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by Konstantin

  I nodded. “But Holly got out of all that, right? Out of theater and into what…film?”

  “Video,” he said carefully.

  “She doing well at it?”

  “How the hell should I know? Like I said, I can’t help you, March.”

  I smiled. “Only because you’re not trying, Gene. I’m sure you know all there is to know about her— you two were involved for a long time, after all.”

  Werner stiffened and a ridge of tension rose along his jaw. His voice became a low rumble. “I guess you know a fair amount about her, yourself.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been talking to people.”

  “Talking to who?”

  “Friends, acquaintances, the usual suspects.” I made a show of leafing through my notebook. “Why, did I get it wrong about you and her dating?”

  He took a deep breath and forced out a laugh. “No, I just don’t know if I’d call it dating, is all. We’d worked together, we were friends, and sometimes we fucked. But it wasn’t an exclusive thing— not for me, anyway.”

  “Apparently not for Holly, either.”

  Werner’s sculpted brows furrowed. “Come again?”

  “I’ve seen her videos, Gene.” Werner straightened, but said nothing. “I understand you have too, and that they took you by surprise.”

  He pursed his lips and toyed with the small gold hoop in his ear. “They’d surprise anybody,” he said slowly.

  “Sure,” I said. “And you had no idea—”

  “Of how fucking crazy she was? No, I didn’t. It was a bolt from the goddamn blue.”

  “I heard you were upset. It must’ve felt like a real betrayal.”

  “Heard from who?” he asked. “Who are these people?”

  “Friends of Holly. How upset were you?”

  Werner took a deep breath and ambled to a chair. He settled in it with elaborate nonchalance, and pulled off the rubber band that held his little ponytail. He ran his hands over his shiny hair, and put a smile on his face. It looked uneasy there.

  “I was…” Werner looked away from me, and back again, with eyes wide. “Those videos were a shock, it’s true, but they were also a wake-up call. Holly has always had issues, but this was another story entirely. You know what she looks like— stunning, incredibly…exciting— but even so, after seeing those things, it was too much. I was sick, and I wanted no part of her. That’s why I broke things off.”

  I kept my voice even and my face still. “You broke things off with her?”

  Werner touched his goatee and showed his big teeth. “I only have so much energy, and it frankly wasn’t enough to deal with Holly’s craziness. It was upsetting, but I got some perspective on it soon enough. And like I said, it was never that big a deal— not for me, at least.”

  I nodded. “But you were pretty pissed off at the time, right? I heard you guys went at it hammer and tongs last fall.”

  Werner leaned forward and pointed at me. “You’re talking to that old man, aren’t you— her fucking neighbor?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t met the guy, but back to my question: Were you two fighting a lot last fall?”

  “We were both unhappy then.”

  “Unhappy— like it was the end of more than just a casual thing?”

  Werner stood and swept his hair behind him and wrapped it again in his rubber band. He sighed deeply and put on a grave expression. “All that time, and I never knew: it was like she’d lied to me every one of those days. So I was upset— we both were. We yelled, we slammed doors, we said things we regretted later— okay? It wasn’t pleasant and I’m not particularly proud of it, but it is what it is.”

  I tried to look sympathetic, but it was hard work. Werner paced around the living room and I let him, and let him think we were moving on to something else. After a minute or so, I shook him up some more. “I heard it was more than just cruel words and slammed doors, Gene. I heard you hit her.”

  Werner spun around. There was anger in his face, and maybe a little fear. “Where the fuck did that come from? Because that’s bullshit! Sure, we fought, but I never once laid hands on her. It’s crap, and I’d be careful about spreading it around.”

  “I hear you kind of stalked her for a while too, followed her around—”

  “Pure crap! Have you been talking to Krug? Because that old queen has always had it in for me, and I’ve never even met the bastard.”

  “Imagine,” I said. “But I wonder why people thought you were knocking her around.”

  “How the hell should I know? Maybe if you told me where you heard this garbage—”

  “People saw bruises on her, Gene, and she was upset. You know her, or at least, you did back then— where else could she have gotten those bruises? Who else might have upset her?”

  “Fuck if I know. Anything could’ve happened to her in those hotel rooms.”

  I sighed and let the silence percolate. “Sure,” I said finally. “But you don’t know any names.”

  A cunning light came up in Werner’s dark eyes. “There was one guy…. She hung with him over the summer, and after we ended things, I think she started seeing him. But he’s a real psycho, a muscle-man type, a bouncer, if you can believe it. Anyway, I think she finally realized what a nasty piece of work he was and wanted to break it off. But she was scared of him— scared of what he might do.”

  “And this guy would be Jamie Coyle?”

  Werner nodded vigorously. “Jamie, yeah, that’s him— a real lowlife. You know about him?”

  “A little. When did Holly tell you all this?”

  “I don’t know…whenever I saw her last.”

  “Which was when?”

  “A while ago— a month at least.”

  “And you haven’t been in touch since?” He shook his head. “Not last week?” Another shake. “Not the week before?”

  “I told you— it was a couple of months ago.” I nodded slowly and Werner leaned on the mantel again and looked at me. “Now, if you’re through with your questions—”

  “Almost. You said that Holly had issues. What kind of issues?”

  Werner looked surprised. “Family issues,” he said. “Daddy issues. Christ, it’s all she ever wrote about. I don’t know the details, but her family was screwed up, more than the usual amount. I gather when she was a kid her father chased anything in skirts, and didn’t bother to hide it. Now, if that’s it…”

  “One more thing. How well do you know Jamie Coyle?”

  He squinted, even more confused. “I don’t— not really. I met him a couple of times last summer, at a club Holly went to. He worked there. But I don’t think I said ten words to him.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “No? Then can you think of a reason why he’d be hanging around outside your apartment building?”

  Werner went pale, and his casual elbow slipped from the mantel.

  22

  “All in all, it’s good he gave up the acting,” I said.

  Mike Metz chuckled. Over the phone I heard him pouring something, and I heard NPR in the background: Weekend Edition. It was Sunday morning, and drops of snowmelt fell glittering past my window.

  “He was that bad?” Mike asked.

  “Worse. Or maybe it’s just that he can’t improvise. That stuff about his relationship with Holly being no big deal, and that he broke things off with her— it was utter crap.”

  “What about the business with Jamie Coyle?”

  “About Holly being afraid of him? I guess it’s possible— Jamie is a scary guy— but I take what Werner says with lots of salt. About the only thing I’m sure of about him is that he’s scared himself.”

  “Scared of whom— Coyle?”

  “Him, certainly. Werner nearly wet his pants when I told him that Coyle had had his place staked out. But it’s not just Coyle; he was nervous from the start. He clearly didn’t want to talk to me, and he could’ve thrown me out anytime, but he didn’t. He was worried enough about something— what I knew, maybe, or what I wanted
to know, or who I was working for— that he let me keep talking.”

  “You think he knows Holly’s dead?” Mike said around a mouthful of something.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? If he saw the pictures in the newspaper, he would’ve recognized the tattoo, but it’s possible he didn’t see them. The weather’s pushed that and every other story to the back of the paper for the past few days, and it never got much TV time. Of course, it’s possible that he knows without having seen the papers.”

  “Because he killed her.”

  “That would also explain the worry, though just seeing the pictures in the paper, knowing Holly is dead, might explain it too. If what Krug told me about him is true— the hitting, the stalking, the whole obsessive-lover-spurned thing— then Werner has to know he’d look very good to the cops.”

  “He looks pretty good to me too,” Metz said. “And so does Coyle— maybe good enough to make an ADA think twice about going after your brother.”

  “I’ll try Coyle’s PO on Monday, and we’ll see how he looks then. And who knows— maybe lawyer Vickers will call back.”

  “Don’t hold your breath. But work fast on Coyle; I want to move on this next week.”

  “I’ll be quick as I can, but David still needs convincing. Last time we talked, he thought the idea of going to the cops was crazy, and maybe you were too. And he wasn’t listening too well to reason.”

  Mike snorted. “Well, something you said sank in. He called me last night, and he was a model of cooperation.”

  “He called you?”

  “He ran down his whereabouts for me on that Tuesday, and answered all my questions about times and places and people. Almost all, anyway.”

  “What’s the ‘almost’ part?”

  “He’s still reluctant to talk about Stephanie, or to let me talk to her.”

  I sighed deeply. “Can he account for his time?”

  “Some of it. His day’s a little patchy, but with some legwork we can probably fill the gaps. It’s the nighttime that’s a problem.”

  “He told me he was home.”

  “That’s what he told me, too. But apparently Stephanie is the only person who can substantiate that.”

  “And he won’t let you talk to her. Great. Does he say why?”

  “He says she’s out of town and that he’ll talk to her when she gets back, though he doesn’t say when that will be.”

  I took another deep breath. Shit. “What does he say about going to the cops?”

  “He seems to understand it’s the best course.”

  “Which is not quite the same as agreeing to do it.”

  “No,” Mike said. “But it’s getting there.”

  “Does he understand that we can’t talk to the cops until we talk to Stephanie?”

  “Yes, though it doesn’t seem to translate into actually letting us talk to her. And he’s developed a theory that the timing of Holly’s death actually works to his advantage.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “His reasoning is, How could he have killed her when, on that Tuesday, he didn’t even know who she was. He’d hired you only twenty-four hours before, and you didn’t even tell him her name until the following day.”

  I almost laughed. “Sounds watertight to me— we might as well pack up and call it a day, Mike. Except, maybe, for the fact that she’s the one who was calling him—and visiting his house and probably following him around. It won’t take the Einstein of cops to work out a scenario where she calls him, they arrange a meeting, and things go wrong. Hell, maybe she didn’t even call; maybe she just waylaid him on the street somewhere.”

  “I explained all that, though without the sarcasm. I’m not sure how much got through.”

  “So where does that leave us?” I asked.

  Mike cleared his throat. “With you and him having another talk, I’m afraid.”

  I managed not to throw the phone through the window, but hung it up instead. Clare came yawning and stretching from the bedroom, her gray eyes puffy from sleep. She poured a glass of cranberry juice and sat at the end of the sofa and put her feet in my lap. They were cold and white and I rubbed her toes. She picked up the TV remote.

  The news had gone from plowing and digging to melting and flooding, and there was footage of water, water everywhere— on roads, in basements, and coursing through storm drains and subway tunnels. Images of JFK came on the screen, where the runways were clear, and long lines of planes were landing and taking off, and the stranded, rumpled, bleary, and unwashed were more or less on their ways. I looked at Clare, who drank her juice and watched in silence. When the images shifted again— to scenes of plows pushing mountains of snow into the river— she looked at me. I opened my mouth to speak, but Clare beat me to it.

  “He’s not flying in from anywhere, if that’s what you’re wondering.” I had been, and now I was wondering why not. A tiny smile flickered on Clare’s lips. “He’s not snowbound anywhere, except at home.”

  I sat up. “No?” I said. My voice was tight.

  Clare shook her head. “No.”

  “Then where does…” There was a little rushing sound in my ears. “What did you—”

  “I left him.”

  “You…”

  “I left him. I walked out.”

  I nodded, more out of habit than because I understood anything. “You…what are you—”

  “Don’t worry; I’m not planning on moving in. But the storm made it impossible to get a hotel room.” She drank some more juice and looked at me over the top of her glass. “I was going to give it a couple of days, but I can start calling the hotels now if you like.”

  “No…I…You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  Clare nodded. She went to the kitchen and put her glass in the sink and stood by the windows. Her back was straight and stiff.

  “What happened?” I asked. She shook her head but didn’t turn around. “You can stay as long as you need to,” I said, “as long as you want.”

  “Which is it,” she asked softly, “ ‘need’ or ‘want’?”

  “Whichever,” I said.

  She nodded, and watched a wing of snow slide from a rooftop across the street and break into diamonds on the way down. “It’s all coming loose,” she said.

  * * *

  Clare went for a walk in the afternoon, and didn’t ask for company, and I went for a messy run. My shoes were heavy with water when I got back, and my eyes ached from squinting. Clare was still gone, and still gone when I got out of the shower. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and opened my laptop and my notebook.

  I found Phil Losanto’s telephone number on-line, and found him at home, in Yorktown Heights. He had just gotten back from forty-eight hours of skidding across northern Westchester County, covering the county’s response to the storm and, according to him, freezing his freaking nuts off. His voice was permanently tired and permanently amused.

  “Plus the wife’s on my ass now ’cause our drive’s the only one on the block that isn’t shoveled. Christ, let me get a Pepsi first.” There was a lot of noise on his end— a television playing loud cartoons, the piercing trills and beeps of a video game, small children fighting, or playing, or both, and a shrill, exasperated woman yelling at them. My heart went out to Phil.

  “You wrote a couple of articles a few years ago about Jamie Coyle.”

  Phil thought for a while amidst the noise. “Yeah, in Peekskill, right. The kid who beat the crap out of that video store guy. He got sent away for a while.”

  “And got out about a year ago. You recall much about him?”

  “Enough. Why?”

  “Your article talked about him being a star athlete, local-hero type. Was that for real, or was it just good copy?”

  Losanto snorted. “What, you don’t trust the press? No, that was mostly for real. Until the knee thing, the kid was a phenomenal defensive tackle— made all-county in his sophomore year— and he was Golden Gloves champ in his clas
s since he was fourteen. As far as the hero part goes…that’s a different story.”

  “Don’t leave me hanging, Phil.”