River's End

  still buried under the fog of shock and withdrawal from his drug of choice.

  The interrogation room had plain beige walls and the wide expanse of two-way glass. There was a single table, three chairs. His tended to wobble if he tried to lean back. A water fountain in the corner dispensed stingy triangular cups of lukewarm water, and the air was stuffy.

  Frank sat across from him, saying nothing. Tracy leaned against the wall and examined his own fingernails. The silence and overheated room had sweat sliding greasily down Sam’s back.

  “I don’t remember any more than I told you before.” Unable to stand the quiet, Sam let the words tumble out. He’d been so sure when they’d finished talking to him the first time, they’d let him go. Let him go so he could find out what they’d done with Julie, with Olivia.

  Oh God, Julie. Every time he thought of her, he saw blood, oceans of blood.

  Frank only nodded, his eyes patient. “Why don’t you tell me what you told me before? From the beginning.”

  “I keep telling you. I went home—”

  “You weren’t living there anymore, were you, Mr. Tanner?” This from Tracy, and just a little aggressive.

  “It’s still my home. The separation was just temporary, just until we worked some problems out.”

  “Right.” Tracy kept studying his fingernails. “That’s why your wife filed papers, got sole custody of the kid, why you had limited visitation and bought that palace on the beach.”

  “It was just formality.” Color washed in and out of Sam’s face. He was desperate for a hit, just one quick hit to clear his head, sharpen his focus. Why didn’t people understand how hard it was to think, for Christ’s sake. “And I bought the Malibu house as an investment.”

  When Tracy snorted, Frank lifted a hand. They’d been partners for six years and had their rhythm down as intimately as lovers. “Give the guy a chance to tell it, Tracy. You keep interrupting, you’ll throw him off. We’re just trying to get all the details, Mr. Tanner.”

  “Okay, okay. I went home.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs, hating the rough feel of the bagging trousers. He was used to good material, expertly cut. By God, he thought as he continued to pick and pluck at his pant legs, he’d earned the best.

  “Why did you go home?”

  “What?” He blinked, shook his head. “Why? I wanted to talk to Julie. I needed to see her. We just needed to straighten things out.”

  “Were you high, Mr. Tanner?” Frank asked it gently, almost friend to friend. “It’d be better if you were up-front about that kind of thing. Recreational use . . .” He let his shoulders lift and fall. “We’re not going to push you on that, we just need to know your state of mind.”

  He’d denied it before, denied it right along. It was the kind of thing that could ruin you with the public. People in the business, well, they understood how things were. But cocaine didn’t play well at the box office.

  But a little coke between friends? Hell, that wasn’t a big deal. Not a big fucking deal, as he was forever telling Julie when she nagged him. If she’d just . . .

  Julie, he thought again, and pressed his fingers to his eyes. Was she really dead?

  “Mr. Tanner?”

  “What?” The eyes that had women all over the world sighing blinked. They were bloodshot, bruised and blank.

  “Were you using when you went to see your wife?” Before he could deny it again, Frank leaned forward. “Before you answer, I’m going to tell you that we searched your car and found your stash. Now we’re not going to give you grief about possession. As long as you’re up-front.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He scrubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. “Anybody could have put that there. You could’ve planted it, for all I know.”

  “You saying we planted evidence?” Tracy moved fast, a lightning strike of movement. He had Sam by the collar and half out of the chair. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Easy, take it easy. Come on now.” Frank lifted both hands. “Mr. Tanner’s just confused. He’s upset. You didn’t mean to say we’d planted drugs in your car, did you?”

  “No, I—”

  “Because that’s serious business, Mr. Tanner. A very serious accusation. It won’t look good for you, especially since we have a number of people who’ll testify you like a little nose candy now and then. Just a social thing,” Frank continued as Tracy let out a snort of disgust and went back to leaning on the wall. “We don’t have to make a big deal out of that. Unless you do. Unless you try saying we planted that coke when we know it was yours. When I can look at you right now and see you could use a little just to smooth the edges a bit.”

  Face earnest, Frank leaned forward. “You’re in a hell of a fix here, Sam. A hell of a fix. I admire your work, I’m a big fan. I’d like to cut you a break, but you’re not helping me or yourself by lying about the drugs. Just makes it worse.”

  Sam worried his wedding ring, turning it around and around on his finger. “Look, maybe I had a couple of hits, but I was in control. I was in control.” He was desperate to believe it. “I’m not an addict or anything, I just took a couple of hits to clear my head before I went home.”

  “To talk to your wife,” Frank prompted. “To straighten things out.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I needed to make her understand we should get back together, get rid of the lawyers and fix things. I missed her and Livvy. I wanted our life back. Goddamn it, I just wanted our life back.”

  “I don’t blame you for that. Beautiful wife and daughter. A man would be crazy to give it all up easy. You wanted to straighten out your troubles, so you went over there, and talked to her.”

  “That’s right, I—no, I went over and I found her. I found her. Oh, Jesus Christ.” He closed his eyes then, covered his face. “Oh God, Julie. There was blood, blood everywhere, broken glass, the lamp I bought her for her birthday. She was lying there in the blood and the glass. I tried to pick her up. The scissors were in her back. I pulled them out.”

  Hadn’t he? He thought he’d pulled them out, but couldn’t quite remember. They’d been in his hand, hot and slick with blood.

  “I saw Livvy, standing there. She started running away.”

  “You went after her,” Frank said quietly.

  “I think—I must have. I think I went a little crazy. Trying to find her, trying to find who’d done that to Julie. I don’t remember. I called the police.” He looked back at Frank. “I called the police as soon as I could.”

  “How long?” Tracy pushed away from the wall, stuck his face close to Sam’s. “How long did you go through the house looking for that little girl, with scissors in your hand, before you broke down and called the cops?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure. A few minutes, maybe. Ten, fifteen.”

  “Lying bastard!”

  “Tracy—”

  “He’s a fucking lying bastard, Frank. He’d’ve found that kid, she’d be in the morgue next to her mother.”

  “No. No.” Horror spiked in his voice. “I’d never hurt Livvy.”

  “That’s not what your wife thought, is it, Tanner?” Tracy jabbed a finger into Sam’s chest. “She put it in writing that she was afraid for you to be alone with the kid. You’re a cokehead, and a sorry son of a bitch, and I’ll tell you just how it went down. You thought about her in that big house, locking you out, keeping you away from her and your kid because she couldn’t stand the sight of you. Maybe you figure she’s spreading her legs for another man. Woman who looks like that, there’s going to be other men. And you got yourself all coked up and drove over there to show her who was boss.”

  “No, I was just going to talk to her.”

  “But she didn’t want to talk to you, did she, Tanner? She told you to get out, didn’t she? Told you to go to hell. Maybe you knocked her around a little first, like you did the other time.”

  “It was an accident. I never meant to hurt her. We were arguing.”

  “So
you picked up the scissors.”

  “No.” He tried to draw back, tried to clear the images blurring in his head. “We were in Livvy’s room. Julie wouldn’t have scissors in Livvy’s room.”

  “You were downstairs and you saw them on the table, sitting there, shiny, sharp. You grabbed them and you cut her to pieces because she was done with you. If you couldn’t have her, no one was going to have her. That’s what you thought, isn’t it, Tanner? The bitch deserved to die.”

  “No, no, no, I couldn’t have done that. I couldn’t have.” But he remembered the feel of the scissors in his hands, the way his fingers had wrapped around them, the way blood had dripped down the blade. “I loved her. I loved her.”

  “You didn’t mean to do it, did you, Sam?” Frank picked up the ball, sliding back into the seat, his voice gentle, his eyes level. “I know how it is. Sometimes you love a woman so much it makes you crazy. When they don’t listen, don’t hear what you’re saying, don’t understand what you need, you have to find a way to make them. That’s all it was, wasn’t it? You were trying to find a way to make her listen, and she wouldn’t. You lost your temper. The drugs, they played a part in that. You just didn’t have control of yourself. You argued, and the scissors were just there. Maybe she came at you. Then it just happened, before you could stop it. Like the other time when you didn’t mean to hurt her. It was a kind of accident.”

  “I don’t know.” Tears were starting to swim in his eyes. “I had the scissors, but it was after. It had to be after. I pulled them out of her.”

  “Livvy saw you.”

  Sam’s face went blank as he stared at Frank. “What?”

  “She saw you. She heard you, Sam. That’s why she came downstairs. Your four-year-old daughter’s a witness. The murder weapon has your prints all over it. Your bloody footprints are all over the house. In the living room, the hall, going up the stairs. There are bloody fingerprints on the doorjamb of your little girl’s bedroom. They’re yours. There was no one else there, Sam, no burglar like you tried to tell us yesterday. No intruder. There was no sign of a break-in, nothing was stolen, your wife wasn’t raped. There were three people in the house that night. Julie, Livvy and you.”

  “There had to be someone else.”

  “No, Sam. No one else.”

  “My God, my God, my God.” Shaking, he laid his head on the table and sobbed like a child.

  When he had finished sobbing, he confessed.

  Frank read the signed statement for the third time, got up, walked around the tiny coffee room and settled for the nasty dregs in the pot. With the cup half full of what even the desperate would call sludge, he sat at the table and read the confession again.

  When his partner came in, Frank spoke without looking up. “This thing’s got holes, Tracy. It’s got holes you could drive that old Caddy you love so much through without scraping the paint.”

  “I know it.” Disgusted, Tracy set a fresh pot on to brew, then went to the scarred refrigerator to steal someone’s nicely ripened Bartlett pear. He bit in, grunted with satisfaction, then sat. “But the guy’s whacked, Frank. Jonesing, jittery. And he was flying that night. He’s never going to remember it step-by-step.”

  He swiped at pear juice dribbling down his chin. “We know he did it. We got the physical evidence, motive, opportunity. We place him at the scene. Hell, we got a witness. Now we got a confession. We did our job, Frank.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t sit right in the gut. Not all the way right. See here where he says he broke the music box, the kid’s Disney music box. There was no music box. He’s getting the two nights confused, blending them into one.”

  “He’s a fucking cokehead,” Tracy said impatiently. “His story about coming in after a break-in doesn’t wash. She let him in—her sister confirmed it was something she’d do. This guy ain’t no Richard Kimble, pal. No one-armed man, no TV show. He picked up the scissors, jammed them into her back while she was turned. She goes down—no defensive wounds—then he just keeps hacking at her while she’s trying to crawl away. We got the blood trail, the ME’s report. We know how it went down. Makes me sick.”

  He pitched the pear core into the trash, then scraped his chair back to get fresh coffee.

  “I’ve been working bodies for seven years now,” Frank murmured. “It’s one of the worst I’ve seen. A man does that to a woman, he’s got powerful feelings for her.” He sighed himself, rubbed his tired eyes. “I’d like a cleaner statement, that’s all. Some high-dollar lawyer’s going to dance through those holes before this is done.”

  With a shake of his head, he rose. “I’m going home, see if I remember what my wife and kid look like.”

  “Lawyer or no lawyer,” Tracy said as Frank started out, “Sam Tanner’s going down for this, and he’ll spend the rest of his worthless life in a cage.”

  “Yeah, he will. And that little girl’s going to have to live with that. That’s what makes me sick, Tracy. That’s what eats through my gut.”

  He thought about it on the drive home, through the impossible traffic on the freeway, down the quiet street where the houses, all tiny and tidy like his own, were jammed close together with patches of lawn gasping from the lack of rain.

  Olivia’s face was lodged in his mind, the rounded cheeks of childhood, the wounded, too-adult eyes under striking dark brows. And the whisper of the first words she’d spoken to him:

  The monster’s here.

  Then he pulled into the short driveway beside his little stucco house, and it was all so blessedly normal. Noah had left his bike crashed on its side in the yard, and his wife’s impatiens were wilting because she’d forgotten to water them, again. God knew why she planted the things. She killed them with the regularity of a garden psychopath. Her ancient VW Bug was already parked, emblazoned with the bumper stickers and decals of her various causes. Celia Brady collected causes the way some women collected recipes.

  He noted that the VW was leaking oil again, swore without any real heat and climbed out of his car.

  The front door burst open, then slammed like a single gunshot. His son raced out, a compact bullet with shaggy brown hair, bruised knees and holey sneakers.

  “Hey, Dad! We just got back from protesting whale hunting. Mom’s got these records with whales singing on them. Sounds like alien invaders.”

  Frank winced, knowing he’d be listening to whale song for the next several days. “I don’t suppose we’ve got dinner?”

  “We picked up the Colonel on the way home. I talked her into it. Man, all that health food lately, a guy could starve.”

  Frank stopped, laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. “You’re telling me we have fried chicken in the house? Don’t toy with me, Noah.”

  Noah laughed, his dark green eyes dancing. “A whole bucket. Minus the piece I swiped on the way home. Mom said we’d go for it because you’d need some comfort food.”

  “Yeah.” It was good to have a woman who loved you enough to know you. Frank sat down on the front stoop, loosened his tie and draped an arm around Noah’s shoulders when the boy sat beside him. “I guess I do.”

  “The TV’s had bulletins and stuff all the time about that movie star. Julie MacBride. We saw you and Tracy going into that big house, and they showed pictures of the other house, the bigger one where she got killed. And just now, right before you got home? There was this little girl, the daughter. She came running out of the house. She looked really scared.”

  Noah hadn’t been able to tear his eyes from the image, even when those huge terrified eyes seemed to stare right into his and plead with him for help.

  “Gee, Dad, they got right up in her face, and she was crying and screaming and holding her hands over her ears, until somebody came and took her back inside.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Frank braced his elbows on his knees, put his face into his hands. “Poor kid.”

  “What are they going to do with her, if her mother’s dead and her father’s going to jail and all?”

  F
rank blew out a breath. Noah always wanted to know the whats and the whys. They didn’t censor him—that had been Celia’s stand, and Frank had come around to believing her right. Their boy was bright, curious, and knew right from wrong. He was a cop’s son, Frank thought, and he had to learn that there were bad guys, and they didn’t always pay.

  “I don’t know for sure. She has family who love her. They’ll do the best they can.”

  “On the TV, they said she was in the house when it happened. Was she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow.” Noah scratched at a scab on his knee, frowned. “She looked really scared,” he murmured. Noah did understand bad guys existed, that they didn’t always pay. And that being a child didn’t mean you were safe from them. But he couldn’t understand what it would be like to be afraid of your own father.

  “She’ll be all right.”

  “Why did he do it, Dad?” Noah looked up into his father’s face. He almost always found the answers there.

  “We may never know for certain. Some will say he loved her too much, others will say he was crazy. That it was drugs or jealousy or rage. The only one who’ll ever really know is Sam Tanner. I’m not sure he understands why himself.”

  Frank gave Noah’s shoulders a quick squeeze. “Let’s go listen