I’d wanted to defend the dead people they were making fun of. Maybe it’s the lawyer in me.
My first impulse was to kneel down, check her out. But what was the point? By the looks of things, she was long dead. Her face was starting to discolor badly.
Silence from upstairs. Maybe he’d pulled it off. He’d been lucky at everything else.
Why not lucky at his suicide attempt?
I went upstairs, moving carefully. If he wasn’t dead, he might want to start shooting at me again. The stairway was enclosed. I took the steps slowly, carefully, and when I reached the top, I smelled floor polish. And then the fresh smell of rifle fire. The floor creaked as I stepped on to the hallway. Two doors on one side, three on the other. I gripped my. 45 harder, feeling self-conscious. You see so much gunplay on private eye Tv shows that you think it feels natural to have a gun in your hand. But it doesn’t. You’re carrying such quick-and-easy death in your hand. There’s so much responsibility, and fear. At least for me.
A bathroom. Watery blood smeared all over the white porcelain sink. A bedroom that I sensed-given its neatness and slightly impersonal accoutrements-was a guest room.
Another bathroom, this one huge compared to the other one. And then another bedroom. Or a monument to bedrooms. This had everything, including a large Tv, stereo speakers on the wall and yet another bathroom. Everything in this bedroom was sumptuous, from the carpeting to the silver-handled hairbrushes on the dressing table. This was how rich people lived, at least around here. Except for the two fresh bullet holes in the ceiling and the raw smell of cordite. He hadn’t done so well by his suicide attempt.
I was just turning around to leave the bedroom when I saw him in the doorway. I hadn’t seen him in some time and at first I hardly recognized him.
The chiseled face was fleshy now, as was his waistline. The eyes were alarming, tinted red from sleeplessness and whiskey and grief, and underscored with deep dark half-moons of loose and wrinkled flesh. His hair had started to thin. He was my age. This kind of aging didn’t just happen; you had to go out and earn it. The white oxford button-down shirt he wore had traces of blood on the sleeves and the cuffs. His chinos showed even more blood. His feet were bare.
He held a Remington hunting rifle on me. He said, “I’ve got some whiskey downstairs.”
Then he quietly laid the rifle against the door frame and led the way back down the hallway to the stairs.
Five
He led me through the dining room so we didn’t have to see the body of his wife in the living room.
In the kitchen, he pointed to the breakfast nook and then he opened a cupboard door and pulled down a fresh bottle of Canadian Club.
He slit the seal with his thumbnail. He grabbed two glasses, opened the refrigerator and the freezer compartment and got out a small bowl of ice, and then carried everything over to the breakfast nook where I was sitting. I’d put my. 45 away. It had started to feel awfully melodramatic.
As he poured and noisily dumped in some ice cubes, I looked out the window at a squirrel wrestling with an acorn it had found on the sunny snow. The border collie was back, too, sniffing my tires.
“Sweetest dog I’ve ever owned,” Kenny Whitney said. He smiled sadly. “Wish I had her personality.” His voice startled me.
I associated Kenny with the quick, derisive jab, making you feel bad for being unpopular or ugly or fat or sissy, at least in his eyes.
And for short, barked threats. He was a master at short, barked threats. But this was a slow and considered voice, and it was an adult voice.
That’s what startled me most. He looked a lot older than he should have, but he’d turned into an adult in the process.
“Why the hell’d you shoot at me?”
He shook his head, “Sorry. I was just crazy is all I can say. I wasn’t really trying to hit you, though.”
“You came close enough.”
“I should never have called her. Gotten her involved.”
He leaned his head against the back of the nook.
The kitchen sparkled. The appliances were brand-new and sat there basking in their own suburban glory.
Then he sat up straight and wrapped a massive fullback’s hand around his glass. He drained the whole drink in a single swallow and then filled up again with the bottle he’d just opened. “You see her in there?”
“Yeah.”
“You call Sykes yet?”
“I wanted to make sure you were still alive.”
“Oh. I’m alive. Unfortunately.”
“You kill her, Kenny?”
He looked up at me. “Yeah.”
I let out a long sigh. “When?”
“Early last night. We were both pretty drunk.”
“What happened?”
“She wanted a divorce. I didn’t.”
“So you shot her?”
He stared at me for a long time.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t tell me anything more.”
“Why not?”
“Because you need a lawyer.”
“I don’t suppose you’d want that honor?”
I smiled at him. “Kenny, I don’t like you. I’ve never liked you. Believe me, you don’t want me for a lawyer.”
“I guess I was kind of a jerk back in school, wasn’t I?”
“You remember my black eye?”
He shrugged. “Not really. I mean, I gave a lot of guys black eyes.”
“Well, you gave me mine right in front of Pamela Forrest.”
He looked at me and grinned. “Oh, yeah, now I remember. Not your black eye. But Pamela. Man, you really made a fool of yourself over her.”
“I guess I did.”
His face became dour and old again. “Well, join the club, my friend. That’s the problem Susan and I were having. And that’s one of the reasons I killed her. She was running around on me.”
“Running around on you? God, look how you ran around on her.”
He was pouring himself his third drink. His third drink since we’d sat down, anyway. He’d had many more during the night. “You need to keep up on the town gossip, McCain. I quit running around on her over two years ago. I even went on the wagon. She’d threatened to leave me and then I realized how much I loved her.
Then she fell in love with somebody else.”
“Don’t tell me anything more. Save it for your lawyer.”
“All I was going to say was that when she asked me for a divorce last night, I couldn’t handle it. I took down a bottle of whiskey-I’d gotten used to having it around, you know, for when we had company and stuff-and then I really started knocking down the drinks. After two years of being dry, they really hit me hard.”
“So then you killed her?”
He shrugged again. “Then I killed her.”
The funny thing was, I didn’t believe him. “Why’re you telling me this?”
“That I killed her? Because it’s the truth. We may as well get it over with. With Sykes and all. Man, will that hillbilly be gloating. He’ll actually have a member of Judge Whitney’s family in his jail.
He’ll probably play Webb Pierce records all day long.” Webb Pierce was the country-western favorite of the moment. A small Iowa town like this, people liked to show their sophistication by shunning country music. Badge of honor.
“I still want to know why you’re telling me this.”
“I told you. Because I just want to get it over with. It’s pretty obvious that I killed her, isn’t it?” Then he drained off his drink. I stood up. “I’m going to walk over to the phone and call Sykes.”
“Fine. That’s what I want you to do.”
“I’m also going to call Bob Tompkins for you. He’s the best criminal attorney in this part of the state. Your aunt has a lot of respect for him.”
He looked at me abruptly. “I don’t want to have to see her again.”
I wasn’t sure who he meant. “Who?”