“This won’t take long.” He fought to sit normally on the bench, so Darlene wouldn’t know he needed the wheelchair, that he wasn’t really on duty. That she wouldn’t notice how his weak left leg fell out to the side, ever so unnaturally. He wanted to shift his weight every minute or two to ease the discomfort. He stayed still.
Darlene held her face in profile as she stared at the mesmerizing river. It looked as if she had aged a decade since he had talked to her two years before. Her skin was pale and freckled, and now it was deeply creased. It bore a moonscape of small scars. She pulled out a pack of Camels and lit one, puffing on it nervously. The smoke mingled with the mist from her breath and it all came into his face.
“I just need to clear a few things up about an old case.”
She looked at him and stubbed out the cigarette. “You mean the murder.”
“Yes.”
She lit another smoke and stared at the river.
“Been a long time ago. That boy went to prison. I hear he died there.”
“That’s right.” Will watched the river and let her smoke and stew. The cold was on his side. He had never minded it. “You said Bud was with you that night.”
“He was there. He came by most nights, when he was working nights.”
“You guys never lived together?”
“No. He wouldn’t.”
“He’d moved out on his wife. Seems like he’d want to be with a pretty thing like you.”
“He said he needed his space, whatever the hell that means. Men say that. He’d come by some nights, some afternoons. We’d fuck and he’d leave. True love, huh?”
“Who knows?” He waited, let the cold stab at her. Then, “Maybe he had a girl on the side.”
She was inhaling furiously, the skin above her upper lip showing ribs of wrinkles. The river slapped noisily at the concrete and traffic droned on the interstate overhead. Quietly, he heard her say, “Son of a bitch…”
“I don’t mean to upset you,” Will said. “You know how some men are. Girl on the side here, girl on the side there, always too busy to spend much time.”
“Son of a bitch.” She said it louder this time.
“How’d you get on meth?”
“He brought it one day. Said he’d taken it off a dealer and it might be fun. It sure as hell was. Only he just drank Jack Daniels while I did it. Fuck, it wrapped around me like a snake…”
“When’d he do this?”
“Couple years ago.”
“Before or after his wife was killed?”
She thought for a moment. “Before.”
“So did you have to go out and buy it, once you got hooked?”
“No, he’d bring me some. I thought I had a real sugar daddy.”
“You can get treatment.” This was Cheryl Beth. Darlene lit another Camel and leaned forward to look at her.
“You sound like you’re south of the river, pretty eyed girl.”
“Corbin, Kentucky,” Cheryl Beth said.
“I got people down that way,” Darlene said. “Down by Bailey’s Switch?”
“I know Bailey,” Cheryl Beth said.
Will wished she hadn’t gotten Darlene off track, but then he changed his mind. He knew how they’d play it.
“Darlene, about that night, when Theresa Chambers was murdered…”
“Yeah, yeah, Detective Will, you have a one-track mind.”
“It wasn’t really true was it?”
“What?” She hesitated just long enough.
“I didn’t think so,” Will said.
She twitched and huddled into herself. “He told me he’d kill me if I told you the truth.”
Will told her she would be safe, and that moment he thought he could leap up and dance along the Serpentine Wall. She had come right out and said it.
“I had to cover for him, don’t you understand?” She hugged herself tightly, staring down at the sidewalk. “He got me my stuff. I woulda died without it. He said he had a dealer under his thumb, that’s just how he said it. And if I didn’t do what he said, he wouldn’t bring me my fix. Then when you guys called, he said he’d kill me if I didn’t say things happened his way.”
“So he wasn’t with you that night?”
She shook her head.
Will asked her again and she nearly shouted “No!” then reached back in her coat pocket, pulled out the pack, and lit another cigarette. She was crying now. “Are you gonna arrest me? Take me to jail? I’m clean now. I got a baby now, Detective Will, please, God, don’t…”
“Just tell me the truth, Darlene.”
“It’s going to be all right,” Cheryl Beth said.
Darlene rubbed her nose and scrunched her face. “Who are you, girl? You don’t have a cop face.”
Will intervened. “What if I told you she was a witness.”
Suddenly Darlene seemed to age another ten years and her face turned bright red before losing its color entirely. Even the veiny damage from her boyfriend’s fist seemed to drain of blood. “Wha…? How is that possible? Oh, fuck. Bud said nobody could…” Her words became an unintelligible blubber with the occasional “they’re gonna take my baby” coming through. Will put his hand on her arm and she fell into his shoulder bawling. He fought not to tilt sideways into Cheryl Beth.
“Tell me how it happened, Darlene. This doesn’t have to go badly for you if you tell the truth.”
“He just told me to tell you that he was with me. He said the bosses were after him, trying to fire him. I never knew anything about his wife being killed…”
“So you covered for him.”
She nodded, kept crying. She was shivering and her teeth chattered from the cold. “But he said nobody would know, nobody would see us. I didn’t know what he was going to do. I swear to God, I swear to God…”
Every nerve tensed in Will’s body. He had used the word “witness” to describe Cheryl Beth. It had opened all the doors. He said, “So you didn’t think anybody would see. Don’t you want to tell your side of the story?”
She sat back up, miraculously avoiding leaving cigarette burns in Will’s overcoat. She leaned out again to stare at Cheryl Beth.
“Bud brought that boy home. Bud was a kinky one, you know? We did some weird stuff, you know? He really liked it. But no way was I goin’ to fuck some street nigger, much less a retard. Poor thing, looked scared as hell. Bud could do that to you. But he told us what to do.” She gently touched her black eye. “I’m cold, Detective Will.”
“Just tell it the way you remember it, Darlene.”
She spoke slowly, the mist from her breath and cigarette smoke wreathing her head. “Bud told me to take off my clothes and get in bed and play with myself. ‘Put on a show for him,’ he said. And he had that boy sit in a chair and watch me.” She hesitated, then continued. “Bud told him to jerk off in this plastic bottle he gave him. That’s what we did. That’s all we did. And Bud let the boy go. I just thought it was weird shit, you know? I said, ‘Why you keeping his come in that bottle?’ He didn’t answer. Nobody was gonna get hurt.”
She had pulled him through a door he didn’t even know existed. He had a dozen questions, but didn’t dare ask them. She believed Cheryl Beth had seen this. Will couldn’t let her think otherwise.
Suddenly Darlene was talking rapidly, trying to purge it from her memory. “I never knew what Bud was going to do. I swear to God. That morning, he come by, all agitated. He said he found her body, Theresa. He swore to me that he didn’t kill her, but he said he had to put that boy’s come on her body because the other cops would frame him, say he done it because he was the husband and she had a restraining order against him and all. He told me what to say. God, I was scared! Fuck, it was hard keeping my head straight.”
“So,” Will said, “just to be clear, did you know who Bud brought home that night?”
“I never seen him before. Just said his name was Craig.”
“The one we arrested for murder, right?”
“Yes sir.”