much jackshit, and I went to the roll of paper towels near the range and ripped some off, wet them in hot water at the tap, and washed out the prints. And in that moment, while I played footsie with the killer, I became part of his crime.
Call the cops, I thought: call them now, before you’re in this any deeper.
I rolled the bloody wet towels into a tight ball, wrapped it in two fresh ones, and stuffed it in my pocket. Everything till then had been blind reflex. Again I thought about the cops, but even then I was smearing the water tap with my handkerchief, where I’d touched it wetting the towels.
Stupid, stupid…
I left the record playing: give the cops that much, I owed it to Eleanor, even if I had to pay the price.
I was lucky on one count—the heavy underbrush made it unlikely that neighbors would see me coming or going. Almost too late, I remembered that I had gone through Fat Willie’s wallet: I went back to his car and smeared it with my handkerchief. I walked around the block and sat in Eleanor’s car with my feet dangling in the rain. I took off my shoes, knowing that human blood can linger in cracks longer than most killers could imagine, and I turned them bottoms-up on the floor.
I drifted downtown, my conscience heavy and troubled.
I was at least five miles away when I called them. I stood in a doorless phone booth outside an all-night gas station and talked to a dispatcher through my handkerchief. Told her there were two dead people, gave her the address.
I knew I was being taped, that police calls today can be traced almost instantly. When the dispatcher asked my name, I hung up.
I stopped at Denny’s, put on my shoes, and went inside for a shot of coffee. It was 3:05 a.m. I sat at the fountain and had a second cup. I thought of Eleanor and that record blaring, of Slater and Pruitt, of Crystal and Rigby and the Gray son boys. I wished for two things—a shot of bourbon and the wisdom to have done it differently. But I was in the wrong place for the one and it was too late for the other.
BOOK II
TRISH
20
I found what I needed over my third coffee. It always happens, I don’t know how. When life goes in the tank, I bottom out in the ruins and come up with purpose, direction, strength.
I knew what I had to do. It was too late now to do it the right way, so the same thing had to happen from a different starting point.
I sat at the counter looking at her card.
I made the call.
She caught it on the first ring, as if she’d been sitting there all night waiting for me.
“Hello.”
“Trish?”
“Yup.”
“Janeway.”
“Hi.”
She didn’t sound surprised: she didn’t sound thrilled. She sounded wide-awake at four o’clock in the morning.
“You said if I’d like to talk…well, I’d like to talk.”
“When and where?”
“As soon as possible. You say where.”
“My office, half an hour. Do you know where the
“I’ll find it.”
“I’ll tell you, it’ll save time. Go to the corner of Fairview and John. You’ll see a big square building that looks like all newspaper buildings everywhere. You’ll know you’re there by the clock on the Fairview side—the time on it’s always wrong. Turn into John, park in the fenced lot on the left, come across the street and in through the John Street door. The guard will call me and I’ll come down and get you.”
The clock on the building said 11:23, but it was an hour before dawn when I got there. The rain was coming down in sheets. I parked in a visitor’s slot and made the sixty-yard dash in eight seconds, still not fast enough to keep from getting soaked again. I pushed into the little vestibule and faced a middle-aged man in a guard’s uniform. I asked for Miss Aandahl: he didn’t think Miss Aandahl was in. He made a call, shook his head, and I sat on a bench to wait. Water trickled down my crotch and I felt the first raw tingle of what would probably be a raging case of red-ass. I squirmed in my wet pants and thought, I
