“It’s on the way to Las Vegas. I’m on vacation and I thought... I wanted to find out about her, her real name, some idea of why she took her own life. And if she had any relatives.”
“What do you mean, her real name?”
“She was living under an assumed name. She died alone, without leaving a note, no explanation of any kind, and the police weren’t able to trace her. That’s why you weren’t notified of her death.”
“How’d you trace her, if the police couldn’t?”
“There was a book with a Beulah Library stamp among her effects.”
“Yeah? How’d you get a look at her effects?”
“If I tell you that you’ll think I’m crazy.”
“I about half think it already.”
“She fascinated me,” he said, “from the first day I laid eyes on her. I’ve never seen anyone sadder or lonelier.”
“And you just had to find out what made her that way.”
“Yes. Her death bothered me more than it should have. I talked to the police and then I went to see the manager of the building where she lived. Her belongings are stored there. I... well, I paid to look at them.”
“Paid?”
“I told you you’d think I’m crazy.”
She studied him for a time. “Not married, right? No kids, no woman?”
“What does that have to—”
“Takes lonely to know lonely,” she said.
Yes it does, he thought. And we’re both sitting here looking at loneliness, aren’t we? Anna’s sister in more ways than one.
“Well, now you know the truth about her,” Dacy Burgess said. “Some of it, anyhow. People in town told you all about the killings, right? Must have, for you to find your way to what’s left of her ranch.”
“I went to see Reverend Hoxie at the Church of the Holy Name.”
A mirthless smile bent her mouth at the corners. “The good Reverend. He doesn’t know the whole story. Good thing for him he walks around with blinders on half the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“You meet his daughter? Maria?”
“Yes, I met her.”
“Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is...”
“Dave Roebuck thought so, too.”
“Oh,” Messenger said. “So it was like that.”
“Just like that. Maria Hoxie and half a dozen others I could name. That bastard would’ve humped a snake if somebody’d held its ears. Can’t blame Anna for blowing his head off with a load of number two shot. Not him, you can’t blame her for. Tess is another story. What she did to Tess... she’ll burn in hell for that.”
“You’re convinced she was guilty of both murders?”
“Guilty as sin.”
“But she never stopped claiming she was innocent.”
“No. Swore it to me on a Bible.”
“Jaime Orozco believed her. Why didn’t you?”
“You talk to Jaime?”
“No.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Only what Reverend Hoxie told me.”
“Which was what? Jaime’s the only person in Beulah who never doubted her for a minute? Well, that’s right. He’s got a heart big as a bucket and he never had a bad thought about anybody, except Dave Roebuck. He’s known Anna and me all our lives. He doesn’t believe she did it because he doesn’t want to believe. Just like you, huh?”
Messenger said, “What I can’t believe is that a mother, a caring mother, would crush her daughter’s skull with a rock. And then put different clothes on her and the body into the well. And then swear her innocence and grieve so hard she could barely function.”
“Well, maybe you never heard of catathymic crisis.”
“No. What’s that?”
“Term in forensic psychology. Describes a person who kills somebody they’re close to and still grieves for the victim, same as if they were innocent. Doctor I know in Tonopah told me about it. Catathymic episodes start with anxiety and depression over emotionally tense relationships and end up with a belief that the only way out is murder. Could be that’s how it was with Anna.”
“Where her husband’s murder is concerned, yes, I can see that it might be. But her daughter? Her relationship with Tess wasn’t emotionally tense, was it?”
“Oh, hell, she could’ve thought so. Part of the same psychosis.”
“It still doesn’t seem right to me.”
Dacy Burgess stabbed out the remains of her cigarette with enough force to make sparks and ash fly. “Okay, then, here’s another explanation. She went plain old batshit crazy and afterward she repressed the whole thing. Couldn’t remember doing any of it, couldn’t face up to it in her own mind, so she convinced herself she didn’t do it.”
“Your doctor friend provide that theory, too?”
“That’s right. And if that’s the way it was with Anna, then maybe it all came back to her in Frisco. She couldn’t live with it so she killed herself.”
“I can think of another possibility,” he said.
“For killing herself? What else is there except guilt?”
“Innocence. She couldn’t live with the pain of her loss, or the knowledge that whoever did murder her husband and daughter would go unpunished.”
“They why’d she run in the first place?”
“Guilt isn’t the only thing that makes people run.”
“Right. Cowardice is another.”
“And hopelessness is a third,” Messenger said. “She might not have seen any hope in staying and fighting alone. From what I’ve gathered, the people around here didn’t give her any hope.”
“Me being one of them.”
“I’m not trying to lay any blame on you, Mrs. Burgess. I’m only doing what you’ve been doing, offering a possible explanation.”
“You’re offering bullshit, as far as I’m concerned.” She was angry again; the inner fire made her eyes shine and sparkle like sunlight on glass. “Anna was guilty and you coming around and saying otherwise isn’t gonna change the fact. You don’t know a goddamn thing about her or me or what it’s like to live and die in this country. Go on back to the city — that’s where you belong.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“Did a good job of it, mean to or not. Go on, get out of here. You and me are finished talking.”
“Not quite. There’s something else you should know.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Your sister had quite a bit of money when she died. Fourteen thousand dollars. The authorities impounded it when they couldn’t trace next of kin.”
“Blood money,” Dacy Burgess said. “Dave’s and Tess’s life insurance policies. Company had to pay off when no charges were filed against Anna. And now you’re gonna tell me I’m entitled to it, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I don’t want it. Lonnie and me don’t want it, you hear me?” She was on her feet, the cords in her neck bulging, the bones in her upper chest as sharply defined as hatchet blades. “You tell the authorities to keep it, give it to the homeless, do whatever they want with it. Tell them Dacy and Lonnie Burgess don’t want a dime of Anna Roebuck’s fucking blood money!”
9
Slow, hot drive back to Beulah. He spent it brooding about Anna, Dacy Burgess, the situation he’d walked into here. Logically, what he ought to do now was to check out of the High Desert Lodge and then drive on down to Vegas; he’d get there in plenty of time for a little blackjack, dinner, perhaps a show. What more could he do in Beulah? He’d found out what he’d come to find out, fulfilled his good-citizen’s obligation to Anna’s family. The only responsibility left to him was to notify Inspector Del Carlo of the Jane Doe suicide’s true identity, and he could make that call from Vegas today or tomorrow.