Before Ernie could answer, Tabitha looked at Jimmy, said, “You killed her, didn’t you?”
“What?” Jimmy said.
“Caroline. You killed her.”
“Shut up,” Ernie said.
“You’re out of your mind,” Jimmy said. “You killed her.”
“No they didn’t,” I said.
Jimmy looked at me.
I said, “Trust me, they’re too stupid to have killed her and set all this up. They’re stumblers, and they stumbled on what they thought was good.”
“That’s right,” Ernie said, liking the fact that I seemed to be taking his side; stupidity had its merits.
“If you didn’t kill her,” Tabitha said, looking at Jimmy as if truly surprised, “who did?”
“I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “I still like you two for it.”
Tabitha became bold. “Well, I think you did it. I think you maybe planned it all along. Maybe you and your brother did it. You look like someone who would be mean to girls. You hit me with that stick.”
“Asp,” Jimmy said.
“It hurt.”
“Hush, Tabitha,” Ernie said.
Tabitha stopped talking. I said, “If we did do it, murdered Caroline, you’d be smarter not to let on you think we did. You consider that, Tabitha? You’ve been quiet most of this time, and now you’re talking, and you’re not thinking. You were smarter quiet. We were the murderers, you’d be next. You and him. We’d kill your asses right here. Do you really want to die on that filthy couch?”
I could see fear move across her face, and it made me feel small.
“We aren’t the murderers,” I said. “Listen up. We won’t turn you in because that just brings up the DVD, and that hurts my brother. You’re right about that part. But you’d be better off not to do anything either. We maybe got all the copies when we take this hard drive, but we don’t, you’d be better off just letting us be. You don’t want to stir us up.”
“That’s right,” Jimmy said. “We’re not for stirring.”
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, thought: We’re not for stirring. What kind of comment was that?
“We got you two on audiotape and film,” I said. “Someone shows up with a copy we don’t know about, it’ll cost them. And when I say someone, I mean you two mental giants. Blackmail, that’s no small crime. And, kids, it’s going to look more like you did Caroline in than Jimmy. Jimmy here, he gets in the deep end for wetting his willie, but you two…I don’t think you’d like how it turns out. You might be finishing out your education online in prison. They have that now. So you got that going for you.”
Ernie and Tabitha looked at each other. “We didn’t mean any harm,” Ernie said.
“Sure you did,” I said. “And you’re not off the hook on Caroline’s murder yet.”
“We haven’t really said anything that matters,” Tabitha said. “There’s nothing you taped that hurts us.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “There’s a device in my brother’s pocket, and it’s on, and I’ve got the receiver and everything you’ve said since we started dealing with you is recorded.”
“Everything you’ve said too,” Tabitha said.
“Yeah, but we’re saying things to trick you. We say what we need to say. And besides, we get in trouble, so do you. It’ll be a big cluster fuck.”
“I don’t know,” Ernie said. “You keep saying it, but I don’t know you have squat.”
I took the recorder and the receiver out of my pocket and put it on my knee. I let him look at it. Jimmy took his part of it out of his pocket. “Surprise, motherfuckers,” he said.
“By the way,” I said, “I need to change cassettes.”
Jimmy grinned at me.
I slipped another cassette in the recorder. I said, “And, we have you on film.”
“We had on ski masks,” Tabitha said.
“You sure did,” I said. “But you weren’t skiing. Won’t help you a bit. We got too much on you.”
I wasn’t really sure about that, but I tried to sound confident. “Okay. How well did you know Caroline?”
“We didn’t know her well at all,” Ernie said.
“Bullshit,” Jimmy said. “You already said you knew her.”
“We saw her around,” Ernie said.
“I’m going to call bullshit again,” Jimmy said. “Bullshit.”
Ernie looked at Tabitha. She nodded.
“That’s better,” I said.
I put the recorder on the floor by my chair. I said, “It’s very sensitive, but it would still be nice if you didn’t whisper. Tell us everything, and make it snappy. I’m starting to crave breakfast and a good cup of coffee.”
21
There was a noise at one of the windows. I turned to look. Through a part in the curtains I could see a huge golden moth beating its wings against the pane, trying to work its way to the light. I sympathized.
I turned back to Tabitha and Ernie. I didn’t say anything. Ernie just started talking.
“We’ve been doing the snooping thing something like a year now,” he said. “There were several of us at first, all university students. We read about it, about snooping, urban exploring. We thought we’d give it a try. There aren’t as many neat places here in Camp Rapture as, say, Houston, or Dallas, but there’s more than you think. We scoped out places. We watched to see who had a night watchman, who didn’t, what their weaknesses were. We even read about picking locks, which I’ve gotten pretty good at. We went all over. You’d be surprised the places we’ve been in.”
“All I’m interested in,” Jimmy said, “is where you were when you found this DVD, and what’s your connection with Caroline.”
“There wasn’t just one DVD,” Ernie said. “We got a bunch of them.”
“Of me and Caroline?” Jimmy asked.
“No,” Tabitha said. “Of a lot of men having sex with Caroline.”
A moment of silence settled on the room. Jimmy looked stunned, as if he’d just discovered one of his legs belonged to someone else and they had asked for it back.
“You’re lying,” Jimmy said, standing up from his chair, pointing the gun at Ernie.
“Goddamnit, Jimmy,” I said. “Put that thing away or I’m going to jam it up your ass. Sit.”
Jimmy looked at me, saw I meant it. After a moment he dropped the gun to his side and sat back down in his chair, an angry man with bullets and no place to shoot them.
I said to Ernie, “So there are a bunch of DVDs?”
“Yep,” Ernie said.
“Did you get them all?”
“What we could carry,” Ernie said. “There were some left. You see, we didn’t know what we were getting. Just trying to take a souvenir. We took a look at the DVDs, saw what we had. Figured we could make a little money. We’ve talked about going back for the others, but we didn’t see any real reason. I mean, we weren’t even sure the rest of the stuff was the same kind of thing, and besides, we didn’t want to be greedy. We had enough here to work up a pretty good head of steam, you know, ten thousand or so a pop.”
I studied Ernie’s face, looking for any lies there. It was a pretty bland face. I said, “A man once told me he believed in coincidences. I feel the same way. I can accept a lot. But this? Just two college kids who happen to know Caroline find a bunch of DVDs of Caroline screwing people in a building where they are snooping? And even more precious is the fact you left some there, didn’t go back to get them when you saw what kind of gold you had. Hell, Ernie. You’re going to commit a crime, might as well go the whole hog.”
“We didn’t want to be greedy.”
I let out a laugh. “Now that’s choice. That’s special. Did you know the others on the DVDs?” I asked.
“History professors. Prominent men about town. Some we didn’t know, but we recognized a lot of
