I held up a hand. “Don’t make excuses for him. He hit you. Being drunk doesn’t change the rules. Might even make it worse, especially if he did it once while drunk and then let himself come home drunk again.”
She digested that. She’d probably heard that rap before but it might have come from a female caseworker or a shrink. From the way her eyes shifted to me and away and back again I guessed she’d never heard that from a man before. I guess for her, men were the Big Bad. Too many of them are.
It was ten to five, but it was already dark outside. December snow swirled past the window. It wasn’t accumulating, so the snow still looked pretty. Once it started piling up I hated the shit. My secretary, Mrs. Gilligan, fled at the first flake. Typical Philadelphian—they think the world will come to a screeching halt if there’s half an inch on the ground. She’s probably at Wegmans stocking up on milk, bread, and toilet paper. The staples of the apocalypse. Me, I grew up in Minneapolis, and out in the Cities we think twenty inches is getting off light. Doesn’t mean I don’t hate the shit, though. A low annual snowfall is one of the reasons I moved to Philly after I got my PI license. Easier to hunt if you don’t have to slog through snow.
“When he hit you,” I said, “you report it?”
“No.”
“Not to the cops?”
“No.”
“Women’s shelter?
“No.”
“Anyone? A friend?”
She shook her head. “I was . . . embarrassed, Mr. Hunter. A black eye and all. Didn’t want to be seen.”
Which means there’s no record. Nothing to support her case about ex-hubby wanting to kill her.
I drummed my fingers on the desk blotter. I get these kinds of cases every once in a while, though I stayed well clear of domestic disputes and spousal abuse cases when I was with Minneapolis PD. I have a temper, and by the time they asked for my shield back I had six reprimands in my jacket for excessive force. At one of my IA hearings the captain said he was disappointed that I showed no remorse for the last “incident.” I busted a child molester and somehow while the guy was, um, resisting arrest he managed to get mauled and mangled a bit. The pedophile tried to spin some crazy shit that I sicced a dog on him, but I don’t have a dog. I said that he got mauled by a stray during a foot pursuit. Even at my own hearing I couldn’t keep a smile off my face to save my job. Squeaked by on that one, but next time something like it happened—this time with a guy who whipped his wife half to death with an extension cord because she wasn’t “willing enough” in the bedroom—I was out on my ass. He ran into the same stray dog. Weird how that happens, huh? Long story short, I already didn’t have the warm fuzzies for her husband. We all have our buttons, and when the strong prey on the weak, all of mine get pushed.
“Did you go to the E.R.?”
“No,” she said. “It was never that bad. More humiliating than anything.”
I nodded. “What about after the divorce? He lay a hand on you since?”
She hesitated.
“Mrs. Skye?” I prompted.
“He tried. He chased me. Twice.”
“Chased you? Tell me about it.”
She licked her lips. She wore a very nice rose-pink lipstick that was the only splash of color. Even her clothes and shoes were white. Pale horse, pale rider.
“Well,” she said, “that’s where the story gets really . . . strange.”
“Strange how?”
“He—David, my ex-husband—changed after I filed for divorce. He’s like a different person. Before, when I first met him, he was a very fastidious man. Always dressed nicely, always very clean and well-groomed.”
“What’s he do for a living?”
“He owns a nightclub. The Crypt, just off South Street.”
“I know it, but that’s a Goth club, right? Is he Goth?”
“No. Not at all. He bought the club from the former owner, but he remodeled it after The Batcave.”
“As in Batman?”
“As in the London club that was kind of the prototype of pretty much the whole Goth club scene. David’s a businessman. There’s a strong Goth crowd downtown, and they hang together, but the clubs in Philly aren’t big enough to turn a big profit, and not near big enough to attract the better bands. So, he bought the two adjoining buildings and expanded out. He made a small-time club into a very successful main stage club, and he keeps the music current. A lot of post-punk stuff, but also the newer styles. Dark cabaret, deathrock, Gothabilly. That sort of thing. Low lights, black-tile bathrooms, bartenders who look like ghouls.”
“Okay,” I said.
“But this was all business to David. He didn’t dress Goth. I mean, he wore black suits or black silk shirts to work, but he didn’t dye his hair, didn’t wear eyeliner. Funny thing is, even though he was clearly not buying into the lifestyle, the patrons loved him. They called him the Prince. As in Prince of—?”
“Darkness, yeah, got it. Go on.”
“David was more fussy getting ready to go out than I ever was. Spent forever in the bathroom shaving, fixing his hair. Always took him longer to pick out his clothes than me or any of my girlfriends.”
“He gay?”
“No.” And she shot me a “wow, what a stereotypically homophobic thing to say” sort of look.
I smiled. “I’m just trying to get a read on him. Fastidious guy having trouble with a relationship with his wife. Drinking problem, flashes of violence. Not a gay thing, but I’ve seen it before in guys who are sexually conflicted and at war with themselves and the world because of it.”
She studied me for a moment. “You used to be a cop, Mr. Hunter?”
“Call me Sam,” I said. “And, yeah, I was a cop. Minneapolis PD.”
“A detective?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” That seemed to mollify her. I gestured to her to continue. She took a breath. “Well . . . toward the end of our relationship, David stopped being so fastidious. He would go two or three days without shaving. I know that doesn’t sound like the end of the world, but I never saw David without a fresh shave. Never. He carried an electric razor in his briefcase, had another at home and one in the office at the club. Clothes, too. Before, he’d sometimes change clothes twice or even three times a day if it was humid. He always wanted to look fresh. Showered at home morning and night, and had a shower installed in his office.”
“I get the picture. Mr. Clean. But you say that changed while you were still together?”
“It started when he fell off the wagon.”
“Ah.”
“When I met him he said that he hadn’t taken a drink for over two years. He was proud of it. He thought that his thirst—he always called it that—was evil, and being on the wagon made him feel like a real person. Then, after we started having problems, he started drinking again. Never in front of me, and he always washed his mouth out before he came home. I never smelled alcohol on him, but he was a different person from then on. And he started yelling at me all the time. He called me horrible names and made threats. He said that I didn’t love him, that I was just trying to use him.”
“I have to ask,” I said, being as delicate as I could, “but was there someone else?”
“For me? God, no!”
“What set him off? From his perspective, I mean. Did he say that there was something that made him angry or paranoid?”
“Well . . . I think it was his health.”
“Tell me.”
“He started losing weight. He was never fat, not even stocky. David was very muscular. He lifted a lot of weights, drank that protein powder twice a day. He had big arms, a huge chest. I asked him if he was taking steroids. He denied it, but I think he was trying to turn into one of those muscle freaks. Then, about a year and a half ago, he started losing weight. When he taped his arms and found that his biceps were only twenty-two inches, he got really angry.”