Crime of Privilege

“That’s bullshit,” he said. He didn’t sound angry. I was certain now that there was someone in the room next to him, someone just beyond my vision.

“Something bad happens,” I said, trying to speak louder, “no matter how mad you Gregorys are at each other, you stick together. That’s the family code, right?”

“We do stick together,” he agreed. “We stuck with you down in Florida, didn’t we?”

“Peter was going to get the last girl that night and you were going to be the loser, weren’t you, Jamie? Couldn’t entice her to go off with you, so you decided to make sure he didn’t get her, either. That’s the way all you hypercompetitive Gregorys are, isn’t it?”

“What we are is loyal to our friends and to those who are loyal to us. You took advantage of that girl down there; you wanted help. We gave it to you. Now you’re afraid it’s going to come back and bite you in the butt.”

“Heidi Telford never left by the side gate, as you guys tried to make it seem. There was no motorist who picked her up while she was walking home. It was just you, Jamie, who screwed everything up that night.”

“What I apparently screwed up was not turning you over to the police after catching you violating Kendrick Powell.”

“You and Peter actually got into a fight over Heidi, and when Paul McFetridge broke it up, you ran off and got the first weapon you could find.”

“So what you’re thinking is that you can keep me from talking when you a

“Came back with a golf club. But you weren’t going to beat in your cousin’s skull, were you? That would tear the family apart if you killed your cousin. And your family doesn’t tear apart. You’re against each other only until it’s time to be against everyone else.”

Jamie Gregory looked into my face as if he were searching for something.

“So you snuck up on Heidi and hit her from behind.”

“Fact is,” he said, “a girl like Kendrick would never have had anything to do with a guy like you.”

“How do you like your date now, Peter, huh? Like her with her skull split open?”

“And there she was, practically passed out on the couch, unable to stop you from doing anything you wanted.” He moved to one side. Toward what? Toward a room that I couldn’t see, toward whatever was going to get me if I actually went inside the house?

I stayed where I was. “Heidi Telford wasn’t just passed out,” I said, my voice pursuing him. “She was dead. And you and Peter were scared. You had to do something before the guests woke up in the morning and found the body, the blood, the little bits of brain and bone you had left scattered around.”

“You must have thought you were in heaven. Seeing her lying on the couch like that.”

“So Peter went to get Ned, get some help, while you started the clean up.”

“She couldn’t even resist.”

“One of you, one of the three, came up with the idea of taking her to the golf course, putting her out there in the trees along the fairway. It was dark, it was accessible, it kept to some kind of theme in terms of how she had gotten killed.”

“What did you do with her underwear, anyhow?”

“It wasn’t a good idea, but all three of you participated, and then the family machine started putting its spin on things, planting rumors, stories, buying off witnesses, just like you did down in Florida. Just like you always do.”

“Put it in your pocket, was that it? Ru

The hand was pumping, the music was pouring down the stairs, the bastard was gri

I spun and raised my arm to protect my own head from whatever was coming.

4

.

THE POLICE WERE THERE WITHIN MINUTES. TWO MINUTES, MAYBE. Time was a blur. Everything was a blur except what was directly in front of me, which was Jamie’s body, crumpled at the base of the foyer wall. He had a hole in his chest, right about where his heart should be, and blood was gushing out of it. I had both my hands over the hole, trying to keep the blood in, pushing down on his chest because I did not know what else to do; hampered in everything I tried by Darra Lane, who had come ru

There had been a shot. A single loud, u

A car had appeared out of nowhere, right behind the figure in the old coat and battered hat. Right behind him because he was facing me. The hat did not quite hide the cold, narrow features beneath its brim. The loose sleeve of the coat most definitely did not cover the pistol held in the right hand.

It had happened so fast. I tensed, thinking I was hit, thinking that on the other side of me something had been punctured and was letting out air. There was a crash. Then a scream. All the noises started separately, then blended together, and Jamie Gregory, his arms flung over his head, dropped to the floor.

My head whipped back toward the street, toward the figure in the battered coat and hat. With an underhand toss, he flipped the gun into the ivy between the house and the wrought-iron fence. He looked at me. Our eyes held for a moment: He wanted me to know who he was. Then Roland Andrews jumped into the backseat of the car and was gone.

5

.

THE FIRST COP TO ARRIVE WAS A BULKY FELLOW, OR LOOKED THAT way in his flak vest and his blue jacket. He recognized Darra immediately and believed everything she said, which, to the extent it was coherent, was that I had shot her boyfriend.

The cop pushed me back from the body and left Darra to flop around on top of it and do even less than I had to try to save Jamie’s life. He was holding me against a wall, an arm across my neck, when reinforcements arrived. Two cops in uniform, two without. The guys without were detectives and they were not wearing suits, but they had plenty of comments about mine. While their colleagues tended to Jamie, they braced me, demanding to know why I was there, dressed like I was, on Mr. Gregory’s doorstep. They fingered my lapels, told each other the suit must have cost a grand, must have come from Barneys, wasn’t ever going to be any good again now that it had blood all over it. They wanted to know if Mr. Gregory had cost me a lot of money, if that was why I was at his house.

“Was it because of what happened in the market today?” said one.

“He lose you a shitload?” said the other.

An ambulance with lights rocketing in every direction arrived, and paramedics raced up the steps and into the house, pushing past us to get to what was now, clearly, a dead body on the floor. I told the detectives I didn’t know what they were talking about, that I was an assistant district attorney investigating a murder on Cape Cod. We were being jostled this way and that and Darra had gone from screaming to wailing and I was half shoved, half guided into the adjoining room. It was sort of a den, sort of a breakfast room, with a fireplace at one end and a wooden table in the middle, and the detectives backed me into the table and demanded my identification.