A touch of evil, p.17
A Touch of Evil, page 17
“How so?”
“Back in the early Eighties, more than a dozen men and boys disappeared or were found dead, including the original owner of the apple orchard that once occupied this very spot.”
“You mean, like a serial killer?”
“Who was never found. We called him the North Albany Mauler. It’s a case that didn’t go cold, but that froze solid. One of the first cases I worked right out of college for the APD. My absolute first as a young detective. And one of the only cases, it turns out, that I wasn’t able to solve.”
“Things like that must come back to haunt your dreams,” I said. “A serial killer in little old Albany.”
“Crazy isn’t it?” he said. “But let me tell you something. The first body I came across... the Mauler’s first victim... not only made my hands tremble just like yours, but I found myself tossing my cookies for a period of about forty-eight hours. It wasn’t the sight of a decapitated body that got to me, so much as the smell of him. I could almost taste the death. It was a taste that would not go away for a long time. I guess I still taste it. Only difference between then and now, is that I’m used to it.”
We pondered that for a minute while I wished for a stiff drink.
“Now,” he said, after a time. “Start from the beginning. From the time you arrived here tonight.”
I did as he told me. Recounted the evening’s events from the moment we arrived at the Cattivo house, to the moment he arrived back home drunk, to my questioning him about his willingness to teach me about guns and how they work, to his agreeing to show me his collection. Then I got to the part about his demonstrating a cop suicide by eating his piece. Something I needed for a crucial scene in the script I was presently writing.
Miller smiled, but it wasn’t out of happiness. More like an inquisitive smirk.
“Why ask him to go through the motions of demonstrating something like that when you’re certainly smart enough to imagine how it’s done? You make your living from writing scripts, am I right?”
I nodded. “Research from the Internet is one thing. To see something live, up close, and personal is another thing altogether.”
There was a pause filled by the sound of a pair of squirrels rustling in the apple tree beyond the fence.
He said, “You sure got the up close and personal treatment, all right. That blood on your arm is the proof.”
I resisted the urge to look at my wrist.
He said, “I suppose Cattivo must have derived some sort of perverse kick out of displaying his own murder for your benefit. How drunk was he?”
“Staggering,” I said. Then, “Listen, Detective Miller, obviously I wouldn’t have asked him to stick the barrel of a gun in his mouth if I knew it was loaded. But yes, he seemed hell bent on showing me how it was done. Almost like he wanted to do it for real. Like he had a death wish.” I was pouring it on, for obvious reasons.
Biting down on his thin bottom lip, the detective cocked his head, shrugged his shoulders.
“Or so we can only assume at this point,” he said. “Because even from where I’m standing, I could see that his two top teeth were broken off at the mid-point. Holy Christ in a breadbasket, he must have really wanted to show you how it was done.” Then, leaning into me, like he needed to communicate something under his breath. “I’m gonna be frank with you, Mr. Forrester. Not a lot of people on the force were too crazy about ole’ John. He was kind of an asshole, if you know what I mean. Not even his partner liked him.”
I felt a jolt in my stomach. Lana’s warning came to mind. If we didn’t figure out a way to make John dead first, he would kill her for sleeping with Carl. For breaking the cop cardinal rule.
“His partner was just here,” I said. “Maybe you saw him coming out on your way into the house?”
He shook his head.
“Carl Pressman,” he said. “He say anything to you about the situation? Anything at all?”
“Not a whole lot,” I said, all the time wondering if Miller knew about his affair with Lana. “He just gave me a look like I personally just blew his partner’s brains out, then he mumbled something about his being in touch soon.”
“He seem visibly upset?”
“Angry, I guess,” I said. “But he didn’t seem to be shedding any tears for his partner.”
I might have told Miller about the confrontation John, Lana, and Carl had out on the deck earlier this afternoon, but I decided to let it go for now. It would only further implicate me as a voyeur.
He bowed his head, said, “Like I told you, John wasn’t too well liked.” He finished with a wink of his eye, like he and I now shared a secret, and having shared that secret, we now possessed a common bond. Cop to script writer, script writer to cop.
Miller didn’t stop there.
“Word up on the street,” he added, “is that John wasn’t very nice to the old lady. You know, he’d wave around that APD hand cannon of his like it was a toy. Fact is, he was reprimanded more than a couple of times at the Poughkeepsie PD for mishandling his service weapon. My guess is Carl was making a check on the scene of his old partner’s unfortunate demise just to make certain Lana hadn’t actually been the one to pull the trigger herself. Something she’d probably fantasized about in the past.”
“Guess I never figured that,” I said, now feeling somewhat encouraged by his logic. “He ever shoot anyone with his service weapon? By accident?”
Flashing through my brain, Cattivo holding his automatic on my wife and his, just last night out on my back deck.
“Good question, Mr. Forrester. Say, you don’t mind my calling you, Ethan, do you? Too many syllables to get through with Mister Forrester.”
“Not at all.”
“Well, Ethan, in answer to your query, as far as I know, Cattivo never shot anyone he didn’t mean to shoot. But he has shot and killed several perps who threatened his life with firearms of their own. Mostly inner-city situations. In Los Angeles and Poughkeepsie.”
“Go figure.”
“Yes, go figure. Detective Cattivo was pretty good at getting himself in trouble with his gun. Did you know some cops can go their entire career without ever having to draw their firearm in the line of duty even once?”
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“It would make for a pretty boring crime flick I would imagine, should you decide to write about a cop like that. Now wouldn’t it?”
“Sure. But if John was so much trouble, why hire him on?”
“It’s Albany, Ethan. We have enough trouble filling the force with top cops as it is. And despite his trigger-happy ways, John was a very good cop. An experienced cop. Hard to come by.”
“Now it’ll be even harder,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t have.
He fell quiet for a moment. If he were a smoker, this would have been the perfect time to pull out his pack, shake one loose, light it with a silver-plated Zippo. Instead he slapped a mosquito off the back of his neck with his little notebook. Bringing the notebook around front, he flicked the remains of the insect off the cover.
“I’ll tell you something else, Ethan,” he said, after a beat. “In confidence, of course.”
Raising my hand, I made the sign-of-the-cross.
He said, “From what I also understand, Mrs. Cattivo hasn’t been all that faithful to her husband.” He followed with another wink of the same eye.
Pulse elevating. “You don’t say.”
“I do, and I’m sorry to bring it up at a time like this when his body isn’t even cold yet. But apparently, Lana’s what we describe at the APD as a player. Do you know what a player is, Ethan?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “I lived in LA for a while.”
If our dialogue was something from out of a 1950s black and white film noir, I would have added “copper” to the end of my sentence.
“Hey, that’s pretty funny,” he said though a faux laugh. Then, leaning into me once more. “The reason they had to pull up stakes downstate is over her numerous affairs, I’m told. One of them having occurred with John’s own partner at the time.”
My stomach muscles bunched up and my mouth went dry. Did he know about Lana and Pressman? Was he playing with my head to see if I’d back down and confess something? I should have taken him up on that offer of a beer while we chatted.
“What’s any of this got to do with what happened tonight?”
Cocking his head over his shoulder, he said, “Not a whole lot, from a direct perspective. But indirectly, her actions could bear some significant weight. That is, he still loved her.”
“I see.”
For a time, we listened to the squirrels chasing tail on the trees in the heart of darkness.
“Mind if I ask you a personal question, Ethan?”
“You’re going to ask me whether I give you permission or not.”
He snickered again. “You know, you writers. You really are sharp, I tell you. Anyway, here goes. Do you have any reason to believe that Lana was cheating on John?”
My stomach went from feeling tight to feeling like it had just been pounded with a sledgehammer. Blood filled my face. I was sure it had because I could feel the heat in the skin and flesh. I was certain that I was blushing and that it must have shown beneath the scruffy five- day growth in the yellow, deck-mounted LED lanterns. A mosquito stuck its pincer into my forearm. When I slapped it, the blood it stored in its belly spattered and stained my skin.
“Cat got your tongue, Ethan?”
I cleared my throat, scratched the itchy bump on my forearm. In my head, I saw myself fucking Lana on my dining room table, Susan watching from outside the living room picture window.
“No,” I lied. “I have no reason to believe she was cheating on him.”
His face went stone stiff. It showed no sign of happiness, sadness, anger, melancholy, or anything at all resembling human emotion even if it was constructed of human flesh and blood. He slid his leg off the table, unfolded his arms, stood up straight and tall. In the semi-darkness of the deck, he reminded me of Dirty Harry.
“That’s all for now, Mr. Forrester,” he said, returning the notepad and pen back to his pocket. He hadn’t written anything in it. “I’ll be in touch.”
“That’s what Carl said.”
He gave me a look. “Excuse me?”
“That’s what Carl said... I’ll be in touch.”
“Oh,” he said. “Must be a cop thing.”
He went for the sliding glass door, but stopped just short of it. He turned.
“Oh and do me a favor, Mr. Forrester,” he said. “Please don’t leave town for anything until I give you the green light. Okay?”
“Am I suspected of something?”
“Why do you ask?”
His question took me by surprise. I had nothing for him. Nothing to say in response or, in this case, my defense. He made a pistol with his left hand, aimed the extended index finger at me.
“One more thing,” he said. “Your wife, Susan. She and Lana... have they been friends for a while? Did they know one another prior to Lana moving into Orchard Grove two months ago?”
“Why do you ask, Detective Miller?” I said, tossing his question right back at him.
He said, “Well, they seem rather, ummmm, intimate, if you grasp my meaning.”
“They only met a few days ago,” I said, despite recalling the text messages I found in Susan’s cell phone earlier.
His gray eyes lit up.
“That so,” he said. “Extraordinary. Perhaps they’ve been soul mates for all eternity and only now found each other.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Enjoy the beautiful summer weather, Mr. Forrester,” he said, as he slid open the glass door. “Before you know it, it will be fall and apple picking season.”
“That’s right,” I said. “An apple a day keeps the coroner away.”
“Very good,” he said. “You like apples, Mr. Forrester?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Some people consider them the true forbidden fruit.”
“Adam and Eve.”
“A God-damned pair if ever there was one,” he said before stepping through the door, sliding it closed.
I turned and looked out onto the dark yard, and nearly collapsed from the sheer weight of my guilt.
41.
I sat outside as the police and the EMTs left the scene along with John’s black-bagged body. The night was warm and clear and my eyes were attracted to the moon. It was a waxing moon. I stared into its luminescent whiteness and I saw the face of Detective Miller. The hard, lifeless face told me in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t buying into the Cattivo suicide story for even a minute. Or, he wasn’t about to buy it until he’d exhausted every possibility of foul play first. Christ, how was I to know his two front teeth would break when I shoved the automatic into his mouth? And what about that blood stain on the floor? What if tests come back proving I was standing in that room hours earlier? It might prove that I had planned out the murder to look like a suicide. That would be murder one. Premeditated murder.
No choice but to keep playing dumb.
“It’s a suicide until I say it ain’t...”
The door slid open and Susan stepped out. She was holding a beer in her hand, which she handed to me. I stared down at it, feeling its coldness against my palm and the pads of my fingers. At this point, it seemed like a gift from God even if it was a small offering from my wife. But at least she was being nice to me now.
“How’s Lana?” I said. “Or don’t I get to ask?”
She folded her arms, as if she were cold.
“Taking it badly,” she said. “But then, you’re already aware of that.”
I popped the tab on the can, took a drink.
“I’m confused,” I said. “Did she or did she not want to see her husband dead? Did she or did she not set him up to die by placing a bullet inside the chamber of that Colt. 45? Did she or did she not insist that I encourage him to demonstrate precisely how a suicidal cop eats his piece? Was she or was she not convinced John was going to kill her... kill her tonight?”
She exhaled, nodded, stared down at her sandaled feet.
“Be careful what you wish for, Ethan,” she said. “As bad as he was to her, he was still her husband. She knows you’ve fallen in love with her. I know you’ve fallen in love with her.”
“You’ve fallen too. But I love you at the same time. Do you think she loves us back?”
She raised her head, looked me in the eyes.
“I try not to think about it. I only know that as strange as the whole thing sounds, it’s happened.”
I thought about Susan’s cell phone and the many texts she and Lana had been sending one another over the past few weeks. But now was not the time to start lobbing accusations that would only make my wife angry with me and put Lana on the defensive. Better to let things play out for a while. I had bigger fish to fry than worrying about who’s been screwing who for the past two months. Like keeping myself off death row, for instance.
I said, “That plainclothes cop who just left... Detective Miller... he isn’t so convinced it was a suicide.”
“Well, it wasn’t a suicide, was it?”
I shot her a look while she bit down on her bottom lip. I wanted to slap her face. But then, she was right. It wasn’t a suicide. Not at all.
“Miller admits John was a real asshole,” I said. “But not the type of asshole to blow his brains out at this stage of the life and career game, even though he was married to a woman with a known history of adultery.”
She stared down at me with unblinking eyes. “There’s no way he can suspect anything. It’s a clear case of negligence. He was playing with his gun and he shot himself. Happens all the time. That’s our story before and that’s our story now.”
Earlier inside the house, you and Lana made me feel like you were double-crossing me, blaming me not for John’s suicide, but his murder...
She looked away, silently for a moment, the quiet filled up with the buzz of mosquitoes and the squirrels in the apple tree. But then she did something that made me feel a little better. She reached out, placed her hand on my shoulder. Tenderly.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s all going to be okay. Soon this will all be behind us and we can move away from Orchard Grove forever.”
“Who exactly will move away from here? Just you and me?”
“You, me, and Lana,” she said. “Just like we planned.”
In my head, I heard and felt the report of that automatic and the back of John’s head spattering against the window and the wall.
Susan turned, went for the door.
“Susan,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Earlier on,” I said, “why were you so cold to me? You made me feel almost guilty... Guilty of cold blooded murder.”
Her beautiful face lit up in the moonlight.
“But aren’t you, Killer?” she said.
42.
My foot throbbed. I should have had it elevated and iced. Instead I was drinking beer out on the porch of the man I murdered. Who the fuck was I fooling? Myself, and that’s all. At least, that’s the way I felt. Sure, Lana helped me plan out John’s death. She even instigated it. She needed John dead or face her own demise. And sure Susan knew all about it. But I was alone in this thing. What’s more, if it ever came out that John had forced my wife to perform some particularly dirty deeds with Lana at gunpoint, Miller could peg me with motive. Motive and means.
After I finished my beer, Susan came back out, told me she would be staying with Lana tonight to keep her company. I asked her how Lana could even contemplate staying in that house of horrors for one more minute. But my wife just shook her head and explained that it’s precisely what she wanted. Even stranger than the thought of sleeping in that house where her husband’s brains were just blown out the back of his head, Lana wanted to reenter the gunroom to clean up the carnage. Wipe it clean of blood and brains. According to Susan, it would somehow make Lana feel better to play an active role in cleaning the place up. It would make her feel as though John’s death were real and not some bizarre dream that occurred earlier this evening. She could deal with the real. Put it behind her, eventually.
