Текст книги "Full dark, no stars"

Автор книги: Стивен Кинг

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“Tonto,” said the Lone Ranger, “our work here is done.”

What she wrote, as Seinfeld gave way to Frasier and Frasier gave way to the local news (one Chicopee resident had won the lottery and another had suffered a broken back after falling from a scaffolding, so that balanced out), was a confession in the form of a letter. As she reached page five, the TV news gave way to an apparently endless commercial for Almighty Cleanse. Danny Vierra was saying, “Some Americans have a bowel movement only once every two or three days, and because this has gone on for years, they believe it’s normal! Any doctor worth his salt will tell you it’s not!”

The letter was headed TO THE PROPER AUTHORITIES, and the first four pages consisted of a single paragraph. In her head it sounded like a scream. Her hand was tired, and the ballpoint pen she’d found in a kitchen drawer (RED HAWK TRUCKING printed in fading gilt on the barrel) was showing signs of drying up, but she was, thank God, almost done. While Little Driver went on not watching TV from where he sat in his La-Z-Boy, she at last started a new paragraph at the top of page five.

I will not make excuses for what I have done. Nor can I say that I did it while of unsound mind. I was furious and I made a mistake. It’s that simple. Under other circumstances-those less terrible, I mean-I might say, “It was a natural mistake, the two of them look almost enough alike to be twins.” But these are not other circumstances.

I have thought of atonement as I sat here, writing these pages and listening to his television and to the wind-not because I hope for forgiveness, but because it seems wrong to do wrong without at least trying to balance it out with something right. (Here Tess thought of how the lottery winner and the man with the broken back evened out, but the concept would be difficult to express when she was so tired, and she wasn’t sure it was germane, anyway.) I thought of going to Africa and working with AIDS victims. I thought about going down to New Orleans and volunteering at a homeless shelter or a food bank. I thought about going to the Gulf to clean oil off birds. I thought of donating the million dollars or so I have put away for my retirement to some group that works to end violence against women. There must be such a society in Connecticut, perhaps even several of them.

But then I thought of Doreen Marquis, from the Knitting Society, and what she says once in every book…

What Doreen said at least once in every book was murderers always overlook the obvious. You may depend on it, dears. And even as Tess wrote about atonement, she realized it would be impossible. Because Doreen was absolutely right.

Tess had worn a cap so that she wouldn’t leave hair that could be analyzed for DNA. She had worn gloves which she had never taken off, even while driving Alvin Strehlke’s pickup. It was not too late to burn this confession in Lester’s kitchen woodstove, drive to Brother Alvin’s considerably nicer house (house of bricks instead of house of sticks), get into her Expedition, and head back to Connecticut. She could go home, where Fritzy was waiting. At first glance she looked clear, and it might take the police a few days to get to her, but get to her they would. Because while she had been concentrating on the forensic molehills, she had overlooked the obvious mountain, exactly like the killers in the Knitting Society books.

The obvious mountain had a name: Betsy Neal. A pretty woman with an oval face, mismatched Picasso eyes, and a cloud of dark hair. She had recognized Tess, had even gotten her autograph, but that wasn’t the clincher. The clincher was going to be the bruises on her face (I hope that didn’t happen here, Neal had said), and the fact that Tess had asked about Alvin Strehlke, describing his truck and recognizing the ring when Neal mentioned it. Like a ruby, Tess had agreed.

Neal would see the story on TV or read it in the newspaper-with three dead from the same family, how could she avoid it?-and she would go to the police. The police would come to Tess. They would check the Connecticut gun-registration records as a matter of course and discover that Tess owned a.38 Smith amp; Wesson revolver known as a Lemon Squeezer. They would ask her to produce it so they could test-fire it and do comparisons to the bullets found in the three victims. And what was she going to say? Was she going to look at them from her blackened eyes and say (in a voice still hoarse from the choking Lester Strehlke had given her) that she lost it? Would she continue to stick to that story even after the dead women were found in the culvert pipe?

Tess picked up her borrowed pen and began writing again.

… what she says once in every book: murderers always overlook the obvious. Doreen also once took a leaf from Dorothy Sayers’s book and left a murderer with a loaded gun, telling him to take the honorable way out. I have a gun. My brother Mike is my only surviving close relative. He lives in Taos, New Mexico. I suppose he may inherit my estate. It depends on the legal ramifications of my crimes. If he does, I hope the authorities who find this letter will show it to him, and convey my wish that he donate the bulk to some charitable organization that works with women who have been sexually abused.

I am sorry about Big Driver-Alvin Strehlke. He was not the man who raped me, and Doreen is sure he didn’t rape and kill those other women, either.

Doreen? No, her. Doreen wasn’t real. But Tess was too tired to go back and change it. And what the hell-she was near the end, anyway.

For Ramona and that piece of garbage in the other room, I make no apologies. They are better off dead.

So, of course, am I.

She paused long enough to look back over the pages and see if there was anything she had forgotten. There didn’t appear to be, so she signed her name-her final autograph. The pen ran dry on the last letter and she put it aside.

“Got anything to say, Lester?” she asked.

Only the wind replied, gusting hard enough to make the little house groan in its joints and puff drafts of cold air.

She went back into the living room. She put the hat on his head and the ring on his finger. That was the way she wanted them to find him. There was a framed photo on the TV. In it, Lester and his mother stood with their arms around each other. They were smiling. Just a boy and his mum. She looked at it for awhile, then left. – 42 -

She felt that she should go back to the deserted store where it had happened and finish her business there. She could sit for awhile in the weedy lot, listen to the wind ticking the old sign (YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU), thinking about whatever people think about in the final moments of a life. In her case that would probably be Fritzy. She guessed Patsy would take him, and that would be fine. Cats were survivors. They didn’t much care who fed them, as long as the bowl was full.

It wouldn’t take long to get to the store at this hour, but it still seemed too far. She was very tired. She decided she would get into Al Strehlke’s old truck and do it there. But she didn’t want to splatter her painfully written confession with her blood, that seemed very wrong considering all the bloodshed detailed within it, and so She took the pages from the Blue Horse tablet into the living room, where the TV played on (a young man who looked like a criminal was now selling a robot floorwasher), and dropped them in Strehlke’s lap. “Hold that for me, Les,” she said.

“No problem,” he replied. She noted that a portion of his diseased brains was now drying on his bony naked shoulder. That was all right.

Tess went out into the windy dark and slowly climbed behind the wheel of the pickup truck. The scream of the hinge when the driver’s door swung shut was oddly familiar. But no, not so odd; hadn’t she heard it at the store? Yes. She had been trying to do him a favor, because he was going to do her one-he was going to change her tire so she could go home and feed her cat. “I didn’t want his battery to run down,” she said, and laughed.

She put the short barrel of the.38 against her temple, then reconsidered. A shot like that wasn’t always effective. She wanted her money to help women who had been hurt, not to pay for her care as she lay unconscious year after year in some home for human vegetables.

The mouth, that was better. Surer.

The barrel was oily against her tongue, and she could feel the small nub of the sight digging into the roof of her mouth.

I’ve had a good life-pretty good, anyway-and although I made a terrible mistake at the end of it, maybe that won’t be held against me if there’s something after this.

Ah, but the night wind was very sweet. So were the fragile fragrances it carried through the half-open driver’s side window. It was a shame to leave, but what choice? It was time to go.

Tess closed her eyes, tightened her finger on the trigger, and that was when Tom spoke up. It was strange that he could do that, because Tom was in her Expedition, and the Expedition was at the other brother’s house, almost a mile down the road from here. Also, the voice she heard was nothing like the one she usually manufactured for Tom. Nor did it sound like her own. It was a cold voice. And she-she had a gun in her mouth. She couldn’t talk at all.

“She was never a very good detective, was she?”

She took it out. “Who? Doreen?”

In spite of everything, she was shocked.

“Who else, Tessa Jean? And why would she be a good one? She came from the old you. Didn’t she?”

Tess supposed that was true.

“Doreen believes Big Driver didn’t rape and kill those other women. Isn’t that what you wrote?”

“Me,” Tess said. “I’m sure. I was just tired, that’s all. And shocked, I suppose.”

“Also guilty.”

“Yes. Also guilty.”

“Do guilty people make good deductions, do you think?”

No. Perhaps they didn’t.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“That you only solved part of the mystery. Before you could solve all of it-you, not some clich?-ridden old lady detective-something admittedly unfortunate happened.”

“Unfortunate? Is that what you call it?” From a great distance, Tess heard herself laugh. Somewhere the wind was making a loose gutter click against an eave. It sounded like the 7Up sign at the deserted store.

“Before you shoot yourself,” the new, strange Tom said (he was sounding more female all the time), “why don’t you think for yourself? But not here.”

“Where, then?”

Tom didn’t answer this question, and didn’t have to. What he said was, “And take that fucking confession with you.”

Tess got out of the truck and went back inside Lester Strehlke’s house. She stood in the dead man’s kitchen, thinking. She did it aloud, in Tom’s voice (which sounded more like her own all the time). Doreen seemed to have taken a hike.

“Al’s housekey will be on the ring with his ignition key,” Tom said, “but there’s the dog. You don’t want to forget the dog.”

No, that would be bad. Tess went to Lester’s refrigerator. After a little rummaging, she found a package of hamburger at the back of the bottom shelf. She used an issue of Uncle Henry’s to double-wrap it, then went back into the living room. She plucked the confession from Strehlke’s lap, doing it gingerly, very aware that the part of him that had hurt her-the part that had gotten three people killed tonight-lay just beneath the pages. “I’m taking your ground chuck, but don’t hold it against me. I’m doing you a favor. It smells spunky-going-on-rotten.”

“A thief as well as a murderer,” Little Driver said in his droning deadvoice. “Isn’t that nice.”

“Shut up, Les,” she said, and left. – 43 -

Before you shoot yourself, why don’t you think for yourself?

As she drove the old pickup back down the windy road to Alvin Strehlke’s house, she tried to do that. She was starting to think Tom, even when he wasn’t in the vehicle with her, was a better detective than Doreen Marquis on her best day.

“I’ll keep it short,” Tom said. “If you don’t think Al Strehlke was part of it-and I mean a big part-you’re crazy.”

“Of course I’m crazy,” she replied. “Why else would I be trying to convince myself that I didn’t shoot the wrong man when I know I did?”

“That’s guilt talking, not logic,” Tom replied. He sounded maddeningly smug. “He was no innocent little lamb, not even a half-black sheep. Wake up, Tessa Jean. They weren’t just brothers, they were partners.”

“Business partners.”

“Brothers are never just business partners. It’s always more complicated than that. Especially when you’ve got a woman like Ramona for a mother.”

Tess turned up Al Strehlke’s smoothly paved driveway. She supposed Tom could be right about that. She knew one thing: Doreen and her Knitting Society friends had never met a woman like Ramona Norville.

The pole light went on. The dog started up: yark-yark, yarkyarkyark. Tess waited for the light to go out and the dog to quiet down.

“There’s no way I’ll ever know for sure, Tom.”

“You can’t be certain of that unless you look.”

“Even if he knew, he wasn’t the one who raped me.”

Tom was silent for a moment. She thought he’d given up. Then he said, “When a person does a bad thing and another person knows but doesn’t stop it, they’re equally guilty.”

“In the eyes of the law?”

“Also in the eyes of me. Say it was just Lester who did the hunting, the raping, and the killing. I don’t think so, but say it was. If big brother knew and said nothing, that makes him worth killing. In fact, I’d say bullets were too good for him. Impaling on a hot poker would be closer to justice.”

Tess shook her head wearily and touched the gun on the seat. One bullet left. If she had to use it on the dog (and really, what was one more killing among friends), she would have to hunt for another gun, unless she meant to try and hang herself, or something. But guys like the Strehlkes usually had firearms. That was the beauty part, as Ramona would have said.

“If he knew, yes. But an if that big didn’t deserve a bullet in the head. The mother, yes-on that score, the earrings were all the proof I needed. But there’s no proof here.”

“Really?” Tom’s voice was so low Tess could barely hear it. “Go see.” – 44 -

The dog didn’t bark when she clumped up the steps, but she could picture it standing just inside the door with its head down and its teeth bared.

“Goober?” What the hell, it was as good a name for a country dog as any. “My name’s Tess. I have some hamburger for you. I also have a gun with one bullet in it. I’m going to open the door now. If I were you, I’d choose the meat. Okay? Is it a deal?”

Still no barking. Maybe it took the pole light to set him off. Or a juicy female burglar. Tess tried one key, then another. No good. Those two were probably for the trucking office. The third one turned in the lock, and she opened the door before she could lose her courage. She had been visualizing a bulldog or a Rottweiler or a pit bull with red eyes and slavering jaws. What she saw was a Jack Russell terrier who was looking at her hopefully and thumping its tail.

Tess put the gun in her jacket pocket and stroked the dog’s head. “Good God,” she said. “To think I was terrified of you.”

“No need to be,” Goober said. “Say, where’s Al?”

“Don’t ask,” she said. “Want some hamburger? I warn you, it may have gone off.”

“Give it to me, baby,” Goober said.

Tess fed him a chunk of the hamburger, then came in, closed the door, and turned on the lights. Why not? It was only her and Goober, after all.

Alvin Strehlke had kept a neater house than his younger brother. The floors and walls were clean, there were no stacks of Uncle Henry’s Swap Guide, and she actually saw a few books on the shelves. There were also several clusters of Hummel figures, and a large framed photo of Momzilla on the wall. Tess found that a touch suggestive, but it was hardly proof positive. Of anything. If there was a photo of Richard Widmark in his famous Tommy Udo role, that might be different.

“What are you smiling about?” Goober asked. “Want to share?”

“Actually, no,” Tess said. “Where should we start?”

“I don’t know,” Goober said. “I’m just the dog. How about some more of that tasty cow?”

Tess fed him some more meat. Goober got up on his hind legs and turned around twice. Tess wondered if she were going insane.

“Tom? Anything to say?”

“You found your underpants at the other brother’s house, right?”

“Yes, and I took them. They’re torn… and I’d never want to wear them again even if they weren’t… but they’re mine.”

“And what else did you find besides a bunch of undies?”

“What do you mean, what else?”

But Tom didn’t need to tell her that. It wasn’t a question of what she had found; it was a question of what she hadn’t: no purse and no keys. Lester Strehlke had probably thrown the keys into the woods. It was what Tess herself would have done in his place. The bag was a different matter. It had been a Kate Spade, very pricey, and inside was a sewn-in strip of silk with her name on it. If the bag-and the stuff in the bag-wasn’t at Lester’s house, and if he didn’t throw it into the woods with her keys, where is it?

“I vote for here,” Tom said. “Let’s look around.”

“Meat!” Goober cried, and did another pirouette. – 45 -

Where should she start?

“Come on,” Tom said. “Men keep most of their secrets in one of two places: the study or the bedroom. Doreen might not know that, but you do. And this house doesn’t have a study.”

She went into Al Strehlke’s bedroom (trailed by Goober), where she found an extra-long double bed made up in no-nonsense military style. Tess looked under it. Nada. She started to turn toward the closet, paused, then pivoted back to the bed. She lifted the mattress. Looked. After five seconds-maybe ten-she uttered a single word in a dry flat voice.

“Jackpot.”

Lying on the box spring were three ladies’ handbags. The one in the middle was a cream-colored clutch that Tess would have recognized anywhere. She flipped it open. There was nothing inside but some Kleenex and an eyebrow pencil with a cunning little lash-comb hidden in the top half. She looked for the silk strip with her name on it, but it was gone. It had been removed carefully, but she saw one tiny cut in the fine Italian leather where the stitches had been unpicked.

“Yours?” Tom asked.

“You know it is.”

“What about the eyebrow pencil?”

“They sell those things by the thousands in drugstores all over Amer-”

“Is it yours?”

“Yes. It is.”

“Are you convinced yet?”

“I…” Tess swallowed. She was feeling something, but she wasn’t sure what it was. Relief? Horror? “I guess I am. But why? Why both of them?”

Tom didn’t say. He didn’t need to. Doreen might not know (or want to admit it if she did, because the old ladies who followed her adventures didn’t like the ooky stuff), but Tess supposed she did. Because Mommy fucked both of them up. That’s what a psychiatrist would say. Lester was the rapist; Al was the fetishist who participated vicariously. Maybe he even helped with one or both of the women in the pipe. She’d never know for sure.

“It would probably take until dawn to search the whole house,” Tom said, “but you can search the rest of this room, Tessa Jean. He probably destroyed everything from the purse-cut up the credit cards and tossed them in the Colewich River, would be my guess-but you have to make sure, because anything with your name on it would lead the police right to your door. Start with the closet.”

Tess didn’t find her credit cards or anything else belonging to her in the closet, but she did find something. It was on the top shelf. She got off the chair she’d been standing on and studied it with growing dismay: a stuffed duck that might have been some child’s favorite toy. One of its eyes was missing and its synthetic fur was matted. That fur was actually gone in places, as if the duck had been petted half to death.

On the faded yellow beak was a dark maroon splash.

“Is that what I think it is?” Tom asked.

“Oh Tom, I think so.”

“The bodies you saw in the culvert… could one of them have been a child’s body?”

No, neither of them had been that small. But maybe the culvert running beneath Stagg Road hadn’t been the Strehlke brothers’ only body dump.

“Put it back on the shelf. Leave it for the police to find. You need to make sure he doesn’t have a computer with stuff on it about you. Then you need to get the hell out of here.”

Something cold and wet nuzzled Tess’s hand. She almost screamed. It was Goober, looking up at her with bright eyes.

“More meat!” Goober said, and Tess gave him some.

“If Al Strehlke has a computer,” Tess said, “you can be sure it’s password-protected. And his probably won’t be open for me to poke around in.”

“Then take it and throw it in the goddam river when you go home. Let it sleep with the fishes.”

But there was no computer.

At the door, Tess fed Goober the rest of the hamburger. He would probably puke it all up on the rug, but that wasn’t going to bother Big Driver.

Tom said, “Are you satisfied, Tessa Jean? Are you satisfied you didn’t kill an innocent man?”

She supposed she must be, because suicide no longer seemed like an option. “What about Betsy Neal, Tom? What about her?”

Tom didn’t answer… and once again didn’t need to. Because, after all, he was she.

Wasn’t she?

Tess wasn’t entirely sure about that. And did it matter, as long as she knew what to do next? As for tomorrow, it was another day. Scarlett O’Hara had been right about that much.

What mattered most was that the police had to know about the bodies in the culvert. If only because somewhere there were friends and relatives who were still wondering. Also because…

“Because the stuffed duck says there might be more.”

That was her own voice.

And that was all right. – 46 -

At seven-thirty the next morning, after less than three hours of broken, nightmare-haunted sleep, Tess booted up her office computer. But not to write. Writing was the farthest thing from her mind.

Was Betsy Neal single? Tess thought so. She had seen no wedding ring that day in Neal’s office, and while she might have missed that, there had been no family pictures, either. The only picture she could remember seeing was a framed photo of Barack Obama… and he was already married. So yes-Betsy Neal was probably divorced or single. And probably unlisted. In which case, a computer search would do her no good at all. Tess supposed she could go to The Stagger Inn and find her there… but she didn’t want to go back to The Stagger. Ever again.

“Why are you buying trouble?” Fritzy said from the windowsill. “At least check the telephone listings for Colewich. And what’s that I smell on you? Is that dog?”

“Yes. That’s Goober.”

“Traitor,” Fritzy said contemptuously.

Her search turned up an even dozen Neals. One was an E Neal. E for Elizabeth? There was one way to find out.

With no hesitation-that would have almost certainly have caused her to lose her courage-Tess punched in the number. She was sweating, and her heart was beating rapidly.

The phone rang once. Twice.

It’s probably not her. It could be an Edith Neal. An Edwina Neal. Even an Elvira Neal.

Three times.

If it is Betsy Neal’s phone, she’s probably not even there. She’s probably on vacation in the Catskills-

Four times.

– or shacked up with one of the Zombie Bakers, how about that? The lead guitarist. They probably sing “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog” together in the shower after they-

The phone was picked up, and Tess recognized the voice in her ear at once.

“Hello, you’ve reached Betsy, but I can’t come to the phone right now. There’s a beep coming, and you know what to do when you hear it. Have a nice day.”

I had a bad day, thanks, and last night was ever so much w The beep came, and Tess heard herself talking before she was even aware she meant to. “Hello, Ms. Neal, this is Tessa Jean calling-the Willow Grove Lady? We met at The Stagger Inn. You gave me back my Tomtom and I signed an autograph for your gran. You saw how marked up I was and I told you some lies. It wasn’t a boyfriend, Ms. Neal.” Tess began to speak faster, afraid that the message tape would run out before she finished… and she discovered she badly wanted to finish. “I was raped and that was bad, but then I tried to make it right and… I… I have to talk to you about it because-”

There was a click on the line and then Betsy Neal herself was in Tess’s ear. “Start again,” she said, “but go slow. I just woke up and I’m still half asleep.” – 47 -

They met for lunch on the Colewich town common. They sat on a bench near the bandstand. Tess didn’t think she was hungry, but Betsy Neal forced a sandwich on her, and Tess found herself eating it in large bites that made her think of Goober snarfing up Lester Strehlke’s hamburger.

“Start at the beginning,” Betsy said. She was calm, Tess thought-almost preternaturally so. “Start from the beginning and tell me everything.”

Tess began with the invitation from Books amp; Brown Baggers. Betsy Neal said little, only occasionally adding an “Uh-huh” or “Okay” to let Tess know she was still following the story. Telling it was thirsty work. Luckily, Betsy had also brought two cans of Dr. Brown’s cream soda. Tess took one and drank it greedily.

When she finished, it was past one in the afternoon. The few people who had come to the common to eat their lunches were gone. There were two women walking babies in strollers, but they were a good distance away.

“Let me get this straight,” Betsy Neal said. “You were going to kill yourself, and then some phantom voice told you to go back to Alvin Strehlke’s house, instead.”

“Yes,” Tess replied. “Where I found my purse. And the duck with the blood on it.”

“Your panties you found in the younger brother’s house.”

“Little Driver’s, yes. They’re in my Expedition. And the purse. Do you want to see them?”

“No. What about the gun?”

“That’s in the car, too. With one bullet left in it.” She looked at Neal curiously, thinking: The girl with the Picasso eyes. “Aren’t you afraid of me? You’re the one loose end. The only one I can think of, anyway.”

“We’re in a public park, Tess. Also, I’ve got quite the confession on my answering machine at home.”

Tess blinked. Something else she hadn’t thought of.

“Even if you somehow managed to kill me without those two young mothers over there noticing-”

“I’m not up for killing anyone else. Here or anywhere.”

“Good to know. Because even if you took care of me and my answering machine tape, sooner or later someone would find the cabdriver who brought you out to The Stagger on Saturday morning. And when the police got to you, they’d find you wearing a load of incriminating bruises.”

“Yes,” Tess said, touching the worst of them. “That’s true. So what now?”

“For one thing, I think you’d be wise to stay out of sight as much as you can until your pretty face looks pretty again.”

“I think I’m covered there,” Tess said, and told Betsy the tale she had confabulated for Patsy McClain’s benefit.

“That’s pretty good.”

“Ms. Neal… Betsy… do you believe me?”

“Oh yes,” she said, almost absently. “Now listen. Are you listening?”

Tess nodded.

“We’re a couple of women having a little picnic in the park, and that’s fine. But after today, we’re not going to see each other again. Right?”

“If you say so,” Tess said. Her brain felt the way her jaw did after the dentist gave her a healthy shot of novocaine.

“I do. And you need to have another story made up and ready, just in case the cops talk to either the limo driver who took you home-”

“Manuel. His name was Manuel.”

“-or the taxi driver who took you out to The Stagger on Saturday morning. I don’t think anybody will make the connection between you and the Strehlkes as long as none of your ID shows up, but when the story breaks, this is going to be big news and we can’t assume the investigation won’t touch you.” She leaned forward and tapped Tess once above the left breast. “I’m counting on you to make sure that it never touches me. Because I don’t deserve that.”

No. She absolutely didn’t.

“What story could you tell the cops, hon? Something good without me in it. Come on, you’re the writer.”

Tess thought for a full minute. Betsy let her.

“I’d say Ramona Norville told me about the Stagg Road shortcut after my appearance-which is true-and that I saw The Stagger Inn when I drove by. I’d say I stopped for dinner a few miles down the road, then decided to go back and have a few drinks. Listen to the band.”

“That’s good. They’re called-”

“I know what they’re called,” Tess said. Maybe the novocaine was wearing off. “I’d say I met some guys, drank a bunch, and decided I was too blitzed to drive. You’re not in this story, because you don’t work nights. I could also say-”

“Never mind, that’s enough. You’re pretty good at this stuff once you get cooking. Just don’t embellish too much.”

“I won’t,” Tess said. “And this is one story I might not ever have to tell. Once they have the Strehlkes and the Strehlkes’ victims, they’ll be looking for a killer a lot different than a little book-writing lady like me.”

Betsy Neal smiled. “Little book-writing lady, my ass. You’re one bad bitch.” Then she saw the look of startled alarm on Tess’s face. “What? What now?”

“They will be able to tie the women in the pipe to the Strehlkes, won’t they? At least to Lester?”

“Did he put on a rubber before he raped you?”

“No. God, no. His stuff was still on my thighs when I got home. And inside me.” She shuddered.

“Then he’ll have gone in bareback with the others. Plenty of evidence. They’ll put it together. As long as those bad boys really got rid of your ID, you should be home and dry. And there’s no sense worrying about what you can’t control, is there?”

“No.”

“As for you… not planning on going home and cutting your wrists in the bathtub, are you? Or using that last bullet?”

“No.” Tess thought of how sweet the night air had smelled as she sat in the truck with the short barrel of the Lemon Squeezer in her mouth. “No, I’m good.”

“Then it’s time for you to leave. I’ll sit here a little longer.”

Tess started to get off the bench, then sat down again. “There’s something I need to know. You’re making yourself an accessory after the fact. Why would you do that for a woman you don’t even know? A woman you only met once?”