Hard Case Crime: Deadly Beloved (16 page)

“I’ll give you that,” I allowed. “But what if he kept coming to you for a completely different reason?”

“What reason would that be?”

“Oh, I don’t know...what if you were a
suspect?”

He reared back, blinking as if at a bright light. “Now that is absurd. A suspect in, of...
what?”

I let the superficially friendly manner drop away, and allowed a cold edge to creep in.

“Funny thing is,” I said, “you steered me to the answer yourself.”

He was openly uneasy now. “I have no idea what—”

“Your patented Old School dream analysis approach—I was thinking about that
dream—”

I lounged there on no towel, basking in a sun that seemed to turn the world white and yellow and orange, though the sensation was of warmth, not heat. The green of trees was a backdrop, more perceived than seen, the blue-green of the lake glinting with sun sparkle.

I felt a sense of repose encouraged by the lapping of the waves and the laughter and splashing of a young couple, happy honeymooners, cavorting in the water. I watched them for a while, but they were indistinct in the shimmer of sunlight.

To the left of me, a digging sound drew my eyes to a boy around ten, in a yellow swimsuit with orange-red seahorses dancing on it, who was working with a shovel, gaining more raw material for the elaborate sand castle he was constructing, turrets and towers and even a carved-out moat.

The sound of splashing drew my attention back to the happy couple coming up out of the water, hand in hand, stumbling onto the sand to fall onto beach towels, dripping, laughing, kissing.

I smiled a little and gave them privacy they hadn’t requested by casting my eyes back out on the gentle rolling water with its diamond-like glimmer.

Then, as if a switch had been thrown, the world turned shades of blue and gray, and a wind began to blow, kicking up choppy waves. My hair started to whip and a sudden, troubling chill enveloped me, encasing me in goose pimples. I looked around for my own towel, but there wasn’t one, and I wound up hugging my legs to myself, a shivering oversized fetus.

But when I glanced over at the boy building that sprawling castle, he didn’t seem to notice the wind and cold; even his sand-color hair remained unruffled, though the blue of fast-moving clouds shadowed him.

“And today, when this session began,” I said, “you ignored the very element that started me thinking—the innocent boy...building the sand castle...
Dr. Cassel.”

His smile was dismissive. “You’re talking nonsense.”

“Maybe. If so, we’ve talked a lot of nonsense in our sessions, examining my dreams.”

Cassel said nothing.

“One small question, Doc. Psychologists can’t prescribe medicine—they have referral arrangements with psychiatrists, their medical equivalent.”

Irritably, he allowed, “That’s of course true.”

“That’s not the question—this is: were you Marcy Addwatter’s psychologist’s referral doctor?
”

He frowned, clearly displeased. “That, I’m afraid,
does
cross the confidentiality line. But even if I were, I can assure you, pharmacy records will show—”

“That you have an accomplice in the pharmacy.”

His face went stony. Eyes, too.

“Something that records have shown already,” I said, “thanks to some work a young investigator of mine, Bea Vang, dug up. Seems as part of the generous pro bono work you’ve done over recent years, you once counseled a troubled young woman from the South Side named Holly Jackson. Prostitute. Poor kid was HIV Positive, but AIDS didn’t kill her—my client, Marcy Addwatter, did, in a shabby little motel room.”

He slowly shook his head. “I don’t recall the name. As you say, I do considerable pro bono work, and a lot of sad souls pass my way. I do what I can.”

“I’m sure. Here’s a fun fact that almost slipped through the cracks—the motel where Richard Addwatter was killed? Along with Holly Jackson? It’s the same one where my husband was killed, on our honeymoon night. Different room, though. Still—small world. I should have picked up on that, but I never bothered to check out the Addwatter crime scene; score another one for Bea....Wonder what an in-depth talk with the manager there will bring?”

In the dim office—only the green-shaded lamp on his desk providing any illumination at all—the doctor’s face was a solemn, carved mask.

“You won’t get anywhere with this, Ms. Tree,” he said.

I shrugged, stood, purse slung over the shoulder of my trenchcoat. “You may be right. A psychiatrist using
his position of trust to vandalize his patient’s mental inventory, to prescribe improper medication designed to aggravate and manipulate that patient’s mental condition—
you
were the one planning these events, Doc. And when we dig back through all of the files of the Planner’s victims, you will be right there, won’t you, Doc? Their trusted psychiatrist.”

Dr. Cassel remained seated, looking up at me with a tiny, nasty smile and cold hard dark eyes. “And do you imagine, Ms. Tree, that any of that will be easy to prove?”

“Possibly not,” I admitted. “You
are
the master manipulator—probably protecting yourself with layer after layer, although the Holly Jackson and no-tell motel links are there, all right. Still, even connecting you to the Muertas may prove difficult.”

His manner brusque, business-like, Dr. Cassel said, “I think you should go. Your time is long since up.”

“But, hey,” I said cheerfully, “I’m gonna give it my best shot—making sure your future is one of police inquiries, civil suits, malpractice hearings, newspaper exposés....Oh, and, uh, cancel my next appointment, would you?”

“With pleasure.”

I turned away and headed toward the door.

And I could hear the desk drawer opening—was he reaching for his appointment book, to record that cancellation? I thought not.

When I whirled, gun from coat pocket already in hand, I could see the little automatic in his fingers coming up from the drawer.

But the dark eye of the nine millimeter already had him stared down.

His expression was stunned, his jaw damn near scraping the desktop.

“See how much you’ve taught me, Doc?...Pushed
your
buttons pretty good.”

Panicking, he tried to raise the automatic, but he didn’t have near the time, and I fired once, the nine mil’s report thundering in the small office, rattling furniture and windows, and he looked at me for a moment, seemingly with three dark eyes—the entry wound in his forehead was perfectly spaced between his two orbs below—though I don’t really think he saw me in those frozen moments before he flopped, dead, onto the desk.

“Actually,” I said to the corpse,
“that
was my best shot.”

I slipped the gun into my purse—I don’t like the lumpy look it gives to the slimming lines of the dark trenchcoat—and got out my cell. I speed-dialed Rafe Valer.

“I’m in Cassel’s office,” I said.

“Is he...are you...was it...?”

“Self-defense? You bet your ass.”

*

Lt. Valer saw to it that my time at the scene was limited, and within two hours I was driving in fast-moving traffic in my late husband’s Jag, heading to the hospital to sit with Roger, and make him feel better with my report.

Dan would be there, too, and afterward we’d head to Gino’s for deep dish. Some good guys may need their heads shrunk after killing a bad guy, but me, I like to get my stomach filled.

My God, Chicago was beautiful at night, all that high-rise geometry and electricity unleashed, and the lake wasn’t half bad, either....

Somebody said,
“Pretty good for a girl.”

I glanced over in the rider’s seat and Mike was grinning at me. Sharp as hell in a black leather jacket and black t-shirt and black jeans. Alive and well and giving me a proud, loving smile.

“So I did all right?”

“All right?”
Mike shivered.
“Lady, sometimes
you
scare
me....”

I laughed.

And I’m sure any other driver gliding by, who saw me, all alone in my Jaguar, laughing my ass off, would have taken me for crazy.

An Afterword

by Max Allan Collins

This is the first prose novel about female private detective Michael Tree, but numerous graphic novels precede it, all written by me and drawn by Ms. Tree’s co-creator, cartoonist Terry Beatty.

The “Ms. Tree” feature began in 1980 when the independent comics scene was just getting started, and one of its pioneers, editor/publisher Dean Mullaney, approached me about doing a serialized tough detective story for
Eclipse,
a new magazine he was putting together.

The buzz in comics fandom about that magazine was considerable, because Dean was bringing in some of the hottest talent in comic books to try to do something that could hold its head up alongside (and possibly above) anything the big boys, Marvel and DC Comics, were doing.

I was surprised to be asked to participate, frankly, because I had never written comic books. But I’d been writing the “Dick Tracy” syndicated comic strip since late 1977; and my take on that classic crime strip had attracted attention. I’d attempted to return the venerable strip to its hardboiled roots, with as much gunplay as I could get away with, and reviving classic Chester Gould villains in the context of contemporary themes—human cloning, video piracy, computer viruses.

Mullaney was part of the generation of comics fans-turned-professionals who revered “Tracy,” and I got a lot of positive reaction from this group—eventually I even got to do
Batman
for a year, because of the high regard in which some comics pros held my work on “Tracy.”

Also, Dean had seen a little strip I was then doing with cartoonist Terry Beatty, called “The Mike Mist Minute Mist-eries,” part of a weekly page of comics Terry and I self-syndicated for a year or so to smalltown papers and advertising “shoppers.” This was a great idea that made us not much money at all, but one of our clients,
The Chicago Reader
, had picked up our “Comics Page” just to run “Mike Mist,” taking advantage of my “Tracy” connection, the strip being a Chicago institution.

Anyway, seeing and liking “Mike Mist” primed Dean for allowing me to use Terry—who also had zero comic book credits—as the artist in a magazine otherwise filled with stars and even superstars.

On his initial phone call, Dean asked me if I had any ideas for a new private detective character. Immediately I pitched “Ms. Tree,” because I’d been thinking for a long time about doing a switch on Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and his secretary Velda.

The central notion was that the tough private eye and his loyal secretary, his unrequited love for years and years, would finally get married, only for the P.I. to be murdered on their wedding night, leaving the secretary to take over the detective agency and step into her late husband’s shoulder holster. The private eye’s murder would be the former secretary’s first case.

Though clearly patterned on Hammer and Velda, this notion was generally true of many if not most classic (and not so classic) private eyes, who always seemed to have beautiful secretaries who loved them, for all the good it did.

Of course, what separated Spillane’s Velda from the rest was that she was a licensed P.I. herself, packed a gun in her purse, and was almost as tough as Mike Hammer, despite needing to be rescued by him now and then.

Due to my corrupting influence, Terry was a stone Spillane fan, too, and we looked at the obscure but wonderful “Mike Hammer” comic strip from the early ’50s and used, as a stepping off point, the way Spillane crony Ed Robbins had drawn Velda. But even without cartoonist Robbins to light the way, Spillane’s description had been fairly exact—Velda was a big beautiful brunette who wore a pageboy hairdo.

For a while we toyed with making pin-up queen Bettie Page (who in 1980 had not yet received much mainstream attention) the physical model for Ms. Tree. But we ultimately rejected that, not wanting to go with a sex-kitten Honey West type, on the one hand, and finding it a little too obvious, on the other. Within a year or two, gifted artist Dave Stevens embraced the obvious, brilliantly, and his Bettie Page-styled heroine helped fuel his
Rocketeer
to comics fame and Hollywood success.

Terry and I always viewed “Ms. Tree” as the syndicated comic strip we would have done if continuity strips were still being bought by the newspaper syndicates (which they weren’t, and aren’t). That meant the character names had the kind of on-the-nose Dickensian quality that makes some people wince—from the pun of Ms. Tree/mystery to the chick-stealing Chic Steele, not to mention inexperienced young Dan Green and brave cop contact Rafe Valer (valor).