Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

The old man stopped her short. He chuffed a bit, and fiddled with a cuff link before meeting her eye.

“Winter, I am truly sorry if I jumped to conclusions. I do understand you now and it’s so good of you. Forgive me. Because there are people who prey on — not you, certainly not! — but in the time since all these ‘difficulties’ came to a head, so to speak, I have learned that my wife — that Bluey has written checks in the last six months to various charitable organizations, some of which have proved dubious. Some of these came from phone solicitations. There are whole armies of people, it seems, who prey on people such as my wife. We are actively going over all her transactions of the past year. We are doing it at this very moment. So I appreciate you coming to me, Winter. And I assure you everything will be looked into.”

“You won’t say anything to her, will you, Mr. Trotter? About my concerns?”

“Of course not,” he said, putting an arm around her.

“Thank you! Thank you so much.”

“Thank you , Winter. Now, get some rest. You look tired.”

“I will, sir. The night nurses have just arrived.”

“I’m going to move them in, Winter — we need three shifts. Two isn’t enough. Because it’s far too much for you, now isn’t it?” He felt an onrush of emotion for this selfless woman, who had served so long and so well. “We need three shifts, and we need the people already here so we’re not at the mercy of waiting — so you don’t have to wait. Extra pairs of eyes to watch over her … so you’re free to go to your room and look at television. Or to the Village to take in a movie. And not be burdened by waiting for someone to show up. That’s already in the works.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He gave her a hug and ushered her out before she had a chance to start bawling.

Jane Scull heard a commotion. Some lights came on, and she was confused. Was it morning? She climbed down from her bunk, rubbing her eyes. Then looked up: horror! She ran to William, now surrounded by policemen, hands fastened behind his back.

“It’s all right, Janey! It’s all right.”

A staffperson restrained her while a lady cop stood between Jane and her beau.

“ Uttt? Cant ake youuuh! ” Now all the hours spent enunciating before the mirror were for naught. She trundled after, and William asked an officer if he might please say a word to his frightened friend. Seeing that he was peaceable, they allowed a supervised moment before locking him away.

“Janey darling, it’s a mistake — I’ll be back, don’t worry! Don’t cry , there’s no reason for it. I left ice cream in the freezer with a special topping. You’ll have some, won’t you?”

She nodded and composed herself to speak as best she could. He leaned to her mouth and had trouble understanding, but at the last moment, just before they made him go, his eyes flashed righteously — she was asking if he’d hurt a girl, a little girl! That’s why she thought they had come for him …

“Janey, Janey, who told you such a thing? That child was my life! I did everything I could to help her!” He was flabbergasted, and numbly took in those gathered around as if they were picadors and he had been one hundred times lanced. “Who would tell you such a thing?” They pulled him away, and William had no time to explain. “Now, don’t you worry your pretty head,” he shouted. “D’you hear? I have done nothing , Janey! [His refutation being general, for he knew not why they had come for him, either.] Have your ice cream in the morning and by the time you finish, I’ll be home!”

As the handcuffed giant awkwardly insinuated himself into the backseat, an officer held a palm over his head in the baptismal gesture that ushered the doomed into custody.

“See to my personal things, Janey! My book — see that it’s safe!”

She nodded vigorously, while the staffers held her back, and cried when the black-and-white peeled away, joyful with what she’d known in her heart all along: her William was bighearted and tender and good. Her William was the Lord’s child, and innocent too! She would visit Please-Help.-Bless once more, then have dessert — and by the time she finished the very last spoonful, her man would be forever home.

The very next morning, Samson Dowling drove downtown to interview the prisoner, who was being held on charges of murder and rape. Arraignment wasn’t until Tuesday, and a public defender would not be appointed before then; the client would be shackled and already in court on the occasion of that first meet.

After the MacLaren interview, his gut told him it was unlikely that the suspect (who since the arrest had reluctantly identified himself as William Marcus) had participated in any nefarious acts, sexual or otherwise, involving the girl. He would no doubt be cleared of such accusations — but that was the least of the prisoner’s worries.

Regarding the murder, Samson had a few threadbare theories. He believed the defendant was in a relationship with the deceased and that there had been a squabble over money or drugs — perhaps even a classic sex-gone-bad scenario escalating to homicide. Things got a little murkier after that. One of his thoughts was that after the killing, a remorseful “Mr. Marcus” aided the girl as a kind of penance. Yet what troubled the detective most were the vicious circumstances surrounding the mother’s death.

The coroner’s report concluded that the woman had been raped postmortem. Amaryllis had told intake workers that her brother and sister were crawling on the bed when she came home to find the body, meaning they had been either in the kitchenette or the room itself while the crimes were being committed. Whether they were sound asleep or not meant little; their sheer presence betrayed a coldness on the part of the killer that was unsettling.

Other details nagged. Investigators were unable to lift prints from the scene; it was the detective’s experience that in a case like this, such fastidiousness (given the low-life players) was unusual to say the least. In other words, there was a degree of professionalism involved. Then there was the actual method of strangulation, accomplished by ligatures of uncommon complexity. What was the meaning of it?

But the most damning piece of evidence was the navy-blue ascot. Amaryllis had corroborated that it belonged to William Marcus aka Topsy; and while the silken item — stuffed deep in the victim’s throat — had not been the instrument of her death, it revealed yet another layer of brutality.

Samson found himself high in the Twin Towers, sitting opposite a weather-beaten mountain of Caucasian male, roughly forty-five years of age, with long, slender fingers on delicate hands and cool, gray eyes. His informant (whom the detective paid off and hoped never to have dealings with again) had accurately conveyed that since relocating to the beach, the formerly hirsute “Mr. Marcus” was now in fact close-shaven; Samson wished he’d at least gotten a glimpse of that near-legendary beard, for it had helped him better form a picture these last few months. William Marcus was assumed to be an alias but would have to be lived with until the computers told them otherwise. †

He began rather delicately, for his instincts told him there was no other way to approach the creature before him; but soon he was asking anything he wanted, for something in the man made him want to rush to the heart of things. Where had he been living before the beach? Had he bivouac’d downtown, under a bridge? Had he ever worked for a man named Gilles Mott in a Temple Street bakery for pocket money? Did he bring a young girl there? And where did he meet that selfsame girl? Was it the girl’s mother who introduced them?