The wind was blowing the balcony’s curtains in around her, so she got up and pulled them back a bit, then reperched herself.
“He wanted to come forward with what he knew, but he’s had a bad history with police, so he’d been afraid,” I said. “When he saw me in uniform the other day, he figured I might listen to what he had to say, and he had a lot to tell me.” I looked at my watch. “He’ll be turning himself in to the state police in a few minutes,” I added, “so we haven’t got a lot of time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” I told her with reluctance, “something’s bothering me.”
She frowned and shrugged.
I said, “Did you bring that charcoal drawing of Rainier home with you as you said?”
“Yes.”
“May I see it?”
“Sure,” she said, then got up, went to a desk, and from behind it, took out the drawing.
I stood and went over to look at it, saying, “And you did say that Carole delivered this drawing to you in early August, I believe?”
“Yes,” she agreed, laying the drawing down and walking back to the sofa and coffee table, where she opened a briefcase that was on it and removed a small piece of paper, which she handed to me. “I brought this to the police officers who questioned me yesterday. They asked me when it was that I last saw her, and I found this copy of the receipt I gave her.”
“Something wrong?” she asked.
I stared at her.
“What is it?”
“The creek is dry in the drawing.”
“I beg your pardon.”
I looked at her.
“Yes?”
I said, “The creek in the drawing — Brown Creek — wasn’t dammed until September first.”
She frowned sharply.
“That split stone at the base of the footbridge was well below the waterline, and under the footbridge itself, and could not have been seen before the creek was dammed.” I frowned back at her. “She couldn’t have drawn this before September first.”
Her frown became thoughtful. “Carole...” she began, then smiled. “Carole had an artist’s imagination, Mr. Virginiak. She could’ve done the drawing earlier. At any time, actually...”
“No,” I told her. “There’s too much detail there. I’ve seen that creek bed, and the rock arrangement is precisely the same as in the drawing.”
Collier gave me a long look, gave her cigar a puff, then hugged herself. “So what’s the problem?”
I folded the receipt I held and put it in my pocket, saying, “The creek was dry when she did the drawing, so she couldn’t have given it to you in August.” I watched her eyes watching me. “Which makes you a liar, Jess.”
Which didn’t prompt a denial.
Instead she frowned at me for a long moment, looking for some sign of stupidity in my face, which she wasn’t going to find. Then finally she sighed and turned away, went back to the sofa, stubbed out her thin cigar, lit another, and smiled at me, saying, “You’re very clever.”
Jesus, I thought.
“So?” she said, sitting back. “Why is it that we have so little time?”
“Because,” I explained, “the police will be coming for you, and I thought we needed to talk before your arrest.”
“My arrest?” She affected amusement at the idea. “That receipt means nothing. In fact, I now seem to recall it was September fifth that Carole delivered the drawing to me.” She shrugged easily. “I wrote an eight instead of a nine — so what?”
“But you did kill Carole,” I told her.
She considered me for a moment, then said, “Take off your shirt.”
I did as she asked, to show her that I was wearing no wire, then she said, “Would you care to know why?”
Collier blew smoke and began to inspect the back of her hand in a casual way. “Carole betrayed me,” she said with coldness. She glanced at me. “After all that I’d done for her, she betrayed me.”
She sat back easily and said, “I found her, you realize. Selling her artwork from a park bench, for next to nothing.”
What was killing, I thought, but the ultimate betrayal.
She said, “I saw her talent, but her technique was naive. I advised her. I taught her to be all that she could be. I arranged her first showings. I became her friend. And when she finally had enough of that idiot she’d married, I was with her, giving my support every moment.”
“I loved her,” Collier told me, in a flat monotone.
“Did you?”
She nodded. “Carole was confused about her sexuality, but I knew, and eventually brought the true woman out of her, even though she resisted.” She frowned slightly. “Then last summer she... went away. Said she needed space. Went to live in that cabin, didn’t even call. I found her and... we reconciled, I thought, but then...” She shrugged. “She chose in the end to reject her true self — and me.” She smiled ruefully. “Well, I couldn’t have that, now, could I?”
I said nothing.
“It was very painful to me, Mr. Virginiak, and I don’t do pain very well — I really don’t.”
“So,” I said, finding my voice again. “You killed her.”
“Oh it wasn’t that simple.” She puffed hard on her little cigar. “Carole needed to be punished before dying.” She blew smoke, and her mad eyes glittered at me.
Right, I thought.
“I admit that when I went there that day, I was a bit out of control. We argued and I hit her very hard with the poker, and at first I thought she was dead — until I saw she wasn’t. And I’ll tell you something else,” she said breathlessly. “Breaking her legs gave me great pleasure, and then, after I’d put her in the tub, watching her struggle so desperately, hearing her scream as she realized what was happening” — she smiled — “I enjoyed it very much.”
“Of course, you did,” I said.
She smiled almost impishly at me. “Does that sound strange to you, Mr. Virginiak?”
“You’re not going to get away with this, Jess.”
She smiled. “That receipt is hardly evidence, and I could just deny what I’ve told you. There’s no evidence I was ever even at that cabin.”
“McGowan saw you there,” I told her.
Her smile flatlined.
“That’s what he’s telling the police now.”
She thought about that, then tried, “A half-witted wild man, Mr. Virginiak?”
I shook my head at her with certainty. “He described you perfectly, Jess, and if you told the police that you’d never been to the cabin, they will know you lied.”
She sighed with a sense of weary capitulation.
“And, there is the receipt,” I went on, “which catches you in another lie, and if the police know what to look for — and I’ll be sure they will — enough evidence will be found. Fingerprints, fiber evidence.” I pointed to the newspaper and the headline: POLICE HUNT FOR HOT TUB KILLER. “You’ll hang in the end, or opt for injection, or more likely, prison, forever, but you won’t get away with this, Jess.”
She looked then as thoughtful as she should.
I said, “You haven’t really thought this through, have you?”
She said carefully, “Do you think, Mr. Virginiak, that a sane person would have done what I did?”
I didn’t, but said nothing.
“I mean, I must have been insane to have done this to poor Carol, mustn’t I?” She considered her line of thought, then blew smoke, and smiled. “A hospital is more likely than prison, don’t you think?”
I kept silent, watching her closely.
She only smiled that little inhuman smile at me.
And, I finally sat back, and felt all my own humanity slip away.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking before I arrived here, actually,” I said, watching her closely, trying to fix the right advantage. “When you say hospital, you do realize that means the state facility at Tillicum?”
She shrugged.
“I’ve seen the place,” I told her. “They’re very chemically oriented, there.”
“Are they?”
“Thorazine, Prozac, Serone, Zoloft — they’ll mix you nice little cocktails, so you’ll feel very little for the few years you’ll be there.”