Jon Talton - Powers of Arrest

It had been another long day, and while Will waited, he stood, sandwiching himself between the car and car door. His legs were not cooperating with this long day of too much sitting interspersed with too much walking. He needed the relief of simply standing for a few moments, stopping the thumping in his left leg and easing the mammoth tightness of his right quads. He said out loud: “Ahhh.” But he was so tired that he couldn’t stand for long. He was tellingly leaning on the car roof and door.

He had spent the day with the Covington police. Although Kristen’s cell phone was still missing, techs had found her cellular phone bill on her computer, and the phone company had provided records. The detectives ran through phone numbers. Much of it was dull and tedious: calls to the dry cleaner, the producer of LadyCops: Cincinnati , her parents in Myrtle Beach, and her sister in Phoenix. Finally, Will called the number that led him to this meeting.

A hand tapped brusquely on the passenger window. The door opened and a man got in. He was wearing a navy pinstripe suit far more expensive than anything in Will’s closet and he folded long legs into the well of the car and closed the door. With his executive build and tan, he looked pretty much as Will had expected for a senior partner at Briscoe, Hayne, and Douglas. Along with Baker Hostetler, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, and Keating, Muething, and Klekamp, it was one of the city’s most prestigious law firms.

What stood out most was his fine head, with a fringe of close-cropped iron-gray hair and creeping forehead, with two dramatic slashes of eyebrows amid uniformly strong features. He had barely a wrinkle even though he seemed at least Will’s age or older. In fact, he looked younger than the son who had nearly run down Will at Music Hall that morning.

The patrician head swiveled around, looking to see that no one was watching them. He didn’t offer his hand and neither did Will.

“I’ll see your identification, please.”

Will handed over his badge case.

“I called your chief.” He closely examined Will’s identification. “And I assume he called you.”

“He did.”

“How does that make you feel, Detective Border?”

“It’s Borders, and I don’t follow you.”

“How does it make you feel? Does it make you feel small? It should. I’ve only been in this city a short time. I didn’t go to Moeller or Elder or any of that provincial crap I hear all the time. Who gives a shit where you people went to high school? If I hadn’t had to move here with my wife, I wouldn’t even have flown through your airport. I don’t care about Cincinnati. I don’t speak Cincinnati. So don’t expect me to be impressed by you or your badge.”

“Fair enough,” Will said. “But I warn you, people move to Cincinnati and dislike it, but after two years you couldn’t pry them out. They fall in love with the city.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. What did your chief tell you, Borders?”

“He said to do what I felt needed to be done, counselor. So let’s cut the bullshit. I have a murdered police officer. I suspect they take that seriously even where you come from. It so happens that your cell phone called Kristen Gruber at 2:21 p.m. Saturday, a few hours before she was killed. Those are the facts, unless you want to tell me your phone wasn’t under your control during that time, and then we can have a different conversation.”

He handed back the badge case and sat in silence for a good five minutes. Will was happy to let him stew.

“I called Ms. Gruber,” he said. “She berths her boat next to mine. I wanted to ask her a question about the marina management. They can get pretty sloppy.”

Will watched him lie smoothly, not even a blink to his eyes. He said nothing, letting the silence do its work.

He finally couldn’t stand it. “Are we done, Detective?”

“No, we’re not done. We have records of you calling Kristen Gruber more than a hundred times in the past three months. You must really have issues with the marina management.”

He sighed. “Off the record?”

“For now.”

“Look. Do you have any idea who my wife is?”

“Actually, I do. I was talking with her this morning, Mr. Buchanan.”

He sat up straight and stared ahead at the trees and, beyond them, Riverside Drive.

“It was about another matter,” Will said.

“And you say these phone records showed a call from me Saturday?”

“That’s right. Did you make it?”

Kenneth Buchanan hesitated, ran a hand with long fingers across his face, and pinched the bridge of his nose. The dark eyebrows inched together.

“I had an affair with Kristen,” he said. “It started about a year ago. I’m willing to cooperate with the police, off the record, but my wife can’t know about this. I want your guarantee.”

Will looked at the man. He might have been old enough to be Kristen’s father, but he supposed that was one of the perks that came with money and power.

“I can’t make that guarantee, sir. All I can say is that I’ll do my best.”

“Well, I was golfing with friends on Saturday, then I went home, where my wife and I had a quiet dinner and spent the evening and night together. So this should cover the entire period you’re talking about, if what I read in the newspapers is true.”

Will watched for tells that he was lying, saw none.

“So why did you call Officer Gruber? What did you talk about?”

“I got her voice mail. That’s it.”

“It was a six-minute conversation. Want to try again, counselor?”

He made fists out of his hands and put them in his lap.

“I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even see her, haven’t seen her for a month. We broke things off.”

“Because you were afraid of being found out?”

He rearranged himself to face Will, leaning against the door, and trying to stretch out.

“Let’s say I was tired of competing with other men, all right? Kristen was not…faithful.”

“As a mistress.”

His mouth crooked down. “You’re in no position to judge me, and I can walk away.”

“But you won’t,” Will said. “I got enough sense of your wife to know you really want her kept out of this.”

“And you’re an asshole.”

“So I’ve been told.” Will smiled without humor. “How did you meet Officer Gruber?”

“She moored her boat next to ours, like I told you. My wife doesn’t really care for the water, so usually I was there alone. She flirted. A man can tell. At least, I can tell. Things went from there.”

“Tell me about things.”

“Things? I don’t get you.”

“Did you have sex at her place?”

He angrily pursed his lips and nodded. “Sure.”

“Five times? Twenty times?”

Kenneth Buchanan laughed. “Obviously you didn’t know Kristen. A hundred would probably be more like it.” His eyes glowed with the memory.

Will used the ensuing quiet to study the man. Was a murderer sitting next to him? He looked physically powerful enough to have inflicted the brutal knife strokes that tore apart Kristen’s vagina. His hands were large, their backs showing engorged veins. But not one knife knick was showing on a knuckle or finger.

For someone who had been Kristen’s lover, who had been intimate with her so many times, he was strangely calm, actually cold, about her death and the way it came about. It was very close to being “no affect,” as the cops and shrinks put it.

“Did she like rough sex?”

He turned his head slightly and his mouth created small dimples. “Yes.”

“Nice memory, huh?”

The dimples went away and he readjusted back into the seat, facing forward.

After a while, he spoke: “I’m not really into that kind of kink, understand. But she liked it.”