William Lashner: A Killer’s Kiss

I bent down, put one arm behind her neck, snaked the other arm beneath her legs, lifted. She was lighter than a woman her size had any right to be. I smelled the shampoo in her hair and felt the silky heat of her skin as I carried her to the couch. I placed her gently on the cushions so she was sitting up. From the bedroom I fetched her a blanket, with which I covered her modestly. From the kitchen I fetched her a beer, which I placed into her hand. She sipped from the bottle once and then ignored it while her dazed eyes darted to and fro. I sat close and petted her still-wet hair.

“Do they know who killed him?”

“No.”

“Do they know why?”

“Not yet.”

“Was it a robbery?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do I do now?”

“You need to get dressed,” I said.

“Okay.”

“The cops are outside. They’re looking for you, and they’re outside.”

“Why are they looking for me?”

“To ask you questions. They want you to help them find out who killed your husband. And they’ll also want to know where you were tonight.”

“Do they know I’m here?”

“Not for sure, but they suspect.”

“They shouldn’t know. This was just about us, not about them. I don’t want them goose-stepping into our lives.”

“It’s too late for that. Either they’re waiting outside, hoping to catch you leave, or they’re waiting for a warrant to be approved by a judge so they can come back and search my apartment. Either way, you need to get dressed.”

“I’ll go out the back.”

“My guess is it’s also being watched.”

“Where will I go?”

“It doesn’t really matter. Once the police spot you, they’ll pick you up and take you to the Roundhouse for questioning.”

“Police headquarters?”

“That’s right.”

“They think I did it.”

“They’ll just want to ask you some questions. And they’ll want to know where you were all night.”

“Here,” she said.

“Before you came here.”

She stared out for a moment as something washed through her. Then her eyes went slack and the blanket fell to her waist, exposing her breasts, and she did nothing about it. It was strange to see Julia at such a loss, as if when she heard the news the secret that seemed always to sustain her had slipped away along with the blanket. When she spoke, finally, her eyes still were distant, as if focused on some far shore, and there was a soft, girlish note in her voice.

“Remember when you spoke about regrets,” she said. “In the hotel bar. You were thinking of me, which was so sweet it almost made me cry. I was thinking of myself at sixteen, living in Ashland. Ashland, Virginia. ‘The Center of the Universe.’ That’s the town motto.”

“I can’t imagine you at sixteen.”

“I was in the drama club at John Paul Jones High School. Romeo and Juliet. I played the lead.”

“Forsooth.”

“It was a disaster, and yet it was the highlight of my life. Is that sad, Victor, playing Juliet in a silly high-school production being the highlight of your life?”

“Who was Romeo?”

“Nobody. Somebody. A sweet boy. Terrence.”

“That name must have made for some unpleasant afternoons on the schoolyard.”

“Terry. You should have seen him then, Victor. He was Romeo in his bones.”

“I’m getting jealous.”

She licked her lips. A worm of emotion stirred in my gut. In all our time together, she had never before rambled on like this about her past, never before let her voice be twisted by remembrance and sentiment. It was as if she were a different woman entirely, open and unguarded, sweetly innocent, the woman I had imagined her to be when first I spied her behind the counter of that coffee joint. I couldn’t help myself. I leaned forward and kissed her.

She raised a hand, touched my cheek. “‘Thou mayst think my ’havior light,’” she said: “‘But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange.’”

“Is that Juliet?”

“On the balcony. But it proved to be a lie, and I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

Was I a fool to think it was my misplaced trust and my betrayed hopes that had been plaguing her all these years?

“It’s time to go home,” she said.

Was I a fool to wonder if my heart was the home for which she yearned?

“I’m here,” I said.

“I know, but I want to go home.”

Yes, I was that fool. I stood, straightened my spine to a lawyer’s posture. “You can’t go back to your house,” I said. “It’s now a crime scene. The coroner would have already picked up the body, but there will be yellow tape across the front door, there will be technicians taking prints and searching for evidence. There will be blood.”

At the word blood, her eyes focused, as if some red and sodden image had snapped her back to the present and its prickly predicament. She pulled the blanket up to her neck. She noticed the beer in her hand and took a long drink.

“I’ll just stay here,” she said.

“The cops are going to find you, Julia. It’s better for you if you find them first.”

“What do I tell them?”

“Either you tell them the whole truth or you tell them nothing. Those are your choices.”

“Which should I do?”

“Do you have an attorney?”

“I suppose. Wren did, at least. Clarence, Clarence Swift.”

“Then you should call this Clarence Swift and ask his advice.”

“But what about you? Why don’t you be my lawyer?”

“I can’t represent you. I’m a witness to your whereabouts. If I try to represent you, they’ll have me disqualified immediately, and it will gum up everything. But as a friend, I would advise you for the time being to tell them nothing before you talk to your lawyer.”

“I didn’t do anything, Victor.”

“It doesn’t matter. They can twist things. And I don’t trust the guys they assigned to the case.”

“Do they think I killed him?”

“The spouse is always a suspect until she’s cleared.”

“What do you think?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“But you just kissed me. Would you kiss me if you thought I was a killer?”

“Go get dressed,” I said.

She took another long drink of the beer, nodded a couple of times, and then stood. As she turned away from me and walked into my bedroom, the blanket still clutched to her front, I caught a view of the length of her naked body, from the back of her head to her thin heels.

Lovely neck, I thought. A sweet arch in her spine. Nice legs. To answer her question, even if my worst suspicions had been right, I’d still kiss her. And more. See, I never believed that part about Sam Spade. Sure he would have turned in Brigid O’Shaughnessy, but only after. That’s the way we’re wired.

When she came out of the bedroom, she was fully dressed, with makeup in place and lipstick bright, her red handbag like a shield at her side. She looked like a woman who had made a decision. I turned to the window again, peered out at the street. The car was still there, Hanratty and Sims were still there.

“They’re waiting for you.”

“I’m ready,” she said, her voice firm.

“I’ll take you down, introduce you, stay with you as long as they let me. Do you remember what I said?”

“To say nothing.”

“Good. If they press, tell them you want to see your lawyer.”

“Okay.”

I walked toward her, took hold of her right arm to lead her to the door, but she didn’t follow. Instead she pivoted forward into my chest. The top of her head tickled my nose. We stood there for a while. And then she tilted her face up and stood on tiptoe and kissed me. And I let her. She kissed me, and her body eased and sagged into mine, and we fit together, like we fit together before, like we were made one for the other, and I kissed her back. I liked it more than I should have liked it, considering the dead man and the questions that remained. But I didn’t like it as much as I did before the knock on my door. It still had the past, present, and future in it, but the idealized sheen was gone, and I could see them now for what they truly were: soiled, paranoid, dead.