I’m only saying suppose. How could we get married if I killed her, if someone says I killed her?
No one has said it, Gerry.
Well, if someone should.
(Silence. Carella was dangerously close to Fletcher’s car now, and risking discovery. But he could not afford to miss a word at this point, even if he had to follow bumper-to-bumper. On the floor of his own car, the unwinding reel of tape recorded each word of the dialogue between Fletcher and Arlene, admissible evidence if ever Fletcher were charged and brought to trial. Carella held his breath and stayed glued to the car ahead. When Arlene spoke again, her voice was very low.)
You sound as if you really did do it.
You know Corwin did it.
Yes, I know that. That’s what . . . Gerry, I don’t understand this.
There’s nothing to understand.
Then why . . . if you didn’t kill her, why are you so worried about being accused and standing trial and . . .
Someone could make a good case for it.
For what?
Someone could say I killed her.
Why would anyone do that? They know that Corwin . . .
They could say I came into the apartment and . . . they could say she was still alive when I came into the apartment.
Was she?
They could say it.
But who cares what they . . . ?
They could say the knife was still in her and I . . . I came in and found her that way and . . . finished her off.
Why would you do that?
To end it.
You wouldn’t kill anyone, Gerry.
No.
Then why are you even suggesting such a terrible thing?
If she wanted it . . . if someone accused me . . . if someone said I’d done it . . . that I’d finished the job, pulled the knife across her belly . . . they could claim she asked me to do it.
What are you saying, Gerry?
Don’t you see?
No. I don’t.
I’m trying to explain that Sarah might have . . .
Gerry, I don’t think I want to know.
I’m trying to tell you . . .
No, I don’t want to know. Please, Gerry, you’re frightening me, I really don’t want to . . .
Listen to me, goddamn it! I’m trying to explain what might have happened, is that so fucking hard to accept? That she might have asked me to kill her?
Gerry, please, I . . .
I wanted to call the hospital, I was ready to call the hospital, don’t you think I could see she wasn’t fatally stabbed?
Gerry, Gerry, please . . .
She begged me to kill her, Arlene, she begged me to end it for her, she . . . damn it, can’t either of you understand that? I tried to show him, I took him to all the places, I thought he was a man who’d understand. For Christ’s sake, is it that difficult?
Oh my God, my God, did you kill her?
What?
Did you kill Sarah?
No. Not Sarah. Only the woman she’d become, the slut I’d forced her to become. She was Sadie, you see. When I killed her. When she died.
Oh my God, Arlene said, and Carella nodded in weary acceptance. He felt neither elated nor triumphant. As he followed Fletcher’s car into the curb before Arlene’s building, he experienced only a familiar nagging sense of repetition and despair. Fletcher was coming out of his car now, walking around to the curb side, opening the door for Arlene, who took his hand and stepped onto the sidewalk, weeping. Carella intercepted them before they reached the front door of the building. Quietly, he charged Fletcher with the murder of his wife, and made the arrest without resistance.
Fletcher did not seem at all surprised.
And so it was finished, or at least Carella thought it was.
In the silence of his living room, the children already asleep, Teddy wearing a long white hostess gown that reflected the colored lights of the Christmas tree, he put his arm around her and relaxed for the first time that day. The telephone rang at a quarter past one. He went into the kitchen, catching the phone on the third ring, hoping the children had not been awakened.
“Hello?” he said.
“Steve?”
He recognized the lieutenant’s voice at once. “Yes, Pete,” he said.
“I just got a call from Calcutta,” Byrnes said.
“Mmm?”
“Ralph Corwin hanged himself in his cell, just after midnight. Must have done it while we were still taking Fletcher’s confession in the squadroom.”
Carella was silent.
“Steve?”
“Yeah, Pete.”
“Nothing,” Byrnes said, and hung up.
Carella stood with the dead phone in his hand for several seconds, and then replaced it on the hook. He looked into the living room, where the lights of the tree glowed warmly, and he thought of a despairing junkie in a prison cell, who had taken his own life without ever having known he had not taken the life of another.
It was Christmas Day.
Sometimes, none of it made any goddamn sense at all.
The End