“That’s Marla’s version. Did you believe her?”
“Of course. But before Marla could learn more, Portia was dead. Marla did some investigating. She was sure the air bag on the passenger side of the Brants’ car had been tampered with so it inflated a precious second too late after impact. The driver would be relatively safe in a head-on collision, but the passenger would die.”
“Why didn’t she go to the police?”
“She probably would have, but while she was considering it, the salvage yard crushed the car and destroyed the evidence.”
“So Marla decided to avenge her sister’s death,” Carver said. “She was going to murder Joel Brant by setting him up, convincing the police he was fixated on her and stalking her, so she could make it look as if she’d killed him in self-defense.”
“Marla was the one with the fixation,” Willa said. “She lived with the conviction that Joel Brant had murdered her sister, but she did nothing about it. Then, three months ago, a woman named Gail she was involved with in Orlando died in a fire. First her sister, then her lover, gone. I think that’s when Marla became mentally unhinged with grief and obsessed with Joel Brant’s execution. She never called it murder. She was going to shoot him. I gave her the gun, taught her how to use it. I guess I was going to be a murderer either way.” She raised her head and stared at him beseechingly, as if she craved absolution. He couldn’t give it to her. “Do you understand now?” she asked.
He nodded silently.
She saw that he wasn’t going to forgive her. “I’m basically a good person,” she said, her voice an agony of guilt and a plea for understanding if not mercy. “Deeply religious.” She glanced with a terrible longing at the crucifix on the wall. “A good person. Nothing like any of this ever happened to me before. I lost my way. I only made one, horrible mistake that I’ll never be free of inside. But I disposed of the murder gun, and the shell casing you found doesn’t mean anything by itself. There’s no way you can prove what I just told you. No way a jury could convict me even I did have to go to trial.”
He knew she was right.
About everything but justice.
“In your case,” he said, “I don’t think it matters about the law or the jury.”
He gently removed from her hand the half-full glass of gin that was tilting sharply and about to spill, then he placed it next to the bottle on the table. On a glossy copy
Then he left her to the truth.
43
“I talked to the detective in charge of the Portia Brant accident investigation,” Carver said. “He told me there was no reason for Marla Cloy to think Joel had tampered with the passenger-side air bag. Portia’s death was an accident.”
“He could be wrong,” Beth said.
“It’s possible.”
They were sitting side by side on the plank steps of the cottage’s front porch, watching sky and ocean darken as the sun set behind them. Far offshore the lights of a cruise ship became faintly visible in the void, a distant, self-contained world of soothing delusion.
“You think she was paranoid about Joel?” Beth asked.
“I don’t know. A lonely woman, forsaken by her adoptive family, a victim of childhood molestation. Then she discovers she has a sister. A lifeline. Then she suddenly loses the sister. Easy to understand how she might have blamed Joel Brant.” Carver stared out at the distant lights that seemed motionless. “Or maybe she really did have some reason to suspect him.”
“Might she have lied to Willa Krull?” Beth asked.
“Anyone might lie to anyone.”
“Then Willa might have lied to you.”
“Yes,” Carver said, “you can call this one whichever way you choose, however your mind colors it. You were right. Sometimes the truth’s impossible to discover. Life’s about irresolution, and learning to live with it.”
“But you,” Beth said, “you discover some of the truth, then you figure out the rest as accurately as possible. You find a faint thread woven through the tapestry and you follow wherever it goes, no matter the consequences. That makes you special, Fred.”
Special? Or simply good at his work? Or maybe it was the same thing. He knew the only kind of proof he had was Willa Krull. He’d believed her story, believed her pain. She was living with the truth.
“You solved your case,” Beth said. “You found the killer and the motive. The rest is always shadow.”
Carver’s stiff leg was extended so the heel of his moccasin dug into the sandy earth beyond the steps. He and Beth were sitting so close together that their arms touched. In the dying heat they continued to watch the darkness close in. The wavering snarl of a speedboat drifted in on the night, then faded as the boat made its way south along the shoreline.
“I’ve been thinking some more about the baby,” Beth said. “Trying to come to a decision.”
“It’s your call,” Carver said. It sounded lame, but he didn’t know what else to tell her. He was with her either way. And either way, it wasn’t the kind of decision a woman made then walked away whistling. Whatever she decided, he knew he might lose her if she thought he’d pressured her into it. She’d talked to the doctor, who’d quoted her the odds on giving birth to another dead child. She knew her chances but hadn’t told Carver. With something like that, what did the odds mean, anyway, if you were the one taking the risk?
“Let’s try it,” she said.
He couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard. “You sure it’s what you want?”
“No. But I’ve made up my mind.”
He touched her hand in the dark and she squeezed his fingers hard, digging her nails into his flesh. Then her grip loosened and he heard her quiet sobs and felt their subtle vibrations.
Carver knew the truth now. She needed him.
The cruise ship’s lights had disappeared. A cool breeze came out of the night with a sound like a sudden intake of breath. Gazing into unbroken blackness, he thought of Portia and Joel Brant, of Charley Spotto and Achilles Jones, of Willa Krull sitting alone in her apartment with her gin and her
He pulled Beth to him and held her close.
Death was in the air, and she was life.
