Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2005

Edwin the Confessor by Brian Richmond

If he were one of the superstitious herd he so despised, he’d have called it fate that he, who never watched television, should have it turned on just when they announced the discovery of his wife’s body.

He was mounting specimens from a recent trip to Mexico and had the damn thing turned on to the local news station. He planned to go into town later to buy some new hiking boots and wanted to catch the traffic report.

Instead, there it was, the dusty, deserted streets of the Cimmarron Movie Ranch in the desert, south of town. Only this time it was filled with men in hard hats and heavy machinery. The newsreader said, “Highway construction workers at the site of an old movie ranch made a macabre discovery today when digging revealed the remains of a woman...”

He picked up the remote control, turned the TV off.

“Shelley, you bitch, you got me in the end...”

There were two policemen — he couldn’t bring himself to call them cops. One, a thick-bodied Hispanic, leaned against the wall next to the door of the dreary interview room. The other, a skinny, peasant-featured mess of a man named McGrath, sat across the table from Edwin and spoke:

“You need anything? Coffee? Water? A sandwich?”

Edwin shuddered at the thought of a sandwich from this place. “No, thank you.”

“It’s no trouble...”

“No.”

“You don’t mind this tape recorder here? We have to tape these things, make sure I’m not slapping you around and stuff.” He smiled to show how ridiculous a prospect that was.

“Could you state your name, please?”

“Edwin Oliver David Cunningham. My father was a devotee of Dickens.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t just a Happy Days fan? Heyyyy! Cunninghammmm!” McGrath made some ridiculous gesture with his thumbs.

“I have come here to confess to murdering my wife. I think I deserve to be treated a little more seriously.”

McGrath held up his hands. “You’re right. Sorry, okay. Just trying to, you know... look, forget it, okay? But, you know, while we’re on the subject... See, the problem is, any time a body turns up or a murder is reported, we get all, kinds of ah... people... come here and confess. Hell, Jack the Ripper comes in all the time. He sends us Christmas cards even. So, you know, you waltz in here, say you want to confess, don’t even ask for a lawyer present...”

“I see no point in a lawyer. I’m not an expert in these things but even I know about DNA testing. You would discover who she was and that I had reported her missing five years ago...”

“That is true.” McGrath flicked open a cardboard file on the table in front of him. A picture of Shelley stared at the ceiling. Edwin remembered giving it to the police after he had reported her missing. They’d been on one of his field trips in Nevada. He’d been looking for rocks, and for the first couple of days, Shelley had tagged along, but she soon got bored. She spent the rest of the trip sunbathing.

“Nice looking woman...” McGrath held the picture up to show it to his companion at the door.

“Too attractive for me, you mean?”

“Hey, no...”

“Don’t worry, I know we made an unlikely pair. In fact, I counted on it. When I reported her missing I could see your colleagues looking at each other. They were thinking someone like her wouldn’t stick around with a... a nerd, I suppose is the expression. When I told them I was suspicious that she may have had a lover and that money and valuables were missing from the house, they put two and two together just like I thought they would. She had been in trouble before.”

“How’d you two meet up?”

“She helped me change a tire. I’m useless at such things. There I was, beside the freeway, struggling, macho idiots driving past and shouting insults. She pulled in, changed it for me.”

“Now that’s my kind of woman. Jesus, you ask my wife...”

“Excuse me for interrupting your no doubt fascinating domestic anecdote, but I am trying to give you some background on my murder of my wife. If you don’t mind...”

“Sorry. That’s just me. Running off at the mouth...”

“Anyway, we got to talking. I like to think I’m above most of the petty interests of the common herd but, I have to confess, lust remains a problem, especially if you have little experience of women. And from that point of view, Shelley was a dream come true. Lack of experience was certainly not her problem.”

McGrath picked up the snapshot again and looked at it. “I gotta tell you, my wife sure don’t look nothing like that.”

“Each of us wanted the opposite to what we had. She wanted security, respectability, a settled life. Her previous relationships had been with drug addicts, criminals. Though the fact that I am the only offspring of wealthy parents didn’t hurt. Me, I was enjoying discovering — shall we say — a more sensual side of my nature...”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Oh, it was. For a while. Until after we were married. She tried, I’ll give her that. Tried to learn, to expand her interests. She gave up drink, drugs. Took care of me. But she was limited. So limited. The more she tried to learn, well, the more those limitations came to the fore. At first it was irritating. Then it was enraging...”

“Hey, I can sympathize...”

“I doubt it. Time passed and I got so I could hardly stand to see her. She grated on me, like nails scraping a blackboard. And she used the word totally all the time. It was totally delicious, she was totally tired, the gas station attendant was totally creepy. Totally totally totally... I tried to tell her the effect she was having and she tried to stop. She did. But it was ingrained. One night I’d gone to my den to escape her constant jabbering. I was working on my samples. Did I tell you I’m an amateur geologist? Anyway, in she came and she started. I was totally insensitive to her needs. She was totally committed to our relationship. This had totally gone far enough. Totally totally totally. After I told her! So I picked up my sample hammer, swung it at her head.

“It made this... this meaty sound, this thump when it hit her temple. She dropped straight down, straight down. She was dead.”

He was looking off into the distance now, seeing the night. “Just like that. Dead.

“I knew the Cimmarron Movie Ranch from my trips to the desert. Knew no one ever went there. So, I took her... took the body and buried it there. I drew out some cash, threw some valuables into my bag to dump on my next trip, told the police she’d disappeared. When they looked up her record, her criminal past, well, as I said, they reached the obvious conclusion.”

McGrath took another piece of paper from his file, slid it across the table. It was an aerial photo of the movie ranch.

“You dumped the body here, right?”

“I told you.”

“Care to show me?”

Cunningham looked down and, without hesitation, pointed to an alleyway running south of the single main street. “There.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you believe me? You must be able to find out it’s her!”

McGrath shifted uncomfortably.

“Look, we appreciate you coming in and all...”

“What?”

“Things are at an early stage... We know where to find you...”

“No no no no no. I’m sorry. I’ve steeled myself for this. Resigned myself. I want this to be over.”

McGrath turned to his companion at the door, made a shrugging gesture.

“It’s her. I killed her. What more do you want?”

“Go home, Mr. Cunningham. See a doctor. Your wife running off... something like that does weird stuff to your head.”

“This is outrageous!”

“Like I said, if we need you, we’ll call.”

McGrath got up.

Cunningham thumped the table.

“No! I will not go home until this thing is cleared up!”

The echo of his shout seemed to hang in the air.

McGrath remained still for a moment. Then he turned and said, “Okay. Look. We’ve got some problems with your story, okay? There’s something doesn’t add up...”

“How can it not add up, you idiot!”

“Whoa, you are riled.” McGrath looked toward his companion. The other officer remained silent, impassive.

“I’ve got a suggestion. You don’t have to do this, it’s up to you, okay? You can call a lawyer, whatever...”

“For God’s sake, what is it?”

“Say we take a drive out there. To the ranch. Go over the scene.”

Another man might have hesitated, been reluctant to face the memories that waited out there in the desert. “Is that all? Then let’s get a move on.”

It was dusk when they arrived at the ranch. Instead of dreading it, Cunningham was relieved. The entire journey had been filled with McGrath’s constant prattling, asking Cunningham if he liked baseball, if he went to the movies. The man was a moron.

The other officer, who was called Jimenez, remained silent throughout.

Now they were pulling into the Cimarron Movie Ranch, driving past the excavations for the new highway project. In the fading pink light, the machines, abandoned for the day, reminded Cunningham of the dinosaurs whose bones he sometimes found among the rocks.

Although it was called a movie ranch, the Cimarron also boasted a false-fronted Western street with saloons, general store, and sheriff’s office. Back in the heyday of the B-movie Western, this would have been used as a location. The horses, trained to fall on cue or stand still when the reins were dropped, had been kept in corrals and stables back behind the fake street. The place had been abandoned since the fifties, as much a ghost town as the real settlements it had been built to resemble.

The unmarked police car stopped in the middle of the street and the three of them got out. The night was turning chill.

“Care to show us where you buried her?”

“But you know. You dug her up.”

Cunningham strode down the alleyway, eager to get this over, not because he was afraid, but because he wanted to wipe the doubt from that idiot’s face.

He stopped.

No excavation work had been done in the alley. The spot where he’d buried her was smooth and undisturbed. The world seemed to tilt crazily. He cast around, tried to find his bearings... This was the place. It was!

“But they found her body... the news...”

“See, that’s your problem, Edwin, you don’t watch enough TV.” Something about McGrath had changed. The empty-eyed, distracted air had disappeared. He came right over and stood in front of Cunningham. “If you’d have listened to the rest of the report, you’d have heard them saying that the museum people were visiting the site, cordoning it off. That they thought the woman was Native American, buried here maybe a thousand years ago. Some kind of ritual.” He pointed back over his shoulder with his thumb. “They found her back over there, beside the corrals...”

Edwin had rarely been speechless. He was now.

“But don’t worry. See, I believe you. Come tomorrow, I’m going to have our crime scene people all over this street. And I know we’re going to find her body. And then I’m going to take great pleasure in seeing you go down, you cold-hearted son of a bitch.”

Now McGrath’s face was right against Edwin’s. “Damn you, you talked about killing her like you’d just taken out the trash.”

Edwin was frightened. “I want a lawyer now.”

“You’ll get your lawyer. But I swear to you, you bastard, you’ll pay for what you done.” McGrath turned away and walked over in the direction of the abandoned corrals where the remains had been found, shouting. “Hey, lady, whoever the hell you were, thank you.”

He stalked off towards the car, leaving Edwin in the alley with Jimenez.

“I screwed myself, didn’t I?”

For the first time that day, Jimenez spoke.

“Totally,” he said.