A Killer’s Kiss

7

Generally I am disinclined to follow the advice of those in authority. I think it comes from the difficult relationship I have with my father. Either that or I am simply a dope. When I am told, repeatedly, to stay the hell out of a thorny situation, I find myself somehow compelled to get involved.

But not here, not now.

Both Sims and McDeiss had advised me to stay away from the Wren Denniston murder case, and I was fully disposed to follow their advice. It wasn’t because they had badges – I don’t heed no stinking badges – it was because something inside me was screaming the exact same thing. The suspicion that had gripped me as soon as two hard homicide dicks trooped into my apartment and gave me the third degree had only grown thicker as I learned the details of the crime. Reclaimed love had turned to outright paranoia in the flash of a gunshot.

So I would not be visiting, not be investigating, not be aiding in her defense. Despite our promises one to the other to maintain silence, I had already told the police everything I knew. And now, going forward, I would not be a valued support in Julia Denniston’s time of utter need as Sims worked like a bulldog to build a case against her. She had betrayed me in the past; I was going to abandon her in the present. It seemed a fair enough trade to me. But she had a right to know.

I could visit her in the prison, tell her the way I was feeling, advise her that she was on her own, but that would require an actual modicum of bravery and class. So I decided instead to write her a letter.

Dear Julia,

Or should it have been “Dearest Julia”? Or “My Dearest, Dearest Julia”? Or “You Murderous Skank”? It was hard to get a grip on the proper address for a former fiancée who was soon to be indicted for murder. Where is Emily Post when you need her?

I want you to know how important these last few weeks have been to me.

I liked the tone of that, a sharp, clinical detachment, like we were working out the details of a business transaction rather than performing our little tango.

In a way we were able to recapture something that was lost so long ago, when you betrayed me and married that urologist asshole whom you have most recently murdered.

So much for detachment. And was it oxymoronic to call a urologist an asshole? I crossed out everything after “so long ago.”

I know that this is a most difficult time, and I very much would like to be by your side as you pass through it.

Did that sound a little bitter, as if I would enjoy the spectacle of her disintegration?

But the exigencies of the situation make that impossible. As a material witness, I have been repeatedly ordered by the authorities to stay away from you and your defense. I believe it is imperative for both our benefits that I do so.

That was actually pretty good, precise and filled with legal nomenclature while still making my cowardice appallingly apparent. I considered it sort of a noble gesture on my part, my spinelessness undoubtedly making the whole abandonment thing less painful for her. Sometimes I’m so noble I can’t stand myself.

I’m sure you are in excellent legal hands and that your attorney will do everything possible to ensure a just result.

This was actually a lie. I was pretty sure that Clarence Swift, whom I had never yet met, was in over his head, but there was nothing I was willing to do about that. And the “just result” thing was a double-edged sword, wasn’t it? If you are innocent, I hope you get off, and if you are guilty, may you rot in jail.

Look me up if you beat the rap, and maybe we can resume precisely where we left off.

The sentiment was true, absolutely, I could still feel her warm flesh, but I’d have to rewrite that a bit, don’t you think?

Sincerely,

As opposed to “Sardonically,” or “Cynically,” or “With All Due Self-Preservation.”

Victor

At least that part I got right. The rest needed some work.

I opened my desk drawer, pulled out another sheet of paper so as to give it a second go. When I pushed the drawer closed, it caught on something.

Not a surprise, really. While that drawer is not normally an exemplar of neatness, it was now an unholy mess. The contents had been rifled, as had the contents of my bureau and clothes closet, my kitchen, my linen closet and bathroom. They had taken the sheets off the bed, the towels off the rack, had swabbed the shower, had taken apart the drain of my bathroom sink and pulled out all the gunk in the elbow. It wasn’t hard to figure out what they had been looking for: They had been looking for blood, Wren Denniston’s blood.

And with all that rifling, they had obviously pushed something in the way of my drawer slide. I reached in, felt nothing that would stop the drawer from closing, tried shutting it again, and failed. I could either work on the letter or solve this mystery once and for all, and working on the letter was proving more difficult than I expected. So I slid the drawer all the way out of the desk and reached inside, and that’s when I felt it. Something, yes. Something smooth and soft.

I grabbed hold and pulled it out.

A little purse, zippered shut. Red. Leather. Coach. About the size of a small hand, Julia’s hand, zippered shut to hide everything inside.

When I realized what I had found, I dropped it onto the desktop as if it were burning my fingers. It sat there, red, on my desk, like a warning fire.

Dear Julia, you sly little minx,

She learns her husband has been murdered. She collapses to the floor in anguish. After a few moments of dazed reminiscence, she goes into the bedroom to prepare for her rendezvous with the police, and what does she do? She dresses, and packs, and stuffs her red Coach purse behind a desk drawer, stuffs it in so cleverly that a team of Crime Scene Search technicians executing a search warrant don’t find it. That told me all I really needed to know about the guilt of Julia Denniston.

I should give it to the cops, without delay, turn it over like a good and honest citizen, an officer of the court. Yes, I should. Except that Julia wanted desperately to keep it from their prying eyes. It was one thing to answer questions truthfully and then wash my hands of her, it was quite another to voluntarily turn over evidence to those trying to imprison her for the rest of her life. I am a defense attorney as much by instinct as by choice.

I picked up the purse, felt its weight, a few ounces maybe. I rubbed my thumb across the leather and felt something underneath, something hard and cylindrical, like a fancy pen. But what pen was worth hiding from the police? Montblanc? It would be nothing to unzip the purse, peek inside. It would be nothing to uncover the secret she was trying to maintain.

I drew my hand away, shook my head. I should give it to her lawyer, Clarence Swift. She wanted to keep it from the cops, and by giving it to Swift I would be facilitating that choice. Then it would be up to Swift to decide what to do with it. He could examine it closely, learn its secret, decide what to turn over, what to keep hidden. With him it would have protections of the attorney-client privilege that it could never have with me. Except that if Julia wanted Swift to have it, he would already have come knocking. She had hidden it from him, too.

I reached my hand once again toward it, gently rubbed the tips of my fingers over its supple red finish. It was worn and soft, like flesh. Like Julia’s flesh in those few rare moments before the cops came knocking, warm and yielding, hungry, ecstatic.

Stop, I told myself. Toss it, burn it, chop it with an ax and drown it in the Schuylkill River. If I did it right, no one would be the wiser. Whatever was inside, whatever evidence, whatever clues to the murder of Julia’s husband or the state of Julia’s soul, would disappear right along with the supple leather.

Yet even as I plotted on how to rid myself of its dangers, I could feel it drawing me toward it. I leaned close and smelled its scent, an aphrodisiacal combination of leather and expensive French perfume. For a moment I lost myself in the erotic promise of the bouquet. Hints of fine oil, champagne, the French Riviera, balsamic and vanilla, musk and passion. And as I breathed it in, as deep as my lungs would allow, I knew, quite simply, that I wouldn’t give it to the cops, or give it to Clarence Swift, or render it unto ash. I had thought our old-lovers’ tango had reached its sordid conclusion, but of course, as usual I was dead wrong.

Whether I liked it or not, I was in the middle of Wren Denniston’s murder. My neck was on the line, and the more I knew, the more I found out, the safer I would be. I wasn’t the type to let evidence disappear, to let secrets lie fallow, to let the soul of an old lover remain hidden from my view when there were clues right in front of me. No, I wasn’t the type. But it wasn’t only that.

Did I still have feelings for her? had asked McDeiss. Of course I did. Old love doesn’t disappear; it is too potent an elixir for that. Instead it burrows deep into bone, like a parasite, waiting until just the right moment to reassert itself and sabotage your life. It arises like an ache in the middle of the night. It crawls up your throat with the taste of bile when you kiss someone new. It grips your soul and shakes you senseless.

It turns you stupid.

I picked up the small Coach purse, gently grasped the red leather pull of the zipper, yanked it open, and in that one sudden movement I was suddenly all in.