Not at all…
46
'She's your daughter, isn't she?'
'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'What did they do to make her want to kill them?'
'Who?'
'You know who. Ken Norris and Kevin Anderson.'
'I thought we were friends, Tobin.'
'We are friends, Susan. I'm trying to stop anybody else from being killed.' He paused. 'She's your daughter, isn't she, Joanna Howard?'
'No.'
'You're lying.'
'As I said, I don't know what you're talking about.'
'You thought she died in the trailer with your husband but she didn't. I talked to Everett Sanderson's brother-she crawled away from the blaze and the police found her in the morning.'
'I'd like a cigarette.'
'I don't have any.'
'Why don't you ask the steward outside the door?'
'In a minute.'
Susan sighed and let her head drop. Even in a loose gray workshirt and wrinkled jeans-and utterly without makeup-she was still beautiful. Fading as she approached her mid-forties but beautiful nonetheless.
They were in the cabin where Susan was being held. Sometimes people passed by in the corridor. Some of them whistled and some of them laughed. It seemed to
Tobin that at this moment no one on the entire planet had any right to whistle let alone laugh.
He stood three feet away from her. There was no doubt at all that he was her inquisitor. He wished it did not have to be this way but there was no choice. Not any longer.
He said, 'You did a good job when you ran away from the trailer, Susan. Just enough plastic surgery that nobody back home would recognize you. Not right off, anyway. But you didn't count on the Sanderson brothers and you didn't count on your own daughter.'
Susan looked up finally. Her face was ruined in the way a stroke victim's face is sometimes ruined. A look carved into the face forever. She said, 'She's crazy, you know.' She was starting to choke and cry.
'They helped you, didn't they-Ken Norris and Kevin Anderson-they helped you burn down the trailer, didn't they?'
She nodded, continued crying.
'They came to a small town to make a movie and you were dazzled-only your young husband was a very jealous man and wouldn't let you go when they made you promises about Hollywood-and so the only way out you could see was to burn down the trailer. Along with your husband and your daughter-and start all over again as Susan Richards.'
He got up and she came at him and he could see now she was just as crazy as she'd accused her daughter of being.
He slapped her across the mouth once, with something like expertise, and pushed her on the bed.
He stood over her and said, 'That's how you got your start in Hollywood, wasn't it? You were sleeping with them and they helped you burn down the trailer and so you were all locked in together. They had to help you succeed. Did they know your daughter was in the trailer that night?'
'No,' she said softly. 'I told them she and her father were out of town. They just thought they were helping me get a new start-burning down the trailer and sneaking out in the middle of the night. I was… crazy. All I could think of was getting rid of my daughter and husband and-' She rolled over on her stomach and put her head down and the sobs were so hard that the entire bed bounced.
He wanted to go over and slide his arm around her-he could not imagine how you could hold in your mind the fact that you had tried to kill your own child-and offer her whatever mixture of hatred and pity he felt for her.
But instead he said, 'Jere Farris was a part of this, too, wasn't he? The other night Joanna tried to tell me she'd slipped a love letter under his door-but it was a Xerox of her baby picture, the one she left with Norris and Anderson before she killed them. She killed Sanderson and Iris Graves because they'd figured out who she was too. She didn't have any choice.'
There was a knock.
Tobin kept his eyes on her as he went to get the door. When he opened it, the room was filled with the scent of the ocean. The steward stood there. 'The captain asked me to check with you after ten minutes. To see if everything was all right.' The steward carried a formidable walkie-talkie.
'Tell him everything's fine.'
The steward nodded and closed the door.
When Tobin turned back, she was gone. He went over and sat in the easy chair and listened to her pee in the toilet.
When she came out she said, 'Can you imagine her life, Tobin? Can you imagine how I've destroyed it? Her own mother trying to kill her.'
'I know.' Suddenly he was tired of her self-pity. It was her daughter who should be pitied.
'I want you to tell her that I don't expect her to forgive me. But that I do ask her to understand that I was very young and that her father was very cruel.'
'She was your daughter.'
'Just tell her that, Tobin. Just tell her that.'
He got up and put his hands in his pockets and began to pace.
He turned abruptly for the door.
'Where are you going, Tobin?' she said.
'Where the hell else?' he said. 'To find your daughter.'
47
'Where's Jere?'
'Went for a walk,' Alicia Farris said at her cabin door. 'What the hell do you want with him?”
She was drunk.
He ran the length of the deck and found no sight of Jere Farris. He found a phone in a lounge and called the captain. He explained as concisely as he could who Joanna Howard really was. 'Find her before she kills Farris,' he said.
He was back on the deck, headed for Cindy's cabin when he sensed rather than saw someone step from the shadows behind him. He'd been aware of a presence ever since leaving the lounge a few minutes ago.
She put the gun into his ribs, jamming it hard, and said, 'I want you to help me get in to see my mother.'
'I can't do that. She's under guard.'
