R. J. Jagger
A Way With Murder
1
Monday morning everything in Bryson Wilde’s life changed. It happened when he was in his office, pacing next to the windows with coffee in one hand and a smoke in the other. It happened when the door opened and a woman walked in.
She wasn’t dressed to impress.
Down below were sandals and up top was a baseball cap, slightly tilted to the side, with a dishwater blond ponytail hanging out the back. Between the two was an uneventful pair of loose cotton pants and a plain white blouse.
She looked to be about twenty-three or twenty-four.
Her eyes were lagoon blue.
Her face was mysteriously hypnotic.
Her body was curvy.
“I’m in trouble,” she said. “I was hoping you could help me.”
Wilde tapped a smoke out of the pack and handed it to her.
She took it and said, “Thanks.”
He lit her up from his.
“What’s your name?”
“Secret,” she said. “Secret St. Rain.”
“I’ve never seen you around town.”
“I’m not from here.”
“Too bad. So what kind of trouble are you in, Secret St. Rain?”
She blew smoke.
It was the sexiest thing Wilde had ever seen.
“I guess I should rephrase it,” she said. “I’m not sure if I’m in trouble or not. I guess that’s what I want you to find out-whether I am or not.”
Wilde took one last drag on the Camel, which brought the fire as close to his fingertips as the law allowed, then flicked the butt out the window.
Damn it.
That was a bad habit.
Alabama had told him a hundred times to not do that.
He leaned out to be sure it hadn’t landed on anyone down at street level.
To his disbelief, there it was smack dab on the top of a gray Fedora, moving down the street compliments of a man who didn’t have a clue.
“Hey, you!”
The man looked around but not up.
“Your hat’s on fire.”
Wilde ducked out of sight as the man looked up.
“Sorry about that,” he told Secret. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Secret pulled a paper out of her purse, unfolded it and handed it to Wilde. It was a page out of the Rocky Mountain News, Saturday edition. She tapped her finger on an article titled, “Woman Falls to Death.”
“Did you hear about this?”
No.
He hadn’t.
“Read it,” she said.
He did.
It was a short piece about a woman in a red dress who was found horribly smashed at the base of a building on Curtis Street, the victim of a fall Friday night. Police were investigating the incident as a possible homicide.
When Wilde looked up, Secret said, “I was there when it happened, down below on the sidewalk.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“Interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
“So what happened? Did she jump or what?”
“She didn’t jump,” Secret said. “Someone was dangling her over the edge, holding her by the hands, then he let her go.”
“Ouch.”
“She almost landed on me,” Secret said. “Here’s the problem. It was murder. The guy who dropped her was just a black silhouette to me. There were no lights shining up there. I have no idea who he was.”
“Okay.”
“The opposite isn’t true though,” she said. “I was under a pretty strong streetlight.”
Wilde tapped two more sticks out of the pack, lit them both and handed one to Secret.
She took it, mashed her old one in the ashtray and said, “Thanks.”
“So you’re a witness to a murder,” Wilde said. “That’s what it comes down to.”
She nodded.
“I want to know if the guy saw my face good enough to recognize me,” she said.
Wilde frowned.
“How am I supposed to figure that out?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “First figure out who he is. Then we’ll arrange a situation where I walk past him or get in his vicinity, what I’m talking about is a situation where he looks at me.”
“All right.”
“You’ll be there off to the side,” she said. “When he looks at me, you look at him and see if there’s a reaction. See if he recognizes me.”
Wilde shrugged.
“There will be a reaction,” he said. “I can already tell you that.”
She blew smoke.
“You’re too kind. What we do is see if he tries to follow me. We see if he tries to kill me. If he does, that means he’s the killer. At that point we can tell the police.”
“So you’re looking to trap him?”
“He’ll trap himself is a better way to put it.”
Wilde took a sip of coffee.
“Why me? Why not just do this with the police?”
She shook her head.
“This can’t get screwed up.” She pulled an envelope out of her purse and handed it to him. “That’s a retainer.”
