A Good Shot in the Nose

Albert Tucher

Office jobs are the worst, Diana thought.

She preferred seeing clients on the neutral ground of a motel room, but she didn't mind going to a man's home. He usually behaved himself, if only to avoid leaving a mess for his wife to find. But if he felt free to have her in his office, it was his territory. She had to fight him for control from the first moment.

This man wouldn't put up much of a fight. Diana stood six feet away and studied the client. He sat in his custom chair and stared at something over her shoulder, but she didn't bother to look. His hair nearly concealed the depression in his skull. Whatever had dented the bone had also broken the skin, but there wasn't much blood. His heart must have stopped pumping immediately.

Who said CSI was a waste of time?

If she went closer to body or the desk, she might leave traces of herself for the cops to find. Putting her fingerprints on the white envelope that held her money would be an especially bad idea.

She turned away from temptation and looked around. Two sides of client's corner office were glass from floor to ceiling. She could see the parking lot behind the building. In the harsh summer light her car seemed to invite her to drive it away. At five-thirty in the afternoon the only other car in the lot probably belonged to the client. She sighed.

Diana turned back to her client and looked him over once more. She saw no way to put off what she had to do. She went back through the door to the outer office and picked up the phone on the secretary's desk. She punched in nine-one-one.

“There's been a … homicide, I guess, at One Forty-Nine Commerce Boulevard .”

The dispatcher matched her for calm.

“Do you feel safe where you are?”

“Yes.”

Diana wondered why she didn't feel worried. She decided that she had bought into the suburban belief that life required a car. Two cars in the lot meant two people in the building. Nobody had legs anymore.

But the building felt empty, and she trusted her instinct.

A similar feeling told her to stand still with her hands slightly away from her sides. It was a good choice. A uniformed Morristown police officer sidled through the outer door with his sidearm drawn.

“You called?” he said.

“That's right.”

He motioned her to turn and raise her arms to shoulder height. She obeyed, and he frisked her. She suspected that he was already drawing conclusions from her acceptance of strange male hands on her.

“Where?”

“In there.”

He looked inside, glancing several times back at her. He didn't go past the doorway. The client must have looked dead enough to him.

“The envelope. Would that be for you?”

“Let's wait on that.”

He gave her a cop look. She had seen better ones than his.

“You're going to call detectives. I'll to talk to them.”

It was one detective, who introduced himself as Breitwieser. She didn't know him. Right behind him came more uniforms and crime scene officers from the county.

“I'm surprised you stuck around.”

“I saw the security cameras downstairs. First thing I look for. I could talk to you now or later, and later you'd like me even less.”

He gave her a smile that she could have done without.

“Somebody disabled them. You could have gotten away free and clear. With your money.”

She refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her wince.

“At least you know I didn't do it.”

“Do I?”

“Are you one of those? You've got a hooker, so that‘s all you need?”

“You'll do for starters.”

“You could call Detective Tillotson in Lakeview. He knows me.”

He grunted without enthusiasm, but he also took a cell phone from a clip on his belt. He turned away from her and made the call. The cop-to-cop tone in his voice told her that he had reached Tillotson. It should be a break for her.

Breitwieser ended the call and turned back to her.

“Tillotson says you know the rules. Run them down for me, just for the record.”

“Tell the cops when I know something. Don't make the cops look bad. Don't beat the clients to death.”

“How do you know how he was killed?”

“I went in there looking for him, and I found him. You want to see where I stood?”

“Wait a minute.”

Another middle-aged man had appeared in the outer doorway. She assumed it was someone from the Medical Examiner's office. For a while Breitwieser was busy with the new man, then with the crime scene technicians. Finally he returned to her and went on as if nothing had interrupted them.

“Okay, go ahead.”

She walked around him, into the inner office, and showed him where she had stopped. He took her place and nodded.

“Okay, you could see the wound. What about the weapon?”

“Probably a sports trophy.”

“Now you're really digging yourself in.”

“Check it out.”

She pointed at the wooden shelves that covered one wall of the office. Most of the shelves held knickknacks and gadgets that did things nobody needed done, but in the center of the display was an arrangement of sports memorabilia. The place of honor was empty.

“What else could it be?” she said. “The highlight of his career, whatever his game was.”

“I see your point. Okay, what else do you know about him?”

“Not much.”

“He didn't talk about himself? Doesn't seem in character.”

“I'm sure he would have. The thing is, I never met him.”

“This was your first date?”

She nodded.

“How did he find you?”

She hesitated. That was the question she had hoped to avoid.

“You don't hold out on me,” he said. “Especially not when it's a homicide. Otherwise, I could get real interested in you. You want me poking around in your business?”

“He had a referral.”

“From who?”

“A friend of his.”

“Interesting. Friend of the victim , also knows you. Maybe they're not so tight these days. Did this client have it in for the guy? Or for you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did this client know when you'd be coming?”

“I don't know that, either.”

“But he could have,” said Breitwieser, “I need his name.”

“I don't think he's the one you're looking for.”

“Did I ask you?”

“I'm serious. He didn't do it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Look around. What's on the victim's desk? Besides my money, I mean.”

“Pictures. His wife. Him and his wife.”

“Anything else?”

“That's it.”

“So, the pictures are important, right?”

“What's your point?”

“I'll let you in on a secret. I checked him out. I always do with a new guy. I asked the other girls in the area if they knew Bill Bernhard.  Nobody did. He's, what, sixty? And he's never come to any of us. I have a feeling the wife just died. Maybe it's a late divorce, but I'm betting that he's a pretty recent widower.”

“Then why didn't he have you to his house?”

“Could be any number of reasons. He doesn't know me to trust me. Or he just thinks it would be hot to do it in the office. Or he's like a lot of divorced men and widowers, and he tries to put off going home as long as he can. Or maybe he just feels like it's his wife's house. And here he's the boss, so he can just kick everybody out.”

“So he planned to do it with his wife's pictures looking at him? That‘s a little weird.”

“Sometimes,” she said, “a guy is also a little pissed off at his wife for dying and leaving him behind.”

“Okay, but so what?”

“Now look at all that stuff.” She pointed first at the shelves, then at the rest of the office. The victim had a lot of golf paraphernalia, including an indoor putting set-up in the corner of the office. “I've seen this kind of stuff before.”

“So he had a gift-of-the-month subscription to Brookstone.”

“Sharper Image, too. But those are good anonymous gifts. Self-effacing. Nobody's going to think, ‘I wonder who gave him that and why.' But there's a lot of this crap, and it goes back years. Who would give him stuff like that year after year? And why would he keep it? Doesn't look like he used any of it.”

Breitwieser nodded. “Okay, I see where you're going with that. I need to find out if there's a woman here who's been with him a long time. Because she might have been in love with him for years.”

“Just waiting and hoping,” she said. “And finally the wife dies, and what does he do? He calls me. Maybe with this woman listening at the door. Which means the secretary is the one you look at first.”

A technician in the outer office called out, “Detective?”

Breitwieser motioned her out ahead of him. He conferred with the technician about some blood drops in the corridor. Breitwieser then got on his cell phone again .. .

“We'll run with this for now,” he said as he waited for an answer. “But you'd better hope it pans out, or I will get back to you. Count on it.”

He asked someone to get warrants for personnel files and the secretary's desk. Diana moved to a chair in the waiting area and sat down. No one seemed to mind. She tried to watch, but after a few minutes she closed her eyes.

When she opened them, Breitwieser stood over her with a file folder open in his hands.

“Barbara O'Sullivan,” he said. “Fifty-six years old. Been with the victim for twenty-seven years. No one else on her health or life insurance.” He closed the file. “Looks like you called it. She lives less than a mile away.”

A uniform appeared in the outer doorway.

“Detective, patrol just did a drive-by. Her car is there.”

Breitwieser nodded. He studied her for a while.

“You can go, but stay available.”

She started to ask about her money, but she caught herself.

“What?” he said.

“Never mind.”

“Good call. It's evidence.”

Another uniformed officer walked her past the crime scene people in the hall to the front door of the building. She thought she was ready for the heat, but it stunned her. She had parked in the shade of the poplar hedge around the parking lot, but now that meant a longer walk across the blacktop.

Diana unlocked her car and pulled the door open. As she bent to climb in, she heard a scuffing sound behind her. Her own thought from earlier in the day flashed through her mind: Nobody has legs anymore.

She ducked lower. Something hard and heavy hit the roof of her car just above her head. She hurled herself backward into her attacker. It wasn't much of a move, but it worked. The attacker staggered, and something fell onto the asphalt with a metallic clang. Diana turned and punched. Her fist bounced off the attacker's shoulder. It was a woman's shoulder. Diana's punch added to the woman's momentum. The attacker sat down on the scorching blacktop and gasped as her palms burned on contact. 

Diana looked. The article that had fallen was a large sports trophy.

“Barbara?” she said.

“Fuck you,” said Barbara O'Sullivan. The words seemed to taste bad to her. She obviously didn't use them much.

“Are you a virgin?” said Diana. She winced, as she often did when she said the first thing that came to her mind. The fact was, the woman looked virginal.

Barbara withered her with a look.

“Yes, I'm a virgin. Unlike some people.”

“After a point, it's not such a good thing.”

“You think I don't know that? I wasted my life on him.”

“Did you already know him when he got married?”

Tears started from the other woman's eyes.

“I was there before she was. He could have had children with me. But he had to have her. Why?”

“I don't know, Barbara.”

“You're supposed to be the expert on men.”

“Don't I wish. I might be married myself.”

Diana could have said that experts on men didn't marry them, but this didn't strike her as the time for taunts.

“You even live close by, so you could walk to work.”

“So I could get there whenever he needed me. Look what it got me.”

Diana realized that she didn't know what to do next.

“I'm going to get up,” said Barbara. “This is too hot for sitting on.”

She planted her hands on the blacktop. The movement would have looked innocent if her right hand hadn't strayed closer to the trophy on the ground.

“Don't try it,” said Diana.

Barbara ignored her. Her hand moved another inch. Diana darted forward and kicked the trophy away. Barbara glared. She levered herself to her feet. The strap of her bag had stayed on her shoulder through all of her exertions. Diana held her hand out.

“I'll take your cell phone.”

“You don't have one? What kind of hooker doesn't have a cell phone?”

“I don't think they're secure enough. So I'll take yours. Now.”

“I'm not going to help you get me arrested.”

“Barbara, it's hot, I didn't get paid, I'm half your age, and I'm pretty sure I've been in more fights than you. So give.”

Barbara let the bag slide off her shoulder. She swung the bag like a slingshot and threw it at Diana's face. Diana couldn't believe she was just standing there, watching the bag come at her. Barbara turned and ran like a woman who hadn't run in years.

Diana started to parry, but too late. The bag hit her in the face and dropped into her hands.

There's nothing like a good shot in the nose, she thought.

That must have been the source of the tears that stung her eyes. They couldn't have come from watching a graceless middle-aged woman fighting to the last.

You've got to give her credit, Diana thought. Can't I just let her run?

Barbara couldn't go anywhere. She had nothing, not even the cash in her wallet. But Breitwieser was the kind of man who would harass Diana's clients just to make his point, whatever it was.

Diana dug in the bag and found the cell phone. She thumbed in the numbers and waited for an operator. She realized that it was her second nine-one-one call of the day.

And that, she thought, is two times too many.