The Same Mistake Twice

by Albert Tucher

  “There must be other people around who knew her.”

  “But she was special to this guy, and he wanted to be something special to her. And he denied knowing her at all.”

  After midnight she waded into the mall against the tide of moviegoers leaving the last showings at the multiplex. Again she found Todd McNally in his office.

  “Did you find anything out?” he said. “About Patricia, I mean?”

  “Yes, Todd, I did. I found out why the sight of me almost gave you a heart attack.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t try it. Patricia looked like me. Or I look like her, enough to freak you out.”

  “But what happened to her?”

  “Stop, Todd. You know what happened to her. That’s why you didn’t help me when I asked you.”

  “I told you everything I know.”

  “No, you didn’t. You claimed you didn’t know James Zakrewsky, but he was here at the theater all the time.”

  Todd said nothing.

  “Okay, let me tell you what I think happened. Patricia came to you and asked if she could hide out with you for a while. She didn’t tell you why. Maybe if she had, she’d still be alive, because you drew the wrong conclusion. I think I can picture it. It must have been late at night, and here was this girl you had been dreaming about, only she really was there. She only wanted help, but you came on to her.”

  Todd listened.

  “You blew it that time, Todd. Why don’t you make it right now?”

  “Make what right? Yeah, I came on to her, but she wasn’t having any of it. So what? Believe it or not, I had heard ‘No’ before.”

  Diana did believe it.

  “And I’ve heard it since, and those women are still alive too.”

  Diana studied him, and her hooker’s radar stayed silent. If Todd wasn’t a stone psychopath, he was telling the truth.

  “For a minute I thought she was finally coming around. But then I saw her junker of a car parked out in front of my house. And her guy was there, sitting in the passenger seat.”

  “He didn’t get out?”

  “No.”

  Diana realized that James had probably been hurting too badly to leave the car.

  “What happened then?”

  “I told her she was welcome, but it would be too weird with her boyfriend.”

  “Smooth, Todd. How did she react to that?”

  “She said I was just like every other man she had ever met.”

  Diana wondered what Tillotson would have asked. She had talked big, and now it was up to her.

  “Back up a little, Todd. Did she say anything about James?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “About James and these other two guys. James knew them from school.”

  “What about them?”

  “She had tried to help James, but they just brushed her aside.”

  “What was their issue with James?”

  “They thought it was queer to go for an older woman.”

  Diana couldn’t think of another thing to ask. She turned and left him the way Patricia had done ten years earlier. As she walked across the parking lot to Tillotson’s car, she wondered what she would say. By the time she reached him, she knew she had no choice but surrender.

  She made her confession through his driver’s side window. Tillotson stared straight ahead. When she finished, he made her wait for his reaction.

  “Get in,” he said.

  He drove out of the parking lot. She watched the landmarks and realized that he was taking her home.

  “I’ll make that client list for you,” she said.

  “I don’t need it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. We know who the John Doe is. He wasn’t your client.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  She almost wished he would yell at her. She would have taken it as if she deserved it. Worse, he kept up with the gentlemanly behavior, helping her out of the car and watching until she got her front door open.

  That was bad. Tillotson was the kind of man whose mother had raised him right. When he was through with someone, he would send the message with all the courtesies. If she couldn’t make it right with him somehow, she might have to find another protector in her business, or try to make it without one.

  That was all she needed him for, right?

  Finally, he drove away.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The problem was, she was a hooker. It always came back to that.

  Tillotson navigated toward the hospital without a conscious decision. It was too late to avoid paying a price to be determined by his wife, but he still had to go. His route might be mapped out for him, but his thoughts were his own.

  For cops, prostitutes were an occupational hazard. He knew that. For starters, they were available. Most women in the business would gladly enroll a cop in their frequent-flyer program in exchange for timely warnings about police crackdowns, or to have a name to drop in a tight spot.

  But it went beyond that. Cops and hookers started to feel almost like colleagues, like insiders against the civilian world. Hookers were the best sources a cop could have. A local dirt bag suddenly has money to throw around? He’ll spend it on drugs, booze, and hookers. Hookers saw the dirty compromises a cop had to make to function at all, and cops knew that prostitutes were just women doing what they had to do.

  Whatever most prostitutes were, Diana Andrews was more so. She was the greatest temptation he had ever faced. He was starting to think that he couldn’t afford their friendship anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The damned kitchen light was on again. As Diana approached the kitchen, she pondered her lack of alarm.

  The same mistake twice, she thought. What is it they say about that?

  Another light went on, this one in her mind. She knew who was waiting for her in the kitchen. She wondered whether he had put the key back in the fake rock, in case anybody else needed it tonight.

  Just kidding, she told herself.

  She took a seat at her grandmother’s solid old kitchen table.

  “It’s not queer to go for an older woman,” she said.

  “I never thought it was,” said Paul Riemenschneider.

  “Dexter and Don did. That’s why they beat James Zakrewsky up.”

  “You must have figured everything out by now.”

  “How did you find where I live?”

  “I work for the DMV, remember?”

  Diana thought there must be a law against personal use of DMV files, but this wasn’t the time to mention it.

  “Believe it or not,” she said, “I didn’t know it was you. Not until I saw you in that chair. Tell me why you killed Patty and James.”

  “It was your fault.”

  “Mine? How could it be my fault?”

  “You wouldn’t even remember.”

  “Try me.”

  She watched him and waited. He had spent ten years trying to bury this story. It wouldn’t come out without a struggle. She was about to lose patience and prod him, when he began to speak.

  “That summer…you know, I’m not really younger than you. I’m a year older than everybody else in my class. I was sick a lot when I was little.”

  “Paul,” she said. “That summer?”

  “I turned seventeen that summer. My parents had just gotten divorced, and they had this competition thing going on. My dad gave me a car for my birthday. My mother couldn’t match that, not living on the alimony, but she blew a big chunk of it on dinner at Chez Thierry. You know that place in Morristown?”

  Diana sympathized. Chez Thierry was the priciest restaurant in the whole region. Its market niche was customers with an expensive point to make. She had been there several times, and she had learned to dread the place. More than one client had used the occasion to proclaim his love and propose marriage. When she was on a man’s clock, it wasn’t enough to sit and listen. She had to smile and be kind and think of something to say that would
n’t crush him.

  She didn’t even like the food.

  “Anyway, you were with this older guy. I hadn’t seen you since you graduated. You looked fantastic, and it started up all over again—my crush on you. Your date went to the men’s room once, and I got up and thought I was going to go over and say hello.”

  He paused, and she watched him reliving his humiliation.

  “I lost my nerve. I just stood there. I must have been so obvious, it was pathetic. Obvious to everybody but you, that is. The maître d’ was getting ready to do something about me, when I finally gave up and went back to my mother.”

  He sat back, as if he had just explained everything.

  “Paul, how does that lead to killing two people?”

  “Patty was a whore.”

  Every woman’s favorite word, she thought. Mine too.

  “You probably didn’t know,” he said.

  “How could I?”

  “Not all the time, just when she and James needed to come up with some cash. I knew about it. Everybody did. So I figured, if I couldn’t have you, I could buy some Diana time from her. It would be almost as good.”

  His words didn’t shock her, and that might be the most depressing thing of all. She realized that she was used to this kind of reasoning from men who bought sex. Her business had warped her, and this time she couldn’t ignore the sad fact.

  “Was it as good?”

  He didn’t notice the barb in her tone.

  “I never found out. I got in my new car and went looking for them, and I finally found them at the Salmon house. It was one of the places they lived. I knew James would be with her. He always was, making sure nobody got rough. I showed them my money, but they didn’t want it. They told me they were closed for business.”

  “How did they seem?”

  “They were celebrating. Which was weird, because somebody had beaten the shit out of James.”

  She looked at him and realized something.

  “I’m guessing Don and Dexter did beat you up.”

  “Yeah. Don did. Dexter watched and gave him pointers. And they did it to James, but he took it better than I did. I stayed in my room for a week, but James was celebrating. He said it was all about getting beaten up by the right people, and Dexter and Don were the right people. I have to say, I never thought of it that way.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Patty wouldn’t stop rubbing it in. She said they had a big payday and didn’t need any nickels and dimes from losers like me. She laughed in my face.”

  Diana could see the rest of his story coming. Everyone had a breaking point, when a new humiliation was one too many.

  “I picked up a chair or something. I don’t even remember exactly what. And I just started hitting. Any other time James could have handled me without even breathing hard, but he was in pretty bad shape.”

  They sat in silence, until Diana decided to ask the next question.

  “Are you going to kill me now?”

  “No. Once was enough.”

  Diana studied Paul. All of his resistance had disappeared.

  “So when did the other guy show up?”

  “Not long after. I don’t know exactly. Somebody pounded on the door. Cops have a way of doing that so you know it’s them. I opened the door, and there was this cop standing there. I mean, there was nothing else he could be. So I’m expecting to get arrested, and instead he says, ‘Wait right there, kid.’”

  “Was he wearing one of those outdoor vests, with all the pockets?”

  “Yeah. How did you know? How did you know about him in the first place?”

  “We’ll get back to that, Paul. What did you do when he told you to wait?”

  “What do you think? I waited. He came back and did the weirdest thing. He took a picture of Patty with a Polaroid camera. Then he told me to help him.”

  “Help him do what?”

  “Clean the place up and take care of the bodies. We buried them near the back of the property.”

  He grimaced.

  “It’s hard to bury bodies. It’s amazing how big the hole has to be. It’s also hard to dig them up. I was almost glad when you showed up and interrupted me.”

  Diana stifled another caustic comment. She didn’t want to lose him. Instead, she thought about what he had just told her.

  Epstein must have had two jobs that night. One was paying James and Patty off and getting them out of town. The other had been a nice bonus if he could manage it—making Rebecca think he had killed Diana.

  With James and Patty dead, getting paid for either job depended on keeping the truth hidden. Even Epstein must have realized that committing a real murder for a crazy woman would be a bad idea.

  “So you buried them. Then what?”

  “I still thought he might take me to jail, but he just left me there. He warned me to forget what happened.”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Like I could forget. But I wasn’t going to tell anybody, either.”

  “Then I showed up.”

  “I never should have mentioned James to you. I guess I thought I could get Dexter and Don in some deep shit. Or maybe I just wanted you to know everything. Because you’re you.”

  “Paul, you understand it’s time for you to make everything right, don’t you? You need to do it for James and Patty.”

  Paul sat motionless, and she feared she was losing him.

  “You know it’s the right thing. You’ve known it all along. That’s really why you told me about James in first place.”

  “I guess.”

  She said nothing. Any words from her would have been fatally lame.

  “I’ll tell the police everything, but first I want one thing. I want to make love to you.”

  Again Diana didn’t answer. She became aware of an unfamiliar emotion. It wasn’t surprise. No man could surprise her anymore. She groped for the feeling, and then she had it.

  Resentment.

  She resented her role in this scene, but why? She had rented her body to many repulsive men. She had serviced men just out of prison for crimes as bad as Paul’s. It shouldn’t have been a big deal to use her body to get what she wanted—not when what she wanted was justice for two people she had never met but had come to know.

  But she didn’t want to do it, because this time it involved more than her body. This felt like asking a detective to investigate the murder of his own daughter.

  What would Tillotson say about that comparison?

  “When you called the other day,” said Paul, “I had put you behind me. At least I thought I was cured. But I was really—what do they call it?—in remission. You had to go and bring everything back.”

  “Paul, one time with me could never make up for what you have to do. There’s no way I could live up to your dream. You have to do this because you have to do it.”

  He seemed to shrink as she watched.

  “What the hell,” he said. “Life never gives you what you want. Why should it be different now?”

  She knew that nothing she could say would work better than silence.

  “Okay. Okay. Get them before I lose my nerve.”

  She hoped Tillotson wouldn’t ignore the call when he saw her number on his cell phone. If Paul heard her call nine-one-one, he might realize that he was the emergency, and he might decide to behave like one.

  Tillotson made her wait before he answered. She told him to come back. He wanted an explanation, but there wasn’t time.

  “Just come.”

  And then in the background she heard a woman’s voice. The words were unclear, but the tone was weary and aggrieved, and the inflection that of a question that had been asked many times before.

  Oh, she thought.

  Wives talked like that. No one else.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  Tillotson closed his eyes on the stranger who looked like the woman he had once loved.

&nb
sp; “I’m a cop. That’s been the problem all along. Why is it such a surprise now?”

  “I need you here.”

  “No, you say you want me here because you know I can’t stay. Also an old story.”

  “Our son was almost killed.”

  “Our son needs a few stitches. I should have known when you called before. Everything is life and death with you.”

  He didn’t add that a cop’s wife couldn’t afford to take that approach to life. If explanations worked with this woman, a lot of problems would never have come up in the first place.

  “You’re going to that whore again. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “I’m going to do my job.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t deny it.”

  He looked at her and knew he was about to start explaining himself. He always did, even when the job said he shouldn’t.

  “James Zakrewsky was murdered. That’s why you didn’t find anything about him. He’s been dead for ten years.”

  “There you go, always playing the damned job card.”

  “I’m not playing at anything. A sixteen-year-old boy never got to be seventeen. In your line of work that should mean something to you.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  She was right, but it was also irrelevant.

  “Diana Andrews solved the case. I don’t know the details yet, but she did it. Again. That’s all this is about.”

  And he knew it was true. That was all it could ever be about. She had chosen her path in life ten years earlier. He had made his choice before she was born. It wouldn’t matter if he was no longer married to this woman he had once loved. Cops and hookers could only go so far.

  “My lawyer will do the talking,” said his wife.

  “That will be an improvement.”

  Those words would only hurt his case, but they felt so good. Tillotson turned away from his wife and went back through the double doors to the ER. He found his son still seated on the examining table where he had been when Tillotson arrived.

  “Hey, buddy. Had to talk to Mom for a minute.”

  The ten-year-old boy said nothing. He knew what “talk” meant lately. Tillotson studied the boy for indications of how much growing up he had already missed with his long hours. He was almost fifty, and he might not see his son finish his boyhood. Tillotson had lost his father before he finished high school. He had always sworn he would be around, but adulthood meant learning that promises like that could be hard to keep.