Soul Siren (27 page)

“They have?” I asked cautiously.

Jill nodded. “Oh, yeah. We know from the angle of the wounds that the blows came down, and the person’s right-handed. We also know the killer’s shorter than Morgan was. This is a short guy or woman, I suppose, who needed to strike Morgan—a reasonably strong and healthy fellow—three times over the head to cause the hematoma that killed him.”

“So you’re saying they came to rob his place and panicked when he turned up?”

“No,” she said very distantly. “Not at all…I do think they came to
steal
something from him, but they weren’t your run-of-the-mill burglar. It’s been assumed they panicked when Morgan showed his face, killed him and then took off in a hurry. Okay. But are we supposed to believe they killed him and then took the
time
to rifle his drawers? I don’t think so.”

“Well, how do you know they took his stuff after they killed him? Why not before?”

“Let me come back to that in a second,” said Jill. “Let’s say they did have time. Okay, why not take some of that snazzy computer stuff? At least the hard drive, you can yank the cables out and tuck that under your arm. Or the DVD? No, they were looking for something else. And they knew him.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“The conditions are exactly opposite of Steven Swann, Mish.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Steven was richer than God, had a security system in a big townhouse. His killer lets herself in and sneaks right up to him in a soundproof recording studio. He never heard her coming. Okay. Here was Morgan. Lived in a loft space, cheap buzzer lock security, but you’re
bound
to hear that freight elevator unless you’re in the shower or deaf. If Morgan arrives after his robber, she hears
him
coming.
The first thing you do if you’re going to ambush someone is put everything back in its proper place so that they don’t suspect you’re there.
Common sense.”

All those careful steps I took, and I overlooked the foolishly obvious. I rode that freight elevator countless times with Erica and Luther to visit Morgan and got used to its rattle, but that’s no excuse. I should have considered the sound. After all, on that night, I was terrified by how long the elevator took during my escape, and, still, I didn’t think of the sound. I never once factored its noise into my burglar scenario.
Fool.

“So my guess is that she didn’t have time to rifle his drawers beforehand, she did it after,” Jill went on. “At the very least, if you really want to stretch to the incredible, she was interrupted
during
.”

“Hold on. Why? Why is it so incredible?”

Jill pointed to the intercom buzzer. “Like I said: buzzer lock security and no sign of a break-in. What burglar announces herself and gets buzzed in? So she gets past the front door, up the freight and rifles his drawers all with Morgan in his home and letting her do it? If it’s a stranger, he would confront the person straightaway, right as she steps off the freight. If he lets her in, maybe they talk, whatever, and he steps into the bathroom or something and she goes for the drawers. He comes back and says what do you think you’re doing. Either way, she went back to the drawers after he was killed. I just don’t buy that it was a robbery.”

“You’re doing it again,” I said softly.

“What?”

“You always use ‘she’—it’s like you always assume the killer must be a woman.”

Jill waved this away with a shy smile. “Oh, that’s probably me being gender-conscious. He, she—no big deal. What was I saying? Oh, yeah. She rifled the drawers after.”

“You’re so sure,” I said, trying to control my exasperation. “He could have come home as it happened.”

“Okay,” answered Jill. “So why not kill him right as he steps off the freight? She’s got the element of surprise. Why the struggle? And look where Morgan’s body was found. Well inside the apartment. If he catches a burglar in the act when he comes home, all the debris from a struggle would be closer to the exit, but it’s scattered pretty evenly through the living room. Staged. And the statuette was the murder weapon—which means the killer had to come
all the way over there
to get it. Sure, she could have picked it up when she hears him coming, but why not leave his body by the elevator? She didn’t kill him there and move him. There’s no need for that. Plus the cops say Morgan’s body wasn’t moved. And if there was a struggle, how did she manage to kill him with a blow to the
back
of his head? It was someone he knew. And she waited until he turned his back on her.”

I couldn’t offer any rebuttal.

“You know people get foolish ideas in their heads, Mish. They want to make a murder look like a robbery. But they’ve never robbed anyone so they don’t understand how robbers think or do their job. It’s amateur hour, and you can see right through them. Check out Beethoven, for instance.”

I glanced at the portrait bust on the floor, the back of its head caved in like a hard-boiled egg tapped with a spoon, shards of it not far away.

“What about it?”

Jill cocked her eyebrow and tilted her head a little. When she talked about these details, she became quite animated. Gesturing with her hands, a whole repertoire of pensive expressions on her lovely face.

“Well, jeeze. Look at that cheap fake pillar where Morgan rested it. It’s pretty unstable, and I’m surprised he bothered. Point is, the bust’s knocked over, but the stand hasn’t moved. The lab guys lifted it. Dust perfectly settled and accumulated around the base. You wrestle around with someone, breaking furniture, and things get shuffled. The pillar wasn’t.”

“Oh,” I said.

“And,”
she said, “they put all the fragments together like a jigsaw and then dusted for prints.”

“So did they get any?”

“Not fingerprints. But they did lift two perfect glove imprints.” She pantomimed the motion of casually knocking the bust over.
Exactly
as I had done it.

“When you point all these things out, yeah, I see what you mean,” I said.

“So?”

“So what?” I asked.

“So can you think of anything he might have had that somebody would have killed him for?”

I turned my head and scanned the loft, taking in everything and weighing her question carefully. “No…Look, our friend’s dead. It’s not like I can think straight. I don’t know how you detach yourself emotionally from stuff like this, but me, I…”

“I suppose it comes with the job,” replied Jill.

“But this isn’t your job,” I said, betraying my frayed nerves. “I could see what you mean about Steven. He was a star. The wacko who killed him could come after Erica. But Morgan? He was nobody. No, I don’t mean nobody, but—well, you know what I mean. He was the gentlest, sweetest guy. He wasn’t perfect, but, shit, he deserved to go while he was asleep in his bed!”

“But, Mish, that’s why I’m looking into it,” argued Jill, resting a comforting hand on my arm. “Erica asked me to. She feels the same way. He didn’t deserve this, and she’s just so torn up inside that…Well, the best thing I can do to make her feel better is conduct my own small investigation.”

“I guess.”

“We might as well get out of here,” she suggested. “Hey, I brought my wheels. I’ll drop you back at the apartment.”

“Thanks.”

We said nothing as we left the building and got into her car. I was still silent when she turned on the stereo and sang along to the Sophie B. Hawkins hit playing:
I had a dream I was your hero! Damn I wish I was your lover. I’ll rock you till the daylight comes…

If I hadn’t slept with her, if we hadn’t grown close as friends, I would have sworn she was mocking me.

W
hen I came home, I found Erica in a chair in the living room. Waiting.

“Mish, I want you to explain something to me,” she said.

Her face was solemn with grief, the way it had been over Morgan, and I felt my heart send a battering ram against the inside of my chest. She was very upset, and I didn’t know why. “I want you to explain…” Her eyes were moist with tears. I didn’t have a clue what the hell was going on. Had someone else died? Was there another problem with her and Luther?

She picked up the VCR remote and clicked on it. My jaw dropped when the image flickered onto the screen. Me. In the sun room a couple of weeks ago, masturbating as I watched Luther and Erica make love.

Oh. My.
God.

“You never knew there was a webcam trained on the sun room, did you?” she said quietly. “Home security guys threw it in.” She anticipated the question forming on my lips. “The monitor is this TV, closed circuit feed on channel 72. I wouldn’t have seen this, except I was changing the tapes, and the deck counter showed it was full. It hits ‘Record’ any time you bring up the monitors in there…”

I looked at her, my face burning with shame. Erica was staring at me not with righteous indignation but another kind of shock. I don’t think she gave a damn that I had seen her making love. The girl wasn’t shy with her private circle, and Steven was proof of that. No, she had figured it out. All she had to do was confirm it for me.

“I know you’re friends with Luther, hon,” she said, her voice cracking with feeling. “But you’ve never done so much as given a second look at him. So this…I mean, you tell me you’re gay and there was Karen, and if you weren’t getting off on seeing Luther then…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

I ran from the room. Oh, Jesus, this can’t be happening. She’d taken away my face, stripped me naked right there over my burden.

I raced into my bedroom, but she chased after me, opening the door as soon as I slammed it shut, calling my name over and over again. “Michelle? Michelle!
Michelle!
” Tugging at my shoulder as I buried my face in the pillows. “Talk to me! Please tell me what’s been going on. We’re friends! What
is
this?”

Me sobbing like a child, knowing I was going to lose my job, my home and most of all the person I loved more than anyone else in the world. She could have held my arm over the gas burner on the kitchen stove, and I couldn’t have felt more agony than this. Shouting into my pillow:

“I love you! I love you! All right? I know I can’t have you, and it tears me up inside!”
Collapsing into spasms and more sobs, mewling in the pit of my own self-loathing.

I couldn’t look at her. I heard her voice, calm, flat, almost respectful in the wake of this revelation as she said to me: “How long?”

God, I couldn’t roll over and look at her.

“Michelle. How long?”

I sat up at last, sniffling, and Erica handed me a tissue from the box on the nightstand. I blew my nose and covered my mouth with my laced fingers, muttering, “Years. Does it matter?”

Another long pause as she grappled with this. “I…I don’t understand, honey. We’re like…like sisters to each other. You know I love you, just not like that. You’ve seen me with how many guys, and you work with me day after day and…? You must have known we—”

“I can still be a professional,” I snapped. And then all my pent-up frustration and shame boiled over into open resentment. “Have I put this on you? Have I made it your problem?
No.
You can’t say I haven’t done my job, Erica. And I’ve been a good friend.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “You have. You’re my best friend, Mish.”

“Damn it, I’m good at my job!” I said, letting it all out now. “It’s just…it’s just that sometimes…” Feeling my lip quiver again and a fresh flood of tears blurring my vision. “I look at you, and you make a joke or you’re performing or something gets you down, and…and it gets too much, you know?”

I stole a look at her as her brow crinkled, still trying to make sense of me, this stranger she’d never met before I had replaced her good friend. “And you…want me? The way you want Karen?”

“Not the way I want Karen,” I said, sniffling again. “Well, yeah, that way—yeah, I understand what you mean. Look, Erica…I would never have told you. Never. Part of me loves you, but, yeah, we are sisters. You’re my best friend, too, and I didn’t…I mean I couldn’t…”

She stood up from the bed and began slipping off her jeans.

“What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer me. She folded them in a neat pile and set them down on a chair. I watched her unbutton her blouse, a shy smile on her lips, and set that aside as well. Then her panties and her bra. Erica, standing in all her luscious glory. Mahogany skin, full large breasts with dark nipples, her wide hips and her wedge of dark pubic fur, the strong legs leading down to delicate feet with toenails painted a burgundy shade this week.

“Erica, don’t.”

She beckoned me with her hand, saying, “Come on.” She stifled a mild shiver. She’d never been with a woman before. And her first would be me. If she had stopped to consider how it would affect her relationship with Luther, it didn’t show. Maybe she thought being with me “didn’t count.” Like an idiot, I was the one who hesitated.

“Why do you want to do this? I know you don’t feel the same way.”

“Come on,” she said simply. “One time.”

“Why? Why do this?”

“For you.”

I was wretched. My beautiful girl naked in front of me, offering me what I had dreamed about
for years,
and I couldn’t touch her. “Erica, I don’t need a pity fuck.”