Q: Mr. Wylie, do you recognize this pendant?
A: I do.
Q: Whose pendant is it?
A: It’s Natalie’s.
Q: Natalie Fletcher’s?
A: Yes. It’s hers.
Q: Were you wearing it when you stole the body of John Hiller from the mortuary at Sixth and Stilson?
A: I was. I must’ve lost it when I was struggling with the old lady. She was ripping at my clothes, she scratched my face, she was a terrible old lady.
Q: Why were you wearing Natalie’s pendant?
A: She gave it to me for luck.
Q: When?
A: Sunday. Before I went out looking for a body.
Q: The night you stole the corpse from Abner Boone’s mortuary?
A: I don’t know the name of the place. The one on Hennessy Street. Where I got the embalmed body.
Q: And you were still wearing it last night, when you stole the second corpse?
A: Yes. Well, I still needed luck, you see.
Q: When did you shave off your mustache and the hair on your head?
A: After I got the second body. I wrapped it in an old rag Natalie used to have in her apartment, and I left it in the VW bus when I parked it. I didn’t want to risk carrying it any place, I figured it would be safe there till the next day. When I got back to the apartment, I put a Band-Aid on my face where the old lady had scratched me, and then I shaved off the mustache, and cut off my hair and shaved my scalp clean.
Q: What time did you leave the apartment on Oberlin Crescent tonight?
A: About six-thirty. I gave myself plenty of time. I knew where I was going to fake the explosion, and I knew it only took a half-hour to get there from my apartment. But I still had to get the gasoline. You see, I’d gone to a hardware store on Saturday, and bought a plastic five-gallon container, you know, with a cap on it and a pouring nozzle—cost me six dollars and fifty cents. But I still had to fill it with gas. So the first thing I did was find a gas station, and have them fill it for me. Then I drove around till it got dark, and when I got to the approach road, I had to wait another five minutes because some guy was parked there, reading a road map. When he left, I got the bus in position, took my valises out of it, and put the body behind the wheel. Then I poured the gas over the body and the front seat.
Q: How could you be sure the gasoline would explode?
A: Oh, I was sure.
Q: How? The engine and the gas tank are in the rear of a Volkswagen bus.
A: Oh, sure, I know that. But you see, what I did was push in the cigarette lighter just before I rolled the bus over the edge. It takes twenty-five seconds for the lighter to get hot, I timed it. I pushed in the lighter, got out of the bus fast, shoved it over, and then watched it go down the embankment. It exploded the second the lighter got hot.
Q: What did you do after the bus exploded?
A: I picked up my valises, and also the empty container, and I started walking toward where Natalie was going to pick me up. I dropped the container in a garbage bin outside one of the warehouses. Natalie was already there when I got to Avenue K and Ulster. By that time I could hear fire engines coming.
Q: And then?
A: We went out for a bite, and then we went to a movie.
Q: What movie did you see?
A: I’d seen it before, when it was first playing. But it’s around again, and Natalie wanted to see it.
Q: What movie is that?
A: Mary Poppins.
I drove Henry downtown to where he’d left the truck. The rain had let up, but the sky was still overcast, and the night was very black. We had talked about the case on the way from the Twelfth, and now Henry said, “He shoulda just killed his wife. That was the easy way to do it.”
“He hadn’t planned on murdering anyone,” I said. “That just came up.”
“Well, you go around stealing dead bodies, you got to expect something to come up,” Henry said, and yawned. He got out of the Pinto and extended his hand. “Ben,” he said, “I’ll see you.”
I waited until he had started the truck, and then I drove off. I found an all-night diner three blocks away, got out of the car, and phoned Maria. She answered on the second ring.
“Ben?” she said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Maria,” I said. “May I come there?”
“Of course,” she said.
“I may be a little while. I want to go home first, check on Edgar Allan.”
She hesitated. “Are you keeping him?” she asked.
“I’ve been thinking about it. He’s not a bad person.”
“Ben?” she said.
“Yes, Maria?”
She had heard the tone of my voice, she knew what I would answer even before she asked. “You solved it, didn’t you?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “I solved it.”
“You poor darling,” she said.