“A reputation is all a man really has, Nick.”
“Touch the finger if you want,” I said. “Take it out of the bag if you want to.”
Stoltz stared down at it. Touched it through the plastic. Looked back at me. He had a very different expression on his face by then. The look of acceptance.
I pictured myself as a small red sailboat beginning to circle Roger Stoltz’s drain. Circling the current of his logic and his despair. Closing in on the center. The black suckhole of corrupted reason that justifies a horrible act. I’ve spent a lifetime learning what these drains look like. How to enter and exit them without drowning. Everyone’s got one. Some are small and easy to find. For small lies and small secrets. But some are enormous and cunningly concealed. Like an underground river. They can carry anything you can imagine. And sometimes much more.
Stoltz was seventy-six years old. He’d been waiting thirty-six years for this.
So I let go and began to circle.
“Sure, Roger,” I said. “A man’s reputation is important. But some people have a conscience, too. You do. I’ve known it for sixty-something years. You’ve done nothing but good things for me and my family.”
“Yes. And I did think very highly of Janelle.”
“I know you did. And I understand why you had to do it, Roger. I understand what it must have been like.”
A gray tiger cat jumped into Stoltz’s lap. Skinny, green eyes. Could hear his motor from where I sat. Stoltz ran a gnarled hand down its back and tried to fix me with his tough old eyes. But he blinked.
“I loved her,” he said. “Really, genuinely, truly loved her. I offered her everything I had. The material things were the least of it.”
Stoltz’s forehead wrinkled with sad sincerity. “I offered to divorce Marie and marry Janelle. To provide her with a fine home and travel and an education and the means to raise her child. She didn’t even know who the father was! Do you know what it feels like, Mr. Becker, to offer everything and be refused?”
I studied the intensity on Stoltz’s face. I couldn’t find even a trace of doubt in it. He believed. And I knew then, from a lifetime of hearing confessions, that Stoltz would tell me everything. It’s always the guys who think they were right who tell you everything.
“The tragedy of Janelle and me, Mr. Becker, were the drugs and the men who gave her the drugs. Starting with her brothers. The drugs ate her away from inside. You saw her beauty. I know you did. My God, when she was crowned Miss Tustin! But you never saw inside her, did you? Let me tell you, she was empty. Black. Janelle was a wasteland of everything this life can offer. A wasteland of life itself. Of all my love and all my plans. Of her own potential. And I was supposed to let that one small but tremendous hope slip down an abortionist’s drain? It would have been monstrous. I had to do something.”
Destroy the village in order to save it.
Destroy the woman in order to save her.
Destroy a life in order to save it.
“I do understand your logic, Roger.”
Stoltz looked at me then as a man of faith. A man who wanted to share that faith. Have it believed by someone other than just himself.
The cat hopped onto the table. Nosed Stoltz’s lemonade glass.
“She came to Tustin that night and I met her in the Sav-On parking lot. Took my Caddy to the Newport apartment. A pretty blue sweater and a black miniskirt. Boots. Hair so fresh and dark and sweet. My God, she was beautiful. She told me she didn’t want to see me again. Wanted to completely break off our friendship. She told me I’d become too forceful and demanding. I wanted too much from her. She had bought me a St. Christopher pendant to protect me on my ‘travels’ away from her. She put it around my neck. And I don’t know what happened at that point, Mr. Becker, but I suddenly became more forceful and demanding than I had ever been. More than I had ever imagined I could be. It was more than just sexual. More than just anger. I was compelled. I was possessed. It was the first and only time I did that to her. She resisted. It was an unbearable pleasure to overpower her. And I’ll admit, Mr. Becker, I made a mistake. I overreacted. I panicked. When I put her in the trunk I saw the new pruning saw that had fallen out of its bag. The packinghouse seemed like a good place to take her. I don’t know what I’d have done if the lock had been locked. Threw her purse in the grove. And it seemed to me, Mr. Becker…it seemed to me-”
Stoltz paused and fixed me with his dark eyes again. The cat put its nose to the finger, sniffed twice. Then to the saw, sniffed twice. Curled away in minor fear and hopped off the table.
“It seemed to me that the best way to protect myself was to do something hateful to her. Do something that only a man who hated her could do. So, the saw. Because it was not something that a man who loved her would ever do.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“The blade came off and I took it. I had no idea what to do with it but I knew I might use it. An hour later I had showered at the Motel 6 on Tustin Avenue and I sat on the bed and looked at the blank TV screen and figured I’d blame it on Cory Bonnett. I had to do something. I’d already had a private eye investigate him for me. I wanted to know who Janelle was seeing. About bankrupted me, there were so many. Cory seemed most believable as a murderer. As soon as he heard about her he left the country. He knew the police would suspect him. Which made it easy to get in and out of his garage. Good luck for me that we drove similar cars. Very good.”
“Where did you get the saw you showed me back in sixty-eight, in your potting shed?”
“Bought it out in McLean, Virginia, a few days after Janelle. Checked it through in my suitcase. It came in handy, didn’t it? More lemonade?”
“Sure.”
“Marie!” Stoltz’s eyes were glassy with tears and his voice cracked so he had to call her again.
“So now what, Becker?”
“I’ll talk to the DA. If you’ll sign a confession it will make things easy for everyone. If not, you’ll be arrested and tried.”
“On the basis of what?”
“Andy’s conversations with Martha and the ticket purchases. The DA will order another DNA comparison and the flesh under Janelle’s nails will be shown to be yours. The tape recording I just made might not get into evidence but it will sure get the DA investigators pointed in the right direction.”
The screen door slammed. Marie came slowly toward us. The man behind her had a tray with a pitcher on it. I put the finger and saw and report back into my briefcase in plenty of time.
When she was done pouring the lemonade Marie smiled at me. Kissed her husband again and began the long journey back to the house.
“I’ll need a few days to get things in order around here,” said Stoltz.
“No. We’re going now. It took me thirty-six years and I’m not waiting one more hour.”
“Afraid I’ll run?”
“Or kill Marie and yourself.”
That glint in his eyes again. “Let me take a leak. Put on some decent clothes. Get a lawyer to meet us down there.”
“Okay.”
I followed Roger in. He walked slowly. Looked around like he might not ever see any of it again. Which he wouldn’t. Nice home. Cool and roomy. Old furniture. Funny wallpaper. Marie sitting in the big living room all alone with the TV on. The hired man doing something in the kitchen.
Marie eyed us as we walked toward the bedroom.
I watched Roger get a shirt and pants from the closet. Lay them over one shoulder. Socks, underpants, and what-have-you from a chest of drawers.
I followed him toward the bathroom.
“Be right out,” he said.
I stepped forward quickly. Quick for an old guy. Took the revolver from him. Socks and underpants falling to the floor.
“Don’t do that to Marie,” I said. Slid the.38 into my waistband. Bent over and picked up the socks and underpants. Back stiff and knees sore.