assistant I would be. I didn’t care. I had been bouncing around the book business for a few years— libraries, bookstores—and I was tired of it. I was ready for something different. Well, I got it.
“For the next four years we went everywhere. We went all over the world looking for books. Everything I know that’s worth knowing I learned in that time. We lived in Paris for six months, went to England every summer. One of the most interesting Jack London collections—part of it’s still here, in the big room—we bought in Tokyo, of all places. You get the idea: there isn’t much more to tell. Malone never went back to Texas and neither did I. He bought this place. He liked the solitude. He liked the fact that it came with that big fence already up. You can’t put up a fence like that anymore—too many zoning restrictions—but they won’t let you tear it down either. Malone had always liked Colorado, not in the summer when tourists come swarming in, but in the dead of winter. He liked being snowed in. He was always different than everybody else. I’d still be with him, if he’d lived. I don’t think of it as a mad love affair, it wasn’t like that. But I know I’d still be with him.”
“He died, though.”
“You don’t have to ask that. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories. What’s the version you heard? Was I supposed to’ve killed him for his money or his books?”
“It was just talk.”
“Yeah, right. Well, I did kill him in a way. He was fifty years old. He smoked too much and couldn’t quit, he had always smoked and he was dying from it. I guess there comes a time when it doesn’t matter anymore. One day he said to me, ‘Rita, I’m not going to die in a hospital.’ I knew then what I was in for. During the next couple of days he tended to business. Had a lawyer come up, dictated what amounted to his last will. I knew he was leaving it all to me. It was never discussed between us, but I knew him so well, and you might not believe this…I didn’t care. We were so businesslike. That’s even how he wanted to die, according to a schedule of his own making. He’d had a lethal injection made up—I knew where it was and what it was there for, and when the time came I went to the cabinet and got the stuff and helped him as best I could. God, I was such a coward. I couldn’t keep from crying and trembling…I had never seen anyone actually die, and I know he wanted to go with me keeping a stiff upper lip but I just couldn’t. I held his head on my lap while he gave himself the shot. That should’ve been all there was to it, only…he wouldn’t die. People tell you that stuff always works: it’s supposed to be painless and you’re gone like the snap of a finger, only it didn’t work that way. The man would… not… die. I thought he just didn’t get enough. It knocked him out before… you know. And he was in such pain! He writhed and twitched… and still he wouldn’t die! So I loaded that needle and I gave him another shot, enough to kill a dinosaur… and still he lived. It was like some nightmare. Then I remembered his gun.
“I knew it was in the bedroom, but it took me a while to find the shells. I don’t know much about guns but I thought I could figure it out. I came into the room and sat beside him. His breathing was heavy and labored. He was struggling, fighting, and I took the gun and put it to his head and cocked it. I remember thinking, ‘How can I do this, how can I possibly find the strength?’ Then he seemed to relax and I knew he was gone. He just… slipped away… just in time. Another ten seconds and I might’ve been in real trouble. I didn’t even know how to uncock the stupid gun. I pulled the trigger and blew a hole in the wall. You can still see the mark. I think the sheriff suspects me of something even to this day. When they read the will, I just sat there and didn’t say anything, but it was an absolutely grand motive for murder. I knew Malone was well-off, but I was shocked at how much there really was. He never told me how much he had: it was his business and I never particularly wanted to know. I guess I was lucky: I might’ve had some real explaining to do if Malone hadn’t had the foresight to tell his lawyer what he intended. Even now there’s a lot of suspicion. To the people on this mountain, and to some in the book trade, I’m the woman who killed her boyfriend and got away with it. So I keep to myself, don’t have much to do with anyone, and that’s the story. That’s how I became rich and famous. It’s also why I’ve been giving it away in buckets. It never really felt like mine.”
The day dawned cold and wet and miserable, one of those days in the Rockies when it’s too warm to snow and too cold to rain. We had slept for a few hours, and I came awake with her head nestled under my chin and my hand cradling her breast. I lay still, reluctant to wake her. But there was a killer to catch, and today was the day, and the day wasn’t getting any younger. I thought I had narrowed it down to an either-or. Everything about it had begun to make sense, except her part in it, and that made no sense at all.
She turned over and opened her eyes. She touched my face and said, “Love me again,” and I couldn’t, couldn’t, say no. Then, spent, we lay under the covers and locked eyes and touched. At some point I said we had to get up. She said, “We don’t have to do anything, not ever again.” She did get up, though, and for a moment she stood by the bed, naked and lovely. She walked away and I heard the shower start. I stared up at the darkest part of the house and thought about it. And I thought: God bless America, I hope you’re not mixed up in this. I tell you it’ll break my heart if you are.
Either-or: six of one, half a dozen of the other. We came down from the mountain and I did a mental crapshoot. It came up Littleton. We rolled in on Hampden and turned south on Santa Fe Drive. The streets were still slick but it was daylight now and I had made the drive down in less than forty minutes.
I pulled into a Denny’s and stopped.
“This’s where you get out.”
“I told you before, Janeway, I have a constitutional problem with fast food.”
“You’ll live through it. Have a cup of coffee. Read the paper. And just wait here for me.”
“How long am I supposed to wait?”
“Till I come back.”
She gave me her long-suffering look. “I hope this isn’t the kind of treatment I can expect from you.”
She got out and came around to my side. I rolled down the window and she stood for a moment looking at me, her coppery hair wafting around her head. This is how I’ll remember her twenty years from now, I thought: her priceless face framed in the car window on a lousy gray day. She leaned in and kissed me. “Don’t get killed,” she said in a tiny voice. “You too,” I said. She had already turned away and was walking toward the restaurant. “Be back before you know it,” I called, but she didn’t do anything at that. Strange girl, I thought: strange woman, still full of secrets.
Our discussion that morning had been brief and to the point.
“I’d like you to stay with me today,” I had said.
