True Crime

3

I did not look at Bob but made a beeline for the supply room. I didn’t even glance in the direction of the city desk. The last thing I wanted now was a run-in with the aggrieved husband. Among other things, it was already two-fifty, and I had to be on the road in ten minutes if I wanted to get to the prison on time. Luther Plunkitt had gone out of his way to accommodate us on this interview, but if I was late, things being what they were, there was every chance he would have me turned away.

So the plan was to grab a few extra pads and get the hell out of there as fast as I could. I hurried back across the room, hugging the wall. Mark Donaldson, another news side hack, looked up from his paper as I passed and tried to flag me down for some gossip about Michelle. I gave him a nervous wave and walked right on. I could see Donaldson watching me, running his tongue around under his lip, wondering what was up. I suspected it would not be long now before he knew, before everyone in the whole place knew.

A few seconds later, I pushed through the supply room door and stepped in. The room wasn’t much more than a closet really. A narrow space with metal shelves on every side. The shelves ran up to the ceiling stacked with pads and boxes of pens, printer ribbons and printer paper and so on. I didn’t think they’d let me bring a tape recorder into the Death House, so I wanted enough fresh pads to last me the day. I grabbed two from a pile and shoved them into my back pocket. I also picked a couple of Bics out of a box and clipped them to the pocket of my shirt.

Then I turned around and found myself facing Bob Findley.

Uh-oh, I thought.

He had entered the little room silently. He was standing just within the threshold, silent, still. His round pink face was set and expressionless and I was dead in his eyes; I could see it. His hand was on the edge of the supply room door. He swung it shut in back of him. There were about three feet between us, and no room to pass on either side.

In fact, for a moment or two, I thought Bob might just launch himself at me. It made a funny picture: two grownup, college-educated men wrestling with each other in the supply room as pens fell off the shelves and papers flew. But I realized quickly there was not much chance of that. Bob was civilized; he was modern; he was caring. He wasn’t just going to slug me. Not when he could torture me slowly to death.

His cheeks reddened, but he smiled. It was a mirthless smile of disbelief, of moral amazement. He shook his head. He spoke in that soft, controlled tone of his.

“You know-I don’t know what to say to you,” he said. “All day, all last night, I’ve been trying to think of what I wanted to say to you.”

And he had to say it now? But what could I do? I lifted one hand and let it fall to my side. “I really am sorry, Bob. I really am.”

A silent laugh broke through his lips. “You know, I really don’t think you are. I actually don’t think you’re capable of it. Of being sorry. Of really feeling anything for other people.”

“No. No, hell. I feel stuff. I feel bad,” I said.

His lip curled, turning the smile into a sneer. He eyed me as if I were a bad smell. He stood in his khaki slacks and his blue workshirt and his cheerful pink tie, one hand in his pocket and the other clenching and unclenching at his side. And I wished he would hit me. It would be faster, anyway, and I really had to be going.

“Well, I’m glad you feel bad, Steve,” he said bitterly. “But I don’t think you really begin to understand. I mean, I want to know why.” These last words broke from him-if anything ever broke from him-if he ever let anything just break from him unconsidered, these last words did.

“Why?” I echoed.

He looked away, shaking his head again. I think he was sorry he’d said it.

But I did my best to give him some kind of answer. “These things, you know. They just happen, man. I was lonely. I didn’t think. It was an impulse kind of …”

“Christ!” In a typically youthful gesture, he brushed the shaggy forelock back off his brow with one hand. As he did, in the cramped space, his elbow touched one of the shelves and it shook ominously, rattling a box of pens. He had not raised his voice, but all at once his eyes looked tormented and damp. “You think I mean you?” he said. “You think I want to know why you did it?”

“I don’t know, I …” A trickle of sweat ran down the back of my neck. What time was it anyway? I didn’t dare look at my watch.

“I want to know why she did it. With you. Christ. I can’t imagine what she was thinking of. Was it just … the sex?”

I didn’t answer. I shifted from foot to foot. I was embarrassed, to be honest. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell-as always, I wasn’t sure-how much of his emotion was real, and how much was display, a show of drama, a way of beating me up with his pain. Was it possible, I thought, that he was actually losing control here?

I considered him another second or two, and I thought that maybe he was. That maybe all day, and all last night, he had been sitting on this, fighting it, holding it back, and now-now, curse my luck, when I had to get out of there fast-he finally couldn’t stop himself. He wanted to know. Sure. That was it. It had to be. He must’ve hated himself for doing this, for asking me flat out this way-but he wanted to know, he had to know. The basics. The core of it. Was it good-for me and Patricia in bed? Was it better than it was with him? Did she talk about him, did she tell me about whatever weird little things he liked? Did we laugh about him before I rammed into her and balled her blind?

“No,” I lied. “No, hell. It was no big passionate thing. It was nothing like that.”

I saw the shadow of relief cross his face but it was quickly gone. “Then what?” he said, more urgently, more desperately than he could’ve wanted. “She doesn’t love you?”

“No, of course not.”

He smiled his mirthless smile again, but his lips were quivering. “She can’t think you’d be good for her, for Christ’s sake. Faithful to her. That you’d be there for her, or you’d help her with her work, or run interference with her parents, or have kids with her or help her raise them. She can’t think you’d help her grow and develop as a human being.”

I laughed before I could stop myself. “No, I guess she couldn’t think that.” I stopped laughing when I saw his expression. I cleared my throat. “No,” I said more softly. “She doesn’t. I’m sure.”

He gazed at me now with a sort of emptiness that was almost innocence, that looked almost like innocence in a way. His eyes were dry now. They were more than dry, they were arid. They were dark. They did not reflect me, as if I weren’t there. And I felt, with a certain sickness, how stupid, how dangerous it was, to make a man like Bob your enemy.

“You have a wife. Doesn’t your wife …?” he began, and his voice sounded dull, as if he were speaking in a trance. “Does she just tolerate it? Does she like it this way with you?” That horrible smile flickered at his lips. “I mean, maybe I take her too much at her word. Are you like her father, am I supposed to be more like that bastard was with her? I mean she says she wants something …”

“My wife …?” I said. “I’m sorry, I don’t …”

“I mean, what do they want?”

“Who? Oh.” Women, he meant. We had reached that stage of the proceedings. Fortunately, though, I wasn’t drunk enough to start speculating about what women want. So I simply raised a helpless hand again. “Look, Bob, I’ve got to go.”

Rage struck through his face like lightning, passed away like lightning.

“It’s that interview. At the prison,” I said quickly. I did look at my watch now. “Christ.” It was after three. “I’m going to be late if I don’t get going.”

After a moment, Bob nodded. His slim frame rose and fell with a deep breath. He didn’t say anything. It was spooky, the way he looked at me, the way his eyes erased me. But he didn’t say anything at all.

“Well …” I said.

He turned without a word, his back pressed against the shelves. It opened up a little pathway to the door for me. I squeezed through it, past him, and pushed the door open while he stood there silently.

But I couldn’t just leave it at that. As much as I had to go-as much as I wanted to go-I couldn’t just leave it at that.

I turned, holding the door open. “How did you find out anyway?” I asked him.

He snorted without looking at me. “She told me,” he said.

“She …?”

“She left your cigarettes in an ashtray by her bedside table. That was her way of telling me.”

I think I gaped at him. I felt as if I had been blackjacked and I think, for a while, I just stood there and gaped. I had always cleaned the ashtrays out myself. I had always emptied them into the toilet. Patricia would have had to have salaged the butts somehow, would have had to have hidden them from me and then replaced them in the ashtray herself. Which made perfect sense, of course. Because it was about Bob. It had always been about her and Bob. She could have used anyone to do this to him. To send this message to him, whatever the message was. She could have used anyone. It only happened to be me.

When I was finished gaping, I nodded. Bob stood still, his back pressed against the shelves, his eyes trained on nothing. I left him there and hurried off across the city room, closing the supply room door behind me.