We heard a machine, maybe a lawn mower or chain saw, echo in the distance when we stepped out of the car. The neighborhood smelled moist and musty. I was parked directly behind the car that must have been John Wellington Welles’s, the Taurus that had killed Kyle McClory. No, the car hadn’t killed him. The driver had.
Ames and I walked up the narrow, cracked concrete walk. The street looked weekend peaceful until the door opened and Welles stepped out. He was no longer wearing his jacket and tie. His shoulders sagged and the gun in his hand pointed in our direction.
We stopped. No one spoke.
“There are so goddamn many things I could have done,” Welles finally said, looking at the gun in his hand. “I could have planned it all better. I could have planned it. No, I couldn’t. I didn’t. In the poker game of life, emotion will almost always push common sense out of the way and take over.”
The gun in his hand lowered slightly.
“Who said that?” I asked, inching forward.
“I did,” he said. “My insurance… now that’s another tale. If I shoot myself, there’s no money to take care of Jane.”
“Jane?” I asked.
I knew Ames was reaching slowly, very slowly for the shotgun under his slicker.
“I should have simply stepped on the gas on the way back here and slammed into a wall,” Welles said, shaking his head. “But what if I lived? It’s a dilemma. I’m not sure what happens with the insurance if you shoot me.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You don’t? No, of course you don’t.”
The door was open behind him, but not the screen door. Welles turned and called, “Janie.”
Someone stirred in the darkness beyond the screen and then appeared slowly, warily. Welles pocketed the gun as a woman who seemed familiar stepped out and looked at us. She wore a blue dress with a bright yellow-and-red flower print. She smiled.
“My daughter, Janie,” Welles said, putting his arm around the girl. She smiled more broadly.
Her face was familiar because it was the same open, round face of all people with Down’s syndrome. She had seemed familiar to Arnoldo Robles because he had seen others with that face on television.
“Hello,” she said to Ames and me, still smiling.
“Hello,” I said. So did Ames.
“Can I go watch the rest of the movie?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Welles, kissing her on top of her head.
She gave him a big hug and went back inside, disappearing in the darkness.
“Janie’s nineteen,” Wells said. “Already old for someone with Down’s. Her mother died of cancer. There’s been no one to take care of her but me since. You understand why I didn’t want you to find me? Why I was willing to kill you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But I couldn’t do it.”
“You shoot at me at the Dairy Queen?” I asked.
“Shoot at you? No. When?”
“Why’d you kill the boy?” Ames asked.
Welles rubbed his eyes with a thumb and a finger and then blinked.
“We were coming out of a movie at the Hollywood 20. Janie likes movies, movies that don’t show people getting hurt. We were walking to the car, talking. I told her we would stop for ice cream. She was happy. Then it happened.”
He went silent again and sighed.
“You know the parking garage behind the 20?”
“Yes,” I said.
“They were on the roof,” he said. “They spit, both of them, spit on Janie’s head. At first I thought it was from a bird. Then I heard them laughing. Janie was bewildered, trying to clean her head and face with the back of her hand. Then she started to cry. You can’t imagine what it’s like to hear that confused crying. I looked up, saw their faces. People flowed past us trying to ignore my crying baby, my violated baby. I took her quickly to the car, sat her in the backseat, handed her some napkins, told her to sit and relax, that I would be right back.”
Welles’s shoulders sagged and he sat heavily in one of the lawn chairs on the small porch. The chair creaked. Ames took a step forward. Welles managed to get the gun from his pocket and aim it in our direction.
“No, not yet,” he said. “You’ve got to hear it all. I ran up the steps of the garage. I heard one of them above me on the fourth level shout, ‘The crazy bastard is coming up here.’ I wanted to get my hands on them, strangle them, make them weep like Janie, throw them off the roof, spit in their faces. When I got to the roof, they were about fifty feet away near the down ramp. One of them, the one I… he laughed at me. I ran. They were much faster than me. They ran down the ramp shouting taunts.”
Welles was tapping the barrel of the gun against the aluminum arm of the chair. He was remembering, shaking his head.
“I kept running, almost lost them in the crowd of people waiting in line at the 20 for the next shows. I shoved through people. People cursed me. I didn’t hear the words. Then I saw them and they saw me, and they began to run again, run down Main toward downtown. Do you have any idea of how I was feeling?”
“Yes,” I said.
The thought of this happening to my Catherine, my dead Catherine.
“Yes,” I repeated. “I do.”
“I went back to the car,” Welles went on, speaking faster now. “Janie wasn’t crying now. She was just huddled against the door, her head against one open palm. I sped out of the parking lot and started looking for them. They saw me and I saw fear and it drove me. I wanted to frighten them. I wanted them to wet their pants, to fall on their knees and beg for forgiveness. I wanted them to apologize and weep at Janie’s feet and tell her she was beautiful and should never cry. But that didn’t happen.”
He stopped again. Now he was tapping the barrel of the gun gently against the right side of his head.
“I found the one boy on Fruitville,” he went on. “He saw me and crossed. I moved into the far lane, cutting off a car that must have barely missed me. The boy ran down the street. I was right behind him now. I could see he was growing tired of running. Oh God, I wanted to frighten him, grab him by the hair. I had a cold, half-full cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in one of the holders on the dash. I wanted to get in front of him, throw coffee in his face. I wanted him to wet his pants. I wanted to see fear, terror, but that didn’t happen.”
He looked at us, trembling.
“He stepped in front of the car,” I said.
Welles nodded yes and said, “He walked right down the middle of the street. I was moving slowly, only a car length away when he turned and held up his middle finger. He gave me the finger. He gave Janie the finger and made a face, a bug-eyed blank face, ridiculing my daughter. I stepped on the gas, hard. I think there was a screech. It might have been the tires or me or Janie or the boy. I hit him. He went down. I went right over him and stopped. I wanted to stand over him, tell him I hoped he suffered. He was dead. The cell phone was right next to his hand. I picked it up. I don’t know why. I got back in the car and kept going.”
There was more, but he had said almost all that he had to say.
“I told Janie that the boy was fine and that he was sorry and that he had said he thought she was beautiful. I took her to Friendly’s for a chocolate ice cream sundae. You understand?” he asked, looking first at me and then at Ames. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. It’s not your right.”
He let out a laugh, a single self-pitying laugh and added, “Can you believe that when I was a boy I wanted to be a priest? Exposure to logic disabused me of the calling. Sometimes I think God had a black suit and collar waiting for me and when I didn’t claim it, he let me think I was safe for a while, then gave me my wife and my poor baby, took my wife and moved those boys on the roof to-”
A car came roaring around the corner behind us.
“I made a call when I got home,” Welles said, calmly looking at the approaching car. “Maybe my saving your life counts for something. I’ve lost all sense of what I’ve studied most of my life, moral definition. Watch out for the woman who tried to run you down. I could see it in her eyes, in the few seconds before she scraped past me. She doesn’t have my curse of hesitation and guilt. If anyone shot at you, it was that woman. It wasn’t me.”