Nocturnal Animals 17
He told Francesca Hooton at lunch: “We got two of them. I identified one and they killed the other.”
She said, “You’re glad?”
“Damn right.”
“They killed one. You’re glad of that?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want them to do with the one they caught?”
“Lou? I want to see justice done.”
“What would that be in this case?”
Tony Hastings was not prepared for the question.
“Death? Should he get the death penalty?”
It occurred to him this was a political question. He had always avoided political discussions with Francesca because of her crazy right wing slant. He said, “Lou’s not the important one. The bad one is still at large.”
“Should he get the death penalty?”
He thought if Francesca knew his mind, she might think they had killed the principle in him that opposed the death penalty. He admitted, “I don’t know what punishment I want.”
She said, “You do want them to suffer, don’t you?”
The idea made him bite his lip the way he used to as a child. He said, “I’d like them to have what they did to me.”
“Their wives and daughters killed.”
“No, I don’t want that.”
“They themselves should be killed.”
“I suppose so.”
“Like Turk. Are you satisfied how Turk was killed?”
“Turk wasn’t important. He went along with Ray.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“I don’t know. He was killed in a holdup.”
“So he got what he deserved and you are satisfied.”
“Maybe not. It wasn’t a punishment. He didn’t know what he was being punished for.”
“You’d like him to know?”
“I’d like them to know what they did. I’d like them to be shown exactly what it was they did.”
“They know what they did, Tony.”
“They don’t know what it means.”
“Maybe they do. They just don’t care.”
“I’d like to make them care.”
“Repent? Say how sorry they are?”
“I’d like them to know exactly how awful a thing they did.”
“Tony, is that possible?”
“I suppose not.”
“Is it even what you want? Say Ray did learn that. He’d be a different person. Shouldn’t he then go free?”
“He mustn’t go free.”
“He knows he hurt you, Tony. Count on it, he knows.”
“I’d like to hurt him back.”
“Hurt him. But not kill him?”
“Kill him too. Both.”
“Both? It’s not enough for him just to suffer?”
“I’d like him to suffer the agony of dying.”
“Ah. Torture?”
“I would like him to know he is dying and I’d like him to know why. That’s what I mean by agony.”
“Would you like to kill Ray yourself?”
“I’d like him to know he is dying because of me.”
“Aha.” She smacked her fist into her hand. “You don’t want him to understand how bad he was. You don’t give a damn about that. You want him to know he can’t hurt you like that and get away with it. Because of who you are.”
“He can’t do that to me and get away with it.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Her gold-edged hair hung down one side of her face as she leaned on her hand, her eyes eager and beautiful on his behalf.
“I remember Helen lecturing Laura and me what a primitive emotion revenge is. We made a fine distinction between revenge and justice, and I remember how civilized we thought we were.”
“You were civilized. It’s Ray who’s not.”
“That puts a burden on me,” he said.
“It does if you think it does.”
The latest call came to his office. Louise Germane was there, she had just come in, he wondered what she wanted. He knew the voice: “Andes here, can you pay us another visit?” He never did find out what Louise had wanted.
This was June, and Tony Hastings was free to travel, his third trip back. He drove his car, taking all day. The next day he sat with Bobby Andes in the top row of bleachers on the first base side, sandlot baseball on Sunday afternoon. The home team’s white uniforms had CHEVROLET on their shirts, the visitors in gray wore the name of Poleville, a town fifteen miles up the valley. The outfield stretched to a row of houses beyond a wire fence. Above them was a bluff with trees, and the valley spread in a broad plain on both sides. Cars on the highway watched on the third base side, and when someone got a hit the horns blew.
Wearing a hat and dark glasses, Bobby Andes dropped cigarettes through the boards to the dead grass while the sun glared on his haggard face. The wind was blowing. A dark rain cloud with black undersides lurked over the two round hills across the valley. The sun shone around the black undersides.
They were watching home player number 19, who was sitting on the bench below them, not playing. Tony could see only the back of his uniform from time to time between the heads of fans in the first row. Number 19 was jiggling, fidgety. He was yelling out to the field. Once he turned and grinned up into the bleachers. Not close enough to recognize, his tanned face in the sun with tiny white fisheyes. His name was Ray Marcus, and someone had named him a frequent companion of Lou Bates and Steve Adams. The lieutenant was sure he was Tony’s Ray because of the description. The possibility gave Tony chills in the sun.
With no one sitting near, Bobby Andes told Tony about it while the game dragged on. How he got the tip from the guys at Herman’s, after questioning Lou and getting nowhere. Herman’s, a bar in Topping, thirty miles up the valley from Grant Center. This Lou is a dumb ox, with one strategy: keep your mouth shut. Excellent detective work revealed that Lou came from California with Steve Adams, but nothing would make him tell who the other guy was in the Bear Valley holdup. As for your case, it couldn’t have been him because he was in California.
Bobby Andes told about Lou’s wife in California who hadn’t seen him in a year and a half with good riddance. That was fine detective work too, finding her, though it provided no useful information. Meanwhile Lou was living in Topping with a Patricia Cutler, who was almost as dumb and stubborn as Lou although not quite. Her slightly higher intelligence led her into revealing things Lou’s rocky stupidity kept hid, like the helpful admission they were not in California last year. And when Bobby Andes told her she wasn’t a wife and therefore not protected from giving testimony, she did remember a jerk they went around with, real creep, but not his name nor what he looked like, for he never came around and she never saw him. Which might be true, for he seems to have had his own life separate from theirs.
According to Andes, that didn’t matter, because he had what he needed. A good detective knows his people. Lou and Turk were known in the village, though no one cared to have known them well. They were remembered at Herman’s, with gossip, including a rumor about a place in the woods for pickup women which Patricia Cutler did not know about. Which Bobby Andes detective figured was probably your murder trailer before it got notorious.
As for this Ray, first there was a source at Herman’s who remembered seeing a third guy with them, and then others remembered. With the folks at Herman’s cooperating (because the people around here are peaceful and respect the police and regard these guys as foreigners bringing evil from outside), someone finally showed up who knew your guy’s name, which is Ray Marcus from Hacksport, and here we are. Which for Lieutenant Andes pretty well closes the search, even before you take a look at him. Even the god damn name. He told about poking around Hacksport, where Ray Marcus was well known. Work as an odd job man, now in the tool factory, formerly and more usually a miscellaneous assistant, sometimes to the electrician, sometimes the plumber, with a short record of minor offenses. Breaking and entering, assault, a fight in a bar. One rape charge, which the woman dropped the case. And nobody wanting to admit being his friend.