Three Tales About Tanya

By Stoned White

“Tell me why Tanya is dead.”

Those are six words housewife Kim Daniels never thought she’d hear. Especially as she sits handcuffed inside a police interrogation cell, accused of her younger sister’s murder. The case against her is open and shut. As close to red-handed as it gets. The only job left for Detective Linda Barone is to get Kim to confess.
But Kim has a plan. Three tales about her scheming, seductive sister that will set Kim free from both the law and her past. A tale of Tanya’s deception. A tale of Tanya’s lies. A tale of Tanya’s murder. But as Kim’s stories twist on and into one another and span years, it becomes clear that nothing is as it initially seems between the two sisters, and Detective Barone is faced with a mind-bending puzzle that only she can solve. Is Kim trying to prove her innocence? Or is she after something else in that interrogation room? Some endgame Detective Barone can’t immediately see...

The answers are hidden inside THREE TALES ABOUT TANYA. Can you solve the puzzle within?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stoned White
• Release date: Aug 11, 2014

Stoned White

Stoned White is a completely fictional and psychotic hermit who lives in Hollywood, CA. As of this writing, he is in his early 30s, is 6’3”, with blonde hair, blue eyes, the body of a Greek god, the tan of a Baywatch character, and the bank account of a newborn Somalian. As of this writing, he may be reached via Twitter @Stoned_White, but he does not tweet often, and he mostly only uses his Twitter feed to harass reality television contestants and to proposition porn stars for mutually unsatisfying sexual encounters. He is in an abusive relationship with his cat, Dewey, and drugs, all. Have a great day.

Book preview

About the Book

Tell me why Tanya is dead.

Those are six words housewife Kim Daniels never thought she’d hear. Especially as she sits handcuffed inside a police interrogation cell, accused of her younger sister’s murder. The case against her is open and shut. As close to red-handed as it gets. The only job left for Detective Linda Barone is to get Kim to confess.

But Kim has a plan. Three tales about her scheming, seductive sister that will set Kim free from both the law and her past. A tale of Tanya’s deception. A tale of Tanya’s lies. A tale of Tanya’s murder. But as Kim’s stories twist on and into one another and span years, it becomes clear that nothing is as it initially seems between the two sisters, and Detective Barone is faced with a mind-bending puzzle that only she can solve. Is Kim trying to prove her innocence? Or is she after something else in that interrogation room? Some endgame Detective Barone can’t immediately see…

The answers are hidden inside THREE TALES ABOUT TANYA. Can you solve the puzzle within?

Three Tales About Tanya

Stoned White

Copyright Stoned White 2014

Published at Smashwords

C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\Divide By Zero\puzzlehollow.png

Before we begin, I should say that after, this night was all I had to go on when the body turned up.

For a long time, I blamed myself. For not seeing the solution. Not until it was already too late. And I still blame myself. Then and now. I’ll never forget.

So part of me hopes you won’t see the solution on your first pass, either. Just to make myself feel better about the whole thing. But I’ll tell you what it is at the end.

Good luck on your own, though. Until then.

Are you ready to start?

THREE TALES ABOUT TANYA

by

Stoned White

July 14

The call comes through to dispatch at 9:21 p.m., and I’m in my car blazing a path there at 9:22. I rip through a stop sign, squeal onto her street, and I see the two squad cars lumbering lazily in the road ahead. Their rooftop lights spin and their heavy sirens blare, but the cars move very slowly down the block. Trying to read the house numbers painted on the curbs, I assume. They don’t know the way.

But I know where we’re going and I know they’ll be there soon enough, so I step on the gas, twist the wheel, swerve around them. The rookie in the passenger seat of the cruiser nearest me tosses out a bewildered stare, but I speed on past him alone. Into the dark.

The lights from her house come into view. There are no streetlamps on these streets, and the chichi homes of the upper crust families and well-to-do workers I pass are already black, so I see the lights first thing. Every window on both floors shines brightly.

I drive right onto her lawn. Stop close to the front door. The uniforms don’t even have boots on the grass before I’ve pushed inside.

There, my low heels crunch broken glass, the smashed remains of a painting, ripped to hell on the floor of the foyer. There’s a fist-sized hole in the plaster, a foot-sized one below that. And blood, on the wall.

The uniforms rush in behind me. I point out the crimson fingerprints smeared on the doorframe, then draw my gun. The uniforms do the same. Two dash up the stairs, the rookie follows behind me, and one loops around the first floor from the opposite side.

Mrs. Daniels? I call out. I press my shoulder against the wall, peer around the corner and into the ravaged living room. Vases smashed. Couch cushions torn. Everything that can be wrecked has been wrecked. This took time. Rage, I know. It’s Linda Barone. We met a little over a year ago. Mrs. Daniels?

I round the corner when I don’t get an answer. The uniform who trailed around from the other direction nods to me from inside the kitchen. He motions outside using his forehead. I can’t see much back there, but I head out the patio doors, and into the hot night.

In the backyard, the pool shimmers a serene and pacifying baby blue at my feet. She’s in deep, I can see once my eyes clear the lights from inside. Water up to her chest. Back to me. She wears just a bra above the surface. Maybe less underneath. I can’t tell in the gentle ripples, soft moonlight that dances around her.

Mrs. Daniels? I call out, taking aim at her back. She doesn’t look at me. Kim?

At this, she turns. Kim Daniels doesn’t seem surprised to see me. She doesn’t seem like she heard me, either.

She’s dead, the woman in the water says to me, with nothing in her eyes. Hollowed out, and gone. She’s dead, Kim says again.

Then she turns away.

• • •

I have my pretty blonde killer handcuffed to the stainless steel table at the center of the police station interrogation room, and I watch her through the one-way glass. I look for any tell that will expose her clearly to me, but I only see what anyone would see. Hair still wet. Makeup smeared, turning some parts of her face into a rainbow-colored mess. Like a drag queen or a clown that’s been doused in battery acid. Still nothing solid that I can make out in those staring, hopeless eyes. I let Kim grab a coat before we left the house, but the coat Kim grabbed isn’t hers, I notice now, from here. It’s too big. It hangs loose over her shoulders. It bulges far away from her chest.

Or maybe that’s just the way I remember it now.

You know, the longer you let her cook, the longer she has to whip up a story, Russ says behind me. Russ has a sly grin to his tone that I don’t need to turn to see happening. He smells like discount cigarettes and moves with heavy, rampaging stomps that can’t be missed. My partner. Eight years with Russ’ cigarette smells and heavy stomps and sly grins taken behind my back, but this will be our last case together. Neither of us knows that yet, though.

If she can whip up a story after what went down tonight, we were never going to catch her anyway. I say this to Russ with confidence, but I don’t say that I’m afraid we won’t catch her. I don’t say this is our only shot, and it’s a damn long one at that. Russ knows all that, anyway. Besides, I tell him, we know what happened tonight. That’s not what this is about.

Russ sighs, You never forget, do you, Lin? He follows that with a defeated laugh, but Russ doesn’t forget either. He just wants to know how I plan to do it. He wants to know long it will be before he can get out of here. Back to the wife and kid. Back to a life less nice than the one owned by my killer in the interrogation box.

I can fill what she’s missing, I decide for the group of us. Russ, Kim, and me. I turn to Russ, who’s dubious. I can get her to talk.

• • •

Kim doesn’t look up from the table as I walk in and shut the door behind myself. I ask Kim how she’s doing, and I get no response. Which I expect. It’s the shell-shocked victim routine. Standard for the garbage I drag into this room, though Kim Daniels certainly doesn’t appear like the standard garbage I drag into this room.

A kept housewife. Privileged. From the right side of the tracks. With every advantage at her delicate, manicured fingertips. Yet Kim acts as if she’s seen some part of herself, this world, from which she can never recover. It’s all just too true, people like Kim Daniels hope to telegraph to me in this room, once they’re here, but all they telegraph are the things they don’t want me to see. Guilt. Manipulation. Image control. The people who find themselves in this room already know the dark parts of their hearts and this world long before they meet with me. And Kim Daniels, I know she knows the dark places of her world too well. After all, I’m the person who pointed them out to her.

Once upon a time, I thought I could help Kim. Now, maybe I still can, but now, maybe I don’t want to. She’s a killer, I remind myself. Despite whatever she shows me in this room.

Sorry to keep you waiting, I tell Kim, but it’s a lie and I’m not sorry. Not for her, at least. A little for Russ. It’s for his sake that I hope the bitter tastes of silence and time I inflicted upon Kim is enough to keep her from delivering the same onto me, but I settle into the chair across from her, the beauty, and I’m ready for the long haul. Kim doesn’t seem like she is. She seems beaten. Exhausted. Ready to give up. Just the way I like them.

How are you holding up, Kim? Are you keeping warm?

I know she’s not warm. I know she’s ice cold. Freezing. I turned the air on full blast the second I closed the door on her earlier. It still hums loudly and steadily, unavoidably, over my shoulder, just to the left of my sparkling fake smile. Neither can be missed. Kim has to be feeling every drop of water on her skin like needles. She has to be trying damn hard not to shake. But Kim isn’t shaking, I see from here, up close. Up close, Kim seems not to register the temperature at all.

Are you sure you don’t want me to call a lawyer? I ask Kim, still with my fake smile. I normally don’t ask that question to people like Kim in this room, but I need to know. If she says yes, I’ll know Kim’s still thinking. Hearing. Scheming. If she says yes, I’ll know the absent husk routine is a performance designed to hide something from me. Designed to hide everything from me. If she says yes, I’ll know for certain that Kim is far colder than I could ever hope to make this tiny room.

But again, Kim doesn’t rise to meet my low expectations, the usual pattern of patter that plays out in this room day in, day out. Kim doesn’t say yes. Weak, barely audible, and sinking, Kim says, No.

But she’s talking. It’s a start.

Kim, you’re accused of first degree murder, I tell her. I want her to hear this, now that she’s drifting back to me. I wouldn’t say this to anyone else, Kim, but you and I have a history. I know you. And your family.

I pause to let the silence break her, to let my words bounce around inside her skull and crumble the walls she’s assembled. Her eyes begin to move. This way, that. Back to center, then back to the side. Thoughts spiraling and beginning to race. Now is when I get her. Now is when Kim will blurt out something she’ll wish she hadn’t later. Now is how I get her to confess then.

We have you on surveillance camera leaving your sister’s penthouse, Kim. Your fingerprints are on the gun we found at the scene.

Kim doesn’t respond. She’s trying to slip away again, back into that numb trance in which I found her in the water, but she can’t get there anymore. The door to that place has vanished, and Kim has to face everything she’s done. The only way out is through me, Kim learns. It only hollows out her expression more.

Show me your palms, Kim.

Kim slowly turns her palms up to me. I reach into my jacket pocket, pull out the UV light, and shine it on her hands. I did this in the front yard of her house earlier, but Kim didn’t look down then. She didn’t want to see. I hope she’s ready now.

But Kim doesn’t look down. She either doesn’t care or knows full well what will be there. What I see. White flecks and specks, exposed hideously in the neon violet glare. Both of Kim’s palms, littered with criminal truth.

That’s gunpowder residue, I tell Kim. Again. Evidence doesn’t wash away just because you go for a late night dip in the pool.

Her eyes dart to the side and then back to center. Unraveling. Farther from her. Closer to me.

My partner is talking to an eyewitness in the next room, Kim. This is as close to red-handed as it gets.

Kim’s eyes trail to me, and she glances past me to the one-way mirror, and then to the walls, almost as if to verify that they aren’t moving in on her. I wonder if she’s trying to figure out a way to escape into that mirror, into that concrete, into a similar but ideally better life in the next room. But Kim deflates. She knows the mirror holds no exit, that concrete no give. The only way out is through me, Kim accepts, quite clearly through the cold. A shiver courses through her. The truth is seeping in.

I don’t need a lawyer, Kim finally states. Soft. Still with the act.

I nod, and smile. Not too big, but big enough for Kim to know that I’m on her side. That I’m here to help.

Why don’t you need a lawyer, Kim? You’re prepared to confess? Even if that is the case, you should still have a lawyer present for your protection. This is a death penalty state. I know that’s not an option for you.

But Kim can’t be ready to confess. Not yet. Nothing about this case or her or her family is that simple. If Kim did confess, it would only raise my suspicions more. If Kim did confess, I would have to walk out of this room and tell Russ to call his wife and tell her not to wait up. I doubt Theresa was going to anyway.

No, Kim whispers, with a rising force, a subtlety churning fury pulses up her neck and stops in her chin. Kim leans across the table. She looks me dead in the eye with what I think is meant to be an intimidating stare. The storm inside her swirls full force, I see in her searching, chestnut eyes. She won’t be able to hold back the dark elements of herself much longer.

I don’t need a lawyer, Detective Barone, Kim repeats, because there are three things you need to know about my sister. And after I tell you these three things, you and I are going to walk out of this room. And I’ll be free.

I smile compassionately, and falsely to her. I reach across the table, grasp Kim’s hand and give it a healthy squeeze. I have a sister, too, Kim. I know how it can be. The obligation. The worry. The responsibility. Let me help you.

Break, my mind whispers. The hard part is over. End this, Kim. Break.

I tilt my head to the side, invite Kim to trust me with what I hope appears to be a caring and supportive stare. Like we’re friends.

Like we’re sisters, sharing a secret, I ask of Kim, Tell me why Tanya is dead.

1

PAINT ME A PICTURE

•

I’m a painter. Which you know. Of course. From the last time we met. But you asked me why Tanya is dead, and that’s as good a place to start as any. I know it sounds stupid, to start all this now with something trivial like that from then – especially knowing how it all turns out – but that was where it started. That was the first step in my trail to here. That was the first nail in my sister’s coffin. So that’s where I’ll start.

It’s another life, looking back. And I wonder if it ever could have been the way I see it now. I remember it from outside myself. Like it’s the life of a soap opera character who looks and talks just like me. Played by an actress who may or may not be anything like the character she plays. She’s perfect, and lives easy. In a world of self-created problems, and petty dramas that advance her circuitous story. Sounds nice. But I know my life wasn’t nice. See, I