'Yes. If I'd had time. But you interrupted. And then… I just didn't care about her so much any more.'
'She was a witness. If she'd seen anything…'
Linski shrugged.
'All your anger turned toward me.'
'You being a hero,' Judge said cryptically.
'What?'
'You being the war hero… what did that make me?'
'I don't know. What did it make you?'
'The villain, the monster,' he said, and tears welled in his eyes. 'Until you showed up, I was clean. I was judgment. Just passing judgment. But you're the big hero… and every hero has to have a monster to slay. So they made me the monster.'
Ben said nothing.
'I was only trying to preserve the memory of Mikey the way he was so long ago. The pure innocence that he was. Preserve it. Is that so bad?'
Finally, Linski sobbed.
Ben could not bear the weeping.
The killer huddled pathetically in the chair, trying to lift his taped hands so that he could bury his face in them.
The trial. The press. Unending publicity. Back into the attic room to escape. And Linski, huddled and pathetic, would never spend time in a prison. A mental hospital, yes, but not prison. Innocent by reason of insanity.
He put one hand on Linski's head, smoothed his hair.
Linski leaned into the comforting touch.
'Everybody's damaged,' Chase said.
Linski looked up at him through tears.
'Some are just damaged too much. Far too much.'
'I'm sorry,' Linski said.
'It's okay.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Open wide for me.'
Linski knew what was coming. He opened his mouth.
Ben put the muzzle between Linski's teeth and pulled the trigger. He dropped the gun and turned away from the dead man, walked into the hall, and opened the bathroom door. He put up the lid of the toilet bowl, dropped to his knees, and vomited. He remained on his knees for a long time before he could control the spasms that racked him. He flushed the toilet three times. He put the lid down and sat on it, blotting the cold sweat on his face with his gloved hands.
Having won the Congressional Medal of Honor, the most sacred and jealously guarded award his country bestowed, he had wanted nothing more than to return to the attic room in Mrs. Fielding's house and resume his penitence.
Then he met Glenda, and things changed. There was no question about living as a hermit any more, sealed off from experience. All that he wanted now was quietude, a chance for their love to develop, a life. Fauvel, the police, the press, and Richard Linski had not allowed him even that.
Chase rose and went to the sink. He rinsed his mouth out until the bad taste was gone.
He no longer had to be a hero.
He left the bathroom.
In the front room, he unwound the tape from Richard Linski's wrists and ankles. He let the body slide out of the chair and sprawl onto the floor.
When he considered the pistol, he realized that there would be three slugs missing from the clip. In the den he found a gun cabinet and drawers of ammunition. He reloaded the clip, leaving out only one round. In the kitchen, he put the gun on the floor, near the dead man's right hand.
In the living room, he searched for the two slugs that Judge had expended earlier. He found the one that had passed through his shoulder; it was embedded in the baseboard, and he dug it out without leaving a particularly noticeable mark. The other was on the floor behind the portable bar, where it had fallen after striking the bronze frame of the shattered bar mirror.
It was a quarter of twelve when he reached the Mustang and put the garbage bag and the cotton gloves into the trunk.
He drove past Linski's bungalow. The lights were on. They would burn all night.
Ben knocked twice, and Glenda let him into the motel room.
They held each other for a while.
'You're hurt.' When she realized the nature of the wound, she said, 'I'd better get you back to my place. You'll stay with me. I'll have to nurse you through this. We can't risk infection. Doctors have to report gunshot wounds to the police.'
She drove the Mustang.
He slumped in the passenger seat. A great weariness overcame him — not merely a result of the experiences of the past couple of hours but a weariness of years.
Heroes need monsters to slay, and they can always find them — within if not without.
'You haven't asked,' he said as they rolled through the night.
'I never will.'
'He's dead.'
She said nothing.
'I think it was the right thing.'
'It was a door you had to go through, whether you wanted to or not,' she said.
'Only the Karneses can connect me to him, and they're never going to talk. The cops can't nail me for it.'
'Anyway,' she said, 'you'll make your own punishment.'
A full moon rode the night sky. He stared at its cratered face, trying to read the future in the destruction of the past.
