I was shocked at the motive.
"Dorothy wasn't killed because of the campaign-contributions story?"
"That? No. What she had on me? Its all smoke. House Ethics Committee might have slapped my wrist. But that was no mortal sin. No, she was getting close to figuring out what happened with Gloria. She had the insurance angle down and was asking way too many questions about me and my practice. Kind of like you are, except she was a little smarter."._Ray had lowered the barrel of the gun so far that it was pointing near my feet. I scoured my memory for details of the floor plan of the house, trying to imagine a route for an escape attempt. I doubted that Ray Welle was a skilled marksman.
The more distance I could quickly put between us, the better my odds would be that he would miss when he fired at me.
His next words stunned me from my reverie like a slap across the face. He asked, "Do you know the hardest thing about getting away with murder?" I said, "Excuse me? What?"
"The hardest part of this whole experience-the whole thing with having Gloria killed?" He could tell that I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.
"I mean killing someone and not even being considered a suspect? I mean never suspected at all-ever. You know what the hardest part is?"
I was flustered. He seemed to want an answer so I took a stab at it.
"I don't know, the guilt?"
Ray Welle laughed at me.
"Bad guess. I figured you for being a little more intuitive than that, Alan.
But, no, I'm not prone much to that particular reflection. Remorse isn't one of my things. So let me tell you just so you'll know. The hardest part about getting away with murder- I'm not talking about the details, mind you, I'm discussing my personal feelings here-the hardest part is not being able to talk about it.
"Me? I'm a talker. Everybody says that about me. They couldn't shut me up when I was on the radio. The Speaker couldn't shut me up when I was on the floor of the House. I was out of order more than a deck of cards. Truth be told, I even yakked too much when I did psychotherapy. But I haven't been able to talk to anybody about this. Not even Phil. We talked about lots of things over the years, but we never talked about getting away with murder. Neither of us. There was a time I needed to talk about it so badly I thought about going into therapy. You know, just to have a chance to spill the beans to someone and leave him sitting there with his mouth hanging open. But that impulse always passed.
The result? There hasn't been a word spoken in all these years, until here today, with you."
What was I supposed to say, that I was honored? The more he told me, the more certain I was that he was planning to seal my lips permanently.
On the other hand, as long as I could hear him talking, I was still alive.
There was that.
"Why, Ray?"
"Why did I have her killed? Is that what you mean? She was bailing out on me, on my dreams. She was going to pull the plug on the money I needed for the ninety-two congressional campaign. I couldn't raise the money without her name and her influence. And even that wasn't enough for a decent campaign. I needed her personal contributions-as my spouse she could spend as much as she wanted.
And soon enough, I figured, she was going to start making noise about a divorce.
When she left me I would have been sitting with my half-assed practice in Steamboat, my quirky little local radio show, and almost no money. Gloria had to die. It was the only way I could see to guarantee my future. Although I couldn't touch her trust, the rest of the assets would be mine. I hoped that would be enough."
"And what was in it for Brian?"
"I promised to convince the coroner that he was no longer suicidal the day that Phil's boys shot him dead on the ranch. That way his family would get enough life insurance money to start their life over again. Without my intervention with the coroner the insurance company wasn't about to pay on his policy. No way. Brian understood that. Basically, he killed Gloria for me and I agreed to make sure his family was taken care of."
"Your idea or his?"
He lifted the gun so it aimed at my gut. I could feel my bowels pucker.
"Brian wasn't the brightest bulb in the scoreboard, if you know what I mean. He didn't have what it would take to come up with this."
"What about shooting her in the closet? That was adlibbed I take it?"
Ray shook his head.
"No, we worked that part out together. Brian wasn't an eager participant. Even at the end, he wasn't at all sure he could look Gloria in the face and kill her. I understood; I don't think I could have done it either. We had to come up with an alternative."
"Why did he do it?"
"I convinced him that no one would really blame him, that everyone would think he just snapped from all the stress. It was a sacrifice for his family."
I considered Brian's desperation.
"A cop friend of mine thought the closet was suspicious. The fact that he shot her through the door. He had a whole lot of trouble with it."
"You know, when Phil first came in the house he had trouble with it, too. If I had to do it over again, I would have insisted Brian shoot her face-to-face."
He broke into a broad smile.
"And look!" He waved the gun at me.
"I do have to do it over again. I need to remember my lesson. Let's go find a good place for you to die. No closets for you."
It was time for me to do something. Trying to run seemed absurd. Ray Welle was standing seven or eight feet away from me with his handgun leveled at my chest.
He might not miss. That left the Kimber option. If he was to be of any help, I had to pray that his panic episode had abated.
I said, "I didn't come here by myself, Ray. You and I aren't alone in the house."
He barely heard my words. He was looking out the big windows of the great room, gazing toward the lane. Two vehicles were approaching the house. One was a Steamboat Springs police vehicle driven by Percy Smith. The other was a familiar Ford Taurus driven by Russ Claven.
Ray said to himself more than to me, "Sylvie must have called them. They think you're holding me hostage." I wasn't about to remind Ray that Sylvie didn't know he was on the ranch. I was certain Ray didn't know who Flynn and Russ were; he probably figured that they were officers who had accompanied Percy Smith and the other uniformed officer.
I had reached a different conclusion about my arrival of the police than Ray had. I was thinking that Kimber must have realized what was going on and called the police. They know that Ray is about to kill me.
The cars stopped about a hundred feet from the house, and the four occupants all exited on the far side of their vehicles. The solitary uniformed officer had a rifle with a scope. Percy Smith was armed with a cell phone.
The telephone rang inside the house. The peal seemed to clang around the cavernous space like a church bell.
Ray said, "If I'm a hostage, I don't answer the damn phone, right? Right. Let it ring, let it ring." He turned to me.
"Back up. We're going into the hall so they can't see us through the windows."
He backed me up into the hallway that led to the master suite and ordered me to stop just opposite the powder room. He said, "Sit."
I did.
The phone finally stopped ringing.
Ray said, "What were you talking about before? About not coming to the ranch alone?"
"I'm terrified. I was just trying to buy some time. You know, distract you."
He stared at me while he tried to cinch his robe tighter without interfering with the aim of the gun.
"I don't know whether or not to believe you."
Good, I thought.
"And I can't exactly go wandering through the house searching for someone, now can I? I can't. The police would see me moving around and know that I'm not really a hostage."
I was beginning to recognize my leverage. It was paltry, but it was something.
I said, "But neither can you risk the possibility of there being a witness already here in the house. Someone who might see you murder me in cold blood."