'He's not there?'
'No. He's in Ithaca and won't be back until Tuesday. John, I've been so worried about you. Where are you?'
The line went dead. Quill jiggled the cutoff button. Two quiet taps sounded at the door. Quill jumped up and flung it open. John stood there, white shirt rumpled, tieless, his sports coat filthy. The gray shadows under his eyes made his cheeks gaunt and his expression haunted.
'Come in and sit down,' said Quill. She ushered him into the room and shut the door. John slumped on the couch and rubbed his hands over his face.
'You look exhausted, John. Have you had anything to eat?'
'A Big Mac, this afternoon.'
'Meg will have a fit.'
He chuckled. 'Actually, it tasted pretty good. Sometimes you just get a craving for junk food, you know?'
Quill paced restlessly around the room. John watched her for a moment, forearms on his knees. 'I want to tell you about my prison sentence.'
Quill sat in the Eames chair, relieved.
'I went to my rooms first, before I came to see you. I wanted to show you a picture I have there, but the police...'
'Yes, I know.'
'Then you know about my sister?'
'I didn't know who she was, John, until I showed it to Nadine. Myles found the one of her in the waitress uniform at the scene of... where Gil drowned.'
'By the pond?'
'Yes. I matched it with the one you had in your room.'
'Gil was going to put it in the family album. He never had much sense. So, that explains the APB. Myles thought it connected me to the scene of the crime.'
'Yes, John. Where have you been all this time?'
'I made some - acquaintances in prison. There's a network, if you know who to talk to, where to look. That's one of the things I did while I was gone. I spent a lot of time trying to find out why Mavis came here, what she was after, what she'd been doing since I saw her last at the company.'
'So you did work together, then?'
'For about six years. It was just after I got my MBA from RIT.' He shook his head. 'I really thought I was going places, then.' His face shuttered closed. Quill waited patiently.
'We were a close family, growing up,' he said. 'My dad worked the high steel and was gone a lot. My mom stayed home. My sister Elaina was quiet, shy, never dated much in high school.' John stopped, sighed, then went on. 'I was a rowdy kid in high school, ran around with a bunch of guys who got into stupid small-time things. Lifting cigarettes from drugstores, joy-riding in other people's cars. I straightened up my senior year, and left all of it behind me when I got the scholarship. All but friends, one in particular, who married my sister. Tom Peterson's brother, Jack.' He looked at Quill, the skin drawn tight over his cheekbones.
'My dad died in a fall from a high beam. My mom passed on soon after that. Cancer. Elaina had no one but me. And Jackie, of course. Jackie who got into the booze every Saturday night, then every Friday and Saturday night, then every day of the week and came home from the bars and beat her.
'She never said a word. Not for all the time I was in school, not for the years I started working my way up to D.G.D.'s headquarters. I'd drive in from headquarters in Syracuse. We'd get together now and then, and I noticed things, as you will, in passing. A black eye. A fractured elbow. A cracked rib. Falls, she said, or clumsiness. Anyone of the million transparent excuses you hear from battered women.'
John stared at his clasped hands. 'I was into the booze pretty good myself. Earning good money. On my way up. Ignoring all the signs that told me I was in trouble, refused to believe I was another alcoholic Indian. I'd beat the stereotype, right?
'I dropped by Elaina's one Saturday afternoon. Hadn't seen her for a couple of months. I'd been to a sports bar with some of the guys from the company and we'd gotten into the Scotch. Somebody had called me at the bar. Said there was trouble. I knocked on the front door and waited. Nobody answered for a long, long time. I went around to the back. I looked in the kitchen window. The place was a mess; pots and pans allover the floor. There was a huge smear of chili on the ceiling, from where a pot'd been thrown off the stove, I guess.
'Elaina lay face down in the middle of the kitchen floor. I kicked in the lock. Went to her. Called her name. I turned her over.' A shiver went through him. It didn't reach his face. Quill swallowed, and dug her nails into her hands.
'Tomatoes get hot. He'd thrown the chili into her face, after hitting her with the pot, I guess. She was burned, from her temple, here' - he touched his own - 'to her chin. Later, we found out that she'd lost the sight of one eye. That pretty face. Gone.
'I shouted. I shouted again. I could hear the TV yowling from the living room. I ran in. Jackie was passed out on the couch. His mouth was open. He was snoring. There was tomato sauce down his shirt, on his hands. I beat him to death. And they sent me to prison.'
Quill was cold. She couldn't speak. 'Why don't I make you something to eat?' She went to her small kitchenette and busied herself. When she returned, she brought a small bowl of soup.
John sipped it, then said, 'It didn't make a big splash in the papers. But everyone in the company knew, of course. And that included Mavis. 'Mavis had a nice little sideline going.'
'She was Human Resources Director, wasn't she?' Quill's voice was rusty. She cleared her throat.
