“Suzy Coleman. The girl in the mobile home-”
“Why are you hung up on the girl? Not the old lady? Nobody else? Only the girl, huh?”
Saying it like I should be ashamed.
“You told me you were making ghosts. What’s that mean?”
“Don’t talk about them. Don’t think about them. That’s not what you’re here for.”
“Don’t think about them?”
“No. It’ll just be distracting for you. There’s only one person you need to wonder about, that you need to ask about. Rebecca Clarke.”
“Why only her?”
“Because I didn’t kill her.”
I rubbed my eyes. I made a scoffing sound.
“So why didn’t you say anything about it before now?” I asked.
Collie looked at me with a mischievous expression, almost wearing a sad grin. He said nothing.
“What? You thought maybe you didn’t remember strangling a teenager?”
He said, “I wasn’t sure.”
“Then how can you be sure now?”
“There have been more.”
“More?”
“More young women who look an awful lot like Rebecca Clarke have been killed.”
I couldn’t look at him anymore. I stared over his shoulder at the wearisome white stone walls and tried to make sense of what he was saying. “How do you know that?”
“Lin’s been doing research. There have been other women murdered in similar ways since I’ve been in here. And at least one that happened about six months before I-”
“Tell the cops.”
“They don’="jdonȁt believe me.”
“I don’t either.”
He paused and the pause lengthened into a heavy silence, and finally he snapped his fingers to get my attention again. “I want you to look into it.”
“Look into what?”
“Becky’s murder. And the others.”
“Becky?”
He pursed his lips and turned away to say something to his audience. His stony eyes focused on me again. His tongue prodded the inside of his cheek. He cleared his throat.
“Talk to Lin, she has notes for you. She’s been investigating.”
“Oh, Christ, Collie.”
He started getting excited. The jazzy bop rhythm worked back into his voice. “Young women strangled around the island. Some even near the park, like Becky was.”
“Stop calling her Becky as if you were friends.”
“There’s been at least three more since I’ve been in here.”
“Collie, what the hell are you saying?”
“Someone else murdered Rebecca Clarke. And it looks like he’s been snuffing others. As many as five in the last six or seven years, maybe more, I don’t know. But the others, they all looked like her. Brunettes, pretty.”
I couldn’t hold back a bark of laughter. “That’s the description? Pretty brunettes? Someone’s killing pretty brunette teenagers?”
“They weren’t all teenagers. But they all looked similar, from what they tell me.”
“From what who tells you?”
“Lin.”
The new wife. The new psycho wife. If it was true and other women were being murdered, I figured that maybe she would be doing it. Trying to put the whole case in doubt. Strangling young girls because she’d always been turned on by the thought of murder. It was why she married a murderer. And now she had the perfect reason. She was killing for love.
“Fuck this,” I said.
“Listen to me, Terry. You’ve got to listen.” He pawed at his face but he wasn’t sweating. I was. “Someone’s out there snuffing women.”
“What do the cops say about all this?”
“They still think I did her.”
“So do I.”
“Check with Lin.”
“Check with Lin?”
“Stop repeating everything I say, Terry. Just do it.”
“Why? Why should I?”
“Because I’m asking you to.”
I slumped back. “You haven’t actually asked me anything, Collie. And that’s how I know you’re bullshitting. You’re giving orders, you’re pushing me around the way you always do. Fuck this nonsense.”
“Please, Terry. Please. I’m begging you.”
“You’re not begging me. You’re simply saying that you’re begging me. But why? Why do you care so much?”
Collie leaped up in frustration and I slipped out of the chair, put some space between us, got my fists up. My brother could be a fearsome sight, the way he moved like a caged beast waiting for the proper moment to strike. His eyes settled on me and he frowned, like I was an idiot to be afraid of him. He was detached from the horror of his own crimes. He had no idea how intimidating it might be for me to sit across from him, from those hands. They were powerful and menacing. They could strangle a young woman easily. They could do the same thing to me.
“Why wouldn’t I care?” he asked.
“Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”
“I did. But no one believed me. Look, you’ve got to trust me on this.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Wait. Wait.” I mouthed the word again but nothing came out. Then there was a trickle of sound that turned into a chuckle thick with revulsion. “I have to trust you? And what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Ask questions.”
“Ask questions? That’s what you’re telling me to do? What does that even mean?”
“Find out who did it. Stop them.”
“Why do you care? What difference does it make now? Five years later?”
“I’ve been thinking about it a long time.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense. You iced one young girl but you want to see justice for another you claim you didn’t kill?”
“It’s not a claim, Terry. I didn’t kill her. I man up for my own crimes.”
“You’re not even sure!”
“I am sure now. Find Gilmore. You remember Gilmore?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, I remember Gilmore.”
“He still hangs around the house. He can probably put you in touch with the dicks who handled my case and the cases involving the other girls.”
“Why the hell would I want to surround myself with cops?”
“Because they think I’m lying.”
“I think you’re lying too.”
“No, you don’t. You think I was wrecked out of my mind and can’t remember, but you don’t think I’m lying.”
I didn’t like being corrected. “Actually, Collie, I do think you’re lying and I think you’re setting me up to take some kind of fall here. I don’t think you want to go out of the game alone.”
My brother didn’t have the capacity to look hurt. It wasn’t in his nature. I wasn’t sure if it was in his nature to even be hurt. But the look that crossed his eyes came as close as I’d ever seen.
I knew every muscle and vein and scar in my brother’s face. I’d seen him with a 106-degree fever and his eyes rolling back and showing only white from the agony of sepsis. I’d walked in on him more than once while he was in flagrante delicto, usually with one of my girls. I knew every twitch and tell he had.
I got in close. “Say it again.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
Maybe it was the truth. I jify truth. Iust didn’t understand why he was bothering to tell it now. It earned him nothing. He couldn’t buy his freedom or his life for it. And a mass murderer couldn’t possibly care about justice for a victim that wasn’t even his own.
The exhaustion and miles and edginess caught up to me in that moment. I slumped into the seat and dropped my chin to my chest, and before I knew it I felt tears on my face.
“Are you crying?” he asked.
“No.”
“You are. For me?”
“Fuck no. I want to know what set you off.”
“Nothing.”
He’d spent the evening drinking at the Elbow Room. He’d gone on his spree and then returned to the bar, ordered a beer, and casually informed the bartender and patrons that he’d just murdered several people. He’d cracked open the.38 and unloaded the weapon. His knuckles were bruised but not bloodied or torn. It didn’t take much to beat an old woman to death. He waited without incident for the cops to show up. He confessed on the spot to what he had done.