Beware Beware (31 page)

“So he did whatever was necessary to set the scene. Like a director. How appropriate.”

It was easy enough to picture—Colson with his gun, a neat dose of roofies in his pocket. The bathtub was in the center of the room, so colossal and picturesque that it demanded a part in the drama. I heard the water running. I heard the halting, heavy breathing.

“I take it Tilley didn't shout. Jamie didn't hear anything.” I paused. “Or did Colson manage to drug him, too?”

She shook her head. “For one thing, it would have been hard to slip him something without attracting attention. But mainly, Jamie needed to be able to wake up, even if he was asleep.”

“So what was the contingency plan?”

“For what?”

“For if Jamie woke up. Walked in. Found his friend and employer getting naked with a gun pointed at his head.”

She locked her eyes onto mine and bobbed her head at a tilt. Her expression was easy enough to read: The answer, it said, should be obvious enough.

“Ah,” I said. “There were at least two bullets in that gun, I take it.”

She nodded. “It was much better that he didn't wake up, but we didn't think it unlikely that he would. Things could have gone either way.”

“Christ. And then, what? You were going to send me in there? Have me stumble on a murder suicide?”

“Things could have gone either way,” she said, talking over me. “But Cole made it go the way it did. He kept Joe quiet, and Jamie didn't hear a thing.”

“Sure,” I said. “Fine. Okay, next question. Why slash his wrists? Why not just make him overdose? It's not like he couldn't have stood over him until his heart stopped.”

“It had to be bloody. It had to look intentional.”

“For Jamie?”

She nodded. “I wanted Joe dead, and I didn't want it to come back to me. But this was the shot I was taking. It had to catch Jamie, too.”

“What if it was ruled a suicide?”

“It was supposed to look like a suicide,” she said.

“Jesus. Blinds on blinds on blinds.”

“Not that complicated, if you think about it.”

“Right,” I said. “Staged suicide means premeditated murder and nothing else. But what if they didn't make it that far?”

“Then I guess that would've been my luck,” she said. “There was a chance they'd rule it a suicide and call it a day, but it was a pretty slim chance.”

“You left a lot to chance, considering.”

“Nothing important, in the scheme of things. The plan had to be flexible, but it was always going to work. Tilley wasn't surviving the night, and neither was Jamie's life of carefree taking.”

Her voice was so calm and neutral it was almost hard to believe we were talking about murder. She sounded more like a white-coated doctor, recounting the finer points of a successful surgery to a fascinated family.

“Why wouldn't the cops have ruled it a suicide? Just because he was so high?”

“That, yes. But more because there was no blade within reach of the body.”

I remembered the blood-darkened bathwater. I'd assumed the blade was in its depths, sunk somewhere between the cold tub and the cold body.

“What did he do with it?”

“He cleaned it and took it with him. It was a little razor blade, this big.” She indicated a tight interval between her thumb and forefinger.

“The kind you might keep on hand if you're planning to snort a few lines.”

“Right.”

“Nice detail, that.” I shook my head. “So you and Colson, you created this whole set piece for the cops to discover, one part at a time. But I'm trying to think, what possible reason could Jamie have had to get rid of the blade when he could have just dropped it in the water? I mean, it was fishy enough that he'd slit his wrists when an OD would've done just fine.”

“You're thinking about this all wrong. Not every little thing needs an explanation. I mean it's a good question, sure. If you were trying to make a murder look like a suicide, of course it would make sense to leave the weapon at the scene. But I doubt any murder makes sense on every level. There are details that can and will be explained, even if the solutions are clumsy. Then there are facts that point to necessary conclusions. Those are the ones that demand attention.”

It was true enough. The absence of that blade was damning, no matter how you cut it.

“How is it that no one saw him leave?” I asked without particular interest.

“He was staying at The Roosevelt, on another floor. He was there for three days.”

We were silent for a while, and I could feel Daphne waiting patiently for the interview to be over.

“Did Tilley know what was happening to him?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did he know why?”

“Yes.”

I saw him in that bathtub, losing consciousness and waiting for the axe to fall. My pity for the man had narrow limits, but the violence of his end made me shiver. “I've seen so much death in the last week, I feel like I'm in a fucking Greek tragedy,” I said. “Did you have to do Winfred, too?”

She paused and spoke with a shake of her head. “Is Lori upset about his death?”

“Very.”

“She shouldn't be,” she said. “The world is a better place because he's dead.”

“So that was you and Cole, too?” I asked. “Are you just a couple of vigilante serial killers?”

She cast me a stern look, like she was my teacher and I'd talked out of turn. “What would have happened if I hadn't intervened?”

“I don't know,” I answered softly. “I don't even want to think about it.”

“I do know,” she said. “He would have shown her hell, and she would never have recovered. So, you tell me what his life was worth.”

We both knew I liked him better dead, and I found I couldn't reproach her further. I tried to visualize the divide between us, to zoom in and determine what it was really made of. Maybe I wasn't better than her at all. I thought I'd had the high ground, but maybe all I had was a dimmer imagination.

I shook my head against the thought as if a fly had buzzed in my ear.

We stood there without speech or motion, dog sounds filling the still air between us. It felt like hours had passed when I sensed Daphne shifting her weight, getting ready to leave the scene. “I want to talk to Jamie,” she said. “Can you take me to him?”

*   *   *

I called Lori and she let me know she and Isaac had Jamie tied up and ready to face whatever was coming. She sounded triumphant, and I loved her for it.

Daphne, I realized, didn't have a car, and she drove back with me. I wondered how she'd arrived, but I didn't ask. We drove in silence. There was a tacit agreement that our talk was on hold until she got Jamie in a room.

Jamie was as I'd left him, with Isaac and Lori waiting in a frenzied quiet for me to come home.

“Hi, Lori,” said Daphne. “Good to see you again.”

Lori looked at her with an arch, suspicious expression, and I realized she thought of her as of a pair with Jamie. My impulse was to say something to defend her, to dispel the cloud of evil by association. I couldn't decide if that was correct.

“I'd like to talk to him alone,” she said. “Would you mind if I went in?”

I gestured toward the door with an upturned palm, and she opened and closed it behind her.

I lingered outside while Lori gaped at me, and I listened until I felt dirty, for about a minute, maybe less. I heard Jamie say her name with joy, a joy that crumbled when he remembered the totality of his situation. Daphne was silent, and without seeing her face, I knew her look was destructive. Jamie started pleading before she said a word.

“
Unni
do you want coffee or something?” Lori asked.

“Sure.” I abandoned the door and followed her and Isaac into the kitchen.

She made coffee with one eye on me, as if I might vanish if she looked away. We sat down at our table, Isaac mute and uncomfortable, Lori staring at me openly. I widened my eyes to acknowledge her.

“What's going on?” she whispered.

Her question sent me tumbling through the chaos that started the day Daphne Freamon came into my life.

“I don't know,” I said, and that, at least, was truthful.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I took a bitter gulp of my coffee and let the question sink into me, tried to measure the waves it made.

“Less okay than usual, I guess.”

She scooted her chair next to mine and rested her head against my shoulder. I tilted my head to stack onto hers. It was an unnatural pose that strained my neck, but the contact was warm and welcome.

Winfred had been killed on Lori's behalf. This knowledge swirled through my head like a whisper that might pass from my ear into hers. I closed my eyes and imagined telling her. I even mouthed it, a silent sentence that moved my jaw and caused her head to stir beneath mine. I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud.

I must have fallen asleep because when Daphne emerged, my head snapped to and there was a dull, knotted pain in my neck. Lori woke up, too, and as she removed her head from my shoulder I saw a nickel spot of drool darkening my shirt. Even Isaac looked surprised out of slumber, and it occurred to me that all of us must be incredibly tired.

Daphne closed the door behind her, and we were still for a minute, watching and listening. Jamie was still quarantined in Lori's room, and I wondered if he was bound by physical restraint or if fear and shame were enough to imprison him for a while. I could hear him crying as quietly as he could manage, with gasping, breathy sobs that seemed to leak out against his will.

Daphne was the only one standing, and she stood so straight and tall that all three of us looked up at her in stuporous awe.

“Can I talk to you alone?” Her question had the quality of a command.

“Lori,” I said. “Maybe you and Isaac can go for a walk or something.”

The two of them scrambled, mumbling something about lunch. They were out the door within a minute.

“I gather you told Jamie a thing or two,” I said when they were gone.

She smirked. “You could say that.”

He was calmer now, but the apartment was so still that I could hear his smallest simper. I had no doubt he could hear every word of our conversation.

“What now?” I asked. “We all know he didn't kill Tilley, even if he is guilty of a”—I paused—“well, another crime.”

“Were you about to say ‘lesser'?”

She'd caught me. I nodded, somewhat sheepishly. “I mean, it is a lesser crime.”

“Legally, sure. But morally?” She puffed her cheeks and blew out the air in a pouting stream. “Look at it this way: Who's more sympathetic—the man who drugs and rapes women, or the man who kills his girlfriend's rapist?”

The question thickened the air like a storm cloud, sopping and horrible with the weight of practical importance. It took me a minute to find my voice.

“You put that question to Jamie, didn't you? You gave him that choice.”

She nodded.

“What did he say?”

“I think he figured it out. He's a writer, after all. He knows only one of those stories lets him play a hero.”

“But only one of the stories is true.”

She shrugged. “I know Jamie. He thinks they're both false.”

“But you think he'll cop to a murder he didn't commit?”

“He won't buy his exoneration by painting himself as a rapist. Even if he won't accept that he is one, he knows that the truth depends on my belief that he raped me.”

“You think he'll go to jail for you just to save face?”

“I think he'll go to trial if he has to. Honestly, he'll never be convicted. There can't be enough evidence, and he'll do well with any jury.”

“Even when the murder victim is an internationally known celebrity?”

“Who will be outed as the rapist of the defendant's girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend, huh?”

“If he goes to trial, I play that role again. I'll take my story to TMZ. I'll call him my white knight. And when the time comes, I'll stand in the courtroom and look somber for the cameras.”

“Is that what you worked out in there?”

She didn't say anything, but that was enough. I had to admire the elegance of her plan. Rarely in the history of fall guys had there been a better fall guy. The only way he could be better was if he were dead.

“There's something I still don't understand,” I said.

“What?” she asked. Her dark eyes were unnervingly calm, almost generous.

I thought about the last few months, about the dim, long hours spent watching, trailing, only to come to this end. I thought about Paul Auster's poor private investigator, Blue, trapped in a circular case by a chess-master client, pushed along like some pawn in his own story. Daphne had lied, and manipulated, and molded this outcome. She'd had its shape in mind before she made her first move, knew who to sacrifice, and when, and how, to topple the offending king.

I tried not to sound petulant, or hurt, though I was very much both. “Why?” I asked. “Why did you need me?”

I thought back on the time she'd put into this farce, the hours we'd spent together, working toward what should have been a common goal. In that time, I'd felt as close to her in some ways as I'd ever been to anyone. And then it hit me with the force of a physical blow: She'd seduced me, sure as any femme fatale.

“I know this will sound like a lie,” she said. “But I want you to know that I consider you a friend, Song.”

“You're right,” I said bitterly. “It does sound like a lie.”

“I needed you on my side. From the beginning, that was important to me, to my plan, if you want to call it that.”

“What else am I supposed to call it?”

“I needed a sympathetic ear, an eye that would see things my way. You weren't the first one I tried. You were the one I wanted.”