Dead Boyfriends (23 page)

I was astonished. Not only at the story, but also at the matter-of-fact manner in which Cilia related it. She spoke about subjects that would send most people into an emotional frenzy, yet her voice held no anger or pain. Instead, it possessed a yearning, thoughtful quality, and when she spoke, she had a way of drawing out some words as if she wished she could think of better ones.

I moved my rook, and Cilia swept it off the board.

“Pay attention, McKenzie,” she said.

“Tell me about Becker.”

“In due time. First, allow me to tell you about my brother. Robert was an alcoholic, like our father, and like our father, he was abusive and totally amoral. Merodie wasn't the first young woman he corrupted by any means. If there was a difference between the two, it was that Father was also ambitious. He enjoyed money and power and wasn't above working long, hard hours to accumulate them. Robert did mind. He detested work, school, anything that required effort. Robert lived only to indulge himself.

“Make no mistake, my father adored Robert. At the same time, he was fearful of what Robert would do to the company he built from scratch. So he turned to me. I had a master's degree in chemistry. My father offered me a job in the company's R&D department and paid me nearly twice as much as everyone else with similar credentials and years of experience. A number of times I was invited to business functions and other gatherings. We rarely spoke at these events, yet he would introduce
me to one and all as his ‘favorite daughter.' That was as close as he ever came to saying, ‘I'm sorry.' Later, after he died, my father left his entire estate—his business and the money to run it—to me. I was as surprised as anyone. For a time I amused myself with the delusion that he had a guilty conscience, but time taught me that he left everything to me because he did not trust Robert. I was all he had left.

“Now, this is important, Mr. McKenzie. When I first joined the firm, St. Ana Medical was attempting to develop a product that could compete with Ativan, Valium, and Xanax as a viable treatment for insomnia and anxiety. I was working on an analog of gamma-hydroxybutyrate—”

“GHB?”

“Yes.”

“The date-rape drug?”

“Yes. GHB had been used productively in Europe as an anesthetic, as an aid to childbirth, and as a means to treat sleep disorders such as narcolepsy. We were hoping to develop a superior analog. And I succeeded.

“As a sleep aid—and this is GHB's primary disadvantage—as a sleep aid GHB has only a short-term influence. Even though sleep is deeper and more restful, people will wake up after only about three hours. This pattern is known as ‘the dawn effect.' However, with my analog, people remained asleep for eight to nine hours. Something just as significant—while GHB can be detected in urine four to five hours after it is taken, my analog completely metabolized into carbon dioxide and water in less than two hours.

“Unfortunately, it was at about that time that GHB was banned in the United States by the FDA and later designated a Schedule I Controlled Substance because people, mostly men, used it to assist in sexual assault, mostly of women. As a result, my analog was shelved.”

“Why is that important?” I asked.

“The analog allowed me to kill without detection.”

“Kill who?”

“My father, to begin with.”

I tried to speak. No words came out. It was as if I had suddenly lost the power of speech. Just as well. I didn't know what to say anyway.

“Your turn,” Cilia said, indicating the chessboard.

I moved my remaining rook three spaces.

Cilia brought her queen out.

“You want me to tell you about it, don't you?” she said.

I reached for my iced gin-tea, hesitated.

Cilia chuckled.

“The drink is fine, Mr. McKenzie,” she said. “Really it is.”

I left the glass undisturbed just the same.

Cilia continued her story.

“My father came home after a night of carousing. He was visibly drunk. I knew he would be. I waited for him by the pool. I was dressed in the skimpiest bikini. I invited him to join me for a drink. Do you believe, Mr. McKenzie, that the sight of me in a bikini would make a man such as my father pause?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I placed two grams of my analog into my father's drink. He fell unconscious in twenty minutes. I rolled him into the swimming pool, clothes and all. The shock of water awakened him, but by then he was suffering from acute loss of muscle control. He thrashed about ineffectually and drowned. I went to bed—after first tidying up, of course. His body was discovered by a maid the next morning. An autopsy was performed, and that worried me. I was concerned that Father had died before his system could absorb the drug. However, while multiple toxicology screens of blood and bile samples revealed that my father's blood alcohol level was enormously high, there was no trace of my analog. Perhaps, if the medical examiner had looked closer—but why would he? My father had a history of alcohol abuse; there had been many witnesses to his abuse the previous evening. His death was ruled an accident. I inherited everything.”

“Do you realize what you're saying?” I asked.

“My father abused my mother, our maids, and God knows who else. He raped me for two years. Yet in the end, it was I who fucked him.”

“That's murder.”

“I prefer to think of it as irony.”

The corners of Cilia's thin lips curled upward in a slight smile, yet her voice contained no trace of emotion.

“Should we continue our game?” she asked. “I think I'm winning.”

I moved a bishop into a middle square, slamming it down on the board harder than I should have. Cilia's hand hovered above her knight. She wanted to move it but realized that I had pinned her. If she moved the piece now, I would attack her king.

“Very nice,” she said, bringing a rook up to protect the knight.

I continued the assault, pressuring Cilia's queen with my own rook. Cilia surprised me by taking the rook with her other knight.

“What happened next?” she said. “Oh, yes. Robert. Several months passed, yet Robert did not change a bit. In many ways he became more and more like Father. I was somewhat disingenuous earlier when I suggested that I did not know about Merodie until after my brother's funeral. Of course I knew about her. My brother took particular delight in listing the sex acts he forced her to perform—acts that would make a hard-core porn star retch. He was proud of himself, proud that he could corrupt a child.

“Eventually, Merodie became pregnant,” Cilia said. “She informed my brother, and my brother rejected her. He claimed he wasn't the father and called her a whore—he acted exactly the way you'd expect an egocentric child to act. In the past, Robert was able to run to Daddy, who would throw money at the girl and make the problem go away. Unfortunately—for him—Robert was forced to come to me for the money necessary to pay off Merodie. I refused to give it to him. He threatened to sue me for his share of our father's estate. I told him that was his prerogative.

“As was typical with my brother, instead of securing an attorney, he
went that same evening to a bar and became drunk. Later, he called me from the bar and requested a ride home. It had begun to snow heavily. By the time I arrived, several inches had already fallen. It was the first stage of a massive blizzard. You might remember it. Seventeen inches of snow fell in about five and a half hours. While at the bar, I slipped a couple of grams of my analog into Robert's drink, then hustled him out to his car before the drug could take effect.

“I drove Robert's car. He sat next to me in the passenger seat. He called me vile, obscene names and demanded that I give him money for Merodie and his other projects until he fell into a nontoxic coma. My experience with my father taught me to be more circumspect. To be sure that my analog would not be discovered in his body, I was determined to kill Robert slowly in order to give his system time to metabolize the drug.

“I drove along East River Road until I found a likely spot near the park, and when I was sure there was no traffic about, I drove the car off the road. I realized later there was a certain amount of danger to me—I could have been injured—but I didn't consider it at the time. After we came to a stop, I pushed and pulled to get him behind the steering wheel. I locked the doors. After first making sure the exhaust pipe was buried, I climbed to the top of the ravine. The hardest part was trudging through the blizzard back to my own car. It was only a few miles, but the journey took nearly two hours in the storm. My feet and hands were wet and numb from cold—I was afraid I'd succumb to frostbite. Fortunately, I survived the ordeal, drove home, and climbed into a hot tub.”

“What about Robert?” I asked.

“They discovered his car a couple of days later. Once again the autopsy found a great deal of alcohol, but not a trace of my analog. He was ruled dead of carbon monoxide poisoning, and his death was dismissed as an accident.”

My head spun at the admission. I held it with both hands.

“You killed him!” I shouted.

“I most certainly did not,” Cilia insisted. “I merely allowed him to die, just like Father. There's a difference.”

“No, there isn't.”

I was on my feet now. I stepped toward the unlit fireplace, then pivoted to face her. “Do you realize what you're telling me?”

“Yes,” Cilia replied.

When I continued to stare at her, Cilia added, “Do you wish to hear the rest of the story?”

I didn't say if I did or didn't, but when Cilia motioned me back to the chair, I sat. She took another sip of her drink, stared at me for a moment, then slowly took one of my bishops off the board as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

“Check,” she said.

I wasn't surprised by the move. I had seen it coming and simply slid a pawn forward two ranks to block the attack. Cilia pulled her queen back into the first rank next to her king. I slid my queen to the fifth rank of the H file, attacking Cilia's knight. She studied the move, shook her head, and slid her knight out of danger.

“Tell me about Brian Becker,” I said.

Cilia's head jerked up. She held my gaze for a moment, then leaned back in her chair. She watched me over the chess pieces.

“Brian Becker abused Merodie, and I have no doubt whatsoever that in time he would have abused Silk. That, I could not allow.”

“So you killed him.”

“It was easy,” Cilia said.

“Did Merodie know you were going to kill him?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you conspire with Merodie to murder Becker? Did she trade custody of Silk for his death?”

“Mr. McKenzie. You've met Merodie. Do you honestly believe I would take the enormous risk of confiding in her?”

“I don't know what to believe.”

A more amazing story I had never heard. Yet throughout it all Cilia's voice was at once warm and precise, as if she were confiding a minor personal secret to a lifelong friend instead of throwing open the closet door to a nosy stranger.

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

“So you'll believe me when I tell you that I had nothing—absolutely nothing at all—to do with the death of Eli Jefferson.”

Who said you did?
my inner voice cried.

“Perhaps not,” I said, “but aren't you even a tiny bit concerned that I'll run off to the county attorney and report that you confessed to three murders?”

“My father and Robert were both cremated, so there is no physical evidence to prove a crime was even committed, much less that I committed it. As for Brian Becker, you would need a court order to exhume his body, and I doubt you'd get one. After all, it's merely your word against mine. If somehow you did manage it, the embalming fluids used by the mortician to preserve his corpse would conceal any trace of the GHB—if there's any to be found.”

I had nothing to say.

“Besides,” said Cilia. “Why should you care?”

I didn't have an answer for that. At least not one that Cilia would understand. Yet I did care. I cared a great deal.

Cilia resumed her playing position. She brought her queen out again. I removed a pawn with my own queen. She moved her bishop one space, giving me a clear shot at her king.

“Ms. St. Ana, you've been unusually forthcoming. It makes me wonder why.”

Cilia didn't reply. Instead, she watched me push a rook into position.
I watched her watch me.
Two more moves and you have her,
my inner voice announced.

“The simple truth is, I have nothing to hide,” she said. Cilia pressed her bishop against my king. “Checkmate.”

For all practical purposes, Priscilla St. Ana had admitted to three counts of murder, and her candor made me squirm in the seat of my Jeep Cherokee. Why would she do such a thing? Cilia claimed she confessed her past crimes so I would believe her when she denied any involvement in Eli Jefferson's death. Well, I didn't trust that motive any more than I would an unsolicited stock tip. It wasn't that I thought Cilia was lying—I believed every word she spoke. It was more like Cilia was telling too much truth. The conversation reminded me of this time when I was still a rookie riding with a field training officer. A suspect had walked up to our squad and without so much as an “Excuse me, Officer” confessed to a burglary that my partner and I had known nothing about. Except here's the thing—the suspect was adamant that the crime took place at exactly 10:15
P.M.
in Highland Park, which, according to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner, was the approximate time the suspect's wife and her lover were being slaughtered in a downtown hotel room.