I’d begun to think of the video as Holly’s test reel, because it incorporated so many essential elements of her later work: graphic, edgy sex, themes of dominance and submission, and a wrenching, punitive interrogation at the end. But there were differences, too. The technical ones were comparatively minor- brighter lighting, murkier sound, the use of a single camera. The important distinction was in the lack of anonymity: the fact that Deering was unmasked- face and voice- throughout, and the fact that he and Holly knew each other outside the confines of the hotel room. So, besides the vivid renderings of Deering’s lust for Holly, the video also documented his many declarations of love for her, his lengthy discourses on Nicole’s sexual deficiencies- on her deficiencies in general- and, near the end, his proposal of marriage to his sister-in-law.
Nicole chuckled grimly. “Of course, Herbert couldn’t give away water in the desert, and all his babbling to me about Redtails-‘Let’s hang on a little longer, it’ll be worth even more next year’- just made me angry. It made me push the deal along faster.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
Nicole looked at Deering. “Go on, Herbert- tell.”
He shook his head. “No, Nikki-”
“You do as I say, you prick!” she said, and she took aim squarely at Deering’s head. He squeezed his eyes shut, and Nicole looked at him with fresh disgust. “You tell him, or I swear to Christ I will shoot you again!”
Deering kept his eyes closed, and his words were nearly lost in the dry rasp of his breathing. “I went to see her, down in the city. I went to explain that Nikki wouldn’t…that I couldn’t convince her. I went to ask her- to beg her- not to do this. I-”
Nicole interrupted with another harsh laugh. “But you brought the gun along, didn’t you, you prick? You stole Daddy’s gun from me and brought it with you.”
He nodded weakly. “It was nighttime and we walked near the water, and Holly was in a bad way. Something happened, an accident or something, and she was bruised. And she was in a terrible mood- angry. I tried to explain about Nikki, but she wouldn’t listen. She yelled and threatened- said she’d send Nikki the video that night. And she called me names- stupid, useless, an ape…
“And then I hit her. I hit her with the back of my hand. I didn’t plan it- it just happened, and she fell down. I tried to help her, but she pushed me away, and when she got up, she was holding a brick. She cursed at me and threw it and it almost hit me. Then she picked up something else, a broken bottle, and she was screaming at me and calling me names, and…” Deering’s head dropped and his shoulders shook.
“Christ, just say it, Herbert- say what happened next.”
He didn’t look up, but he said it. “I took out the gun…and I shot her.”
I let out a deep breath, and something unwound in my gut. Nicole stared at her husband, like a bluejay at a worm. “What happened after that?” I asked.
“I took her things…her clothes…and I threw them in a storm drain. I put her…her body…in the river. Then I went to her apartment, to look for the disk, but I couldn’t… It was a mess, torn apart, so I got out and went home.
“You came by the next day, and ever since, I’ve been…crazy. I can’t sleep, I can’t think straight.” Deering pressed his right hand harder against his side, and folded around his wound. The pool beneath his chair was larger now.
Nicole snorted. “Hell of a guy, isn’t he?” she said. There was a wild light in her blue eyes.
I looked at her. “Let me call an ambulance, Nicole- for your sake as much as his. If he dies-”
She ignored me. “I knew Holly. I knew what she was like, how selfish she was, how self-indulgent and sick, that there was nothing she wasn’t capable of. Holly didn’t surprise me. But him…” She turned to Deering and brought the gun up again, in a two-handed grip. “You surprised me, Herbert. I thought I knew what you were about- not Superman, maybe, not the brightest bulb, but not a guy who’d fuck my evil sister, either. It turns out you were full of surprises. Live and learn, I guess.”
“Let me make a call, Nicole- for you. You don’t want to sit here and watch him bleed out.”
She laughed, an unlovely, crazy sound. “You sure about that?”
“He’s not worth it, Nicole. Come on.” She looked at me and sighed, and let her hands fall to her lap. She took a deep breath and a shiver ran through her. Her face seemed to collapse on itself, and she looked a thousand years old. “Come on,” I said again.
She ran a hand across the back of her neck, and what was left of her ponytail was gone. Her hair fell forward in a tangle, and caught the winter light, which brightened it and made it somehow richer. For an instant, as she turned her head, it looked like Holly’s hair, and she looked more than a little like Holly. Nicole found a calm, exhausted smile. Her voice was quiet and even.
“You’re right- I don’t want to watch him bleed out,” she said. “It’s taking too damn long.” Then she shot him twice, and blew his chest apart.
39
“I’m sick of looking at you,” Leo McCue said, and he ran a thumb over his mustache, and closed the door of the interview room. I started to say something and Mike kicked me under the table. McCue made us a quorum: me, Mike Metz, Rita Flores, Tina Vines, and the fat man himself, gathered yet again at the Seventh Precinct station house. It was early enough on Thursday morning that we were all drinking coffee and rubbing sleep from our eyes. McCue was right: we’d seen entirely too much of each other lately.
It had started on Sunday, in the brick bunker on Route 7 that housed the Wilton PD. I’d spent the day there, surrounded by predictably frosty Connecticut law enforcement types- a couple of Wilton detectives, the Wilton chief, and a guy from the state’s attorney’s office- and when I hadn’t been sitting and waiting, I’d been answering questions and giving statements.
I’d kept my story simple, and almost true: that I’d come to Wilton in an attempt to tie up some loose ends in an investigationspecifically, that I’d wanted to discuss with Deering his apparently false claims that Holly never visited her father, and that I’d wanted to ask him what “Redtails” was. I hadn’t mentioned the fact that I also wanted to discuss the video I’d seen the night before, of Deering and his sister-in-law fucking like bunnies. Everything else I told the cops about what had happened at the Cade house, from the time I pulled up, to when the first cars responded to my 911, was as complete and accurate as I could make it. And it was happily consistent with the story Nicole had repeated- with a notable lack of remorse, and over the strenuous objections of her attorneys- several times that day.
Mike Metz had joined me sometime in the midafternoon, and sometime after that, the Connecticut guys had thawed enough to offer me a refill on the bad coffee. For a little while, it looked like we might get out of there before dark. We were sitting in the day room, at a cafeteria table, under buzzing fluorescent lights, when McCue and Vines swept in and sucked all the air from the place.
Vines perched on a desk, and knocked over photos of someone’s kids. McCue opened his mouth, and an avalanche of commands and condescension tumbled out. The Connecticut guys, for their part, were amazingly patient. McCue was told that it would be some time before he and Vines could interview Nicole, and even more time before he could look at the crime scene. Going through Herbert Deering’s personal effects would take longer still. Demands that Nicole’s gun be turned over to the NYPD for testing were met with amazed laughter. Maybe just to get McCue out of his face, the Wilton chief had agreed to let him talk to me.
We’d gone into a small, airless room, McCue, Vines, Mike, and I, and they took me over the same ground I’d covered with the Wilton cops. I told them the same story, but they’d pushed back harder. “What the hell gave you the right to question Deering?” “Who the hell else have you been talking to?” “What did we say about fucking around in an active investigation?” They snarled and snapped, but even they knew that the game had changed. Their big case, while still plenty lurid, was effectively closed. Mike had summed it up for them.