“I can’t believe any of this,” she said. Her voice, he now realized, was whiskey-seared — the lady was a drinker, funerals or not. He glanced swiftly at her legs, and saw the black-and-blue marks on her shins, the habitual marks of a drunk who bangs into furniture. “Not any of it,” she said. “First that Andy could do something like this, and then that his sister would tell the police about it. I simply... It’s a nightmare. I woke up last night, I thought it had gone away. I sat up in bed, I thought, Dear God, it was all a bad dream, it’s gone away. But it was still there, I realized it was still there, my son had killed his own cousin, my daughter had seen him do it, she had seen him. Oh my God, it was still there.” Mrs. Lowery lifted the second drink to her lips, tilted the glass, and drained it. As she began talking again, she poured herself a third drink. “Can you have any idea how I feel?” she asked. “I loved that girl like my own daughter, I loved her. But how can I believe Andy did a thing like this? And yet I know Patricia doesn’t lie, she’s not a liar that girl, I know what it must have taken for her to go to the police. I love them all, do you see? I’m caught in this thing, I love them all. And one of them is dead, and the other one did it, and the third one saw him, oh my God...” She lifted the shot glass, drank half the whiskey in it, and then put it down on the tabletop. “May I talk openly with you?” she asked.
“Yes, certainly,” Carella said
“I know you’re here to gather evidence against Andy, I know that. I also know that the strongest evidence against him is Patricia’s identification. I know that, too. But... can you realize how difficult this... this other thing is to... to accept? The... the idea of the sex? That he... that he forced Muriel to... to...” Mrs. Lowery shook her head. “And then wanted his own sister to...” She shook her head again, violently this time, as though the motion would dislodge whatever filthy pictures she had conjured. “This is... my son,” she said. “I haven’t even begun to think of him as a man yet, he’s still a boy in my mind. And now I’m being asked to think of him not only as a man but as some sort of... of perverted... per... per—”
She suddenly put her hands over her face, and began weeping into them. Carella sat watching her, not knowing quite what to say. It was, after all, the same old story, wasn’t it? The quiet neighborhood boy setting fire to his dear old grandmother and lopping off his sister’s head with a meat cleaver. Always had a cheerful word for me, the next-door neighbor would say. Hard-working lad, the grocer who’d employed him would say. Bright and alert in class, never caused any problems, his teacher would say. Sang beautifully in choir, the minister would say. But also forced his cousin to commit sodomy, and then brutally stabbed her to death, and turned the same knife upon his sister. What could you say to a woman who had just discovered her only son was a monster?
He waited.
“I suppose you hear this all the time,” she said, as though reading his mind. “But I keep trying to remember, I keep looking for clues, anything that would indicate he was... was capable of this, could do this, do you know what I mean? You see, I never once suspected he... he was harboring... was... was... May I speak frankly?”
“Yes, please.”
“I wouldn’t have cared,” Mrs. Lowery said suddenly, and lifted the shot glass, and drained it. “I mean, what the hell difference does it make? So they were cousins, so what? Haven’t cousins fallen in love before, even married before? I’m not suggesting there was even the slightest... but even if there was, so what? Would that have been any worse than... than wanting her so desperately he... he had to, to force, to... to... to do what he finally did... to take her by force and kill her? What’s wrong with this world, Mr. Carella? I tell you, I swear on my eyes, I tell you I wouldn’t have cared what the two of them were doing, if only it hadn’t come to this. If only it hadn’t come to the knife.”
Carella said nothing.
“You’re thinking, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, What about the sister? He also tried to... he also made demands on the sister. Oh my God, I don’t know what to think any more. I wish I were dead. I wish the ceiling would fall in on me, I wish I would die, please, dear God, let me die, how can I possibly live through this?”
She began to weep again, and he watched her and still said nothing, and at last the tears were spent, and she rose and dried her eyes and said, “You wanted to see Muriel’s room.”
“Please,” Carella said.
She took the bottle from the table, carried it to the cabinet from which she’d taken it earlier, put it on a shelf, and then closed the cabinet door. “Andy’s room is just across the hall,” she said. “Did you want to see that, too?”
“I’m not permitted to,” Carella said.
“What’s to stop you?” she asked wearily.
“The law,” he said.
She turned to look at him. Her eyebrows went up a trifle. She seemed in that moment to be taking his measure anew. Then she turned away and went out into the corridor, and walked directly past the door opening into her son’s room. As Carella went past the room behind her, he saw a portion of a bed covered with a blue spread; a wingback chair; a maple dresser against the wall, a mirror over it; a maroon pennant on the wall, gold lettering spelling out HADLEY HS.
“My bedroom is on the other side of Andy’s,” Mrs. Lowery said. “The girls’ room is here at this end of the hall.” She opened a door and stepped aside to let him enter.
It was September on the street, but in that room it was April. Green shag rug and white lacquered dressers. Ruffled bedspreads in yellow and green, curtains running rampant with daisies. A full-length mirror in a white lacquered frame. A desk just under the windows, white Formica top, white legs, three drawers. On its top, a yellow lacquered tray for papers, and a lamp with a frosted white globe. Greens in subtly shifting shades, yellows that roamed the spectrum, and a constant white that unified the color scheme. Together they gave to the room the quick bold look of spring-time — or of youth.
“This side of the room is Patricia’s, here by the windows,” Mrs. Lowery said. “Everything on this side of the room is hers. The other side was Muriel’s. The girls shared a closet, it’s the walkin closet here by the door, the left-hand side of it was Muriel’s, the right-hand side is Patricia’s.” She hesitated, and then said, “Will you need me? I feel suddenly exhausted.”
“I won’t take too long,” Carella said.
“Mr. Carella?”
“Yes?”
“He couldn’t have done it.”
“Mrs. Lowery—”
“But she saw him, didn’t she?”
“Yes, Mrs. Lowery.”
“His own sister saw him.”
“Yes.”
“Still...” she said, and seemed to debate the rest silently — tiny shakes of her head, small shrugs, and finally a sigh of defeat. She turned and went out of the room, and Carella heard her shuffling to her own bedroom at the other end of the hall. A door opened and then closed. A key turned, a lock clicked shut.