Nerds Who Kill: A Paul Turner Mystery (21 page)

Turner asked, “Did you know Dennis Foublin?”

“We e-mailed each other a few times. I’d only met him once at a party. We talked for all of five minutes.”

“You know anyone who would want to kill him?”

“I barely knew him to talk to him.”

He left.

Fenwick said, “I wish I could put him at the top of my suspect list.” They scribbled on their charts as they talked.

“Why?”

“He was close to the deceased, but he seemed kind of snarky about almost everybody else. That is going to be my new favorite word.”

“What?”

“Snarky.”

“Hate to see you without a new favorite word,” Turner said. “Wordless in Chicago? Doesn’t have quite the ring you need.”

“So who do you think did it?”

“Granville is certainly the right build. He denied being approached by Muriam for her little costume shows. He could be a clueless dolt who didn’t recognize the come-ons. Although someone that good-looking has to be used to people coming on to him.”

“Maybe Marwood lied to us. He’s the only one who’s mentioned the shows so far.”

“Well, she was in the costume. Something had to be up. His is the only explanation we’ve gotten up to this point.”

Fenwick looked at his charted diagram of the rooms and floors where they had bloody clothes, feathers, suspects, killings, and the attack on the cop. “This tells me nothing.”

“So far,” Turner said. They always made diagrams. Sometimes they helped. Sometimes they didn’t. The detectives believed that the time they didn’t do it would be the time it would have made a difference.

20

On their list from Oona Murkle they found David Hutter’s name. They sent for him.

David Hutter was a huge bear of a man in a medieval monk’s robe. He wore a great white beard and tonsured hair. He had a deep baritone voice. Turner thought he either needed to bathe more often or use more deodorant.

Fenwick said, “We heard you had some problems with Muriam Devers.”

“Doesn’t mean I killed her. All kinds of people have all kinds of problems with all kinds of people. Doesn’t make them killers.”

“Yes,” Fenwick said, “but most people we have problems with don’t end up dead. Your problem person did.”

“Did she really get run through with a broadsword?”

“You have any fights with her?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Fenwick said, “It’s late. I’m on overtime. I’d love to see my family sometime this weekend. I’m sure I represent all that is evil in government with my officiousness.”

“Why not just answer?” Hutter said.

Turner wasn’t sure the guy was wrong. Sometimes it would be easier just to answer the question instead of trying to bash the person with banter.

Turner said, “She got run through with a broadsword. You have the heft to be on the list of people able to easily wield a sword that heavy. Did you have fights with her?”

If Hutter thought they were playing good cop/bad cop, Turner wasn’t going to disabuse him of the notion. “Yes, we had fights. I dared to criticize her. I dared to say what I think. Not just about what she wrote but about what everybody wrote. I was honest.”

“Did you give honest positive comments or honest negative comments?” Turner asked.

“Both. Always both. Devers wouldn’t listen to me. She never listened to anybody.”

“Who would have a reason to kill her?” Fenwick asked.

“I’m not sure. She was a back-stabber. She was quite willing to ruin anybody’s career or reputation. Trampling the downtrodden was a skill she had in abundance.”

“How did Muriam Devers notice you?”

“I was at a convention about fifteen years ago. That was also fifty pounds ago and before I let my beard grow. She pinched my butt. It was a great joke. Everybody laughed. I got to join her writing group.”

“How come you got thrown out?”

“When I met her, I was in awe. I wanted to be an author, a published author. That has been my goal since I was twelve. I wanted to see my words in print. She took an interest in me. An author I’d admired, whose books I’d loved. I was thrilled. I was willing to do anything for her. Very quickly I learned that I should never have put her on such a pedestal. I was young and stupid. For ten years I was young and stupid. That’s a lot of stupidity. For a long time I didn’t want to believe what I knew to be true, that she was a shit. When I finally admitted it to myself, I began to be less subservient than I was supposed to be, plus I started to gain weight. Look at all the guys in her group. They had to be studly and stay that way.”

“Could she really have been that blatant?” Fenwick asked.

“Sure,” Hutter said, “why not? She was rich. Personal writing groups don’t have governmental regulations on who can or cannot be in them. She could afford to be anything she wanted.”

“What exactly did she do that you had to be subservient about?”

“You laughed at her jokes or you were frozen out. You listened to her criticism, and you changed what she suggested you change in your manuscript or you lost favor. And then there was that sucaryl-drenched reputation. It takes a hell of a lot of energy and careful planning to maintain the façade and be vicious to people at the same time. Like, we were supposed to be the ones who spread vicious rumors at conventions or on the Internet about other people.”

Turner asked, “Why would you agree to act for her like that? It might not be criminal, but it was unsavory at the least.”

“To get published. To get a better agent. To get a better deal. To make more money.”

Fenwick said, “You were willing to sell your soul so you could write about truth and light?”

“I suppose you believe the moronic cliché that all writers are busily producing truth and light for the honor and glory of their craft?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Fenwick said.

“Not likely. It’s like any other job. We’re in it for the money. And it’s a whole lot more like real work than people know. You may not have a water cooler to gather around, but there’s gossip and rumors that spread fast. There’s infighting and back-stabbing. You have to fight for what is yours.”

Turner said, “Maybe it was that way for you and the people in your group. My guess is there are honorable people in the writing profession just like in any other. And dishonest people just like any other. And ambivalent people. The usual gamut.”

Fenwick said, “Such fighting doesn’t usually involve broadswords stuck through people.”

Turner asked, “Who did she make angry enough to do something so violent?”

“Everybody.”

“Anybody who specifically fought back?” Turner asked. “Anybody who might get angry enough to kill about it?”

“I never knew any killers, but people lost jobs, prestige, or friends.” He told them about Devers’ first publicist and first editor. “She pissed off Hollywood people and tried to bring down other authors. She hated Samuel Chadwick and Arnie Rackwill. Samuel because he laughed at her behind her back. He was always trying to lower the price on what she could get. She sneered at him behind his back.”

“Do you think any of them would kill someone else?”

“I never would have before today. I don’t know. I’ve heard a famous mystery writer once said that to find the motivation for the murderers they write about, to understand their killers, it was only necessary for a writer to look inside their own souls. We’re all capable of great anger. Most of us have enough controls on us to keep our darker impulses in check. I guess anyone could do anything. I don’t know of anyone I’d specifically accuse.”

“How well do you Arnie Rackwill?”

He sighed. “All this is going to come out. I guess it doesn’t really make a difference.” He flapped his arms. “I fucked him once. It didn’t get me a movie deal. I wasn’t angry with him. I guess I’d have slept with any number of people to get a deal.”

“Men and women?” Fenwick asked.

“Does it make a difference?” Hutter asked. “A sale is a sale.”

Turner said, “She was found in a Xena, Warrior Princess outfit.”

“If she trusted you enough, she invited you to her private soirees, and you’d get to see the show. There were mountains of vanity behind that public image. I suppose we are all different in private, but the difference between her public and private personas seemed more extreme than most. There’s a long distance between all that goddamn sweetness and light and her kinky shows.”

“What was the show?”

“She’d parade in different outfits, but the Xena was her favorite.”

“Wasn’t she kind of old for that?” Fenwick asked.

“You think vanity disappears as you get older? You think people don’t judge you on how you look because you’re older? She had an ego, and it needed to be fed. You didn’t feed it, you didn’t last in her inner circle. I guess it was a harmless enough thing. I just thought she looked so stupid. I saw the shows for years. Finally, I couldn’t hold it in. I laughed. I couldn’t stop laughing. She got very offended, and I got booted out of the group.”

Turner didn’t think it was odd that someone laughing at your private fantasies would be a cause for anger. “Laughing at her sounds kind of cruel,” Turner said.

“She set herself above everyone else. She was always better than you. She always got the better contract. The better foreign rights deal. She made money and pots of it, and she let you know it. I have no idea where she spent her millions. I don’t care. She was crueler than a playground full of adult bullies. Worse, it was embarrassing to see her be human. She admitted to having needs to people who were essentially work colleagues. Can either of you imagine dressing up in odd costumes in front of the people you work with?”

Turner didn’t really want to hear Fenwick’s answer to that question. Turner said, “You laughed so she threw you out?”

“Yeah.”

“Describe this to me,” Turner said. “How did you wind up being the one to watch her?”

“I’ve talked to people over the years. As far as I can tell, she operated the same way with everyone. You’ve already discovered the young sexy males, and how she liked to draw them to herself. I know it’s hard to believe looking at me, but I was a young sexy male once.”

Turner, of course, believed the young part. He wasn’t ready to concede that Hutter was sexy once. The general state of the parts of his body Turner could see or smell seemed to need a lot of maintenance.

“Can you give us names please?” Turner asked.

“Over the years she might have had twenty or thirty different guys in the group.”

“Did all of them get thrown out because they laughed?”

“I’ve talked to maybe a quarter of them. Some never got invited to the private showings. Some were never interested. Some saw her for what she was. I guess some were honest people. I don’t know which of them are at the convention.”

Fenwick asked, “So who was she meeting to do a show for at this convention?”

“I have no idea. I assume one of the people in her writing group. Or it might have been someone whose butt she’d pinched at this convention.”

“Would she do a show for someone she just met?” Turner asked.

“Once in a great while.”

Turner knew that Brian’s butt had been pinched. He couldn’t and didn’t want to begin to imagine his son agreeing to go to an older woman’s room under such odd circumstances, but this was another addition to his unease.

Fenwick asked, “Did you know Dennis Foublin?”

“Sure, I knew Dennis. He was a good guy. We kind of started out together in this business. You know how it is. You get recognized a little on the Internet, in a few little magazines. Fans get interested. I wasn’t famous. Denny was cool.”

“Do you know if he had any enemies?”

“I can’t imagine. Denny was a calm, quiet, pleasant kind of guy. Nobody could get angry at Denny.”

“Somebody did,” Fenwick said.

“It makes no sense,” Hutter said. “There would be no reason to kill him.”

“How about something sinister in his background?”

He scratched his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Who said that? Denny was just a regular guy.”

“We haven’t been able to find any more than a casual connection between him and Ms. Devers.”

“She never talked about him while I was around.”

Fenwick said, “We need to know your movements this morning.”

He gave them his itinerary. He had been part of a panel discussing writing humorous science fiction novels. He claimed to have been in someone’s presence the whole day. They would have to check.

He left.

Turner got up and strode toward the window that looked out on the high-rise office building next door. It gleamed with the rain that once again was pouring down. He turned back.

Fenwick said, “There is a pun somewhere in this, something about these people being back-stabbers. A pun waiting to see the light of day.”

Turner said, “A pun waiting to die.”

Fenwick said, “I got no notion on this guy yet. He’s a writer. He tells lies for a living. Many of these people do.”

“I imagine they prefer to call it writing novels.”

“Either way.”

Turner said, “You should be happy at any rate.”

“Why?”

“We’ve got a lot less sweetness and light than we had a several hours ago.”

“We haven’t had anybody seriously dump on Dennis Foublin yet. Somebody had to not like the guy.”

Turner said, “Who was Devers supposed to be meeting to put on her show?”

“She could have been just dressing up for herself, a very private fantasy moment.”

“Or someone had an appointment.”

They called Sanchez in and asked him about the results of the preliminary interviews with the people on the various lists they’d been given by various suspects.

Sanchez said, “Nobody’s reported anything really odd or that they figured you needed to know about.”

For the chart they were making, he gave them information on room numbers of the people they’d talked to. Turner and Fenwick would add the room numbers of the places they’d found blood. They also asked him to get Peter Damien who was the only member of the writing group they hadn’t talked to yet.

While he was doing that, they met with the CEO of Galactic Books, Murray Keefer. Keefer was in his sixties. He wore an Armani suit with a snowy white shirt and a dark, conservative tie. He reverted to the sweetness and light theme of some of their earlier interviewees.