“What about Joey, though? Wasn’t Rudy worried about his having heard?”
“No, not then, because what had he heard? The murder had been virtually silent, according to Rudy, so all Joey knew was that they’d argued, which was nothing new.”
“And no one knew Edgar was dead at the time,” Julie said, “and when they finally did find out, they thought he’d disappeared from his camp in Alaska.”
“Right. But once enough of the skeleton turned up for me to come up with the fruit-picker connection, Rudy knew that was the end of that. It was only a question of time until the police were all over Star Castle, interrogating everybody in sight. ”When was the last time you saw Villarreal?“ ‘Where were you on the night of… ?” And so on.“
She nodded slowly. “And Joey would have been sure to say he heard him arguing with Rudy late that last night, and Rudy couldn’t risk their starting to look into that.”
“That’s it.”
A waist-high, moss-covered, fallen trunk blocked their way and they walked along it until it was narrow enough to clamber over and return to the path.
“But how could he be sure that Joey was the only one who heard?” Julie asked. “What about whoever was on the other side of his… oh, that’s right, the John Biddle Room. It was at the end of the hall. No other neighbors. And nobody across the way.”
“Right. Only Joey, poor unlucky Joey. He had no idea Rudy’d murdered Villarreal. He didn’t know there’d been a murder at all. He died not knowing what he was being killed for.”
They walked on for a while without talking, until Julie said: “Gideon, this all must be pretty awful for you, what with Rudy being such an old friend.”
“Well, it was at first, I guess, but now I’ve separated them into two different Rudy’s. The one I knew, my old pal Rudy—before Fran died, before Mary was killed—wasn’t a murderer. But he doesn’t exist anymore.”
“But in a way,” she offered after a few more steps, “it’s not hard to understand how he felt, how terrible it must have been for him to listen to Edgar going on and on the way he did, so smug, so self-righteous. I’m not excusing murder, of course, but, well, in a way, he brought it on himself, didn’t he?”
“Maybe,” Gideon said softly. “But Joey didn’t.”
“No.” She looked at her watch. “Time for me to get back.”
“Me, too, I guess.”
All the same, they walked another minute or two until they came to the abrupt end of the path, the chain-link, barbed wire-topped fence that surrounded the maintenance yard and the equipment sheds.
“I do have a question, though,” Julie said as they turned back.
“Mm?”
“If Rudy was smart enough to know you’d figure out the bones were Edgar’s, why did he kill Joey the way he did? Why wasn’t he smart enough to know you’d be able to tell from his skull that it wasn’t just a fall, that he’d been murdered?”
Gideon considered the question, then responded with a shrug and the faintest of smiles. “I guess he should have gotten that Ph.D.”
