Kill Her Again

6

It was still dark when Pope got back to his room.

The crisis with Anderson Troy, as petty as it was, had been artfully averted. While most practitioners of his craft were loath to admit it, it’s often possible for a skilled hypnotist to manipulate a subject’s thought processes through visualization and guided imagery.

After putting Troy under again, Pope managed to feed him just enough details to get him to believe that the Nigel Fromme he’d Googled was an entirely different person. That Troy’s Nigel Fromme-whom Troy himself had eagerly conjured up-was a bad-ass London gangster whose untimely death had been the result of a hail of bullets fired almost point-blank as he was bedding a beautiful blond Sunday School teacher.

With very large breasts. And no surprises, dangling or otherwise.

Recall and imagination. A 10/90 mix.

Pope walked away from this adolescent fantasy session feeling like a fraud, knowing he had broken nearly every tenet of his profession, but secure in the belief that Arturo wouldn’t be shoving a knife into his rib cage anytime soon, thus maintaining the sanctity of Troy’s plush white carpet.

The things we do to stay alive.

Not that Pope really had much of a life these days. But he did like being alive.

Standing at his window now, he looked out at the desert darkness and at the distant cluster of squat gray buildings that had kept him company nearly every morning in recent memory:

The Nevada Women’s Correctional Facility.

Who in his right mind, he wondered, would think to build a hotel-casino so close to a prison compound?

Then again, he couldn’t be sure which had come first. And it was almost as if the marriage had been arranged just for him, so that he could stand here on dark mornings, stare at those distant buildings, and wallow in his misery.

He wondered if Susan was awake in her cell, thinking about what she’d become and how she’d gotten there.

Thinking about Ben.

Thinking about Pope.

H E WAS JUST coming out of the shower, finally ready to crawl into bed, when his cell phone rang again.

Hoping to Christ it wasn’t Sharkey, he snatched it up off his nightstand and checked the screen, surprised by the name he saw.

J. T. Worthington.

Cousin Jake.

The two hadn’t spoken in months. Pope had halfheartedly invited Jake and Veronica out to the casino when the show first opened, but they’d never been able to make it. And in that last call, Pope had sensed a trace of disappointment in Jake’s voice. As if he thought Pope could do better. That the show was a frivolous enterprise. A waste of Pope’s time and talent.

All of which were probably true.

But then Pope wasn’t much interested in Jake’s opinion. He had little use for friends and family these days.

After the tragedy hit the news, followed by the trial, the sentence, and all the nastiness that accompanied them, the people in his life had slowly begun to drift away.

Thanks to the skewed logic of the many graceless TV pundits who chimed in, uninvited, with an opinion about Pope’s life (not to mention the lurid sensationalism of the tabloid press), some of his so-called friends had actually blamed him for the events that had started it all.

And, who knows, maybe they were right.

But he suspected that for those who really knew him, there was no ill will behind this gradual abandonment. After a while, trying to console the inconsolable simply becomes too much of a burden. And in the aftermath of that terrible ordeal, Pope had not exactly been the easiest guy to get along with.

He was scarred. Tainted. A man addicted to distrust and personal failure.

And as much as he’d like to blame it all on Susan, on what she’d done, he knew that a better man would have faced up to this particular challenge rather than to try to bury it with dope and cards and women.

He was as much a prisoner as Susan was. A prisoner by choice, who had turned this room, this hotel, into his own private cell.

He hadn’t been outside its doors in over a year.

The phone kept ringing, reminding Pope that he had a call to answer.

He clicked it on, said, “This must be serious; you’re calling me at three in the morning. Is Ronnie okay?”

“She’s fine. How are you, Danny?”

“You know how many times I’ve been asked that question in the last two years? The answer never changes.”

“You staying sober?”

“I don’t drink.”

“You know what I mean,” Jake said.

The two of them had spent half their childhood in Ludlow County, California, smoking dope and experimenting with various recreational drugs. There’s not much else to do in the desert. But both had eventually lost interest in the stuff as life became more complicated. Careers and family will do that to you.

When Pope lost both, however, the first woman whose company he sought was the blessed White Widow.

“Are you asking me as an officer of the law, or a concerned relative? Although I’m not sure it really matters at this point.”

“Come on, Daniel, knock it off. It’s me.”

He and Jake had once been closer than brothers, but time and distance-whether it’s physical or emotional-has a way of eroding even the tightest relationships.

Jake, however, was one of the few people who hadn’t given up on him.

Pope sank to the bed, hearing the springs groan, letting himself relax a little. “Sorry, man. Being an asshole is a tough habit to break.”

“Doesn’t have to be.”

Pope shrugged. “Use it or lose it, I always say. What can I do for you?”

“I wasn’t just asking before. I need to know if you’re straight.”

“Why?”

“You won’t like this, but I’ve got a case here I need some help with.”

Pope sighed. He should have known. This wasn’t the first time he’d heard such a request, and he hated it whenever Jake tried to drag him back into his old life. That had been its own kind of prison.

After the murder, he’d tried to fit in, to resume his work at the clinic and with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, but had felt like a man who had gained too much weight and was still trying to wear his old clothes.

“I’m not interested,” he said.

“Come on, Danny. It’s important. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t.”

“Sure you would. You’ve been trying to save me from myself since I was twelve years old.”

“Obviously I’ve failed.”

Pope smiled. “Now look who’s the asshole.”

“You need to snap out of this, my friend. Start circulating again. Use that big brain of yours.”

“I do, twice a night, starting at nine p.m. Not that you’d know.”

“Actually, I would,” Jake said.

“Oh? How so?”

“One of our deputies, a kid named Chavez, drove out to see your show a while back, brought us a DVD of the night’s festivities. You had him up onstage, howling like a goddamn coyote.”

“That one always goes over big with the tourists.”

Now it was Jake’s turn to sigh. “What the hell are you doing with yourself, Danny?”

“Surviving,” Pope said.

“Existing,” Jake countered. “You can’t let this thing rule you forever. There’s a saturation point.”

“Then I guess I haven’t reached it yet. How many times do we have to do this before you finally get the message?”

“And how many times do I have to ask before you finally say yes? This is a bad one. Three people dead, a little girl missing, and a brother who’s in a bad way. I hate to tell you who he reminds me of.”

Pope stiffened. “Then don’t.”

“He’s about the same age, Danny. Got the same eyes.”

“Fuck you,” Pope said, shifting his thumb to the kill button — “Don’t hang up. I know you want to, but don’t do it.”

Pope hesitated, not sure why. He had every right to drop the hammer on this conversation. Jake knew this was a touchy subject.

“He may be the only one who can tell us what happened to the girl, but he’s in shock, having memory problems. We need somebody out here as quickly as possible and I figured you’d be awake. And I definitely know you’re the best man for the job.”

“Not anymore,” Pope said.

“I don’t believe that. I know the old Danny’s in there somewhere. We just need to wake him up.”

“So… what? Poke him with a stick and hope he doesn’t snap at you? That’s expecting too much, Jake.”

“For Christ’s sake, all we’re talking about is a couple hours of your time.”

Pope hesitated again, trying to push back the image that was suddenly crowding his mind: Ben giggling at the breakfast table as he purposely dribbled milk down his chin.

Every instinct Pope possessed told him to turn Jake down, just as he had a dozen times before. But that image seemed to have grabbed hold of him and wouldn’t allow him to form the words.

Finally he said, “I won’t come to you. You’ll have to bring him here.”

“Come on, Danny, I’ve got an investigation to run and a restless feeb up my-”

“Take it or leave it,” Pope said. “And all you get is two hours.”

“All right, all right, hold on.”

Pope heard the sound of a hand muffling the receiver. After a long moment of silence, Jake came back on the line. “You’ve got a deal. The medic is checking him over right now, but somebody’ll be out there with him as soon as possible. I’ll call you back with the details.” He paused. “And Danny? Thanks for this.”

Pope pressed the kill button.