“No.” Alice said. “Not just yet.”
“They’ll have to be turned on sometime.”
“Yes. A little later.”
Their voices throbbed in the hushed room and the Walls threw back echoes of implication.
“You’re as good a runner as he was, in your way,” Sands said. “You sit in the dark, you shut your eyes. The present is a burden to you and the future is a danger. You have only the past, not all happy, but healed.”
“Go on with your story,” she said hoarsely.
Story, Sands thought, it’s a story to her. He’s already unreal and remote because he had Mamie and the yellow shoes.
“He ran down the driveway past the car where Stevie Jordan was sitting and Jordan recognized him. I don’t think he saw Jordan but he must have seen the car, must have realized that he was running and would attract attention, that he’d have to come back to the house and face it out. He did come back and he was calm enough this time to slip back the lock on the door which Mr. Heath had set when he came home and found it unlocked.
“So he left the door unlocked. He had no idea that as James he was building up a case against Murillo. He couldn’t anticipate that irony or the final one, that as James he should die for Murillo.”
“You sent him down there,” Alice said.
“He wanted to go.”
“You knew he was Murillo when you sent him.”
“He wanted to go,” Sands said again. “He had to get down there somehow, to kill her, not knowing she was already dead.”
“Not to kill her,” Alice said.
“Perhaps not. I think so, but perhaps he only wanted to see her again. Anyway, she was dead. She had fixed herself up before she died almost as if she knew he’d be coming to see her and she wanted to look nice for him.
“She had shot Jordan to save Murillo. Jordan is a brittle man in some ways, and I think that when she came into the office after the club was closed he taunted her by telling her about seeing Murillo, and she shot him without thinking or planning. It was the way she did everything, all her thinking was done below the neck. She cried and laughed easily like a child and had a child’s strange loyalty.”
“She knew who he was?” Alice said. “She knew he lived here?”
“Yes, I’m sure she did. She was jealous of him, she wanted to know where he went when he wasn’t with her. It took her a long time to find out, I suppose, because Murillo was shrewd and he didn’t trust her. He never went directly from here to there, he used the room he rented to practice in as a half-way house, and she must have followed him there and asked questions of the landlady. Well, she found out some way.”
“That telephone call,” Alice said. “I answered the telephone this morning and there was someone who hung up as soon as I answered.”
“She was waiting for Murillo to answer it himself,” Sands said. “I think she did get him finally, and that’s why he went down to kill her. She was the only one who knew, he thought.”
“You knew.”
“Yes. His first murder was the best, he got away with it for two years, yet in the end it was Geraldine who gave him away. There were only the three of them who were in the car who could have killed Geraldine. Kelsey was out because she did not know the girl and she was blinded in the accident. Johnny could have killed the girl but you had to scrape the bottom for a motive for him and the motive didn’t suit Johnny’s type. He wouldn’t kill to avoid marrying a girl.”
“No,” Alice said. “He’d walk away. He’d leave it to settle itself, or he’d leave it to me to settle. He’s already forgotten this dancer and in a week he’ll have forgotten Philip.”
“That left Philip James,” Sands said. “It seemed improbable at first but it led me up Mr. James’ alley in the search for Murillo. And little things began to fit — James had had chest cuts from the accident, Murillo had been knifed in the chest by Chinaman, Mamie said. It explained the unlocked door, Murillo’s knowledge of the house and of Kelsey’s blindness, the similarity between the two murders and the motives for both. And it explained, chiefly, why Jordan had seen Johnny and Murillo together. Jordan didn’t know the other side of Murillo’s life, he thought it meant that Johnny had hired Murillo to kill Kelsey.”
“You let him go down there,” Alice said. “You wanted him to be shot.”
“Yes.”
“You... you may even have told them he was coming, ordered them to be ready to shoot him.”
“Maybe I did,” Sands said.
“You did. I know you did.” She was not accusing him, she sounded eager to believe it, slyly happy as if they shared a secret triumph. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me for something I may not have done,” Sands said irritably. “Or if I have, not for you or your family.”
“I could have killed him myself,” she said. “I wish I had killed him.”
He did not answer. He was thinking how wondrous a mixture were the women of Alice’s class. Combining barbarism and decadence in equal parts they passed as civilized and were eager to thrust their philosophies on the weak and unwary, to teach others how to live as Alice had tried to teach Murillo. Doomed and damned. Too weak for this world, and too hard for heaven.
“I wish,” he said, “that I could feel when I walk out of here today that you had learned something in this past week, that you were more humane.”
“Humane?” She sounded surprised and a little contemptuous. “You think it makes you more humane to have your sister murdered and your... your...”
“It could,” Sands said in a tired voice, “but it won’t.”
He got up from the chair. She could see him as a shadow moving, see the outlines of the hat in his hand.
She rose too, reluctant to have him leave, to be abandoned here in the darkness. After he was gone the dark would come alive with ghosts that crawled and slithered and bit with their little teeth, a cellar full of rats. Humane!
“Don’t go,” she said.
“Turn on the lights,” he said.
She switched on a lamp, quickly, as if by Instant obedience she could coax him to stay, to take back what he’d said about her.
“I thought I was humane,” she said.
“Did you? Well, maybe you are,” he said over his shoulder, and she knew from his voice that he meant: You aren’t, but I’m too tired to argue.
She clenched her hands together. What does he know about it? Conceited little — a policeman — just an ordinary policeman — I’ve always done my duty.
Sands shut the door. The hall was brilliantly lighted and he squinted his eyes against the glare. Then he saw that Mr. Heath was standing in the hall waiting for him. He looked as if he’d been waiting a long time.
They smiled at each other and Mr. Heath said, “Well,” in a tone of sad satisfaction.
“Listening?” Sands said.
“Oh, a little.”
Sands squinted again. “You don’t find it a tragedy.”
“No.” Mr. Heath said. “No. He’s dead and the girl’s dead and Kelsey, they have nothing to fear.”
Decadence, Sands though, they all have it, they have none of them a will to live.
“I heard you phoning,” Mr. Heath said, “telling them that Murillo was on his way. You have a lot of courage, and wisdom.”
“Oh, sure,” Sands said. “Oh, hell, yes.” He wanted to get home, back to his familiar loneliness and anonymity, submerge like a submarine for a time.
“Guess I’ll be going,” he said, twisting his hat.
“I... we hope you’ll come back,” Mr. Heath said.
“Oh, I’ll come back,” Sands said.