Lawrence Block - The Girl With the Deep Blue Eyes

“But you don’t think it was self-defense.”

“I think it’s fine they called it that way, and there really wasn’t any other way they could have called it. But no, it wasn’t self-defense, not once he tossed the gun.”

“You were already set to fire, and it was too late to hold yourself back.”

He shook his head. “No. I’ve thought about this enough to be able to say for sure. I had time to think about it, just a second or two but that was plenty of time. And I knew not to pull the trigger, and I went ahead and did it anyway.”

“Three times.”

“Uh-huh. Bam-bam-bam. One of the hoops they made me jump through was a series of sessions with a department psychiatrist. She didn’t get the story you’re getting, she got the official version. She asked me how I felt about it, and I told her what I figured she wanted to hear. Glad to be alive, sorry I’d had to take a life, sorry I couldn’t have been there in time to prevent the woman’s death. That last line was true, anyway.”

“And not the others?”

“Well, it’s true I was glad to be alive. The only problem she had with me is she was concerned by my lack of affect. When I saw the report I read it wrong, I thought she meant I was ineffective, and I didn’t see how it applied. But I think she meant my attitude didn’t match my words, that I didn’t seem to have processed the experience.”

“How did you feel?”

“Glad he was dead, glad I’d made him that way. I’d have been just as happy not to go through all the crap that came after it, but it was worth it.” He thought for a moment. “How I felt — it didn’t have all that much to do with who he was and what he did. Here’s what you have to know. I liked it.”

“You liked—”

“I liked the feeling. I liked pulling the trigger, I liked watching the man die. It was like coming.”

“Honestly?”

“I don’t know if I can describe it properly. It was like an orgasm, but it wasn’t sexual. It had nothing to do with my dick, nothing to do with sex, really.”

“Jesus,” she said.

“Yeah, really. So if I lacked affect when I talked to the shrink, maybe that had something to do with it. What I did, I wound up putting in for retirement a little earlier than I’d planned. My marriage coming apart was a factor, plus I got caught up in something unrelated, an Internal Affairs investigation of a former partner of mine that got me a little bit tarred with the same brush. But the shooting, which absolutely went into the books as a righteous use of deadly force, it played a role.”

“How?”

“Because once they gave me my gun back,” he said, “I figured I’d look for an excuse to use it. Or I’d be afraid I was looking for an excuse, and that would hold me back and keep me from defending myself when I really needed to. If you walk around questioning yourself—”

“Yes, I can see what that would be like.”

“So now you know something about me you didn’t know an hour ago. Am I really on board for killing your husband? When the time comes, will I be able to pull the trigger? Hell, yes, I’ll be up to it. I’ll enjoy it.”

Murder was easy. The tricky part was getting away with it.

He spent the next several days trying to work out a way. The problem, of course, was that her willingness to pay to have her husband murdered was already a matter of record.

The script he’d written, the lines he’d given her, had amended the record so that she’d called off the putative killer and denied that she’d ever been serious about it. And Sheriff Radburn bought the scene he’d staged, or part of it. Yes, she’d called it off, but that hadn’t convinced him that she didn’t actively desire George Otterbein’s death, and wouldn’t eventually try to make it happen.

And when it did, she was the first person they’d want to talk to. That was basic, you always looked first to the surviving spouse, and with a far more skeptical eye than the NYPD shrink had turned on Doak’s affect, or lack thereof. Did the Widow Otterbein seem unaffected? Did she profess shock, but never shed a single tear? Did the tears flow like an open faucet, but remain somehow unconvincing? Was she too emotional? Was she not emotional enough?

Was she too quick to call for an attorney? Was she not quick enough, as if overly concerned how it might look to lawyer up before the body was cold?

Would she consent to a polygraph test? Her lawyer would shoot that down, but suppose they asked her before he got there? It wasn’t evidence, but there were plenty of ways they could hang her with it. They’d make what they wanted out of it, believing the jagged graph when it called her a liar, dismissing it as bad science if it backed her up.

And maybe you couldn’t point to it in a courtroom, but you could leak the results when it suited your purpose, so that the jury pool wound up awash with men and women who knew she’d taken a lie detector test, and knew too that she’d failed it.

A call on the Lisa phone: “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Darling, I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“Uh, I suppose you should tell me the bad news first.”

“It’s the same news.”

“I don’t—”

“I’m being a pain in the ass, aren’t I? I’m sorry. I’m not pregnant.”

“Well, that’s good news, isn’t it? So how is it also bad news?”

“Think about it, Sherlock.”

“Oh.”

“Right. So let’s just postpone our next get-together, because, well, you do get the picture, don’t you?”

“You know, even if we don’t do anything—”

“Not to mention that there are other things we could do, and they’re all things I’m very fond of, believe me. But I’m bitchy and blotchy and I’ve got cramps and I’m totally not in the mood. So we’ll have a little five-day vacation, and in the meantime why don’t you call one of your girlfriends?”

“How did girlfriends get to be plural? There’s just the one.”

“Real Estate Girl, the one with the oh-so-fabulous stories, except that would make them fables, and fables have to have morals. Which her stories don’t, and neither does she, and neither do we, either one of us, and isn’t that nice? Call her up and get her to tell you a story, and in a few days you can tell it to me. Or you know what? Bring her along and she can entertain us both. You’ve gone quiet. Don’t tell me you’re shocked.”

“I didn’t know you were into that.”

“Girls? Not in years, and it was never really what I was about, but women’s bodies are nice, aren’t they?”

“I’ve always thought so.”

“Well, they just are, and it’s not like I’d forget what to do. When you come right down to it, what’s the difference between eating pussy and riding a bicycle?”

“Uh—”

“That’s a rhetorical question, darling. You don’t have to answer it. And if I do forget, I’ll just do her the way you do me. You know who I’d really like to do? Roberta, but I forget her last name. You know who I mean. Pregnant Girl.”

“You’ve never even seen her.”

“I haven’t seen Barbie Doll either. You’ve seen her, but you haven’t done anything about it, and I don’t know what you’re waiting for. How long before she has the kid?”

“I don’t know. A couple of months.”

“Well, there’s time, but still. I’m sure Real Estate Girl’s great, but I want Pregnant Girl. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I have the feeling we could get Barb to do anything, and she’d be up for it.”

“You could be right.”

“And Pregnant Girl wouldn’t be up for it, but we could make her do it anyway. And maybe she’d like it and maybe she wouldn’t, and either way we’d have a good time. Now you’re shocked. But you still love me, don’t you?”