Gerald’s Game

what really happened as soon as they saw the cuffs hanging from the bedposts. It’s not the first time they’ve seen handcuffs after someone popped his carburetor, believe me. There wasn’t a single one of those cops-state or local-who wanted to see you and your husband turned into a dirty joke as a result of something that was really no more than a grotesque accident.”

At first I didn’t say anything even to Brandon about the man I thought I saw, or the footprint, or the pearl earring, or anything else. I was waiting, you see looking for straws in the wind, I suppose.

Jessie looked at that last, shook her head, and began to type again.

No, that’s bullshit. I was waiting for some cop to come in with a little plastic evidence bag and hand it to me and ask me to identify the rings-finger-rings, not earrings-inside. “We’re pretty sure they must be yours,” he’d say, “because they have your initials and those of your husband engraved inside them, and also because we found them on the floor of your husband’s study.”

I kept waiting for that because when they showed me my rings, I’d know for sure that Little Nell’s Midnight Caller had just been a figment of Little Nell’s imagination. I waited and waited, but it didn’t happen. Finally, just before the first operation on my hand, I told Brandon about how I’d had the idea that I might not have been alone in the house, at least not all the time. I told him it could have just been my imagination, that was certainly a possibility, but it had seemed very real at the time. I didn’t say anything about my own missing rings, but I talked a lot about the footprint and the pearl earring. About the earring I think it would be fair to say I babbled, and I think I know why: it had to stand for everything I didn’t dare to talk about, even to Brandon. Do you understand? And all the time I was telling him, I kept saying stuff like “Then I thought I saw” and “I felt almost sure that.” I had to tell him, had to tell someone because the fear was eating me from the inside out like acid, but I tried to show him in every way I could that I wasn’t mistaking subjective feelings for objective reality. Above all I tried to keep him from seeing how scared I still was. Because I didn’t want him to think I was crazy. I didn’t care if he thought I was a little hysterical; that was a price I was willing to pay to keep from getting stuck with another nasty secret like the one about what my father did to me on the day of the eclipse, but I desperately didn’t want him to think I was crazy. I didn’t want him to even speculate on the possibility.

Brandon took my hand and patted it and told me he could understand such an idea; he said that under the circumstances, it was probably tame. Then he added that the important thing to remember was that it was no more real than the shower Gerald and I took after our athletic, bump-and-bruise romp on the bed. The police had gone over the house, and if there had been someone else in there, they almost certainly would have found evidence of him, The fact that the house had undergone a big end-of-summer cleaning not long before made that even more likely.

“Maybe they did find evidence of him,” I said. “Maybe some cop stuck that earring in his own pocket.”

“There are plenty of light-fingered cops in the world, granted,” he said, “but it’s hard for me to believe that even a stupid one would risk his career for an orphan earring. It would be easier for me to believe that this guy you thought was in the house with you came back later and got it himself.”

“Yes!” I said. “That’s possible, isn’t it?”

He started to shake his head, then shrugged instead. “Anything is possible, and that includes either cupidity or human error on the part of the investigating officers, but… “He paused, then took my left hand and gave me what I think of as Brandon’s Dutch Uncle expression. “A lot of your thinking is based on the idea those investigating officers gave the house a lick and a promise and called it good. That wasn’t the case. If there had been a third party in there, it’s odds-on that the police would have found evidence of him. And it they’d found evidence of a third party, I’d know.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because something like that could put you in a very nasty situation-the kind of situation where the police stop being nice guys and start reading you the Miranda warning.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” I said, but I was beginning to, Ruth; yes indeed. Gerald was something of an insurance freak, and I had been informed by agents of three different carriers that I was going to spend my period of official mourning-and quite a few years after-in comfortable circumstances.

“John Harrelson in Augusta did a very thorough, very careful autopsy on your husband,” Brandon said. “According to his report, Gerald died of what MEs call “a pure heart attack,” meaning one uncomplicated by food poisoning, undue exertion, or gross physical trauma.” He clearly meant to go on-he was in what I’ve come to think of as Brandon’s Teaching Mode- but he saw something on my face that stopped him. “Jessie? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Yes there is-you look terrible. Is it a cramp?”

I finally managed to persuade him that I was okay, and by then I almost was. I imagine you know what I was thinking about, Ruth, since I mentioned it earlier in this letter: the double kick I gave Gerald when he wouldn’t do the right thing and let me up. One in the gut, one smack in the family jewels. I was thinking how lucky it was I’d said the sex was rough-it explained the bruises. I have an idea they were light, anyway, because the heart attack came right on the heels of the kicks, and the heart attack stopped the bruising process almost before it could get started.

That leads to another question, of course-did I cause the heart attack by kicking him? None of the medical books I’ve looked at answer that question conclusively, but let’s get real: I probably helped him along. Still, I refuse to take the whole rap. He was overweight, he drank too much, and he smoked like a chimney. The heart attack was coming; if it hadn’t been that day, it would have been the next week or the next month. The devil only plays his fiddle for you so long, Ruth, I believe that. If you don’t, I cordially invite you to told it small and stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine. I happen to think I’ve earned the right to believe what I want to believe, at least in this matter. Especially in this matter.

“If I looked like I swallowed a doorknob,” I told Brandon, “it’s because I’m trying to get used to the idea that someone thinks I killed Gerald to collect his life insurance,”

He shook his head some more, looking at me earnestly all the while. “They don’t think that at all. Harrelson says Gerald had a heart attack which may have been precipitated by sexual excitement, and the State Police accept that because John Harrelson is about the best in the business. At most there may be a few cynics who think you played Salome and led him on deliberately.” “Do you?” I asked.

I thought I might shock him with such directness, and part of me was curious as to what a shocked Brandon Milheron might look like, but I should have known better. He only smiled. “Do I think you’d have imagination enough to see a chance of blowing Gerald’s thermostat but not enough to see you might end up dying in handcuff s yourself as a result? No. For whatever it’s worth, Jess, I think it went down just the way you told me it did. Can I be honest?”

It was my turn to smile. “I wouldn’t want you to be anything else.”

“All right. I worked with Gerald, and I got along with him, but there were plenty of people in the firm who didn’t. He was the world’s biggest control-freak. It doesn’t surprise me a bit that the idea of having sex with a woman handcuffed to the bed lit up all his dials.”

I took a quick look at him when he said that. It was night, only the light at the head of my bed was on, and he was sitting in shadow from the shoulders up, but I’m pretty sure that Brandon Milheron, Young Legal Shark About Town, was blushing.

“If I’ve offended you, I’m sorry,” he said, sounding unexpectedly awkward.

I almost laughed. It would have been unkind, but just then he sounded about eighteen years old and fresh out of prep school. “You haven’t offended me, Brandon,” I said.

“Good. That takes care of me. But it’s still the job of the police to at least entertain the possibility of foul play-to consider the idea that you could have gone a step further than just hoping your husband might have what is known in the trade as “a horny coronary.'”

“I didn’t have the slightest idea he had a heart problem!” I said. “Apparently the insurance companies didn’t, either. If they’d known, they never would have written those policies, would they?”

“Insurance companies will insure anyone who’s willing to pay enough freight,” he said, “and Gerald’s insurance agents didn’t see him chainsmoking and belting back the booze. You did. All protests aside, you must have known he was a heart attack looking for a place to happen. The cops know it, too. So they say, “Suppose she invited a friend down to the lake house and didn’t tell her husband? And suppose this friend just happened to jump out of the closet and yell Booga-Booga at exactly the right time for her and exactly the wrong one for her old man?” If the cops had any evidence that something like that might have happened, you’d be in deep shit, Jessie. Because under certain select circumstances, a hearty cry of Booga-Booga can be seen as an act of first-degree murder. The fact that you spent going on two days in handcuffs and had to half-skin yourself to get free militates strongly against the idea of an accomplice, but in another way, the very fact of the handcuffs makes an accomplice seem plausible to… well, to a certain type of police mind, let us say.”

I started at him, fascinated. I felt like a woman who’s just realized she has been square-dancing on the edge of an abyss. Up until then, looking at the shadowy planes and curves of Brandon’s face beyond the circle of light thrown by the bedlamp, the idea of the police thinking I might have murdered Gerald had only crossed my mind a couple of times, as a kind of grisly joke. Thank God I never joked about it with the cops, Ruth!

Brandon said, “Do you understand why it might be wiser not to mention this idea of an intruder in the house?”

“Yes,” I said. “Better to let sleeping dogs lie, right?”

As soon as I said it, I had an image of that goddamned mutt dragging Gerald across the floor by his upper arm-I could see the flap of skin that had come free and was lying across the dog’s snout. They ran the poor, damned thing down a couple of days later, by the way-it had made a little den for itself under the Laglans” boathouse, about half a mile up the shore. It had taken a pretty good piece of Gerald there, so it must have come back at least one more time after I scared it away with the Mercedes’s lights and horn. They shot it. It was wearing a bronze tag-not a regulation dog-tag so that Animal Control could trace the owner and give him hell, more’s the pity-with the name Prince on it. Prince, can you imagine? When Constable Teagarden came and told me they’d killed it, I was glad. I didn’t blame it for what it did-it wasn’t in much better shape than I was, Ruth-but I was glad then and I’m still glad.

All that’s off the subject, though-I was telling you about the conversation I had with Brandon after I’d told him there might have been a stranger in the house, He agreed, and most emphatically, that it would be better to let sleeping dogs lie. I guessed I could live with that-it was a great relief just to have told one person-but I still wasn’t quite ready to let it go.

“The convincer was the phone,” I told him. “When I got out of the handcuffs and tried it, it was as dead as Abe Lincoln. As soon as I realized that, I became sure I was right-there had been a guy, and at some point he’d cut the telephone line coming in from the road. That’s what really got my ass out the door and into the Mercedes. You don’t know what scared is, Brandon, until you suddenly realize you might be out in the middle of the woods with an uninvited houseguest.”

He was smiling, but it was a less winning smile that time, I’m afraid. It was the kind of smile men always seem to get on their faces when they’re thinking about how silly women are, and how it should really be against the law to let them out without keepers. “You came to the conclusion that the line was cut after checking one phone-the one in the bedroom-and finding it dead. Right?”

That wasn’t exactly what happened and it wasn’t exactly what I’d thought, but I nodded-partly because it seemed easier, but mostly because it doesn’t do much good to talk to a man when he gets that particular expression on his face. It’s the one that says, “Women! Can’t live with “em, can’t shoot “em!” Unless you’ve changed completely, Ruth, I’m sure you know the one I’m talking about, and I’m sure you’ll understand when I say that all I really wanted at that point was for the entire conversation to be over.

“It was unplugged, that’s all,” Brandon said. By then he was sounding like Mister Rogers, explaining that sometimes it surely does seem like there’s a monster under the bed, by golly, but there’s really not. “Gerald pulled the t-connector out of the wall. He probably didn’t want his afternoon off-not to mention his little bondage fantasy-interrupted by calls from the office. He’d also pulled the plug on the one in the front hall, but the one in the kitchen was plugged in and working just fine. I have all this from the police reports.”