“What put that goddamn crazy notion in your head, anyway?”
“Little slips you made, little things she and Kayabalian and Troxell himself told me. Bits and pieces that add up to the same conclusion.”
“Wrong conclusion.”
I grinned at him. Wolf grin, just the baring of teeth. “Here’s the way I see it. Sometime after Troxell witnessed what happened in the park, he came to you and told you about it. Or you dragged it out of him. Doesn’t matter which. He couldn’t make himself go to the police and he couldn’t confide in his wife, he wasn’t made that way. But he was full of guilt and starting to unravel and he needed to talk to somebody. Who else but you, his best buddy since high school.”
“Blowing smoke, man, that’s all you’re doing.”
“He confided his obsession with death and suicide, too. And not in an offhand way, like you made it seem- straight from the gut. He was serious about putting himself out of his misery, he’d been building to it even before the Erin Dumont trigger. But some men, men like Eberhardt, men like Troxell, just can’t do it on their own, no matter how much they want to die. You saw that. Saw your opportunity, hatched your little scheme, and went to work on him.”
“How am I supposed to’ve done that, smart guy?”
“Couldn’t have been too hard. You knew how to manipulate him-you as much as told me so yourself, all that stuff about getting him to tutor you in school, arranging for him to lose his virginity. Strong, confident jock, weak and emotionally screwed-up nerd. Not much of a contest at all. Reinforce his low self-esteem, lead him to believe his situation is hopeless and he’d be doing it for his wife as much as for himself, shore up his resolve and courage, finally offer to help him do the job.”
That must have been pretty close to the way it happened. Casement fidgeted again, slugged more whiskey- about as much reaction as I was going to get out of him.
“You went to work on her, too,” I said. “Kept telling her how worried you were about her husband and his mental state. Suggested she hire detectives to follow him. You wanted her to know just how bad off he was.”
Between his teeth: “Why would I hurt her like that if I’m so much in love with her?”
“To make her need you, lean on you. It was also a way to set Troxell up for the final push over the line. You must’ve been happy as hell with my report, the suggestions I made, the weekend grace period. After I left you talked her out of notifying the family doctor; Kayabalian told me that. You didn’t want any medical interference that might keep Troxell from listening to anybody but you after the confrontation. You spent a long time alone with him Saturday afternoon and part of Sunday-working on his hopelessness and death obsession, maneuvering him into a state where he could blow himself away.
“Mrs. Troxell hid his car keys Saturday, in a place he’d never think to look. But Kayabalian told me you were with her when she did it. Troxell didn’t find those keys on his own; he’d’ve had to tear the place apart and he didn’t, he slipped out of the house almost immediately after he got out of bed. He got the keys from you. You took them from the hiding place and handed them over before you left that afternoon.”
I watched Casement’s face closely as I spoke. No expression except for tight lips and a faintly throbbing vein in one temple. No sign of guilt or remorse. Incapable of either emotion; I had him pegged that way. Cold bastard. Self-involved, borderline sociopath.
“Why would a man like Troxell use a gun on himself?” I said. “That bothered me almost from the first. Wouldn’t be his choice if he were doing it on his own-the idea had to’ve been planted in his head, nurtured. ‘A small caliber handgun is quick and painless, Jim, you do it somewhere outside the home, out on the beach, say, and there’s not much mess for anybody to clean up.’ When he says he doesn’t think he can shoot himself, you keep telling him he can, and show him just how to do it, and eventually you’ve got him convinced. ‘With help you can find the necessary courage to go through with it. And I have all the help I need now.’ Troxell’s words to me on the phone Saturday night. I thought he was talking about going to the police, but what he was really talking about was putting that bullet in his brain.”
“Bullshit,” Casement said again.
“Then there’s the clincher,” I said, “the weapon itself. Brand-new twenty-two-caliber automatic. Where did he get it?”
“How should I know? Bought it someplace.”
“Where?”
“A gun shop, where else.”
“That’s what you said this morning. But you know and I know nobody can buy a handgun in this state without a valid permit. Troxell never applied for one. I checked.”
“So what? So some sleazeball dealer sold it to him under the counter. Or he bought it on the street.”
“There aren’t that many sleazeball dealers who’d risk a stiff fine and a jail sentence on such a small illegal sale. How would a man like Troxell, an advocate of gun control, go about finding one in the first place? Same thing for a street buy-how would he know where to go and who to approach? No, he had to’ve gotten the piece from somebody he knew.”
“Not me.”
“Closed-off type like him, no close friends except you-it couldn’t be anybody else. You sell sporting goods, you have easy access to target weapons like the twenty-two he used.”
“You can’t tie that pistol to me,” Casement said. “No way.”
“Pistol. Right. That’s another thing you said this morning. I told you and Mrs. Troxell that he’d shot himself, she said why did he do it that way. And you said, ‘A pistol… that’s as quick as it gets.’ ”
“Gun, pistol, what’s the difference?”
“Pistol refers to a semiautomatic handgun. You damn well know that in your business. But I didn’t say what kind of weapon Troxell used. It could’ve been a revolver, or a even a shotgun or rifle.”
“I just assumed it was a pistol. You can’t prove any different.”
“No?”
“No. Can’t prove a goddamn thing you’ve said.”
“I could try.”
“Go ahead. You won’t find anything.”
“The police might,” I said.
“Take this crap of yours to the cops? You do, you’ll be one sorry son of a bitch.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Damn right it’s a threat. Any hassle, and I’ll sue you for slander and defamation. I’ll take everything you’ve got.”
“You’d have to prove malicious intent. The malice here is all on your side.”
“I’m warning you. Back off.”
“No. I may or may not talk to the police. I am going to talk to the widow.”
Blood-rush darkened his face even more. He said savagely, “You stay the hell away from Lynn.”
“She has to know what you did.”
“She wouldn’t believe you.”
“It’s the truth. She’ll believe it eventually.”
“Goddamn you, I won’t let that happen!”
“You don’t have a tenth of the influence with her you did with her husband. If you did, you wouldn’t’ve had to help him die to get your hands on her.”
He slammed the glass down on the bar top, lunged off the stool and up close to me. I set myself again, arms out away from my body, but all he did was get into my face. “Stay away from her,” he said, spitting the words, spraying saliva.
“All for nothing, Casement. She’ll hate your guts, she won’t have anything to do with you.”
“She will, she’s mine now! You’re not gonna take her away from me, not now, not you or anybody else.”
“We’ll see about that.”
He grabbed handfuls of my shirt and jacket, yanked me up on my toes. “I’ll kill you, you hear me? I’ll kill you!”
I drove the heel of my left hand up hard against the tendons in one wrist, at the same time chopping down with my right on the other wristbone. The force of the moves made him yell, broke his hold and exposed the upper
