I guess so, anyway. I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t think I knew then that I was going to turn on the gas or anything, but I did know I was going to put the pills in their drinks, maybe I thought they’d die that way, do you know what I mean, from an overdose of sleeping pills. When I came out, I had the bottle of pills in my pocket. There were four pills in the bottle. Tommy poured fresh drinks, and I went into the kitchen with them, to put water in them, you know, we were drinking Scotch and water, and that was when I put the pills into their glasses, two pills in each glass, I figured that would be enough to put them to sleep, or maybe to kill them, I don’t know what I figured. The pills worked very fast. I was glad they did because my lunch hour was almost over, and I’ve never been late in all the time I’ve worked for Anderson and Loeb, never late getting to work in the morning, and not coming back from lunch, either. They were both asleep in maybe fifteen minutes, and I looked at them, and I realized they weren’t dead, only asleep, and I guess, yes, that must have been when, yes, I guess that was when I decided that I would have to kill them because, I don’t know, because I didn’t want Tommy to marry this girl and go to live all the way in California, yes, I suppose that was when I decided to turn on the gas.
I carried them into the bedroom and put them on the bed and then I saw the typewriter on the stand alongside the bed, and I typed up the note on the machine and put it on the dresser. I don’t know why I misspelled the word “ourselves.” I think it was just a mistake I made, because I don’t know how to type, I just pocked the note out with two fingers, but there wasn’t any eraser in the room, and besides I thought the mistake made the note look more genuine, so I left it there. I took off Tommy’s watch to hold the note down on the dresser, and that was when I got the idea of taking off their clothes. I guess I wanted to make it look as if this had been a love nest, do you know, as if they had just done it, do you know? I mean, before they turned on the gas. So I took off all their clothes, and folded them on the chairs, I tried to make it look the way I thought it would look if they had really taken off their own clothes before doing it, Then I went around the apartment and wiped everything I could remember touching, but I couldn’t remember what I’d touched and what I hadn’t, so I just wiped everything, with my handkerchief. I found the film in the living room while I was wiping the things off in there. It had Tommy’s name on the can, and I remember meeting his friend one time, and I remembered they’d made some movies together, so I put the reel in my coat pocket
Then I took the whisky bottles into the bedroom, and I opened the second one to make it look as if they’d been drinking a lot, and I spilled it out on the rug to make it look as if they’d got real drunk before turning on the gas, but I still hadn’t turned it on, even though the idea was in my head all the time, I knew I was going to do it, but I still hadn’t turned it on yet. While I was in the bedroom with the whisky bottles, I looked at the two of them on the bed, and it began bothering me, the two of them on the bed the way they were. I kept thinking about them all the while I was in the kitchen washing out the glasses. I washed and dried all three glasses, and I left two of them in the sink to make it look as if they’d been drinking alone together, and I put the third glass back in the cabinet where all the other glasses were. I thought I’d wiped them all clean. But I guess your lab has ways of finding out, it was silly of me to think they wouldn’t find out, with their microscopes and all. But all the while I was washing the glasses, I kept thinking of them on the bed there, and it kept bothering me that they would be found undressed even though I wanted it to look like love. So I went back into the bedroom, and I put their underwear back on, Tommy’s and the girl’s. I would have put on her . . . her brassiere, but … I … I didn’t know how. So I . . .I did what I could. Then I stood in the doorway and looked into the room for a minute to see if it still looked like love, and I decided that it did, and that was when I went into the kitchen and turned on the gas, and left the apartment.
* * * *
When the stenographer delivered the typed confession, Amos Barlow signed it and went limping out of the room with a patrolman who took him downstairs to the detention cells where he would be kept overnight until his arraignment the next morning. They watched him as he limped out of the squadroom. They could hear the sound of his cane on the iron-runged steps leading to the downstairs level. They listened to it without a sense of triumph, without even a sense of completion.
“You fellows want some coffee?” Miscolo asked, standing just outside the door of the clerical office.
“No, thanks, none for me,” Carella said.
“Cotton? Some tea?”
“Thanks, Alf. No.”
The men were silent. The clock on the wall read ten minutes to one. Outside the grilled windows of the squadroom, a light, early morning rain had begun to fall.
Carella sighed heavily and put on his jacket. “I was just sitting here and wondering how many people commit murder on the spur of the moment, and get away with it. I was just wondering.”
“Plenty,” Hawes said.
Carella sighed again. “You got any brothers, Cotton?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. How can a man kill his own brother?”
“He didn’t want to lose him,” Hawes said.
“He lost him,” Carella answered flatly, and then he sighed again and said, “Come on, I’ll buy you a beer. You want a beer?”
“All right,” Hawes said.
They went down the corridor together.
Outside the clerical office, they both stopped to say good night to Miscolo. As they came down the iron-runged steps to the first floor, Carella said, “What time are you coming in tomorrow?”
“I thought I’d get in a little early,” Hawes said.
“Trying for a line on Petie?”
“He’s still with us, you know.”
“I know. Anyway, Bert thinks he’s got a lead on that numbers bank. We may be hitting it tomorrow, and that’ll shoot the whole damn afternoon. Be a good idea to get in early.”
“Maybe we ought to skip the beer.”
“I’d just as soon, if it’s okay with you,” Carella said.
It had begun raining harder by the time they came out into the street.