Lethal People: A Donovan Creed Crime Novel (18 page)

I nodded and told Lauren I cared a great deal about Janet and Kimberly and wanted only the best for them. I told her I wasn’t interested in taking Ken’s place; I just didn’t want a man like him living in the same house with my family. I told her how horrified I’d been to learn that Janet was planning to marry a habitual wifebeater.

With that preamble out of the way, I explained my plan: Lauren would pretend to be Chapman’s ex-wife, Kathleen, and pretend Chapman had beaten her as a warning to keep her mouth shut about the abuse. I assured Lauren that I was a professional, meaning I would assault her very carefully, going for the maximum e
ff
ect with the minimum pain. I reiterated there’d be no enjoyment in it for me and that I didn’t go around beating up women on a regular basis—but that I couldn’t think of any other way to discourage Janet from marrying Ken Chapman.

Then I gave her a handful of pain pills and told her if she decided to go through with it, she should take two now and one every four hours for two days. I told her the pills would make her feel so good she’d probably call to thank me for the beating.

“Whoa, cowboy,” Lauren said. “There you go again!”

I looked at her blankly. Then it registered. “Oh, right. Sorry.” I shook my head. “That was a figure of speech about thanking me for the beating. I just meant that the pills are incredibly e
ff
ective. I really am an idiot with women.”

“I’ve had pain pills before,” she said.

“Not like these,” I said. “They’re laced with something that gives you a feeling of euphoria.”

Then I got out my du
ff
el bag and handed her two bricks of money held together with rubber bands, each of which contained ten thousand dollars. She stared at the money. “It pains me to say this, but let’s see if I can help you save a few bucks. Why not just call Janet and tell her about Chapman? Or better yet, send her this folder and tell her you did a background check on her fiancé and this is what turned up.”

“She won’t believe me,” I said. “She knows my people can fabricate legal documents in a matter of hours. We can alter it, falsify it, destroy court records or create published testimony overnight. And don’t forget, she loves the bastard, and he’s persuasive. His last girlfriend still believes Kathleen beat herself up all those years to maintain control in the relationship.”

Lauren was running out of ideas. I knew the feeling. “What if you sent the information anonymously?” she asked.

“Janet would know I did it,” I said, “and she wouldn’t believe it anyway. She really hates me.”

“Honestly, sugar, if this is your best idea, I can see why she might feel that way.” Lauren gestured toward the photos on the bed. “I admit there’s a resemblance,” she said, “but we’re not even close to identical. Really, this whole thing is insane. Even if I agreed to do it, when Janet sees the real photographs, she’ll know I’m not Kathleen.”

“I’ll take photos of you before and after the beating, and my people will alter the police photos to match your face and body. They’ll even do an age regression on you to show the beatings over a period of years. Then they’ll superimpose Kathleen’s injuries on your photographs. The updated packet will be delivered to your home address by courier within eight hours.”

“You can’t possibly know where I live,” she said.

To her horror, I recited her address from memory. “So the story and paperwork will be real,” I continued. “Only the police photos will be doctored.”

Lauren said, “How do you know that Janet never met Kathleen?”

“There’s no way Ken would have let them meet. He wouldn’t want Janet to learn about the beatings.”

“Why can’t I just pay her a visit, pretend to be Kathleen, and tell her the truth about Ken?”

“I thought about that, but we have to make Janet want to protect Kathleen.”

“Why?”

“Because if Janet thinks Ken beat Kathleen half to death as a warning, she’d be putting Kathleen’s life in danger by implicating her.”

“You’re talking about later on, when Janet breaks o
ff
the wedding,” Lauren said.

“Exactly. If Kathleen just shows up on Janet’s doorstep without any injuries, Janet will tell him, and he’d either say Kathleen was crazy or that it all happened years ago and he’s cured. Remember, he can prove he’s been to anger management courses.”

“Required by the court.”

“Right, and also counseling.”

“Also a provision of his probation.”

“You know the drill.”

She nodded.

“He’ll claim he was bipolar,” I said, “and that he subsequently took drugs to alleviate his chemical imbalance.”

“All of which might be true.”

“It might be, but that’s not the issue. I don’t want this creep in my wife’s life—or my daughter’s.”

“Your ex-wife, you mean.”

“Right.”

“So, if I pretend to be Kathleen, show up all battered and bruised, and tell Janet he did this to me as a warning, you think she’ll buy it?”

“I know she will. He can’t claim to be cured if he did this to you. But you’ve got to play it a certain way. We’ll need to do a lot of rehearsing.”

“I charge a two-hour minimum.”

I smiled. “I thought the twenty grand might be enough.”

She smiled back. “That’ll help take away the sting,” she said, “but you said the twenty was for the beating. Anything else, such as rehearsing, that’s extra.”

She saw me frown.

“Don’t go cheap on me now, Donovan,” she said. “I’m obviously the only game in town, the only escort that matches Kathleen enough for this crazy scheme to work.”

“Fair enough,” I said, noting she’d called herself a hooker earlier. “But if I’m paying for your time I want your full attention.”

“Of course.”

I nodded. “Good. And, Lauren, I’ll make you a promise: if my ex breaks o
ff
the wedding, I’ll owe you a favor.”

“A favor,” she said.

I nodded.

“You mean like some kind of Mafi a thing?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Like what, you mean you’d kill someone if I asked you to?”

I shrugged. “It’s up to you how you use your favor.”

“Mister, you are some kind of twisted freak, anyone ever tell you that?”

“I hear that a lot, actually.”

She looked at me silently for a moment. “Well I intend to hold you to it,” she said, “cause I’ve got a Ken Chapman in my life, too.” Lauren tried to hand one of the envelopes back to me. She said, “Don’t you want to just give me half now, half later?”

“I trust you,” I said.

She nodded. “I guess if you’re willing to beat me up and kill my ex, you’re not the sort of person who gets double-crossed much, am I right?”

“You think you can pull this o
ff
convincingly?” I said.

“Are you kidding me?” She said her experience as a successful escort all these years made her a better actress than Meryl Streep.

The way she put it, “Every week, an eighty-year-old man thinks he gives me a screaming orgasm, okay? So this business with Janet’s a piece of cake.” Then she added, “Still, you need to prepare yourself for something.”

“What’s that?”

“She’s never going back to you.”

“I don’t want her back.”

“Then let me put it another way: she’s never going to forgive you.”

“You don’t think she’ll eventually thank me?”

“Not a chance.”

I thought about that a bit. “Okay,” I said. “It’s still worth it.”

In all, Lauren and I were together six hours. The first hour we rehearsed her lines, over and over. Then I ordered room service. We rehearsed another thirty minutes while waiting for the food. Lunch came and we ate it and chatted about life in general.

I couldn’t get over how much she looked like Kathleen Gray. Lauren didn’t have Kathleen’s spark, of course, or her gift of gab, or her capacity to be adorable. Yet she had something special going for her in a Kathleen sort of way.

After lunch, since I was paying for her time anyway and since she looked so much like Kathleen Gray, we had a little casual sex.

Then I beat the shit out of her.

We rehearsed her lines again while I waited for her bruises to bloom. Then I took pictures and got the information about her ex and asked if she had a preference how she wanted the hit to go down. She said, “Two things. First, I want him to su
ff
er.”

“Of course you do.”

“Wait,” she said. “This is really going to happen, isn’t it?”

I smiled. “What’s the second thing?”

“I want to watch him die.”

I smiled again. “Of course you do.”

She asked, “Am I bad?”

I shrugged. “Hey, he’s got to die sometime, right? Now don’t over-think this. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”

CHAPTER 21

O
ne quick glance and I forgot all about Joe DeMeo.

It was Saturday, a couple hours after my meeting with DeMeo at the cemetery. I was staying in a luxury beach hotel in Santa Monica when she knocked on the door.

Jenine.

The first thing she noticed was the envelope fat with cash on the edge of the co
ff
ee table. She picked it up and her eyes widened as she riffled through the stack of hundreds. She glanced at me to see if I was serious.

I nodded.

She’d been advertising on Aspiring Actresses, the internet escort site, and had purchased enough space to display three sultry photographs and a bio listing her vital statistics and limited acting experience.

In the e-mails we exchanged, she admitted being desperate for cash, and I had agreed to share some of mine in return for what might happen when we eventually met.

When she’d called from the lobby, I gave my room number and wondered—having been previously burned in similar encounters—if the girl who showed would bear any resemblance to the photos I’d seen.

I needn’t have worried. If anything, she looked better than advertised—and that was saying a lot. Dressed casually in jeans and a halter top and sporting iridescent ear buds tethered to a surprisingly bulky MP3 player, she looked every bit the college student for whom a distinguished professor might willingly sacrifice his career.

Jenine removed the ear buds and placed the MP3 player on the co
ff
ee table before tucking the envelope securely into her handbag. She performed the obligatory small talk in a detached but e
ffi
cient manner until I let her know it was time to move things along.