“I asked him if he thought that was God’s way of punishing Andrew. You know, an eye-for-an-eye sort of thing. Just like he lost his eyesight over what he did to you.”
“God didn’t throw the bacon grease,” Diana said. “I did.”
“But God’s responsible for the result, isn’t he?” Myrna Louise insisted. “If God had wanted it to work that way, he could have just burned him, but he wouldn’t have been blind. Don’t you see?”
“Not exactly,” Diana said.
“Well, anyway, now I hear you’re writing a book about him.”
“Yes, although it’s not just about him. It’s about all the people whose lives he touched. Whose lives he changed.”
“Or ended,” Myrna Louise added sadly. “It serves him right that he doesn’t get to write his own book. He asked you to do that, to write it?”
“Yes.”
“That’s hard for me to believe, but I don’t suppose anything about Andrew should surprise me anymore. I would think he would have wanted to write it himself, even if he couldn’t get it published. He’s still angry with me about the manuscript, you know.”
“What manuscript?”
“Of his book. The book he wrote when he was in prison the first time.”
“And what happened to it?” Diana asked.
“I burned it,” Myrna Louise said thoughtfully. “One page at a time.”
“There aren’t any copies left?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And what did your son call this book?”
Myrna Louise shook her head. “I don’t remember the name of it now. After all these years, I guess I’ve managed to forget what it was exactly, although I remember the title had something to do with Indians. I didn’t read the whole thing, just parts of it. It was awful. I couldn’t believe anyone could write such terrible stuff. The things his main character did to other characters were just awful. It made me feel filthy just having in my hands. But of course, I know now that he must not have made some of that up.”
“What do you mean, he didn’t make it up?” Diana asked.
“That he had actually done some of those things himself. And that there were others.”
“Other what?” Diana asked.
“Other victims,” Myrna Louise answered. “Ones the police knew nothing about.”
For several moments after that, Diana didn’t trust herself to speak. She was thinking about the ashes of the cassette tape she had swept out of the fireplace and thrown into the garbage can before Brandon and the kids came home from Payson. If there were other victims, did that also mean there were other tapes?
“You told me a little while ago that he tried to kill you the same day he attacked me.”
“He didn’t exactly try,” Myrna Louise corrected. “He was going to. He planned to, but I drove away before he had a chance.”
“Did he have a tape recorder or tapes with him that day?”
Myrna Louise pursed her lips. “It’s really hard for me to talk about this,” she said.
“About what?”
“About the tape recorder.”
Diana felt a chill run up and down her spine. “So there was a tape recorder?”
“Yes,” Myrna Louise answered. “Yes, there was.”
“What happened to it?”
“That’s the part I don’t want to talk about. When the detectives found it under the car seat in Jake’s Valiant —my second husband’s Valiant—I told them it was mine and they let me keep it. If you write into your book that it was really Andrew’s, I might still get in trouble over it. For concealing evidence.”
“What did you do with the tape recorder, Mrs. Rivers?” Diana asked. “It could be very important.”
“I pawned it,” Myrna Louise answered. “Andrew asked me about it later, about what had happened to it. I told him the detectives took it. So, please, it’s better if you don’t say anything about it at all. It could raise all kinds of ruckus.”
“When you took the recorder, were there any tapes with it?”
“Only some blanks. A whole package of blanks.”
“But none that had been used?”
For a long time after that, Myrna Louise Rivers didn’t answer. She had gathered up the deck of cards from the table and sat there absently shuffling them. Finally she reached for her walker and stood up.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Rivers,” Diana said. “I haven’t had a chance to ask you . . .”
“We have to go back to my room now,” Myrna Louise said. “They’ll be setting up for lunch in a few minutes anyhow, so we’ll need to be out of the way. But I want to give you something.”
