DARK CITY a gripping detective mystery (17 page)

Chapter 31

A Coiled Snake

Anna Summers was a different creature in captivity, no longer a timid soul afraid of confrontation, instead a coiled snake ready to lash out and strike. She studied her surroundings, her mind trying to devise an exit strategy. No escape was obvious, the room secure enough, the walls stained with ample quantities of blood. She knew she was trapped; her only option was to convince Detective Knox he had made a terrible mistake. She was well-trained in lying, her mind could spin whole webs of fiction, delicate and ornate. No man had ever been able to stand straight as she bent their will to hers, all of them succumbing to the carnal appetite of her charms. There was little satisfaction in the art of conning those who were glad to be taken in, but Anna was not in the game for the intellectual victories. Men were tools she used to get what she wanted.

Detective Knox entered the room, calmly sitting down opposite Anna. He made sure to dull his response, to not let on how satisfying this arrest had been. He knew Anna was an egoist at heart, and that she would be distraught as much over being caught as knowing it was business as usual. Detective Knox could see in her eyes that what Anna desired most of all was to be praised for her ingenuity, for almost getting away with the perfect murder.

Anna could not understand what had gone wrong, how her plan had been uncovered. She had been careful at every step, meticulously planning her moves, leaving no trace behind that was not intentional. The puzzle was supposed to be unsolvable, the key piece missing from the set once it had been fully assembled. Detective Knox was supposed to throw his hands in the air in frustration, admitting defeat and closing the case without a conviction. Something had gone terribly wrong, Anna knew, feeling the same sense of helplessness she had intended to cause in him.

Detective Knox sat for a moment without speaking, letting the moment hang. They were now locked in a battle of wills, neither wanting to give the other the satisfaction of being the first to give away what little was left cloaked in mystery.

“Detective, I don't understand. Why did you arrest me?”

“Because you killed George Hobbes.”

“I did no such thing. You just got a confession from his son, so why are you harassing me?

“I'm glad you enjoyed that show.”

“Show? What are you talking about?”

“That was what you might call a ruse.”

“I don't understand.”

“It wasn't real. It was fake, because I knew you would be here watching.”

“And just how did you suppose to know that?”

“You had made it clear that the killer I was looking for was proud of herself, that she relished the attention that came along with outsmarting us. She would not have been able to resist the urge to stand here and watch as we made someone else confess to the crime.”

“You keep using that pronoun, she.”

“You are a woman, aren't you?”

“Yes, but I am not your killer. I can't be. I don't have the kind of skills needed to do any of that. Not like Emerson, who did.”

“That's where you went wrong. He doesn't have any skills.”

“But he said he had taken pre-med classes. George had told me before that he was going to be a doctor.”

“I'm sure he did, but it wasn't true. You were talking to a father who was embarrassed by the path his son had chosen. It was easier for him to say his son was trying to be a doctor than admit the truth.”

“Which was?”

“That Emerson Hobbes spent his college years in drama school. He's an actor. And judging by the look on your face, he's a pretty good one.”

Anna's shoulders slumped as she fell against the back of the chair. She had never considered the possibility that she had been lied to. For as long as she had lived near George Hobbes, he had never given her a reason to think he was anything but a good, honest man. Understanding people was a difficult enough task for those who were normal, and nearly impossible for those who were not. Anna realized, as she sat shackled to the table, that she had made too many assumptions about the nature of people.

“Even if he didn't do it, what makes you think it was me?”

“You do. I didn't notice it at first, but your behavior isn't consistent with what I would have expected.”

“That's a flimsy argument.”

“It wasn't a coincidence that you happened to show up here just after I got a letter from the killer. You were here because you had sent it, and you wanted to see how much it upset me. It only became clear once I started thinking about you as a suspect.”

“A suspect? You were grasping at straws.”

“Perhaps, a bit. But the thing is, you made a big mistake with your plan.”

“Not that I'm admitting anything, but I'm curious, what would that be?”

“The whole staged abduction. If the killer was someone in the family, they would have been able to find a much simpler way of killing him. The fact that you went to such extremes eventually led me to the conclusion that the killer couldn't have been a family member. It had to be someone on the outside, trying to cover their tracks. That left you as the main suspect, because you popped up too often.”

“So far, everything you've said still sounds like a theory, and not like evidence. Do you have anything to prove I actually did this?”

“I have your confession. Or, I will.”

“You're crazy if you think I'm going to confess to a murder I didn't commit.”

“Do you really think that if we tore apart your life, we wouldn't find a single hair, or fiber, or speck of DNA to tie you to this? I've been around a long time, and I know all the tricks, and there isn't a way to avoid leaving a trace behind.”

“Have you ever sat across from a gambler?”

“I have, and what I can tell you is that even a gambler knows when to throw down their hand. Maybe we find the evidence, maybe we don't. If you don't confess, the stakes become higher with each passing day. Right now, you can get all the attention you've ever wanted, and you'll live to see the sun shine again. If you don't, let's just say no one will ever notice when you die.”

Anna turned the thought over in her mind, tilling the fertile possibilities. Getting caught had never been part of her plan, but faced with the reality, she had to weigh her options. The endgame had been to get away with murder, to prove it was possible, but now that she had been discovered, there was little reason to continue the facade. Whether in jail or running for her life, she had failed. Failure deserved to be punished.

“I'll make a deal with you. I'll tell you what you want to know, if you tell me what I want to know.”

“That sounds fair. What do you want to know?”

“How did you figure it out? My plan was perfect.”

“It was indeed. I'll give you all the credit in the world for being brilliantly evil. I don't think there is a detective alive who would have looked at the body and come up with the right answer. You obviously know the rule book we play by, and you used it perfectly against us.”

“If that's the case, why am I sitting here?”

“Because I was too drunk to play by the rules.”

“I don't understand.”

“You would have gotten away with murder if I was a better man, but I got drunk and angry, and I did something stupid. My moment of weakness led me to the answer. So what I'm saying is that one sin uncovers another.”

“I suppose I have rotten luck.”

“There is no such thing. Now it's your turn to talk.”

“I suppose you want to know why I did it, don't you?”

“Yes, that would be a good start.”

“You're not going to like the answer.”

“Tell me anyway. Humor me.”

“I killed him to see if I could get away with it, to see if you could figure it all out. It was sort of a human experiment. I like pushing the pieces around and seeing how people react.”

“This was going a bit far, don't you think?”

“Maybe. If you have a conscience. I don't, however, so it was just another game to me.”

“That might just be the worst explanation I've ever heard. I figured you'd have some grand declaration to make. You disappoint me.”

“Come now, detective. Doesn't the thought of getting away with murder excite you? Haven't you ever thought about whether you could do it or not?”

“No, I spend enough time thinking about death as it is.”

“You're missing out. I would bet you're one of the few people smart enough to do it.”

“Plenty of people get away with it all the time. You don't have to be smart; you just have to be lucky.”

“I thought you said there was no such thing.”

“It's a figure of speech.”

“Do me a favor, think about it.”

“No thanks.”

* * *

Detective Knox closed the door behind him, feeling less satisfied than he usually did after closing a case. Anna had gotten under his skin, showed him a side of humanity he was not used to. Even in the city, even amongst the killers he saw on a daily basis, there was always a reason for the shedding of blood. Anna was an amoral creature, someone who extinguished a life as though it mattered no more than the flame of a candle on an unwelcome birthday cake.

Detective Lane drew nearer, his face contorted with anguish. Knox could tell he was struggling to digest what he had heard; the very foundation of his world fracturing as his understanding of humanity was upended.

“Did that just happen?”

“Yes, kid, it did. You come across all sorts on this job, but even for me she's out there. I've never seen anything quite like her.”

“How did you know she would confess?”

“People with egos like that, the one thing they want more than anything is attention. Getting the credit, getting her name in the paper, that's even more important than being free.”

“That's an odd way to be wired.”

“We're all weird. Some of us know we are, and figure out how to deal with it. The rest are just hoping they're never in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Have you ever been?”

“Every day, kid. Every day.”

Chapter 32

Salvation

Detective Knox knew what he was supposed to be feeling, the sense of elation that came with solving an unsolvable riddle, taking a killer off the streets, and relieving his mind in the process. His hand trembled on the handle as he paused before entering. Blackness filled his vision as he closed his eyes, taking in one last deep breath of cold city air before he pried the door open. The warmth of home hit his face, more inviting than usual. Something inside him was different, though he could not put his finger on exactly what had changed. After a case was closed, he seldom felt the urge to rush home, preferring to revel in celebratory excess by draining a bottle of whiskey by himself. It was a routine that was misinterpreted as misanthropy, but Detective Knox did not see it that way.

To his mind, a victory such as this one could only be appreciated properly when given ample time to sink in, which could not be done while sharing the experience with others. The glad-handing that came in social settings were good for giving lip-service to the notion of success, but did nothing to instill the lessons that came along with it. Self-reflection was the only recipe for taking success to heart. That others could not see what Detective Knox did was not his fault, or at least he told himself.

This time, Detective Knox did not want to bury himself in a bottle, tasting the sweet drops of victory as they fell upon his tongue, while sitting alone in a dark bar, running his fingers over the blood-stained carving on a table, eying the crowd for his next case. What he wanted was to be at home, with Kat, sharing a connection with another person that might remind him all hope was not lost. Hope was not something that came naturally to him, a resource that needed to be infused into him by others. That was Kat's role, the reason he loved her. She tethered him to the rest of the world; she was the lone dissenter stopping the crowd of angry villagers before they could lay into him with their pitchforks.

Kat greeted him as he stepped through the door, into another world. The smile on her face would often make him wonder about her sanity, how she could manage to smile in a city filled with as much evil as he knew was out there. On this occasion, he did not resort to such thinking, and instead was reassured by her presence that his heart was still beating. He approached her, and had given her a kiss before she knew what was happening. Kat was confused, not recognizing the man embracing her. Her husband had become cold over the years, eschewing such affection as a product of a spent youth.

“What's gotten into you?”

“I closed the case.”

“Congratulations. I'm so proud of you, but that doesn't explain all of this.”

“It's the weirdest thing. I usually feel great when I solve a case, but this time I don’t. I feel nothing, at least I didn’t until I walked in the door.”

“That's almost sweet, if you mean it.”

“I do, I think.”

“Why is it different this time? Not that I'm complaining.”

“I don't really know. I guess this answer was even more disheartening than usual. Sometimes, knowing why something happened doesn't make it any easier to understand.”

“I could have told you that, if you ever listened to me.”

“Listening to you is the only reason I solved this one.”

Kat's eyes lit up. It was the first time she had received credit for assisting his thinking on a case.

“Do tell.”

“Now you're trying to rub it in.”

“Maybe a bit. I'll tell you what, you go in the den and relax, and I'm going to go out and get us a bottle of something good to celebrate with. How does that sound?”

“That works for me.”

Kat gathered up her coat, wrapping herself tightly in its warmth. Detective Knox let his weight fall into his favorite chair, melting into the soft support. He looked up to see Kat leaving, a grin on her face the likes of which he had not seen for years. Little gestures could bring her such happiness, he noticed, ashamed that he failed to make the effort to provide them more often. He had not lived up to his promise, something she would not remind him of, something he was well aware of. Making a promise to change would have been the right thing to do, but he knew the likelihood of that occurring was low, and so did Kat. She would not want him to be anyone other than who he was. He would say he wanted to be different, but his consistency would show the confusion in his mind on that point.

Alone once again, Detective Knox's thoughts shifted back to the case. The clock ticked in lockstep with the gears turning in his mind. The dust was knocked off, and as the wheels spun, his troubles began to come into focus. Anna's question came back to him, hanging over him like the sword of Damocles.

In all the years he had been consumed by murder, he had never thought about what it would take to be on the other side of the table, to be the one taking life. Anna's query spurred him to sort through his subconscious, in search of any evidence of such desires. Deep in the recesses, he found what he was looking for, a nascent idea of pure evil that had been sentenced to the dungeon of his mind. It was there, as he had suspected, although he had refused to admit it before. He could not deny that the idea had an intellectual appeal, that the only puzzle more satisfying than solving murders was that of committing the perfect one himself.

He did not wish to continue down this line of thinking, to allow himself to be stained by the ugliness it entailed, but he was often powerless to stop himself once set in motion. Despite himself, schematics began drawing themselves before his eyes, intricate plans for the perfect murder. Detective Knox tried to shut them down before their images could be burned into his eyes, but he could feel himself spiraling further downwards. He had emerged victorious by catching Anna, but she may have struck back by dosing him with a dangerous mental poison. He was not sure if he would be able to repress the thoughts, to live the rest of his life without knowing whether he could do what Anna could not.

As he felt himself slipping away, the door opened, and Kat entered, shimmering with the glistening dew of melting snow. He saw in her something more than beauty, he saw salvation.

“It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but tonight's about celebrating. Are you still feeling up to it?”

“Absolutely. I'm feeling great.”

Detective Knox couldn't tell whether he was lying to Kat, or to himself.

THE END