Chapter One
Guy Forrest was sitting on the cement steps outside the housewhen I arrived. His head was hidden in his hands. Rain fell instreams from his shoulders, his knees, tumbled off the roof ofhis brow. He was slumped naked in the rain, and beside hisfeet lay the gun.
From his nakedness and the diagonal despair of his posture, Isuspected the worst.
"What did you do?" I shouted at him over the thrumming rain.
He didn't answer, he didn't move.
I prodded him with my foot. He collapsed onto his side.
"Guy, you bastard. What the hell did you do?"
His voice rose from the tangled limbs like the whimperings ofa beaten dog. "I loved her. I loved her. I loved her."
Then I no longer suspected, then I knew.
I leaned over and lifted the gun by the trigger guard. Notelling what more damage he could do with it. Careful to leaveno prints, I placed it in my outside raincoat pocket. The doorto the house was thrown open. I slipped around his heavingbody and stepped inside. Lat
Chapter One
Guy Forrest was sitting on the cement steps outside the housewhen I arrived. His head was hidden in his hands. Rain fell instreams from his shoulders, his knees, tumbled off the roof ofhis brow. He was slumped naked in the rain, and beside hisfeet lay the gun.
From his nakedness and the diagonal despair of his posture, Isuspected the worst.
"What did you do?" I shouted at him over the thrumming rain.
He didn't answer, he didn't move.
I prodded him with my foot. He collapsed onto his side.
"Guy, you bastard. What the hell did you do?"
His voice rose from the tangled limbs like the whimperings ofa beaten dog. "I loved her. I loved her. I loved her."
Then I no longer suspected, then I knew.
I leaned over and lifted the gun by the trigger guard. Notelling what more damage he could do with it. Careful to leaveno prints, I placed it in my outside raincoat pocket. The doorto the house was thrown open. I slipped around his heavingbody and stepped inside. Later on, in the press, the housewould be described as a Main Line love nest, but that raisesimages of a Stanford White-inspired palace of debauchery-redsilk sheets and velvet wallpaper, a satin swing hanging fromthe rafters-but nothing could be further from the truth. Itwas a modest old stone house in a crowded Philadelphia suburb,just over City Line Avenue. The walls were bare, thefurnishings sparse. A cheap table stood in the dining room tothe left of the entrance, a television lay quiet before athreadbare couch in the living room to the right. There was aJacuzzi in the bathroom, true, but in the furnishings therewas a sense of biding time, of making do until real life withreal furniture began. In the bedroom, up the stairs, I knewthere to be a single bureau bought at some discountbuild-it-yourself place, a desk with stacks of bills, afold-up chair, a mattress on the floor.
A mattress on the floor.
Well, maybe the press had it right after all, maybe it was alove nest, and maybe the mattress on the floor was thegiveaway. For what would true lovers need with finefurnishings and fancy wallpaper? What would true lovers needwith upholstered divans, with Klimts on the wall, with a grandpiano in the formal living room? What would true lovers needwith a hand-carved mahogany bed supporting a canopy of bluesilk hanging over all like the surface of the heavens? Suchluxury is only for those needing more in their lives thanlove. True lovers would require only a mattress on the floorto cast their spells one upon the other and enjoin the worldto slip away. Until the world refused.
The mattress on the floor. That's where I would find her.
Rain dripped off my coat like tears as I climbed the stairway.My hand crept along the smooth banister. Around the landing,up another half flight. As I rose ever closer, my step slowed.A complex scent pressed itself upon me like a smotheringpillow. I could detect the sharpness of cordite and somethingsweet beneath that, a memory scent from my college daystouched now with jasmine, and then something else, somethinglower than the cordite and the sweetness, something copperyand sour, something desolate. A few steps higher and then tothe left, to the master bedroom.
The door was open, the bedroom light was on, the mattress onthe floor was visible from the hallway outside. And on it shelay, her frail, pale body twisted strangely among the clottedsheets.
There was no need to check a pulse or place a mirror over hermouth. I had seen dead before and she qualified. Her legs werecovered by the dark blue comforter, but it was pulled down farenough to reveal her cream silk teddy, shamelessly raisedabove her naked belly. Crimson spotted the blanched white ofher skin. The teddy was stained red at the heart.
I stood there for longer than I now can remember. The sight ofher unnatural posture, the colliding scents of gunpowder andpot, of blood and jasmine, the brutal mark of violence on herchest, all of it, the very configuration of her deathoverwhelmed me. I was lost in the vision, swallowed whole bytime. I can't tell you exactly what was flailing through mymind because it is lost to me now, just as I was lost to themoment, but when I recovered enough to function a decision hadbeen made. A decision had been made. I'm not sure how, but Iknow why, I surely know why. A decision had been made, adecision I have never regretted, an implacable decision, yetpure and right, a decision had been made, and for the rest ofmy involvement in that death and its grisly aftermath thatdecision guided my every step, my every step, starting withthe first.
I took a deep breath and entered the bedroom. I squatted,leaned over the mattress, touched her jaw. It was stillslightly warm, but the joint now was not perfectly slack. Theskin at the bottom of her arm had turned a purplish red. Ipressed a finger into the skin; it whitened for an instantbefore the color returned. It had been about an hour, Icalculated. Still squatting, I leaned farther forward andstared closely at her face.
Her name was Hailey Prouix. Black hair, blue eyes, long-neckedand pale-skinned, she was thirty years old and lovely as asiren. While still alive she had peered out at the world witha wary detachment. She had seen too much to take anything atface value, her manner said as clear as words, she had beenhurt too much to expect anything other than blows. She woresharp, dark-rimmed glasses that were all business, but hermouth curved so achingly you couldn't look at it withoutwanting to take it in your own. And her stare, her stare,containing as it did both warning and dare, could weakenknees.
Continues...
Excerpted from Fatal Flaw Low Priceby William Lashner Copyright © 2004 by William Lashner. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.