“Needed you. Meaning what?”
“He wanted me to drive down there. Right away.”
“The alley, Bolt Street.”
“Yes.”
“And you went.”
“Yes.”
“Why? You could’ve called nine-eleven instead. Or Rivera or Joe... somebody.”
“I was afraid if anyone but me showed up, he’d go ahead and do it. I believed I could talk him out of it. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I’d been asleep and I was groggy and scared... I crawled into my car and drove down there, that’s all.”
“And when you got there?”
“He was sitting behind the wheel with the gun in his hand, just as he’d said. Spilled liquor and vomit all over him. He started to cry when I got in. He said he wanted to die. Couldn’t stand to go on or to hurt me anymore. Said he’d written a note, it was in the glove compartment, and he’d been trying to finish the job ever since. Said he’d had the gun in his mouth a dozen times but he couldn’t make himself eat it. ‘I can’t squeeze the trigger, Bobbie Jean, I can’t make myself eat it.’ His exact words.”
Don’t be surprised if you hear I ate my gun. And most handgun suicides by cops and ex-cops did go that way — barrel in the mouth, squeeze the trigger. A chest shot wasn’t Eberhardt’s way, the hard-line retired cop’s way. It had never seemed quite right to me, despite Jack Logan’s arguments. Join me for a midnight snack? Let’s eat. Lodged in my subconscious and manifested in the recurring dream.
I knew what Bobbie Jean would say next. And waiting for it, I was cold all over and filled with emotion like a viscous fluid clogging my chest, making it difficult to breathe.
“He begged me to help him,” she said. “I told him no. I tried to talk him into giving me the gun, coming home with me, but he wouldn’t listen or he was too drunk to listen. He drank what was left in his bottle, threw it on the floor and cried and begged some more. I kept saying no and then, real foolish, I made a grab for the gun. He turned ugly. Laid the muzzle against my temple and said he’d kill me first, kill me sure if I didn’t help him. He meant it. Dark in the car, I couldn’t see his eyes, but I heard the truth in his voice. He’d’ve shot me if that was what it took to shoot himself. That’s how much he wanted to die.”
“You had no choice,” I said thickly. “No other choice.”
“I didn’t see that I had. Maybe if... oh, Lord, I don’t know. I was so scared and he’d made me hate him for everything he’d done to me, to himself — I wanted him dead right then as much as he wanted it. He put that gun in his mouth again and I let him take my hand and fold it over his hand, my finger over his finger on the trigger, and he mumbled ‘Squeeze, squeeze’ but I couldn’t. In my mind I saw his head exploding and I couldn’t do it, not that way. ‘Not that way, Eb,’ I said, we were both bawling by then, and he took the barrel out of his mouth and pressed it against his chest, his hand and mine, and said ‘Squeeze’ and I couldn’t and he said ‘Do it, please, for both of us, squeeze’ and I squeezed...”
“Jesus, Bobbie Jean.”
“The shot was so loud... I jumped and I think I screamed. But after that, it’s crazy but I was real calm. Drug-calm, you know? As if I’d had a shot of something. I went from his car into mine and drove home just as if nothing’d happened. It wasn’t until I was in the house that it came over me he was actually dead and I’d helped him die. For a long time I was hysterical. But by daylight, when the police called and said he’d been found, I was calm again. I thought I could tell them, but I couldn’t. I thought: I’ve been through enough, I can’t go through anymore. But I’m still going through it, over and over. That kind of thing just tears you up inside. And the worst of it is, I don’t even know if I murdered him or not. Did I?”
“No,” I said. “He murdered himself.”
Her dark, dry, haunted eyes searched mine — the kind of look a supplicant might give to a priest. “You don’t hate me?”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Sometimes I hate myself.”
“You shouldn’t. Him, if anybody.”
“Funny, but I don’t hate Eb. Not anymore.”
Me neither, I thought. Maybe I never did. Maybe all along I was enraged at him for being sick, disappointed in him for being weak and flawed and culpable. And maybe I’d wanted to hang on to some of my belief in the old Eberhardt, the fantasy Eberhardt, even though I knew better. Some illusions die harder than others, and the ones closest to your own soul the hardest of all.
I said, “Look at it this way, Bobbie Jean. He felt he’d rather be dead than hurt you any more — and that’s a form of love, isn’t it? Bitter and twisted, but still love. So is what you did for him. An act of love as much as any other kind.”
“It’d be a comfort to really believe that.”
“Better than carrying the weight of him on your shoulders as long as you live.”
“Someday,” she said. “Someday.”
The energy-high kids rocketed by on their bikes, yelling. A woman being half dragged by a standard poodle appeared on the sidewalk, stopped when the poodle stopped, and looked on with benign obliviousness as the dog lifted its leg and peed all over one of the Hoyts’ yew trees.
“What happens now?” Bobbie Jean asked.
“Now?”
“You, me. Where do we go from here?”
“You go to work; it’s almost one o’clock. And I drive back to the city and do the same.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know. The fact is, I haven’t seen or talked to you since last week. Any conversation we might’ve had after that is strictly imaginary.”
The haunted eyes probed my face again in that seeking-sinner way. Her mouth opened slightly; her throat worked.
“Don’t say it, don’t say anything. Whatever it is I couldn’t hear it because I’m not here.” I pushed off the railing, leaned down and kissed the papery skin of her cheek. “Forgive yourself, Bobbie Jean. I already have.”
And I said good-bye for the last time and left her sitting there and walked out of the rest of her life.
22
I told Kerry that night over dinner. All of it, every detail. She had as much right to know the truth as I did. We’d had secrets from each other once, before our marriage, but not since and not ever again. Anything, everything that mattered to one of us now belonged to the other.
Kerry, yes, but nobody else. Our secret and Bobbie Jean’s to the grave.
She took it as I expected she would: shock, bewilderment, sadness, understanding. “My God, that poor woman. What she must’ve gone through.”
“Six kinds of hell and still burning,” I said. “So you think I did the right thing? Not turning her in?”
“Yes.”
“Letting her get away with a crime.”
“I suppose so, but— Oh.”
“Sondra Nelson and Gail Kendall, that’s right. Nelson went through the same kind of hell, and for a much longer time, and she’s still burning, too. So is Kendall after nine years.”
“But Bobbie Jean didn’t murder Eberhardt.”
“Technically, no. But she did help him kill himself and then hid the fact. Assisted suicide is a serious offense in California, Kerry. Just about as serious as second-degree homicide.”
“Which means you’ve decided. You’re going to let Nelson and Kendall get away with their murder.”
“I have to, now. How can I do anything else? I’d be the most despicable kind of hypocrite if I let a guilty friend off the hook and gaffed a couple of poor strangers. The cases are too similar, legally and morally and in every other way. You can see that, can’t you?”