Cars drove by. The front door of the Elbow Room opened and closed. I heard hushed voices punctuated by mean girlish laughter. Gilmore took me by the armiveil an19; and got me to my knees.
A few of the other patrons walked by on their way to their cars. Gilmore acknowledged them and said, “Evening.”
I deserved what I’d gotten. I accepted it the way I’d accepted the beating from Big Dan’s boys. I took my chances with my eyes open.
Still, I thought Gilmore was overreacting a bit. It was a petty move. He knew I’d never punch a cop, not even in self-defense.
He tried to help me to my feet, but I was still too wobbly. He left me kneeling on asphalt and patted my back tenderly.
“You know, Terrier, you broke your mother’s heart.”
Jesus Christ, I thought, here it comes.
He toed the paperwork scattered across the ground. He said nothing about it.
“I always liked you. You and your whole family. From the start, or nearly so, we understood each other. There are lines you cross and those you don’t. Your grandfather knew that, your uncles, your father. But it got crossed up when it came to you and your brother.”
I wanted to tell him I was nothing like Collie, but I still couldn’t speak. The pain was lessening. I breathed deep. As I listened to him talking quietly behind me, I couldn’t stop picturing him pulling his piece and popping me in the back of my head, execution style.
“I wish you would’ve called me. I wish you would have asked. I deserve that much respect, no matter what you think of me or cops in general.” He rubbed my back again, took a deep drag on his cigarette, and let the smoke out over my shoulder. “I thought you were the bright one. I thought you might be going somewhere. I had hopes, Terry, I really did. I figured you and Kimmy would get out of that house and go your own way. You’d leave the life behind and raise a family. It would’ve been a good thing. I knew you had it in you.” He sighed. “But then you ran out on everyone. You showed a real lack of character there, you know?”
I knew.
“You got a wife wherever you been living? Kids?”
I coughed and shook my head.
“That’s too bad.” He flicked his cigarette butt away, lit another. “Did you really come back just to stir up trouble?”
“No,” I groaned.
“Well, that’s good to hear. I’m happy to hear that. You still on the grift wherever it is you’ve gotten to?”
“No.”
“Good, that’s good to know. But there’s something about home that brings it out in you again, huh?”
I thought it might be time to try standing. He slung one of my arms over his shoulder and helped me up. When I was on my feet again, I propped myself against the back bumper of my car. I slumped there for a couple of minutes, watching him smoke.
When I was able to, I bent and retrieved the copied files, opened the car door, and stuffed them back under the passenger seat.
“I bet you could use a beer right about now,” Gilmore said.
My voice sounded exactly like I felt-sick, weak, trembling. “I think I’m done for the night.”
“Then you can buy me one. Come on, Terry.”
He turned away from me and headttedth='1ed into the Elbow Room. I followed him, limping along. I smelled like asphalt and vomit. I thought I might get sick again the second I stepped back into the bar. Gilmore breezed over to the table I’d been at and took the opposite bench. I sat exactly where I’d been sitting all night.
The waitress came by and Gilmore ordered us two beers. She returned with them and he paid her and said thank you. I grabbed the wet bar towel from her tray and wiped my face with it.
Gilmore sipped his beer and stared at me like I was a long-lost friend he’d been searching for and had finally found. “You look well,” he said.
“I’ve been better.”
“You deserved worse from me, but we’ll let that slide for now.”
His eyes were dark and lonely. His kids were gone. He probably saw them only on alternating weekends, if that. When he was forced to drop them off at their mother’s again, the grief would try to drown him from the inside.
“You didn’t hang around for your brother’s trial,” he continued. “You never got to see the evidence against him. Hear the witnesses. Listen to the testimony. Take the stand in his defense. Your mother did, you know. She wept the whole time but she tried to put in a righteous word. You could’ve said something too, if you’d cared.”
“What would the point have been? He admitted his guilt.”
“That’s right, he did.”
I started to feel better. Suddenly I wanted the beer that was in front of me. I took a swig. Gilmore finished his and ordered another round. He paid again. Our eyes met.
“You know what he says now?” I asked.
“That he didn’t smoke the teenage girl. Rebecca Clarke.”
“That’s right. Is there any chance it’s the truth?”
“None,” Gilmore said. “He did them all.”
“He never confessed to killing her.”
“He didn’t have to. Maybe he just forgot. Isn’t that what he said? That he wasn’t sure at the time? A night like that, a crazy murder spree. Who wouldn’t want to forget?”
I nodded and sipped. “What about the kiss?”
He pulled that tight and wistful grin again. He couldn’t help himself, his face fell into it so naturally now. It showed me how forlorn he’d become. He let out a false chuckle that told me even more about how his life had smashed up since I’d last seen him. “You spotted that, huh? Sharp eyes.”
“Yes. He apparently kissed them all on the forehead. But not Rebecca Clarke.”
“So he was too excited. So he was too juiced up on rage or adrenaline to perform that specific sick ritual that one particular time. He still choked her to death.”
“Maybe not. What about the sash or cord? What about the knife? They were never found.”
“So he ditched them. He admitted to knifing the gas-station attendant, Douglas Schuller.”
“Right, he admitted it to me again the other day. But he said he didn’t snuff Becky Clarke.”
“Did his wife put you up to this?” Gilmore asked.
I drew my chin back. “You know about her?”
“Yeah, she haunts me on a weekly basis.”
“But you never mentioned her to my mother or father?”
“They’ve cut themselves off from your brother. It wasn’t my place to lay something like that in their laps. Have you told them?”
“No,” I said. “You’ve met Lin?”
“She’s made it her life’s mission to cause me heartburn. She camps out in my office, brings me information. What she calls evidence. Jail-house lawyers are bad enough, but jailhouse wife attorney-wannabes are much worse. You know who falls in love with death-row inmates?”
“Mentally unstable individuals.”
“That’s right. Imagine what Christmas dinner is going to be like if she ever shows up on your doorstep.”
I took a pull of beer and propped myself up lengthwise in the booth. I swallowed a grunt of pain. I watched Gilmore. There was a certain air to him that it took me a moment to place. He was doing his best to assure and console me.
“He told me there’d been others,” I said.
Gilmore angled himself closer. “What others?”
“Not others he’d iced. Other girls who fit Rebecca Clarke’s profile, murdered in similar ways. Some while he was in prison.”
“Three or four.”
“Doesn’t that make it suspicious?”
Gilmore held back a mocking laugh, the strength of it causing his body to shake. “You know how many unsteady
