Don't Look Now (3 page)

He directed his light along the crumbling concrete retainer wall at the rear of the motel’s property. Nothing. Nothing
moving
. A few fifty-gallon drums, a couple of chained-down picnic tables, the remains of an old cast-iron barbecue.

If I had a brain, Paris thought, I’d pack this in until morning.

He glanced at his watch. It
was
morning. He clicked off his flashlight and—

The sound came from directly behind him. The sound of heavy boots on broken glass. Paris turned quickly, but the tall man in the Irish walking-hat was already upon him. He grabbed Paris by the hair and ran his straight razor across his throat.

‘You wanted to fuck her too, didn’t you?’ the man said, his voice gravelly and wet. ‘Admit it, Jack.’

At first, Paris thought the man had pinched him – the contact seemed so light, so
minor
– but a scant moment later the blurt of bright red blood that slapped against the side of the rusted Dumpster told him all he needed to know.

The man had severed his jugular vein.

Paris fell to his knees and screamed.

The man came at him again, swinging the razor in broad, muscular arcs, striking Paris’s face and chest, chopping away the flesh in burger-sized chunks. For Paris, the pain soon coalesced into an excruciating red knife in the center of his brain.

He screamed again.

Soon, in his mind, his scream became a brain-rattling bell and the bell became the telephone and it was the phone, not the sunlight or his pounding skull or his fear, that brought him raging back to consciousness.

It rang again.
Screamed
again.

Paris looked around, terrified and disoriented, clutching at his neck. He was in his apartment and it was at least noon. He sat up, grabbed the receiver – his heart still racing furiously, his head a violent echo chamber – and brought it to his ear.

‘Daddy,’ the young voice said. ‘I
knew
you’d still be there.’

Paris tried to speak, but his mouth was thick with wool.

‘Dad-eeeeeeeee!’

It was Melissa, his daughter. And
man
did she sound pissed. ‘What’s the matter, sweetie?’ Paris sat up, assaulted by the noonday sun streaming through the high jalousie windows. He had to get some fucking
drapes
.

‘You were supposed to be here already,’ she said, clearly on the verge of tears.

‘Wait, sweetie,’ Paris said. ‘Wait for Daddy one second. I’ll be right back. Don’t hang up, okay?’

Not a word.

‘Missy?’

‘All right.’ Her voice sounded so small, so betrayed, that Paris’s heart clogged with shame. He ran to the bathroom, barking his shin on the coffee table en route, and doused his entire head with ice-cold, rusty water. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the way out and was nearly frightened by the look of the jowly, red-eyed man staring back.

And then he remembered.

Today was his birthday.

He glanced into the kitchen and tried to determine if he could at least get the water on the heat before his daughter disowned him right there on the phone. But he decided that the instant coffee would have to wait. He stumbled back to the couch, the quarter-bottle of Windsor staring up at him in mockery.

‘Sweetie?’

‘Yes, Daddy.’ This was a very, very solemn Melissa Adelaide Paris.

‘Where was Daddy supposed to be, honey?’

‘
The Olive Garden
,’ they said in unison.

And then everything came flooding back at once. Melissa had saved her money for six months to take her father out to lunch on his birthday at the Olive Garden restaurant on Chagrin Boulevard. Beth had even called to remind him about it three days earlier. The plan was for Beth to drop Melissa off at the restaurant, and for Paris to take her home.

Paris was going to try and explain everything to Melissa, but the woes of an overworked, boozy Cleveland homicide detective didn’t carry much weight these days, especially with slightly cynical eleven-year-old girls. ‘What time is it now, sweetie?’

‘It’s, like, twelve-oh-five already.’

‘Daddy’s on his way, okay?’ Paris said, scrambling for his pants, hoping they weren’t too creased. ‘You just wait right there, okay punkin?’

More silence. Big, cold, Beth-silence.

‘Okay, sweetie?’

‘Where am I going to
go
?’ Melissa said softly. ‘It’s not like I have a car or anything.’

Eleven going on thirty, Paris thought. She knew how to work him. Just like her mother. ‘Love you. On my way.’

Manfred, who was every bit the cur Paris felt – and probably the man’s one true friend and over-burdened confidant of late, this being the duty of Jack Russell terriers worldwide – rolled over with an indifferent woof and went back to sleep.

‘ANDIE’S ON LINE
one,’ came Jennifer’s voice over the intercom.

Matt Heller took a deep breath, loosened his tie, held his finger over the blinking, clear-plastic button. He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining an outcome, visualizing, hoping. Will she?
Would
she? He picked up the receiver and hit the button with all the authority he could muster. ‘Hi babe, what’s up?’

‘Are you sitting down?’ When Andrea Heller started off with that rhetorical question, it was usually good news. When she started with ‘You’re gonna kill me’, it usually meant a fender bender, a jammed computer printer, or that she had set the entire deck ablaze with the Charmglow. But he knew his wife’s moods as he knew his own, and that underlying fizz of Andie-ebullience in her voice was a good sign for Matt Heller and his naughty little plan for the evening.

It was serendipity.

‘You got L’Etoile,’ he said, heading her off at the giant, career-move pass. L’Etoile was a chain of upscale fragrance mini-boutiques that Andie had been stalking for six months. The account probably meant another $25,000 gross to the Heller annual household coffers.

‘I got L’Etoile,’ she echoed.

‘
Unbelievable!
’ Matt’s shout was loud enough to draw a glance and a smile from Jennifer in the outer office.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I mean, I
knew
you could do it, babe.’ They laughed at their routine. All through Andie’s meteoric rise to regional sales representative for cosmetic giant Cinq, Limited, they’d run that by each other. Often for the mini-plateaus in Matt’s career, as well.

Couldn’t have been luck
, they’d say.
Had to be you
.

While Andie’s job kept her on the road four or five days per month, the two had often thought, although never sharing it with each other, that it was just that time apart – and not some magic formula that their divorced friends kept bugging them for – that kept their marriage alive and electric.

‘So, Primo at seven-thirty? Braciole and some ridiculously expensive amarone?’ Matt asked.

‘What about somewhere a little more private?’ Her voice dropped a sexy half-octave and sent a ripple of excitement down Matt’s spine.

‘We’re feeling private, are we?’

‘Ummmmmaybe.’ Andrea sing-songed the word, a girlish ploy she knew her husband found absolutely maddening. Like when she wore her plaid skirts and knee socks. Or a hair ribbon. Or barrettes. Or the strappy shoes, his favorite.

‘I see,’ Matt replied. ‘Then how about the Terrace Room? Nobody goes there much anymore. It’s dark and private.’

‘That’d be great. Haven’t been there in years.’

‘Not too déclassé for a woman of your international reputation?’

‘Screw you,’ she whispered.

‘You know, if you whisper it, it’s not a curse anymore. If you whisper, it’s more like an invitation.’

‘I know.’

‘Let’s make it six-thirty then.’

‘You are
so
bad,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you at seven-thirty. I’ve got a few things to wrap up here and I want to stop at Beachwood Place.’

‘What if we …’ He was pushing it. He was going to blow it.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

She knows
, Matt thought. But it sounded as if she might be up for anything.

‘We’ll see,’ Andie said.

‘Can’t wait.’

‘And honey?’

‘What?’

‘We’re going to have fun.’

She
was
teasing him. ‘See you tonight.’

The knock broke his concentration. He was an engineer, a mathematician. He couldn’t afford to lose concentration.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m going to lunch.’ It was Jennifer. ‘Do you want something?’

‘No thanks,’ Matt said, trying to sound normal. Not easy to do when you’ve been interrupted while masturbating in the executive washroom in the middle of the day. He felt like a bigger pervert than usual.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes Jenny, I’m fine.’

He watched the shadow beneath the door hesitate for a moment, then disappear. He waited until he heard the office door close before he went back to the business at hand.

This time Andie and he were on vacation somewhere. It was summer, the middle of the night, and they were staying at a two-story motor lodge that wasn’t more than one-quarter full. There were fewer than a dozen cars scattered around the parking-lot.

Andie had told him to go out to the parking-lot and sit beneath their sliding glass door. She said she wanted him to see something. Matt had grabbed a pair of beers off the dresser and hurried down to the car like a hormonal teenager.

After fifteen minutes or so, after sitting in their sensible rental car, sipping his Bud Light, and watching Andie walk around the room, teasing him in her working-girl suit and high-heeled pumps, Matt noticed a man sitting in a car to the left and in front of him.

The man, it seemed, had been watching Andie too.

Matt thought about getting out of the car and going back to the room, hoping he could get there before his wife started actually stripping, but the idea of this stranger watching Andie excited him. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because he just wasn’t sure how far Andie would go.

Was this fair to Andie? he wondered.

He didn’t know, but he didn’t move.

For the next twenty minutes the two men watched Matt Heller’s wife take off her clothes, slowly, piece by piece, drawing out the part where she walked about the room in her pink lace camisole – a present from her husband. Andie then slipped out of the lingerie in front of the mirror and brushed her hair, her breasts rising and falling with the movement. She stood briefly in front of the sliding glass door, totally nude, her hourglass figure silhouetted against the white walls of the motel bedroom, then closed the curtain.

And although none of this had ever happened – nor had any other of Matt Heller’s bulging Rolodex of voyeur’s fantasies about his wife – the prospect that it might someday never failed to arouse him.

Even at the office.

Maybe tonight
, he thought as he closed his eyes.

Maybe tonight.

SHE WAS BIG
and she was small in the doorway to the restaurant. Big because she was getting so tall. She would be a woman before Jack Paris knew it. Small because here she was on her own – no Beth, no Jack, no mom or dad. Just a dressed-up little girl with a purse full of hard-earned money, waiting for her father. Her juicehead father who can’t even keep a date with an eleven-year-old.

As Paris walked across the lot he made a solemn vow. He would never let her down again.

Melissa Paris screwed up her mouth, tapped her foot and stared as her father opened the door. She looked like a pintsized Beth. Her hair, a deep mahogany in color, seemed to have grown considerably since Paris had seen her last, even though it had been just a few weeks. It fell to her shoulders now, luminous in the midday sun.

‘Hi sweetie,’ Paris said, planting a wet kiss on the top of her head. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘Twenty-one minutes late,’ she said, trying to hold onto the mad-look for all it was worth, but rapidly losing ground to a smile. Paris hadn’t been able to get that smile out of Beth in years, but his daughter still loved him, still trusted him. ‘Did you forget?’

Paris cleared his throat. ‘Forget? Are you kidding? What kind of guy forgets his own birthday?’

‘A cop.’

Paris smiled. ‘You know, you can still be arrested for being a wise guy. Just because you’re a detective’s daughter doesn’t mean you get any special privileges.’

Melissa gave him a big hug. ‘Sure it does, Daddy.’ she said. ‘Besides, they don’t arrest
angels
.’

The hostess approached them. ‘I see your gentleman caller has finally arrived,’ she said, grabbing two menus, saving Paris from any further scrutiny. The woman exchanged a wink with Melissa. ‘Right this way.’

Paris scanned the
Plain Dealer
but found nothing on Karen Schallert’s murder. These days murders were relegated to page one of the Metro section and, unless they were spectacular or involved someone of celebrity, warranted no more than a few column inches. Paris had gotten to the scene at around one-thirty, far too late to make even the late-morning edition. He took out his notebook and scribbled a note about calling Mike Cicero, the best of the
PD
’s crime reporters.

‘Daddy!’

Paris looked up. ‘Yeah, honey?’

‘You’re
working
.’

Paris had gone easy on his daughter’s budget, ordering just a sandwich and coffee, even though she had encouraged him to order whatever he wanted. He took a bite. ‘So how’s school?’ He wiped his lips with his napkin.

Melissa rolled her eyes. ‘You already asked me that.’

‘I did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh. And what did you say?’

Another glance at the ceiling. ‘I said it was fine and that I was going to be in a play and that we went on a field-trip to Hillside Dairy and we had to watch them make cottage cheese.’ She wrinkled her nose.

‘That sounds great.’

‘And I told you that I took my third karate class.’

‘
Karate
class?’

‘
Heee-yah!
’ Melissa shouted, then smiled, drawing her hands into a defensive position.

Paris was dumbfounded. ‘Since when are you taking karate lessons?’