Her shoulders sagged. 'He was dying of cancer,' she said. 'He would have died of his own accord in another month or two. He was in pain all the time.' She raised her eyes to mine. 'You can believe what you want about me, Matt. You can think I'm the reincarnation of Lucrezia Borgia, but you really can't turn Carl White's death into a murder for gain. All I did was lose whatever rent he would have paid in however many months of life he'd have had left to him.'
'Then why did you kill him?'
'You'll try to find a way to twist this, but it was an act of mercy.'
'What about Eddie Dunphy? Was that an act of mercy?'
'Oh, God,' she said. 'That was the only one I regret. The others were people who would have killed themselves if they'd had the wit to think of it. No, Eddie wasn't an act of mercy. Killing him was an act of self- preservation.'
'You were afraid he would talk.'
'I knew he would talk. He actually waltzed in here and told me he would talk. He was in AA, the poor damned fool, and he was babbling like some kind of religious convert who had Jesus Christ appear to him on the side of his toaster oven. He said he had to sit down with someone and tell him everything, but that I didn't have anything to worry about because he would keep my name out of it. 'I killed somebody in my building so the landlady could get her apartment, but I won't tell you who put me up to it.' He said the person he was going to tell wouldn't tell anyone.'
'He was right. I wouldn't have.'
'You'd have overlooked multiple homicide?'
I nodded. 'I'd have been breaking the law, but it wouldn't be the first law I ever broke or the first homicide I overlooked. God never appointed me to go around the world righting wrongs. I'm not a priest, but anything he said to me would have been under the seal of the confessional as far as I was concerned. I told him I'd keep his confidence and I would have.'
'Will you keep mine?' She moved closer to me, and her hands fastened first on my wrists, then moved to my forearms. 'Matt,' she said, 'I invited you in here the first day to find out how much you knew.
But I didn't have to take you to bed to manage that. I went to bed with you because I wanted to.'
I didn't say anything.
'I didn't count on falling in love with you,' she said, 'but it happened. I feel foolish saying it now because you'll twist it, but it happens to be the truth. I don't know if you're in love with me. I think you were starting to be, and I think that's why you're angry with me now.
But there's been something real and strong between us from the beginning, and I feel it now, and I know you do, too. Don't you?'
'I don't know what I feel.'
'I think you do. And you're a good influence on me, you've already got me making real coffee. Matt, why don't you give us a chance?'
'How can I do that?'
'It's the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is forget everything we said tonight. Matt, you just told me you weren't put on the planet to right all wrongs. You'd have let it go if Eddie had told you about it. Why can't you do as much for me?'
'I don't know.'
'Why not?' She leaned a little closer, and I could smell the scotch on her breath, and remember how her mouth tasted. She said, 'Matt, I'm not going to kill anybody else. That's over forever, I swear it is. And there's no real proof I ever killed anyone, is there? A couple of people had a non-lethal dose of a
common drug in their systems. Nobody can prove I gave it to them. Nobody can even prove I had it in my possession.'
'I copied the label the other day. I've got the number of the prescription, the issuing pharmacy, the date of issue, the physician's name—'
'The doctor will tell you I have trouble getting to sleep. I bought the chloral for my own consumption.
Matt, there's no real physical evidence. And I'm a respectable citizen, I'm a property owner, I can afford good lawyers. How good a case could they make against me when all they have is circumstantial evidence?'
'That's a good question.'
'And why should we go through all of that?' She laid a hand on my cheek, stroked along the grain of my beard. 'Matt, darling, we're both tense, it's all crazy, it's a crazy day. Why don't we go to bed? Right now, the two of us, why don't we take off our clothes and go to bed and see how we feel afterward.
How does that sound to you?'
'Tell me how you killed him, Willa.'
'I swear he never felt a thing, he never knew what was happening.
I went up to his room to talk with him. He let me in. I gave him a cup of tea and put the drops in it. Then I came back downstairs, and when I went up again later he was sleeping like a lamb.'
'And what did you do?'
'What you said. It was clever of you to figure it out. You're a good detective.'
'How'd you manage it?'
'He was already stripped. All he was wearing was the T-shirt. I got the clothesline hooked up, and then
