“Should I leave?” she asked him. “Like he said?”
He licked his lips, ran the back of one hand across his forehead. “Go ahead, Tanya. I’ll call you.”
“Should I... I mean, do you want me to go straight home?”
I said, “She wants to know if she should call the law, tell them about me. She thinks you’re in trouble.”
“Rich? Are you in trouble?”
“No.”
“Yes,” I said. “But you don’t want her to call anybody, do you? You just want her to go on home.”
“Is that what you want, honey?”
“Yeah. Christ, just get out of here.”
“You’ll be okay? He won’t do anything to—”
“Shut up! You stupid bitch, I can’t think with you yapping at me. Shut up and move your fat ass out of here.”
He couldn’t have hurt her more, or got her out of there more quickly, if he’d kicked her broad bottom. She went flying through the door, yelling “Fuck you!” over her shoulder, and banged it after her with enough force to dislodge a plaque from the knotty pine wall next to it.
Twining wheeled away and went to the fireplace. The fire was banking; he picked up a poker and bent and began to stir the charred wood around. As soon as he did that I took the .38 out of my pocket and held it down against my leg. Outside, a car engine came to life, revved up high. Headlights flashed on, glared through the window, then made a sweeping pattern across the far wall as the carrot-top backed her car around.
When she roared away I said to Twining, “Put the poker down and come back over—”
I didn’t get the rest of it out because the damn fool was moving by then, swinging around and making a wild-eyed rush my way with the poker lifted high. I raised the gun, but he was too far gone to see it or to stop his charge if he did. But he hadn’t surprised me any; I had plenty of time to set myself and then dodge sideways just as he started his downward swipe. The poker slashed air, nowhere close to me. The force of his lunge bent him over and his foot came slanting down on one of the throw rugs. It slid, he slid, and I stepped in and kicked his leg out from under him.
He went down yelling, but he didn’t lose the poker. I backed off and shouted at him, “Don’t get up, Twining!” Useless words; he was already flopping around, trying to set his legs under him. Only one thing I could do then, and I didn’t waste any time doing it: I threw the gun up and squeezed off a round.
Not at him, at the far wall — a warning shot. The racket the .38 made was like a small explosion in there. To my relief it had the desired effect on Twining: It turned him stone-still on his knees, the tip of the poker still touching the floor.
“Let go of it,” I said. “The poker. Let go. Don’t make me put the next bullet in you.”
He stared up at me out of those bulging eyes. I waggled the revolver at him. The wildness went out of his face; he jerked his hand free of the poker handle as if it had suddenly become red hot. “Jesus!” he said, and it was as close to a prayer as somebody like him would ever get.
“On your feet. Go sit on the sofa.”
“You... oh... God, you could’ve killed me.”
“That’s right, I could have. But I like the alternatives better. Do what I told you.”
He tried to get up, couldn’t make it the first time. I watched him gather himself, struggle to his feet, stagger toward the wicker sofa. The last couple of steps were a lunge, as if his legs were giving out on him. He sat there with his teeth gritted, the sweat on his face shining in the dying firelight, looking at me and then not looking at me in little flicks of his head and eyes.
After a time he said, “I shouldn’t’ve done that. Come at you like that. But the way you busted in here... and now that gun... What’s the idea? What do you want?”
“You know why I’m here.”
“I don’t know. You said... alternatives. What alternatives?”
“Not the kind you’re looking for. Prison. Maybe even lethal injection.”
One side of his face spasmed, the rippling kind that pulled it out of shape. He pawed viciously at his cheek. “You’re crazy! I haven’t done anything.”
“Just killed two women, that’s all.”
“I never killed anybody!” It was a shriek as shrill as the carrot-topped Tanya’s parting shot, and with just as much anguish.
“Sheila Hunter and Dale Cooney.”
“No. No!”
“I can prove it, Twining.”
“No. How can you... no.”
“Yes. The scratches on your neck, for one thing. Made by a woman’s fingernails.”
“My wife. Or Tanya...”
“Sheila Hunter. She clawed you, and when she did she broke the gold chain you wore around your neck. Same gold chain you had on the day I talked to you in your office. You missed one of the links when you cleaned up her kitchen. I found it. Found some other things you missed, too. Like a smear of her blood on the center island.”
His throat worked as if he were going to be sick. He clamped his jaws to keep his gorge down, wiped his mouth, pawed at his face again. His eyes were as big and streaky-white as cocktail onions.
“Here’s the way I think it happened,” I said. “You went to her house on Saturday around noon, one o’clock. Pretense of business, but she was the real reason. Big stud like you, knowing she played around with Trevor Smith and any number of other guys but never with you — it must’ve been like a needle jabbing that cocksman’s ego of yours. So you decided to give it one more try. Only she was strung out, scared, never mind why, and the pass you made set her off. I figure she called you names, maybe slapped you, maybe scratched you then, and that set you off. You lost control, threw her down, raped her right there on the kitchen floor—”
“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.”