THE MOMENT I HEARD the front door close, I yanked on the cuffs. The stair railing didn’t budge but the cuffs cut sharply into my wrists and I winced from the pain. Already I could feel my fingers starting to go numb from reduced circulation. Outside, I could hear the door of my Virtue hybrid car open and close. The vehicle was so quiet, I didn’t hear it start or back out of the drive and pull away.
I hadn’t heard Trixie make any phone calls from upstairs, but I had to hope, certainly if I couldn’t get free on my own, that she’d keep her word and send someone to rescue me. The handcuff keys were on a table only ten feet away, but they might as well have been in the next town for all the good they did me now.
I glanced in the direction of Martin Benson, not wanting to look at him, yet not able to take my eyes off him. The slice across his neck was a macabre grin. Look what happens when you mess with me, it seemed to be saying. I tried not to think about what might happen if the person or persons who did that decided to return before I could get myself out of these handcuffs and the hell out of this house.
Rather than yank on the railing with the cuffs again and make my wrists even more sore, I put my hands directly on the railing and pulled. If I could pry it off the wall and drag it just ten feet, I could reach the keys and get out of here. I pulled once, and nothing. Clearly, the screws that held the hardware to the wall had been sunk into studs and not just drywall. I tried again, really putting my back into it this time, still without success. I cursed under my breath.
Even if I could free myself, it wasn’t necessarily my plan to run. I’d feel a lot safer than I did now as long as I had the freedom to move around. If Trixie wanted to make a break for it, well, that was her decision. Evidently she had her reasons, one of which had just been revealed to me.
“I’m not going to let them get my little girl.”
Just when I thought there was so little I knew about Trixie, I found myself realizing there was even more I did not know. Not long after I’d first met her, I’d asked her whether she had children, and she had said no.
While Trixie might have had her reasons to flee before the police arrived, I couldn’t see myself following suit. I had to stay and explain this as best I could. Chances were I wouldn’t even need to call the police. They were probably on the way now, or at least would be soon. Once Trixie felt she had enough of a head start, I was reasonably confident that she’d let them know about me, and Benson.
So I would explain this to the police as best I could. That was the Zack Walker way. You bring in the authorities. You extricate yourself from the situation and let the professionals take over.
Not that that had always been my approach. There was that one time, when I found myself in a situation where I figured I was the most likely suspect in a homicide, that I did not pick up the phone and immediately call police. There were extenuating circumstances.
But surely that wasn’t the case this time. I would not be the prime suspect this time. What possible reason would I have to want Martin Benson-
Hold on.
I started to work it out in my head.
What would Martin Benson’s editor have to say when the police interviewed him? He was investigating this dominatrix, the editor would say. Must have been ruffling some feathers too, because some writer from the Metropolitan tried to talk him out of it. The M.E. there’s an old friend of mine. Told him all about it.
And then the police would talk to Magnuson. And then they’d want to have another interview with me.
So you tried to warn Benson off a story, the police would say, and when he didn’t go along with it, he ratted you out, and you got demoted.
I couldn’t be sure the cops would use the word “ratted,” but I figured that would be about the gist of it.
Maybe it made more sense to stop fighting with the railing. Maybe it made more sense to stay handcuffed until the police arrived. How likely a suspect was I when I was left handcuffed at a murder scene? I was a victim too, although I had to admit I’d gotten off a little bit better than Martin Benson.
Of course, the only problem was, we hadn’t both been victimized by the same person. Being handcuffed by Trixie would no doubt lead police to suspect that she was also responsible for Martin Benson’s murder.
Trixie did, after all, have some familiarity with the apparatus to which Benson was secured.
What a fucking mess.
I twisted my right hand around to look at my watch. Coming up on 2:30 p.m. Trixie had been gone at least half an hour, maybe more. Just how far away was she planning to get before she called someone to rescue me?
It hadn’t occurred to me then that she might actually have called someone right after leaving the house. That she might have called someone who would need thirty minutes or more to get here.
Finally, around 2:45, there was a hard knock at the door.
“Down here!” I shouted.
Another knock.
“Hey!” I shouted. “In the basement!”
I thought I heard the door open, and then a voice, tentatively, called out, “Hello?”
I think, of all the people Trixie could have called, Sarah would definitely have been my last choice.
I went to say something but the words caught in my throat for a moment. I guess, for a fleeting instant, for nothing more than a millisecond, I must have thought I could keep Sarah from finding me handcuffed in Trixie’s basement only a few feet away from a dead guy strapped to a cross with his throat cut open. But it only took the briefest of moments to realize there was no way out for me that didn’t include immense dollops of shame and mortification.
“Sarah!” I shouted.
“Zack?” Sarah sounded scared. “Zack! Where are you?”
“Just listen to me first, okay? Okay? Just stop and listen!”
“Zack, what’s happened? Are you okay? Where are you?”
“Sarah, stop! Are you stopped?”
A pause from upstairs. “Okay, yes. I’m not moving. Zack, Trixie phoned. She told me to come out here, that something had happened and-”
“Sarah! Listen to me!”
“Okay.”
“First of all, I’m okay. I’m going to need your help, but before you come downstairs, I have to prepare you for what you’re going to see.”
“Oh my God. Don’t tell me you’re trapped in some sort of leather thing. You’ve been coming to Trixie, paying her to-”
“No, Sarah. Please just listen and don’t interrupt. I’m not hurt, but I am handcuffed to the stair railing and I need you to get the keys.”
Even from where I stood, I could hear her intake of breath upstairs.
“But Sarah, what I have to tell you is, I’m not exactly alone down here.” I took a breath of my own. “I’m down here in the midst of a…I’m in a crime scene, Sarah.”
“A crime scene.”
“A man has been killed, he’s been murdered, and I’m down here with his body.” I paused. “It’s very, very…bad.”
From Sarah, almost a whisper: “Who is it, Zack?”
“Martin Benson. The reporter from the Suburban. Somebody’s…oh man.”
“Tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m okay. Are you ready?”
Sarah paused a second before she said, “I’m ready.”
And then she appeared at the doorway at the top of the stairs, assessing my situation in a glance. She came down the steps slowly, and as she was able to see more of the room, she saw Benson at the far end of it.
“Dear God,” she said. She stayed on the last step, next to me, as if putting a foot on the floor would be an admission that what she was seeing was really true.
“The keys are right there,” I said softly, nodding at the table a few feet away. “If you give them to me, I can get these off and call the police.”
“Zack, his throat’s been slit clear across.”
“I know. The keys. Hand me the keys.”
She was holding it together fairly well, considering. She’d been a police reporter back in her early days and had seen the odd corpse here and there. Usually after the police had arrived.
She looked at the keys on the table. She’d have to put both feet on the floor to get there. As if she were putting her toe into icy cold water, she came down the last step and approached the table hesitantly. She delicately picked up the keys in her fingers, turned, and handed them to me.
“Your wrists are bruised,” she said as I struggled to work the keys into the openings. It took a minute or more for me to get the cuffs off my wrists. I didn’t bother to remove them from the railings. Perhaps, if they stayed there, it would bolster my version of events when the police arrived.
“Come on,” I said, leading Sarah up the stairs. “Let’s get out of here.”
I took her into the kitchen, where sunlight was streaming through the blinds and down through a skylight. Sarah slipped her arms around me and hugged me tight.
“I didn’t know what to think,” she said, starting to cry. “Trixie called, all mysterious, said you were in some trouble at her house, that she’d had to take your car, that she was very sorry, but that I should get out here as fast as possible.”
I put my arms around my wife, held her tight.
“I’m glad she called you. And I’m sorry you had to see what’s happened here.”
She pulled back, looked into my face, put a hand on each of my cheeks. “What’s going on, Zack? What’s happened?”
And then something caught her eye, something on my lip, and then she moved her left thumb over and rubbed at the corner of my mouth, then glanced at her thumb.
She stared at it for a moment, as though transfixed, then looked at me and said, “The police. You better call the police.” Then she turned and walked away.
I realized then what she’d found on her thumb was lipstick.