It’s easy to wish the womanizer with a zipper problem would one day wind up with his dick in his hand. But when the guy is one you’ve dated, with news hour name recognition, and he’s gracing your office chair one morning with a bloody hole in his chest, your letter opener in one hand and his severed penis in the other, you wish you’d never been so bold.
You ask yourself, calmly while your mind does the whirling dervish thing before you call the guard at the front desk, did I ever say out loud I wanted this guy on a slab?
Did I ever voice this to a friend? No, I shake my head, doubtful mostly because my closest friend died in ’96 and I don’t take time to make new ones.
Would I ever say this to a colleague? No. I would have to have downed half-a-dozen body shots of Herradura Silver to rage on someone like that. True, anyone on my staff might imprudently blurt out I could kill a man at twenty yards with my stare, but no, I don’t do straight shots of tequila like I used to when I was young, loco and unknown with nothing to lose but my virginity.
I take a step closer to the body. Whoa, there. Death definitely smells like stale fish. And it doesn’t provide a flattering photo-op, either. Alistair Dunhill, once a six-foot-plus white-haired powerhouse with year-round tan and blinding Brite Smile teeth, slumps without pride or dignity in my overstuffed, old oak chair. With head sloping over to one shoulder, his skin the color of paste, he’d be horrified to see himself, perfectionist that he once was. His mouth lies slack with pink froth drooling out one side onto his crisp white shirt collar. His Armani suit coat is open. A dark red splotch marks his shirt on the right above his belly, the only flaccid part of him. His shirttails frame his open fly, gaping wide to reveal pale skin and a few short and curlies. Blood, dark and dry, encrusts the zipper.
I slap a hand over my mouth and gag, but, ghoul that I am, I move in for a closer look. His pale blue eyes are wide open, milky in death and gazing...or rather, not, but pointing toward the skyline.
I get down to his level, something I repeatedly refused to do when he was living, and face the way he is, squinting at the detail. The view is the office building across the street. Its gray mawing windows stare back, most of the blinds still down. At five-forty-five a.m. in this nose-to-the-grindstone town, the worker bees have not yet begun to swarm into their nests.
Thanking God, Buddha and Allah, (I pray at the altar of political correctness), I stride to the window. Lower the shade. On the second yank of the cord, I lift my hands, splay my fingers then curl them like a burn victim. I shouldn’t have touched that and left my prints and perspiration and whatever else forensic pros collect from scenes like this.
I wipe my hands on my skirt while my blood pressure climbs the charts. Dizzy does not become me. Get it together, Carly. You need to be centered when the police start to ask questions―and you will need to be firmly in command of your army when Katie Couric tries to break this story like morning eggs all over the seven o’clock news.
I take two steps to my briefcase, still standing like a soldier where my fingers dropped it to the carpet upon discovering Alistair in my chair. I dig out my cell phone. Punch in the number for the front desk. And breathe.The guard picks up. I identify myself. What do I say? Look, Harry. Small problemo. I have a dead man in my office. In my office chair, my inner office, Harry.
Who the hell knows what I say, but it must be something like that because Harry at first is speechless. I envision him, groping like a guppy. Good. I am not alone. Always have allies.
He mutters something that sounds like a curse and then enunciates so slowly that he implies my IQ logs in at cretin, “Don’t touch anything. Don’t do anything. And do not make or take any phone calls.” Oh, don’t worry. I’d prefer to do The Three Monkeys on this one: See, hear and definitely speak no evil. My personal fave would be to turn around, drive home and crawl back between the sheets. I could pull them over my head and tell myself that the day has not begun. Dunhill is not clutching his cigar- sized penis, not holding the shiny silver murder weapon tipped with blood, not soaking my chair with his bodily fluids. I am not involved. I could even call in and declare I am just working from home today!
In a rat’s eye, I could.
Denial is one psychological trait I used to get into big time. Like bubble bath. But I reformed years ago in the interest of keeping my job―and excelling at it. Wallowing now during the daylight only in projections, budget numbers and press releases, I do tai chi to relieve tension. But when fatigue sets in, I dig at night in the dirt of my backyard garden, burying seeds and bulbs along with any remaining frustrations. The result is I tend a disgustingly overcrowded English garden. Surveying Alistair, I predict that tonight I’ll be planting enough seeds to regrow the Amazon jungle.
I curse. Then, clamp the phone closed, drop it back in my briefcase. I study Alistair. What the hell is he doing in my inner office in my chair? Why not outside in my receptionist’s? I circle my desk. Alistair could have picked any one of the other offices on this hall to die in. Or how about in his own office chair? But he did not pick, did he? Someone did it for him. They chose the place. Mine. The weapon. Mine, too. They’d also chosen the time, clearly, after I had gone home, maybe nine-thirty-ish. I had been here alone most of the evening, except for Alistair’s ten-minute visit to me around nine. Chances are, whoever killed him and left him here might have known that.
Crossing my arms, I shiver as I recall my actions after he’d left. I had pushed my chair into the desk, flicked off the overheads, then traipsed down into the garage, revved up my trusty Chevy Tahoe and toddled on home alone to an empty house. No alibi, no corroborating witnesses in sight. Then, with no one at home to confirm my story there either, I had planted chrysanthemums in the backyard until my energy and my gin ran out a little past midnight.
I stoop to examine Alistair’s body more closely—and this time I ignore his twanger, just like I did when he was alive. His hair is ruffled. His suit is a shambles, wrinkled as if he’d slept in it. His left lapel is torn or ripped—maybe by my letter opener. His left eyelid seems cut with a line of blood as if someone poked him good. Did his killer attack him, beat him up first? Makes sense to me. Weaken your foe before you move in for the final blow. I haven’t risen this far up in the world without practicing Sun Tzu’s Rules of War. Of course, my mother’s five rules formed my character first. Tempt ‘em, tell ‘em, order ‘em, love ‘em, leave ‘em wanting more. Sadie O’Neill didn’t raise no fool.
I jam my hands in my skirt pockets and devote myself to wearing a circular path in my carpet while I absorb details of the crime scene. My desktop is bare, except for the two items that should be there. The photo of my pride and joy, my twelve-year-old daughter, Jordan, and the small marble trophy I won at age fifteen for Texas State Rodeo Barrel-Racing Champion. Definitely the desk is the way I left it, but what about all the drawers? All appear neatly closed, the way they should be. But are they locked? I wince. My heart picks up a salsa beat. They better be. I try to remember and, for the life of me, can’t recall if I did turn the lock with my key before I left for home! But at least the center drawer had to have been open, right? Otherwise, how could Alistair be holding my letter opener? I reach to open that drawer and think better of that little maneuver. I’m not into implicating myself or covering up any one else’s prints...if indeed there are any, other than Alistair’s.
I bend over, scrutinizing the keyholes and edges. None appears to be tampered with. The desk, due to its advanced age, is secure as a vault, the previous owner told me when I purchased it from him as he left this office. The four-foot-by-six-foot expanse is early Johnson, (Andrew, not Lyndon), and coveting it as I had for years, I was thrilled to find it for sale when I moved into this building last year. The building, like the desk, was supposed to be unbreachable, an inner sanctum, holy of holies, that no one could just enter at will. After all, the doors to each of our offices are key coded. No one passes through the metal-detector gates down at the front entrance or the garage or even the press entrance without presenting a badge with photo ID. Briefcases are wanded. All packages, too. Bomb-sniffing dogs as feral as those patrolling death row at Huntsville, roam the halls and the grounds, receiving one solid square meal a day for their 24/7 devotion. Security was the highest priority here. No need to worry.
Unless you are Alistair Dunhill and someone wants to cut off your life and your dick.
And that same someone wants to frame the little lady who works in Rayburn Office Building Room 2336, Carly Wagner, five-time elected Congresswoman from the 23rd district of Texas.