Shakespeares Trollop Page 0,50

Schuster begged.

Becca and I looked at each other simultaneously, and if I looked like she did, we looked pretty silly. Becca's bright blue eyes were about to pop out of her head with astonishment and chagrin. To trap the brother of the sheriff in such a position, in the apartment of a murder victim... We'd cut our own throats with our bravado. No one, but no one, would thank us for this.

"Oh, hell," Becca said, disgust in her voice. "Come down to my place."

Like a whipped puppy, Marlon slunk down to the landlady's apartment, looking smaller than ever. His black hair had been cut very short, I was guessing for the funeral, and now that I could watch him for a minute I realized that the young man was fine-boned and spare. I doubted if he could lift seventy-five pounds. I'd hoped we were catching Deedra's murderer, but now I didn't know what to think.

Without being told, Marlon sank onto the single chair that was squeezed in across from the couch. Becca and I faced him, and Becca told him to start talking.

Marlon sat staring at his hands, as if answers would sprout on them. He wasn't too far from crying.

"How'd you get in?" I asked, to get him rolling.

"Deedra gave me a key," he said, and he had a trace of pride in his voice.

"She didn't give out keys." I waited to see what he'd say next.

"She gave me one." The pride was unmistakable now.

Becca shifted beside me. "So why didn't you turn it in?" she asked. "I had to give the cops my key, and I own the place."

"I kept it because she gave it to me," Marlon said simply. I scanned his face for the truth. I am no human lie detector, but it looked to me like he believed what he said. I'd noticed before that Marlon was more like his father than his mother, at least as far as looks went. But Sheriff Schuster's size had been belied by his ferocious reputation as a lawman who swung his nightstick first and asked questions later. If there was a similar ferocity in his son, it was buried mighty deep.

"So, you went in with a key given you by the tenant," Becca said thoughtfully, as if she was considering the legality of his entry.

Marlon nodded eagerly.

"Why?" I asked.

Marlon flushed a dark and unbecoming shade of red. "I just wanted to ...," and he trailed off, aware that a sentence that began that way wasn't going to end up sounding convincing.

"You went to get... ?" Becca prompted.

Marlon took a deep breath. "The film."

"You and Deedra made a video?" I kept my voice as neutral as possible, but the young man flushed even deeper. He nodded, and buried his face in his hands.

"Then you're in luck, because I have all the home videos at my house," I said. "I'll go through them, and when I find yours, I'll give it to you."

I thought he would collapse from relief. Then he appeared to be screwing up his courage again. "There were other things," he said hesitantly. "Mrs. Knopp shouldn't see them, you know?"

"It's taken care of," I told him.

Becca's eyes flicked from me to the boy, absorbing this information.

"You found her, Miz Bard," Marlon said. He was staring at me longingly, as if he wanted to open my head and see the images there. "What had happened to her? Marta wouldn't let me go see."

"Marta was right. If you cared for Deedra, you wouldn't have wanted to see her like that."

"How was it?" he asked, pleading.

I felt very uneasy. I tried to keep looking the boy steadily in the eyes, so he'd believe me. "She was naked in the car with no visible wounds," I said carefully. "She was sitting up."

"I don't understand."

What was to understand? The plainest explanation of the scene was probably the true one, no matter what problems I had accepting it. Deedra had had one man too many. That man had lured her out to the woods, become angry with her or simply decided she was expendable, and killed her.

"Had she been raped?" he asked.

"I don't do autopsies," I said, and my voice was too hard and angry. Deedra had been so quick to have consensual sex that it would be hard to even theorize she'd been raped unless there was a lot of damage, I was sure. Maybe the insertion of the bottle covered up damage from another source? Maybe it indicated the man couldn't