He waited in the darkness. He would wait another two minutes, and then he would shoot the lock off the door. He didn’t have to wait nearly that long. He heard footsteps approaching the door, and then the door opened, and Amos Barlow said, “Yes?” and Hawes thrust the gun at him and said, “Get your hat, Mr. Barlow. It’s all over.”
“What?” Barlow said. A look of complete astonishment crossed his face. He stared out at Hawes with his eyes opened wide.
“You heard me. It’s finished. We just got a lab report.”
“What? What lab report? What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your fingerprints on the glass you washed and put in the kitchen cabinet,” Hawes lied. “I’m talking about the murder of your own brother and Irene Thayer. Now get your goddamn hat because this has been a long day, and I’m tired, and I’m just liable to shoot and end it right here and now.”
He waited in the darkness with the gun poised, waited with his heart pounding inside his chest because he didn’t know whether or not Barlow would call his bluff. If he did call it, if he said he didn’t know what Hawes was talking about, what glass? what kitchen cabinet? what prints? if he did that, Hawes knew there wasn’t a chance in hell of ever cracking the case. It would rot in the Open File forever.
In a very soft voice, Barlow said, “I thought I’d washed it.”
“You did,” Hawes said quickly. “You missed a print near the bottom of the glass.”
“I thought I’d been very careful,” he said. “I went over the place very carefully.” He shook his head. “Did you… have you known this very long?”
“The lab was backed up with work. We just got the report tonight.”
“Because I thought… I thought when you were here the last time looking for the film, I thought that was the end of it. I thought you’d close the case after that.”
“What did you do with the film, Mr. Barlow?”
“I burned it. I realized it had been a mistake, taking it like that, and I waited a long time before deciding to get rid of it. But… I wanted something of Tommy. Do you know? I wanted something to remind me of Tommy.” He shook his head. “I burned it two days before you came looking for it. I thought that was the end of it, when you came around that time. I thought the case would be closed.”
“Why’d you do it, Mr. Barlow?” Hawes asked. “Why’d you kill them?”
Barlow stared up at him for a moment, a slight man with a lopsided stance, a cane in his right hand. And for that moment,
Hawes felt an enormous sympathy for him; he looked at Barlow standing in the doorway of the house he had bought with his brother and tried to understand what had pushed this man into doing murder.
“Why’d you do it?” he asked again.
And Barlow, staring at Hawes, and through Hawes, and past him to a night long ago in April, said simply. “The idea just came to me,” and Hawes put the handcuffs onto his wrists.
* * * *
The idea just came to me. You have to understand that I didn’t go up there with the idea of killing them. I didn’t even know Irene Thayer existed, you understand, so I couldn’t have planned to kill them. You have to realize that. Tommy told me that morning that he had a surprise for me, and he gave me an address and told me to come there on my lunch hour. I go to lunch every day at twelve-thirty. I could hardly wait to know what Tommy’s surprise was. I could hardly wait for lunch that day.
So at twelve-thirty I came down from my office and I took a cab uptown to the address he had given me. 1516 South Fifth Street. That was the address. Apartment IA. That’s where I went. I walked upstairs, and I rang the bell and Tommy opened the door with a big smile on his face, he was a happy-go-lucky person, you know, always laughing, and he asked me to come in, and then he took me into the living room, and the girl was there.
Irene.
Irene Thayer.
He looked at me and he said, “Irene, this is my brother, Amos,” and then with the smile still on his face he said to me, “Amos, this is Irene Thayer,” and I was reaching for her hand to shake hands with her when he said, “We’re getting married next month.”
I couldn’t believe him, do you know? I hadn’t even heard about this girl, and now he’d invited me to this strange apartment on South Fifth and he’d introduced her and told me he was going to marry her next month, and all without ever having even told me he was serious about anybody. I mean, I’m his brother. He could have at least told me.
They . . . they had two bottles of whisky there. Tommy said he had bought them to celebrate. He poured out some whisky, and we drank to the coming marriage, and all the while I was thinking why hadn’t he told me before this, why hadn’t he told his own brother? We’re… we were very close, you know. It was Tommy who took care of me after my mother and father died, he was like a father to me, I swear it, there was real love between us, real love. And while we drank, while I was all the time wondering why he hadn’t I told me about this Irene Thayer, they began to explain that Irene was married and that she would be leaving for Reno and that as soon as she got her divorce Tommy was going to join her there and they planned to spend their honeymoon out West, and then maybe Tommy would take a job out there, he wasn’t so sure, but he had heard there were a great many opportunities in California. He might, he said, try to get something in the picture business. He was always fooling around with film, you know, him and this fellow who worked at his place with him.
So we drank, and I began to realize that not only was he getting married to this strange girl I’d just met, but also he was planning on moving out, maybe living in California permanently, after we’d just bought a house for ourselves, well not just that minute, but we’d only been in the new house less than a year, and here he was talking of leaving it, of living in California, all the way on the other end of the country. I began to feel a little sick, and I excused myself and went into the bathroom, feeling nauseated, sick to my stomach, you know, and I looked in the medicine cabinet to see if there was some Alka-Seltzer or something, anything to quiet my stomach, and that was when I saw the sleeping pills, and I guess that was when I got the idea.