Looking back at the blue eyes, he could see her struggling to keep from crying again. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t do it to kill him.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t want him to hurt anyone,” she repeated.
“Even you?” He pointed to her bruises and for an instant felt his father’s touch inside. His father would have been more than sympathetic with this woman; he would have soothed her with his Cajun compassion, probably joking to make her feel better.
But a moment later the warrior rose again in Beau. “You’re a smart woman, Barbara. Don’t get too smart. We’re pretty smart too.”
Beau stood up and stretched.
She looked up and asked, “What happens now?”
“Go back home. You’ve got a second chance at life. Use it well.” He looked around the tiny apartment. “Don’t carry this around for the rest of your life.” He smiled sadly, letting his Cajun side through. “I’m here to tell you it’s all right. You didn’t put the gun in his hand. You took it out.”
He nodded and turned toward the door.
She said, “What about the officer who shot him? Is he going to be okay?”
“Yeah,” Beau said as he reached for the knob. “It was a good shooting.”
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.