“What if the trainer, who knows his players almost as well as they know themselves, knows that all this is coming down? Wouldn’t the trainer think it was vitally important to protect his players from this one-man plague? Doesn’t this bring us right back to tonight’s Bible reading: ‘It is expedient for one man to die.’?”
“Bobby, Bobby. .” Brown shook his head. “You should know me better than that. No matter what was going on, I couldn’t kill somebody. . one of the players. It’s just against everything I believe.”
“All we’ve got is your word on that, Brownie.”
“Bob, that’s all you got from everybody at this table. The Father is not in on this. The Mick is the only other one here with an all-day alibi. Everybody else at this table had the opportunity to do it to the Hun. And we have, maybe foolishly, devised made-up motives for each other. All of us can deny the accusations that have been made against us. But that’s all you got: some accusations and some denials. There isn’t a speck of proof in any of it.”
The word “foolishly” struck a responsive chord in Koesler’s mind. Instead of an innocent Bible discussion this evening, the members of this group had said things to each other, made embarrassing accusations, many in some anger and long-suppressed hostility.
It had long been a conviction of Koesler’s that words spoken in the heat of emotion, especially in anger, can become as permanent as words carved in stone. And because of such words, friendships had been permanently destroyed. Looking around the group now, with the exception of Murray and himself, they were all glaring at one another. Relationships between these men would, he thought, never again be the same. That was, somehow, saddening. He was quite certain he was attending the final meeting of this God Squad.
“Brownie,” said Whitman, “we are forgetting one of the so-called suspects who isn’t sitting at this table and who also had the opportunity to kill Hank Hunsinger.”
“What?”
“I was wondering when you would get around to me, gentlemen.”
Marj Galloway stood, leaning against the doorjamb, in the arch separating the living room from the dining area. In one hand she held a straight-back chair. She proceeded to the table and seated herself between her husband and Jack Brown.
She looked straight at her accuser, Dave Whitman. Neither blinked.
“Seems to me you’re doing a lot of accusing, Dave,” said Galloway, bitterly. “First Hoffer, then me, now my wife. Is it just possible that, to borrow from Shakespeare, you are protesting too much?”
Whitman did not take his eyes from Marj. “If anything, I may be getting warmer.”
“Think so?”
Koesler had to admit Marj Galloway was cool. She gazed steadily at Whitman. If anything, she seemed to be suppressing a smile.
“You,” said Whitman, “had the best opportunity of any of us. The way I heard it, you had unaccounted-for time right up to the opening kickoff. You-let’s be honest-knew Hunsinger and his personal habits better than any of us. And, now that we’re concentrating on motives, you had perhaps the best reason of all.”
“Oh?”
“‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ Revenge is as old as Cain and Abel.”
“Really, Dave, you’d have a much more viable reason for saying that if the Hun had been found dead a year ago. I’ve had a lot of time to forget, if not forgive. And time heals lots of wounds.”
“Time,” Whitman pursued, “also provides the opportunity to plan. We don’t have to pussyfoot around your affair with Hunsinger-”
Galloway made as if to interrupt, but Whitman cut him off by talking over Galloway’s objection.
“Everybody knew about it, Jay. Hell, all you had to do was read the gossip columns. Neither of them tried to keep it a secret. And the assumption, never denied by you or anyone, Marj, was that it was Hunsinger who dumped you. You couldn’t have helped being bitter. You had to have had access to his apartment while the two of you were still together. You could have kept the key or easily had a duplicate made.
“What if you hear-or, for that matter, discover for yourself-that the Hun had gotten a supply of a lethal poison? And you’ve had almost an entire year, not, as you say, to cool down, but to have your humiliation and anger fester. Seems to me you had the very best knowledge, opportunity, and motive of anyone.”
There was a prolonged silence as the seven men stared at Marj.
“A nice guess, Dave,” she said. “But that’s all it is: a guess. I’ve been listening to you all very carefully, and that’s all you’ve been doing all evening: guessing. The only ones who’ve escaped the guessing game have been Niall and the Father here. And that’s only because neither of them had the opportunity or a motive. As for the rest of us, each of us knew the Hun well enough to know his peculiar habits. Each of us theoretically had the opportunity. And, I suppose as a kind of tribute to how really rotten the Hun was, each of us seems to have had a reason to dislike him, at the least, and, at most, hate him enough perhaps to kill him.
“But what we lack here, gentlemen, is what I think they call in the crime trade the smoking gun.
“You can talk all night long, Dave, about how much I hated the Hun and how good an opportunity I had to kill him, and all I have to do is sit here and deny it. And that is all any of us has to do: simply deny it. No one, including the police, can put any one of us at the scene. All they can say is that one of us could have been there. So, what you’ve done tonight is to complete an exercise in futility. And I would suggest that since everybody who could have been accused of the crime has been, maybe this party ought to break up.”
Koesler considered that the evening had been somewhat more than an exercise in futility. Some real animosity had built up around all these accusations. He wondered how or if some of these people could ever work together again.
But evidently, Marj Galloway’s invitation to call it a night had been taken seriously. The men had closed their Bibles and were preparing to leave. Unlike the conclusion of previous meetings of the God Squad, there was no light repartee tonight. Only awkward, stony silence.
Koesler, like the others, prepared to leave. As he walked through the living room, he recalled that something about that room had disturbed him both when he had visited here for the first time yesterday with the police and again tonight. What was it? He looked around the room.
The color scheme … it was the color scheme. The walls of the living area were papered in a sort of pale apricot, but the upholstered furniture was done in a purplish red. Even to Koesler’s uncultivated and untutored eye, the hues seemed to clash. He found it curious that both Jay and Marj had such poor taste and that no one had ever rectified things. It seemed strange, but, in the light of the murder they had just been discussing, of comparatively little moment.
In a very few minutes, all of the men, with the exception of Jay Galloway, had left. Instead of being the last out the front door, he closed it and doubled back to the kitchen where Marj stood at the sink disposing of the uneaten hors d’oeuvres.
Silently, Galloway approached his wife. As he moved directly behind her, she stiffened as she became aware of his presence.
He put his arms around her waist, his hands resting against her flat abdomen. She stood stock-still.
“You were magnificent tonight, honey.” His voice was almost a whisper. “Any other woman would have folded at Dave’s accusation. But you stood right up to him. I was proud of you.”
“What’s this all about, Jay? Why didn’t you leave with the others?”
“I told you, I’m proud of you. When you take over a situation like that and are in command of the whole thing. . damn, but I find that a turn-on.” His hands slid up her body until they found her breasts. He cupped them and squeezed. It was one of his many habits that disgusted her.