“Do you attend AA meetings regularly?”
“Now and then, I’d say. I’ve been sober for nine months now. I won’t lie to you. I fell off the wagon a few times. But Dave and my faith in a higher power picked me up and made me sober.”
“That’s good,” Pearl said.
“I try.” The wide, white smile. “Gotta keep trying.”
“People can vouch for you being at work from about ten o’clock last night until past dawn?”
“Oh, yeah. The whole crew. Six of them, not counting me. And the company locks us in as soon as we set to work. For our own good. Safety. And you know, in the event anything big gets stolen, we don’t get blamed. They leave a guard outside one of the doors, so we can get out in case of a fire.”
“You worked all night?”
“Somebody sure did. Go by and look at the place. We swept up and bagged all the trash and bottles and condoms. Yeah, condoms even at a revival meeting. You’d be surprised.”
“Not me,” Pearl said, thinking for some reason of Nancy Weaver. She pretended to scribble something with her pencil. “I will talk to Sweep ’Em Up and the people involved. To check your story.”
“I wish you would.”
“You said you were glad when you heard Judith Blaney had been murdered. Can you explain that a little more?”
“What’s to explain? The bitch was responsible for ruining my life. After what happened to me, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t feel glad about what happened to her.”
Pearl smiled. “I guess you know that gives you a motive.”
“I’ve got an alibi, too, thank God.”
“Tell me, Mr. Sanderson, after you were proven innocent and got out of prison, didn’t you even once consider…”
“Killing Judith Blaney?” He crossed his arms, and muscles rippled. He shouldn’t have been such a pushover in prison. But then some of those cons pumped iron half the day, building themselves into perfect thugs. An ordinary man like Sanderson wouldn’t have stood a chance without somebody in the cellblock to back him. And like he said, rapists were on the rung just above child molesters. Even the worst cons had something like morals. “To be honest,” he said, “I did think about killing her.”
“ Really think about it?”
“No, not really. It takes balls to kill somebody, and I lost those in prison. Figuratively speaking.”
“Good,” Pearl said. “I mean about the figurative part.”
She looked for the toothy white smile, but it didn’t appear.
After replacing her notebook and pencil in her purse, she stood up and thanked Sanderson. He straightened up from where he was perched on the chair arm.
She handed him her card. “If you think of something…”
“I won’t,” Sanderson said. “I don’t intend to think of Judith Blaney at all. Alive or dead.”
As Pearl left the apartment, she decided she didn’t blame him.
“I checked out his story,” Pearl told Quinn later that day in the office. “There’s no doubt where he was when Judith Blaney was killed. He’s got seven witnesses confirming his alibi, including a uniformed security guard.”
“So we cross off another one,” Quinn said. “Jock Sanderson isn’t the Skinner.”
“He’s another guy with a drinking problem.”
Quinn nodded where he sat in his desk chair. “What happened to those men, to be wrongly convicted of rape and then serve time, it figures to drive some of them to drink when finally they do get out and realize they still wear the badge of dishonor.”
“I guess,” Pearl said. “It’s a complicated problem with a simple but damned difficult solution.”
“Probably most of the men still alive on our list of thirty-two have a drink or drug problem.”
“Maybe the Skinner does.”
“No,” Quinn said. “I have some idea of what makes him tick.”
Pearl remembered that Quinn himself had once been falsely accused of rape.
“Being falsely accused of a heinous crime has its effects,” Quinn said. “Instead of drinking, shooting up, or sniffing, the Skinner kills.”
“And Jerry Lido becomes a computer maniac.”
“Right.”
“Trading one addiction for another.”
“I suppose.”
“And you?”
“Me?”
“Your addiction is that you need a mission,” Pearl said. “Is that what you traded for?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He smiled. “That would be you or Cuban cigars, Pearl.”
“You’ve already got Cuban cigars, in your desk drawer.”
“That’s a fact, Pearl.”
Jock Sanderson left the AA meeting alone. It had taken place in a room above a restaurant. There was nothing fancy about it, and it could do with a visit from Sweep ’Em Up. There was a slightly raised platform at one end, and metal folding chairs were lined up facing it. A large framed photograph of a smiling President Kennedy hung on the wall across from the door. No one seemed to know why. The room had a separate entrance with a stairway leading up from a door at street level.
Jock had without doubt been the most interesting member there this evening. He’d stood up and told the others everything about Judith’s murder. Well, not everything. He’d almost convinced himself that the torture and murder had occurred as a complete surprise to him. Faking sincerity. He’d long thought that was what got you ahead in life, phony sincerity. If you had luck to go with it. The luck was what Jock had never had, but now maybe things had turned a corner.
Dave, his sponsor, had left the meeting ahead of him and was waiting out on the sidewalk.
“You gonna be okay, Jock?” Dave asked, concern on his alcohol-ravaged face.
“I am,” Jock said. “I was tempted, but I denied myself. I’ll be okay.”
“The devil’s waiting to move in on you if you give it half a chance,” Dave said.
“And I know it, Dave. But I’ve got God on my side now.”
“That’s good. Wanna go for some coffee?”
“I think I need to be alone, Dave. Deal with the grief.”
“You suffer grief over the death of a woman who wrongly accused you of rape?”
“I do. I mean, the way she was killed. So horrible. It requires God’s understanding, Dave, but I can try. Judith Blaney did nothing to me deliberately. She made an honest mistake.”
“You sure of that, Jock?”
“I am. She had no reason to lie.”
Dave stepped back and regarded him. “I think you’re going to be okay, Jock.”
“I am.”
“But stay on your guard.” Dave hugged him, then turned and walked away.
“On my guard,” Jock said after him. “That’s me.”
But he was thinking it was other people who’d better be on their guard.
47
Hogart, 2005
Beth Colson watched the boxy yellow back of the school bus rumble down the dirt drive to the county road and then turn toward the highway. For an instant the pale face of a student was visible staring out the rear window. Not Eddie, she was sure.
