Proof of Intent by William J. Coughlin Read Free Book Online

put you on the stand and asked if you think Miles could have killed his wife, what would your answer be?”
    Rourke’s little blue eyes examined me for a long time. “Absolutely not. He loved Diana in a way that few men ever love a woman. And I suppose she loved him just as much.”
    â€œWhen did they marry, do you know?”
    â€œSure. They married when he was about twenty. Right after he’d written
Savage Hands
, his first book. He was bussing tables at some fine old restaurant, and she came in with her mother and her brother. The way Miles told me, they looked at each other, and it just happened. Bang. Like that.”
    â€œSo she’s a New Yorker?”
    The shaggy black eyebrows went up again. “You didn’t know? She’s the
original
New Yorker. She comes out of the old New York WASP elite. Brearley, Bryn Mawr, social register, house in the Hamptons, that whole thing. Her family, the van Blaricums, started out as Dutch slavers, then moved into banking. Don’t suppose anybody in that family has worked in a century, though. Naturally they hated Miles. They disowned her or something after she married him.”
    â€œAnything else you can tell me about her family?”
    â€œMother, awful harridan. Father, decent fellow as rich men go. Only met them a time or two. There was a brother, can’t remember his name. Robert? Roger? Something. Supercilious character with a grotesquely exaggerated sense of his own self-worth. He kept hounding me to publish a book, ancient Japanese erotica or some tedious thing. One of those rare people you actually
enjoy
sending rejection letters to. Saw a lot of him for a while there. It seemed like he and Diana were awfully close. But then once the family ditched her, he disappeared.”
    â€œTell me about her.”
    â€œShe was this beautiful, serene, debutante rich girl. First impression, you would have thought she’d never been touched by anything harsh or unpleasant. If that were all there was to her, she would have seemed a little shallow, a little smug maybe. But after you knew her a while—it was almost imperceptible—but there was a sense about her that she had seen real sorrow. It gave that serenity of hers a depth that was . . .” Rourke’s eyes grew dark for a moment. “Well. I fell in love with her myself. I was married; she was married; I couldn’t do anything about it. But I became almost obsessed with her for a while. Awfully unhealthy thing. My wife saw it in my eyes, and our marriage was never the same.” He raised his hands, taking in his shabby, dim shambles of an office. “She left me a couple of years later, and now this is all I have left.”
    He gave me his sly little smile, as though what he said was not to be taken seriously.
    â€œDiana, she was everything that was best about the old New York gentry. The lovely manners, the beauty, the grace—a kind of otherworldly quality. No one cares about these things anymore. Good manners? There’s no such thing today. It’s all middle fingers and shouting today. The world has lost something without people like Diana. We’ve spent the past century merrily pissing on our aristocracy, and it’s too damn bad. The world needs aristocracy. The world needs Diana van Blaricum, and it’s too damn bad, it’s too damn bad, it’s too damn bad.”
    The old man began to weep silently. After a while he looked up and grunted. “Was there something else you needed?”
    â€œThe shooting,” I said. “What about the shooting?”
    â€œThe shooting
here
?” Rourke’s sadness seemed to pass quickly. He studied me with his crafty blue eyes, then laughed sharply. “There was no shooting here.”
    I frowned. “Then where did the bullet hole up there come from?”
    â€œI told you that Miles Dane is only a mask.” His eyes kept twinkling at me.
    â€œSo now you’re playing