The Crime Writer

Her close-up was appropriate; she was the unwitting star of the story. I hadn't been the protagonist after all, but like Kasey Broach, like Sissy Ballantine a bit player. Morton Frankel, fellow fall guy, had played his role as well as I, two expendable L.A. walk-ons hitting the marks and saying the lines. I'd responded to Lloyd's preparations with a promptness and an ardor that could scarcely be improved on, calling him within hours of my release from jail, scratching at the imagined scab of my guilt until I'd raised blood. Book after book, I'd reinforced Lloyd's increasingly imaginative involvement in what had previously been dry scientific work. Some of the most diabolical killings in my novels wouldn't have been nearly as inventive were it not for Lloyd. And perhaps his crime wouldn't have been nearly as well plotted were it not for me. Or as far-fetched.

An improbable fiction? Certainly. But then, we don't want to construct the story that's most likely to be told. We want to tell the one that finds its way to the pit of the gut, like a curved boning knife.

I never would have guessed it, but Lloyd had proven a better crime writer than I was.

I turned off the tube and petted Xena's oversize head, enjoying a few minutes of blissful silence.

The telephone rang. Not my cell but the glorious, hearty ring of the landline, harmonized on a faint delay with the phones upstairs. The noise filled the rooms. It made it seem as though my house worked again.

I strode over to the cordless mounted on the living-room wall and answered.

Caroline said, "Done showing off?"

"I hope so."

"You're all right?" Something in her delivery connoted great care.

I considered for a moment, then answered, truthfully, "Yes. I am."

"You weren't answering your cell," she said. It was only then that I realized the phone had been on mute since Lloyd's house. "So I got your home line from your Big Brother form. I have something to cheer you up."

"What?"

"Me?"

"Do you deliver?"

"I do."

She hung up. Xena garishly stuck her muzzle between my legs. Jealous, no doubt.

I went to my car to retrieve the half-written book and the unlabeled CD from Genevieve's that I'd shoved beneath my floor mat.

Back upstairs I sat at my desk, placed the pages beside my mouse pad, and slid the disc into my computer, bringing up iTunes on the monitor. My screen asked if I wanted to retrieve track and album information, identifying the burned music from the online library.

I did.

While iTunes searched, showing me a horizontal barber pole to solicit my patience, I picked up my office phone to call Chic. The line bleated, indicating messages.

I dialed voice mail. A synthetic voice said, "Greetings. You have forty-nine saved messages."

My lawyers and I had reviewed digital copies of all the messages while preparing my case. My messages had been preserved in the actual system, too, it seemed, from when LAPD froze me out of my voice mail right up until the day SBC interrupted my service. I bleeped through them now, deleting the first several from September 22 and the day of the twenty-third. Preston, nagging me about deadlines, a missing jacket, and an anthology he'd wanted me to contribute to. April asking what time she should come over for dinner that night.

The synthetic voice spoke the chillingly familiar time stamp: "Fifth message. Sent September 23,1:08 a. M."

Genevieve's damning message. I cocked back in my chair.

The softly accented voice whispered in my ear, "It's me."

A wave of heat passed through my face, setting my scar on fire. I'd heard the message countless times during my incarceration and trial. That wasn't how it started.

The computer search completed, iTunes confirming what I already knew. Madame Butterfly Disc 3.

The first track began to play from my tinny computer speakers, an accompaniment to Genevieve's message.

"I wanted to tell you I'm peaceful. I'm okay, I feel okay now. I've heard you're with someone new, and I'm… I'm glad for you." A moist inhale. "I'm sorry. For how I hurt you, for how I hurt everyone." How fragile her voice, how delicate that French inflection. "Maybe this can be one of your stories one day. Maybe you'll understand."

From my computer Madama Butterfly wailed, Verra, verra, vedrai.

"Maybe you'll forgive me. For that and for this. I ask of you only one thing. My last request. Don't judge me. I hope you can walk around in my skin for a while. Isn't that what you do? Feel this pain. Write about it so maybe other people don't have to feel so alone."

Salite a riposare, affranta siete… al suo venire vi chiamero.

"Good-bye, my love."

The click of the hang-up.

Tu se con Dio ed io col mio dolor…