William Bernhardt - Murder One

“I—I should’ve seen—”

“Yeah, you should’ve. But you didn’t. Like most men, your mind was somewhere else whenever I was around.” Keri laughed shrill and brittle. “You probably said a million times, one petite nineteen-year-old girl wouldn’t have enough strength to pull off this crime. And you were right. But two women working together—that’s another thing altogether.”

“But you two hate each other.”

“Do we?” Keri smiled and then, touching her fingers to her lips, blew Andrea a kiss. “Men are so easily deceived.”

“But, all those fights—I saw them—”

“Staged. That time Andrea came to your office because she supposedly wanted to tell Christina something? Wrong. She came to stage a fight. For your benefit.”

“That can’t be.” Ben struggled to make sense of it all. “I saw the way you two went at each other. That was real.”

“Sure it was, Ben. Just like professional wrestling.” She laughed, then leaned toward Andrea. “The truth of the matter is, we’re very close, aren’t we, dear?” Andrea pressed close to her, and the two women locked lips for a deep and passionate kiss.

Ben braced himself against the wall. The room seemed to be moving, revolving around him. “But— why? ”

Keri broke off the kiss and started to answer, but Andrea threw a sofa pillow at her. “Keep those pert little lips closed.”

“He can’t do anything about it, Andrea. He’s sworn to secrecy. Besides the case is over. I can’t be retried, and the cops will never admit they made a mistake and go after someone else. Right, Ben?” She grinned. “It’s over.”

“I asked you a question,” Ben said, his voice hollow. “Why?”

“I’m afraid the answer to that question is all too pedestrian. Money. Joe had a lot of it, remember?”

“But Andrea was already married to him.”

“He wasn’t sharing.”

“She could divorce him. By law, the money would be half hers.”

“Actually, no. The money was in a trust fund from his grandparents, remember? And Joe was the beneficiary. So the money went to him and him alone. In the event of a divorce, she would get nothing. There was a time when Joe shared the loot with his beloved, but after things got frosty between them, he stopped. So what could she do? Divorce wouldn’t help her get her hands on the goodies. But if Joe died, and Andrea was the beneficiary of his will, which she was, the proceeds of the trust fund would go to her. So he had to die.”

“And you helped?”

“Strange world, isn’t it? Who would’ve ever thought the two of us would get together? When Andrea came to my apartment that night, she was ready to tear my eyes out, just like she said. We had a bit of a tussle. Not quite as violent as she described it, but it was still a major league turn-on. Rolling around on the floor, our bodies pressed together. I thought she was hot, and I guess she felt the same way about me. Ten minutes after she arrived, we were making out like nobody’s business. And when that was finished, we talked. To make a long story short, we realized we had a lot in common. Like for instance, that we’d both be better off if Joe McNaughton was dead.”

“But—you weren’t a beneficiary.”

“No. But since Joe was going to break it off with me, I was out in the cold. Until Andrea offered me a slice of the pie for my assistance. Which I gladly gave.”

“You helped her murder her husband?”

“Hey, I was the mastermind. I came up with the ideas. When Joe returned to my apartment on that fateful night, we were both waiting for him. I did most of the knife work. But Andrea was a big help with the chains and moving the body and such, weren’t you, dear?” She quickly pointed a finger. “Don’t answer that.”

“Joe was a strong man—”

“Yes, a strong man with a strong taste for sadomasochistic sex. You may have noticed in those photos, he’s always the one on his knees in the dog collar, and I’m always the one wielding the whip. That was the way he liked it. Actually, that was the way I liked it, too. And on that fateful night, when he came home, stripped off his clothes, got down on his knees, and asked Mommy to punish him—I did, with Andrea’s assistance. Big time.”

“Even if you had to kill him, why hang his body out in such a hideously public way?”

“To confuse and distract, of course. That was the plan, anyway. If he just turned up dead, Andrea knew she’d be the top suspect. But if he turned up chained in Bartlett Square, well, a whole new world of possibilities opened up.”

“But why the mutilation?”

“Are you really surprised? Hell, Ben, you heard my shrink rattle on for more than an hour about my violent tendencies. How I fantasized about killing Joe. When the time finally came, I made the most of it.”

Ben felt a choking in his throat.

“Andrea wasn’t very happy about that part. Then she got this brilliant idea. She knew about Joe’s investigation of Antonio Catrona. She thought that if we made it look like a mob rubout, that would confuse matters even further. And she was right. You used that red herring like a pro at trial, Ben.”

“You—you planned out the whole thing!”

A light shone behind Keri’s eyes, transforming those vivid blue eyes into something fiery and sinister. “What can I say, Ben? You take what the gene pool gives you. My mom was cruel and crazy, as I told you, and Kirk was seriously whacked, which you also knew. Is it a big surprise that my blood runs the same way? We Dalcantons, we’re nothing if not consistent. Sexual flexibility and a serious taste for violence, that’s like the family motto. Hell, even Matthews tried to tell you how violent I was when he came to my apartment. But would you listen? No—you were too busy sneaking peeks at my Wonderbra.” She laughed. “I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I enjoyed it, Ben. I snuck up behind Joe and clubbed him on the head so he couldn’t resist—I guess that’s when he got the concussion. I ripped his clothes off. Must’ve scattered his wallet and badge in the process. And then I took my little knife and tore his guts out.” She licked her lips hungrily. “I savored each and every stroke of the knife. And I especially liked labeling the creep for what he was. Faithless .”

Andrea couldn’t contain herself. “You shouldn’t have done that!”

“I told you to be quiet!” Keri shouted. The harshness of her voice sent chills down Ben’s spine. “Andrea didn’t like that touch,” she explained, her voice suddenly eerily calm. “Didn’t really fit with the mob-hit motif. And true enough, after that touch, it was inevitable that the cops would come sniffing around my panties. But I couldn’t resist. He was faithless. He deserved it.”

“My God—Matthews was right. He was right all along. He really was working to find some semblance of justice. And I—I—”

“Truth sucks, don’t it?” Keri giggled. “The truly amazing thing is, we put it all together that one night. Granted, we made some mistakes. We shouldn’t have used my knife, and we shouldn’t have used my chains. But time was short; Joe was here before we had a chance to run out for supplies. We had to use what we had at hand.” She paused reflectively. “Those two errors in judgment came back to haunt me, though. Although we successfully distracted the police from Andrea, we attracted them to me. But Andrea is nothing if not loyal. When the police came after me, she promised she’d find a way to get me off. And she did, too.”

“How?”

“Well, first of all, by sending me to you. She knew you were a whiz in the courtroom, that you had a soft heart that would naturally go out to me when I told you about my boo-hoo childhood and hard-knock life. She also suggested that if there was a little romance in the air, you would become particularly attached and unlikely to be suspicious. And boy was she right about that.”