by Tim Downs
“I thought we were talking about females of my species.”
“I’ve studied a few of them too—purely in the name of science, of course.”
Suddenly Kathryn noticed that Nick’s elusive eyes had come to rest on some object behind her, just across her left shoulder. She turned. At the jukebox stood a young woman with a body as sleek as a hornet, swaying seductively from side to side as she studied the selections. Kathryn turned slowly back to Nick with a broad smile.
“Aha.”
“Aha what?”
“Nothing.” She raised one eyebrow. “Just ‘Aha.’ ”
“Don’t be annoying, Mrs. Guilford.”
“You seem to have taken more than a clinical interest in a member of my species. Down here, that’s what we call eyeeatin’.”
“Nonsense,” he said casually. “I was merely observing.”
Kathryn leaned forward. “Liar.”
“Well,” he took a second glance, “it’s hard not to appreciate an outstanding example of any species.”
Kathryn watched as Nick’s floating eyes turned back to her again, studying, analyzing, searching for something. She had the distinct impression she wasn’t going to like what came next.
“I suppose your attraction to someone can keep you from seeing things clearly,” he began. “Sometimes it takes a third party to help you see what’s going on.”
Kathryn hesitated. “Who are we talking about?”
Nick rocked back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him.
“Let me ask you a question. It appears quite possible that your friend’s body was moved—and if it was moved, he was most likely murdered. The body could have been moved just a few feet—or many miles. The murder could have occurred anywhere—in another county, even in another state. Suppose the murder occurred far away; why would the killer choose to return the body to Holcum County? After all, an apparent suicide could be staged anywhere.”
Kathryn shrugged.
“The killer would return the body here because Holcum County is one of the only counties in North Carolina that still operates under the old coroner system—where the death investigation would be conducted by the ice cream man. Here he would have the best chance of faking a suicide and fooling the authorities. Now—who would know such a thing? Not the hunters. The coroner would know, of course—and anyone else who is familiar with medicolegal procedures in your county. Now, who might that be?”
The hair began to stand up on Kathryn’s neck.
“Of course, even if the killer fooled the coroner, the police might figure it out.” Nick looked directly at Kathryn now. “Unless for some reason the police didn’t want to figure it out …”
Kathryn’s eyes narrowed to a fiery glare. She brought both fists down hard on the table and sent two bottles clinking to the floor. The couple on her right stopped and turned. She glanced awkwardly over at them, then turned back to Nick and lowered her voice to a growl.
“Are you saying you suspect Peter? You think he might have done it?”
“Could have done it,” Nick corrected. “Of course, there is one other possible suspect …”
“Who?”
“You.”
Kathryn slumped back in her chair and threw both hands in the air.
“Me? You think I would pay you twenty thousand dollars to investigate a murder I committed myself? Are you out of your mind?”
“You know your problem, Mrs. Guilford? You’re naive—and in this business that can be a fatal error. This sort of thing happens all the time. Here’s the scenario: A beautiful young woman decides to do away with her friend, or boyfriend, or lover—whatever—and then she comes to me to investigate the death for her. She knows that there’s little chance I’ll be able to find anything, but her eagerness to investigate and her willingness to sacrifice her hard-earned money convinces everyone in town of her innocence. Twenty thousand dollars is a small price to pay for that kind of public support.”
Kathryn sat in stunned silence, shaking her head in disbelief. “Do you actually suspect me?”
Nick paused. “No. I don’t.”
“Then why—”
“Because I want you to open your eyes. No, I don’t suspect you of murdering your friend—but I’m willing to suspect you. I’m willing to suspect you and the hunters and the Sunday school teacher and the president of the PTA. I’m willing to suspect anyone—including your old friend the sheriff. My concern is that you’re not.”
“Peter offered to cooperate with us in this investigation.”
“I believe his words were, ‘I’d like to know what you come up with.’ ”
“And in return, he said he’d give us everything he has.”
“Which is nothing. An interesting form of cooperation.”
“Then why did you agree to go along with him?”
“First, because like it or not your friend is the law, and it’s within his power to demand our cooperation. Second, because I’d rather keep him where I can see him. And third,” he said with a tilt of his head, “because I have no choice, do I? This is your investigation—and wherever you are, I have a feeling the sheriff won’t be far away.”
Kathryn could barely contain herself. “Let me tell you something about Peter,” she seethed. “When I lost Andy he was the first one there. He stayed with me. He held me while I cried.”
“What a terrible burden for him.”
“He helped settle Andy’s affairs. He fought with the Department of Defense about searching for Andy’s body. He took care of the finances. He washed my car, he cut my grass, he did my shopping for me—he kept me from losing my mind.”
“That reminds me of a joke,” Nick said. “A man lies dying on his bed with his faithful wife sitting beside him. He says to her, ‘You’ve always been there, Margaret. When I lost the business, you were there. When I had the accident, you were there. When I suffered the nervous breakdown, you were there. And now that I’m dying, you’re still there. It just occurred to me—you’re bad luck.’ ”
“That’s not funny,” Kathryn glared. “I owe Peter everything.”
“Apparently not.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t love him.”
“How do you know? Maybe I do.”
Nick raised both eyebrows and peered at her over the top of his glasses. “You’re a very poor liar. Take it from an expert.”
“What makes you so sure Peter loves me anyway?”
“Oh, come on,” he groaned. “Mother bears are less protective.”
“Oh, really. It just so happens Peter has a girlfriend, you know.”
Nick stopped. “Now that’s interesting. And what might her name be?”
“Oh no you don’t,” Kathryn shook her head. “The last thing I want to do is turn you loose on Peter’s girlfriend.”
“I’m not going to eat her, Mrs. Guilford. I’d just like to ask her a few questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Like, ‘When the sheriff holds you, are you aware that he’s thinking about someone else?’ ”
“You are way out of line!”
“In my business, Mrs. Guilford, there are no lines.”
“I am not paying you to suspect Peter!”
“Oh? Who are you paying me to suspect?”
“Anyone else, but not him!”
“Why? Because he’s not capable of killing anyone? You know better, Mrs. Guilford. Because he had no reason to? Take another look behind you.”
Kathryn turned to see the woman with the hornetlike body still smiling and swinging hypnotically from side to side. Two eager young drones now circled around her, vying for her attention and flashing increasingly angry glances at one another.
“She could settle this right now if she wanted to—but she won’t. She’ll let them fight over her. In another ten minutes they’ll be out in the parking lot. If it goes badly, one of them may even die. That’s why your species kills, Mrs. Guilford.
That’s all the reason they need.”
“Not Peter.”
Nick adjusted his glasses. “And you thought I was blind.”
Kathryn jumped to her feet. “Why don’t you drop this ‘your species’ and ‘my species’ routine? Like it or not you’re a part of this species, mister! You can withdraw if you like—you can hole up in that perverse little laboratory of yours and spend your life staring at bugs, but you’re still one of us. You can look down your nose at everyone and distrust everyone and pick fights with everyone—but that doesn’t make you more of a bug, it just makes you less of a human! You say I’m naive—well maybe I am, but you’re a cynic! You think you’re above it all, standing outside and staring in the window at the rest of us—but you’re not! You’re just the pathetic little boy with the big funny glasses who got tired of being hurt and ran to his room and slammed the door!”
Kathryn suddenly realized that she was standing and that her voice had inadvertently risen to a shout. Half the room had grown silent, watching, and several couples now stood motionless on the dance floor. As if in response to the change of atmosphere, the music segued to a slower beat.
She sank awkwardly into her chair again and sat staring at her reflection in the amber bottle closest to her. There was a long, long silence—so long that Kathryn began to wish that Nick would shout or scream or even throw something—anything would be better than the awful silence.
“You know,” Nick said suddenly, “I believe I’d like to dance after all.”
He rose and stepped a few paces away from the table, then turned and held his arms out for Kathryn. She sat stunned, blinking in disbelief, her mouth gaping open—until she noticed her reflection in the bottle. She slowly rose from her chair and stepped toward him. She stopped a few feet away and held her own arms out, almost with a shrug, as if to say, “It’s your move.”
Nick stepped forward and slid his right arm around her waist, pulling her closer than she expected. He held her right hand against his chest and put his cheek almost against hers, his lips just a few inches from her right ear. They began to move with the music, far more smoothly than Kathryn would have imagined possible—for someone of his species.
Minutes passed.
“So you’re convinced that the sheriff couldn’t have done it,” Nick said softly.
“I’m absolutely sure.”
“Then the next time you see him, will you ask him something? Ask him why, after nine years of silence, he suddenly chose to make your friend’s cocaine habit public knowledge.”
“He only told one person,” she reminded him.
“Yes. But he told the right person.”
Kathryn thought about his words. “All right. I’ll ask him.”
Nick spotted the waitress working her way toward them across the dance floor. He stopped and looked into Kathryn’s eyes. At this distance, his eyes seemed truly enormous.
“Promise? The next time you see him?”
“I promise.”
“Your ride is here,” the waitress said to Kathryn.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Nick said. “I have a few things to take care of.”
“Thanks for thinking of me.” She patted him on the chest.
She turned and headed toward the door. Halfway there she recognized the figure of Peter St. Clair standing by the entrance, grinning, holding a handwritten sign that said, KATHRYN GUILFORD.
Kathryn spun around and glared back at Nick, but Nick had already turned away, busily studying two angry young men hustling one another out the side door.
Looked like quite a party back there.” Peter smiled without taking his eyes from the road. A burst of static and an indistinguishable voice broke through momentarily on the police scanner. He reached down and switched it off.
“It wasn’t a party,” Kathryn said, her eyes transfixed by the endless telephone poles blinking past her window. “It was work.”
“You needed a ride home from work? You got a better job than I do.”
“I didn’t need a ride home,” she said irritably. “This was Nick’s idea.”
“So now it’s Nick.”
Kathryn looked at him for the first time since she got in the car. His face flashed lean and angular in the stark headlights of each passing car, and his eyes sparkled like blue ice in the glare of the cold halogen beams.
“How is Jenny?” she asked softly. “You never say.”
Peter paused. “She’s fine.”
“She’s fine,” Kathryn repeated. “That’s all men ever say. This is fine. That’s fine. I’m fine, thank you very much. ‘She’s fine’ just means, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ ” Kathryn paused and looked at him again. “How are you two doing?”
Peter turned and looked at her. “Fine.”
She shook her head, and they sat in silence for several minutes.
“Do you love her?”
Peter said nothing.
“I saw you dancing with the doc,” he said lightly. “Looks like you’re keeping your employees happy.”
“That was his idea,” she lied. “We had an argument, and I think he was trying to patch things up.”
“An argument about what?”
This time Kathryn said nothing.
“I thought we were going to cooperate on this investigation of yours. How come I’m not invited to these ‘work sessions’?”
“It’s Nick. He likes to work alone.”
“He didn’t seem to want to work alone tonight.”
Kathryn winced.
“So when am I going to hear something? After all the hours you two have spent together, you must have come up with something.”
Kathryn hesitated. “Nick says he wants to wait until he’s sure.”
“C’mon, Kath, this is me. I know when I’m being stonewalled. I expect that kind of runaround from the doc, but not from you.” He reached over and squeezed her arm.
Kathryn looked out the window again.
What’s wrong with me? Why am I hesitating? Nick suspects everyone—he said it himself. Why am I allowing him to plant doubts in my mind about Peter, of all people?
“Peter, I need to ask you something.”
“Go for it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Jimmy’s cocaine habit?”
Peter sighed. “Put yourself in his place, Kath. Life isn’t going the way you wanted. You got baggage from the past, you got a sister who belongs in the loony bin, you even got dumped by the girl you wanted to marry.”
“Thanks.”
“One day you find yourself in the middle of some nameless desert, about to fight the Mother of All Battles. They say you could get nuked or gassed or infected with who-knows-what. You could use a little confidence. I suppose that’s how it started for Jim.”
“But the war wasn’t as bad as everyone thought it would be.”
“That’s right—so when it’s over, you feel a little silly about the whole thing. Never again, you tell yourself. You’ll just stop—nobody has to know—you’ll beat this thing all by yourself. So you quit. But then you do it just one more time—in a moment of weakness, maybe on a bad day. So what? You beat it before, you can do it again. And you do—until the next time. You beat it for a couple of years, and you tell yourself it’s over. Then you can only hold out for a few months. Pretty soon you can only go a week, but every time you tell yourself that you’re in charge, you can handle it. Fact is, you can’t handle it—but you’re not about to admit it to anyone. You won’t even admit it to yourself.”
“I don’t get it. I would have told someone. I would have asked for help.”
“You’re not Jim,” he said. “Call it a guy thing.”
“Then how did you find out?”
“From Andy. They were in the same unit, remember? Andy walked in on Jim one day. Caught him in the act. If he hadn’t, believe me, Jim would never have told anyone.”
“But why didn’t you tell anyone else?”
“I did what Jim wanted me to do. I did
what I would have wanted him to do for me.”
“Couldn’t you have at least told me?”
Peter glanced at her. “Think about it, Kath. He asks you to marry him. You say no—so he figures for some reason he doesn’t quite measure up in your eyes. But maybe he can do better, maybe he can make you wish you had said yes—and then you hear that he’s got this little drug problem? I couldn’t do that to him. The thought of having a second chance with you is what kept him alive.”
Kathryn smiled at him and took his hand. “You’re always protecting someone, aren’t you, Peter? Andy and Jimmy and now me. Most of all me.”
“Just doin’ my duty, ma’am.” He smiled. “We aim to serve.”
Kathryn hesitated. She felt foolish, she felt faithless asking her next question—but she had to ask. A promise is a promise.
“You didn’t even want me to know,” she said softly. “So why did you tell Ronny? Ronny told Denny—Denny, of all people. Now everybody knows.”
Peter slowly shook his head. “You don’t believe Jim killed himself. I do. All the evidence points that way, especially when you figure in the cocaine—but nobody knew about the cocaine. So along comes your Bug Man friend, and he starts to stir things up, starts people talking. Maybe Jim didn’t kill himself, maybe it was murder, he says. He talks to Amy, he talks to Ronny and Denny and Wayne. He tells the coroner he didn’t do his job—next thing you know, maybe I didn’t do my job. I wanted to put an end to it—so I let people know the rest of the equation.” He paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“No, you shouldn’t have—not until we find out the truth.”
“The truth.” Peter rolled his eyes. “Is that what you and the doc are finding? Admit it, Kath, all you’ve got is questions. You’ve got no answers.”
Kathryn studied his face carefully and took a deep breath.
“Peter,” she whispered. “Jimmy’s body was moved.”
She waited for his reaction … there was none. Not a word, not a questioning glance, not even the rapid blink of a startled eye. He sat rigid, staring straight ahead, as if the words had never been spoken. They had been spoken, and he had certainly heard them—but whatever Peter St. Clair thought of those words he was not about to reveal it.
