Crazybone

by Bill Pronzini

  “No!” He had both hands up in front of him, palms out, as if he were trying to ward off my accusations. “I never raped her! I never raped any woman!”

  “Then how did she die?”

  He shook his head, hard.

  “How did Sheila Hunter die, Twining?”

  “...Accident.” The word came out convulsively, like a piece of something that had been choking him and that he’d hacked loose. It left him panting a little, so that his next words were broken and wheezy. “An accident, I swear to God... an accident.”

  “She just slipped and fell, I suppose. All by herself.”

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “No? Tell me how it happened.”

  “I... all right. All right.” Deep, shaky breath. “I talked my way into the house, made a pass at her... nothing heavy, I just nuzzled her a little. And she... I don’t know, she just went crazy. Screamed at me, slapped my face. I shoved her away, but she came right back with those goddamn claws out, marked me, broke the chain... But I didn’t hit her, not even then. I shoved her away again, that’s all, I swear it. It wasn’t my fault. She was cooking something, hot dog in a pot, and she grabbed the pot and swung it at me. I couldn’t get out of the way in time, fucking pot slammed my elbow and threw hot water all over me. Would’ve scalded me if it’d been boiling, but she hurt me enough as it was—”

  “Hold it. Where’d you say she hit you with the pot?”

  “My elbow. Right on the crazybone. Man, you must know how much that hurts, you get hit on the crazybone like that.”

  Sweet Jesus!

  “I went a little crazy myself,” he said. “Anybody would, getting marked and then hit like that. I smacked her. Sure, I smacked her... it was self-defense. You can see that, can’t you? I smacked her good, right in the face, I was only trying to protect myself, and she went over backward and her head... ah, man, I can still hear the sound her head made when it hit that wood corner...” Twining’s face screwed up for a few seconds, as if he might cry. If he had, the tears would not have been for Sheila Hunter; they would have been for Richard Twining. He dry-washed his face again, looked up at me pleadingly. “Dead. Caved in the back of her skull. There wasn’t anything I could do for her. Eyes all rolled up into the back of her head, no pulse, blood in her hair... dead, just like that.”

  I didn’t say anything. In my mouth was a taste like ashes and bile. “An accident, a freak accident,” Twining said. “But who’d believe it? She’d marked me, it happened in her house... I was scared. Scared and not thinking straight. At first I just wanted to get out of there, run like hell, but I couldn’t do that with my gold chain all over the floor, my fingerprints Christ knew where... and suppose somebody’d seen me drive in? And I’d talked to Mack Judson about her, his office is next to mine and she’d called him about putting her house up for sale. That’s why I went out to see her, I figured it was my last chance...” Headshake. “I couldn’t just leave her there. I had to do something.”

  “So you cleaned up the kitchen and took her body away.”

  “What else could I do? It was the only thing I could think to do. I wrapped her up in some sheets and put her in the trunk of my car. I had her purse, her keys... I locked up the house, turned on the alarm system. Her car was in the garage but there wasn’t anything I could do about that, I had to leave it where it was...”

  “The body, Twining. What’d you do with it?”

  Another headshake. He didn’t want to talk about that.

  “Buried her somewhere, is that what you did?”

  No answer.

  “Took her up here and buried her,” I said. “Right here on this isolated property of yours.”

  A guess, but the right one. He twitched a little, looked away, looked back at me. “I didn’t want to risk going anywhere else,” in a hoarse whisper. “Rack in the trees—”

  “Don’t tell me. Save if for the police.”

  “Police.” The word produced a shudder. He sat there for a few seconds, abruptly tried to got up and then sank back down as if he had no strength. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got money, about thirty thousand in liquid assets and I can raise another hundred or so, more if I sell my house. It’s yours, every penny, if you—”

  “You can’t buy my silence, Twining. You couldn’t buy it for ten million dollars. Two women are dead and a little girl is an orphan because of you, and you’re not going to pay for that with money.”

  “Two women? No,” he said, “you’re wrong. Sheila Hunter, yeah, it was self-defense, I panicked, but nobody else...”

  “Dale Cooney. Her you killed in cold blood.”

  “No! You can’t pin that on me. She was a lush, she drove home drunk and passed out in her garage with the engine running... another accident, that’s what everybody’s saying...”

  “Murder. Your murder.”

  “For Chrissake, why would I kill Dale Cooney?”

  “I think she showed up at the Hunter house after Sheila Hunter died, while you were still there. Fortified with booze, mourning her lover, and looking to tell his widow what she thought of her. I think she saw you and your car, the scratches on your neck, maybe even you putting the body in the trunk.”

  “No.”

  “I think you used that glib, bullshit charm of yours to convince her nothing was wrong, get her to leave. But you were still in a panic, afraid she’d change her mind and contact the police. So you followed her home. Either she told you her husband was away for the weekend or you knew it some other way. Nobody else on the premises made it easy to hit her with something, arrange things to look like she’d passed out with the engine running. But you screwed up with the Scotch. She was a gin drinker, martinis. If you’d remembered that, you could’ve used her house key and gotten a bottle of her Bombay gin, but you wanted out of there and it was quicker to use the Speyburn — your brand of single malt, a bottle from your car. Might have one of your fingerprints on it, even if you did try to wipe it clean. Premeditated, first-degree murder.”

  “I didn’t do any of that! I never saw Dale Cooney that day! I tell you I didn’t kill her, I didn’t have anything to do with it!”

  Lies. I knew it and he knew I knew it, but he was not going to budge. I could almost see the wheels turning inside his head, the protective shell he was trying desperately to hold tight around himself. He’d admitted what happened with Sheila Hunter, but in his mind it was an accident, self-defense, not his fault, and nobody would ever convince him otherwise. He’d moved and buried her body, he was probably going to prison, but maybe a judge and jury would be inclined to leniency; he was a pillar of the community, he’d made a mistake and he was sorry and willing to pay for it, he’d throw himself on the mercy of the court.

  But Dale Cooney’s death was just what I’d said it was — coldblooded murder. Admit that, and he’d go to prison for the rest of his life, possibly even wind up on death row. Admit the truth, and it made him into something he couldn’t face up to in either the public eye or his own eyes — it made him a kind of monster. So he’d deny it and he’d keep on denying it, the way the famous football player turned actor had denied guilt all through his trial and ever since. Nobody’d ever shake the truth out of Richard Twining, no matter what.

  But he knew what he’d done. He’d have to live with the knowledge for the rest of his life, and even if the law couldn’t find enough evidence to convict him of Dale Cooney’s murder, he wouldn’t escape punishment for it. He’d be punished plenty, sorry bastard that he was, in the cold, sleepless dark of the nights to come.

  I’d had enough of him: I’d had too much of too many people like him who refused to accept responsibility for their actions. I said, “All right. Put on the rest of your clothes. It’s time for the police.”

  “Listen,” he said, “please, isn’t there any way—?”

  “Not with me. Get dressed. Now.”

  He got slowly to his feet, reached out an unsteady hand for his shirt. Not looking at me, he said, “Sheila H
unter... honest to God, it was an accident. You tell the police that.”

  “Tell them yourself what you did or didn’t do.”

  “I never saw Dale Cooney that day, I hadn’t seen her in weeks, I didn’t have anything to do with her dying. They have to believe me. They have to!”

  I quit listening to him. Quit thinking about him. What I thought about, standing there waiting for him to finish dressing was Emily and what I would have to say to her pretty soon, the terrible things I would have to say to that little girl.

  23

  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

  Kerry was there for moral support, but that did not make if any easier. I still had to say the words, and to look into those sad, lost eyes as I said them. Omitting the more sordid details didn’t help, either. Nor did using softened phrasing and clichés and half-truths like “Your mom and dad did a bad thing once but they weren’t had people” and “What happened to your mom wasn’t her fault; the man who killed her is sick, as sick as the one who hurt her before you were born.” Kerry tried, too, in the same vein. “She loved you, she’d never have abandoned you” and “Your parents didn’t tell you the truth because they wanted to protect you.” Awkward, hitter, empty, comfortless words, every one.

  Emily sat there and listened to them with no outward emotion, without even flinching much — and maybe without really believing the clichés and half-truths. Her only reaction, when I broke the news about her mother, was to squeeze her eyes shut and say, “I knew she was dead.” She spoke little after that. And when it was over I was the one who sat tense and sweating; her body was slack, her face and eyes clear and dry. She had already done most of her weeping, I thought, and if there were any more tears she would shed them quietly and alone. Her outward appearance was a child’s protective armor. Inside, she had to be a mass of bruises — stoned and hurting from all those awkward, bitter, empty, comfortless words.

  It was just as well neither Kerry nor I could think of anything more to say; silence was a few seconds of mercy. Emily was the one who finally ended it.

  “Where will I go now?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Nowhere, honey,” Kerry said. “You’ll stay right here with us.”

  “I mean later. Will I have to live with Aunt Karen?”

  “No way,” I said. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Not even if she comes back to her house?”

  “No matter where she ends up.”

  “What about Uncle Mike?”

  “I promise you that won’t happen, either.”

  “Then where will I live? There isn’t anyone else.”

  Kerry and I exchanged glances. She said, “What will probably happen is that you’ll be made a ward of the court. Do you know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “It means a judge will make the decision because you’re not old enough yet. He’ll work with a child welfare agency to find a foster family for you to live with.”

  “Strangers,” Emily said.

  “Yes, but a good family, with other kids your age—”

  “I don’t think I’ll like that.”

  “Why not? Once you get to know them—”

  “I don’t make friends very well. I don’t feel comfortable with people I don’t know.”

  Amen, I thought.

  Kerry said, “You feel comfortable with us, don’t you?”

  “You’re different — you’re older. I mean kids my age. Mom and Dad never wanted me to have friends and now I know why.”

  No answer for that. Neither Kerry nor I spoke.

  “I guess I couldn’t keep on staying here?”

  “Oh, honey,” Kerry said. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “I know. But I thought I’d ask anyway.”

  “It’s not that we don’t want you...”

  “I know,” Emily said again. “Is it all right if I go to my room now?”

  “Of course it’s all right. Would you like to take Shameless with you?”

  “No. I want to be alone.”

  “Well, if there’s anything...”

  She shook her head and got up and went away, small and stooped, very young and very old.

  Kerry and I just sat there. After a while she said, “My God, that was awful. Awful. The look on her face... I wish there was something we could do for her.”

  “She can’t keep on living here. You know that.”

  “I know it, but still... something...”

  “We already did the only thing we can do,” I said. “We told her the truth.”

  Cybil paid us a semisurprise visit two nights later. She’d been asking about Emily and she wanted to meet her and she didn’t care to wait, she said, until we got around to issuing an invitation or bringing the kid to Larkspur. She didn’t drive much anymore, especially at night, which was a measure of how deeply her interest ran. Besides which, it was obvious she was still feeling her oats; the Nurse Dunn episode and the attendant publicity had elevated her confidence level and made her a touch more imperious.

  There was an instant rapport between Cybil and Emily. The girl had been quiet and withdrawn, keeping mostly to herself, but Cybil’s arrival seemed to perk her up some. The two of them shut themselves up in Emily’s room for a private get-acquainted session which lasted more than half an hour. When Cybil came out, alone, she had a sharp little gleam in her eye. She perched on the sofa, looked at Kerry, looked at me, and said, “Well? Are the two of you going to do the right thing by that child?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Kerry demanded. “We are trying to do what’s best for her—”

  “Don’t be dense. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Adoption. A-d-o-p-t-i-o-n.”

  I said, “What?”

  Kerry said, “We couldn’t do that.”

  “Of course you could. You’ve talked about it, surely?”

  “No, we haven’t.”

  “Well, you’ve each thought about it, and don’t try telling me different. It’s what the child wants, you know that.”

  “Did Emily tell you it’s what she wants?”

  “She didn’t have to put it into words. It’s in her eyes and the way she talks about the two of you. She needs a mother and a father. A grandmother, too, for that matter.” Cybil fixed Kerry with a steely eye. “I’ve been denied that privilege so far and I’d like to be one for a little while before I croak.”

  “Mom, for heaven’s sake...”

  “Hah. You haven’t called me Mom in years. I like hearing it. I’d like hearing Grandma even better.”

  I said, “You might as well forget it, Cybil. It’s not going to happen.”

  “Why isn’t it?”

  “For a lot of reasons. I’m nearly sixty and that’s too old—”

  “Nonsense.”

  “—to be an adoptive father, even if the courts would allow it. I’m too set in my ways, that’s another thing. So is your daughter.”

  “Nonsense, I say.”

  “Plus, I have a sometimes dangerous profession, and Kerry and I both work odd hours and there are nights when neither of us gets home until late, if we get home at all.”

  “Not an issue. There are private schools, nannies, sitters. And me, in a pinch.”

  “We can’t afford private schools or people to come in—”

  “Horse apples. Don’t you think I know what the two of you earn in a year, how much you have tucked away?”

  “Cybil, listen to me—”

  “I will not. You both care about the girl, any fool can see that, and she cares about you. That’s what matters. That’s all that matters.”

  “We are not going to become parents. We couldn’t if we wanted to. The child welfare people, the courts—”

  “Damn all that,” Cybil said. “If you really want to adopt that little girl, you can find ways and means to do it. And I think deep down you do want to, both of you. You’d better
give it some serious consideration. I mean that. Serious consideration.”

  All right, so we gave it some serious consideration.

  The answer was the same: No.

  We talked to Emily about it, tentatively at first, then openly. Kerry’s idea. It was what the kid wanted, all right. No begging, no pleading, just the big soulful eyes and a small hopeful smile.

  The answer was still no.

  Tamara, naturally, thought it was a splendid idea.

  No.

  The social worker who came to talk to Emily and to Kerry and me didn’t rule it out.

  No.

  Cybil kept calling up and lobbying.

  No.

  Kerry went to see a family lawyer she knew. He thought it could probably be managed, given the unusual circumstances and despite our ages, if all parties were in accord and the judge in the case was the sympathetic type.

  No.

  Then one evening while I was dozing in my chair. Emily came and sat on the arm and looked at me and then snuggled down and laid her head on my shoulder.

  Just say no and keep on saying it.

  But dammit, I’m not made of stone...