Red Blooded Murder

by Laura Caldwell

  I expected him to protest. I guess I hoped he would. But he just craned his neck to look for a cab. “Yeah, tomorrow,” he said. Then, “Shit, I’ve got rugby practice.”

  “Well, after that. Or Friday.” We used to feel an urgency to be together. Where had it gone?

  We both seemed to sense the change. He looked at me with a face suddenly torn, anguished, surprised. He reached out his arms and pulled me close. I put my head on his chest, smelling a hint of the tea tree aftershave he wore, smelling something deeper, something pure Sam.

  “This is stupid,” he said. “I’m coming home with you now.”

  “No, it’s okay. I know it’s difficult, and you have to be at work early, too. If not tomorrow, we’ll get together soon.”

  “Okay.” I hated that he had given in so easily. That we both had.

  Still we clung to each other. Still I breathed him in. That scent brought tears to my eyes, pain to my belly.

  “What’s happening?” I said, my words muffled.

  He squeezed me tighter. “Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing.”

  That was exactly what I feared.

  48

  T he city was a blur outside my cab window. I couldn’t focus on anything, couldn’t see past the haze in my brain, the ache of Sam and me skidding to some new form of us, or maybe no form at all, or some form that would exist on a plane we’d never even known was out there. How fast it had changed, twisted, turned.

  The same could be said of Jane’s murder investigation, with how quickly I’d gone from friend and coworker to a person of interest. None of it made any sense to me, and the longer I thought about it, the angrier it made me. The city outside the cab window became a violent composite of hazy smudges, of dark and then of glaring electric light.

  Who did Zac Ellis think he was, accusing me? I understood that his suspicion of me had started Saturday morning when I was spouting off possible explanations for her absence, when I really suspected that she’d gone home with Mick. I was trying so hard not to get her in trouble, and trying so hard to contain the fact that I had gone home with someone myself, that I probably sounded as if I had something much bigger to hide. But still. Still, it was Zac’s crazy suspicions that had gotten caught in the lens of the cops’ radar. As far as I could tell, it was because of him that everything was spinning so quickly out of control right now.

  When the cab neared my house, I leaned forward. “I’m going somewhere different,” I said. I gave him Jane’s address.

  49

  W hen the cab pulled up in front of Jane’s house-correction, it was solely Zac’s house now-I saw the lights were on, and all the drapes in the front closed tight. Two news vans were parked on the street, lights on, but there were no reporters or cameramen outside. The night’s quiet had a temporary feel to it, as if the calm had died down, but everyone knew the storm would erupt again tomorrow.

  And then that night came back to me in a flash. I couldn’t walk in that front door again.

  “Can you take me around to the other side, please?” I asked the cabbie, remembering the rear entrance that Jane had showed me.

  The back of their house faced the alley-familiar territory for a photographer like Zac, who featured such alleys in his work. But for me, the barely lit dark and the eerie silence made me remember another terrifying time-last night, those hands shoving me against the garage.

  I asked the cabbie to drive a few houses past Zac’s, then gave him a twenty. “Will you wait for me, please?”

  “What do you mean wait for ya?” He was a huge man who looked as if he’d been poured into his cab ten years ago and hadn’t gotten out yet. I doubted whether he could be responsive enough to help me if I needed it.

  “Just wait, and call the cops if I don’t come back, okay? I’m going to that house right there.” I pointed.

  “I’m not calling the cops.”

  I gave him a ten. “You can drive away if you want, but call the cops if I don’t come back in ten minutes. Please.” Ten minutes was enough to confront Zac, to ask him a few questions, to get him to see that I had nothing to do with his wife’s love life, certainly nothing to do with her death.

  I hurried down the alley, looking every which way, my heels feeling unstable on the uneven brick. I thought of how I would talk to Zac in a simple way, assuring him I wasn’t involved with Jane. I knew that, as a new widower, he had to be struggling through circles of hell I hadn’t even glimpsed yet.

  A gate protected the rear of the house, with a swinging door cut into it. Locked. I looked up at the house. Like the front, all the lights appeared to be on but the drapes and blinds were closed. I looked around for a buzzer. There didn’t seem to be one. I walked down a ways, trying to see into the house from another angle, but again all the curtains were closed. Then the back door of the house opened. I saw Zac and another person. A woman. She was wearing a plaid coat and a white beret. She stepped out of the house first. Zac was behind her, not wearing a coat. He looked up and down the alley. His eyes seemed to miss me in a dark corner of the property. His gaze stopped when he saw the cab up the street, but then the woman in the beret put her arms around him. He hugged her back. Tight. And for a long time. They kissed on the lips once, then again, then once more. Zac closed the door, and she trotted down the stairs. She was pretty in a quirky way. She walked through the gate, and I remembered I’d seen her before at Jane’s funeral, the dark-haired woman looking through the photo book of Jane, dabbing at her eyes.

  I stepped back quickly, against the side of a neighboring garage. When I poked my head out, I saw that the woman had spied my cab. She hurried that way, waving at it. And then my thirty-dollar cabbie let her in and drove away.

  The loss of my cab was one thing. The fact that Zac had been accusing me of something when he’d clearly had his own secrets pissed me off even more. I marched to the back gate. It had closed but hadn’t locked when the woman left. I was inside and heading up the back stairs in a second.

  I pounded on the door. It opened, and Zac poked his head out.

  “How long have you had a girlfriend?” I said.

  His eyes narrowed. He opened the door farther and gestured at me to come in.

  50

  Z ac and I stood in his big kitchen, both of us leaning against the countertops, both of us with our arms crossed tight over our chest. Between us, the granite island, marbled in tan and black, held an assortment of sympathy cards and baked goods.

  “Her name is Zoey,” Zac said.

  Zac and Zoey. It was actually a cute name for a couple, but now probably wasn’t the time to point that out.

  “How long have you been together?” I asked.

  “We’re not together. She was helping me move back into my house for the first time since Jane died. It’s been a crime scene until now.”

  “From what I saw, she looked like more than a friend.”

  “Fuck you,” Zac said. “You have no idea what my life has been like.” He leaned forward, arms squeezed tight around himself, the veins on his neck standing up. “And you have no idea what it was like to be married to Jane. She cheated. You know about her dalliances, right? And she probably also told you that I let her do it. And you know why? Because I loved her. I fucking loved her. So that’s it. Now, what do you want?”

  He stopped short and took a breath. His energy and the intensity seemed to drain away then, as if he were a sponge pressed hard, everything seeping out.

  I spoke up. “I can’t imagine how tough that would have been. You know, being with Jane, while she was…doing whatever.”

  “Doing whomever.”

  “So you turned to Zoey. It’s understandable.”

  “Look, I don’t have to explain anything to you. But the fact is I’ve got nothing to hide, so I’ll tell you. Zoey and I picked up again just this past weekend.”

  The weekend before your wife died, I thought. Kind of an interesting coincidence.

  Zac sighed. “We dated years ago. We broke up right bef
ore I met Jane, and we stayed friends. And that was all it was. But on Saturday, when Jane wasn’t home, I was about at the end of my rope.” Zac was looking at the floor now, almost as though he was talking to himself. “After that, I just couldn’t stand being in the city. I went to our house in Long Beach. I was trying to sort out what to do. And then Jane found that noose in the house.”

  I stayed quiet. Jane had said that Zac could have driven to Chicago from Long Beach and left the scarf in that noose shape when she was at the gym. As her husband, he would certainly have known where she kept it.

  He was shaking his head, emotion taking over his face. And then he looked at me, his eyes boring into mine. “Can you see why I loved Jane?”

  “Of course,” I answered softly. “She was dynamic. Smart. Beautiful.”

  “And sexy,” he added matter-of-factly. “And that was what brought her down.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She was beaten and then strangled with her scarf.” He shook his head. “That scarf.”

  That scarf. Zac and I just looked at each other.

  “This whole thing is so surreal,” he said.

  Was it surreal because he had killed his wife? I couldn’t get a read on him.

  “But Zoey has helped me,” he continued. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I called her to talk on Sunday, and we met and…”

  I wanted to say, And the next day your wife was dead. But Zac appeared to be telling the truth. And he seemed tortured by it.

  “Is it wise to be hanging out with her, Zac?” I asked. “While the cops are still investigating?” Why I was willing to help this guy when all he’d been doing was trying to bring me down, I didn’t know. There was something about him that touched me. And if he hadn’t killed his wife, he would be going crazy trying to figure out who did. Just like me.

  “I don’t care if the cops see me with her. Don’t you get that? I told you I don’t have anything to hide.”

  “I don’t, either, Zac. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  His face hardened. “You seemed like you had something to hide Saturday morning.”

  “I explained that.”

  “So where is he? This guy you went home with? Have you introduced him to the cops?”

  I bit my lip. “He’s still out of town.”

  “Right.”

  “Look, what makes you think Jane went home with me on Friday?”

  “I told you earlier. I’m not stupid. I know Jane’s pattern and the way it went when she was fucking around. She’d go out one night, and she would always have an excuse. It’s networking, she would say. It’s a friend of a friend. In this case it’s ‘someone I want to bring into Trial TV.’ And then-boom-I can’t find her, but then she turns up the next morning. It was the same shit with you.”

  “When you saw her on Saturday, did you ask who she’d been with?”

  “I asked her if she was with ‘some guy,’ because that’s what she always said.”

  “Fine. Some guy, Zac. Not some girl.”

  He shook his head, peering at me. “She didn’t say that this time, though. I’ve thought about this a lot since she was killed. I asked her if it was some guy, and she said, ‘Something like that.’”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “It’s not. She was all hopped up and freaky that morning, like she was trying out something new. Trust me, I know Jane’s moods. Something different had happened, or someone different.”

  “That someone different wasn’t me!”

  “So you say.”

  “I told you. She was with a writer named Mick. And he was at Trial TV on the day it launched. And Jane said that he had been following her. She’d figured it out that morning. That’s why she was acting so strange.”

  He peered at me, eyes squinting. “You didn’t tell me that before.”

  “I didn’t get to say that before. We were at the memorial, and then I saw him.”

  “Yeah, you saw him. And then you took off. You find him?”

  “No.”

  He made a face like, Uh-huh. Sure.

  I looked down and waved a hand at myself. I was still in the dress, ivory coat and heels that I’d worn to dinner. “Look at me! Do I look like I would kill someone?”

  “I’m not saying you killed her. Not necessarily. I’m just saying I think you were together. I think you hid that, and I think you’re still hiding something. It’s Vaughn who says you did it, and man, he seems really sure.”

  “This is insane!”

  Zac uncrossed his arms, and his face distorted. “You know what’s insane? That someone killed Jane! And if you did kill her, I’ll hurt you. I’m not kidding. If you’ve got a soft spot, I’ll find it. I’ll fuck you up.”

  I exhaled loud, suddenly terrified. “I should leave.” But then suddenly I thought of something. “Years ago, when you and Zoey split up, did you break up with her or was it the other way around?”

  His forehead furrowed. “What does it matter?”

  “Just curious.”

  “You should mind your own goddamned business.”

  “It’s odd you won’t tell me.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide. Unlike you. I broke up with Zoey, okay? But we stayed friends.”

  “And being friends with her, did you tell Zoey about Jane’s affairs?”

  “Yeah. Eventually. So what? She was one of the few people I told. She’s that good of a friend.”

  “Did Jane know you were friends?”

  “Of course. And she was fine with it. Jane was not the jealous type.”

  “So Jane knew Zoey.” I was thinking of how the detective had said that it appeared Jane had let someone in, someone she knew, and that she had turned her back.

  “Of course. In fact, they liked each other. They were friends, sort of.”

  “I’m sure it would have been hard for Zoey to be friends with the woman who replaced her.”

  Zac lifted his shoulders and dropped them again. “They didn’t see each other very often.”

  “You said Jane wasn’t the jealous type, but was Zoey?”

  His forehead creased deeper. “Are you implying that Zoey did this to Jane?”

  “I have no idea. I’m just asking.”

  “You are a crazy bitch!” The veins in his neck were prominent now. “Zoey is a sweet person, a person who was there to listen to me when I needed it.”

  “And maybe someone who wanted you back? Maybe she was angry at having to watch you struggle so much with Jane?”

  “No.” He shook his head, irritated. “Just shut up, okay? Because you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “No more than you know what you’re talking about when you throw around allegations about Jane and me. I want to figure out who did this to Jane.”

  “It sounds like you want to figure out someone else to pin it on. And you saw Zoey. She’s about an inch over five feet. Jane was almost a foot taller.” He looked me up and down. “Meanwhile, you’re pretty tall. Not as tall as Jane, but it wouldn’t have been a problem for you to do something about her, especially if you wanted her job.”

  “Zac, I didn’t want her job. I’d never even thought about being on the news until Friday when Jane brought it up.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Zac stalked to his back door and opened it. “Get out.”

  I walked to the door. I stepped outside, trying to think fast, think of some way to derail this train of thought that Zac had about me. I opened my mouth, but before I could say another thing, he slammed it, and I heard the lock click into place.

  51

  A fter I went off the air on Thursday, Maggie called to say she was picking me up at Trial TV.

  I stood out front under an umbrella, the earlier sunshine having given way to a looming dust-colored sky that leaked a continual drizzle. It was one of those rains that seemed as if it would go on forever.

  Maggie’s little black Honda splashed into the parking lot and pulled up
front. Maggie had bought this car when we were in law school, and although she made enough now to afford better, she said she didn’t want to drive an expensive car to the neighborhoods she had to visit as a criminal defense attorney.

  “How are you?” she asked, when I was in the car. She pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward Belmont.

  “Nervous.”

  Her face scrunched the way it did when she was thinking hard. She tapped her top and bottom teeth together, something she did when she was nervous, too.

  “What’s going on with you?” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Wyatt?”

  “No, he’s cool.” She smiled briefly. “He’s great actually.” The scrunched expression returned. “It’s this case I had this morning. A woman busted with heroin. She’s our age. A mom with four kids, and she’s raising all of them by herself.”

  “How much heroin?” I’d learned something from being friends with Maggie. You could get caught with just about any kind of drug, but what really mattered was how much you had on you, and whether you had intent to sell it.

  “Enough. It’s her third felony.” She grimaced, turned right. “The problem is she’s had two other felony drug convictions. And under the sentencing guidelines, three convictions can get you life.”

  “Life in prison?” I asked, shocked.

  “Yep. I just had to tell this woman that she might never see her kids again outside of visitation days, never go to their graduations or their weddings.” Maggie looked as if she was on the point of tears, then they cleared and her face became full of anger. “The war on drugs,” she scoffed. “Nice war, putting away moms for life. I’ve had clients who got less-way less-for raping a kid or kidnapping someone.” She scoffed again. “Hell, I’ve had clients get less for murder one.”

  I fell silent. All this talk of sentencing was starting to mess with my head.

  Maggie shot me a look. “Sorry. We’re onto your case now.”