Black Cat Weekly #81

Chapter 7-2

I took her hand again and walked us along, got us away from the sneering kid. A few steps later, we turned the corner, headed for the river.

I didn’t catch any of that breeze she’d said she felt. The night was still hot as a steam iron. My T-shirt stuck to me, trapping my sweat, cooking my skin. And that’s when I started thinking about cooler climates in faraway places, where I wouldn’t have to be a cop and nobody would have to know she was a murderer. Maybe even I could forget it. All I wanted to do was hold her in my arms all day and roll around in her arms all night. And if she decided to kill me, shoot me quick or cut me up slowly, hell, I’d die happy.

I said, “Listen, since it’s our anniversary, why don’t we celebrate it with a nice long trip?”

“A vacation? Oh yes, that’s a wonderful idea! We can find someplace special, somewhere I’ve never been.”

“Okay, where haven’t you been?”

“Oh, lots of places.”

“Then you pick the place. Just make sure it has cooler nights than this one.”

“I thought you liked the heat.”

“Yeah, I thought I did too. I guess it’s time for a change.”

We’d arrived at the waterfront. The crumbling brick warehouses looked almost delicate in the moonlight. Romantic, sure, just like she’d said. The silvery light drifted across her face, touched the red flower, gave her eyes a sheen.

We walked out to the end of one the old piers. Moonlight glistened on the river, its reflection from the redbrick warehouses turned the water the color of old blood.

She gave me a wistful smile, and when she spoke it was nearly a whisper. “Yes, a little vacation, a week or two in some romantic spot. It sounds…perfect.”

“Well I—actually, I was thinking about something longer.”

“Like a month? How wonderfully extravagant!” She hugged me with the sort of sweet embrace a kid gives someone who just gave her a terrific birthday present. But when my arms wrapped around her, I couldn’t prevent my hug from being stiff and awkward. Sensing it, she pulled away, her eyes narrowing, a little sadness in their sparkling green, a little suspicion. “Or maybe you’re talking about a permanent trip, about leaving here altogether,” she said.

I couldn’t tell if she was on to me, if she’d figured I knew about her murdering ways or if it was just an insightful guess, but chasing either of those ideas was a dark and dangerous alley I didn’t want to stumble around in. So with a shrug as easygoing as I could fake it, all I said was, “How about it? Make a home somewhere, a fresh start,” but meaning every word.

She lingered over it, looked out to the water, stared at the river for a while. So help me, I really believed we might stand a chance.

She said, “Well, I don’t know. This city is my home, after all. I have a life here.”

“Yeah, but—” I wanted to choke on my own tongue. How could I tell her what was in store for her if we didn’t make a run for it? How could I tell her that she’d spend the rest of her life walled into a hell house where she’d be beaten—and worse—without end?

She rummaged through that red handbag. My cop sense, that stealthy animal who slumbers in my bones, woke up fast, leapt through my marrow and clawed into my brain, preparing me to break her wrist if she brought her g*n out.

Her hand slid from her bag with a pack of cigarettes. “I’m out of matches. Do you have a light?”

That was the moment; her right hand holding a cigarette, her left hand arranging the strap of her purse on her shoulder, both hands busy, at their least resistant, least quick, defenseless against any move I’d make to grab her wrists, lock her down, turn her around, and put the cuffs on her. I slid my hand into my jeans pocket. My fingertips moved past my car keys, the keys to my apartment and my police locker, past the keys to her place, slid along my lighter, and rubbed the warm steel bracelets.

My fingers curled.

I slid my lighter out.

“Thanks,” she said after I lit her cigarette.

I thought about lighting a smoke for myself. There’s nothing like tobacco to cool the moment. But I needed my hands free, needed them ready. I slid the lighter back into my pocket, hooked my fingers through the steel cuffs.

She took a deep drag on her cigarette, exhaled slowly, the smoke tinged red as it blew across her lipstick, drifted up along her cheek and curled in the air. Smiling a small flirtatious smile, but with enough smarts behind it to flatten a university professor, she said, “You know, it’s okay that you’re a cop. I don’t mind.”

My breath stopped, my chest knotted tight. Even the hot night couldn’t prevent my blood from suddenly running cold, while my skin, already slick with sweat, turned chilly and clammy.

No wonder it took my squad so long to trap her. She was the hardest type of killer to catch: a smart one. A smart one who’d figured me to my bones.

She took another long pull on her cigarette. As she exhaled, a soft breeze came up, the lipstick-tinged smoke gently billowing around her face like a lacy red-tinted veil. She looked so beautiful I could have fallen to my knees. When she put her fingers on my face and slowly stroked my cheek, I swear I almost cried.

She said softly, “Really, you could have told me you’re a cop. It wouldn’t have made any difference. I fell for you the first time I saw you, when you sat on the stool next to mine at the bar. I fell for your puppy-dog eyes. They’re so sweet and soft, but with something stony and in command underneath. It was that secret hardness that made me think you might be a cop, that it wasn’t just coincidence that you sat next to me. But I fell for you anyway. I couldn’t help it. You’re my type of guy, handsome and tough. And I’m still in love with you.”

“Then come away with me. It’s our only chance. Your only chance.”

YourHer fingers slid from my cheek to my lips as she brought her face close to mine, her eyes piercing, her breath oddly cool through the hot night air.

She whispered, “We don’t have to run. You won’t turn me in.”

I pushed her hand away with a harsh snap, a cop’s bone-deep reaction to being challenged. It didn’t faze her.

I was the one who was desperate. “I’d have no choice,” I said. “Don’t you get it?”

She did, slowly. I saw it take hold in her eyes, a look helpless and feral at the same time.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m nuts about you, but if we stay in this town, I’d have to be a cop, bring you in because I’m a cop. We can’t stay here together if you want to avoid…want to avoid…” I couldn’t say it. But I could see it, all of it, in the back of my mind, the horror of caging her, a terrible thing to do to a wild animal, which is what she was. I grabbed the cigarette from her hand, tossed it away, pulled her to me.

She came at me with more hunger than I’d ever felt in a woman. She covered my mouth with hers as if she wanted to chew me up and swallow me. I wished more than anything that she could, because then I wouldn’t be around to hand her over. She could go on enjoying the ferocious, predatory life she’d been created for.

I kissed her and drank her and knew I’d never let them cage her.

neverMy hands cupped her face. The heat of her skin seeped into my palms. I pressed my mouth deeper into hers, still hoping she’d swallow me even as my hands slid slowly down to her neck. I won’t let them cage you, I can’t, I can’t, kept running through my mind, the words repeating like a drumbeat as my hands tightened around her throat. I let my hands do the grisly work because I loved her and I couldn’t live with the idea of her body being used for brutal jailhouse pleasure.

I won’t let them cage you, I can’t, I can’t, She didn’t try to pull away. She just kept on kissing me while my grip around her throat grew tighter. She kept right on taking as much of me as she could, groaning softly in long beautiful moans that grew shorter, coarser, until breath and life finally died in her, her mouth still on mine.

I held her a little while longer, not ready yet to give up the feel of her, the last warmth of her. In time, her mouth fell from my lips, her head lolled back, her eyes staring up at the night sky. Sweat coated her face, her neck. In the moonlight, the red band of bruises my hands had made around her throat shone like a collar of rubies.

She slid down to my feet. The red flower fell out of her hair. It was crushed under her cheek.

I’d just committed murder, and it felt like a dream, a dark nightmare dream.

And then my cop sense woke me up. That good ol’ reliable, stealthy cop sense. It told me to play it smart, don’t let the law figure me, cage me, maybe even fry me.

Still…

What a coward I was. I should have died with her, should have…

But the grip of love loosened and slipped away, the instinct to live took over. And not live a caged life either.

I pushed the panic down, that trustworthy cop sense stiffening my spine. I took stock of my situation, my surroundings. Neither were too bad. My situation, my status as a gold-shield cop, would make my word believable if I handled things right. Which is where my surroundings came in. The warehouse piers along the old waterfront were chock-full of loose bricks and leftover lines of rope. I gathered a few bricks, tied them together, wrapped the rope around her ankles. I did the same to her arms, then stuffed a brick into her handbag, right on top of her g*n.

ifEven as a trussed-up corpse she was still beautiful. Her silvery blond hair, her red lipstick, and the rubies of death around her neck all caught moonlight. I kissed her one last time, savored her lips, the last of their warmth and softness, then shoved her over the pier and into the water. The splash she made was more delicate than I’d expected. It gave me the creeps. So did the way her wet dress rippled along her body, the way her red handbag gleamed in the water before it sank with the rest of her.

Sooner or later, though, she might surface, even with the bricks that were now pulling her to the bottom. Sooner or later Mother Nature might try to have her way with her, bloat the body with gases that could send her floating to the surface. By then, fish would have gnawed at her flesh, nibbled away her beauty.

A chilling thought crept through me: what if I’m the cop called in to ID the body? I’ll handle it, I told myself, I’ll handle it.

I’ll handle it,I’ll handle it.I knew I’d better start handling things right then and there. I couldn’t let too much time get away from me, not if I wanted my story to stick.

I headed back to her apartment, walked fast past our bar, didn’t even glance at it, though from the corner of my eye I saw the bartender step outside for a smoke. He started to give me a wave. I didn’t acknowledge him, kept moving, let him figure maybe I was someone else.

I finally made it to her apartment building, unlocked the street door and walked inside. The red marble walls of the lobby echoed my breathing, just as it echoed her breath and mine a little while ago, but the sound wasn’t romantic anymore. It was a punishing sound, tightening around my head like a band of nails. I bypassed the elevator and the romantic memories it could trigger, ran up the four flights to her apartment, let the exercise pump me, harden me.

Panting, I put the key into the lock but didn’t turn it. I just stood with my fingers around the key for a few seconds, steadied my breathing and steeled myself against the emptiness that might attack me and tear me apart on the other side of the door. Finally trusting my cop sense to hold me together, I opened the door, stepped inside.

I didn’t dare look around as I walked through the living room, didn’t dare let anything trigger lovesick memories that could cloud my thinking, cause me to stumble through my story. I walked straight ahead to the phone on the little table next to the sofa, tried to ignore the upholstery pattern of red and pink flowers that suddenly looked like smudges of blood.

I used her phone to call my precinct so there’d be a tag back to this number, evidence that I was here, strengthening the story I gave to the detective on my squad who took the call, a guy I’d worked with for years. I told him she wasn’t here, she’d skipped, told him the planned arrest was dead. He said he’d put out an APB. I said, “Sure,” with an Academy Award-winning sigh of disappointment and resignation. Then I lit a cigarette and left the apartment.

That was three months ago. Her body still hasn’t surfaced, might not after all. I’m on another case, another beautiful dame who’d offed another poor schmo.

As for what happened on the pier and the woman at the bottom of the harbor, the only other person who knows about it is you.

New Yorker Ann Aptaker’s Cantor Gold novels have won the Lambda and Goldie awards. Her short stories have appeared in major crime/mystery fiction anthologies, with a novella published by Down & Out Books. After a long career as an art curator, Ann was a professor of art history in New York City. In between, Ann was an investigative-report writer for a private investigations firm in California before returning to New York.