full-disclosure time, right?” Downing took out a pack of Winstons. “Mind?”

  “Yes.”

  Downing put the cigarettes back in his coat pocket. The look was less hostile than pathetic. “I got a video, too.”

  “Oh, Christ.” He wanted to run, rage. But he wanted to know the rest, needed to know.

  “Same thing as yours,” Downing said. “Nothing too hostile. Nothing outright threatening. Just a couple minutes long, a bunch of ordinary scenes that made it pretty clear he knew my routines, knew about Carole. He’d videotaped us one night sitting in my car outside her apartment building. Talking. Kissing. Totally vulnerable. Then Carole got out of the car and went inside. That was it.”r />
  “And that was in the middle of Primenyl?”

  “Eight weeks after the killings started. About a week after my last interview with Corbett. That was probably the only time since the first wave of killings that I’d seen Carole, that night he taped us. I didn’t even tell anybody about it, because I wasn’t sure there was a connection between the tape and my role in the investigation, at least not till three days later. That’s when she died.”

  Downing scissored open the miniblind with his fingers and peeked out the front window. Then he twirled the control bar and opened the blind into the midnight darkness and turned back toward Christensen. “She kept a bottle of Primenyl in her car, in the glove compartment, already opened. Somehow he got some bad capsules into it. She couldn’t find any Primenyl in her apartment, and I know she had a headache that night. I was there.”

  The detective’s face contorted. He rocked back and forth as he pressed his eyelids shut tight, fighting tears. “We made love an hour before,” he said.

  Christensen was transfixed, forgetting his rage in the presence of raw emotion. “My God, Grady. She died that night?”

  “In the parking lot, maybe ten feet from her car. Car door still open, the lid still off the bottle from the glove box. Capsules everywhere. Couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes after I left. Got the call at home an hour later, sitting at the kitchen table with Trix, eating leftover salmon loaf. Looks like another killing, the watch commander said. Female Caucasian, tentative identification from the license plate number. But I knew the address, knew the car.”

  Christensen imagined the scene. The wife knowing something terrible had happened, something worse than she could have dreamed. Downing, probably paler than he was now, bluffing his way through a hurried good-bye, maybe conceding that the latest victim was an old friend.

  “So everybody assumed it was random,” Christensen said.

  “Might as well have been. Only way anyone could have known was the unmatched lot numbers. But at that point, we weren’t splitting hairs.”

  “And you were the lead investigator.”

  Downing shrugged. “Look, it was obviously Primenyl. It looked random. I hadn’t told anybody about the video. So Carole became the sixth victim. Couldn’t tell the truth, and not just because of Trix. I was there half an hour before Carole died, the last person to see her. Hell, I was still inside her. They’d have pulled me off the case in a second. I might even go from cop to suspect.”