K Is for Killer

Beauty arranged herself so that she was between us.
    While Hector and I exchanged pleasantries, the dog watched us with an air of nearly human intelligence, her gaze shifting constantly from his face to mine. Sometimes she panted with an expression close to a grin, dangling tongue dancing as if at some private joke. Her ears shifted as we spoke, gauging our tones. I had no doubt she was prepared to intervene if she didn't like what she heard. From time to time, in response to cues I wasn't picking up myself, she would retract her tongue and close her mouth, rising to her feet with that low rumble in her chest. All it took was a gesture from him and she'd drop to the floor again, but her look then was brooding. She probably had a tendency to sulk when she wasn't allowed to feast on human flesh. Hector, ever watchful, seemed amused at the performance. "She doesn't trust many people. I got her from the pound, but she must have been beaten when she was young."
    "You keep her with you all the time?" I asked.
    "Yeah. She's good company. I work late nights, and when I leave the studio, the town is deserted. Except for the crazies. They're always out. You asked about Lorna. What's your connection?"
    "I'm a private investigator. Lorna's mother stopped by my office earlier this evening and asked if I'd look into her death. She wasn't particularly happy with the police investigation."
    "Such as it was," he said. "Did you talk to that guy Phillips? What a prick he was."
    "I just talked to him. He's out of homicide and onto vice these days. What'd he do to you?"
    "He didn't do anything. It's his attitude. I hate guys like him. Little banty roosters who push their weight around. Hang on a sec." He slid a fat cassette into a slot and depressed a button on the soundboard, leaning forward, his voice as smooth and satiny as fudge. "We've been listening to Phineas Newborn on solo piano, playing a song called The Midnight Sun Will Never Set.' And this is Hector Moreno, casting a little magic here at K-SPELL. Coming up, we have thirty minutes of uninterrupted music, featuring the incomparable voice of Johnny Hartman from a legendary session with the John Coltrane Quartet. Esquire magazine once named this the greatest album ever made. It was recorded March 7, 1963, on the Impulse label with John Coltrane on tenor sax, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums." He punched a button, adjusted the studio volume downward, and turned back to me. "Whatever he said about Lorna, you can take it with a grain of salt."
    "He said she had a dark side, but I knew that much. I'm not sure I have the overall picture, but I'm working on that. How long had you known her before she died?"
    "Little over two years. Right after I started doing this show. I was in Seattle before that, but the damp got to me. I heard about this job through a friend of a friend."
    "Is your background in broadcast?"
    "Communications," he said. "Radio and TV production; video to some extent, though it never interested me much. I'm from Cincinnati originally, graduated from the university, but I've worked everywhere. Anyway, I met Lorna when I first got down here. She was a night owl by nature, and she started calling in requests. Between cuts and commercials, we'd sometimes talk for an hour. She began to drop by the studio, maybe once a week at first. Toward the end, she was here just about every night. Two-thirty, three, she'd bring doughnuts and coffee, bones for Beauty if she'd been out to dinner. Sometimes I think it was the dog she cared about. They had some kind of psychic affinity. Lorna used to claim they'd been lovers in another life. Beauty's still waiting for her to come back. Three o'clock, she goes out to the stairs and just stands there, looking up. Makes this little sound in her throat that'd break your heart." He shook his head, waving off the image with curious impatience.
    "What was Lorna like?"
    "Complicated. I thought she was a beautiful, tortured soul. Restless, disconnected, probably depressed. But that was just one part. She was split, a contradiction. It wasn't all the dark stuff."
    "Was she into drugs or alcohol?"
    "Not as far as I know. She blew hot and cold. She was nearly hyper sometimes. If you want to get analytical, I'd be tempted to label her manic-depressive, but that doesn't really capture it. It was like a battle she fought, and the down side finally won."
    "I guess we all have that in us."
    "I do, that's for