Ray looking away, out the window, in a sulk.
“You know damn well it was wife and daughter. You didn’t have to be there to know that.”
Out the window. “I never noticed. I don’t pay much attention to the papers.”
“You didn’t need the papers, Ray. Tony told you yesterday.”
“I didn’t pay much attention to that neither.”
“And in our interview last night, I must have mentioned daughter twenty times.”
“All right, all right, daughter. You take me for an idiot?”
“Calm down Ray. We’re not out to get you.”
“Like hell you ain’t.”
“It will go easier for both of us if you tell us the truth.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Both of us, Ray. That includes you. You cooperate, we get you better terms.”
“Better than what?”
“Better than what you’ll get if you don’t.”
“I told you why it couldn’t be me. What more do you want?”
“You sticking to that story?”
“Christ, how could I stick to it if it’s true?”
“Tell Tony. You expect him to believe it?”
“I don’t give a fuck what he believes.”
“I do, Ray. He believes you murdered his wife and kid. Tell him what you say you were doing that night.”
“You tell him.”
“I forget. Already I’ve forgotten what you said.”
“You bastard.”
“Tell me again, Ray. I’ve got the tape. Maybe it will help me remember.”
“I told you, you got it on the other tape. I was with Leila. All night, you know what I mean. Watching television, Braves over Dodgers six to four. Look it up, damn you. A couple of beers, then bed, woowoo. Ask Leila. Have you asked Leila?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“You’d better ask her. It’s your job to ask her. It ain’t fair to me if you don’t.”
“Like I say, Ray.”
They turned to the right, a black road into the woods, which began to climb the mountain, turning back and forth. Tony remembered it, the turns, his breath coming short.
“I have a question about your alibi, Ray. What night did you say that was?”
“July nineteen, I told you. You can look up the baseball score if you don’t believe me.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t the twentieth or the twenty-first?”
“I know when it was.”
“Let me tell you my question. My question is where you was the night of the twenty-sixth? Last year, July twenty-sixth.”
Ray confused. “What are you asking? It wan’t that night.”
“No. I just wonder if you remember where you were that night.”
“Hell, that’s a year ago, man.”
“Well how come you remember the night of the nineteenth if you don’t remember the night of the twenty-sixth?”
Discomfort. Muddy eyes, scared. He thought of something. “Maybe it was my mama’s birthday.”
“Was it your mama’s birthday, Ray? We can look that up too, you know.”
Hesitate. “I said, maybe it was, I mean it might of been. It could just as well of been. But it wasn’t.” He thought again. “It was in the papers. That’s how I remembered.”
“You’ll have to explain that to me.”
“I mean, we saw it in the paper next morning. Leila and me, we saw how this guy’s folks was killed, and we said, How interesting, and what was we doing when that happened, and we was watching the ballgame and afterward we was in bed.” Suddenly Ray looked at Tony. “I’m sorry you lost your folks, man, that’s a shame. But I didn’t have nothing to do with it, believe me.”
“The paper next morning, Ray?”
He thought. “The morning after that.”
They passed the white church and a moment later went fast around a curve where the trailer was still in the woods above the ditch. The sight shocked him in the chest, and it occurred to him to watch Ray, who glanced at it, you could see the glance and the pretense not to notice and the settling in his face right afterward. Thinking into Ray, who was thinking you’re such wise guys you don’t even know where it happened. Tony looked at Bobby Andes whose eyes were watching his prisoner’s eyes.
They came to where the other road went down the hill, where he had gone down that night, and in another moment turned up the drive into the woods. The road seemed first broader and then narrower and wilder than Tony remembered, with the grass high in the middle and green bushes leaning into the track to scratch the car, and sharp turns around boulders and trees and gullies. Almost a year had passed since this place located itself in Tony’s mind, and it was hard to believe he had only been here twice. Since then, the leaves had fallen into it, the branches had gone bare, the heavy mountain snows had covered it and new green had appeared on everything, the scrub and undergrowth and all the high branches. All this green was new, a different growth from what he had stumbled through and recapitulated after, and it reminded Tony of the bleeding green agony of his grief, forgotten, left behind in the time between, the shame making everything since then a masquerade of neglect or a long foolish hibernation in the locked house of his living.
He heard the feigned stupidity of the voice in the back seat, “What’s this place?” He remembered the tyranny of the same voice in the woods: Mister, your wife wants you. He looked again at the face looking out the window at the trees, he stared at it trying to force the eyes back to him, compel them, look at me. He realized that Bobby Andes was looking not at Ray but at him, with a slight grin, just a suggestion of one.
It was Tony, not Andes, who said, “You know this place.”
Now Ray did look at him, a long stare before he said, “Honest to God I don’t.” Not stupidity now, though. Now the voice was unmistakably ironic, and the stare was not stupid or confused. Tony Hastings was looking at his enemy as if no time had passed, and he did not have to think into Ray because the words were clear by themselves: What’s this, man, you think you’ve got me? Why fella, you and your cops, you’re just digging a hole for yourself because you ain’t got a case, only your word which won’t stand up in court without nothing to back it up.
They came to the end. New meadow grass covered all where the police cars had been. Tony saw the deep loss in the bushes of what he did not see. “Want to get out, Tony?” Andes said.
All right, yes. He went over to the bushes, where he remembered having seen. As he approached he was suddenly aware of the danger of finding something belonging to them, overlooked by the police and left lying all winter. The possibility frightened him, he thought he should stop but he couldn’t stop. He stood next to the bushes and realized he did not know exactly where it was. Bobby Andes took him by the elbow. His eyes were shining.
Tony Hastings went to the window and looked down at Ray in the car. “I want to know,” he said. “Were they already dead in the car when you brought them, or did you kill them here?”
“I didn’t kill nobody, man.” The voice was soft and mocking.
“Nothing to say to us, eh, Ray?” Andes said.
“I’m telling you, you’re wasting your time.”
Tony Hastings did not think so. He was more and more aware of power he had acquired to do whatever he liked. They left the place and drove out. When they got to the road, Tony pointed to the ditch and said, “That’s where you tried to run me down.”
Ray was grinning all the time now, enough for Tony to see but not Bobby Andes. If you ain’t got sense to get out of the road. What was you doin in these parts anyway? I thought you was going to your summer place in Maine.
They turned up the hill road and down the other side of the ridge, and at the curve George pulled onto the gravel by the trailer.