She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. I heard a woman come in behind me, stopping suddenly at the end of the toilet partition.
“What’s going on?” the woman said.
“Get out of here,” I said.
She didn’t move: I could feel her behind me; I could hear her breathing.
“Lady, you better do what I tell you. Just turn around and walk out of here.”
She went, quickly now. I heard the door swish shut.
“People will be coming now,” Barbara said.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep them away from you.”
“Cops… cops’ll come.”
“I’ll walk you through that, too. The way it stands now, it’s no big deal.”
We looked at each other. I hoped to hell I looked sincere. In the distance I heard noises: a woman shouting; someone running; sharp, excited voices. In the dimmer distance, somewhere far outside, a siren.
“They come fast,” Barbara said.
“They’re just a phone call away, hon. They’ve got cars all over town.”
“Janeway…” Her voice broke.
“I’m right here.”
“I don’t want to live anymore.”
“Sure you do. You can’t make that decision now… you don’t know what the alternative is…you haven’t given me a chance yet.”
Now her voice was bitter. “You had plenty of chances. You couldn’t do anything…”
The siren got louder. I knew if the cops came in, she would do it. I had maybe two minutes to talk her out of it.
She put the gun in her mouth and my time was up.
One last plea. Desperately, I shouted: “Barbara, for Christ’s sake, don’t do this to me!”
She blinked.
“Don’t do it,” I said. “Please.”
And I watched her… slowly… come back from the brink.
She wavered. The gun came out of her mouth.
I reached out my hands. She didn’t do anything. The gun was still cocked but she held it limply in her lap.
I touched her: ruffled her hair with my knuckles, touched her cheeks where the tears still ran. Kneeled and looked in her eyes.
Outside, the sirens were very close.
I put an arm around her shoulder and helped her up. “We’ll go meet them together,” I said. “Give me the gun now and I’ll take you outside.”
Then the door opened. Jackie Newton was standing in front of us, blocking the way.
“Get out of the way, Newton,” I said.
He just stood and looked. His face was full of contempt.
“Move,” I said.
He gave a little laugh. “Stupid bitch.”
And before I could stop her, Barbara brought up the gun and shot him.
39
They put her in a police car and segregated the witnesses: mainly me. It was getting to be habit-forming. For the second time in two days I told a uniform the bare facts and was told to wait over here, away from the crowd, until a coat-and-tie arrived from downtown. Barbara sat in the car, huddled into herself while a cop leaned across the seat and tried to talk to her. Reading her rights, I imagined: it was amazing how fast your sympathies passed from the cops to the accused, once you knew something about it and were no longer part of that world where the gathering of information must be just so. A plainclothes cop arrived and took charge. He was a burly guy named O’Hara: I had known him for years, though not well. I thought he was probably pretty good. I heard him tell the uniforms not to ask her anything until she could comprehend what she was being asked and what she was saying. She seemed to be in shock, one of the uniforms said. “Okay, let’s get her downtown right away and have a doctor check her out,” O’Hara said.
All this happened in a few minutes, while the medics were still working on Jackie Newton on the women’s room floor.
“Good grief,” O’Hara said when he saw me. “Can’t you stay out of trouble?”
He went back into the women’s room and came out again a few seconds later.
“Well, I guess you finally got the bastard.”
“Hey, all I was was the cheering section, O’Hara. If I’d had anything to do with this, she’d‘ve used a real gun.”
“Lucky for her she didn’t.”
The shot had hit Newton in the throat and had gone through his neck. The exit wound was at the base of the skull. It was messy, O’Hara said, but probably not fatal.
Whatever it was, the medics were taking their time.
“You wanna tell me about it?”
I told him the story, omitting nothing about why and how long Newton had been asking for it. Even at that it didn’t take long: my main statement would come later, downtown, in a smoky room with a stenographer.
“What do you think my chances are of seeing her?” I said.
O’Hara gave a loud laugh. “What a guy. You know better than to ask a question like that, Janeway.”
“I told her I’d help her through it, if I could.”
“Well, you shouldn’t‘ve told her that.”
“I believe she is entitled to see a lawyer. That’s the way it works, isn’t it, O’Hara? Or have they changed the rules since I went away.”
“Where’s your law degree?”
“Standing over there with its thumb in its ear.”
I called Mose and he came over.
“How about going down and talking to Crowell?” I said.
He blinked and looked at me as if I had suddenly started talking Arabic.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“You’re out of your mind, Clifford. You want me to represent that dame?”
“I want you to go talk to her, let her know she’s not alone. Come on, Mose, nobody does that better than you. Tell her about your last fishing trip. While you’re at it, you might slip in some free advice.”
“Cliff, listen to me. There’s no way I could properly do something like that. You understand what I’m saying? You know what conflict of interest is, I believe.”
“Look, I don’t want her facing these dinosaurs alone.”
O’Hara let out a bellow. “What a guy!”
They were bringing Newton out now. He lay on a stretcher, his head immobilized by a brace, tubes dangling from his nose and arm. His eyes were open, lovely blue eyes, wet and terrified. He saw me and his terror doubled.
“Merry Christmas, Jackie,” I said.
They packed him into the ambulance and slammed the doors. The siren came up and they drove away.
“She’s damn lucky she didn’t kill him,” O’Hara said.
“Oh yeah, she’s real lucky. Two months from now she’ll have all her old problems back and a whole shopping cart full of legal problems as well. When she finally does get out of jail she’ll probably find Jackie Newton waiting at the gate.”
If she does, I thought, I’ll be there too.
40
It was still on the right side of seven o’clock when I finished up at headquarters. I was wired to the gills and ready to make something happen. I drove out to Stan Ballard’s house, more on a whim than anything else. A sign on the door said offered by john bailey assoc., and under that was a phone number for an agent named Douglas Barton. There was a lockbox on the door: the place had a sad look about it, as if it had just lost its best friend. It was one of those fine old houses, vintage World War I, that still had a lot of life in it. They built houses to last then, not the prefab cardboard they use today. There was a time in Denver, not so long ago, when a house like this wouldn’t last a day on the open market. The oil business was booming and shale was the coming thing, and there was an economic excitement in the Rocky Mountains that hasn’t been here since. But the bottom fell out of the oil bucket, they never did figure how to suck the shale dry, and then HUD got into the real estate business and started giving houses away. The Ballard place lay fallow. There were simply more houses than people.
I walked up the steps and peeped through the window. Light fell in from old Mr. Greenwald’s place next door and I could see most of the front room. It looked different with everything stripped away. The Ballards had left nothing but the walls and the carpet and, yes, the bookshelves. It was a house made to order for a bookscout, big and solid and already shelved. I wondered what they were asking for it. I went around back and tried to peep in, but visibility was poor: I could see just enough to know that the shelves back there were still intact. I walked across the lawn and tried the garage. It was locked, but I could see that it was a big one, made for two cars and a small workshop. A man could park his car and still have room for five thousand books out here.