Authors: Laurence Gough
“He was a real charmer, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Parker.
“You went to bed with him, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Come on Claire. Everybody went to bed with Dave, the women couldn’t keep their hands off him.” Franklin laughed harshly. “Why, he was even sleeping with my wife!”
It wasn’t the acoustics, and it wasn’t her nerves. Franklin was moving in on her, inching closer with every word he spoke. Crouching, staying low, Parker backed away from the aisle. A hand suddenly slapped at her face, stiff fingers clawing at her eyes. Twisting down and away, she thrust out the revolver and pulled the trigger. The hand disintegrated in a shower of plaster dust. Parker choked back a scream.
“You ever meet my wife?” said Franklin.
“No.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Just asking,” said Franklin mildly. “You mind if I smoke?”
“Help yourself.”
“Thank you,” said Franklin.
Parker heard the rasp of a match, Franklin exhaling noisily. She knew he had to be very close, that he was waiting for her to panic and bolt into the open.
“Dorothy is forty-three years old and maybe thirty pounds overweight,” said Franklin. “What was it about her that Dave found so attractive? I couldn’t figure it out, but finally I did. He was sticking it into me at the same time as he was screwing my wife, and that’s what really gave him a kick.”
“How did you find out about it?” said Parker.
“I’m a detective. It was easy. She confessed.”
Parker had a sudden, chilling thought. “Where is Dorothy now, George?”
“Probably stretched out on the chesterfield, watching the soaps.” A slight pause. “It was Dave I was after, not her. My only problem was how to knock him off without getting caught. I gave it a lot of thought, Claire. Finally I figured, what better way than in the middle of a homicide investigation?”
“Except it wasn’t the middle,” said Parker. “It was only the beginning.”
“Hey,” said Franklin, “maybe I got carried away a little, but don’t be so quick to judge. Wait’ll you try being God sometime, you’ll soon see how hard it is to stop.”
Willows lay flat on his back in the rubble, his head cradled between a pair of hard, cold breasts. Dust had settled in his nostrils and the corners of his eyes. He concentrated on Franklin’s voice, which seemed garbled, an octave too low, like a tape recording run at the wrong speed. He saw Franklin take another tiny, mincing, cautious step towards Parker. Franklin was only a few feet away but he was too busy hunting Parker to pay any attention to Willows.
Despite the considerable protection afforded by the multiple layers of DuPont Kevlar in Willows’ bulletproof vest, the first shot from the .460 Magnum had hit him with so much force that he’d been paralysed by the shock of impact.
Now he was drowning in pain.
Pain flowed in hot, undulating waves from high up in his chest, in the area of his heart. Another kind of pain, sharper and less constant, radiated from his right side. He lifted his head an inch, looking for the Remington. The broken ends of his ribs grated together so loudly that he was sure Franklin must hear them. He repressed a groan, and raised his head another fraction of an inch. The Remington was lying on the floor within easy reach, as if someone had placed it there. Franklin took another mincing step down the aisle. Willows swallowed noisily. The whining in his ears faded away, and he could suddenly understand what Franklin was saying.
“… not that it was easy, Claire. There were a million details to work out. Where to do it. How to do it. When to do it. Not who to do it to, though.” Franklin’s giggle was high-pitched, girlish. “That’s because I always picked the names at random. You know why? Because it was fairer that way, and I wanted to be fair.” A pause. “Are you listening to me, Claire?”
“I’m listening,” said Parker.
“The best part, the part I enjoyed the most, was figuring out what kind of junk to leave behind for that overdressed bloodhound Goldstein to chew on, worry over. It gave me a kick, watching Goldstein waste his time.”
“I’ll bet,” said Parker, hardly aware of what she was saying. She could hear the rasp of Franklin’s breathing, smell the smoke from his cigarette, almost hear him thinking. Her heart hammered in her chest. She was soaked in sweat, exhausted, limp. She was going to have to do something every soon, take the initiative before Franklin decided to pounce.
“I knew Bradley’d have to stick me behind a desk after Dave got shot,” Franklin continued, “but I could hardly believe my luck when he made me assistant liaison officer, dumped me right in the middle of the whole fucking investigation.” Another fit of giggling. “From then on, I always knew exactly what everybody was up to, right down to the last detail. It was perfect.” Franklin’s voice hardened. “At least, it was perfect until you and Jack decided to set up an ambush without telling anybody about it.”
“We tried to call you. You weren’t at the office. Nobody answered at your home number.”
“Oh well,” said Franklin, “the main thing is that I eventually got here.” Another fit of giggling. “Better late than never.”
Willows gritted his teeth. He pushed himself to a sitting position, forced himself to his feet.
Franklin turned, his face slack with amazement. At the same moment, Parker stepped into the aisle and began shooting. She was so close to Franklin that the muzzle blast from her .38 charred and blackened the bodice of his white dress, and the revolver and her hands and wrists turned red with his blood.
Franklin gave Parker a stern, disapproving look. He opened his mouth, licked his lips. Parker reached out and took the Winchester away from him. Their eyes locked. Franklin swayed, and then fell back, arms akimbo. He hit the concrete and dust flew up all around him. He shuddered, and was still. Examining the photographs the next morning, Mel Dutton would marvel at the way the dust that was everywhere had been displaced by Franklin’s falling body, pushed back so it formed a cleared space exactly the same shape but slightly larger than his corpse.
Willows limped over, clutching his side. Together, he and Parker knelt beside Franklin.
Franklin’s eyes dropped to Willows’ chest, the ragged, gaping hole in his jacket and, beneath, the finely woven fabric of the Kevlar vest.
“Clothes make the man, eh, Jack?”
“Looks to me as if we both dressed for the occasion,” said Willows.
Franklin gave Willows a sad and empty smile, teeth flashing red with lipstick and blood. He tugged weakly at the tattered hem of his dress. The dark leather of the automatic’s holster gleamed against the pale, loose flesh of his thigh. Parker saw that he was wearing panties and that he’d shaved his legs. He mewed like a gull, his fingers plucking feebly at the hem. Was it possible he was embarrassed? Parker pulled the dress down past his knees.
“Sweet thing,” croaked Franklin.
“I’m going for an ambulance,” said Parker.
Franklin was sweating heavily. The thickly applied makeup on his face had bubbled and ruptured, flowed in thick rivulets down his sunken, stubbled cheeks. He blinked up at Willows and said, “Questions, Jack?”
“Why the singles club?”
“Had to start somewhere, didn’t I? It was either that or the phone book.”
“Is that where you first met your wife, at the club?”
“Yeah, right. After I decided to kill Atkinson, I went back. First time in a long time, but nothing had changed. I broke in through a rear door. The keys to the filing cabinets were in McCormick’s desk. It wasn’t locked …” Franklin faded. Willows watched him work to gather his strength. “That was my wife in the Christmas picture I hung on the wall in McCormick’s office.”
“The picture with the shoes in it. Were you having a little fun with us, George?”
“She’s still got those shoes. Tucked away in a plastic bag in the attic. I left one just like them on Jervis when I shot Patterson. Hearts stitched above the arch. Real nice …”
Franklin coughed. A fine red mist hung in the air. Blood from the exit wounds in his back had formed a wide pool beside him, crawled along his left arm and wormed its way between his splayed fingers. “I loved her so much,” he said quietly. “I loved her so much and it turned out I didn’t know her at all.” Sunk deep in sockets of mauve and black, Franklin’s eyes were listless and dull, the pupils tiny despite the low light level inside the warehouse. He closed his eyes and then opened them, searching for Willows. He clutched spasmodically at Willows’ lapel and said, “Talk to me, Jack. I’m dying.”
Willows took Franklin’s hand, held it firmly. He was bleeding inside, where Franklin had shot him in the ribs. He felt feverish, giddy, full of laughter and panic.
Afterwards, when they asked him what he’d talked about, he couldn’t remember a single word.
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The Goldfish Bowl
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