by Dianne Emley
Scoville had never known a time when he hadn’t lived in someone’s shadow. He’d thought his father’s death would finally liberate him. But like brainwashed prisoners of war for whom the gates are finally flung open, he chose to stay inside his cell. He knew no other way.
He took his bottle from his desk drawer and poured the last of the Grey Goose vodka into his coffee mug over ice culled from the employee lunchroom. The mug, a joke gift from his secretary, was imprinted with the message “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.”
He swirled the vodka until it was chilled and took a sip. From his desk he could see one of the firm’s most prominent and profitable billboard faces, with an ad for a blockbuster swashbuckling pirate movie. The cleavage of the female costar, pushed up and out in a leather bustier, was at Scoville’s eye level. Normally, he would have found such a coincidence amusing and entertaining. Tonight, it only made him think of Dena. Lately, the only way he could think of Dena, in spite of his efforts to shove the image from his mind, was of her bent over the back of the couch with Crowley ramming her.
He opened a bottom drawer of the desk and felt for Jenkins’s gun. He was going to lock the drawer and leave it alone. Let it be. But it called to him. Just like that bottle of Grey Goose called to him. He heard the siren call of his dark angel, and he heeded. Could Jenkins have been right? Does everyone have a killer within?
Scoville set the gun on the desk and peeled back the scarf. It had been years since he’d fired a gun, but he knew how to shoot. His father had liked guns, owned some, and made sure his sons knew their way around firearms. Dena had of course gotten rid of his father’s collection when Luddy was born.
Using the scarf, he picked the gun up by the barrel. Something had been filed off from an area on the grip. Jenkins had said the gun was untraceable. Scoville didn’t know enough about things like that to know if it was even possible. SIG SAUER was etched on the barrel.
Scoville smiled. It sounded macho. The silencer made the gun seem criminal. He’d never fired a gun with a silencer, and wondered how it sounded.
Taking down his father’s old unabridged dictionary, he stood it on a shelf against a row of books. He stepped back. Aiming the gun with both hands, he shoved his finger onto the trigger with the scarf around it, held his breath, and fired. The gun made a sharp clack, like a nail gun. The noise both surprised and thrilled him.
The bullet had made a precise hole in the dictionary. He took it down and saw that the bullet had lodged in the middle of the S’s, between “sordid” and “sorehead.”
He again stepped back and took aim, this time with one hand, feeling more comfortable with the gun. He squeezed off two rounds in quick succession, enjoying the adrenaline rush. He took down the dictionary to throw away later.
Sitting at his desk, he tapped his finger on his keyboard to wake up his computer and did a search on Sig Sauer. He found a photo of his weapon and learned it was widely used in the military, prized for its reliability and durability. He again picked up the gun and admired it anew.
Still holding the gun with the scarf, he walked to the window and aimed the gun at the heart of the starlet on the billboard, which for him was at the contact point of her two mounded breasts. He stood spread-legged, gripped the gun in both hands, and uttered a sharp, “Clack!” as if he’d fired it, jerking his hands up with pretend recoil. He imagined a perfect spot of red between those breasts, lasting just a moment before a trickle of blood appeared, followed by a torrent. The starlet’s face became Dena’s. She blinked and said, “I’m sorry, Mark. I love you,” as the life faded from her eyes.
He paid her no heed, but turned his attention to her handsome male costar, the dashing pirate. The actor morphed into Bowie Crowley. It was an easy leap, as the actor also had long tousled hair and too-sensitive-for-this-world eyes. Scoville finished him off with a bullet right between those eyes.
“Clack!”
Recoil.
They were both bloody and dead. Scoville’s feeling of triumph was fleeting, and was soon overwhelmed by despair.
He was not a killer. Despite what Jenkins had said, he couldn’t be turned into a killer any more than he could be turned into an Olympic athlete. You either have that in you or you don’t.
He should call the cops right now. He wasn’t in any trouble with the police yet. He hadn’t lied to them. Well, just a little. He should call those detectives. They’d probably make him wear a wire, meet with Jenkins, and try to get him to talk about how he’d murdered Oliver and Lauren. He could do that. That shouldn’t be too hard.
On the other hand … His fury against Crowley and Dena was like a slow burn within him. He knew Dena had been thinking of leaving him. He’d felt it in his bones. Seen it in the slight, disdainful curve at the edge of her mouth when she spoke to him. He’d known that it was the beginning of the end when she got sober and stayed sober and he didn’t. He’d tried it for a while. Sure, he felt healthier, and it was nice not being hung-over. Ultimately, though, he’d concluded that reality was highly overrated. Reality couldn’t hold a candle to getting a good toot on. He wasn’t even talking about getting drunk. He just wanted those blurred edges. That’s all. He knew his drinking lately had been over the top, but it hadn’t always been that way. For years, all he sought was that nice, fuzzy haze. Ahh … That’s better. It made the whole thing tolerable. But Dena had bought into the entire A.A. religion. All or nothing.
Maybe she would leave him, in spite of a divorce damaging her image. She’d take her substantial income with her. She’d been living paycheck to paycheck when they’d first met, but she was pulling down good money now, even though she didn’t think so. He’d resisted putting her name on the deed to the house, but was forced to when they’d refinanced to get a lower interest rate. They’d needed her income to do the deal. Her name was on nearly everything now. Maybe she’d planned it all along. She’d leave and force him to sell out. She’d slowly and steadily built an investment portfolio of her own. He’d get part of it as community property under California law. Still, he’d be screwed. Her career was heading up. One of the big networks had been talking to her about joining its morning show. His career …
Well, he knew where his career was headed.
He peered into the coffee mug and the dwindling vodka. He took a miserly sip.
But if Dena died, he’d keep the house and the business and most of her assets. He was trustee over the portion she’d set aside for the two kids until they were twenty-five. He considered that his money too, for the time being. Plus she had a handsome life insurance policy. He and his son, Luddy, would make a fine life for themselves. He’d marry again, to someone who was actually nice to him. Someone less flashy than Dena. Less self-absorbed. Less beautiful, even. He’d settle for merely attractive. That was an acceptable trade-off for loyalty. As for Dena’s daughter, Dahlia, he couldn’t care less. She would be eighteen soon anyway. He’d kick her out that same day, if she hadn’t already left on her own like she was always threatening to do.
Maybe murder wasn’t as tough as he was making it out to be.
Scoville played out the thread. He could murder Crowley and Dena, and then, in a twist, plant the gun on Jenkins. He knew Jenkins lived with his mother out by the Salton Sea. Jenkins said she owned a gas station and mini-mart out there. That couldn’t be hard to find. Jenkins wanted Crowley dead for some reason. Others must know about that. There must be a connection between Jenkins and Crowley that made Jenkins leery of killing Crowley himself.
On second thought, instead of planting the gun on Jenkins, it would be cleaner if he just killed him too. He could make it look like a suicide. He’d turn Jenkins’s crazy murder plan back onto him. It would serve the freak right. Jenkins would get just what he deserved.
Scoville toyed with the scarf-cloaked gun and took another sip of vodka, feeling his blood pressure rise with indignation at the thought of Jenkins trying to turn him into his patsy. Guys like that were always getting the
upper hand on him. Tried to walk right over him. His own father was like that. The old man had even had the nerve to call him a pussy. Because he wasn’t a manly man, he’d taken crap from bolder men his whole life.
Now he had to deal with Jack Jenkins. Or Jill … Whatever. There seemed to be no end of schoolyard dramas and the long reach of bullies in his life.
He finished the vodka in the coffee cup, chewing on the ice. Taking the empty bottle from his desk, he put it in his briefcase. He picked up the gun and set it inside too. He pushed his chair back and stood, too fast. He staggered and steadied himself against the desk. Regaining his balance, he took his briefcase and left.
At first Scoville thought he’d go home, but once on the road in his Porsche, home didn’t sound appealing. No place did. He felt rootless. Adrift. It was a feeling he’d never experienced before. There had never been a time when he hadn’t known where “home” was. For him, it had always been the big Tudor mansion in Hancock Park. Even during the years he’d run from it, it had always been home.
Dena had ruined it for him. Dena, Crowley, Jenkins, and even Mercer. Mercer had started it. His ambitions had planted the evil little seed that had led to where Scoville was right now. It was as if all of them were in a line, like the tail of the Big Dipper. At a stoplight, he looked up and saw the constellation, his head tilted back. Not many stars shone through the city’s smog and lights, but those of the Big Dipper made it. That single star off to the side was Lauren Richards. She was part of it. All of them together. Bad stars casting him under a bad sign.
Agitated honking from the cars behind roused him. Apparently, the light had turned green some time ago. Scoville gunned the Porsche’s engine, the tires squealing, as he held his right arm aloft in the topless car, middle finger erect.
As he drove down the Strip, he passed billboard after billboard, most of them belonging to Marquis, all with photos of gorgeous thin models in Dolce & Gabbana, Armani, Chanel, or Prada. Or showing off their watches: Tag Heuer, Rolex, Baume & Mercier. The only relief was a billboard advertising a new animated film about farm animals. Even that had a vampish character—a slinky little filly. Scoville made his hand into a gun and shot all the pretty models in each of the billboards he passed, the women between the breasts, the men between the eyes. His signature kill.
Clack!
Turning onto a side street, he blew past the parking lot of a liquor store. The tires complained when he made a sharp right into the alley behind it, scraping the front fender against the thorny branches of a bougainvillea vine that had engulfed a fence. He stopped the car. A spray of blossoms on a potentially eye-obliterating woody stalk brushed his face and littered the car with magenta confetti.
Forgetting about his briefcase on the passenger seat but remembering to snatch the keys from the ignition, Scoville left his car and stumbled from the alley to the sidewalk and then to the liquor store.
Returning with a fifth of Grey Goose and a sack of ice, he was startled to see someone sitting on the hood of the Porsche.
“Hey! What the fuck?”
The man slid off his big haunch and stood. “That’s what I was gonna ask you, pal.”
Scoville squinted through his vodka haze. He’d seen this man before. He thought back and remembered where he’d seen his fat, fleshy face, at Crowley’s book signing in Pasadena. Scoville clutched his purchases tightly to his chest. The plastic bag filled with ice felt like the cold embrace of a corpse.
The man lumbered toward him. “Bennie Lusk sent me. You owe him for that thing last week and the vig on top of it.”
Even though Scoville was drunk, he knew he was lighter on his feet than the overweight thug. He’d had it with people telling him what to do. “Fuck you.”
He darted past, lobbed his purchases into the Porsche, and got the driver’s door open.
“Fuck me? No, I’m gonna fuck you up.”
The guy came at Scoville, slugging him in the kidney and sending him sprawling onto the seat, crashing into the bottle and bag of ice, and slamming his head against the gearshift.
The thug was on top of Scoville, hitting him in the face.
Scoville was crushed beneath him, pinned by the steering wheel and the gearshift. He grabbed a handful of the thug’s oily hair and pulled hard enough to make the guy jerk back. It was enough for Scoville to slip out from under the steering wheel. The thug was on him again. Scoville could see that the guy was loving it. He felt himself losing consciousness. He blindly groped with his right hand, touching his briefcase and the bag of melting ice, but he couldn’t grab them. He then touched something hard and solid that fit perfectly in his hand. He instinctively closed his fingers around it. As the thug drew back his hand for another punch, Scoville swung the vintage hood ornament, hitting him in the side of the head.
The thug reared back, blinking.
Still on his back, Scoville thrust both feet against the guy’s belly.
The thug staggered backward, stumbled on the uneven asphalt, and fell to the ground.
Scoville could have gotten away, started his car and left, but something held him there. He got up and walked over.
Dazed, the thug couldn’t get to his feet. He kept rolling back onto his butt. He reminded Scoville of a turtle stranded on its back. Standing a few feet away, Scoville saw dark shiny blood running down the thug’s face. His own face felt wet and numb. He forgot about that as he watched the thug. Scoville laughed.
The thug slurred, “I’m gonna fuck you up.”
Scoville darted forward and kicked him onto his back. He straddled him, swinging the heavy hunk of metal, and laughing.
“Look at you now, asshole. Look at you now.”
He kept hitting and hitting and laughing until the man’s head was mush, the blows no longer creating a sharp retort, but making their mark like a fist against oatmeal. The man’s head now bloody pulp, Scoville roared as each blow struck home.
“Look at you now!”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Dillon Somerset’s lanky form was hunched, his brow furrowed, his lips pursed beneath his toothbrush mustache. He leaned against the table with fingers interlaced, perfectly still but for his thumbs, which he ceaselessly tapped together. The fluorescent lights in the interview room reflected off his shaved head and black-framed glasses.
Kissick leaned against the wall, arms crossed. He sometimes used his height as an intimidation factor, but he had another reason for assuming that pose now: he’d spent most of the day sitting. His shirtsleeves on his periwinkle-blue shirt were rolled up but his tie was still snug around his neck.
Ruiz sat opposite Somerset. His tie was loose. His white shortsleeve shirt bloused over the top of his pants along with his waistline. His shirt hadn’t held up to the long day as well as Kissick’s. Ruiz’s wife laundered and ironed his shirts herself and had bought Costco’s Kirk-land brand for him for years. Bachelor Kissick sent his shirts out and didn’t scrimp on quality, shopping at Nordstrom—a habit he’d retained from his ex-wife.
Ruiz set glasses on his nose and began reading Somerset’s statement aloud. “Dillon, this is what you told us. ‘That Saturday night, I followed Lauren to Oliver Mercer’s house. I watched the gate open and after she drove in, I parked down the street and hopped the fence onto Mercer’s property. I brought a knife with me. I rang the doorbell and when Mercer answered it, I stabbed him. He ran into the living room and I kept stabbing him. Lauren was screaming and I grabbed her and stabbed her too. When they were dead, I used their blood to write on the wall. Then I took a chain saw and cut Mercer into little pieces and put all his body parts into a big pile.’ ”
Taking off his glasses, Ruiz held them by an arm and tapped them against the report. “Dillon, this is bullshit. You need to tell us what really happened that night.”
Somerset’s voice was flat. “It’s not bullshit. That’s what happened. How many times are you going to ask me that?”
“As many times as it takes for you to tell us the truth.” Ruiz pushed
back from the table.
Somerset continued tapping his thumbs together.
Kissick began. “Dillon, why did you confess to two murders you didn’t do?”
“I did murder them.” Somerset sat straight. His head looked big atop his skinny neck. He stared at Kissick, his eyes intense. “I’m responsible. It was me. I wanted to be close to her. To Lauren. She and I belong together, forever. He was no good for her, that Oliver Mercer. I tried to tell her.” The veins on his neck bulged as his voice became strident. “I warned her about him. Now that’s all I hear. All everyone talks about. Lauren and Oliver, Lauren and Oliver, Lauren and that …” Somerset pursed his lips, struggling for an apt description of Mercer. He spat it out. “That idiot.” His face was flushed and he was panting. He stroked his square mustache then continued tapping his thumbs.
Kissick looked at Somerset anew, intrigued by his lapse of control.
Ruiz tried to remain calm but didn’t make it. He jabbed his finger toward the suspect. “Dillon, I sense you’re holding back. I sense you’re hiding something. Today is the day to tell the truth. The truth never hurt anyone.”
Somerset mumbled, “I have told the truth.”
“Dillon. Dillon, look at me.” Kissick held up two fingers and pointed at his own eyes.
Somerset stopped his thumb-tapping and became eerily still.
Kissick raised his voice. “You’re wasting our time with this bullshit. Look at me.”
Somerset defiantly swung his head to face him. He sniffed.
“Dillon, we know you’re not telling the truth.”
Somerset swallowed, and then darted out his hand to snatch a plastic bottle of water from the table. He unscrewed the sealed cap and guzzled most of it down. Finishing, he brushed his fingers against his lips and set the bottle back on the table but still held the cap.
