“ I know that, otherwise I would have called the sheriff the second you walked through the door.” She wore her smile wide and she winked at him. “Hugh wouldn’t be bringing you in here if you were guilty.”
“ I appreciate your trust,” he said.
“ I’m not trusting you. I’m trusting Hugh. We go back a long way.”
“ Thanks Susan,” Washington said. “We’d like some coffee, quiet conversation and a poor memory.”
“ How poor?”
“ If anybody ever asks, Glenna and I came in alone and we got here an hour ago.”
She looked up at a Felix the Cat shaped wall clock, with a swinging tail, counting the seconds.
“ Yeah, I remember now, you came in at 3:00, I remember because that’s the time I was supposed to get off, but Clara and Ellie didn’t come in and I had to stay. You were here from then till whenever you leave.” She smiled at Hugh and asked. “Will you be leaving town in the morning?”
“ Yes.”
“ Well, I wish you all the luck.” Then she took their order.
They sat in silence, tired, tense and hungry. When the order came they wolfed it down quickly and quietly.
“ Why did you need to establish an alibi?” Monday asked when they were finished and drinking coffee. “It would have been easier and less risky to say nothing. Nobody need ever know we were up there.”
“ Ah, my felon friend,” Washington said, “once it comes out that I was up there talking to Kohler, then I might need an alibi.”
“ Why tell anyone?”
“ Because while I was up there he confessed to being behind Askew’s murder. Of course, I can’t tell anyone that, because the next logical question would be, why didn’t I arrest him, and I’d have to tell the whole story. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want Glenna involved in any of this. But what I can do is say that I was up there earlier this evening, say around 10:00, and your wife told me she found out Kohler was behind Askew’s death. I’ll say I planned to inform the police when I got more proof. It’s believable. I’m known for running an investigation close to the vest. After I left Kohler’s I went over to Palma where I had too much to drink. I came back to the motel sloshed and Glenna dragged me over here and started pouring coffee down my throat.”
“ That way,” Glenna interrupted, looking Jim directly in the eyes, “you’re off the hook for David Askew’s death and once Kohler’s name is brought up, Dad should have no trouble connecting the phony lawyers at the jail to him and-”
“ And the two I killed at Edna Lambert’s,” Jim finished the thought for her.
“ You got it,” Washington said. “Once I say that Mrs. Monday told me Kohler was behind Askew’s murder, it gives me a valid reason to investigate the doctor. It might take a week or two, but I’ll prove your innocence. You can count on it.”
Jim lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as sunlight danced in through the top of the curtains. The swaying shapes of shadows on the ceiling, caused by sunlight filtered through a shade tree outside the window, reminded him of the black and red ant wars he used to watch when he was a child. He always cheered for the black ants, the red ants always won. Life wasn’t fair then, it wasn’t fair now.
David was dead. Roma and Julia were dead. The Lamberts, whose only crime had been trying to help him, were dead. Kohler, who should be dead, was gone and Washington wanted Jim to come back to L.A. with them and give himself up.
“ It would look better,” he’d said, and Jim agreed, but he had other problems. Donna was still strapped in a hospital bed somewhere in New Zealand, about to become part of some macabre sacrifice. He had a week to get halfway around the world to find and save her.
For the fifth time in the last hour he sat up and looked at the picture on Eddie Lambert’s passport. With his long frizzy hair, bushy beard and that eye patch, he looked like a wild man. Jim slid the eye patch over his eye and looked at himself in the mirror above the bureau. The patch was the same. They both had blue eyes, but there the similarity ended. Eddie’s face in the photo seemed harsh, like he had a permanent chip on his shoulder. The face in the mirror had a satisfied, self made look about it, even with the patch. The man in the photo had a bag under his good eye, the man in the mirror did not. But still, Jim decided, if an immigration officer didn’t look too closely, it might work.
There was a gentle knock on his door.
“ Jim, it’s Glenna.”
“ What are you doing here?”
“ Can I come in?” She spoke in a soft, halting voice. She was smiling.
“ Sure.” He opened up and she came in, walked over to the double bed and sat down.
“ You’re not going back with us. You’re going to try and find her, aren’t you?”
“ Yes.”
“ Is she there now?”
“ Yes.”
“ Have you been, I don’t know how to say it, talking, I guess?”
“ No. Not since earlier tonight. Since she made me snap out of my grief and cut your father loose.”
“ Then how do you know she’s still there?”
“ I just know.”
“ Would you ask her a question for me?”
“ Sure.”
“ Ask her if it’s okay if we make love.”
“ What?” Jim was shocked. Her question was the last thing he expected. She was a nice girl, but that’s what she was, a girl. And even if she wasn’t, he’d just lost his wife, her throat cut and her body still smoldering in that gray house. Even if he wanted to, he probably couldn’t.
“ Tell her it’s okay,” Donna thought.
“ No, I won’t. It’s not okay.”
“ She needs you. You owe it to her.”
Glenna watched the struggle going on inside of him. The back and forth written on his face. There was nothing she could do except sit on the bed with her hands folded in her lap and wait. Wait and count on Donna to understand.
“ No, I don’t, and how can you think I do?”
“ She saved your life and now she’s asking you to save hers. It’s fair. A life for a life.”
“ What do you mean?”
“ Ask her.”
“ Why? Why me? Why now?” he asked Glenna.
“ What did she say?”
“ It’s not relevant.”
“ What did she say?” Glenna insisted.
“ She said it’s okay, but that’s not the point.”
“ I knew she’d understand.”
“ I don’t understand.” Jim was perplexed.
“ When that man raped me he took something from me and I haven’t been able to get it back. On the surface I pretend I’m this superwoman that can handle anything. It’s out of my mind, I tell myself. I’m over it, I tell myself. All men aren’t like that, I tell myself. But dammit, it’s not out of my mind. I’m not over it and part of me thinks that all men are like that. I’ve never had real sex and I’m afraid that I never will. Now I’ve met you, another man besides my father who I can believe in. I need help. I want you to help make me whole.”
“ Even if I wanted to, I don’t think I can.”
“ Let’s see,” she said, her liquid brown eyes on the verge of tears as she lifted off her tee shirt. Her bare breasts were caught in the early light, copper globes casting perfect shadows. He knew he’d be able to do what she wanted and he knew that it was right.
Once again he was entwined with Donna as they watched Glenna kick her shoes off. He felt Donna sigh as Glenna slipped down her jeans and he felt Donna’s strong sexual desire as Glenna opened her arms and beckoned
