“Do you have anything else to add to the statement before it's typed up?”
At some point during the night Otis had dropped his toughness. He was almost gentle now. “Do you want to talk to a lawyer before signing the statement?”
Sheldon was still alive and would talk his head off, and I knew it. I said, “A lawyer couldn't help me.”
Otis gave the signal and the stenographer gathered up his notes and left the room. The Sheriff and his deputy sat there staring at me.
It was all over. Otis said, “Well, Hooper, we might as well go over to the jail.”
For the first time in eight hours a real emotion went to work on me. Fear. Fear of being put in a cell and left to, myself.
Ray King said, “Is there something else you want to say?”
Suddenly I felt an insane urge to laugh. “We almost got away with it.” I heard myself saying. “We came so close!”
“You're wrong, Hooper,” the Sheriff said. “You couldn't be more wrong if you tried.” Suddenly he pushed himself back from his desk, still not satisfied with the bare facts. He still wanted an answer, but he wasn't sure of the question. He said, “You never had a chance, Hooper. We're not completely stupid down here. We had you nailed to that box-factory job and, in spite of what you think, we could have made a good case in court. But we also knew you didn't pull the robbery alone. I figured Bunt Manley helped you, but I was wrong in that. Anyway, we didn't want to pull you in until we found out who was in it with you. With all the circumstantial evidence we had on you, do you think we'd just forget about you?”
He snorted. “We had you watched day and night, Hooper. Ike Abrams or one of my deputies reported every move you made. You thought you were going to leave this town scot-free, didn't you? Well, let me tell you, you couldn't have got away in a Patton tank. We were just waiting for you or the Sheldons to make a mistake, and when you did make one it was a lulu!”
I stared at him. “You had Ike spying on me all the time?”
“You're a murderer, Hooper. Ike was doing a job for the Sheriff's office. And it didn't take him long to tie you up with Sheldon's wife. After that it was just a matter of waiting. There's one thing I'm curious about though. Why did you kill her?”
I closed my eyes and there she was.
I could almost feel sorry for Sheldon; he wouldn't die easy in the chair. Maybe I wouldn't, either, but the prospect was not frightening now. I had died the instant my finger had pulled the trigger on that .38. With a woman like Paula it seemed ridiculous to think such thoughts—but I had loved her. I must have loved her to have done the things I had done.
Ray King said, “Maybe I'll never understand it, Joe, but I'd like to try. You threw over a fine girl like Beth Langford, then turned to robbing and murdering because of a woman like Paula Sheldon. Why?”
I thought of the cell that was waiting for me. When I reached it I wanted to be able to drop into dreamless, thoughtless oblivion—and the time was not yet.
I looked at them and they were waiting for the answer. They wanted a simple, clear-cut answer and there wasn't any.
It was a long story. Almost a month ago, I thought; that was when I saw her for the first time. That was when the Buick stopped on the highway in front of the station. Less than a month ago it had been. It seemed like a thousand lifetimes.
Otis and Ray were waiting and I didn't know where to begin. And then I thought dully: Begin at the beginning, and maybe there will be an answer there for you, as well as for them. And I said:
“This is the way it was....” And I started at the beginning.
THE END