Charlaine Harris - Shakespeare’s Champion

He collapsed on top of me and I put both my arms around him for the first time. I ran my hands over his back and bottom, feeling skin and muscles, planes and curves. He nuzzled my neck gently for a minute, withdrew from me, and rolled onto his back. The white gauze was spotted with red.

“Your shoulder!” I raised up on an elbow to look. My bedroom was getting a little lighter; the dark and secret cave had opened to the world.

“I don’t care,” he said, shaking his head from side to side on the pillow. “Someone could come in here and shoot me again, and right this moment I wouldn’t care. I tried to stay away from you, tried not to think about you… if they hadn’t been so close, I wouldn’t have come here, but I can’t be sorry. Jesus God, Lily, that was absolutely-wonderful. No other woman… God, that was sensational.”

I was shattered myself. Even more than by the physical sensations Jack had given me, I was a little frightened by the urge I had to touch him, hold him, bathe myself in him. In self-defense, I thought of all the women he’d had.

“Who are you thinking about?” He opened his eyes and stared at me. “Oh, Karen.” I was frightened that he knew so much about me that he would read my face that way. His own eyes lost their glow, flattened, when he said the name Karen.

Jack Leeds had become a household reference right about the time Lily Bard had, in the same state, Tennessee; and in the same city, Memphis. While my name became linked with that of the crime committed against me (“Lily Bard, victim of a brutal rape and mutilation”), Jack’s was always followed by the trailer, “alleged lover of Karen Kingsland.”

Karen Kingsland, from her newspaper photos a sweet-faced brunette, had been sleeping with Jack for four months when catastrophe wiped out three lives. She was twenty-six years old, earning her master’s degree in education from the University of Memphis. She was also the wife of another cop.

One Thursday morning, Walter Kingsland, Karen’s husband, got an anonymous letter at work. A uniformed officer for ten years, he was about to go on patrol. Opening the letter, laughing about receiving it, in front of many of his friends, Walter read that Karen and Jack were having sex, and having it often. The letter, which Walter dropped to the floor as he left, was quite detailed. A friend of Jack’s called Jack instantly, but he was not as quick as Walter. No one called Karen.

Walter drove home like a maniac, arriving just as Karen was leaving for class. He barricaded himself and his wife in the bedroom of their east Memphis home. Jack came in through the front door moments later, hoping to end the situation quickly and privately somehow. He had not been thinking well. He stood at the door of the bedroom and listened to Walter plead with his wife to say Jack had raped her, or that it was all a malicious lie on the part of some enemy.

By that time, the modest Kingsland home was surrounded by cops. The phone rang and rang, and finally Jack picked it up in the living room and described the situation to his coworkers and superiors. There was not going to be any private or amicable solution, and it would be fortunate if all three involved made it through alive. Jack wanted to offer himself as hostage in exchange for Karen. His superiors, on the advice of the hostage negotiation team, turned him down. Then Jack revealed to them what Walter did not know yet, what Karen had only told Jack the day before: Karen Kingsland was pregnant.

At that point, it would have been hard to find anyone in the Memphis Police Department who wasn’t, at the very least, disgusted with Jack Leeds.

From the living room, Jack could hear Karen scream in pain.

He yelled through the door that Walter should exchange his wife for Jack, since torturing a woman was nothing a real man would do.

This time Walter agreed to swap his wife for his wife’s lover.

Without consulting anyone, Jack agreed.

Walter yelled that he’d bring Karen to the back door. Jack should be standing on the sundeck, weaponless. Walter would push Karen out and Jack would come in.

Detective Jack Leeds went outside, took off his jacket, his shoes and socks, his shirt, so Walter Kingsland could tell Jack wasn’t carrying a concealed weapon. And sure enough, out of the bedroom came Walter and Karen. From inside the kitchen, Walter yelled to Jack to turn around, so Walter could make sure there wasn’t a gun stuck in the back of Jack’s slacks.

Then Walter appeared, framed in the open back door holding Karen by one of her arms, his gun to her head. Now there was tape over her mouth, and her eyes were crazed. She was missing the little finger of her right hand, and blood was pouring out of the wound.

“Come closer,” Kingsland said. “Then I’ll let her go.”

Jack had stepped closer, his eyes on his lover.

Walter Kingsland shot Karen through the head and shoved her out on top of Jack.

And this part, media hounds, was on videotape. Jack’s yell of horror, Walter Kingsland’s screaming, “You want her so bad, you got her!” Walter’s taking aim at Jack, now covered with Karen’s blood and brains, trying to rise: a dozen bullets cutting Walter down, bullets fired unwillingly by men that knew him, men that knew Walter Kingsland for high-strung, hot-tempered, possessive; but also as brave, good-natured, and resourceful.

Jack had been a plainclothes detective, often working undercover. He had a stellar work record. He had a rotten personal life. He drank, he smoked, he’d already been divorced twice. He was envied, but not liked; decorated, but not altogether trusted. And after that day in the Kingslands’ backyard, he was no longer a Memphis cop. Like me, he sank to the bottom to avoid the light of the public eye.

This was the chronicle of the man I was in bed with.

“I guess we’ll have to talk about that sometime,” he said with a sigh, and his face looked immeasurably older than it had been. “And what happened to you.” His finger traced the worst scar, the one circling my right breast.

I lay close to him, put my arm over his chest. “No,” I said. “We don’t have to.”

“The funny thing is,” he said quietly, “Karen wrote that letter herself.”

“Oh, no.”

“She did.” After all this time, there was still pained wonder in his voice. “It was from her typewriter. She wanted Walter to know. I’ll never understand why. Maybe she wanted more attention from him. Maybe she wanted him to initiate a divorce. Maybe she wanted us to fight over her. I thought I knew her, thought I loved her. But I won’t ever know why she did that.”

I thought of things I could say, even things I wanted to say, but none of them could repair the damage I’d recalled to his mind. Nothing could ever make up for what Karen Kingsland had done to Jack, what he had done to himself. Nothing could ever get back Jack’s job, his reputation. And I knew nothing would ever erase the memory of Karen’s head exploding in front of his eyes.

And nothing could ever erase what had happened to me a couple of months afterward: the abduction, the rape, the cutting, the man I’d shot. I felt the urge to make some good memories.

I swung my leg over him, straddled him, bent to kiss him, smoothed his long black hair against the white lace-trimmed pillowcase. I was not ashamed of my scars with Jack Leeds. He had a full set of his own. I told him, close to his ear, that I was about to take him inside me again. I told him how it would feel. I could hear him draw his breath, and soon I could feel his excitement. My own heart was pounding.

It was even better this time.

“Why housecleaning?” he asked later.

“I knew how to do it, and I could do it by myself.” That was the short answer, and true enough, as far as it went. “Why detective? What kind are you, anyway?”