A-Way Motel.' He looks up and sees nothing but Sally's gray eyes. 'Someone at the rental car desk recommended it.'
Sally knows the place, a dump on the other side of the Turnpike, near a vegetable stand and a fried-chicken franchise known for its excellent onion rings. She could not care less if he's staying in a lousy motel like that. She doesn't give a damn that he's leaving tomorrow. As a matter of fact, she'll be leaving, too. She and her girls will be out of here in no time. If they wake early, and don't stop for coffee, they can make it to Massachusetts by noon. They can be opening the curtains in the aunts' dark rooms to let in some sunlight just after lunch.
'Thanks for the coffee,' Gary says. He spies the half-dead cactus on the window ledge. 'This is definitely not representative of the species. It's in sad shape, I'll tell you that.'
Last winter, Ed Borelli gave each of the secretaries at the high school a cactus for Christmas. 'Plop it on your windowsill and forget about it,' Sally had advised when complaints were raised about who on earth would want such a thing, and other than slosh some water onto its saucer now and then, that's exactly what she herself has done. But Gary is paying the cactus a good deal of attention. He's got that worried look, and he's fumbling with something stuck between the saucer the cactus rests on and its pot. When he turns back to face Sally and Gillian, he seems so pained that Sally's first thought is that he's pricked his finger.
'Damn it,' Gillian whispers.
It's Jimmy's silver ring Gary is holding on to, and that's what's causing him such pain. They're going to lie to him and he knows it. They're going to tell him they've never seen this ring before, or that they bought it in an antique store, or that it must have dropped from the heavens above.
'Nice ring,' Gary says. 'Real unusual.'
Neither Sally nor Gillian can figure how this can be possible; they know for a fact that ring was on Jimmy's finger, it's buried out back, and yet here it is in the investigator's hand. And he's looking at Sally now; he's waiting for an explanation. Why shouldn't he be; he's read a description of this ring in three depositions: A rattler on one side of it, he remembers that. A coiled snake, which is exactly what he's got now.
Sally feels that heart-attack thing again; it's something wrong in the center of her chest, like a red-hot poker, like a piece of glass, and there's nothing she can do about it. She couldn't lie to this man if her life depended on it—and it does—and that's the reason she doesn't say a word.
'Well, look at that.' Gillian is all wonder and sugar. It's so easy for her to do this, she doesn't have to think twice. 'That old thing's probably been there for a million years.'
Sally's still not talking, but she's leaning all her weight against the refrigerator, as though she needed help to stand up.
'Is that so?' Gary says, still drowning.
'Let me take a look.' Gillian goes right up to him and takes the ring out of his hands and studies it as if she's never seen it before. 'Cool,' she says, giving it back. 'You should probably keep it.' This is such a nice touch she is truly proud of herself. 'It's much too big for any of us.'
'Well, great.' Gary's head is pounding. Fuck it. Fuck it all. 'Thanks.'
As he slips the ring into his pocket, he's thinking that Sally's sister is really good at this; she's probably well aware of James Hawkins's whereabouts as of this very second. Sally, however, is another story; maybe she doesn't know anything, maybe she's never seen this ring before. Her sister could have her fooled completely, could be siphoning money, groceries, family heirlooms to Hawkins as he watches TV in some basement apartment in Brooklyn, waiting for the heat to die down.
But Sally isn't looking at him, that's the thing. Her beautiful face is turned away because she knows something. Gary has seen it before, countless times.
People who are guilty of something think they can hide it by not looking you in the eye; they presume you can read their shame, that you can see in through their eyes to their very soul, and in a way they're right.
'I guess we're done,' Gary says. Unless there's something you've suddenly thought of that I should know.'
Nothing. Gillian grins and shrugs. Sally swallows, hard. Gary can practically feel how dry her throat is, how the pulse at the base of her neck is throbbing. He's not certain how far he would go to cover for someone. He's never been in the position before and he doesn't like the feel of it, yet here he is, standing in a stranger's kitchen in New York on a humid summer day, actually wondering if he could look the other way. And then he thinks about his grandfather walking to the courthouse to legally claim him on a day when it was a hundred and twelve in the shade. The air started to sizzle; the mesquite and the Russian thistle burst into flame, but Sonny Hallet had thought to bring a container of cool spring water with him, and he wasn't even tired when he walked inside the courthouse. If you go against what you believe in, you're nothing anyway, so you might as well stick to your guns. Gary's going to fly home tomorrow and hand this case over to Arno. He can't even pretend it will turn out all right: that Hawkins will surrender, and Sally and her sister will be proven innocent of assisting a murder suspect, and Gary himself will start writing to Sally. If he did, perhaps she wouldn't be able to throw away his letters; she'd have to read each one again and again, exactly the way he did when hers was delivered, and before she knew it, she'd be lost, the way he seems to be at this very moment.
Since none of this is going to happen, Gary nods and heads for the door. He has always known when to step aside, and when to sit by the road and just wait for whatever was going to happen next. He saw a mountain lion one afternoon because he decided to sit down on the bumper of his truck and drink some water before changing a blown tire. The mountain lion came padding toward the asphalt, as if it owned the road and everything else, and it took a good took at Gary, who had never before been grateful for a flat tire.
'I'll have the Oldsmobile picked up by Friday,' Gary says now, but he doesn't look behind him until he's out on the porch. He doesn't know that Sally might easily have followed him, if her sister hadn't pinched her and whispered for her to stay where she was. He doesn't know how badly this thing inside Sally's chest hurts her, but that's what happens when you're a liar, especially when you're telling the worst of these lies to yourself.
'Thanks a million,' Gillian sings out, and by the time Gary turns to look behind him, there's nothing to see but the locked door.
As far as Gillian's concerned, it's all over and done with. 'Well, hallelujah,' she says when she goes back to the kitchen. 'We got rid of him.'
Sally is already dealing with the lasagna noodles that have been congealing in the colander. She tries to pry them out with a wooden spoon, but it's too late, they're stuck together. She dumps the whole thing into the trash and then she starts to cry.
'What is your problem?' Gillian asks. It is times like these that provoke perfectly rational people to say what the hell and light up cigarettes. Gillian looks through the junk drawer, hoping to find an old pack, but the best she comes up with is a box of wooden matches. 'We got rid of him, didn't we? We seemed totally innocent. In spite of that damn ring. I'll tell you that thing scared the pants off me. That was like looking the devil right in the eye. But honey, we fooled that investigator anyway, and we did a good job of it.'
'Oh,' Sally says, completely disgusted. 'Oh,' she cries.
'Well, we did! We pulled it off, and we should be proud of ourselves.'
'For lying?' Sally rubs at her leaking eyes and nose. Her cheeks are red and she's snuffling like crazy and she can't get rid of that awful feeling in the dead center of her chest. 'Is that what you think we should be proud of?'
'Hey.' Gillian shrugs. 'You do what you have to.' She peers into the trash at the globby noodles. 'Now what do we do for dinner?'
That's when Sally throws the colander across the room.
'You are in bad shape,' Gillian says. 'You'd better call your internist or your gynecologist or somebody and get a tranquilizer.'
'I'm not doing this.' Sally grabs the pot of tomato sauce, to which she's added onions and mushrooms and sweet red pepper, and pours it into the sink.
'Fine.' Gillian is ready to agree to any reasonable plan. 'You don't have to cook. We'll get take-out.'
'I'm not referring to dinner.' Sally has grabbed her car keys and her wallet. 'I'm talking about the truth.'
'Are you out of your mind?' Gillian goes after Sally, and when Sally keeps heading toward the door, Gillian reaches for her arm.
'Don't you dare pinch me,' Sally warns her.
