Detective

At the end he shook his head in anguish. "Unbelievable." His voice was barely audible. "I can hardly believe - "

"Goddam! You'd better believe it," Cynthia cut in sharply, combatively.

"I didn't mean that . . . Give me a minute." After a pause, "I do believe you. Every single thing. But it's so - '

Impatiently, "So what?"

"So hard to find words to fit. In my life I've done bad things, but this kind of sick "

"Oh, Patrick, get off it. You murdered two people."

"Yeah, I know." He grimaced. "I'm a shit, okay. Yes, I did kill out of passion, or impulse, or whatever. But what I'm saying is that your parents, over a long period, with lots of time to think about what they were doing. . . well, the way I see it, your parents are the stinking scum of the earth."

Cynthia said, "Good. So maybe you understand why I want to kill them."

After the briefest hesitation, Jensen nodded. "Yes, I do."

"So you will help me."

* * *

For two hours Cynthia and Patrick Jensen talked sometimes heatedly, occasionally calmly, at moments persuasively, but never lightly. Their thoughts, arguments, doubts, discussions, denials, threats, persuasions, were all arranged, discarded, and rearranged, like jumbled dominoes.

At one point Patrick tried: "And suppose I don't say yes to your insane proposition, if I tell you the hell with it, go screw yourself. Then would you really open up that box of snakes that could put me in the chair? If you did that, you'd accomplish nothing."

"Yes, I'd do it," Cynthia answered. "I wouldn't make the threat if I didn't mean it. Besides, you deserve to be punished, if not by me, then for Naomi.''

"Then what would you do, Lady Noble Avenger?" Jensen's voice was contemptuous. "Without me, how would you plow the killing fields?"

"I'd find someone else."

And he knew she would.

Much later, Jensen argued, "I told you that what I did was a crime of passion; I admitted that, and wish I could undo it. But I couldn't simply know I couldn't do a cold-blooded, premeditated murder." He threw up his hands. "Like it or not, that's the way it is."

"I know all that," Cynthia said. "I've known it all along."

Jensen sputtered, "Then for God's sake, why in hell "

"I want you to arrange for someone else to do it," she said calmly. "And pay them."

Jensen inhaled a deep breath, held it, then let it out. Both his body and his brain felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Then, a moment later, he wondered: Why?

He already knew the answer. Cynthia, adroitly and with cynical psychology, had maneuvered him to a point where what she now proposed was the better of two choices: Go to prison for life, or perhaps pay the ultimate penalty of death for the murders of Naomi and her friend, or take a chance in arranging for someone else to do another killing for which he, Patrick, had no stomach. He might not even have to be present when it happened. There would be a chance of discovery and exposure, of course, with a penalty for that, too. But that had been the case since the night he killed Naomi.

Cynthia was smiling slightly as she watched him. "You've figured it out, haven't you?"

"You're a witch and a bitch!"

"But you'll do it. You don't really have a choice."

Strangely, in his storyteller's mind, Jensen was already thinking of it as a game. He supposed it was perverse, undoubtedly despicable. Just the same, it was a game that he could play and win.

"I know you've been banging out with a pretty scummy crowd lately," Cynthia prompted. "All you have to do is find the right guy." In fact, Jensen had been slowly immersing himself in the criminal underworld, beginning more than two years earlier when he decided to write a novel about drug trafficking. In the course of researching the story he had sought out some small-time drug dealers not difficult because of his own occasional cocaine use who, in turn, had referred him to bigger sharks.

Two or three of those bigger operators, while agreeing to meet him out of curiosity, were slow to relax, but finally decided that a real, live author, "a smart guy with his name on books," could be trusted. The inherent vanity of most career criminals and the compulsion to be noticed also opened doors for Jensen. In bars and nightclubs, with drinks and confidences flowing, a question he often encountered was "You gonna put me in a book?" His stock answer was "Maybe." Thus, in time, Jensen's criminal acquaintanceships widened, beyond what he needed for research, and he began doing some occasional drug deals and drug transporting himself, surprised to find how easy it was, and how pleasantly profitable.

The profit was helpful because his crime novel did not do well, nor did another that followed, and it appeared that Patrick's high-flying best-seller days might be over. At the same time he had made some bad investments, based on poor advice, and his accumulated money was diminishing alarmingly.

The combined factors made Cynthia's bizarre objective at least more feasible, not entirely unthinkable, perhaps even interesting.

"You know we'll have to pay someone a lot for this job," he said to Cynthia. "And I don't have that kind of money."

"I know," she said. "But I have plenty." And she did.

Gustav Ernst, as part of his attempts to make peace with his daughter after the long years of abuse, had given Cynthia a generous monthly allowance, which supplemented her salary and enabled her to live well. For her part, she accepted it as her due.

In addition, Gustav also arranged for substantial sums of money to be placed in a Cayman Islands bank account in Cynthia's name. But Cynthia had not acknowledged the Caymans money or used any of it, though the accumulated amount, she knew, was now in excess of five million Dollars.

For many years Gustav Ernst had been a successful financial entrepreneur; his specialty was buying major interests in small, innovative companies in need of venture capital. His instincts were uncanny. Most companies he chose would burgeon in a short time, their stock soaring, at which point Gustav sold out. His net worth reputedly was sixty million Dollars.

Gustav's younger brother, Zachary, had shed his United States citizenship as increasing numbers of wealthy Americans were doing to avoid punitive taxation. Now Zachary divided his residency between the Caymans and the Bahamas, both congenial, sunny tax havens. It was Zachary who opened Cynthia's Cayman account and put money in it periodically, always as a tax-free "gift." On each occasion Cynthia received a confirming letter along the following lines:

My dear Cynthia:

I do hope you will accept the latest gift I have placed in your account. These days I seem to have more money than I need, and since I have no wife, children, or other relatives, it gives me pleasure to pass these sums along to you. I trust you are able to make use of them.

From your affectionate

Uncle Zack.

Cynthia knew the money was, in fact, from Gustav, who had his own arrangements with Zachary involving tax avoidance or was it evasion? Cynthia neither knew nor cared, except for being aware that avoidance was legal, evasion illegal.

She did care, however, about her own legal position and, while not acknowledging the letters, saved them and sought a tax consultant's advice.

He reported back, "The letters are fine. Keep them in case you ever need to prove the deposits were gifts and nontaxable. About your Cayman account and your receiving gifts there, all of that is perfectly in order. But each year on your U.S. tax return you must report having that account, and declare any interest earned as income. Then you'll be in the clear."

Subsequently one of Cynthia's tax returns was audited and approved, with the consultant's advice confirmed, so she never had to worry about breaking the law. Even so, she kept her Cayman wealth a secret from everyone except the consultant and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. She had no intention of telling Jensen, either.

For a few minutes he had been silent, thinking.

"Plenty of money will be a help," he resumed. "To do what you have in mind, making sure the killings stay unsolved and no one talks . . . the price will be steep maybe two hundred thousand Dollars."

"I can pay that,'' Cynthia said.

"How? "

"Cash."

"Okay. So what's our time frame?"

"There isn't one not yet. You can take however long you need to find the right person someone who's clever, tough, brutal, discreet, and totally reliable."

"It won't be easy."

"That's why you'll have plenty of time." She would savor the waiting, Cynthia thought, knowing that eventually her revenge, which she had planned so long ago, would be fulfilled.

"While you're at it," Patrick said, "figure on a lot of money for me, too."

"You'll get it, and part will be for protecting me. You are not to mention my name to whoever you hire. Don't even hint of my involvement at any time, to anyone. AISO, the fewer details I know, the better except I must be told a date at least two weeks ahead."

"So you can have an alibi?"

Cynthia nodded. "So I can be three thousand miles away."

3

"Take however long you need," Cynthia had told Patrick Jensen. But it was almost four years certainly longer than Cynthia had intended before the irrevocable steps were taken.

The intervening time passed quickly, however particularly for Cynthia, who was climbing the promotion ladder at the Miami Police Department with exceptional speed. Yet neither Cynthia's successes nor the passage of time tempered the hatred she felt toward her parents. Nor did it diminish her need for revenge. From time to time she reminded Jensen of his commitment to her, which he acknowledged, insisting that he was still looking for the right guy someone resourceful, ruthless, brutal, and dependable. He had not, so far, appeared.

At times, in Jensen's mind, the whole concept seemed eerie and unreal. As a novelist he had often written about criminals, but all of it was abstract no more than words on a computer screen. The true darkness of crime, as he saw it then, was in a world that belonged to others a whole different brand of people. Yet now he had become one of them. Through a single crazy act he had committed a capital crime and, in that instant, his formerly law abiding life was gone. Did others enter the underworld in that same headlong, unplanned way? He supposed many did.

As time passed, he sometimes asked himself, What have you become, Patrick Jensen? And answered objectively, Whatever it is, you've gone too far; there can be no turning back.. . Virtue's a luxury you can't afford anymore . . . There was once a time for conscience, but that time has gone . . . If someone ever discovers and discloses what you've done, nothing nothing at all will be forgotten or forgiven . . . So survival is all that matters survival at any cost. . . even at the cost of other lives. . .

All the same, Jensen was still haunted by that sense of unreality.

In contrast, he was sure, Cynthia had no such illusions. She possessed an inflexibility that never abandoned a target. He had seen that trait at work, knew that because of it he would not escape his mission as Cynthia Ernst's surrogate executioner, and that if he failed her, she would keep her promise and destroy him.

In essence, Jensen came to realize, he was no longer the same person he had once been. Instead he had become a self-protective, ruthless stranger.