David Ellis - Eye of the Beholder

“I was afraid,” she whispers. “I needed time.”

I move my face over hers and get my arms underneath her back and press her tightly to me.

“I love you,” she says.

I take a couple of breaths and remind myself of everything I’ve learned about playing it cool. Cue the fireworks. She has never said those words to me before.

McDERMOTT WALKS OUT OF Evelyn Pendry’s apartment and takes in the fresh air. There are nothing but questions now.

“She didn’t meet me for dinner,” Carolyn Pendry explains, leaning against the railing, looking down onto the courtyard. “I called her at work, home, her cell. She always answers her cell.”

“Any sense, Mrs. Pendry, of who might do something like this?”

Evelyn Pendry was tortured. Her body was peppered with knife wounds before the fatal wound to the left temple. The weapon of choice, your basic switchblade, was found in the trash can in the small kitchen.

Same brutality as last night, at Fred Ciancio’s. Different weapon.

“She covers the crime beat.” Carolyn touches her eyes.

“I know,” McDermott says. “I saw her yesterday.”

Carolyn looks at him, tries to read his face.

“By any chance,” he tries, “does the name Fred Ciancio mean anything to you?”

She freezes a moment, like it rings a bell, then she lets out a gasp. She backs into Stoletti, his partner, and covers her mouth.

“You know him,” he gathers.

“Call Paul Riley,” she says.

“Paul-”

“Paul Riley.” She moves to him, takes his arm. “The man who prosecuted Terry Burgos.”

IMAKE IT THROUGH the reporters and up to the third floor of the apartment complex, courtesy of some uniformed officers who are expecting me. They were vague on the phone, first a cop named McDermott, then Carolyn Pendry, who grabbed the phone away and gave me a little detail.

I see Carolyn first, talking with a heavyset guy who looks familiar to me. He is moving his hands and, it seems, trying to reassure her. She is nodding along. She paints the contrast, the beautiful hair and clothes, a perfectly etched face that is now drawn and beaten with sorrow, a slumped posture.

When she sees me, she says, “Paul,” and drags the guy with her. “This is Commander Briggs. Paul Riley.”

We shake hands. They brought the big brass in. The commander showing up after ten o‘clock to a murder scene? Well, it is the daughter of Carolyn Pendry.

Carolyn’s face melts in anguish. She touches my arm. “Thank you-thank you-”

“Carolyn, my God. Anything I can do. I’m so sorry to hear.”

She pulls me along, just as a woman appears in the doorway of the apartment that must be Evelyn’s. A tall woman, midforties, with a shield hanging from her neck.

“This is Detective Stoletti.”

“Paul Riley.”

“I know who you are.” She gestures inside.

Nice to meet you, too.

“Don’t touch anything,” she tells me.

I don’t answer but heed her advice. A tall, ruddy-faced guy, almost my height but with a little more size in the torso, introduces himself as Mike McDermott. Friendlier on the surface than Stoletti, but seemingly no more pleased to see me.

I consider reminding them it wasn’t my idea to come here. I was lying in bed with a beautiful, naked woman thirty minutes ago and was in no hurry to move.

He gives me the same lecture about tampering with evidence. Looking over McDermott’s shoulder, I can see that they’ve already combed it, anyway. The place is what I would expect, a tiny apartment with a kitchen you could barely turn around in, then a single living room with a single piece of furniture, an L-shaped couch. Patches of carpeting have been lifted from the living room, the main room in the apartment. The kitchen is taped off, with a long counter that’s been dusted.

I walk into the living room, which is undisturbed. The fun, I assume, will begin in the bedroom, the other half of the condo. I feel an adrenaline spike. This is what I used to do. Chasing bad guys. Solving puzzles.

As I get closer to the archway between the living room and bedroom, I feel my body slow, a defense mechanism. I look down and a noise escapes my throat. It doesn’t matter that I knew it was going to be Evelyn Pendry. I can’t stifle the shock upon seeing this happen to the person who hounded me yesterday with questions.

She is lying on the carpet, naked to her underwear, her arms and legs spread, her head rolled to the right. Her left temple wears an ugly, bloody gash, what looks like a deep wound. Her mouth is open. The color of her skin has already begun the death fade. She looks like she was in midsentence, as if something had just occurred to her, something important, or like she hadn’t completed what she’d set out to do.

The bright lights in the room seem garish under the circumstances, plunging this murdered woman into a spotlight at the point in time where she most deserves privacy. I want to cover her in a blanket and close her eyelids. I watch her vacant eyes, waiting for her to blink.

I walk within a few feet of her and bend over. The foul smell coming from the young girl’s body is urine and feces; her sympathetic nervous system had broken down as she’d fought the killer. Or fought the pain.

The wound to her head aside, Evelyn Pendry’s body has been ravaged with knife cuts. Some are superficial, others deeper. There is blood from each wound, which means they happened before her heart had stopped circulating blood.

She was tortured before he killed her, before he put one through her brain.

I look back at the detective and see that Carolyn isn’t in the room with us. I’m glad for that, though she’s obviously already seen this.

“He enjoyed himself first,” I say, taking another look, bending down. There is no blood that I can see splattered around. “He held her down right here and went to work on her.”

I look at the detectives, neither of whom seems impressed so far. I don’t know what they expect from me. I still am not entirely sure why I’m here.

“How’d he get in?” I ask.

Nobody answers at first. I don’t expect them to like me, but I don’t really care.

“How’d he get in?” I repeat.

McDermott shrugs. “No forced entry. Either he picked the lock or she let him in.”

“Was there sexual trauma?” My eyes avoid Carolyn, who is in the room with us now.

McDermott shakes his head no. “He just wanted to hurt this girl.”

I stand up and look at the detective. “You don’t think she let this guy in,” I say.

He doesn’t respond to that.

“The bathroom,” he says. “Tread lightly.”

I turn and walk carefully into the bathroom. The light is already on. I look first with my eyes down on the floor. Then I catch it in my peripheral vision. I look up at the mirror and see my reflection, with ghoulish words written on the glass in red lipstick:

I step back, almost losing balance. I look at the cops, who seem to be making something out of my reaction.

“That mean something to you?” Stoletti asks.

I let it happen, let it rip through me, grip my insides and twist them in knots.

“You okay?” McDermott asks me.

I walk past them and again look at Evelyn, squat down carefully to examine the wound to her head. A young one. Never got her age, but she had so much ahead of her. Smart and ambitious. I recall what I said to her the last time we talked, my dismissive brush-off. There’s always that regret if you left on a bad note, said something negative, like I did. But there is more than one reason now that I wish I had listened to her.