Baby, Would I Lie?

47

Cal was standing in the open doorway. Sara parked the rental Skylark behind Ray’s Jag, then walked over to Cal, who looked as worried in person as he’d sounded on the phone. “I sure appreciate this, Sara,” he said. “Come on in.”

Sara entered, looking around, seeing the place unchanged, as Cal shut the door and said, “Lemme show you where I found it.”

“Where you found what?”

“I’ll show you,” he said, and led the way through the house, Sara following, Cal saying, “I was in the bedroom. Socks, shirts, he needs everything. He ties his socks up in pairs — you know, he’s always been neat, Ray — and I dropped a pair of socks on the floor and it rolled under the bureau.”

They entered Ray’s bedroom. Sara saw a crumpled piece of duct tape all mixed up with Saran Wrap on the carpeted floor. Pointing at the wide dresser opposite the bed, Cal said, “I went down on my knees, you know, and reached under, and I hit something.”

“Something duct-taped there.”

“Right. I couldn’t figure it. So I lay down flat on the floor and looked, and it was a tape, a regular videotape in its box, stuck onto the bottom of the bureau.”

“A tape,” Sara echoed.

“I pulled it out,” Cal said, miming the gesture, pulling hard on a package duct-taped to a hard-to-get surface. “It was the kind of tape Ray always uses,” he said, “but it didn’t have nothing written on it, no date or nothing.”

“You put it in the machine.”

“I surely did,” Cal said, and started out of the bedroom again, saying over his shoulder, “Lemme show you.”

“I can hardly wait,” Sara said. She was very aware of her shoulder bag bouncing against her hip as she followed Cal back through the house.

“It’s one of Ray’s practice tapes all right,” Cal said, walking ahead of her. “For about an hour, it’s just him practicing the IRS song — you know that song.”

“He sang it on the bus.”

“Right.”

They were back in the living room. The heavy Mexican doors were open to exposé the VCR and monitor. Moving toward them, Cal said, “After about an hour, on the tape, there’s something happens I want you to see.”

“I want to see it, too.”

Turning on the machines, Cal said, “I backed it up to just before that so you could see what was going on.” He hit play.

Neither of them sat down. Standing side by side, near the monitor, they watched the instant of snow, then the sudden appearance of Ray, with acoustic guitar, one leg up on the chair, in the middle of “Singin for the IRS”: “—own these great-lookin threads. I’m bein—”

Ray stopped and looked over his shoulder toward the door, in the background of the picture. His voice hushed, Cal said, “I figure he heard the car pull up.”

“This is that night, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

The front door, at the rear of the TV picture, burst open and a man half-ran, half-stumbled into the room, crying out incoherently. He was dressed in what looked like the filthy remnants of a tuxedo, white shirt ripped down the front, jacket and trousers mud-stained. The man and his clothing were wet, his hair plastered to his head, torn shirt stuck to his heaving chest.

Sara had never seen him before in her life. “Who’s that?”

“Bob Golker.”

The other victim. The dead man pulled out of Lake Taneycomo in his car, and Ray charged with his murder.

“Ray!” was the first understandable word shouted by Bob Golker as Ray slapped his guitar onto the chair and ran toward the man. “Ray, Jesus Christ, help me!”

“What the hell happened to you?” Ray went past Bob Golker to shut the door, then came toward the man again, who stood weaving no more than three steps into the room, still in the semi-dark back there. “Christ’s sake. Bob, you’re all wet.”

“I killed her, Ray.”

The hair stood up on the back of Sara’s neck. Her throat was dry. This was not staged; this was real. She clutched her shoulder bag to her side like bagpipes.

On the screen, Ray came forward to Bob Golker’s side, to stare in wonderment at the man’s profile. “What did you do?”

“Oh, Jesus, Ray, I didn’t, I shouldn’ta done it!”

Ray was clearly as agitated on screen as Sara was in person. “For fuck’s sake, Bob,” he yelled, “will you tell me what you did?”

Bob Golker staggered a few steps forward, as though wanting to sit in the chair Ray had been using as a footstool. But he didn’t make it. His legs went out from under him and he fell into a lumpish sitting position on the floor, bent to the left, both hands splayed out on the floor on his left side to keep him from falling any farther. “Belle,” he mumbled. “Belle.”

Ray crossed to the chair, put the guitar on the floor, carried the chair to Bob Golker’s side, and sat on it himself. Leaning down toward Bob, he said, “You’re drunk again. Bob, you know that.”

“Not anymore,” Bob said. He lifted bleary eyes to Ray. In a shrill and ghastly whisper, he cried, “I killed Belle!”

“Oh bullshit,” Ray said. “You had another fight, that’s all.”

“I killed her, Ray,” Bob insisted. “Honest to God. I buried her in the lake.”

Ray sat back, frowning, studying the man on the floor. “Are you shitting me?”

“They’ll never find her, Ray,” Bob said. “The fuckin fish’ll eat her.”

Exasperated and astonished, Ray spread his hands. “What do you wanna go kill Belle Hardwick for?”

“She wouldn’t come with me. Fuckin bitch, she knew— She promised she’d come to California with me. She said—”

“Belle doesn’t belong in California.”

“She wouldn’t come with me.”

“Then she has more sense than I thought.”

“What am I gonna do, Ray? Shit, I used your car; it’s all fucked up—”

“Oh thanks,” Ray said. “What’d you do to the car? You hit a tree with it?”

“I didn’t hit nothin. Except Belle. Oh, Jesus, Raaaayy! There’s blood all over the car, Ray!”

“Blood?” Again Ray reared back, this time considering Bob with more concern. “Did you really and truly do it, you simple shit? You fuckin killed Belle Hardwick?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t — I’m sorry! Bob was weeping now, tears running down the face he held up toward Ray. Wailing, voice breaking, he cried, “What am I gonna do, Ray? I don’t wanna fry!”

“You don’t fry in this state,” Ray told him, flat, still thinking.

“I know I shouldn’ta done it, but Jesus. Oh shit! What the fuck am I gonna do?”

“Turn yourself in.”

“I don’t want to! I don’t want them to kill me, Ray. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail!”

“Shit,” Ray said. He looked around, shook his head, said, “Then go to California.”

Bob stared up at Ray, face wild with hope. He looked like a rabbit, Sara thought. He said, “Should I?”

“Turn yourself in or get outta town,” Ray advised him. “Don’t stick around here.”

“They’ll never find her, Ray,” Bob said, his voice suddenly a confidential murmur, making the two of them conspirators together. “I wedged her down in there, in the roots—”

“I don’t wanna hear about it,” Ray said. “Do you mind? You’re some kinda crazy drunk asshole animal, you know that. Bob?”

“I know. I know I know I know, oh, Jesus, Ray, I just got crazy out of my mind, I didn’t want to go anywhere without—” He rolled back onto his haunches, getting his balance, putting his hands to his face. “Why did I do it?” he wailed. “Why did I do it?”

“Because you’re a dumb shit,” Ray told him, though with a heavy sympathy in his voice. “And so was Belle.”

Bob lowered his hands from his face, rested them on his bent legs, palms up, fingers curled. He seemed calmer at last. “I can’t stay here,” he said.

“That’s the truth.”

“You always been a good friend to me, Ray.”

“Better than you’ve been to me. Bob.”

“Oh shit, I know I’m a fuckup. I’ve always been a—”

“Bob, it’s late at night, you know? You wanna call the sheriff from here?”

Wide-eyed again. Bob yelled, “No! I’m gonna take off, I swear to God I am. I’m goin to California.”

“Fine,” Ray said.

“Don’t tell on me, will you, Ray?”

“I won’t tell on you, Bob.”

“Swear you won’t. Swear it, Ray. Don’t ever tell anybody.”

Ray got off the chair, went down on one knee beside Bob Golker, put his hands on Bob’s shoulders, stared him in the eye. “I swear,” he said solemnly. “All right? I swear I will never say a word to anybody at all anywhere about you and Belle Hardwick, no matter what. I swear. All right?”

“God bless you, Ray, God bless—”

“Yeah, good. Now get up, Bob, get on your feet.”

With Ray’s considerable help. Bob struggled to his feet and stood there, swaying. Ray said, “Can you walk on out of here? Don’t take my car anymore, Bob.”

“No.”

“Where’s that heap of yours, out by Jjeepers!?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you get there?”

“Yeah. I’m okay now, Ray. I’m okay.”

“Sure you are. Bob? What you should do—”

“Yeah?”

“Go home tonight, get some sleep.”

“I couldn’t sleep, Ray! Jesus, not after — I couldn’t sleep!

“Well, lay down, then. Get some rest somehow. In the morning, decide what you want to do. The sheriff or California. Decide it then. All right?”

“Okay, Ray.”

“You got a bottle in your car?”

“Sure. Yeah, sure.”

“Don’t drink it. You hear me? Don’t drink it.”

Solemn: “I won’t, Ray.”

“Good. Get some rest. Decide in the morning.”

“Thank you, Ray. God bless you, Ray.”

“Yeah, that’s all right,” Ray told him, steering him toward the door. “That’s fine.”

Bob kept mumbling his thanks and Ray kept consoling him with friendly words until they reached the door. Ray opened it. Bob stumbled into the darkness beyond, and Ray shut the door behind him.

Ray took a step or two away from the door, shaking his head. He put the heels of both hands to his temples as though struck by a severe headache. “What a fuckin mess,” he muttered. Then he looked up, looked directly at the camera, and seemed for the first time to remember it was still running. “Oh shit,” he said, and came purposefully forward, hand reaching out.

Snow.