Only it didn’t last very long. Not very long at all.
The money just seemed to evaporate. My fault as much as Alicia’s. Expensive sailboat, expensive clothes, expensive jewelry, expensive gadgets. Trips to Las Vegas, New York, Hawaii. Catered parties at home with French champagne and gourmet food, lavish meals in the best restaurants in San Francisco. And I listened to somebody’s can’t-miss recommendation on a stock that had just gone public and took a flyer and lost a bundle.
Maitland’s blue chips went next, at a loss in a buyer’s market. It wasn’t long before the money from that ran out, too. And then we lost the business because of poor management and a lousy economy that kept people from buying luxury cars. I didn’t know or care anything about running a large dealership and the man I hired as manager proved to be incompetent and a crook besides; I found out too late that he’d been knocking down a percentage of every sale on the sly.
The bankruptcy forced us to sell the house, and we didn’t get anywhere near what it was worth or realize much profit once the balance of the mortgage and the realtor’s fees were paid. And when the money from that was gone, we were right back where we’d started. Or rather I was. I had to go to work as a used-car salesman to pay the bills, and at that we almost went under. All that saved us was Alicia grudgingly taking a job selling cosmetics.
That was when I knew for sure that there’s no such thing as a perfect crime. That there are other kinds of punishments besides prison and the death penalty. That you can pay and keep on paying in installments, a little at a time over a period as long as a jail sentence.
I don’t know why Alicia and I stayed together after we lost the house and the last of the good life disappeared. It wasn’t love; that ended as soon as things started going bad. Not sex, either; we quit sleeping together early on and went our separate ways when itches needed scratching. Inertia had something to with it, I suppose. And guilt. And the subconscious desire to hurt and be hurt. But the main reason was the fear that if we split up, one of us would be vindictive enough to take revenge on the other, no matter what the cost. We were tied tight together by the invisible strings of what we’d done, and by love’s flip-side replacement, hate.
I thought of ways of cutting those strings. So did Alicia, I’m sure. But both of us were too beaten down, too scared, too dependent, too gutless to do anything about it. We just went on and on and on in the mire of our shared misery.
Until tonight.
Until our anniversary.
We fought constantly after everything went to hell. Just about every day, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries included... no truces, no cease fires. Verbal battles, mostly — name-calling, accusations, recriminations, empty threats. But every now and then things erupted into violence. She’d slap me, I’d slap her back. Once she threw a dish that opened a gash on my forehead; another time in the heat of rage she tried to stab me with a paring knife. I hit her with my fist that time and knocked her down, and just barely managed to stop myself from doing what Maitland had done on a couple of occasions, hitting her again and again, beating her bloody.
The fight tonight started because I made the mistake of mentioning the anniversary, I don’t know why except that I’ve always had a good memory for dates. It set her off on an immediate tirade. One of those that went on and on, an endless rehash of what crap our life together had turned out to be, how killing Maitland had all been for nothing and losing everything was my fault. She wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, the words that rolled off her viper’s tongue growing uglier and uglier until my nerves were raw wounds and my fury was even greater than hers and I... I don’t know, I guess I snapped. Finally snapped.
I have only a vague memory of rushing into the bedroom, yanking my revolver out of the closet, then running back into the living room shouting “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” and pointing the gun at her and pulling the trigger. But that’s what I did, just what I did. I shot Alicia dead and shut her up forever.
Murder number two.
If I’d had the courage then, I might have turned the gun on myself. But I didn’t; my hand was shaking so badly I couldn’t even hold onto it. I staggered out to the car and drove around and around, going nowhere, until I calmed down enough to think clearly. I knew then what I had to do. And I drove straight here to Bodega Head, a place we went to now and then in the beginning to be alone together and look at the ocean and make some of our plans.
But the nights were never so cold back then, the sky never so dark.
The wind is louder now, the noises it makes like the screaming voice of a woman. Like Alicia’s voice, just before I killed her.
No, you can’t get away with murder. Sooner or later, one way or another, you have to pay.
My confession is nearly finished. In a minute or so I’ll get out of the car and walk as steadily as I can to the cliff edge and then step off into the dark — make the final payment for my two murders.
The one I committed on May 12, 1964.
And the one I committed tonight, on the fiftieth anniversary of the first.
The Storm Tunnel
The two boys stood on the grassy creek bank, staring down through the darkness at the yawning mouth of the storm tunnel. Raymond shivered. “It looks kind of spooky at night.”
“Sure,” Timmie said. “That’s what makes it such a swell place to explore.”
“You’ve really been inside before?”
“Lots of times.”
“At night?”
“Sure.”
“Alone?”
“Sure.”
“Weren’t you scared?”
“Not me,” Timmie said.
“How far inside did you go?”
“Pretty far.”
“What’s it like?”
“Neat,” Timmie said. “Lots of twists and turns, and water and leaves and stuff on the floor.”
Raymond shivered again. “You didn’t... see anything, did you?”
“Like what?”
“You know.”
Timmie laughed. “It’s just an old storm tunnel.”
“I heard that rats and animals and... things live in old storm tunnels,” Raymond said.
“You don’t believe that junk, do you?”
Raymond toyed with the zipper on his jacket.
“Well, do you?” Timmie asked him again.
“I guess not.”
“Come on, then.”
Timmie started down the bank, but Raymond did not move. “My folks would skin me if they knew I was here,” he said.
“But they don’t know, do they?”
“No. I snuck out my bedroom window like we said.”
“Then it’s all right.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re not scared?”
“No.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“It’s just spooky, that’s all,” Raymond said.
“Are you coming or not?”
Raymond took a long breath. “Yes,” he said. “I’m coming.”
The two boys picked their way down the steep bank, holding onto bushes and shrubs that grew there, digging their feet into the spongy ground. Pretty soon they stood on the sharp stones of the creek bed. In its center, a thin line of water came out of the darkness and disappeared inside the tunnel.
It was very dark. There was no moon on this night, and the trees that rimmed the creek looked like pieces of black cardboard pasted against the sky. The soft gurgle of water was the only sound.
Timmie said, “Follow me, Ray.”
“All right.”
They stepped along the stones. Timmie paused before the tunnel mouth and took a flashlight from his pocket. Raymond said, “Maybe I should have brought one, too.”