by Blair Howard
She was getting angry.
“And then…. Well, you thought you could fix what wasn’t broken. I thank you for that, Kim.”
“It won’t do you a damned bit of good. You’re not going to tell anyone.”
“You going to kill me too?”
She didn’t answer, but I could see the insane light in her eyes. She wasn’t planning on letting me go, that was for sure.
“Why did you kill her, Kim?”
She didn’t answer right away. Then, eventually, she shrugged. “She didn’t love me. I loved her, but….”
I waited for her to continue, but she seemed to have retreated into another world.
“Well go on,” I said.
“We met through the Kalliste website. Have you heard of it?
I nodded.
“I thought so. I figured it was bound to come out sooner or later. I did my best to keep myself out of it, but…” She shrugged again, and tapped the knife blade on the seat of the chair between her legs, staring absently at the floor. “Well, I changed phones often, used disposables, prepaids, but there’s always something. Anyway, that’s how I met her. She was into BDSM, like me, but it went beyond that. We became friends. She’d come here sometimes, stay with me, to get away. We were lovers. Well, I loved her. Then she told me it was over, that she was leaving me for that goddamn vet. Broadening her horizons. Bitch!”
She paused; I wriggled; she continued. “I followed her that Saturday night. I went everywhere she did. She ended up in that sleazy downtown bar, and that bitch was there. They didn’t see me…. What?”
She’d spotted the look I was giving her.
“So that was you, in the bar, all alone in the corner. You were on the security footage, but it was too dark. Damn it. No wonder you looked familiar.”
“I was wearing a ball cap, dummy. How do you think you would have been able to recognize me if Emily and that group of morons couldn’t, as close as they were to me?”
She stared at me, smiling. It wasn’t pretty.
“You were saying,” I said.
“Yeah, well. They hooked up and left. I followed them to that bitch’s home on Constitution. Would you believe she stayed the whole damned night? Didn’t leave until almost seven in the morning?”
Her eyes were vacant. She seemed to be staring at me, but if she was, she wasn’t seeing me. Maybe she was reliving it all. For several minutes, she sat there, her hands together in her lap, holding the knife.
“Go on,” I said.
She blinked, startled. “What? Oh! So they came out together. They got in that bitch’s car and she took Emily back to the college. I followed. She dropped her off outside the block and left. Emily went inside and I called her, asked to come out and talk to me. She didn’t want to, but… well, she did. She got in the car with me. I kissed her; it was nice. For me, not for her.”
She shrugged, smiled to herself—she was reliving it—then continued. “I asked her if she’d let me cook breakfast for her one last time. She didn’t want to, I could tell, but she said okay, and I drove her back here. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“No, not really. I made scrambled eggs and bacon for her… and coffee.” She smiled at the thought. “A few drops of Ketamine, and she was all mine.”
She stopped talking, staring at something on the floor I couldn’t see, then looked up at me, tears streaming down her face.
“Why?” she asked. “Why did she do it? I kept her here, where you are. I tried to persuade her. I was so nice to her. I made her all her favorite dishes. I held her, cuddled her, told her how much I loved her, that we could be together, always, if only… but she wouldn’t listen, kept crying, kept…. In the end I just gave up. She didn’t suffer. I loved her.”
“Then what.”
“I put Emily in the little valley. It’s so pretty there, what with the wild flowers and all. It was difficult, she was all stiff, you see. Then I went straight to that bitch vet’s place and I strangled the shit out of her, literally. The cow!”
I waited, but I sensed that she was done, and that she was about to turn her attention to me.
“They weren’t the only ones, Emily and the vet, were they?” I didn’t use Erika’s name because I had a feeling it might set her off.
“You mean Angela and Marcy.”
“Yes.”
“They were much the same, really. I never was very lucky in love. I met them both on the website. I fell for them, as I usually do. I had maybe a dozen or so dates with Angela. I thought it was going to last, but it didn’t. Marcy? She was a bitch too. Lovely, but a bitch. She drove me wild. Made promises and never kept them. God, how that girl could turn me on…. They’re both out back. The big flowerbed… oh, you haven’t seen it, have you? Pity. Now you never will.”
Shit. It’s now or never.
I rose quickly to my feet, not easy when they were fastened to a chair. She began to rise too. I leaned forward, almost double, raised my arms as far as they would go behind me and brought my wrists down as hard as I could against my backside—it’s a trick anyone with self-defense training knows. And it worked.
The cable tie snapped with a crack, leaving my arms free. And then she lunged forward, the knife aimed for my gut. I twisted sideways, leaned back a little, and punched her hard in the side of her neck with the knuckles of my right hand. She went down choking; the knife flew out of her hand, spinning. I had no choice. I reached up and caught it. Talk about dropped bread always landing buttered side down. I grabbed the thing by its blade, and felt my palm split open. No pain, but that wouldn’t last.
I transferred the knife to my left hand and looked down at her, the knife at the ready. There was no need. She was done. She rolled over onto her back, coughed twice, and then passed out.
I collapsed back down onto the chair and took a deep breath. My palm was cut from the thumb joint all the way across to the base of my little finger; I was bleeding like a stuck pig, and it was beginning to hurt.
I bent down, cut the ties around my ankles, stood up, took a step forward and stretched. How long I’d been there I didn’t know, but I sure as hell was stiff.
I found a piece of cloth on the draining board by the sink, and wrapped it around my hand; it wasn’t much, but it would have to do. Then I found more cable ties on top of a pile of cardboard boxes. I used one to secure Kim’s hands behind her back, another to secure her ankles, and then I sat down again and breathed quietly for a few moments. She began to stir. She was a big woman, and I began to wonder if she knew the cable tie trick. I went back and made sure that even if she did she would stay secure, by adding a second tie over the first.
That should do it.
I went upstairs, found my pistol and my phone. I called Kate first, then 911, then I settled down to wait.
And wait I did. Things move much more slowly in the county than they do in the city.
While I was waiting, I had a thought. I walked back into the house and hit the speed dial for Emily’s number, put the phone to my ear, and listened. It began to ring. I took the phone away from my ear and smiled. Down in the basement, I heard it. I hung up, punched in Erika’s number, and again was rewarded.
I found the two phones, along with several others, in an old dresser drawer. More physical evidence. I left them where they were, but photographed them, then went back outside to wait for the authorities.
A sheriff’s cruiser was the first to arrive, followed by an ambulance, then a friggin’ fire truck, and then another, and then, finally, Kate arrived with Lonnie.
The deputies took Kim into custody, sealed the house, and… well, it was over. I had to go to the hospital, because my hand would need some serious stitches, but it would heal. They always do.
I turned to get into the passenger side of my car—Kate would drive—but for some reason I stopped and turned to look up at the living room window. A little white face with a sharp pointy nose and a big brown patch over o
ne eye was looking back at me. I hesitated for a moment, then looked again. She was still there. There was something about that face I just couldn’t resist, so I went back up the steps. She was there by the door when I opened it, the stub of her tail vibrating wildly.
“Come on, Merry.” I picked her up. She licked my ear. “You’re going to need a new home.”
Chapter 34
It was after nine o’clock when I got home that evening. I spent an hour at the hospital having my hand stitched—have you ever had the palm of your hand stitched? No? You don’t want to. It was more painful than the cut.
I’d called Amanda during the ride down the mountain, so she was waiting for me at the hospital when they’d finished putting the stitches in. We dropped in on Bob, said hello and goodbye, and made a promise to drop by in the morning. Then it was away to the police department on Amnicola.
I spent two more hours making statements and explaining everything. Kim Watson was in a cell in Hamilton County Jail under suicide watch. Apparently she’d retreated into some quiet world all her own. She just sat there on the edge of her bed, staring at the wall, rocking back and forth.
Wes Johnston had left a message at the front desk saying he wanted to see me. The paperwork completed, I tapped on his office door and pushed it open. He was seated behind his desk, staring out over the motor pool. He looked up, then waved a hand at the chair in front of his desk. It was a tired gesture, half-hearted.
“Hey, Harry.” He continued to stare out of the window. “How’s your hand?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure if he was really interested or just being polite. “It’s okay.”
For a long moment we sat there, neither one of us willing to say the first word.
Finally, he turned away from the window and looked me in the eye, “Thanks,” he said. His face was drawn. He looked tired. He was a changed man; something was missing, and it showed. That edge he’d had was gone.
I shook my head, slowly. “There’s no need to thank me, Wes.”
“Yes there is. You and I both know that if it had been left to Hands and his crew, it wouldn’t have happened; the case would have gone cold. She would have been forgotten. You changed that, Harry. I’ll be forever in your debt.”
“Come on, Wes….”
“No,” he interrupted me, “I owe you. That’s the end of it.” And it was. The next thing he said was: “Go home, Harry. Get some rest. We’ll talk again.”
He turned again to the window. I waited a few more minutes, opened my mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come, so I left him there to deal with his demons alone. All I wanted to do was go home and drink some of Scotland’s best. And that was what I did.
-----
Amanda and I sat together on the sofa in front of big windows—not for much longer, I hoped. I dozed a little, watched the reflections of the lights from Thrasher Bridge flicker and undulate. The night was clear and it seemed to me that the river was on fire: beautiful. I was feeling better… well, a little.
“So,” she said. “Are you going to tell me or not?”
I looked sideways at her. She really was beautiful.
“How did I figure it was Watson, you mean?”
She nodded.
“To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes: Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the answer.
“First, I had no doubt that the two deaths were linked. That being so, I was positive the answer lay in those five missing days. Where was she? Who had the means to keep her hidden like that? It was impossible for Jessica to have done so. She only had a dorm room. The same went for Mason-Jones. Her apartment was big, but very public. Rösche? The same, unless he had some sort of hideaway on campus, but there was no profit for him in Emily’s disappearance. I even considered the next-door neighbor. What was her name, Collins? She lived alone, and she had a Jack Russell, but she was no lesbian. Did you see the way she came onto me that day? Okay, don’t answer that. So, who did that leave? The sheriff? He’s corrupt as hell, but he’s no killer. I even considered Jepson, the vet. I had Danny run a check on him, but he wasn’t even here when Emily went missing. He was on some island in the Caribbean. So that left me with… nobody.”
She looked at me over the rim of her glass. “Okay smartass,” she said. “I’ll bite. How did you figure it out?”
“I went back to basics, of course. How the hell I let it get past me… well, I guess it was because it was Emily, and I was so upset. Then Bob, and… ah, hell. I screwed up. Think about murder and prime suspects. They are?”
She looked at me, quizzically, “The spouse—husband or wife—a close relative, brother, sister…? The person who….”
I nodded.
“Found the body,” she breathed.
“You’ve got it, and so did I, eventually. When I did, it was so damned obvious I could have kicked myself. She was the figure in the bar, in the ball cap. Had to be. I looked for her on Kalliste, but she wasn’t there. And then I got that too. She wasn’t there because she was a client. Then there were the dog hairs.”
I put my hand down and tickled Merry’s ears.
“And that damned great old house practically right next to the dump site? The motive was jealousy, just as I’d always thought. Kim Watson was obsessed with Emily, but Emily had found a new love with Erika, so both of them had to die. I figured I had the answer, but I couldn’t prove it.”
I leaned back in my chair, grinning, and took a sip of wine. I savored it. It was well worth the two hundred dollars I’d paid for it.
“So what to do? I decided to talk to her, but I didn’t want to spook her. I had to have a reason. I figured the two girls on the bikes might work; she’d brought them up. I’d show her photos of Emily’s friends, and twist her nose a little, figuratively speaking. The problem was, I underestimated her. I did not expect her to hit me in the head the minute I walked in the door. But that worked out fine. That attack and the subsequent conversation, which I recorded via my CIA watch, the two phones—Emily and Erika’s—and the dog hairs, along with the paint chips, the mold, and the dust, all microscopically identical to what was found in her basement, put it away. Her DNA will clinch it: the tissue we found under Emily’s fingernails. It’s cut-and-dried. Another one for the books.”
I sat back and savored the moment.
“By the way, I know we talked about this already, but Bob gets out in a couple of days, and I told him he’s coming here until he can cope on his own. That’s okay with you, right?”
She nodded. “Of course it is. I’ve already cleared my stuff out of the spare room….”
I took her hand, squeezed it, put her palm to my lips, kissed it, and stared out over the glittering waters of the Tennessee.
“So what now?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well. It’s over. What’s next?”
I didn’t know what she was getting at. She was staring at me.
“The house, I suppose, and we’ll have Bob here for a while….”
“Oh, Harry. I know all that. That’s not what I meant. What about us?”
“Us? Us…?”
Suddenly I could hear my old man, whispering in my ear, What the hell’s the matter with you, boy? Snap the girl up, before someone else does. And I almost did it. I almost asked her. But the words wouldn’t come, not yet.
I put my arm around her and…. Well, that’s a story for another day.
Family Matters
A Harry Starke Novel
By
Blair Howard
Chapter 1
A heavy mist hung over the narrow streets like a damp velvet shroud. The hour was a little after midnight, and all was quiet as Annie hurried homeward through the dark. Her soft slippers made no sound against the cobblestones. Her skirt reached almost to the ground, but the heavy fabric barely whispered against her legs. Even the rats that usually infested the gutters and alleyways seemed to be in hiding.
She’d spent the
evening as usual, drinking at the Ten Bells and servicing her clients; just two tonight, but the extra sixpence would come in handy. Maybe she’d buy herself a half dozen eggs, maybe a pound of sausages to go with them. The thought was a pleasant one. Dinner in her ratty little room at Mrs. Crossingham’s lodging house on Dorset Street.
She walked quickly, fearful of not only what might lie ahead, but also of what might be lurking in the alleys that separated the dank, decaying tenements on either side of her. Something was wrong. She knew it instinctively. Her skin crawled. She shuddered and looked back over her shoulder, but there was nothing there, only the mist that swirled and seemed to close in around her.
She drew her shawl more tightly around her neck and shoulders, tucked her chin down into her coat, and hurried onward through the darkness.
A gas lantern flickered faintly at the end of the street, casting weird, moving shadows. They grew to monstrous proportions, then shrank again as the night breeze bent and folded the wavering yellow flame. A dreadful feeling that she was being followed began to grow inside her.
She began to run toward the dim light, now seemingly far away in the distance. She had gone no more than a few steps when she heard it: a voice, whispering, as if borne on the mist.
“Annieeee.”
Her eyes widened. She stopped, backed into the dark shadow of a shop doorway, and peered back down the street into the darkness. A shadow emerged, walking quickly toward her.
“Annie, there’s no need to run. It’s only me. I have sixpence for you.” It was no more than a whisper, but she knew that voice. She’d been talking to him earlier, in the Bells. Now she was terrified.
“Annie, please don’t run away from me. I want you oh so much.”
