Page 7 of Fade Out

“I was in there Sunday morning. It looked the same. Nothing was moved. There wasn’t any smell of cleaners. I mean, even if she was strangled, well, you know people release their bowels. There’s always some mess to clean up.”

His eye twitched. I was making him angry. That meant I was at least a little bit right. He said, “Why don’t you tell me more about cleaning up the mess.”

“You mentioned Rita shooting me. That’s my motive?”

“Yes.”

“If we’re going to court you’re going to make a big deal out of that, right?”

“You bet your ass.”

“When she shot me six months ago the bullet made a mess of my shoulder blade. I have trouble picking things up. You know, like corpses and shit.”

That sparked a few more eye twitches. “Don’t think for a moment that a fucking doctor’s note will get you out of this.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I was under the impression that murdering someone and mailing them away might require picking the body up.”

The eye twitching had spread to a clenching jaw.

“So what. You had help.”

“Yeah, I put an ad inThe Reader.”

“You need to take this seriously. You’re in a fucking lot of shit.”

“I didn’t kill Rita Lindquist. Sooner or later you’re going to figure that out.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re a cocky son of a bitch.”

He was right, I was. I guess that happens when you don’t have much to lose.

“So… how did I kill her? Did I shoot her? Strangle her? Poison her with arsenic?”

He lost his temper completely and blurted out, “What did you do with her fucking head and her fucking hands?”

I’m sure my mouth fell open. Then I said, “Hold on. Are you saying the body you have doesn’t have a head or hands?”

“What did you do with them?”

My mind was scrambling, trying to find something to hold onto. Something that made sense. I asked, “Is it even Rita?”

“Of course, it’s Rita. We found a driver’s license belonging to a Regina Lawson taped to the bottom of your desk drawer.” He said that as though it made sense. It didn’t.

That just made my theory stronger. “It’s not Rita Lindquist.”

“We know she was living as Regina Lawson. And you have her license. Her forged license. If you didn’t kill her why would you have that?”

“Why would I have it if Ididkill her? Why would I keep it? It incriminates me, doesn’t it?”

“Souvenir.”

“Am I a serial killer now? Am I the Boston Strangler?”

“I don’t know why the fuck you kept it, I just know you did. I also know that anyone who kills another human being isn’t working off the same kind of logic as the rest of us. I’ll know why you kept the license when you tell me why you kept it.”

I leaned forward over the table and said, “Don’t hold your breath.”

Chapter Three