“This came as something of a surprise to her husband, I’d imagine.”
“I think he ignored the improbability of it all and decided to accept the child as a gift from God — which, in an abstract and indirect sense, it certainly was. They had a boy.”
“Roger Thoreson,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Roger was your son, and the apple of everyone’s eye in this town. Everyone blamed Katie Costner for his suicide.”
“Yes.”
“You blamed Katie for his suicide.”
“Well, of course I did. After his father died, I tried to act the role of a surrogate father to Roger. I tried to warn him about Katie. He wouldn’t listen. She lured him in, and she drained him, and then she moved on, like the vampire she was.”
I tried to pick up the story.
“Katie’s father died, and she didn’t attend the funeral. Her mother became ill, and asked you to find her. You hired the detective. He located her and told you where she was. Katie’s mother died, and you didn’t bother to tell Katie.”
“She wouldn’t have come,” Quincy said. “Katie had no intention of ever setting foot in Prosperity again, after the way she had been treated. There was no point in contacting her.”
“You knew where she was, though,” I said. “You waited until you had a reason to travel to Louisiana. You flew to New Orleans. You went to Katie’s home. She welcomed you, of course. You’re a preacher. You weren’t one of those people who drove her out of town. You passed the time of day, and then you found the opportunity to strike and you choked the life right out of her.”
“And then I bought a box of pralines for Inez Stillman,” he said. “It’s true. Every word.”
He drained the glass of sherry and examined the glint of sunlight in the cut-glass cordial.
“I… think perhaps another would do nicely,” he said.
He stood and went again to the cabinet. He reached in, but instead of pulling out the decanter, he withdrew a nasty looking revolver.
“It really would have been much better if you had stayed in New Orleans.”
“You don’t want to do that,” I said.
“The gravediggers were at the church this morning. They just finished Katie’s grave. The people from the funeral supply will deliver the vault for the casket in an hour or two. My plan is for you to be at the bottom of that grave, covered with a tarpaulin. The vault will be placed on top of you. It’s made of concrete, and I daresay it will crush you quite badly. Nobody will ever know you are buried underneath Katie.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said.
“You’re a stranger here. Nobody knows you. Nobody will miss you if you simply disappear. Now, I need you to go to the back of the house. I can’t have blood all over my living room. Clues, you know. I watch the television crime shows. I know what to avoid.”
“No,” I said.
“What? This is a real gun, Pat. I know how to use it. Don’t think for a second I won’t just shoot you where you sit.”
I should have been angry, but Quincy just saddened me.
“You aren’t going to shoot me.”
“Give me one good reason why I won’t.”
Judd Wheeler stepped into the room from the kitchen and leveled a pump shotgun at Quincy.
“Because if you do, I’ll have to shoot you,” he said. “I heard everything. Gallegher called me right after he found the evidence, and explained his theory. He picked me up at the station, so my cruiser wouldn’t be here when you got home. Drop your gun right now, or I will drop it for you.”
Quincy was distracted, so I shot out my hand and grabbed the revolver from him. He seemed mystified. He didn’t even bother to resist.
I felt a little sorry for him.
The next day, I stood at the graveside while the local Methodist minister conducted Katie Costner’s burial ceremony in Quincy Pressley’s stead. I had long since resolved my differences with religion and I allowed myself to focus on the reverence of the occasion.
Katie was buried next to her parents. Just two rows over lay Roger Thoreson and his mother, and the man who died thinking he was Roger’s father. It felt a lot like the end of a Shakespeare tragedy — two families brought to ruin by the weaknesses and flaws of a man who believed that he was both an instrument of mercy and a sword of vengeance.
I didn’t stick around to see them lower the casket into the vault. I didn’t want to hear the scrape of wood on concrete, or the thud of falling earth. I had endured enough of Prosperity and its secrets to last me a lifetime.
By dinnertime I was three hundred miles closer to home.