by Marvin Kaye
The meeting had gone well, and the money had been made, but at great cost. When Ghotikar returned home at the end of the day, he found his wife dead with a bullet through her head. “That man took her away from me!” he said.
When he left the stand, the chatter in cyberspace was that the verdict could go either way. He had spoken convincingly, but few people liked him. He was arrogant and impatient, so nothing softened the many factors against him: He was the husband, he had given a colleague a negligee for her birthday, the gun that was used had been registered in his name, and he was the only one to have seen this mysterious employment-seeking stranger. In fact, the banker was the only person who’d been proved to be at the house that day, except for the victim.
Then, at the last minute, a neighbor who’d been on a religious retreat came forward to testify that he, too, had seen a strange man at the Ghotikar’s door on the day of the murder. This unknown man was tall and lean and hungry-looking. He had a scruffy beard. The neighbor had seen Ghotikar’s wife Bronwyn open the door. Then he’d seen Ghotikar join her and shout at the stranger, calling him a bum. There was more shouting. But the words were indistinguishable.
On the strength of this evidence, Ghotikar was acquitted in a matter of hours. The jury members who spoke publicly said that no one doubted the testimony of the neighbor, fresh from the arms of his church. They all expressed sorrow for the banker’s loss, probably because some of them were ashamed of their earlier suspicions of him. But one juror, a middle-aged woman who worked at a call center, said she thought Ghotikar might have provoked the attack on his wife. Who knew what desperate straits the bearded man was in when he’d knocked on their door?
It is possible that Ghotikar heard the same interview. After shutting himself up in the “death house” for a week, he announced angrily that he would track down the killer if it was the last thing he ever did. “You’re blaming the victim!” he said, although blaming the victim’s husband would have been the more accurate description. He took a leave from his job and disappeared from sight.
If Kevin Ghotikar was in Sarasota looking for the mysterious stranger, that mysterious stranger could very well be Nat Serpas. Serpas had a beard now—at least in his photo on TV. That would make two men who’d gone straight from TV to Sarasota, Florida. This place was going to get a reputation.
Eureka did not waste a lot of time looking through the squad car for an adequate substitute for “the jaws of life,” which had disappeared along with most of the police force earlier in the decade. Police cars were not really equipped to deal with vehicular accidents any more. There weren’t enough cars around to matter. All she could find was the chain-saw she used to clear the road. It was not large, and she didn’t know how it would hold up against steel. Upon reflection, she took the silicone gloves and the jack as well.
She still didn’t have anything to smash open the window with, so she decided to take a quick look through the remains of the house. It had been one of the largest in the area. Judging by the litter, there must have been plenty of stuff inside before the roof blew away. Chances were that up until the storm it had been inhabited by squatters. Anyone with the money to buy it would have fled north years ago—or maybe it had been a second home.
Now everything was in pieces, most unrecognizable. You couldn’t always tell if they belonged inside or out. A lot of stuff was as wet as a marsh that shouldn’t be wet at all, like the rug and the mattress. As Eureka stepped into the foyer of the house, it was like stepping into the first box of a game of hopscotch. The boundaries were more theoretical than actual. She was still surrounded by bright sunshine and she still breathed the post-hurricane air, with its peculiar and invigorating smell of ozone.
In a rectangle that delineated a former closet she found a lidless plastic bin holding a tennis racket, a baseball bat, and a cottonmouth. She managed to pick out the bat without disturbing the snake. Farther on, next to an upended oak entertainment system, was a man lying on his back: Nat Serpas. Det. Kilburn recognized his long, handsome face, his thin lips, his beard. She supposed he was hungry-looking. Most people around here were. Smashed around him were a large flat screen, several audiovisual tech modules, and half a dozen big black metal storage boxes, one of which had just missed him. He was alive, but unconscious. Det. Kilburn cuffed him in front. She wasn’t unfeeling, but that was what she was there for. And if he happened to be Bronwyn Ghotikar’s mysterious killer, well, he wasn’t going anywhere soon.
Next Det. Kilburn went back to the car and used the baseball bat to break the right back window, which was in line with the upside-down man but not so close that he’d be hit by shards of glass.
As she was clearing the shards from the door with her gloves, he said, as clear as day, “You look like you have some initiative, thank the Lord. I’ve got to get out of here. What we really need is a reciprocating saw. Did you see anyone else around?” He spoke with authority, despite his breathlessness.
“First I’m going to examine you real quick.” She was crouched over, her head inches from the ground, but she managed to stretch her arm far enough inside to take his pulse.
“We’ve no time to waste,” he said sharply. “I have reason to believe there is a very dangerous man nearby.”
“Dangerous?”
“It’s too complicated to go into now.”
“There’s a man in what’s left of the house, if that’s what you mean,” said Det. Kilburn.
“Get me my gun,” he barked. “It’s somewhere around here.”
“He’s not going to attack anyone. He’s unconscious. He was almost crushed when a huge shelf fell over.”
“Naturally,” said Ghotikar. Bitterness overcame him. “He has the luck of the devil. Whatever he does, he gets off scot-free. He obviously didn’t secure anything. But he’s not the one stuck here. He’s the laziest person I ever encountered. Look at that house. The roof wasn’t strapped down. I’ve never seen such a shoddy job. Did he do anything to prepare for the storm? Put plywood over the windows, maybe? Bring his car parallel to the house? Any moron knows that’s what you do.” He was becoming increasingly breathless. “I didn’t even grow up around here, and I can tell you that much. He’s a shirker through and through.” His face was turning red and blotchy. “I must keep calm!”
“You know this man?” asked Det. Klburn.
“Well enough,” said Ghotikar. “He destroyed my life.”
She was amazed that he had the energy to talk as much as he did.
“What are you standing around for?” he cried, as if Serpas’s sloth was a contagion, and Eureka the unfortunate recipient.
This was annoying. Plus she was still not really standing. She was bent over nearly double trying to examine the door. The posture was awkward and painful for her. “I would prefer not to kill you in the process of getting you out,” she said.
She turned on the chain-saw and attacked the door at the hinge. He did not flinch. She gave him that much. But the blade was not doing anything to the door except for scratching it. She was going to have to go in through the window and get at the door that way.
“Do you see my gun?” he asked.
“You don’t need a gun,” said Det. Kilburn.
“Yes, I do. You don’t know what you’re getting into here.”
“I have a gun.”
The banker perked up. “Yes, of course,” he said. He gathered himself together and declared, “That man over there killed my wife.”
“I see.”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I recognized him from a TV program called ‘CrimeWatch.’”
“Why didn’t you call the cops? Or the TV show, for that matter?”
“The cops! They never believe a word I say. So now I have to do my own police work, too. I tell you, there is no rest for the weary.”
Det. Kilburn pointed out pleasantly that eyewitness IDs were notoriously shaky.
“I looked straight at him for ten minutes, and I can read a person
like that as easily as I can read the stock figures. Believe me, I have the right man.”
The air was hot, but not humid. The hurricane had sucked all the moisture away. A sudden little breeze made it almost pleasant to be out doing physical labor. First she brushed the worst of the glass from the crumpled top of the car where she was going to have to sit. Then she wriggled in with the baseball bat. Kneeling with her head bent, she bashed at the door till it fell off. Finally she set up the car jack between the seats, which were hanging from above. She and Ghotikar were as close as lovers. His salt-and-pepper hair was inches from her khaki-clad thigh.
“Is this your car?” she asked.
“A Chevy? Are you kidding? Haven’t you ever heard the joke about how many bankers it takes to drive a BMW?”
“I don’t like jokes,” said Eureka, straight-faced.
So this was Serpas’s car—or more precisely, the car he’d stolen from the woman in Atlanta.
“I was wondering why you’re caught between the seats,” she said. “Why not between the front seat and the dash? You must have been in the back seat when the car flipped over.” Actually, given the force of the storm, anything could have happened. Still, it was a pretty good guess, and Ghotikar accepted it.
“I suppose you think I was in the back seat waiting for the guy,” he said.
“Maybe you were crouched down with your gun, hoping to surprise him.”
“Maybe I was assuming he’d come out to move his car to a safer place,” said Ghotikar sarcastically. “That’s what any responsible person would do when they heard a hurricane was coming. But not Nat Serpas. You’re not going to find him doing anything useful with his miserable life.”
“I guess he’s lucky he wasn’t the responsible type,” said Det. Kilburn. “Then you would have been able to shoot him.”
“And what would be so wrong with that? You know he deserves it. And if you don’t know, I haven’t done my job. I haven’t gotten across what a scumbag he is. He preys on women. Vulnerable older women.”
It was true that in certain circumstances Eureka might step back and not interfere with frontier justice. There was no courthouse in Sarasota any more. No judges, either.
“You’d understand if you knew Bronwyn,” said Ghotikar. “She was such a nice person. A real homebody. Of course she wasn’t much of a cook. I had to do that, too, to get a decent meal. But she always tried her best. We did nothing to merit what happened to us. And I can certainly make whatever steps you take worth your while.”
Det. Kilburn asked what he meant.
“I’m a very wealthy man. I don’t want to brag, but I made more than ten men could spend in a lifetime when I was a banker, and now that I have Bronwyn’s money, too, I can give you anything you want. How about a house in Iceland? It’s so beautiful there. Cool breezes. Pure water.”
Det. Kilburn wondered what she should do with someone who so clearly planned to shoot a fellow human being the next chance he got. Even if Serpas had killed his wife, she didn’t see how in good conscience she could just release Ghotikar from between the seats. Not that that was going to happen in the next few minutes, anyway. She’d already tried three different positions for the jack, and none of them had worked.
“Serpas is in handcuffs,” she said. “I saw him on ‘CrimeWatch’ just the way you did.”
“Perfect. Forget me. Just go finish him off. I won’t care if I never get out of this car. I can die in peace.” He closed his eyes to illustrate.
“I know you’re angry. But you don’t really want to kill him. You’d be throwing your life away, and it wouldn’t bring your wife back.”
“I do want to kill him,” he said, his eyes popping open down there next to the crushed roof. “I think of nothing else. I don’t have a life any more, and it’s his fault.”
He was very convincing. She decided to confiscate his gun as soon as she found it. She wasn’t even sure where she drew the line, but this was way over it, she was sure.
Besides, she wasn’t sure he had the right man. What would Nat Serpas have been doing in Charlotte? Travel was very difficult these days. You had to have a powerful incentive to do it. You did not go from Atlanta to Charlotte and end up asking for work like some kind of hobo or yardman. Maybe if he’d met Bronwyn somewhere and figured she was a good prospect…. But Eureka couldn’t see any way that would have happened.
The argument Ghotikar was supposed to have had with him made no sense. Serpas was not a day laborer, he was a con man. He was more likely to have tried to sell the Ghotikars pixie dust than to have mentioned any kind of violence. He might have gotten an advance to do contracting work that he didn’t intend to do. That sounded like him. Or if he’d fallen on hard times, he might have offered to paint the hall so he could swipe some jewelry. But when he was turned away, why would he have threatened them?
As Det. Kilburn was thinking this through, she spotted Ghotikar’s gun in the trunk. She reached out with her right foot and kicked it farther away.
“That’s my property!” he said, immediately realizing what she was doing. “I’ll give you everything I have for it!” He grabbed her arm with his upside down hand, but then thought better of it and withdrew.
Considering Ghotikar’s role as avenging husband, it was odd the way he didn’t dwell on murder or blood or even revenge. Eureka believed that if you paid close attention to the words people use, they inadvertently reveal themselves. Ghotikar was obsessed with work. When he spoke of Serpas, he talked about him the way you’d talk about an employee who didn’t measure up. His bitterness seemed centered on a feeling of being deeply, thoroughly cheated.
Det. Kilburn knew then instinctively what job Nat Serpas had told Ghotikar he would perform and instead reneged on. She found herself asking, “Why did you get the lingerie for your colleague?”
“What lingerie? Where did you get that from? You knew all along who I was. I should have known.” Ghotikar’s sourness was returning. “I explained all that at the trial. I didn’t buy any lingerie. Why would I? I wasn’t interested in that woman. She wasn’t my type at all. Anyone could have signed my name to the card. It wasn’t even my handwriting. That’s just the sort of prank the traders were always pulling. I can’t be held responsible for what they do.”
Nothing that happened at the bank would surprise Eureka. But she knew she was on the right track. Serpas had agreed to kill Ghotikar’s wife. The two men must have first met in Atlanta. Businessmen like Ghotikar still traveled because of their professional responsibilities. Not everything could be done teleconferencing. He would have had meetings, consultations.
With advance in hand, Serpas should have been happy to sneak away—far away. But maybe murder was still too much for him. Maybe he drove to the Ghotikar house up in Charlotte intending to warn the poor woman. More likely, he wanted money from her in return for exposing her husband’s plot against her.
So why was Ghotikar home at the time? Why wouldn’t he have been as far away as possible with as many witnesses as possible? Because by then he’d seen Nat Serpas’s photo on CrimeWatch and had learned he was a con man. He wanted to make sure Serpas was going to go through with his part of the deal. That time would have been only a test. He planned to ask him to come back later.
Eureka slipped out of reach of Ghotikar’s arm as she pictured the scene on the porch up in Charlotte. A big old Victorian wrap-around, with plenty of room for everybody. Bronwyn would be puzzled at first by Serpas’s accusations, more frightened of him than of her husband. But soon it would be clear to the banker that here was yet another job he was going to have to do himself.
Ghotikar was no fool. Far from his wrap-around porch, upside-down in a car that was no BMW, surrounded by trashed palm trees, he took stock of the situation and said, “You can’t do anything about it. Double jeopardy applies.”
“You tried to hire me to kill a witness,” said Det. Kilburn, out in the sunshine once again. “That will cause problems if I manage to get you out of there.”
>
VALENTINE’S DAY, by John M. Floyd
Retired schoolteacher Fran Valentine pushed through the door of the sheriff’s office with her purse clenched under one arm and a greasy paper bag under the other. “Want a donut?” she asked.
Sheriff Lucy Valentine hung up the phone and stared at her.
“You don’t want a donut?” Fran said. “Are you sick?”
“What I am, is busy. Don’t you ever knock, Mother?”
“Why should I? I’m a taxpayer—I own this office.”
Lucy sighed. “I was about to call you anyway.” She pointed to the telephone. “Penny Collins was kidnapped, three hours ago.”
“You’re joking.”
“Am I laughing?” She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed the top of her head as if trying to start a fire in her hair. “We found her car parked beside Lake Road. No witnesses. I just got back from her son’s house—the state cops are already there.”
“That’s why you’re sitting here doing nothing?”
“I’m not doing nothing,” Lucy said. “And I’m sitting here because they sent me here. The staties are in charge now, and that means they want me and my deputies to stay out of their way.”
“They used those exact words?”
“Let’s see—they said, ‘You and your deputies stay out of our way.’”
“Wait a minute. You said they were at the Collins’s house? How’d they get there so fast?”
“Because they were here in town already, guarding the governor and the sheik.”
Fran nodded and took a donut from her bag. “That’s right, I forgot.” The newly-elected governor was here for the day with the head of some Middle Eastern nation, touring the antebellum homes along the river. What a foreign dignitary was doing in a remote county seat in the Deep South no one seemed to know. Maybe he wanted to buy the courthouse. Fran added, “I came from home the back way, I guess that’s why I didn’t see them.”
