She couldn’t take her eyes off the name on the photostat. It had been written very carelessly and quickly, and she wasn’t sure whether the writing was Lewis’ or not. She said, “It doesn’t look exactly like Lewis’ writing.”
“It is.”
“And it proves nothing except that he stopped at Ashley for a night.”
“On February twenty-sixth.”
She didn’t reply, though she knew the significance of the date. It was the beginning of July now, and Violet had been four months gone with child when she died. But how could it have happened? Lewis wasn’t like that at all, Charlotte thought. He would never have looked at Violet — she was young enough to be his daughter, young and ignorant and not even pretty; and Lewis was a respectable man, a little stolid, a man who valued his place in the community and his reputation. Lewis and Violet. The thought made her sick. It stuck in her throat; it couldn’t be swallowed; it couldn’t be coughed up. Lewis and Violet. And the baby boy that had died with Violet was Lewis’ child; it might even have grown to look like him — the son that he’d always wanted, now in a garbage can in the morgue or already burned to dust in an incinerator. Poor Lewis, she thought. But running through her pity was an iron stripe of bitterness.
Easter was watching her, narrow-eyed. “I’m not interested in bringing Ballard to trial on moral grounds. That’s woman’s work. What he does with his spare weekends in Ashley or Cucamonga is no business of mine.”
“You’ve managed to make it your business. Do you also break into locked hotel rooms and peer over transoms and creep under...”
“I’m after a murderer,” Easter said. “Not a four-bit Romeo.”
She leaned her forehead against the window to steady herself. The lights of the city whirled, slowed, stopped. “Lewis is neither,” she said at last.
“He’s both.”
“No you have no proof.”
“I can’t prove that he killed Violet. But he’s made it easier for me by shooting Voss and O’Gorman and leaving the bodies in your garage.”
She turned to face him. “He wouldn’t do such a thing. Even if he were desperate, he wouldn’t involve me in such a mess. He loves me. You can laugh at that, but it’s true. He loves me.”
“He loves himself, too, and that’s the big passion. You’re running a poor second, Charlotte.”
She repeated stubbornly, “He would never do such a thing.”
“I admit it’s a pretty stupid idea to drive a convertible containing two bodies into your girlfriend’s garage. But I figure that he didn’t expect you back for a few days, and he intended to use the time to think himself out of the jam. When you look at it like that, Ballard was playing it smart. Your garage was practically the one safe place in town where he could hide the bodies until he planned a way to dispose of them.”
Lewis and Violet. Lewis and Voss. Lewis and Eddie. Three deaths already, and Easter with death in his eyes.
Easters mouth moved with a question, but she hadn’t heard it.
“I repeat,” Easter said. “Ballard had a key to your garage?”
“I don’t see what difference it...”
“But he had a key?”
“I left the door open.”
“Did he have a key?”
“Yes!”
Both their voices were raised, but Easter’s had lowered in pitch, and Charlotte’s was high and shrill.
“Do I have to squeeze everything out of you?” Easter said. “Don’t you know I’m trying to help you?”
“I don’t want your kind of help.”
“You can’t be choosey at this stage of the game. You’d better take all the help you can get while you can get it. You’ve got a car with two very dead men out in your garage, and I have to report it. I have to report it to the chief, to the D.A., to the sheriff. I should have reported it half an hour ago, but I gave you a chance. Where’s Ballard?”
“I don’t know.”
“And even if you knew...?”
“I wouldn’t tell you.”
“The loyal-little-woman role, eh?” An ugly smile crossed his face. “Well, come on, loyal little woman, I have something to show you.”
“I don’t have to...”
“Come on. I want to see that loyalty explode right in your two blind eyes.”
She felt a surge of violence. She wanted to reach out and hit him. It was the first time since childhood that she had wanted to strike someone, to hurt “You’re — you’re a contemptible...”
“Bully,” he said. “Gad. Yeah, I know all that.”
“My — my loyalty isn’t as absurd as you seem to think it is. There’s no proof that Lewis is guilty of anything.”
“Not enough for a court of law. It might take a month, two months, to line up the witnesses and the ballistics and medical experts and to organize the evidence. But right now I’m convinced, as the judge puts it in his instructions to the jury, I’m convinced beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty, that Ballard killed all three of them, Violet, O’Gorman and Voss.”
Beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. Heavy, somber words, like a funeral sermon.
Easter glanced at his watch before he opened the front door. “You haven’t much time. Coming?”
“Where are you going?”
“Just to the garage.”
“I don’t want to.
“Afraid you’ll be convinced?”
“No.”
“Come on, Charlotte.”
“No.”
Easter made an impatient gesture. “If I have to convince you that Ballard is a murderer before you’ll do anything to help yourself out of this mess, you must come out to the garage and see for yourself.”
“See what?”
“The gun.”
“Gun?”
“You’re in a worse spot than you think you are, Charlotte. The evidence indicates that the shooting was done in the convertible, perhaps right in your garage.” He paused. “Coming?”
“Yes.” She wanted to see the gun. She even had a sudden hope that she would be able to say definitely that it didn’t belong to Lewis. Lewis had a target pistol, a pair of them, in fact. She remembered the day she’d first seen them. She thought back to the time when she and Lewis were having a picnic on a remote stretch of beach near Pismo, and Lewis was trying to explain to her the difference between a revolver and an automatic pistol.
“These are revolvers. Now an automatic works differently. The cartridges are loaded into a clip that fits into the handle and the recoil mechanism discharges the empty shell and throws a new cartridge into the chamber. But a revolver like this has a revolving cylinder which — you haven’t even been listening, Charley.”
“I have so.”
“All right, what is this in my hand?”
“It’s a .38 caliber Colt target pistol. Darling, the sun’s making me sleepy. Anyway, what is a caliber?”
“You actually don’t know what a caliber is?”
“I actually don’t.”
“You are an amazingly ignorant but lovable woman,” Lewis said solemnly. He had leaned over to kiss her, one of the pistols still in his hand.
It had been a happy day. She thought of it now as she followed Easter silently out to the garage. The beach, the sun, the happiness, were as remote as a dream.
Easter beamed his flashlight into the back seat. It pointed like an accusing finger at the gun on the floor beside Voss’s knee. “See it?”
“Yes.”
“Recognize it?”
“No — I don’t know — I’m very ignorant about revolvers.”