“I’m awfully fond of you, too, Master Sergeant.”
The road up to the Devil’s Hopyard was narrow and twisting, and the low, dense fog ahead of him in the headlights made the shoulders seem to crowd right in around his truck.
Mitch drove slowly, alone in the cab except for his microcassette recorder and the pint bottle of peppermint schnapps on the seat next to him. His mouth was dry, his palms moist, even though he kept wiping them on his shorts.
When he arrived at the end of the road he pulled onto the shoulder by the gate, just as Tito had when he’d phoned him to say goodbye. The yellow crime scene tape had been removed, but two overflowing barrels of evidence still remained-the trash that the press corps and celebrity gawkers had left behind. Their empty film canisters, food wrappers, coffee cups and soda cans were spilled out all over the pavement.
Stinking garbage. This was Tito Molina’s final tribute from his public.
Mitch shut off his engine, grabbed his things and got out, hearing the roar of the falls, feeling the fear surge through his body. He started down the rocky footpath in the fog, making his way by flashlight past the picnic tables toward a wooden guardrail that smelled of creosote. Here he spotted the warning sign that all of the newspaper accounts had referred to, the one that read: Let the Water Do the Falling. Stay Behind This Point.
He climbed over it and started his way carefully out onto the slick, gleaming shelf of ledge, the roar growing louder as the water cascaded right by him, crashing onto the rocks down below. It was cooler up here over the falls. But he was still perspiring, his heart pounding as he inched his way slowly out onto the promontory.
Mitch sat now, hugging his knees with his arms, and flicked off his light, alone there in the wet, roaring darkness. And terrified. He would be feeling way more sure of himself if Des were backstop-ping him, no question. Not that he blamed her for saying no. She had to think of her future. He knew this. But he also knew that she was his safety net. Walking this particular tightrope without her made the trip a whole lot more daunting. He took a sip of the peppermint schnapps, realizing at long last that what it tasted exactly like was Nyquil-although he doubted that a slug of peppermint schnapps would put him to sleep in ten to twelve minutes with drool dribbling down his chin.
In fact, he doubted he’d be asleep for a long, long while.
The waterfall masked all distant noise. Mitch didn’t hear the other car arrive. Didn’t hear its door slam shut. Didn’t hear the footsteps approaching in the darkness-not until they were right there beside him, sure and quick on the slippery granite ledge.
And Mitch heard a raised voice say: “You came alone?”
Mitch reached down and flicked on the microcassette recorder at his feet. It was a powerful little unit. When he’d tested it in his bathroom with the shower and faucet running full blast it could pick up his voice quite clearly from four feet away. “Of course I did,” he responded, hearing the quaver of fear in his own raised voice. “I said I’d be alone, didn’t I?”
“You said it was urgent, and that I should meet you up here. Why here?”
“Because this is your special place. You feel safe up here. I think I can see why. It’s comforting being surrounded by so much darkness and water. You’re totally free to be yourself-the self that you hide so well from everyone in the daylight.” He took a gulp from the bottle. “Want some peppermint schnapps?”
“I’ve never liked the stuff. Since when do you?”
“Oh, I don’t.”
“Then why’d you bring it?”
“As a tribute.”
“Does anyone else know we’re here, Mitch?”
“Not a soul.”
“Why are we?”
“Because we’re friends. I want to help you.”
“You said on the phone that you know. What do you know?”
Mitch reached for his flashlight and flicked it on, its beam illuminating the lean, taut face of Will Durslag. “I know that you loved Tito and you killed him. I know you loved Donna and killed her. But I don’t know why, Will. I need to know why.”
Will’s eyes turned to narrow, frightened slits. He looked like a wild, desperate animal crouched there in the torchlight.
Mitch flicked it off, plunging them back into the darkness. They’d been doing better there. “We talk about lots of things when we walk on the beach together. Can’t we talk about this?”
“Sure, Mitch,” Will finally said, his voice heavy with sadness. “Let’s do that. It’ll be good to talk about it. Maybe I won’t feel so scared.”
“I can’t imagine why you’re scared. You’ve got away with it all. There are no witnesses. And the only physical evidence is in your Franklin stove.”
“My Franklin stove…?”
“Sure, that’s why you made that fire in your parlor this morning. Not because of the chill, but because Donna’s blood got all over your clothes. Plus there were the towels you mopped up with. I’m thinking you must not have been wearing rubber-soled shoes when you killed her-rubber stinks out loud when it burns. You must have had on your leather flip-flops. I suppose you could have buried the stuff, but a fire made a lot of sense.” Mitch glanced over at him in the darkness. “What are you scared of, Will?”
“Myself. I’m not in control of me anymore. My God, I even killed my own wife. That’s generally considered to be pretty despicable behavior.”
“Generally.”
“Tell me, Mitch-how did you know?”
“You told me yourself.”
“I did?” Will shot back in surprise. “When?”
“On the beach the other morning, when I asked you about your croissant recipe. You mentioned you’d gotten it from your partner in, I think you said, Nag’s Head.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“When I asked you if you meant business partner you said no. But you didn’t clarify what you did mean. Just kind of left it hanging there.”
“So?…”
“So I work with words for a living, Will. Guys our age usually use the word ‘girlfriend’ when we’re discussing a significant romantic partner. Unless, that is, we’re going out of our way to be non-gender specific. Unless, that is-”
“Unless we’re gay,” Will said.
“I didn’t think much about it. Not until this morning, when you used the word again in connection with Donna. That’s when it dawned on me that you’re bisexual. And that you were the one getting it on with Tito-who, like you, had relations with both men and women.”
“No,” Will said emphatically. “You’re wrong on both counts.”
“Okay, tell me how.”
“For starters, we weren’t ‘getting it on.’ That suggests something quick and sweaty in the backseat of a parked car. It wasn’t like that, Mitch,” he insisted, his voice growing painfully earnest. “It was real love. I was ready to devote my life to him. Give up Donna. Give up everything. We were in love, Tito and me. And Tito wasn’t bisexual. He was one hundred percent bitch-his word, not mine. Oh, sure, he got married to Esme. And he could perform sexually with women, up to a point. He was one hell of an actor, after all. But his heart was never in it. Tito was gay from the time he was a barrio boy, Mitch. He kept telling me: You have no idea what it’s like to be a bitch in the barrio. The scorn you face, the contempt. He hated being gay. That’s why he became an actor-so he could become someoneelse, anyone else. That’s why he got high all of the time. And that’s why he was always trying out so many different women. He kept hoping that one of them would ‘cure’ him, as if what he had was a disease. God, he was so nineteenth century.”
Mitch sat hunched there on the damp granite, recalling that both Abby and Chrissie had pointed out how disappointing the lovemaking with Tito had been. Chrissie even told Des that the screen idol hadn’t been able to perform at all the final time they’d slept together.
“Tito was a tortured soul, Mitch. He couldn’t be himself. They wouldn’t let him be himself.”
