What you do is, you’re just honest. You don’t know anything about anything. If they make an actual accusation, tell them you need a public defender. But, I really don’t think it’ll come to that. Bill was obviously unbalanced. It’s not something that two people would do.”
“I can’t believe… I lived with Bill fourteen years. He could be a jerk, but I don’t see this. I’m, I’m…”
“Well, you know… the prospect of that money,” Haden said.
She looked away from him. “That’s something else that Flowers said. Virgil said. He tells me to call him Virgil, like he’s a friend of mine, but I can tell he isn’t. I can tell he’s up to something… .” She trailed off, put her face in her hands for a moment.
He was sitting on the couch opposite her, and asked, “What was the other thing he said?”
“He said that if the town development went back the way it was, I’d be rich,” she said. She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands, one after the other. “He thought that might be a motive. He thought that was Bill’s motive, and he thought it might be mine.”
“What’d you say?” Haden asked.
“I told him that Bill didn’t care that much about money,” she said. “When the town changed direction, he just laughed it off. Said he didn’t need the money for another thirty years, and by then, it’d be even more valuable.”
“And what’d he say?”
“He said that was interesting,” she said.
Haden looked at her for a moment, and then asked, “When did you send the kids away?”
“Right after the bomb… right away. Oh my God, they’re going to be so messed up. Bill would come over every other day, take them out. He really was a good father. Good as he could be, anyway, you know… He never even said good-bye to them.”
“Okay.” Haden got up. “You want a beer? Or a glass of wine?”
“No… but I need to ask you something.”
“Yeah?”
“I just remembered, you asked a lot of questions about the farm,” she said. She twisted her hands together. “You know, that first night I came over. I just, I mean, you seem really interested…”
He frowned. “Sally, where are you going with this?”
“Well, I don’t know.” Her hands flopped in her lap. “It just seemed you were always more interested in the money than Bill was, and you started talking about maybe us getting married, and I started to think… I mean, oh, God…”
He laughed. “You think I’m the bomber?” This wasn’t good.
“No. No, of course not. It’s just that you came on so hard with me. Nobody ever did that before. You’re so good-looking and the other women, you know, are always looking at you. I wondered why you… I mean, I know what I look like, I’m pretty average… I’m not that smart…”
“Sally, for Christ’s sakes.” That ol’ sinking feeling.
“And then…”
There was more? “What, what?”
“I remember last week, you were telling me how we’d slept together the night before that bomb went off at Pye’s building… but we didn’t. The bomb was on a Wednesday, and Billie has her dance line on Tuesday evening, and then her cello lesson, and we’re never home before ten o’clock. It was on Monday we slept together. And on the way over here, I wondered why you’d even bring it up-that we’d slept together the night before the Pye building thing, when we didn’t, and I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”
“That I was building an alibi?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Did you tell any of this to Flowers?” Haden asked. “I really don’t want him jumping down my throat.”
“I didn’t tell it to anyone. Nobody knows about us, not even the kids. It’s so embarrassing. Bill leaves the house, and three days later I’m in bed with a friend of his. I mean… I’d be ruined, if my friends found out.”
“Sally, people don’t get ruined anymore,” Haden said. “They only get ruined in Victorian novels.”
“And small towns,” she said. “Anyway, you didn’t do it. I mean, Flowers asked if I’d been seeing anyone, and I lied and said no, and that’s when all this silly stuff started going through my head. And then I started thinking, I just lied to a police officer. I think I could really be in trouble, I think I might have to go back and tell him that I was seeing somebody. I think that would be best.”
Oh, shit. The whole plan goes up in smoke.
He thought, Nobody knows where she’s at. Nobody knows that we’ve been sleeping together. If Flowers finds out, finds out I mentioned marriage… that would be inconvenient. If Flowers kept coming, if he ever stumbled over that FedEx store in Grand Rapids… and who knows what would happen if they took too close a look at that videotape? Would there be some way they could tell it wasn’t Wyatt?
He felt a surge of anger, ran his hands through his hair. Hated to give it up. Hated it.
But the anger was running so hot, and the frustration. He’d been one inch away…
Wyatt stood up and stepped toward him. “John,” she said. “They won’t care. I mean, I won’t tell them, you know…”
He slapped her, hard, and she fell on the floor. “You bitch!” he shouted. “You’re taking it right out of my pocket.”
She was weeping, and trying to turn and crawl away from him. He straddled her, and dropped his weight on her hips, pinning her facedown. She cried, “You did it.”
“You silly bitch. All my work. All my planning.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she screamed. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Yes, you will. You’ll tell everybody,” he said. He swatted her on the side of the face with an open hand. “Now, I want you to tell me something, and I want you to be honest about it, because if you’re not honest about it, I’ll catch that little bitch of a daughter of yours, and I’ll spend two days raping her virgin ass, then I’ll strangle her and throw her body in a ditch so the animals can eat her. You hear me? You hear me?”
He hit her again, and she sobbed, “Yes.”
“Who did you tell about us?”
“No one,” she sobbed. “Honest, no one, and I never will tell anyone. Just let me go, let me go, I’ll never tell anyone.”
“You’re fuckin’ lying.” He hit her yet again, and her head rocked with the blow.
“Why… why did you kill that car man? Why?” She tried to push herself up against him, but he pinned her. “I know why you killed Bill, but why… that car man…”
“Because I needed him to lead Flowers to Bill,” he said. “Now, listen, Sally, I’m really sorry about this, but I’m going to have to choke you a little-”
“Please don’t do this, please don’t…” She thrashed against him, and he felt the hard knob in her back, and cocked his head, and frowned and she shouted, “Safety.”
Haden said, “What?”
Virgil stuck his head in the door and said, “Get off her, John.”
Haden, stunned, looked down at Wyatt, then back up at Virgil, his mouth open. He said, “Virgil…”
Virgil said, “Get off her, John.”
Haden stood up and said, “She accused me-”
Virgil said, “Too late, John.”
Haden took a quick step toward Virgil, as if to push him out of the way. Virgil’s response was instantaneous: the punch came from somewhere behind his waistline. As it passed his shoulder, his fist was already traveling at the speed of sound-well, almost-and when it collided with Haden’s beaked nose, there was an immensely satisfying crunch, at that perfect distance where your hand and knuckles don’t feel it too much, and your shoulder takes up some of the recoil, and the nose guy’s head rockets off your knuckles like a tennis ball flying off a racket.
Haden stumbled over Wyatt’s legs and smashed into the wall, and went to his butt. O’Hara pushed past Virgil and said, “That’s what happens when you resist.” Jenkins was right behind her, and said, “Good punch.”
Wyatt wailed, “He was on top of me, he had me by the throat, he was choking-”
At that moment, Haden, who’d rolled up on one leg, as though he were just coming to his feet, suddenly fired off the floor, like a runner coming out of the blocks. He was headed toward the patio door…
Which was closed.
