Hard Case Crime: Deadly Beloved (7 page)

If Norman Bates had been watching through the matador’s eyes, we’d have been a sight, I’m sure—Mike in his shorts and half a tux, me in the disarrayed remains of my wedding gown; but we were having too much fun to give a damn about how we looked, kissing each other feverishly in between laughter that was turning increasingly lustful.

Then he was climbing on top of me, and what happened next is as obvious as it is none of your business.

A single lamp was on in the dreary little room, on Mike’s nightstand.

He was in black pajama bottoms now, sitting up in bed, on top of the sheets and covers and the nubby blue spread. He was smoking a cigarette, reading one of half a dozen Nassau brochures that were spread over his tummy.

I was in the black top of the same pajamas, wearing the white panties that were the sole survivor of my wedding outfit, and was almost asleep, curled up next to the big lug.

“Turn that out,” I said sleepily but not grumpily.

“I’m planning our itinerary.”

“Plan it tomorrow....Please don’t smoke. Bad for you, baby....”

He stabbed his cigarette out in a glass tray that hadn’t been on that nightstand more than twenty-five years. The bedsprings told me he was getting out of bed before I noticed him doing it.

I looked over at him with half-lidded eyes.

He glanced back. “Thirsty,” he explained.

“ ’Cause you smoke! Duh.”

“That’s why I love you.”

“What is?”

“You worry about me.”

And he leaned over to give me a peck on the cheek.

Then I put a pillow over my head, to block out the light, as he went out.

About thirty seconds later, I removed the pillow, sat up, and reached over and shut off the nightstand lamp. The room was dark now, mostly, some of that red neon-tinged light slanting in from the door, which Mike had left ajar.

But I was happy. The light was no longer on my face, and I was quite confident he’d leave the lamp off when he returned, out of deference to his bride. I was just drifting off when the gunshot exploded the silence.

I sat upright, and another shot
blammed
.

Then I was off the bed but not out the door, de-touring to Mike’s bag, even as another gunshot split the night, and
goddamn it,
another.

Mike’s .45 automatic was in my hand as I quickly pushed out through that already-ajar door.

I saw the horrible tableau at once.

To the left of our room, down a couple of doors, Mike was sprawled on his back on the pavement near a Pepsi machine, his bare chest puckered with entry wounds and blood pooling beneath him, glistening with neon reflection
.

Hovering over him was an unshaven, long-greasy-haired, wild-eyed lowlife in a leather biker jacket and frayed jeans and with a big, honking revolver in his hand.

I thought I recognized him—Hazen, Something Hazen...a punk Mike put away a long time ago, for killing a stripper with a wrench or some damn thing.

He hadn’t noticed me yet, too busy leaning over Mike’s body, ranting, “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! I said I’d shoot your ass and I did it! Son of a bitch!”

“Mike!”

Hazen turned and saw me running at him, a wide-eyed apparition in a black pajama top with a gun, ready to blast his evil ass to Kingdom Come.

And he started to flee, shooting back at me as he did, tossing off two quick rounds.

I didn’t bother ducking. He was firing wildly, the shots landing on either side of me, one kissing concrete, another thunking into a parked car. I ran and I aimed and I shot, the .45 report twice as loud in the night as his revolver.

But I didn’t hit him, either, and he ducked behind a car, one of half a dozen parked along this row of motel rooms.

I wasn’t quite running now, more striding, and it was cold out but colder within: frozen with shock and rage, I was moving in a straight line toward the son of a bitch....

Then Hazen popped out to take a shot at me, but he didn’t get it off, because I shot first—
damn!
—narrowly missing him.

I was almost on top of him now, and he went scrambling out from behind his car to the next one down, and again tried to pop up and shoot at me.

My shot nicked his ear and he howled and ducked down behind a parked car.

Two cars between me and him.

Fuck it
.

I got up on top of the nearest parked car and my bare feet made burps in the metal as I stalked across the hood of one, then hopped to the next, and when Hazen popped up from behind the next car down, he had me looking down at him and I was smiling something too terrible to really be called a smile as I sighted the .45 at his ugly head.

His revolver swung up, but it was way too late.

The .45 split the night and Hazen’s skull and he flopped back, leaving a cloud of blood mist.

I gazed down at the dead piece of shit, flung onto the sidewalk, his eyes wide open and looking back up at me, but not really.

Somehow I climbed down off the car. When the pavement was under my feet, I started to run, to run back to my husband, sweeping past various motel rooms, people in underwear or pajamas in doorways, peeking out cautiously, but I barely saw them.

I was busy screaming:
“911! 911! Now! Now!”

Then I was kneeling at Mike’s side, bending to him, holding him in my arms and soothing him and cradling him, unaware of the blood I was getting all over myself, praying he could hear me, knowing he could not.

He was dead. My husband was dead. No question. No getting around it.

“Bad for you, baby,” I said to him softly. “Bad for you.”

Time passed. How much I couldn’t say, but all sorts of vehicles were angled into the motel lot now—two police cars, flashers painting the night blue and red; and an unmarked police car had its flasher pulsing, too.

Over in the middle of things, an ambulance was being loaded up by a pair of EMTs, a white guy and a black guy, putting Mike’s sheet-covered body on its gurney.

Chic Steele took off his trenchcoat and slung it gently around my shoulders, over the blood-spattered pajama top. Rafe Valer was there as well, not standing with Chic and me, rather over by Hazen’s corpse. But Rafe’s eyes were on Mike as the EMTs loaded the body up and in.

Somewhere a crime scene photographer was taking flash pics of the dead killer, strobing the night, making it seem even more unreal to me than it already did. I was staring into nothing when the EMTs started removing another gurney from the back of the ambulance, and I came alive.

I don’t remember going over there, leaving a startled Chic behind, but suddenly I was in the black EMT’s face.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

He swallowed and blinked. “Uh...we’re...the other...”

I pointed at him; more than pointed, I thumped his chest. “No. You won’t take my husband and his murderer away on the same trip. You come
back
and pick up the garbage.”

The white EMT, who looked bored as hell, came over and leaned in closer than was wise. “Lady, no disrespect, we’re just following procedure. Two gurneys, one trip.”

I took the prick by the front of his uniform and slammed him down onto the gurney—both the gurney and the EMT made surprised squeals.

No longer bored, the EMT, on his back on the thing, looked up at me, startled and scared shitless. But I didn’t pay any attention to him. I was nose to nose with his partner again.

“
Now
,” I said, “you got a full load.”

The other EMT scrambled off the gurney and he and his partner hauled the empty stretcher up and in, and the white one climbed up in back as the black guy shut him in, and headed around front.

Then Rafe was on one side of me and Chic on the other, and they were guiding me from the parking lot to the sidewalk. Dazed as I was, I knew they were concerned about me, and were shaken themselves by their friend’s killing.

The ambulance rolled out just as another Jag pulled in, a white one that had Dan Green behind the wheel with a good-looking, slightly disarrayed young blonde woman, both still dressed for the wedding.

Rafe was back over by the dead perp and Dan rushed over to him, getting filled in, the young woman staying in the car.

“Wondered who Dan would wind up with,” I said, amused in some detached way.

Chic asked, gently, “Michael, are you...are you up to a few questions?”

“Plenty of contenders at the reception....What?”

His eyes were tight but his voice stayed gentle. “Do you know who it is you killed?”

“Son of a bitch who killed Mike.”

“Yes, but—”

I frowned. “Hazen is his name. Isn’t it?”

“Yes. Randall Hazen. So you know who he is? Was?”

“Got drunk...beat up a stripper, didn’t he? Killed her in a parking lot...with a wrench? Or was it a piece of pipe?”

Rafe had heard this, approaching. Suddenly I was bookended by the two plainclothes cops.

“No,” Rafe said, “that was his brother, Matthew. Matthew’s on death row.”

“Wrench,” I said. “It was a wrench.”

Chic said, “Awaiting his much-deserved lethal injection. Randall got ten years for hiding his brother out.... Got sprung two days ago.”

Dan came over, quickly. He was on the verge of tears but too angry to let them out. “Why didn’t anybody
tell
us Hazen was out? Good-the-fuck behavior, I suppose.”

Chic said, “Parole.”

Dan shook his head. “Both brothers at their trials pointed right at Mike and swore to kill him....If I’d known, if
Mike
had known....”

“Dan,” Chic said, “Mike knew. I told him. He said he wasn’t about to postpone his wedding over some ‘lameass dirtbag.’ I offered to put the bastard under surveillance, but Mike said it was just...hot air. Buncha ...hot air.”

“Cold,” I said.

Rafe put a hand on my shoulder. “Michael?”

“Cold,” I said. “I’m cold. Could somebody...take me home?”

Dan covered his face with a hand and the tears came.

That young woman from the wedding reception was at Dan’s side now, slipping an arm around him, comforting him, but clearly this pick-up was getting more tonight than she’d bargained for. I knew the feeling.

Rafe and Chic exchanged glances, and Rafe nodded, and Chic took the honors, escorting me away.

We were in Chic’s unmarked car when he asked, “Where, Michael? Mike’s place or yours?”

“We...we moved my things to his place last week. His place, Chic. Mine and his, I mean. I want to sleep in his bed tonight. Our bed tonight.”

“I’ll stay on the couch.”

He did.

I had some sleeping pills and took a double dose, and in the morning Chic had breakfast ready for me. He waited on me at the table in Mike’s little kitchenette and finally asked me, “What are you going to do?”

“What
is
there to do?” I sipped coffee. “I already killed the bastard who took Mike from me.”

“I know. I mean...about the business? The Tree Agency? If you want to come back to the PD, I’m sure I can make a few calls and—”

“No,” I said, a little too sharply.

He just looked at me curiously.

“We’ll keep it open,” I said. “We’ll keep it going, Dan and Roger and me.”

“Can the Tree Agency survive without...” But he couldn’t get it out; his eyes were everywhere but on me.

“What, Chic? Say it.”

“Can the Tree Agency survive without Michael Tree?”

“Chic—you’re
looking
at Michael Tree.”

He just sat there, not knowing what else to say. What was there to say, anyway? I felt better. Not a lot better, but enough so to eat. Enough to go on.

The sunlight around the edges of the window curtains was fading into early evening
.
Honking horns said the city was still out there.

“That was a Friday,” I said. “Monday I took over the Tree Agency. Hell...we didn’t even have to change the name on the door.”

Leather whined as the doctor shifted in his chair. “Why not take time to grieve? To process your husband’s death?”

“I ‘processed’ my husband’s death, Doctor. Every newspaper covered it. We were news. Our newfound celebrity meant we got work. It kept us afloat.”

“Yes, and your celebrity has only increased. But had that truly been an effective way to come to terms with your husband’s murder, Ms. Tree, you wouldn’t be in this office, right now....”

I took a moment.

Then I said, “You’ve accused me of burying my feelings, Dr. Cassel, my emotions...of not confronting this...tragedy.”

“Yes. I have.”

“Well, since I’ve seen you last, I
have
confronted it....In particular, I confronted the tragedy itself...the murder...by opening a door that I’d previously considered closed....
”

My office was warmly masculine, having been my husband’s, and, though it was now mine, I’d chosen not to change it much, leaving up on the dark-paneled walls police citations of valor and framed photos of Mike shaking hands with local mucky-mucks and a few framed front pages, too—the
Tribune
and
Sun-Times
alike. Mike had always looked so natural, so at home, behind the massive dark wood desk; and now I felt the same way.

I was on the phone with Lt. Valer, who it was easy for me to picture in his own considerably less spacious and upscale office, running to a decor of Early Institutional as it did. I could see him at his work-filled but perfectly organized desk. Mine might have piles of this and piles of that, but so what? I knew where everything was.

I was saying to him, “You credit this ‘Event Planner’ with seven or eight murders, tied to the Muertas.”

A dry chuckle preceded his reply. “Chic thinks I’m overworkin’ my imagination.”

“I don’t. I think you’re onto something.”

“You do?”

“And I also think you owe me an explanation.” I couldn’t keep the irritation from edging my voice. “You failed to mention that one of those ‘events’ in question was my husband’s murder.”

The silence on the wire went on forever—a good five seconds.