The room convulsed around him, as if the walls had clenched like a fist.
“Mr. Ralston?”
He became aware that Tommy was holding out typewritten pages to him, eyes anxious. “This explains it.”
“Sit down,” Ralston said.
“Thank you. Yes, I will.” The boy collapsed loosely on a tan davenport, long legs sprawled, head back, eyes closed, hands turned palms uppermost, the sacrifice at the altar. On the wall behind, two fencing foils crossed above the emblem of the university team.
Tommy added, without emphasis, “I thought really serious things were more formal. You expect personal tragedy to have dignity and form. But it doesn’t. It’s only caused by trivialities — stupid mistakes, misjudgments. Nothing of weight. All accident.” He might have been whispering prayers before sleep.
Ralston, set-faced, read:
I am a murderer.
Last night, I murdered two people that I cared for.
One I loved and loved deeply. The other was my friend. But it was wholly by capricious and accidental chance, which now seems inescapable, that I murdered both of them. That it was essentially accidental does not excuse me.
The balance of the paragraph was crossed out. There were four pages, scarred by revision, ending with his full signature.
Ralston took out his pen and laid the pages in Tommy’s lap. “Sign your usual signature diagonally across each page.” He watched, immobile, as the boy wrote. Then he folded the sheets and thrust them into his breast pocket.
“Now tell me what happened,” he said.
“I loved her. We were planning to get engaged. At first I thought she was a criminal with Piggott. But she was sensitive and warm. You’re her brother. You know. She didn’t know about Piggott, what he did. We fell in love. We were going to get engaged after I graduated.”
“How did you get involved with Piggott?” Ralston asked. The tremor shaking his legs and body was not reflected in his voice.
“It was Fleming. Dad had a Citizen’s Committee for Law and Order meeting at the house. Fleming came. He said that the sheriff and the bootleggers were cooperating. But he needed more evidence. He said that Piggott would try to blackmail me to make it seem like I was participating in his business. He called it a business. Dad didn’t like it, but he agreed that I would let them try to blackmail me.”
“So then Fleming introduced you to Sue.”
“I met her at his house. Twice. He said that she knew Piggott. Then I went to her house, and Piggott was there a couple of times. He doesn’t look like a criminal, but he laughs too much. It makes you distrustful.”
“Why was Fleming there last night?” He glanced at his watch, and anxiety crawled in him.
“I told him I loved her. That we were almost engaged. Fleming wouldn’t believe me. I told him to wait outside, last night, I could prove it easily. He thought that if I were right, she could help us.
“I walked down to his car. This was after the accident. There was lightning on the horizon, like a bad movie. I told him they’d been recording everything I said. He laughed and said he knew it. I asked to see his gun. I didn’t tell him about Sue. When I shot, there was all this light. I thought lightning had struck by us. Then it smelled like blood and toilets. I wiped off the gun. I wrote it all down. You just have to read it.”
Ralston asked gently, “I don’t understand. Why did you shoot Fleming?”
“He would have known right off I killed her. He said she was working for Piggott.”
His head shook blindly, and he jerked forward in his seat.
“He would have been sorry for me. I couldn’t have faced him if he had known. Isn’t that a dumb reason? It doesn’t even make sense. But she told me she wouldn’t have given the cassettes to Piggott. She told me. She loved me. We were almost engaged.
“You and I,” he said, “would have been brothers-in-law.”
He lifted his head.
“Are you corrupt, Mr. Ralston?”
“Not always,” Ed said at last. He glanced again at his watch, and his heart pulsed. “Will you come with me and make a formal statement?”
“I wrote it down.”
“We still need a statement.”
“OK.”
He rose slowly, a sleepwalker awake in his dream. He looked slowly around the room. “This is real, isn’t it? I keep thinking that I’m going to wake up, but I am awake.”
Ralston said, “You better hurry. I think Piggott knows you were there last night. He knows Sue… had an accident. He’ll want to ask you about it.”
“I pushed her away from me and she fell.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“It’s just that simple. I pushed her away and she fell.”
“We have got to get moving.”
He followed the boy into the bedroom, watched him find a coat, pick up wallet, keys, money from the dresser.
“Not that.” He took a fat pocketknife from Tommy’s fingers.
“Dad gave me that.”
“You’ll get it back. Better give me the cassettes, too.”
“Sure.”
They left the apartment. Driving rain lashed their faces. As they came into the parking lot, a black sedan jerked to a stop before them. Its doors opened, like an insect spreading its wings, and Buddy and Elmer bobbed out.
Ralston whispered urgently, “You left the house early. Nothing happened.”
“But that’s a lie,” Tommy said.
The two men splashed toward them. Buddy’s mouth was opened. He stopped before Ralston, hunching in the rain, hands jammed into his pockets. “Goin’ somewhere, Champ?”
Elmer said, “Hello, Tommy. I think we met once at Sue’s. Mr. Piggott would appreciate it if you could stop by and see him.”
Tommy nodded gravely. “I’d like to see him. I have a lot to say.”
Elmer looked respectfully at Ralston. “Mind if we borrow him, Ed?”
Ralston looked at Buddy’s weighted pocket. He said, “I was just going that way, myself. Might as well join you.”
They sat in the rear seat of the rain-whipped car. Elmer drove. Buddy, in the front seat, sat turned, looking at them.
Tommy lay back on the brown leather upholstery, his unshaven face wan in the pale light. His eyes were closed. His lips twitched and jerked with internal dialogue.
When they had driven for a quarter of an hour, he said unexpectedly, “Mr. Ralston?”
“Yes?”
“It feels — it’s rather complicated to describe. It’s as if I had been walking along someplace high and it fell apart under my feet. I feel as if I am in the act of falling. I’m suspended. I haven’t started to fall yet. But I will. I don’t understand how I feel. Is that guilt?”
“It’s lack of sleep.”
“I think it is the perception of guilt.”
“Get some sleep if you can. Keep quiet and get some sleep.”
Buddy said sharply, “Nobody asked you, Ralston. Let the kid talk. What’d you do, kid?”
Tommy’s unkempt head threshed right and left.
Ralston jerked hands from pockets as he said, “Tommy, keep quiet,” in a savage voice.
“Can it, Ralston,” Buddy said.
“Screw you.”
Buddy’s arm flashed across the seat. He hit Ralston on the side of the head with a revolver. Ralston grunted and, trying to turn, was struck twice more.
He let himself fall loosely into Tommy’s lap. To his surprise, he felt himself rising very swiftly up a shimmering incline. As he rose, he thrust the knife he had taken from his pocket into Tommy’s hand. Light turned about him in an expanding spiral, and his speed became infinite.
He awoke almost at once. His nose and cheek were pressed against Tommy’s coat. Elmer was snarling at Buddy with soft violence. Tommy was saying, “Mr. Ralston, Mr. Ralston,” his voice horrified. The blows, Ralston decided, had not been hard. He reasoned methodically that the angle for striking was wrong, and therefore insufficient leverage existed for a forceful blow. This conclusion amused him. Tommy’s coat faded away.