But she was still alive.
If she died, the doorman could identify Motley. And, once the department put its full resources into the case, any of a number of witnesses might turn up to put him on the scene when Echevarria got stabbed, when Elizabeth Scudder was butchered, when Toni Cleary went out the window. No end of physical evidence might come to light if enough trained personnel looked in the right places for it. And a full-scale investigation in New York would almost certainly tip the balance in Massillon, where Tom Havlicek's chief would okay reopening the Sturdevant case. And Ohio was a death penalty state, wasn't it?
Still, a confession would make a big difference. All I had to do was wait until he came to and get him talking. No question the bastard liked to talk.
He was lying facedown, his hands cuffed behind him. I rolled him over onto his back and lifted an eyelid with my thumb. His eye was rolled way back up into its socket, with only the white part showing. He was out cold, and looked as though he'd be out for a while.
I went and got the Smith. I looked at it and I looked at him. I thought of everything he'd done and I looked within myself, trying to summon up the hate I felt for him. But it didn't seem to be there. At least it wasn't anywhere that I could find it.
And that had been oddly true a few minutes ago, when he had been far removed from the inert bundle in the middle of the floor. I had been very literally fighting for my life, and all the same I'd been oddly calm, and fresh out of hate and anger. I hadn't hated him then. I didn't seem to hate him now.
I put the gun to his temple and let my finger test the tension in the trigger. I withdrew my finger from the trigger and put the gun down on the floor.
I thought it all over. I must have spent several minutes running it through my mind. Then I took a breath deep enough to hurt my ribs, and then I let it all out, and then I picked up the Smith and broke it open.
I unloaded all six chambers. I got out my handkerchief and wiped off the bullets and the gun itself, cleaning every surface that might have held a print. Then I made sure he wasn't playing possum before removing the cuffs from his wrists. I took hold of his fingers and touched them to the bullets, then loaded them back into the gun.
I put the gun down and took hold of him under the arms. I dragged him a few yards, then hauled him onto his feet and dropped him in the needlepoint chair. He started to slide back onto the floor but I pulled him up into a seated position and balanced him there. I went back for the Smith, wiped it again with the handkerchief, and fitted it into his right hand. I slipped his finger inside the trigger guard. With my own left hand I worked his jaw to get his mouth open, and then I got the short barrel of the little revolver between his teeth.
I made sure I had the angle right. Cops eat their guns all the time, it's their favorite single method of committing suicide, and sometimes they miss, sometimes the bullet goes on through without doing mortal damage. I wanted to do this properly, and I was only going to get one chance. I wanted the bullet to go right up through the roof of the mouth and into the brain.
When I had the gun the way I wanted it, I just stayed in position for a moment. There was something I seemed to want to say, but whom was I going to say it to?
I thought, Say it to him. And I remembered what the ICU nurse had told me. According to her, patients in coma understood what was said to them.
I said, 'I'm not sure this is a good idea. But suppose you got out again. Suppose your lawyer pulled off some kind of half-assed insanity defense. Or suppose you went away for life and escaped. How can I take that kind of chance?'
I paused for a moment, then shook my head. 'I'm not even sure that's it. I just don't want you to be alive anymore.
'And I want to be the one who sees to it, and that's how all this shit started in the first place, isn't it? I had to play God and frame you for attempted murder. What would have happened if I'd just let things take their course back then? Would it have made a difference?'
I waited, as if he might answer. Then I said, 'And here I am playing God again. I know better and I'm doing it anyway.'
That was all I said. I stayed there at his side, down on one knee, the gun in his mouth, his finger on the trigger, my finger on his. I don't know how long I waited, or what I was waiting for.
Eventually his breathing changed slightly and he started to stir. My finger moved, and so did his, and that was that.
I set the stage before I left. I got Echevarria's cuffs loose from Motley's ankles and returned them to the case on his belt. I righted the table that had gotten upended earlier and straightened out other articles disturbed during our struggle. I went around the apartment, handkerchief in hand, and removed my prints from every surface where I might have left them.
While I was doing this, I picked up a lipstick tube from the dresser in the bedroom and used it to leave a
last message on the living-room wall. In block caps three inches tall I printed, it has to end. i make my peace with god. sorry i kill so many. You couldn't prove it was his writing, but I couldn't see how you could prove that it wasn't. Just to keep it neat I capped the lipstick tube, got his prints on it, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
I fastened the chain lock on the apartment's front door and left the same way I'd come in, via the window. This time I drew it all the way shut after me. I went down the fire escape, lowered the ladder, descended it. Someone had moved the garbage can to its original position, so I had to drop the last few feet, but that was easy enough.
Someone had also removed my topcoat. I thought at first someone had walked off with it, but something made me lift the lid of one of the garbage cans and there it was, reposing under a layer of eggshells and orange peels. The person who'd put it there had evidently assumed it had been discarded, and decided further that it wasn't worth rescuing. It had been a perfectly respectable coat, or at least I'd thought so, but now I figured it was time to buy myself a new one.
I thought the same conscientious tenant who'd tossed my topcoat might have removed my toothpick from the lock, but it was still in place and all I had to do was draw the door open. I retrieved the toothpick and let the door lock behind me, went on out through the front of the building, and walked over to First Avenue where I caught a cab headed uptown. I got out at the hospital's main entrance and went directly to the ICU. The nurse said Elaine's condition was unchanged but wouldn't let me go in to see her.
