For the first time, I saw real fear in her face. She seemed to sway on her feet, as if her knees were about to give way.
“I don’t feel well,” she said. “I need to sit down.”
I stood aside, pulled out a chair for her. She came around the counter, slumped in the chair with her arms on the table. I crossed around to the other side of the table and sat opposite her. The stun gun lay between us. She looked at it, then quickly at me.
“Dogs, Harry. I run. I’ve been attacked by dogs.”
“And you saw what it could do, didn’t you?”
“You’re twisting things,” she cried. “These are horrible accusations!”
“Does Walter know about this, about how you had Conrad killed?”
“I didn’t kill him!”
“Tell me, Rachel,” I said. It was time to play my last card. “The morning after Conrad was murdered, I came over to see you. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“You ran up to me in the kitchen, when Mrs. Goddard was here and the police were in the den. And the first thing you said was that you’d heard I got hit. You said that before you even saw the back of my head.”
“Well, yes, I know, I-”
“How did you know I got hit, Rachel?”
“Well,” she stammered, “I-I, the police told me. The police told me when they questioned me.”
“No, Rachel. The cops wouldn’t tell you anything like that. And they didn’t. I checked. The only way you could know I got hit on the back of the head was if you were there, or if somebody who was there told you about it.”
She had this shocked look on her face, as if I’d grabbed the stun gun and jammed it into her. She stared through me, about a mile off, her mouth cracked barely open.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
“Rachel,” I said, my arms on the table toward her. I reached over, took one of her hands in mine. “I want to help you. We can help you. This doesn’t have to be the end of everything.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she said, her voice faint. “I asked you to let it go. Why didn’t you let it go, Harry?”
“Rachel, I called Walter. He’s a good lawyer, the best. He’ll help you. I’ll help you. We both care about you.”
Her eyes shot open. She jerked her hand away from me. “You did what?”
“He’s on his way here, Rachel. He’ll want to help you.”
She jumped up from the chair. “You fool,” she screamed. “You idiot!”
I stood up, confused. “What the hell are you talking about? I only want to help you.”
She stepped quickly up to me, got right in my face, yelling so loud spit flew. “Oh, you’ve helped all right! You damned fool, you’ve ruined everything!”
“Rachel,” I said, as soothingly as I could, “please …”
Her eyes welled up; tears began to run down her cheeks. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone,” she sobbed. “Why didn’t you do what I asked?”
She hid her face in the palms of her hands. Her shoulders heaved. Something in me melted; I couldn’t help it. I took two steps and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her tightly to me. Her breath came in ragged gulps, her body shaking as if she were freezing to death.
The kitchen door opened, and Walter Quinlan stepped in. He was wearing a starched white shirt, gray suit, and carried an expensive leather briefcase. His hair was swept back neatly. He was lawyer to the core of his soul. Good thing, too. Rachel would need the best.
“Walter,” I said. “Hey, man, thanks for coming.”
Rachel stiffened; the shaking stopped, every muscle in her slim body seemed to lock up. She pushed away from me, turned toward him and stared.
“Well, well, well,” Walter said. “Harry and Rachel. How nice to see you guys again. Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”
“Walt, this isn’t some kind of relationship confrontation,” I said. “We’ve got some serious problems here.”
He smiled, but it was more of a contemptuous sneer than anything funny. “Oh, yeah, I’d say we got problems all right. Enormous problems.”
Rachel turned to me, fear in her eyes. “Harry, I-” she hesitated. “I’m so sorry.”
Walter set his briefcase down on the counter. He fiddled with the catches, the lid of the case rising toward us.
“You don’t understand,” Rachel said. “I didn’t pay anyone to kill Conrad.” Her voice was barely a whisper, the color completely gone from her face. There were dark circles under her eyes, as if a fatigue beyond measure had settled on her.
“I didn’t have to.” She turned, stared at Walter.
“Oh, for chrissakes, Rachel, you really need help,” I said, shocked. “You can’t really believe anybody’s going to believe that. Walter’s an attorn-”
I turned. As Walter shut the lid of the briefcase with his left hand, I saw in his right hand a pistol.
And again, in one of those senseless, idiotic sparks that run rampant through human brain cells in the middle of catastrophe, I thought: Hmmm, looks to be about a 9 millimeter. Nope, I ain’t gonna mess with that.
I stared at him. My jaw cracked open this time.
“Does this mean no more raequetball?”
Walter smiled. “You always were an asshole, Harry.”
This ain’t real, I thought. This isn’t happening.
His smile disappeared. “This wasn’t my fault, Harry. She talked me into it.”
“You, Walter?” I was still dazed by it all. It was the one option I hadn’t considered.
“It was her idea, damn it! She put it together.”
I looked at Rachel. She stared at Walter with an expression I’d never seen before. An expression of pure, distilled fear.
“We’d been having an affair for about a year,” he continued. “She was going to divorce him after I made partner. Big bucks in being partner.”
“Then you didn’t make partner,” I said.
He moved his eyes from her to me. “Yeah, that’s right, Harry. I didn’t make partner. Rachel and Conrad were falling apart, the marriage dead. In debt up to their eyeballs. The money almost gone. I’m in deep, too, man. Don’t you see? This was the way out. For both of us.”
He motioned with the gun, his hand shaken by a quick tremor. “Both of you, sit down. Now.”
I looked at Rachel. Her eyes bulged in terror. She backed into a chair, then sat without taking her eyes off him. I came around the other side of the table, sat as well.
The pistol looked small in his hand, the way it must have looked to Mr. Kennedy. It was the last thing Mr. Kennedy saw in this life; I didn’t want to have the same experience.
“Why’d you do Mr. Kennedy?”
“Who?”
“The black guy in the Lincoln, the one who worked for Bubba Hayes.”
“Hell, I’d forgotten his name. I knew he was following you. I didn’t know what he knew. But then he started following me as well. Not all the time, but enough to make me think he knew more than I wanted him to. Then I caught him parked out in front of Rachel’s house one night when I was coming out. I knew he had to go.”
I shook my head slowly. He hadn’t even remembered the man’s name. “Jesus, Walt. Did you have to kill him?”
“He was getting too close, damn it!” he yelled, his hair falling down on his forehead. “He brought it on himself.”
He reached up, loosened his tie with his one free hand, the pistol pointed at us the whole time. He was sweating now, perspiration dripping down his face. All I could think of was that I didn’t want to the sitting at some goddamn kitchen table.
“Why me?” I asked. “Why’d you bring me into it?”
Walt grinned, but it was a painful grin, his lips pulled back like a dog baring his teeth. “That was Rachel’s idea, too. When I told her you’d lost your job at the paper and had become a detective, we both got a good laugh out of it.”
Pained, I looked over at Rachel. She turned my way, but couldn’t bear to look at me.
“You were our backup,” Walter said. “We figured the cops would never suspect Rachel if she had the alibi and also hired a P.I. We never figured you’d be smart enough to figure this out. Kinda broke a few patterns on us, buddy.”
I looked at Walter, his face glistening, tight, and I realized at that moment how much he hated me. For whatever reason and from whatever source, Walter Quinlan hated me. I’d never seen it; even now, didn’t understand it.