"Call them and ask."
"Why did you come to Boston?" she asked. "To get me, to fuck me because you couldn't have Mom? Or to kill me?"
Both, maybe, Jeff thought. To fuck you, yes, sure. To kill you, maybe that too. Because he had been slowly drifting to the point where he realized that he had to isolate Georgianne completely, to strip her life of any ties and trappings that kept her from him. Yes, even to keep her from moving to Boston.
"Tell me," Bonnie went on. "Tell me the truth."
"What truth?"
"I'm asking you if you killed my father. I'm asking you if you can deny it to my face."
Jeff looked at her calmly and smiled.
"What are you going to do, Bonnie? You've got me where you want me now, but what are you going to do? Kill me? Go ahead. I won't resist. You can do it, you know. You're really a lot like me."
"Don't say that," she responded angrily. "I'm not like you, not at all."
"Oh yes, oh yes."
"When my father was murdered, I bought this knife for my own protection. I thought that whoever did it might come after me next and I wanted to be prepared. But even when you came along the other day, I was surprised and I found it hard to believe. I have to believe it now, though. I have no choice. I'm sorry for you, Jeff, I really am. Obviously my mother reaches deep, deep inside you, and you can't help it. I guess that's not your fault, but it's not hers either. I hope to God I never have that kind of effect on any man. But you didn't have any right to kill my father, and you did. I know you did. Tell me."
Jeff didn't flinch or show any reaction.
"You have your mind made up," he told her. "I just wish you'd do whatever you're going to do. Go on, do it. Now."
"I wonder," Bonnie said. "Would you be so eager to die if you hadn't killed my father? Somehow I doubt it. You're not brave enough to come right out and admit it, but the way you're acting is as much as a confession."
"Think what you want. You will anyway."
"But I'm not going to kill you," Bonnie said. "Because I'm not like you, Jeff."
That's not right, he thought. One of us has to die here.
He was ready for it to be him. His death would be an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence practically no one had heard. It would transform Bonnie's and Georgianne's lives forever. The whole story would come out and make news all around the country. They would never escape the importance he would have achieved in their lives. In death, at least, he would have them both, and they would spend the rest of their days haunted by the memory of him. It was a sweet and profoundly satisfying thought, and Jeff smiled at Bonnie again.
"You are like me," he repeated, "and you'd better kill me while you have the chance."
"Listen to me," Bonnie ordered, painfully aware of the cramps developing in her hands. "With that hand, reach into your pocket and take out the car keys. Very slowly, and make no other moves. Then put the keys on your stomach and your hand back under you."
When he did that, Bonnie intended to release his hair, put the keys between her teeth, and then pour some sand in his open eyes so that he couldn't race right after her when she broke for the car. It wasn't a great plan, but it was the best she could devise. She didn't want to hurt him, she just wanted to get away. Filling his eyes with sand would slow him down enough ... but Jeff refused to cooperate.
"No," he was saying, "no. You listen to me for a second. I'm not going through that rigmarole with you, Bonnie. You can kill me if you want, but I'm going to stand up. And you should think what you'll say if you do kill me. Are you going to tell the police that I killed your father? What proof will you show them? You don't have a weapon, you don't have a confession, you don't have anything to tie me to your father's death. And what'll you say when the police come up with witnesses who'll testify that I was at home in California when your father actually died? Kill me if you think you have to, but you'll destroy your mother and ruin your own life in the process."
"Don't move," Bonnie demanded, but it came out more as a plea than a command. Her eyes were wide with terror. Her resolve had crumbled away in the few moments it had taken Jeff to speak, and she no longer knew what to do. As long as he had been willing, eager to die, she'd had no doubt that she was right about him. But now everything he'd just said rang true, and she realized how flimsy her case was. Regardless of what had transpired between them, she didn't have a single concrete piece of evidence against him.
"I am moving," Jeff said, and he started to take his hands out from beneath his body. "I'm getting up right now."
Bonnie twisted his head away sharply and shoved him. Then she jumped up and bolted for the car. Annoyed but smiling, Jeff caught up with her before she'd gone twenty yards. He knocked her to the ground, and when she started to roll over, he stepped on her hand and pulled the knife from her grip. Then he positioned himself so that Bonnie would have to pass him to get to the car and, beyond it, the road. He glanced around, but they were the only two people in sight. Bonnie got to her feet slowly, rubbing her wrist and looking confused. She looked at Jeff, and it all came back into focus. A fine mist, so light it was nearly invisible, floated on the air.
.You can understand, can't you?" she asked anxiously. "You can see why I might have thought-"
"Bonnie."
"If you had nothing to do with what happened to my father, what you'd do now is drive me back to Boston."
"And?" It was Jeffs turn to smirk.
"And we'd say good-bye, and that would be the end of it."
"Oh, really? You'd decide you had been wrong about me and that I was really all right, is that it? And you'd never say a word about me to your mother, you'd never tell her anything about-this?"
Bonnie couldn't answer. She kept thinking she should have stabbed him, cut him somehow, not fatally but enough to slow him down. But how could she do that to someone who hadn't raised a hand to her and who might not have had anything to do with her father's killing? Jeff had toyed with her, he had let her appear to get the upper hand, and then, when he was ready, he'd pulled the rug out from under her as if it was the easiest thing in the world. And the worst part of it-what had rendered her helpless-was that he was right: she had no proof, no evidence, not a single hard fact to justify her suspicions.
"You have to understand what it's been like for my mother and me," she said, because she knew she had to talk to him. "I'm sorry, very sorry, I acted like that, but ... I didn't want to think you were involved, but so many crazy things have been going through my mind since Dad died. It really fucked me up. You can understand that, Jeff, can't you? I'm sorry I put you through that whole scene. I was wrong, and I'm sorry. I was scared, and-"
"Yeah, well."
Jeff pursed his lips and looked up and down the chilly gray beach with its lumpy dunes and thickening mist. The whitecaps were like razor cuts in the slate sea. The air was quiet and damp but charged with risks and chances, impossible choices.
"You're very bright and very brave," he told Bonnie, "but you fall short in your knowledge of human nature."
"It's been such a great weekend, until now," she said, trying to find a positive note. "Think about how I made love to you, Jeff. I wasn't just going through the motions. You know I made love to you like I cared about you and wanted you, like it meant something to me. Because that's the truth-I did care about you, I did want you, and it did mean something to me. Do you really think I could have done that if I thought you were the one who shot my father?"
She was good, she was making an effort, but she was out of her depth, Jeff thought. She was a precocious child, nothing more.
"So you don't think I killed him?"
"Well, no. I think you would have said so before, when I had the ..." She couldn't bring herself to mention the knife. Then, a final inspiration. "You love my mother. You wouldn't ever hurt her like that."
Jeff put his arm around Bonnie's shoulders and walked her into the shelter of the dunes. They sat down together. He stuck the knife into the sand beside him and held her close, embraced and kissed her. He stroked her hair and face. Bonnie responded eagerly, like a person reaching for a life line. It took him a minute or two to find the carotid artery in her neck. The security chief at Lisker-Benedictus had taught him this maneuver a few years ago. He gently increased the pressure until she sagged against him and passed out. He held her for a few more moments, thinking how beautiful she looked. What a waste! But it seemed to be the only way.