More Twisted: Collected Stories, Vol. II

“Did you rob her? And kill her when she wouldn’t give you her wedding and engagement rings?”

“If she was getting divorced why wouldn’t she give me her rings?”

Phelan meant this only rhetorically. To point out the flaw in Boyle’s logic.

Homicide had discounted robbery as a motive immediately. Anna Devereaux’s purse, eight feet from her body, had contained eleven credit cards and $180 cash.

Boyle picked up the manila folder, read some more, dropped it on the tabletop.

Why?.…

It seemed appropriate that the operative word when it came to James Kit Phelan’s life would be a question. Why had he killed Anna Devereaux? Why had he committed the other crimes he’d been arrested for? Many of them gratuitous. Never murder, but dozens of assaults. Drunk and disorderlies. A kidnapping that got knocked down to an aggravated assault. And who exactly was James Kit Phelan? He’d never talked much about his past. Even the Current Affair story had managed to track down only two former cellmates of Phelan for on-camera interviews. No relatives, no friends, no ex-wives, no high school teacher or bosses.

Boyle asked, “James, what I hear you saying is, you yourself don’t have the faintest idea why you killed her.”

Phelan pressed his wrists together and swung the chain so that it rang against the table again. “Maybe it’s something in my mind,” he said after some reflection.

They’d given him the standard battery of tests and found nothing particularly illuminating and the department shrinks concluded that “the prisoner presents with a fairly strong tendency to act out what are classic antisocial proclivities” — a diagnosis Boyle had responded to by saying, “Thanks, Doc, his rap sheet says the same thing. Only in English.”

“You know,” Phelan continued slowly, “I sometimes feel something gets outta control in me.” His pale lids closed over the blue eyes and Boyle imagined for a moment that the crescents of flesh were translucent and that the eyes continued to peer out into the small room.

“How do you mean, James?” The captain felt his heart rate increase. Wondered: Are we really closing in on the key to the county’s perp of the decade?

“Some of it might have to do with my family. There was a lotta crap when I was growing up.”

“How bad?”

“Really bad. My father did time. Theft, domestics, drunk and disorderlies. Things like that. He’d beat me a lot. He and my mother were supposedly this great couple at first. Really in love. That’s what I heard but that’s not what it looked like to me. You married, Captain?” Phelan glanced at his left hand. There was no band. He never wore one; as a rule Boyle tried to keep his personal life separate from the office. “I am, yes.”

“How long?”

“Twenty years.”

“Man,” Phelan laughed. “Long time.”

“I met Judith when I was in the academy.”

“You been a cop all your life. I read that profile of you.” He laughed. “In that newspaper issue with the headline, after you caught me. ‘Checkmate.’ That was funny.” Then the smile faded. “See, after my mother was gone, my father never had anybody in his life for more’n a year. Part of it was he couldn’t never keep a job. We moved all the time. I mean, we lived in twenty states, easy. The article said you’d lived ’round here most of your life.”

He’s opening up, Boyle thought excitedly. Keep him going.

“Lived three miles from here, in Marymount, going on twenty-one years.”

“I’ve been through there. Pretty place. I lived in plenty of small towns. It was tough. School was the worst. New kid in class. I always got the crap beat out of me. Hey, that’d be one advantage, having a cop for a dad. Nobody’d pick on you.”

Boyle said, “That may be true but there’s another problem. I’ve got my share of enemies, you can imagine. So we keep moving the kids from one school to another. Try to keep ’em out of public schools.”

“You send ’em to private?”

“We’re Catholic. They’re in a parochial school.”

“That one in Granville? That place looks like a college campus. Must set you back some. Man.”

“No, they’re up in Edgemont. It’s smaller but it still costs a bundle. You ever have kids?”

Phelan put on a tough face. They were getting close to something, Boyle could sense.

“In a way.”

Encourage him. Gentle, gentle.

“How’s that?”

“My mama died when I was ten.”

“I’m sorry, James.”

“I had two little sisters. Twins. They were four years younger’n me. I pretty much had to take care of them. My father, he ran around a lot, like I was saying. I sorta learned what it was like to be a father by the time I was twelve.”

Boyle nodded. He’d been thirty-six when Jon was born. He still wasn’t sure he knew what it was like to be a father. When he told Phelan this the prisoner laughed. “How old’re your kids?”

“Jonathon, he’s ten. Alice is nine.” Boyle resisted a ridiculous urge to flash his wallet pictures.

Phelan suddenly grew somber. The chains clinked.

“See, the twins were always wanting something from me. Toys, my time, my attention, help ’em read this, what does this mean?… Jesus.”

Boyle noted the anger on the face. Keep going, he urged silently. He didn’t write any notes, afraid that he might break the stream of thought. That could lead to the magic why.

“Man, it damn near drove me nuts. And I had to do it all by myself. My father was always on a date — well, he called ’em dates — or was passed out drunk.” He looked up quickly. “Hell, you don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

Boyle was stung by the sudden coldness in the prisoner’s voice.

“I sure do,” the captain said sincerely. “Judith works. A lotta times I end up with the kids. I love them and everything — just like you loved your sisters, I’m sure — but, man, it takes a lot out of you.”

Phelan drifted away for a moment. Eyes as glazed as Anna Devereaux’s. “Your wife works, does she? My mama wanted to work too. My father wouldn’t let her.”

He calls his mother “Mama,” but his father by the more formal name. What do I make of that?

“They fought about it all the time. Once, he broke her jaw when he found her looking through the want ads.”

And when she passed me I hit her hard in the neck and she fell down.

“What’s your wife do?” Phelan asked.

“She’s a nurse. At St. Mary’s.”

“That’s a good job,” Phelan said. “My mother liked people, liked to help them. She’da been a good nurse.” His face grew dark again. “I think about all those times my father hit her…. That’s what started her taking pills and stuff. And she never stopped taking ’em. Until she died.” He leaned forward and whispered, “But you know the terrible thing.” Avoiding Boyle’s eyes.

“What, James? Tell me.”

“See, sometimes I get this feeling… I sorta blame it all on my mother. If she hadn’t whined so much about getting a job, if she’d just been happy staying home…. Stayed home with me and the girls, then Dad wouldn’t’ve had to hit her.”

Then I sat on her and grabbed this scarf she was wearing and pulled it real tight and I squeezed until she stopped moving, then I still kept squeezing.

“And she wouldn’t’ve started drinking and taking those pills and she’d still be here.” He choked. “I sometimes feel good thinking about him hitting her.”

The cloth felt good on my wrists.

He blew a long stream of air from his lungs. “Ain’t a pretty thing to say, is it?”

“Life ain’t pretty sometimes, James.”