Proof of Intent (2 page)

It wasn't the usual thing for a detective to roll up on a crime scene and have a lawyer there to greet them. I expected her to ask why I was there, but instead she just said, “You touch anything?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Mrs. Dane appears to have been beaten to death in her bedroom.” I chose my words carefully, doing my best to keep my answer as vague as possible. “As you might expect, my client is very distressed and hasn't articulated what he knows very clearly.”

“Anything he wants to get off his chest before I start conducting my examination of the scene?”

“If what you're implying, Detective, is
Did he do it?—
the answer is no.”

“Then sit tight. I'd like you and Mr. Dane to stay in the living room. Please instruct him to stay there until I come in.”

“Don't you need to see the body?” I said.

Denkerberg smiled blandly. “Amateurs always stampede straight for the body. I, however, proceed methodically.”

She took a 35mm camera out of a shoulder bag and began walking unhurriedly across the lawn, pausing to take pictures of every door and window, peering closely at the ground.

I went back inside and sat on the couch. The room was beautifully decorated, with a spare, Japanese flavor. A large, richly colored book of woodblock prints lay in front of me on the coffee table, open to a picture of a Japanese courtesan playing a shamisen, one bare breast and a wisp of pubic hair visible beneath her loose kimono. Behind her a man peeped around the corner of the room, a comical leer on his face—and from the coquettish expression on the courtesan's face, it seemed likely she was not unaware of the voyeur's presence. I considered picking up the book for a closer look at the odd picture, but then decided it would be best not to touch anything. Miles sat across from me, still wearing his spotless white silk dressing gown.

“So,” I said, “have you collected yourself enough to tell me what happened?”

He stared across the room for a while, his face empty.

“I work at night,” he said finally. “I was in my office at the other end of the house. I was getting a little tired, and the juices weren't flowing, so I decided to go to bed. I brushed my teeth, put on my robe and pajamas, then I opened the door to check on her . . .” His hands moved feebly in his lap.

“There's no blood on your robe. You didn't touch her?”

He frowned, half-quizzical, half-irritated. “You saw her, for godsake!” he said. “What would have been the point?”

Logically speaking, he was right: She had been beaten so badly there probably had been precious little question she was dead. But still, it seemed odd to me. The natural human reaction when you see an injured loved one is to approach them, to see if there is anything you can do to help, no matter how remote the chance of success.

“Okay,” I said. “And you didn't hear anything while you were working?”

“I play music when I'm working. Play it pretty loud, actually. Helps me get where I need to be so I can wring out the primal juices.” He said it like it was a line he'd rehearsed for a bad play.

“So you didn't hear anything.”

“Nothing but Beethoven.
The Tempest
. Piano Sonata number 17.”

“Mind my asking why you called me before you called the police?”

He studied me with his haunted gray eyes. “Are you joking?”

“No, I'm not, Miles.”

“Well, the answer to your question is, because they're going to crucify me.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I'm a student of crime, Charley: the husband is always the first suspect. Right? Plus, hell, you know who I am, what my reputation is. That new guy? That jerk-off fair-haired boy whom the good people of our county voted into the prosecutor's office last year? He's gonna take one look at me and figure this is the best chance he'll ever get of being on Court TV.”

“Not if there's no evidence against you.” I didn't mention that the new prosecuting attorney was a friend of mine, a man who could be trusted not to pursue anybody who didn't look like he deserved it.

He fixed his eyes on me like he was trying to stare me down. “You just watch.”

We sat for a while in silence.

“They're going to ask about your relationship. Were there any problems there that I should know about?”

His eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I loved my wife more than anything else on this planet. We had a thing so strong you wouldn't believe.”

“There were no affairs? No conspicuous arguments? No late-night calls to the police?”

He eyed me for a while. “How many times have you been married, Charley?”

“Three.”

“Good marriages?”

“The worst imaginable.”

His eyes softened, and he smiled at me with a look of pity in his eyes. “Then I guess you'd have no idea what it's like,” he said. “Devoting your whole life to one person, loving completely and being loved completely in return?”

I didn't know quite what to say to that. So I just sat there and waited for Detective Denkerberg to come talk to my client. Miles was right: I'm forty-seven years old, and I'd never known the thing he was talking about. Forty-seven years old, and I was only just now feeling my way toward a life where such a thing seemed like a realistic possibility.

Suddenly he came over to me and put his arm around my shoulder—as though
I
were the one who'd just suffered an unimaginable tragedy.

The sun was just coming up as Miles turned a large, unusually shaped key, unlocking the massive door of the office in the back of his house. The lock was exceptionally sturdy, with a bolt as big around as a banana, and the door itself was made of two-inch-thick mahogany. I'd seen bank vaults that looked like sissies next to that door.

As soon as we walked into the room, I nearly turned around and walked out. One wall of the office consisted of a large window with a spectacular view of the harsh white sun as it rose over a glittering St. Clair River, the slow-moving half-mile-wide body of water that separates Michigan from Canada. There was nothing wrong with the view. But the other three walls were a problem: They were covered with weapons. Everything from expensive English shotguns and hunting rifles, to antique cavalry sabers and Japanese swords, to cudgels, to a bewildering array of martial arts weapons. It looked like the
sanctum sanctorum
of a man who was preparing to invade a small West African nation. Talk about a poorly chosen place for a murder suspect to let himself be interviewed by the police.

Denkerberg looked around the room with obvious interest. She was a good four inches taller than Miles, I noticed. “Quite a collection,” she said.

“Yeah, I had all this stuff appraised last year. Well over a hundred grand, you believe that?” Miles said loftily. “That's why I keep the door locked.”

I suddenly felt a prickling on the back of my neck. It wasn't just the weapons. Something seemed to have changed in Miles's countenance the second Denkerberg had entered the room. It was as though a mask had dropped over his face: Suddenly he seemed a harder, tougher man than the one who had led me to his dead wife. Miles had a reputation—in the press, at least—for belligerence. And friction was the last thing this interview needed.

I cleared my throat. “Shall we get started?”

Miles and I sat on the couch, but Denkerberg continued to circle the room, hands behind her back, examining every item carefully. Each weapon was perched on its own small pair of wooden hooks—each hook, from the look of it, custom-made from mahogany to fit the individual weapon and to match the room's wooden paneling. Under each rack was a small brass plate detailing the weapon's particulars.

Denkerberg finally sat down, crossing her long legs primly. She took a pack of Tiparillos out of her purse, stuck one in her mouth, clamping the plastic holder between her teeth. She reminded me of a hateful nun from back in my parochial school days, Sister Herman Marie, who was always whacking me in the back of the head with her prayer book when I fumbled in catechism practice. You stumbled over a couple words, then KA-WHACK!

“I'm deeply sorry about your wife, Mr. Dane,” the detective said, lighting the Tiparillo. “And I know this is a difficult time for you. But if we're going to find the person who committed this horrible thing, I'll need to speak with you while your impressions are still fresh.” She examined Miles Dane's face with frank curiosity. The writer might as well have been wearing a kabuki mask for all the expression he showed. The vulnerability he'd shown just minutes earlier seemed to have entirely evaporated. “First, Mr. Dane, if you'd tell me what happened tonight. Everything you saw, everything you heard. When you're done I'll ask you some more questions.”

Miles looked at me and blinked. “I'm not being thin-skinned, am I? I mean, this is my house. Isn't it customary these days to ask before you fire up tobacco products in other people's houses?”

“I'm sorry,” Denkerberg said, not sounding sorry at all. “I wasn't thinking.”

Miles's eyes widened. “Oh, no. I don't mind in the slightest. I just was a little surprised you didn't ask.” He smiled without warmth as he fixed his cold gray eyes on the detective.

I rested two fingers gently on the back of his forearm. “I'm sure the detective didn't mean anything by it. She's got a lot on her mind.”

“Not a problem,” Denkerberg said, drawing on the Tiparillo. “Mr. Dane?”

“Some people describe the writing process as being something like entering a fugue state,” Miles said. “If you're not a writer, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. But at a certain point the characters on the page seem to get up and start walking around on their own. Once that happens the writer's job is almost like taking dictation. But that doesn't mean a writer just sits on his ass. Ever learn shorthand, Ms. Denkerberg? Taking dictation requires a great, great deal of concentration.”

“I can imagine,” Denkerberg murmured.

“I write at night.” Miles's face had changed subtly once he started speaking, taking on a pugnacious look, like a drunk who was hoping to get in a fight with somebody. “I require complete and utter quiet, so I located this office at the far end of the house.”

This caught me by surprise. Why had he told me he was blasting Beethoven when his wife died? Denkerberg must have caught me frowning because she said, “Something to add, Counselor?”

“Pardon?” I said vaguely. “What? Oh, no, sorry I was just . . . I sort of drifted off for a moment there.” I smiled pleasantly. Over the years I've perfected the art of acting marginally competent. It's an act that fits with my rumpled clothes and scuffed wing tips, my forgettable face, my cheap haircut. But it
is
an act.

“Anyway,” Miles said, apparently irritated at the interruption in his narrative, “I started working at around midnight. I only work at night. I don't see how writers get anything done during the day. I'm suspicious of these sanctimonious jerks who always go on about how much they accomplish bright and early in the morning. Seems like some kind of character flaw to me.

“Anyway. Me, I'm lucky. I never have writer's block. My view, writer's block is an excuse for chumps and dilettantes who don't like working. You don't want to be a writer, hell, go dig ditches, be a secretary, whatever. But don't whine to me about writer's block.” He glared at the detective as though expecting some kind of objection. When Denkerberg continued to sit silently, pulling on her Tiparillo, Miles continued.

“So I'd written about eight pages by around three-thirty. Goddamn good work, too, if I may say so myself. The juices were really flowing. Then I heard something.”

The room was silent for a while. I noticed that Denkerberg wasn't looking at Miles. Her gaze was fixed on the wall. I followed the direction her Tiparillo was pointing, saw that one of the weapon racks was empty. There was a brass plate next to the two mahogany hooks, but nothing rested on them. I wondered if she found any significance in that.

“What did you hear?” Denkerberg said finally.

“A noise,” Miles snapped.

“A noise.” She didn't say it with any particular inflection, but still there was that vaguely accusatory Sister Herman Marie quality about the way she said it.

“What.” Miles didn't seem to like her tone. “A
noise
. A
noise
, that's all.”

Denkerberg raised her eyebrows slightly. “As an accomplished author, I'm sure you appreciate the need for precise description. ‘Noise' is a rather vague term.”

“How should I know? I'm in the middle of a gripping scene, characters stomping around in my brain, then suddenly something reaches in, some kind of goddamn noise, and yanks me out of what I'm doing.”

“But you don't know what kind of noise?”

“What did I just tell you?” The room was silent for a long time. “A sharp noise, maybe? Somewhere between a crack and a bang? I don't know! But it was inside the house. That's about all I can say for certain. So I got up to see what the noise was. My wife is usually asleep this time of night, so I wanted to make sure she was okay.”

“Any reason to think, based on this noise, that she
wouldn't
be okay?” Denkerberg said.

Miles glared at her. “Are you questioning my story?”

“I'm just trying to establish the whys and wherefores, Mr. Dane.”

Miles looked at me, raised his eyebrows sarcastically. “Ah! The whys and
wherefores
! Now I understand.”

“Miles,” I said softly, “let's not get off track. I know you've received a terrible shock here, that you're angry and distraught. But let's just focus on helping Detective Denkerberg do her job.”