Blood Wine by John Moss Page B

out … but, you know, maybe you’re already doing it by then —”
    â€œDoing it!”
    â€œMaking love … pathetic, but not totally degenerate —”
    â€œSays you,” said Miranda. “I think it’s despicable.”
    â€œHe falls asleep beside you. Someone else, apparently not the man with the ring, another man breaks into your apartment —”
    â€œCondo.”
    â€œCondo, right. You two are out cold. The third man gets Miranda’s gun from her desk —”
    â€œHow did he know it was there?” asked Miranda.
    â€œWhere else would it be? He jimmies the drawer, takes out your Glock in its holster, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œHe puts a slug through Philip’s head, another through his gut —”
    â€œThrough his gut?” Spivak interjected, not anticipating Morgan’s hypothesis.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œOkay. To this point, he’s been neat and efficient.”
    â€œRight,” said Spivak.
    â€œThen he — he fucks Miranda.”
    â€œSteady,” said Stritch.
    â€œOkay, it’s my word,” said Miranda. “Go on, Morgan.”
    â€œIt’s not too messy, at this point. The sex, it’s not about writhing around, he makes a deposit.…”
    â€œYes,” said Miranda, envisioning it happening to someone else. “Then?”
    â€œOkay,” said Morgan. “No, at this point he hadn’t shot Philip in the gut. Just through the head. Using the pillow to muffle the sound. Now he takes Miranda’s hand, he puts the Glock, which he’d wiped clean, in her hand, he twists her arm around and pulls her finger on the trigger — the gun goes off against Philip Carter’s abdomen.”
    â€œAnd?” said Miranda.
    â€œThe intruder, he puts the gun on the bedside table. It’s not convincing, he thinks. He needs it to look like she did it. Why would she shoot him in the gut? He gets a bullet from the desk drawer, puts it in the clip. Sets the gun back down on the table with only one bullet missing. We know two were fired. He’s smart and cold, he’s a foreigner, he wouldn’t know the extent of forensic discovery. He rolls Philip’s body away from Miranda, on top of the sheet, and with a knife he’s carrying he goes after the slug inside the corpse. He’s wearing one of Miranda’s plastic aprons. Check, I’ll bet there’s one missing. When he gets the bullet, Philip’s guts are slopping out of his body. The guy thinks the mess will reinforce that she’s crazy. He goes to the bathroom, washes meticulously. Gets her kitchen knife, slicks it with blood. Dumps it under the bed, not too obvious, he thinks. Goes back into the bedroom, covers the two of them. Starts to leave. Sees the holster where he set it beside the bed. Returns it to the desk, sees it’s flecked with blood — no, he fired one of his shots through the holster. That’s it. The other was through the pillow. He has to take the holster with him.”
    â€œWhy through the holster?” asked Eeyore, who was mesmerized by Morgan’s narrative.
    â€œTo muffle the sound. His first shot was through the holster. Otherwise he would have used the pillow for both.”
    â€œWhat about the blood on the walls?” Miranda asked. “How does that fit into your grand scenario?”
    Morgan’s face took on an introspective scowl, brow furrowed, eyes squinting, then he pronounced it was one of two possibilities.
    â€œEither he was trying to show how hysterical Miranda was when she killed the guy, I mean, something to go along with disembowelling him and then climbing back in beside him with his guts hanging out. Or. I think there’s another side to this guy. Fastidious, yes, and absolutely cold-blooded. But pathologically driven to assert his own personality, no matter how necessary it was to conceal himself from