by Mark Pryor
He shook his head. “What a way for it all to end.”
I was thinking the same thing, but from a slightly different perspective. Otto's death could also be the death of the investigation. If the cops went into this with no idea who was responsible, they'd be licking their chops at pinning the whole thing on a dead guy. Sure, one of the bullets they pulled from the bodies wouldn't match his gun, but the cops could reason that Otto had used two weapons and gotten rid of the one he used to shoot Silva. Unlikely, but so was a former APD officer being a double-murderer. The last thing the police would want, it seemed to me, was to admit there was another shooter out there, someone they couldn't begin to identify. With an unpopular victim in Silva, all the more reason to close up the file, call it a day, and pat each other on the back in the local bar.
At the gas-station parking lot I shook hands with Officer Constable and we peeled off in opposite directions, him back to the crime scene, me heading for home. I drove slowly, running my mind through Otto's house for the umpteenth time, wondering if there was anything there that might incriminate me. Any fingerprints were easily explained as coming from my prior recent visit there, and I simply couldn't think of a single other thing that might hurt me. Otto didn't seem the journaling type, and the lack of a suicide note ruled out another chance to drop my name into police hands.
As I pulled into my parking spot, I allowed myself a small smile and the thought that Otto was a loose end well and truly tied off.
Tristan, of course, took a while to see it that way. I sat on the couch in the living room as he paced back and forth in front of me.
“You're sure there's no note or written confession, absolutely sure?”
“I was there almost two hours. They found nothing.”
“What if he hid it? They could be finding it right now.”
“Nope.” I shook my head, like I was explaining to a child. “Think about it. If he shot himself out of remorse and had written some sort of tell-all confession, then it would have been on the table. Or the floor. Or pinned to the fridge. He's not going to write a note like that and hide it, is he?”
“I guess not.” Some color returned to his face as the good news sank in. It drained away as his brain latched onto another problem. “My fingerprints. From when we were there.”
“Relax. Those prints are useless unless they have some to compare them to. You're not in the AFIS database, are you?”
“I don't think I am, no.”
“Have you been convicted of a crime?”
“No.”
“There you are then. Free and clear.”
“Unless I become a suspect, in which case they can take them and—”
“If they ask your permission, just say no. Get all civil rights on them. But they won't, because they have no reason to. So like I said before, relax. I'm wondering if they'll even look for a second person.”
“What do you mean?”
“They have Otto. They know he's guilty, but they have no idea if anyone else was involved, right?”
“I guess.”
“Even if they did, they wouldn't know where to start. So it's easier for them just to lay it all at his door. A dead perp doesn't argue with you. And there'll be no trial, obviously, so there won't be a slimy defense lawyer trying to point the finger at someone else, haranguing the detectives on the witness stand about why they didn't look for the real killer, or the ringleader. Whatever.”
He stopped pacing as he considered the theory. “All wrapped up, nice and tight for them.”
“With a bow on top,” I added.
“Jesus, poor Otto. You really think he was feeling that guilty about it?”
“Didn't seem like it to me. More likely he knew his gun had been found and took the easy way.”
“Easy for us, anyway.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Ledsome. “Detective,” I said. I resisted the urge to make a joke about her not being able to stay away from me, and instead went with, “What's up?”
“Not much. We're wrapping up here. Just wanted to say thanks for your help today, and ask whether you're the point person on this for the DA's office, or whether Maureen is the person to call.”
“Probably her. I think I was covering while she had a kid thing.”
“Got it. Thanks again, Dominic.”
“Wait, did you find anything?”
“Not much. Plenty of fingerprints that aren't his, but that's not surprising because the place hasn't been cleaned in a decade. Men are pigs, you know.”
“We try to be. Nothing else?”
“Nothing to speak of.”
“So that's it then? Case closed?”
“What do you mean?”
“The capital murder. Your suspect is dead, so I assumed you'd spend a few weeks writing a report and that's that.” I kept my voice light, casual, like I didn't care either way.
She laughed. “I wish. Don't get me wrong, he's definitely our shooter. But he wasn't out there alone.”
“How do you know?”
“We have two bodies with two different holes in them.”
“Maybe he had two guns? For a former cop, that wouldn't be unusual.”
“I agree. The thing is, we didn't find any money. If he did this alone, I would have found the money at his place.”
“Not necessarily.”
“We went through everything, Dom. No locker keys, no storage-facility contracts, nothing like that. And it looked like the guy hadn't spent a dollar in weeks. Not on his place, his wardrobe, or his car.”
I clenched my jaw. “So what's your theory?”
“Someone else is keeping the money until the heat dies down. The leader of this little expedition.”
“The real bad guy.”
“Precisely. And something else crossed my mind.”
“Go on.”
“That Otto Bland didn't kill himself at all. That he was a risk, a liability to whoever planned the whole thing. And as a result, he found himself staring down the wrong end of a gun barrel.”
I hung up the phone and looked at Tristan, who'd sat opposite and stared at me throughout the conversation. “Our pretty bow just came undone,” I said.
“That was the lead detective?”
“Yeah, and she's overthinking this one.”
“She knows Otto didn't act alone, doesn't she?” He stood up and ran a hand through his hair. “Dammit.”
“Quite an irony, if you think about it. She didn't find the money, so she assumes he had someone else helping him. Or several someones, she didn't specify.”
“Fuck.”
“She's got no idea it's us, don't worry.”
“Right, okay, I'll just stop worrying.” He paced back and forth, making abrupt little turns like a toy soldier. “Otto's dead, and there's a smart detective breathing down our necks. How exactly do you suggest I relax? Drugs?”
I stood. “Hey, do what you gotta do.”
“Don't you worry, I will.”
An edge in his voice stopped me in my tracks. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I'm not going to prison for this. I'll do what Otto did if I have to, but no fucking way I'm going to prison.”
I couldn't resist. “Technically you might not, you could get the death penalty since it's capital murder.”
“So could you.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “we both could. But we're not going to because we're keeping a low profile and I can keep an eye on the investigation.”
Tristan stared at me for a few seconds, then sank back into the couch. “Okay. Do you believe in the perfect crime?”
More shades of Gus, I thought. “I don't know. You?”
“Maybe. If they'd blamed Otto for it, let it go when they found him, then I'd say we committed it.”
“And now?”
“Now, not so much.” He wiped a hand over his face. “This is really fucking stressful.”
“I know. But we just need to hang in there, we'll be fine. And mayb
e this is the perfect crime. I'm starting to think that there aren't specific elements that bring a crime to perfection, just because every crime is so different, so unique. I mean, the one thing they can all have in common is that the criminals get away. And so far we've gotten away with it. So as stressful as this feels, we just need to ride it out. And then, in a few days or weeks, we can look back and realize that we did, after all, commit the perfect crime.”
“No,” Tristan said quietly. “It can't ever be perfect.”
“Why not?”
“Because someone else has our money.”
I went to my room and sat on the bed with my guitar. I was torn between wanting to think about where we were, what was happening, and losing myself for a few minutes. I chose the latter and began to play those simple songs that I'd learned as a kid. They were songs that used only the essential chords of A, C, D, Em, and G, songs like Sweet Home Alabama and Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl. I strummed each one slowly, the way I had done a million times before, the way I'd first done, hesitantly and haltingly, when I was eleven years old and learning.
The familiar chords brought back the smell of my school's music room, a wood-beamed loft at the top of the school, a place of refuge for me and the few of us who liked to play music. Our days were structured at prep school, even our free time was regimented and restricted, but on Wednesday afternoons and Sunday mornings, after church, Arthur “Artie” Halliwell and I used to meet up there and play music together. He was a quiet child, in my class but a year older than I was. He was reed-thin and timid, and on the rugby field he drifted around like the wind was blowing him from play to play, his spindly fingers constantly hitching up the shorts that sagged from his minuscule waist. He and I didn't speak the rest of the week, we had no cause to, but the one thing we had in common was the refuge of that attic room. He was good, too, better than I was, which is the reason I let him play when I was there. I learned things from him, and I liked the quick squeak of the chord changes he made, the songs that were one step ahead of the ones I was playing.
One afternoon, about six weeks into the summer term, the music teacher found us up there. Mr. Flowers. I didn't know his first name, same for all the teachers, and didn't find out what it was until his death about six months later, in the middle of the next term. He was a tall, thin man, and the only person I've ever met to wear an Adolf Hitler–style mustache. With his light Scottish brogue, he came across as gentle and a little creepy, and always wore perfume. Not aftershave or cologne, but women's perfume, a sickly sweet cloud following him around the school. When he taught the young boys guitar, he'd have them sit on his lap so he could “make sure they had perfect form.”
That Sunday, he just watched us play. He made Artie nervous and, being in there with them both, I saw certain similarities between the two. The physical resemblance, the fragility of them both, the birdlike way they perched on their chairs. Flowers, though, was like a vulture, eyes pinned on Artie as he played, and though I was too young and naïve to understand what was happening, I knew instinctively something was wrong when he asked me to leave and come back later so he could give Artie some private lessons.
That day repeated itself the next weekend, but the weekend after that, Artie declined to go to the music room with me. When Flowers found us buying candy at the tuck shop that afternoon, he seemed put out.
“Have you boys given up the guitar?” he asked.
“No, sir,” I said. “Just not practicing today.”
Artie was staring at his feet.
“Why don't you both come to my study and practice?” he asked.
I narrowed my eyes and looked at him. As far as I knew, the headmaster was the only one to have a study at the ninety-person prep school. “Where's that, sir?”
“My cottage,” he said. “I have a little music study set up, very conducive to practice and the understanding of music.”
His cottage was at the end of the rear driveway, one of four that belonged to the school. They were stone houses, small but attractive, and allocated to the more senior teachers at the school, the ones who were single. Which most were.
“Right, then,” he said. “Get your tuck and bring it to my place, with your guitars. See you both in a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and glanced at Artie. He was still staring at his shoes.
“He's a ponce,” I said to Artie, when Flowers had wandered off.
“I don't want to go,” said Artie.
“I don't think we have a choice,” I said. And we didn't. All of us, even me, had been programmed at boarding school to obey the teachers unquestioningly. To do otherwise risked detention, hours of “hard labor” in the garden, or a beating.
We showed up at four o'clock, leaving it as late as we dared and knowing we had to be back in the main school for five o'clock tea. Flowers sat in a leather armchair and watched us as we played, his only interruption to tell us what to play next. When we left together at ten minutes to five, I could feel the relief coming off Artie in waves. We never talked about his “private lessons,” but I think Artie told himself they were over, that the visit to Flowers's cottage meant he was safe.
He was wrong.
The next day, Mr. Flowers appeared at the front of my class and announced, in his soft voice, that he was taking over as our Latin teacher. I looked over at Artie, but he didn't seem bothered, because what could the man do in a classroom of kids?
Nothing, as it turned out. He talked about Socrates for forty minutes, then sent us to wash up for lunch. We began to file out of the classroom, and we all looked back when Flowers raised his voice loud enough to be heard over the shuffling of feet.
“Halliwell, stay behind, please.”
I looked back and saw that the boy's face had turned pale, and his little body sagged as he retook his seat to wait for the empty classroom and Mr. Flowers's attention.
For the remainder of the summer term, I saw less and less of Artie. He sat quietly in class and didn't speak, on the few occasions I asked if he wanted to go to the music room, he just shook his head. I suspected he was still playing for Mr. Flowers, and on a couple of Sunday afternoons, I went looking for him. When he was nowhere to be seen, I assumed I was right.
I forgot about Artie and Mr. Flowers over the summer holidays, which I spent with my family in France. But when the winter term began in early September, Artie was nowhere to be seen. I asked around, and someone said he'd left the school for good, no idea why.
I had an idea, and I wasn't happy about it. Not so much because of what Flowers had done to Artie—I didn't fully understand it back then, and, if I had, I wouldn't have cared that much. No, I was mad about what he'd done to me. He'd taken away one of the few pleasurable interruptions in an existence that otherwise varied from mundane to miserable. I still went up to the music attic to play guitar, but Flowers never appeared. I was left alone up there with the smell of dust and floor wax, and the tunes I played by myself, to myself, for myself.
Flowers himself seemed angry, that term. He continued to teach music and Latin, and continued to smell like a woman, unaware or ignoring the wrinkled noses of the other boys. But he seemed intent on punishing me for Artie's absence, or perhaps for my unformed knowledge about what he'd done to the boy. Too often I found myself chided for messy handwriting, yelled at for fidgeting, punished for not listening. He was clever about it, too, not overtly bullying me but doing it incrementally, when no one else was there or when my misdeeds were real, and all he had to do was exaggerate them. Disproportionate punishments were common at the school, the severity of the crime depending on the whim or mood of the teacher. So to be ordered to scrub a bathroom floor with a toothbrush for taking too long to piss attracted no one's attention. Except mine.
Mr. Flowers died the day after my birthday, a birthday being the one day we were shown a modicum of humanity. Instead of whatever the sport was, we were allowed to go off on our own, or with up to two friends, for a walk in the Scottish highlands. My birt
hday always fell in cross-country season, which I hated, so I took full advantage of the custom and went walking. By myself. The second tradition was for the cook to make a large cake, which the birthday boy could share with his classmates. Often, a piece was delivered to friends outside one's class, maybe the captain of the football team as a way of sucking up, likewise to a favorite teacher. I took a piece to Mr. Flowers, catching him on his way out of the main school. He seemed surprised, but my downcast eyes and submissive tone made it clear it was a peace offering, or perhaps one of defeat, the way a vanquished soldier might give up his weapon to a captor.
He died that night, or in the morning. A heart attack was the word, and the headmaster gathered us all in the chapel to let us know. A tragedy, we were told, one that the school would recover from in due course. Stiff upper lip and carry on, we were told. John Flowers would have wanted it that way.
John Flowers. The first man I ever killed.
Tuesday morning crawled by. I was in court scrolling through the docket case by case, the weekly procession of misdemeanors and juvenile delinquents pretending to be sorry. I'd never seen the appeal of tattoos, but so many of these kids, some as young as twelve, had them all over their bodies. Ugly, blotchy, homemade tattoos, of course, because no professional artist would work with a kid. One little punk, a repeat offender according to his probation officer, had his area code, 512, tattooed under his eye. A gang thing, and an absolute guarantee of a thug life.
A rare cool front had blown through central Texas, so at lunchtime I walked to a taco truck half a mile away, a place that made its own salsa. I sat at a picnic bench to eat and felt someone behind me. I knew who it was immediately, that soft perfume and the uncanny knack of appearing out of nowhere. She slid onto the bench beside me.
“Hi, Dominic. Lunch looks good.”
“Hungry? You want something?”
“No thanks. Ate already.”
“Okay. Stalking me?”
“Kind of. I need to talk to you.”
“About?”
“Bobby.”
