Crazybone

22

There was nothing comical in the way they broke apart, surged up off the floor in a wild untangling of arms and legs and bumping of bodies. Or in the way the woman grabbed up one of the pillows to cover herself, making little frightened squeaking noises. Or in the way Twining gawked at me in those first few seconds, with slack-jawed incredulity and the clownlike foolishness of a middle-aged, paunchy stud caught in flagrante delicto. The whole scene was pathetic and shameful and disgusting. And I was loaded with too much dark and bitter rage.

He said, “You... what... Jesus Christ, how did you...” Confused and meaningless sputterings. He took a half-step toward me. “Son of a bitch...”

“Stay where you are.” I had my hand in my coat pocket, holding on to the gun, but I did not want to show it unless I was forced to; the plump carrot-top had nothing to do with this and she was scared enough as it was. I moved the pocket a little, with just enough menace to show Twining I was armed and meant business. But it was all right. Very few naked men are willing to start trouble with another who is fully dressed, and he wasn’t one of the few. Lover, big lover, not a fighter.

“Rich?” the woman said in querulous tones. “For God’s sake. Rich?”

He paid no attention to her. “What the hell’s the idea?” he said to me. Confusion giving way to blustery anger. And with the return of control came the realization that he was standing there nude in front of me. His gaze wavered and slid away, around behind him. His pants were draped across the back of a wicker sofa; he moved over there, trying not to be too eager about it, and managed to put them on without hopping around too much. That made him feel better. He came back to where he’d been before and glared at me and said, “What the fuck’s the idea? Who do you think you are, busting in here like this?”

Ignoring him, I said to the woman, “Go into the bedroom and put your clothes on. Then get in your car and drive away. Your boyfriend and I have some business to take care of.”

She looked at Twining, clutching the pillow against her body with both arms. “Rich?”

“Go on, get dressed,” he said without looking at her. “I’ll handle this.”

“Are you sure—?”

“Go on, go on!”

She went, scooping up clothing with one hand and then running. I didn’t pay any attention to where she went; I had eyes only for Twining.

He said, “I don’t have any goddamn business with you.”

“Sheila Hunter.”

“...What?”

“You heard me. Sheila Hunter.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bluff and bluster, but he couldn’t keep the fear from showing in his eyes.

“How’d you get those scratches on your neck, Twining?”

His hand came halfway up, twitched, and went paralytically still. The fear was on his face now, in little beads of sweat. “I don’t have to answer that. This is my house — you’re trespassing on private property. I can have you arrested.”

“Go ahead. Call the law.”

“I will if you don’t get out of here—”

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re the one going somewhere.”

“Bullshit.” Then, “Where am I going?”

“You know where.”

The carrot-top came back into the room like somebody walking on hot embers. Wearing a green coat, her hair still tangled, her eyes still showing fright — but not as much fright as Twining’s.

“Should I leave?” she asked him. “Like he said?”

He licked his lips, ran the back of one hand across his forehead. “Go ahead, Tanya. I’ll call you.”

“Should I... I mean, do you want me to go straight home?”

I said, “She wants to know if she should call the law, tell them about me. She thinks you’re in trouble.”

“Rich? Are you in trouble?”

“No.”

“Yes,” I said. “But you don’t want her to call anybody, do you? You just want her to go on home.”

“Is that what you want, honey?”

“Yeah. Christ, just get out of here.”

“You’ll be okay? He won’t do anything to—”

“Shut up! You stupid bitch, I can’t think with you yapping at me. Shut up and move your fat ass out of here.”

He couldn’t have hurt her more, or got her out of there more quickly, if he’d kicked her broad bottom. She went flying through the door, yelling “Fuck you!” over her shoulder, and banged it after her with enough force to dislodge a plaque from the knotty pine wall next to it.

Twining wheeled away and went to the fireplace. The fire was banking; he picked up a poker and bent and began to stir the charred wood around. As soon as he did that I took the .38 out of my pocket and held it down against my leg. Outside, a car engine came to life, revved up high. Headlights flashed on, glared through the window, then made a sweeping pattern across the far wall as the carrot-top backed her car around.

When she roared away I said to Twining, “Put the poker down and come back over—”

I didn’t get the rest of it out because the damn fool was moving by then, swinging around and making a wild-eyed rush my way with the poker lifted high. I raised the gun, but he was too far gone to see it or to stop his charge if he did. But he hadn’t surprised me any; I had plenty of time to set myself and then dodge sideways just as he started his downward swipe. The poker slashed air, nowhere close to me. The force of his lunge bent him over and his foot came slanting down on one of the throw rugs. It slid, he slid, and I stepped in and kicked his leg out from under him.

He went down yelling, but he didn’t lose the poker. I backed off and shouted at him, “Don’t get up, Twining!” Useless words; he was already flopping around, trying to set his legs under him. Only one thing I could do then, and I didn’t waste any time doing it: I threw the gun up and squeezed off a round.

Not at him, at the far wall — a warning shot. The racket the .38 made was like a small explosion in there. To my relief it had the desired effect on Twining: It turned him stone-still on his knees, the tip of the poker still touching the floor.

“Let go of it,” I said. “The poker. Let go. Don’t make me put the next bullet in you.”

He stared up at me out of those bulging eyes. I waggled the revolver at him. The wildness went out of his face; he jerked his hand free of the poker handle as if it had suddenly become red hot. “Jesus!” he said, and it was as close to a prayer as somebody like him would ever get.

“On your feet. Go sit on the sofa.”

“You... oh... God, you could’ve killed me.”

“That’s right, I could have. But I like the alternatives better. Do what I told you.”

He tried to get up, couldn’t make it the first time. I watched him gather himself, struggle to his feet, stagger toward the wicker sofa. The last couple of steps were a lunge, as if his legs were giving out on him. He sat there with his teeth gritted, the sweat on his face shining in the dying firelight, looking at me and then not looking at me in little flicks of his head and eyes.

After a time he said, “I shouldn’t’ve done that. Come at you like that. But the way you busted in here... and now that gun... What’s the idea? What do you want?”

“You know why I’m here.”

“I don’t know. You said... alternatives. What alternatives?”

“Not the kind you’re looking for. Prison. Maybe even lethal injection.”

One side of his face spasmed, the rippling kind that pulled it out of shape. He pawed viciously at his cheek. “You’re crazy! I haven’t done anything.”

“Just killed two women, that’s all.”

“I never killed anybody!” It was a shriek as shrill as the carrot-topped Tanya’s parting shot, and with just as much anguish.

“Sheila Hunter and Dale Cooney.”

“No. No!”

“I can prove it, Twining.”

“No. How can you... no.”

“Yes. The scratches on your neck, for one thing. Made by a woman’s fingernails.”

“My wife. Or Tanya...”

“Sheila Hunter. She clawed you, and when she did she broke the gold chain you wore around your neck. Same gold chain you had on the day I talked to you in your office. You missed one of the links when you cleaned up her kitchen. I found it. Found some other things you missed, too. Like a smear of her blood on the center island.”

His throat worked as if he were going to be sick. He clamped his jaws to keep his gorge down, wiped his mouth, pawed at his face again. His eyes were as big and streaky-white as cocktail onions.

“Here’s the way I think it happened,” I said. “You went to her house on Saturday around noon, one o’clock. Pretense of business, but she was the real reason. Big stud like you, knowing she played around with Trevor Smith and any number of other guys but never with you — it must’ve been like a needle jabbing that cocksman’s ego of yours. So you decided to give it one more try. Only she was strung out, scared, never mind why, and the pass you made set her off. I figure she called you names, maybe slapped you, maybe scratched you then, and that set you off. You lost control, threw her down, raped her right there on the kitchen floor—”

“No!” He had both hands up in front of him, palms out, as if he were trying to ward off my accusations. “I never raped her! I never raped any woman!”

“Then how did she die?”

He shook his head, hard.

“How did Sheila Hunter die, Twining?”

“...Accident.” The word came out convulsively, like a piece of something that had been choking him and that he’d hacked loose. It left him panting a little, so that his next words were broken and wheezy. “An accident, I swear to God... an accident.”

“She just slipped and fell, I suppose. All by herself.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“No? Tell me how it happened.”

“I... all right. All right.” Deep, shaky breath. “I talked my way into the house, made a pass at her... nothing heavy, I just nuzzled her a little. And she... I don’t know, she just went crazy. Screamed at me, slapped my face. I shoved her away, but she came right back with those goddamn claws out, marked me, broke the chain... But I didn’t hit her, not even then. I shoved her away again, that’s all, I swear it. It wasn’t my fault. She was cooking something, hot dog in a pot, and she grabbed the pot and swung it at me. I couldn’t get out of the way in time, fucking pot slammed my elbow and threw hot water all over me. Would’ve scalded me if it’d been boiling, but she hurt me enough as it was—”

“Hold it. Where’d you say she hit you with the pot?”

“My elbow. Right on the crazybone. Man, you must know how much that hurts, you get hit on the crazybone like that.”

Sweet Jesus!

“I went a little crazy myself,” he said. “Anybody would, getting marked and then hit like that. I smacked her. Sure, I smacked her... it was self-defense. You can see that, can’t you? I smacked her good, right in the face, I was only trying to protect myself, and she went over backward and her head... ah, man, I can still hear the sound her head made when it hit that wood corner...” Twining’s face screwed up for a few seconds, as if he might cry. If he had, the tears would not have been for Sheila Hunter; they would have been for Richard Twining. He dry-washed his face again, looked up at me pleadingly. “Dead. Caved in the back of her skull. There wasn’t anything I could do for her. Eyes all rolled up into the back of her head, no pulse, blood in her hair... dead, just like that.”

I didn’t say anything. In my mouth was a taste like ashes and bile. “An accident, a freak accident,” Twining said. “But who’d believe it? She’d marked me, it happened in her house... I was scared. Scared and not thinking straight. At first I just wanted to get out of there, run like hell, but I couldn’t do that with my gold chain all over the floor, my fingerprints Christ knew where... and suppose somebody’d seen me drive in? And I’d talked to Mack Judson about her, his office is next to mine and she’d called him about putting her house up for sale. That’s why I went out to see her, I figured it was my last chance...” Headshake. “I couldn’t just leave her there. I had to do something.”

“So you cleaned up the kitchen and took her body away.”

“What else could I do? It was the only thing I could think to do. I wrapped her up in some sheets and put her in the trunk of my car. I had her purse, her keys... I locked up the house, turned on the alarm system. Her car was in the garage but there wasn’t anything I could do about that, I had to leave it where it was...”

“The body, Twining. What’d you do with it?”

Another headshake. He didn’t want to talk about that.

“Buried her somewhere, is that what you did?”

No answer.

“Took her up here and buried her,” I said. “Right here on this isolated property of yours.”

A guess, but the right one. He twitched a little, looked away, looked back at me. “I didn’t want to risk going anywhere else,” in a hoarse whisper. “Rack in the trees—”

“Don’t tell me. Save if for the police.”

“Police.” The word produced a shudder. He sat there for a few seconds, abruptly tried to got up and then sank back down as if he had no strength. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got money, about thirty thousand in liquid assets and I can raise another hundred or so, more if I sell my house. It’s yours, every penny, if you—”

“You can’t buy my silence, Twining. You couldn’t buy it for ten million dollars. Two women are dead and a little girl is an orphan because of you, and you’re not going to pay for that with money.”

“Two women? No,” he said, “you’re wrong. Sheila Hunter, yeah, it was self-defense, I panicked, but nobody else...”

“Dale Cooney. Her you killed in cold blood.”

“No! You can’t pin that on me. She was a lush, she drove home drunk and passed out in her garage with the engine running... another accident, that’s what everybody’s saying...”

“Murder. Your murder.”

“For Chrissake, why would I kill Dale Cooney?”

“I think she showed up at the Hunter house after Sheila Hunter died, while you were still there. Fortified with booze, mourning her lover, and looking to tell his widow what she thought of her. I think she saw you and your car, the scratches on your neck, maybe even you putting the body in the trunk.”

“No.”

“I think you used that glib, bullshit charm of yours to convince her nothing was wrong, get her to leave. But you were still in a panic, afraid she’d change her mind and contact the police. So you followed her home. Either she told you her husband was away for the weekend or you knew it some other way. Nobody else on the premises made it easy to hit her with something, arrange things to look like she’d passed out with the engine running. But you screwed up with the Scotch. She was a gin drinker, martinis. If you’d remembered that, you could’ve used her house key and gotten a bottle of her Bombay gin, but you wanted out of there and it was quicker to use the Speyburn — your brand of single malt, a bottle from your car. Might have one of your fingerprints on it, even if you did try to wipe it clean. Premeditated, first-degree murder.”

“I didn’t do any of that! I never saw Dale Cooney that day! I tell you I didn’t kill her, I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

Lies. I knew it and he knew I knew it, but he was not going to budge. I could almost see the wheels turning inside his head, the protective shell he was trying desperately to hold tight around himself. He’d admitted what happened with Sheila Hunter, but in his mind it was an accident, self-defense, not his fault, and nobody would ever convince him otherwise. He’d moved and buried her body, he was probably going to prison, but maybe a judge and jury would be inclined to leniency; he was a pillar of the community, he’d made a mistake and he was sorry and willing to pay for it, he’d throw himself on the mercy of the court.

But Dale Cooney’s death was just what I’d said it was — coldblooded murder. Admit that, and he’d go to prison for the rest of his life, possibly even wind up on death row. Admit the truth, and it made him into something he couldn’t face up to in either the public eye or his own eyes — it made him a kind of monster. So he’d deny it and he’d keep on denying it, the way the famous football player turned actor had denied guilt all through his trial and ever since. Nobody’d ever shake the truth out of Richard Twining, no matter what.

But he knew what he’d done. He’d have to live with the knowledge for the rest of his life, and even if the law couldn’t find enough evidence to convict him of Dale Cooney’s murder, he wouldn’t escape punishment for it. He’d be punished plenty, sorry bastard that he was, in the cold, sleepless dark of the nights to come.

I’d had enough of him: I’d had too much of too many people like him who refused to accept responsibility for their actions. I said, “All right. Put on the rest of your clothes. It’s time for the police.”

“Listen,” he said, “please, isn’t there any way—?”

“Not with me. Get dressed. Now.”

He got slowly to his feet, reached out an unsteady hand for his shirt. Not looking at me, he said, “Sheila Hunter... honest to God, it was an accident. You tell the police that.”

“Tell them yourself what you did or didn’t do.”

“I never saw Dale Cooney that day, I hadn’t seen her in weeks, I didn’t have anything to do with her dying. They have to believe me. They have to!”

I quit listening to him. Quit thinking about him. What I thought about, standing there waiting for him to finish dressing was Emily and what I would have to say to her pretty soon, the terrible things I would have to say to that little girl.