San Diego Noir

I scanned the downstairs quickly. Nothing seemed out of place, so I went up. I hadn’t turned on any lights, even though it made me feel vaguely criminal—I told myself I didn’t want to advertise to the neighbors that anyone was in the house, even though I knew the nearest neighbors could barely see a corner of the top floor. The flashlight was plenty bright, and using it I picked my way down the hall to the bedroom we always used. Empty. I turned the other way down the wide corridor, to the room she’d told me she shared with Terry. That door had always been closed during my visits, one aspect of their life together off limits to me.

It was open now.

Even before I reached it, the stink hit me. Blood and shit, unmistakable, mixed with other odors I couldn’t identify. Her name fell from my lips. My left hand went to my nose and mouth, covering them, and sucking in shallow gasps, I went in.

She was on the bed, her head dangling off the near side, her arms splayed out, legs flung toward the far edge. A spray of blood flecked with gray painted the ceiling, and more of it streamed down the bed covering, puddling thick and black on the lush carpet under my feet. My stomach gave a quick flip and I swallowed hard, afraid I was going to lose the fish tacos I had bought for dinner down in Pacific Beach.

“Sharon?” I said, sobbing the word.

But it wasn’t her, and I knew it almost at once. This woman had a hole in the middle of her forehead, just between the eyebrows. But she also had gray streaks in auburn hair and wide green eyes staring at me, and she was at least fifteen years older than Sharon. Attractive, or she had been before the bullet, and relatively fit, but thicker and less voluptuous.

I stared at her, uncomprehending, just as stupid as I had been while in Sharon’s bed, in her arms, clutched between her thighs. I was still standing there, unable to move, my gullet spasming, when the door creaked behind me.

“I see you’ve met Sharon,” Terry Paulson said.

I spun around, shined the light at him. She stood behind him, glorious as ever. “But … if that’s Sharon …”

“It is,” Terry said. “Meet Lacie.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That, my friend, is self-evident. Come on, let’s go to the kitchen and talk this over, shall we?”

I let them lead me back downstairs. Lights were on now and the house felt more like it usually did, except there was a dead woman upstairs and I was utterly lost.

We sat at their big rustic wooden dining table, and Terry filled me in. Sharon—no, Lacie—sat close to him, occasionally stroking his arm, smoothing his hair. She made no effort to touch me, and I was too afraid to try reaching out to her.

“Here’s the deal,” Terry said. “I have this big house, this terrific life, right? Or I did, until I lost a bundle in the meltdown. Since then, things have been getting tight. We were in serious debt—another month or two or five, and we would have lost all this. Sharon wouldn’t have wanted that. She has never been particularly healthy, and worse these last couple of years, sick all the time. We had major insurance policies on each other, of course, and I kept thinking I’d be able to collect on hers in time to save everything. But although she was close to dying, she wouldn’t actually die. She was in pain, absolutely miserable, really, but she kept hanging on. Lacie and I, well … we couldn’t wait.”

“So you killed her?”

“You still don’t get it, do you? You killed her.”

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” I slammed my palm against the table, making it jump.

“You’ve been having an affair with her for months. There’s plenty of documentation of that. Phone records, saved texts, surveillance video showing you coming to the house at all hours. I bet if we subpoenaed the GPS records of your company car, they’d back that up.”

“But … not with her. Not the real Sharon.”

“Phone records and texts don’t divulge that kind of detail. So you’ve been having an affair with a married woman. Tonight, she called you. You came over. I guess you fought or something, and … well, you just snapped.”

“But that’s not what happened!” I said.

He smiled, and the jam I had put myself in started to become clear.

“It doesn’t have to be what happened,” he continued. “But it might have been, and we can prove that version if we have to. There’s video of you coming in here tonight. There’s her phone call—her last phone call, to your cell. That’s your company car outside.”

I stared at them, my gaze shifting from one impassive face to the other. “What kind of sap do you think I am?”

“How many kinds do there have to be?” Lacie asked, throwing me the kind of smile that a day ago would have caused a stirring at my groin instead of nausea in my gut. “We only needed one. It was down to you or the pool service guy, and I liked you better.”

Terry picked up where he had left off. “Or it could go this way. Lacie has an apartment, down by the Cove. We were all there tonight, the three of us. A kinky little threesome. Some man-on-man action, along with both of us on Lacie.”

“I don’t—”