Cruel & Unusual

  “I thought you could keep your court schedule in it,” she said. “It matches your motorcycle jacket.”

  “Lucy, it's gorgeous.”

  I touched the black lambskin binding of the appointment book and smoothed open its creamy pages. I thought of the Sunday she had come to town, of how late she had stayed out when I'd let her take my car to the club. I bet the sneak had gone shopping.

  “And this other present here is just refills for the address section and the next calendar year.”

  She set a smaller gift in my lap as the telephone rang.

  Marino wished me a Merry Christmas and said he wanted to drop by with my present.”

  “Tell Lucy she'd better dress warmly and not to wear anything tight,” he said irritably.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I puzzled.

  “No tight jeans or she won't be able to get cartridges in and out of her pockets. You said she wanted to learn how to shoot. Lesson one is this morning before lunch. If she misses class, it's her damn problem. What time are we eating?”

  “Between one-thirty and two. I thought you were tied up”

  “Yeah, well, I untied myself. I'll be over in about twenty minutes. Tell the brat it's cold as hell outside. You want to come with us?”

  “Not this time. I'll stay here and cook.”

  Marino's disposition was no more pleasant when he arrived at my door, and he made a great production of checking my spare revolver, a Ruger .38 with rubber grips. Depressing the thumb latch, he pushed open the cylinder and slowly spun it around, peering into each chamber. He pulled back the hammer, looked down the barrel, and then tried the trigger. While Lucy watched him in curious silence, he pontificated on the residue buildup left by the solvent I used and informed me that my Ruger probably had “spurs” that needed filing. Then he drove Lucy away in his Ford.

  When they returned several hours later, their faces were rosy from the cold and Lucy proudly sported a blood blister on her trigger finger.

  “How did she do?”

  I asked, drying my hands on my apron.

  “Not bad,” Marino said, looking past me. “I smell fried chicken.”

  “No, you don't.”

  I took their coats. “You smell cotoletta di tacchino alla bolognese.”

  “I did better than 'not bad,'“ Lucy said. “I only missed the target twice.”

  “Just keep dry firing until you stop slapping the trigger. Remember, crawl the hammer back.”

  “I've got more soot on me than Santa after he's come down the chimney,” Lucy said cheerfully. “I'm going to take a shower.”

  In the kitchen I poured coffee as Marino inspected a counter crowded with Marsala, fresh-grated Parmesan, prosciutto, white truffles, sauteed turkey fillets, and other assorted ingredients that were going into our meal. We went into the living room, where the fire was blazing.

  “What you did was very kind,” I said. “I appreciate it more than you'll ever know.”

  “One lesson's not enough. Maybe I can work with her a couple more times before she goes back to Florida.”

  “Thank you, Marino. I hope you didn't go to a lot of bother and sacrifice to change your plans.”

  “It was no big deal,” he said curtly.

  “Apparently, you decided against dinner at the Sheraton,” I probed. “Your friend could have joined us.”

  “Something came up.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “Tanda.”

  “That's an interesting name.”

  Marino's face was turning crimson.

  “What's Tanda like?”

  I asked.

  “You want to know the truth, she ain't worth talking about.”

  Abruptly, he got up and headed down the hall to the bathroom.

  I'd always been careful not to quiz Marino about his personal life unless he invited me to do so. But I could not resist this time.

  “How did you and Tanda meet?”

  I asked when he returned.

  “The FOP dance.”

  “I think it's terrific that you're getting out and meeting new people.”

  “It sucks, if you really want to know. I haven't dated nobody in more than thirty years. It's like Rip Van Wrinkle waking up in another century. Women are different from what they used to be.”

  “How so?”

  I tried not to smile. Clearly, Marino did not think any of this was amusing.

  “They're not simple anymore.”

  “Simple?”

  “Yeah, like Doris. What we had wasn't complicated.

  Then after thirty years she suddenly splits and I have to start over. I go to this friggin' dance at the FOP because some of the guys talk me into it. I’m minding my own business when Tanda comes up to my table. Two beers later, she asks me for my phone number, if you can believe that.”

  “Did you give it to her?”

  “I say, 'Hey, if you want to get together, you give me your number. I'll do the calling.'

  She asks me which zoo I escaped from, then invites me bowling. That's how it started. How it ended is her telling me she rear-ended somebody a couple weeks back and was charged with reckless driving. She wanted me to fix it.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  I fetched his present from under the tree and handed it to him. “I don't know if this will help your social life or not.”

  He unwrapped a pair of Christmas-red suspenders and compatible silk tie.

  “That's mighty nice, Doc. Geez.”

  Getting up, he muttered in disgust, “Damn water pills,” and headed to the bathroom again. Several minutes later, he returned to the hearth.

  “When was your last checkup?”

  I asked.

  “A couple weeks ago.”

  “And?”

  “And what do you think?” he said.

  “You have high blood pressure, that's what I think.”

  “No shit.”

  “What, specifically, did your doctor tell you?”

  I asked.

  “It's one-fifty over one-ten, and my damn prostate's enlarged. So I'm taking these water pills. Up and down all the time feeling like I gotta go and half the time I can't. If things don't get better, he says he's gonna turp me.”

  A turp was a transurethral resection of the prostate. That wasn't serious, though it wasn't much fun. Marino's blood pressure worried me. He was a prime candidate for a stroke or a heart attack.

  “Plus, my ankles swell,” he went on. “My feet hurt and I get these damn headaches. I've gotta quit smoking, give up coffee, lose forty pounds, cut down on stress.”

  “Yes, you've got to do all of those things,” I said firmly. “And it doesn't look to me like you're doing any of them.”

  “We're only talking about changing my whole life. And you're one to talk.”

  “I don't have high blood pressure and I quit smoking exactly two months and five days ago. Not to mention, if I lost forty pounds I wouldn't be here.”

  He glared into the fire.

  “Listen,” I said. “Why don't we work on this together? We'll both cut back on coffee and get into exercise routines.”

  “I can just see you doing aerobics,” he said sourly.

  “I'll play tennis. You can do aerobics.”

  “If anyone so much as waves a pair of tights near me, they're dead.”

  “You're not being very cooperative, Marino.”

  He impatiently changed the subject. “You got a copy of the fax you told me about?”

  I went to my study and returned with my briefcase. Snapping it open, I handed him the printout of the message Vander had discovered with the image enhancer.

  “This was on the blank sheet of paper we found on Jennifer Deighton's bed, right?” he asked.

  “That's correct.”

  “I still can’t figure out why she had a blank sheet of paper on her bed with a crystal on top of it. What were they doing there?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “What abou
t the messages on her answering machine? Anything?”

  “We're still running them down.. We've got a lot of people to interview.”

  He slipped a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket and blew out a loud breath of air. “Damn.” He slapped the pack on top of the coffee table. “You're going to nag me every time I light up one of these now, aren't you?”

  “No, I'll just stare at it. But I won't say a word.”

  “You remember that interview of you that was on PBS a couple months back?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Jennifer Deighton taped it. The tape was in her VCR and we started playing it and there you were.”

  “What?” I asked, amazed.

  “Of course, you weren't the only thing featured on that particular program. There was also some crap about an archaeology dig and a Hollywood movie they filmed around here.”

  “Why would she tape me?”

  “It's just another piece that's not fitting with anything else yet. Except the calls made from her phone the hang ups. It looks like Deighton was thinking about you before she was whacked.”

  “What else have you found out about her?”

  “I gotta smoke. You want me to go outside?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It gets weirder,” he said. “While going through her office, we came across a divorce decree. Appears she was married in 1961, got divorced two years later, and changed her name back to Deighton. Then she moved from Florida to Richmond. The name of her ex is Willie Travers, and he's one of these health nut types - you know, into whole health. Hell, I can't think of the name.”

  “Holistic medicine?”

  “That's it Still lives in Florida, Fort Myers Beach. I got him on the phone. Hard as hell to get much out of him, but I managed to find out a few things. He says he and Miss Deighton continued feeling friendly toward each other after they split and, in fact, continued seeing each other.”

  “He came up here?”

  “Travers said she'd go down there to see him, in Florida. They'd get together, as he put it, 'for old times' sake.' Last time she was down there was this past November, around Thanksgiving. I also pried out of him a little bit about Deighton's brother and sister. The sister's a lot younger, married, lives out West. The brother's the eldest, in his mid-fifties, and manages a grocery store. He had throat cancer a couple years back and his voice box was cutout”

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  “Yeah. You know what that sounds like. You'd know it if you heard it. No way the guy who called you at the office was John Deighton. It was somebody else who had personal reasons for being interested in Jennifer Deighton's autopsy findings. He knew enough to get the name right. He knew enough to get it straight that he's supposed to be from Columbia, South Carolina. But he didn't know about the real John Deighton's health problems, didn't know he should sound like he's talking through a machine.”

  “Does Travers know his ex-wife's death is a homicide?” I asked.

  “I told him the medical examiner is still running tests.”

  “And he was in Florida when she died?”

  “Allegedly. I'd like to know where your friend Nicholas Grueman was when she died.”

  “He has never been a friend,” I said. “How will you approach him?”

  “I won’t for a while. You only get one shot with someone like Grueman. How old is he?”

  “Somewhere in his sixties,” I said.

  “He a big guy?”

  “I haven't seen him since I was in law school.”

  I got up to stir the fire.

  “Back then Grueman's build was trim bordering on thin. I would describe his height as average.”

  Marino did not say anything.

  “Jennifer Deighton weighed one-eighty,” I reminded him. “It appears her killer yoked her and then carried her body out to her car.”

  “All right. So maybe Grueman had help. You want a far out scenario? Try this one on for size. Grueman represented Ronnie Waddell, who wasn't exactly a pencil-neck. Or maybe we should say, isn't exactly a pencil-neck. Waddell's print was found inside Jennifer Deighton's house. Maybe Grueman did go to see her and he didn't go alone.”

  I stared into the fire.

  “By the way, I didn't see nothing in Jennifer Deighton's house that could have been the source of the feather you found,” he added. “You asked me to check.”

  Just then, his pager sounded. Snapping it off his belt, he squinted at the narrow screen.

  “Damn,” he complained, heading into the kitchen the phone.

  “What's going . . . What?”

  I heard him say. “Oh, Christ. You sure?”

  He was silent for a moment. He sounded very tense when he said, “Don't bother. I'm standing fifteen feet from her.”

  Marino ran a red light at West Cary and Windsor Way, and headed east. Grille lights flashed and scanner lights danced in the white Ford LTD. Ten-codes crackled over the radio as I envisioned Susan curled up in the wing chair, her terry cloth robe pulled tightly around her to ward off a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. I remembered the expression on her face shifting constantly like clouds, her eyes revealing no secrets to me.

  I was shivering and could not seem to catch my breath. My heart beat hard in my throat. Police had found Susan's car in an alleyway off Strawberry Street. She was in the driver's seat, dead. It was unknown what she had been doing in that part of town or what might have motivated her assailant.

  “What else did she say when you talked with her last night?”

  Marino asked.

  Nothing significant would come to mind.

  “She was tense,” I said. “Something was bothering her.”

  “What? You got any guesses?”

  “I don't know what.”

  My hands shook as I fumbled with my medical bag and checked the contents again. Camera, gloves, and everything else were accounted for. I remembered Susan once saying that if anyone tried to abduct or rape her, they'd have to kill her first.

  There had been a number of late afternoons when it was just the two of us cleaning up and filling out paperwork. We had had many personal conversations about being a woman and loving men, and what it would be like to be a like to be a mother. Once we had talked about death and Susan confessed she was afraid of it.

  "I'm not talking about hell, either, the fire and brimstone my father preaches about. I'm not afraid of that," she said adamantly. "I'm just afraid of this being all there is.”

  "This isn't all there is," I said.

  "How do you know?”

  "Something's gone. You look at their faces and you can tell: Their energy has departed. The spirit didn't die. Just the body did.”

  "But how do you know?” she asked again.

  Easing, up on the accelerator, Marino turned onto Strawberry Street. I glanced in my side mirror. Another police car was behind us, light bar flashing red and blue. We passed restaurants and a small grocery store. Nothing was open, and the few cars out pulled over to let us pass. Near the Strawberry StreetCafe, the narrow street was lined with cruisers and marked units, and an ambulance was blocking the entrance of an alleyway. Two television trucks had parked a little farther down. Reporters moved restlessly along the perimeter cordoned off in yellow tape. Marino parked and our, doors opened at the same time. Instantly, cameras pointed our way.

  I watched where Marino stepped and was right behind him. Shutters whirred, film advanced, and microphones were raised Marino's long strides did not pause and he did not answer anyone. I averted my face.

  Rounding the ambulance, we ducked under the tape. The old burgundy Toyota was parked head-in midway along a narrow stretch of cobblestone covered with churned-up, dirty snow. Ugly brick walls pressed in from either side and blocked out the low sun's slanted rays. Police were taking photographs, talking, and looking around. Water slowly dripped from roofs and rusting fire escapes. The smell of garbage wafted on the damp, stirring air.

&n
bsp; it barely registered that the young Latin-looking officer talking on a portable radio was someone I had recently met. Tom Lucero watched us as he mumbled something and got off the air. From where I stood, all I could see through the Toyota's open driver's door was a left hip and arm. A shock went through me as I recognized the black wool coat, the brush-gold wedding band, Wind black plastic watch. Wedged between the windshield and the dash was her red medical examiner's Plate.