“Canoga Park,” she said. “But this time they let him go after only a few hours.”
“If they don’t catch the slasher soon, Eddie’s going to see the inside of every police station in the greater Los Angeles area.”
“Tell me about it.”
Marianne stared out the diamond-paned window at the shadows which were creeping across the brown hills, and beyond to the purple haze. She supposed the ocean was out there somewhere.
Roger hated being ignored.
“What did the psychiatrist say?” he tried.
“Which? The police psychiatrist or my psychiatrist?”
“Either. Both.”
She sighed. “Same old, same old. The police say people confess to get attention—”
“Eddie’s in toastmasters, for God’s sake—”
“—or have the need to be punished.”
Roger nodded sagely. It was as he thought. “Guilt,” he said.
Marianne chewed the cuticle of an acrylic nail. “So they seem to think.”
She resumed her pacing.
“But you don’t think so,” Roger said.
“No.”
“Wife and only son dying a fiery death—”
“—ex-wife—”
“—has to give them pause,” Roger said reasonably, “even if Eddie had nothing to do with it. He didn’t cause the accident. Fourteen people died when the tanker truck got rear-ended in that sandstorm.”
“Fifteen,” Marianne said.
“Husband runs off with secretary—”
“—administrative aide—”
“—and the nun and kid buy the farm.” Roger felt that if she was going to start smoking again, he got to call a spade a spade.
“Ex-nun.”
“Just bad luck, but you can see how it might get Eddie down.”
“That’s what they both glommed onto.”
“But you don’t agree.”
“No.”
While Roger admired her confidence in flying in the face of expert opinion, he thought her unreasonable. Her dedication to her own opinion was starting to irritate him. He got out of bed and started to dress.
“Just because it happened over three years ago,” he said, “doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been eating away at him and just now bubble to the surface.”
Marianne watched him put on his socks. She wondered if he knew what an idiot he looked like in putting on his socks before he put on the rest of his clothes.
“That’s what they think,” she said. “God, Roger, if you can’t make it as a broker, maybe you can make it as a shrink.”
“There’s no need to get nasty, darling.”
Marianne ground out her cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’m sorry, but he’s driving me wild. Both of them said, ‘Not to worry, he’s harmless.’ Harmless? Harmless? Would you buy insurance from a certifiably crazy person?”
“Of course not.” Actually Roger had let his policy lapse. He couldn’t afford the premium, and he was pretty sure that should anything happen to him, his mother had enough money to get by.
“Well, neither will anyone else,” Marianne said.
Roger came to sit by her and patted her knee.
“At least you got your invitation to the Jonathans’.”
“They can hardly take it back, can they?”
Marianne stared bleakly into a future as a social leper with horrendous mortgage payments.
“Did Eddie tell them anyway? The psychiatrists, I mean.”
“What psychiatrists? He hasn’t seen any psychiatrists on his own. I’ve tried to get him to see Fred, but I think Eddie thinks Freud was in league with the devil. The police psychiatrist only said that Eddie wanted to sleep, but he can’t because of the screaming.”
Roger felt cold. He drew the edge of the bedspread over his lap.
“That’s why they believed him at first,” Marianne continued. “They thought he meant the screams of those poor women that maniac carves up in the afternoons. Which is ridiculous. You can’t sell as much insurance as Eddie does and take the afternoons off to butcher people.”
“But now they think he means the ex-wife and kid?”
“That’s what they think.”
There was an awkward silence. Roger wished his clothes weren’t on the other side of the bed.
“What makes you so sure they’re wrong?” he asked.
“They’re wrong because at the funeral Eddie said I was paid for.”
“What?” Roger was shocked. “What on earth did he mean by that?”
“I think he meant that he was being punished for being with me. That their deaths were the price he had to pay for our happiness.”
“That’s a bit thick, isn’t it?”
Roger stood up and began to look for his underwear.
“He said his suffering made a balance. For Eddie everything has to balance.”
“Did you tell them that?”
“Of course not. What good would it do? I did tell them that he slept like a baby for three years after the accident. Anyway, I don’t care why he is now running all over Los Angeles confessing to crimes he can’t have committed. I just want him to stop. Did I tell you about the clippings?”
“What clippings?” Roger could find only one of his shoes.
“I went through his things this morning while he was at the office, or looking for another jurisdiction, or whatever he does now with his days besides not sell insurance. In his sock drawer I found a pile of newspaper clippings about the slasher.”
“That’s morbid.”
“No, I think it’s homework. He had underlined some of the grisly details. I think he’s trying to get better at convincing them.”
“Hell of a hobby.” Then Roger had a chilling thought and paused in the act of retrieving his shoe from beneath the bed.
“You don’t think he knows about us?”
“Of course he doesn’t.”
For once Roger was grateful for her absolute conviction. But like picking at a scab, he couldn’t leave it alone.
“That’s good, darling, but what makes you so certain?”
“We’re still alive, aren’t we?”
Roger decided she was being flippant. But with Marianne, he never knew. It was part of her charm.
“I like that part about his being harmless,” he said. “I think I’ll go with that.”
Roger finished tying his tie. He ran a finger along the edge of his jaw. Was it his imagination or was the skin there losing some of its elasticity? He frowned at his image. Sometimes it was easier than at others to see the skull beneath the skin. Those girls.
“Why do you think he keeps doing it?” Roger asked.
“I don’t know and I don’t care. He tells me he’s very sorry. Very sorry, but the screaming has got to stop. He can’t sleep.”
“He might try a bed instead of patio furniture. I’m afraid he’s nutty as a fruitcake, my dear.”
“That’s not very constructive, Roger.”
Roger looked at his eyes. Sometimes they didn’t look as disappointed as they now did. Sometimes they showed his power, his magnetism. He needed a confidence builder. Maybe he’d go for a drive near Pepperdine. There were plenty of girls there.
Edward blots his mouth carefully on the white cloth. In the dim light the wine stain looks black. The back of his shirt is wet. He doesn’t feel the moisture rolling down his sides. His lips move.
“Forgive me.”
He tried to make them punish him for what he is about to do. He tried.
He takes a knife from the wall and starts up the stairs.
Murder Mystery
by Alex Auswaks
© 1994 by Alex Auswaks