Against Nature

by Casey Barrett

  Receive. Accept. React.

  * * *

  Detective Lea Miller arrived ten minutes later, flanked by a pair of beefy officers in uniform. Both had hands on their weapons. Not a smile among the three. The other patrons stiffened over their drinks. When Detective Miller addressed me, I felt a palpable exhale from my fellow drinkers. It wasn’t them they were after. I raised my beer, gulped it down, and turned to face her.

  “There she is,” I said. “What can I get you?”

  She glanced at one of the uniforms and he stepped forward. “Lawrence Darley, you’re under arrest.”

  “For what?” I asked. Then I remembered the pint glass broken over Crowley’s head. “Oh, right, the glass . . .”

  “Anything you say can and will be used against you,” he continued.

  I turned to Lea. “What does he have, a concussion?”

  The arresting officers lifted me from my stool and forced me around. I felt the cuffs lock around my wrists, heard them click shut.

  “So I guess this means Crowley is pressing charges?” I asked.

  “No, Duck,” said Lea. “He’s not. He’s dead.”

  * * *

  The bludgeoned body of Dr. James Crowley was found the night before in Stuyvesant Park by a neighbor walking his beagle. Killed by blunt-force trauma, by a lot more than a pint glass to the head. My apartment on East 17th Street was about two hundred yards from the spot where he was discovered under the trees. The police did not appreciate the proximity. Neither did I. But at least I had an alibi. So I waited patiently in an interrogation room, confident in the knowledge that I’d be out soon enough. After enough time to make a guilty man squirm, the door opened and in stepped Miller, along with another detective I didn’t recognize.

  “Where were you last night?” she asked.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?”

  She glanced at him; he looked at me, offered a scowl. He was a tall, well-built cop, clean-shaven, with a bent, hooked nose.

  “New partner?” I asked.

  He said nothing, waited for Miller to take the lead.

  “Duck, where were you last night?” she asked again.

  “About time you guys got around to establishing my alibi,” I said. “I was otherwise engaged last night, with a woman named Uli Kruger.” When Lea’s mouth tightened at the name, I added, “That’s right, the widow of Carl Kruger. I was with her all night long, at her bar, and then, later, alone with her at an apartment on Orchard Street. You’ll find she can verify my whereabouts from the moment I left Crowley at that bar—where I reported our altercation to you, Lea—until about three a.m. last night. May I assume that the murder occurred sometime before three?” I searched their faces for confirmation; the nameless partner began to chew his lower lip.

  “So you spent the day and then the night with Ms. Kruger, is that correct?” asked Lea.

  “Yes, like I said, I was with her for quite a while yesterday, from roughly two p.m. until three a.m. You might say we became close.”

  “Did you have sexual relations with this woman?” asked the partner.

  “He speaks. Nice of you to join the party, Officer, what was your name again?”

  “Did you have sex with Ms. Kruger?” he asked again.

  “I did, yes.”

  “And she’ll verify that?”

  “If she won’t, I’m pretty sure my DNA will.”

  “So, to clarify,” said Lea, “your alibi in the death of James Crowley, a man you admit to assaulting in front of witnesses yesterday afternoon, who was then beaten to death in a park very close to your home—your alibi is that you were drinking with, and then having sex with, the widow of the man that your partner has been charged with murdering? Is that correct?”

  “’Tis.”

  Lea couldn’t meet my eyes. “You’re all class, Duck,” she said.

  She turned and left the room. Her partner lingered for a moment, looking down at me like he wanted to fire a jab over the table. I smiled up at him until he suppressed the urge and left me alone.

  They took their time about it. I was transferred to a holding cell, where a junkie lay curled in the fetal position on the floor. Open sores were visible along his scarred arms. He closed his eyes, braced for withdrawal. Soon he was shaking and sweating on the cement. I felt better about myself by comparison. No easy task. Here I was, hours after a return to Rikers, back behind bars, facing a bogus murder charge. At least I knew Cass didn’t do it. I would have asked for an attorney, but the only one I knew was Eddie Lutelman, and I wasn’t sure if his heart was still beating. Whatever, I was confident that Uli would establish my innocence. I’d be released after they spoke to her.

  I tried to imagine Crowley’s movements after I broke that glass over his head. Had I knocked him out? Or did he shake it off? I knew he had a high tolerance for pain. Was he killed in Stuyvesant Park, or dumped there after? Within shouting distance of my front door, that wasn’t an accident. What happened in the intervening hours? Did he go to the hospital for stitches, a possible concussion? Did he file a police report?

  I could picture our spooked ginger waitress relating the whole encounter: “It was a tense conversation, I was afraid to go near them and drop off their drinks. The older guy, he stayed pretty calm, but the other one, he was drinking heavily and sweating and really angry. Then when he got up, he grabbed his glass and smashed it over the other guy’s head. My manager and I went outside after him, but he jumped in a cab and sped off. . . .”

  And what did the good doctor do next, after he washed the blood from his hair and treated his head wound? Crowley didn’t strike me as the “official channels” sort. He had too much to hide himself. He would be less likely to file a report and press charges, and more likely to seek out Oliver. Where was that sneering Aryan?

  * * *

  Hours passed before I was summoned back to the interrogation room. Detective Miller and Detective No-Name joined me a minute later. He took a seat on the chair across from me and scooted in close. Lea lingered a few strides behind his shoulder.

  “They say every good lie must have a grain of truth,” he said. “You ever hear that one, Darley?”

  I smiled back without a nod or shake of the head.

  “It’s true. You have to start with some truth, then you just shave it and convince yourself that this altered version is the actual memory. It’s how so many guilty folks pass lie detectors. It’s just a matter of convincing yourself of a new reality.”

  I kept smiling, offered nothing. Tried to slow the acceleration of my heart rate.

  “So . . . here’s the deal,” he said. “We followed up on your alibi. We spoke to Uli Kruger and we confirmed that you were almost honest with us. But not entirely, my friend, and that is where we have a problem.”

  I looked over his head and made eye contact with Lea. “Is this clown going to get to the point?”

  She stepped forward, pressed the tips of ten fingers on the table, and leaned in. “Uli Kruger says you arrived at her bar yesterday around two p.m., soon after you assaulted Crowley.”

  “As I told you.”

  “Ms. Kruger stated that you drank through the afternoon. She says that the bar emptied of other patrons around four thirty p.m., at which point the two of you began talking. She joined you for a drink, and the conversation became infused with sexual tension.”

  “‘Infused’? Was that Uli’s word?” I asked. “I like that, ‘infused.’ Good word.”

  “Miss Kruger confirmed that you did indeed have sexual relations in her bar bathroom soon after. When you emerged from this encounter, she reports that the bar began to fill again, and that you returned to your seat and continued to drink.”

  “All true,” I said.

  “But then we have a problem,” said her partner. “The rest of your story is bullshit.”

  “Miss Kruger further reports that she chose to close the bar early last night, around ten p.m., after it emptied, leaving you as her only customer
. At this point you had to be very intoxicated. Can we establish that you had been drinking for approximately nine hours straight?” Lea asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “No?”

  “I also had a half-dozen drinks at the Wheeltapper earlier, waiting for Crowley, and then while we talked.”

  “Okay, eleven hours then. You had been drinking for eleven consecutive hours at this point?”

  “Give or take.”

  Detective No-Name snorted with disgust. I guessed a night out for him was two or three Michelob Ultras after a good sweaty workout with other sweaty men.

  “So you left with Miss Kruger as she closed the bar, is that correct?” asked Lea.

  “Yes.”

  “And outside, she mentioned, you had an altercation with some gentlemen while she locked the door?”

  “A couple cokeheads that wanted to keep drinking,” I said. “Some rude hipsters, we had words. That was it.”

  “And then you left?”

  “Yes, with Uli. We went to Cass’s apartment-cum-dungeon, a few blocks away on Orchard.”

  “I don’t think so,” said No-Name.

  “I don’t care what you think. What did Uli say?”

  The detectives exchanged a look. Lea blinked, gave a nod, let him deliver the blow. He turned with a crooked smile and said, “That’s it, end of night, end of alibi. Uli Kruger reports that she said good-bye to you then. She says that you were drunk and belligerent, and she advised you to sleep it off. She returned to her apartment on Henry Street, while you walked off in the other direction, Uptown. I’m sure we can find the gentlemen you confronted to confirm the altercation. Uli says they’re regulars.”

  “She didn’t mention us going to Cass’s place on Orchard?”

  “No, Duck,” said Lea. “She says she went home.”

  “James Crowley was killed approximately two hours later, around midnight,” said her partner. “Do you have an alibi for those hours, after you left Uli Kruger?”

  “I told you—”

  “And she told us otherwise.”

  “I don’t know why she would say that, but you can check the place on Orchard. We were there, together. There has to be evidence of that.” But even as I said it, I was picturing the spotless décor of Cass’s dungeon. It was wiped clean after every use. Uli saw me out, said she was going to clean up after us. She wouldn’t have left so much as a thumbprint. I remembered the whipping she’d given me, the marks that must still be covering my back. I stood and turned. “Check it out,” I said. “Pull up my shirt and take a look. Uli whipped me last night. You’ll see the marks. Just look.”

  Lea stepped around the table and raised my t-shirt, then dropped it and shook her head at her partner. “There’s nothing there,” she said. “Looks clean.”

  “What the fuck? It still stings, you’re telling me you can’t see any marks?”

  Detective No-Name was enjoying this. He stood and came around and had a look for himself. “Nothing there, partner, sorry,” he said. “I heard you were messed up, but this is pretty twisted. Your partner, Cassandra Kimball, kills Carl Kruger, you screw his widow, and then you go off and kill this Crowley, and your alibi is that the widow was whipping you in your partner’s dungeon at the time of death?”

  “That’s the truth,” I said. Though I wasn’t sure if I still believed it myself.

  “We have another problem, Duck,” said Lea.

  I knew before she could get the words out. I remembered Uli’s face, her averted eyes, when I said his name. The way she shushed me and took control when I probed further.

  “Oliver,” I said. “He’s her son.”

  Miller nodded. “He confirms that his mother was home last night soon after ten p.m.”

  Chapter 33

  Mothers and sons. Who among us can question that bond? Who would doubt what they are capable of doing for one another? Boys are born into the world and held by the one woman that will forever forgive them. Mothers never lose that image of their baby boy, helpless and pure, in their arms. Even as the boy grows with bad intentions, and a less than pure heart, the naughtiness is charming at first. As he becomes a teen, though, it becomes destructive—there’s drugs, the fighting, the uncontainable anger. When he’s a young man, there are arrests, escalating in severity. The boy’s path looks like a hell-bound train, but the mother doesn’t see that. She continues to see her loving child. Sure, he can be a bit unruly, a little difficult at times, but underneath it all he’s really a sweet boy.

  And sons never lose that earliest image either, the Madonna who protects and loves without condition. Even as the mother ages with bitterness and poor decisions. Even as the drinking and the pills take over, and she stops caring for him as well as she should, as the men come and go, before she decides that one is more important than the boy and she chooses the man over the son. Even then, the boy remains convinced that beneath all the ugliness of life, there’s the mother he can always return to, who will shield him from harm.

  Or something like that.

  But who was the father? Lipke indicated that he’d adopted Oliver and said he’d taken his name. Crowley said that was a recent development, and used quotes around the term “son.” Biologically it couldn’t be Carl Kruger, of course. Still, the presence of a child would not have been something he would hide. Carl wanted to share his story with the world. Wasn’t that why he was collaborating with Victor Wingate on the book? I wondered if he even knew about the boy.

  But Uli knew all about her son. What he became, what he was capable of, and now she was protecting him. Shielding him the way he always knew his mother would. How long had she been with Carl? It had to be three decades, since before the Wall came down in ’89. It was a love story worthy of Hollywood. A pair of abused and doped athletes come together in the waning days of their failed country; escape to freedom; make a life together in a city of reinvention and tolerance. But left behind: a child, Uli’s boy, to be raised motherless in a crumbling East.

  I could see the resemblance now, too late: the strong Germanic nose and jaw, the intense, watchful eyes. They both moved with that athlete’s grace.

  Her boy was back with her now, and it looked like the mother was making amends. Helping to frame others for the murders her boy was committing. Could he have killed her love, her Carl? Would mother choose son over husband? And when had Oliver turned on Crowley, his onetime boss? Had mother instructed son to tie up this loose end, now that she had a drunken fall guy? It closed a circle and contained their sins, while Cass and I paid for them.

  I tried to explain this theory to the detectives. One looked on with pity, the other with contempt. Detective Miller asked her partner for a moment alone with me. His parting shot: “We got you, loser.” And maybe they did.

  * * *

  When he was gone, Lea took the chair across from me. Something like sympathy flashed in her eyes. I wondered if this was a bad time to ask for a second chance.

  “Duck, have you ever heard of a condition called alcohol-induced psychosis?”

  “Jesus Christ, Lea . . .”

  “It’s also known as pathologic intoxication. There’s a growing body of literature that . . .”

  “So you’re telling me that I hallucinated that entire trip to Cass’s dungeon, where I let Uli Kruger whip me? And meanwhile, I was actually in a blackout state where I went off and killed James Crowley? That’s what we’re going with here?”

  “You’d been drinking for eleven straight hours, by your own admission,” she said.

  “Will you just check out Cass’s place, please? I can tell you where it is. My prints must be there. Someone must have seen us coming or going. Please, Lea. This isn’t some alcoholic hallucination. I did not kill James Crowley. I don’t even know how to reach the guy.”

  “What’s the address?” she asked.

  “The what?”

  “The address, to your partner’s apartment on Orchard, what is her address?”

  “I’m not sure. .
. .”

  “Fucking hell, Duck.”

  “Wait. It’s just north of Canal, about halfway up the block, on the west side of the street. There’s a blue sign that says ‘Success’ next door. It’s a red door with a bench out front. Her place is on the first floor of a tenement, at the end of the hall, last door on the left.”

  “But you don’t know her exact address?”

  “That was my first time there!” I shouted. “That’s the thing. I’d never seen her place before. Cass always guarded her privacy. She was part of my life, but I was never really a part of hers. Does that make sense?” Lea looked back without expression. So I added, “Ask her. Go ahead and ask, you know where to find her—at Rikers, where I’ll be soon too. We’re both being set up here, and I know who’s behind it.”

  “Who’s that, Duck?”

  “Oliver! Oliver Lipke, Uli’s son, adopted by the doctor who doped her back in Germany. They created each other’s alibis last night. They’ll swear they were together at home, a mother-and-son reunion, while in reality one was off killing his former boss, and the other was whipping me in Cass’s dungeon.”

  “You need to talk to a lawyer, Duck. I think you should stop.”

  “Just listen to me, Lea. You know me. You know I didn’t do this. Neither did Cass. Did either of us write that letter to Juliette Cohen, threatening her son? No way. It was Eberhard Lipke, Oliver’s father, or whatever he is. They’re behind all this. Uli’s son, he was the one who warned me before I went to see Cass after Wingate died. He told me to walk away, said some things aren’t worth it. While I was gone, he spray-painted a hate slogan on the front door of my apartment. He must have been the one who came in through the back of Kruger’s Bar and knocked me out and then killed his stepfather. . . .”

  “Duck. Stop.”

  “Just tell me my motive. Tell me Cass’s motive. Why would we kill the people we’re being accused of killing?”

  “Talk to your lawyer. I’m serious. We’re done here.”

  She left me there without looking back. I felt eyes watching me behind the dark glass. Felt them listening to everything I muttered alone in that room. I stared at my hands until a young officer came in and escorted me back to my cell. Lea was right—I needed a lawyer. I could try Lutelman, see if he was still breathing, and if so, would he be willing to represent me? I knew he’d fight for Cass, but I wondered if we were still a package deal. We were being charged with separate crimes, connected but not united. I’d need my own representation. And I had no one.