"I don't think the label is necessary or helpful."
"What, then? What is necessary?"
"The awareness of how furious you've been at her. Maybe that's a good place to start. That's precisely what she took advantage of, Lucy-your anger. She knew all about your anger."
Her shoulders hunched upward and her body began to sway back and forth like a sapling against the breeze.
I put a hand on her upper arm and told her that I needed to sit. She sat with me. Still way too close to the edge for my comfort, but at least we were sitting.
Lucy's sobs were almost drowned out by the gusting wind. I had to struggle to make out her next words. "I could've fallen in love with him. Maybe I did. It wasn't all about Susan."
I weighed her thoughts for further evidence of rationalization. But I knew I'd been witnessing evidence of something else, something more pathological than a garden-variety ego defense. Could it have been possible that her rage at her mother was really as isolated as it appeared? Had she been so incapable of seeing how Susan had been hurting her all over again? So out of touch with her own agony? And so unwilling to see her own vicious response toward her mother?
It seemed like time for me to say something. I said, "This wasn't about Royal, Lucy."
"It wasn't?" The sound of her question was so puerile it was as though I were watching a child move from doubts about immense bunnies to recognition of the fact that Easter morning was a fiction.
I shook my head. "No, it wasn't."
Lucy said, "I wondered if she knew."
I didn't respond.
Lucy went on. "I don't know if she knew. Royal thought she suspected, but I didn't see how she could really know. We met at their house. He'd give her some sleeping medicine before I came over. That was the arrangement. I'd park on the next block and come in through the backyard. Royal and I would get a few hours together." She wiped her eyes with her fingertips and wet her lips with her tongue as she scanned the sky.
Reality was settling the way that dust coats a mirror.
"God, it was hostile, wasn't it? What I did."
I replied, "And what she did. And what Royal did."
In a quick motion she popped to her feet and circled me on the rock. The abyss in front of me felt as though it was pulling at us with the force of a vacuum. For a fleeting moment the image of a bloody confrontation between Royal and Lucy filled my awareness. I considered the possibility that she was intending to jump off the rock, and I wondered if I was strong enough to stop her. I knew I wasn't.
Before I could decide what to do, she stopped wandering around the rock and lowered herself to a squat again. She was slightly in front of me, inches from the edge. "Am I crazy, Alan? How crazy do you have to be to do what I did?"
I thought, What did you do? I said, "You're not crazy, Lucy."
"But I have problems, don't I?"
I revisited understatement. "Yes, Lucy. I think you could use some help."
After a few minutes of silence she said, "After I went out with Grant for a while, I decided what I was doing with Royal was crazy and I decided to break it off. The night Royal was killed, I'd told him it was the last time."
"That was it?"
"He wasn't happy about it but I don't think he was surprised. It wasn't like we argued about it or anything. He was… rather gracious… and he said I didn't have to worry about Susan, that when he moved out he'd make arrangements for her, that he had some long-term-care insurance she didn't know about, and that he'd been looking into assisted-living facilities. He told me that he'd already talked to their kids and none of them was in a position to live with Susan. And that was it.
"I was relieved I wasn't going to have to take care of her. I felt guilty about that, but I was more feeling sad that the thing with Royal was over. We said good-bye and I left."
"Royal was still alive?"
She squeezed my hand. I read no offense in her voice as she murmured, "Of course he was." She squeezed harder. "You know what Royal said right at the end, as I was leaving that last time?"
I shook my head.
"He said, 'I wondered which one of us would come to our senses first. I'm glad it was you.' At the time, I didn't know what he meant."
"And now?"
"Right now? I think he knew what Susan and I were doing. How we were hurting each other."
I added, "But he was willing to participate anyway."
"That's sick, too, isn't it?" she asked.
I didn't have to answer.
She stood up and took a step away from me.
I opened my mouth to ask another question, then closed it. She said, "Go ahead, ask me."
"No, I was going to change the subject."
"Ask."
"Your fingerprints were on the pottery, Lucy. The piece that was used to bash Royal in the head."
She nodded. "The pottery was a new acquisition of Royal's. He was proud of it; it was by some artist he really liked from New York City. He'd found it on eBay and was thrilled that he had won the auction. He showed it to me when I first got there that night."
"That's it?" I asked. "You touched it when he showed it to you?"
She shrugged. "What was it Freud said about cigars?" she asked.
I managed a weak grin for her benefit, but was thinking that Lucy was in no position to make a decision whether or not this cigar was really just a cigar. I also knew that she hadn't shared all her secrets.
CHAPTER 64
"Was Ramp there that night, Lucy? Did Royal discover him placing the bomb? Is that what happened?"
She shook her head. "I asked Ramp about it. He said that he and Marin placed the bomb in the Peterson home at least a week before Royal was murdered. He said they were real careful to make sure no one was home. They were in and out of the house in ten minutes and didn't see anyone."
"You believed him?"
"Of course. And I still do. What possible reason would he have had to lie?"
She seemed surprisingly sanguine.
Not really sure why I was asking, I said, "You know who killed Royal, don't you?"
"Any cop will tell you that knowing who did it is sometimes the easy part. Proving who did it, that's the hard part. This town learned that lesson the hardest possible way."
I figured she was alluding to JonBenét Ramsey's murder. The old homicide was a stray dog that followed Boulder cops everywhere they went. No way was I going to comment on that mutt.
She hadn't answered my question. I said, "But you know, don't you?"
"Sure I do. So do you."
She actually smiled.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Sorry," she said. "The hostility has to end somewhere."
CHAPTER 65
Susan Peterson killed herself the next morning.
Sam and I were sitting downstairs at her kitchen table while she did it. I still think that I was more surprised than Sam was, which gives you some idea about how much to rely on a psychologist's ability to predict suicide.
Since Sam wasn't an active part of the investigation of Royal Peterson's murder and had no official reason to visit Susan again, he'd asked if he could accompany me on my next visit to see her.
After my conversation the day before with Lucy about Susan, I wasn't at all certain I would ever choose to see Susan again. When I told Sam that I had absolutely no plans to make another visit to the Peterson home, he looked at me with mocking condescension and asked me if I was getting thicker with age.
I replied by wondering aloud if there was any alternative. He said no, that it was important.