“Mr. Beachum,” I said hoarsely. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about Jesus Christ. And I don’t care how you feel either. I don’t care about justice, not in this life or in the next. To be honest, I don’t even care very much about what’s right and wrong. I never have.” I dropped my cigarette to the floor. I crushed it under my shoe, watching my shoe turn this way and that. I could hardly believe what I was saying to him. And I couldn’t stop. I raised my eyes again. “All I care about, Mr. Beachum,” I said, “are the things that happen. The facts, the events. That’s my job, that’s my only job. The things that happen. Mr. Beachum-I have to know-did you kill that woman or not?”
Another sound escaped his wife, and she brought her hand up to cover her mouth.
“What?” said Beachum. He was staring back at me through the bars, his eyes dull, so weary, his mouth hanging open.
“What happened, damn it?” I swallowed hard. “What happened?”
“What …? What hap …?”
“In that store. On that day. When Amy Wilson was shot.”
His mouth closed and opened again. His gaze held mine and mine his. We were locked together. “I … I bought a bottle of A-1 Sauce.”
The breath hissed out of me. Jesus, I thought. A-1 Sauce. Jesus. And yet it was true. I was sure it was true.
“And you paid Amy for it at the counter,” I said.
“Yeah.”
My hand went automatically to my cigarettes again. I drew one out. “And she mentioned the money, didn’t she? The money she owed you. Did she mention that?”
At first, he seemed unable to answer, to speak. His mouth opened and he gestured but there were no words. Then: “She said she was … you know. Trying to get it together. The money. I told her … I told her not to worry about it. I knew they were struggling. That’s why I did the car for them. I only charged her for parts in the first place. I told them all this at the trial. They didn’t believe me. Even my lawyer …” His voice trailed away. He shook his head.
But I believed him. He had talked with Amy about the money. That was what Porterhouse heard before he went into the bathroom.
I put the fresh cigarette in my mouth. It bobbed up and down as I talked. “Well, somebody shot her, my friend. That’s true, that’s a fact. That girl is dead and someone shot her. So if it wasn’t you, it was someone else.”
“You got five minutes over there,” said Benson behind me. His tone was dark now, threatening. We paid no attention to him. We went right on as if he hadn’t spoken.
Frank nodded, dazed. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
“Sure,” I said. I lifted my lighter. “Like who?”
“What?”
“Who could’ve done it?”
“I don’t … I don’t know.”
“Not Porterhouse,” I said. “He’s no shooter. I talked to him. He didn’t do anything. But I’ll tell you something else: he didn’t see anything either. And he’s their only witness.”
At that, Mrs. Beachum gasped. That’s the word for it. A short, wet, sobbing gasp. I didn’t look at her. I blocked out the heat of her gaze.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Beachum wearily. He looked away sadly, defeated.
“Come on, man,” I whispered. “What about the woman? The woman in the car.”
The condemned man gave a quick shake of his head as if I were annoying him now. “No … No …”
“Why didn’t she hear the shot?”
“I don’t …”
“Why didn’t she see that you had no gun? It was the steak sauce in your hand, wasn’t it?”
“Oh God!” Mrs. Beachum cried.
I made myself ignore her. “It was the bottle, wasn’t it? In your hand? Tell me.”
Beachum seemed now like a man half-asleep, a man too suddenly awakened. “Yeah,” he said dully. “Yeah. The bottle. I told them that. It was in my right hand, so she couldn’t see it. She backed into the other side of me. The left side. She didn’t see, she didn’t have a clear view.”
“All right. So it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Porterhouse. It wasn’t you.” I heard Mrs. Beachum start to cry. I didn’t care. I am not a caring person. I am a reporter. This was my story. This was all I knew how to do. “Who else was there? That’s what I want to know. Who the hell else was there?”
But he was too tired. His shoulders slumped. He looked down at the table. Dropped the smoldering butt of his cigarette into the ashtray there. “No one.”
I plucked the unlit cigarette from my mouth. “Somebody. That’s a fact.”
“The place was empty cept for me. The accountant guy. Amy.”
I threw the cigarette down. I wanted to grab him by the shirt-front, shout in his face. “But it wasn’t empty,” I said. “She didn’t shoot herself, did she?”
He opened his mouth a little, looked miserably down at the table. He didn’t answer.
“Somebody,” I said again. “There must’ve been somebody. Somebody coming in as you left maybe. That would explain why she didn’t hear the shot. If it was right after you left. Didn’t you see anyone?”
“No, I … I don’t know. I didn’t see. I was just buying … steak sauce. I had to get home. For the picnic. We were having a picnic. Bonnie ran out of steak sauce. It was Independence Day.”
I heard a chair scrape behind me. “All right,” said Benson quickly. “That’s it.”
“No!” It was Mrs. Beachum. She was off the bed. She flung herself off it. She flung herself against the bars of the cage, gripping them until the knuckles whitened afresh on her small, red, dishwater hands. “No, please,” she said again. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her face was mottled and ugly. “You believe us. Don’t you? Do you believe us?”
I finally had to face her. But her grief, her desperation left me silent. Benson stepped up on my left side and put his hand on my arm. A man used to moving people around as he saw fit, was our Benson. He didn’t pull me up, but I felt the pressure and stood.
“All right, all right,” I said to him.
“Let’s go,” he said. “… upsetting people …”
“All right.”
Mrs. Beachum clung to the bars without restraint, without dignity. Her teeth were bared, as mine had been, as if she were some kind of animal. She growled the words out from deep in her throat. “Do … you … believe us?”
“Don’t, Bonnie,” Beachum murmured. “Don’t.”
“Come on, damn it,” Benson said.
I looked at that woman’s terrible face in the cage. She seemed to strain through the gaps toward me.
“Yes,” I said finally. “I believe you. For Christ’s sake. You only have to look at him.”
She closed her eyes-thank God for that; I couldn’t stand them anymore. She rested her forehead against the bars and her shoulders shook with crying.
“No one. Not even the lawyers,” she said. “No one else …”
Benson tugged me toward the door. I yanked my arm away from him. “All right,” I said. “Damn it.”
“Coming in here, upsetting people,” he said tightly. “Don’t you think these people have enough? What do you think this is?”
“All right,” I said. I walked to the door. Benson hurried around me to signal the guard outside. The door opened.
But I stopped on the threshold. I glanced back at the cage. Beachum sat as he had, his eyes lowered to the table, his mouth pulled down in a distant, almost dreamy frown. But his wife had now lifted her head again, the marks of the bars white on her brow. She was watching me through the steel, through her tears, the way you’d look at a child who had just done something incredibly thoughtless, thoughtlessly cruel.
“Where were you?” she said softly, her voice breaking. “It’s too late now.” She sniffled thickly. “Dear God, where were you? All this time.”