“It’s a possibility.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“I don’t know what to think until I learn more, but my feeling is that your feeling is correct. She’s smart and she makes things happen.”
I nodded. It was turning into a pretty day, dark clouds being pushed east, and the early morning sun now warming everything up. “We’ll both see what we can find out, then?”
“Let’s stick to the plan. If there’s nothing, then it was nice to have you come down to visit. It cheers my father up.”
“You don’t have a lot of visitors?”
“Not ones that he likes. My mother’s friends, mostly. Dad’s friends seem to be either dead or done with traveling.”
“Or both,” I said, hoping to make Lily smile.
“Or both,” she said.
“Are you going to stay here with them?”
“I have to. Well, that’s not true. I need to. And I don’t mind it so much. I couldn’t have gone back to work at Winslow College, even if they’d have had me. Too many interested stares.”
She bent and pulled a weed from the damp soil, her hair falling off her shoulder. Lily Kintner had tried to kill me and almost succeeded, and I suspected she’d killed two other people and gotten away with it. Despite this, spending time with her made me feel a level of peace I’d never really felt before. It was like being with a dangerous animal, but knowing that the animal would never hurt you, would never really hurt anyone unless provoked to do it. It wasn’t just peace I felt, but I felt special. Lily had let me in.
And there was another feeling I had about Lily, one that was harder for me to understand, but what I felt for her was a kind of unconditional love, but more importantly, it was a love that didn’t require a return of love from her. It was simply enough to be the one who did the loving. I was sure that if I thought about that too long, I might conclude I was simply commitment-phobic, only attracted to Lily because she was unattainable, but I thought it was somehow more than that. It was a deeper love, protective and elemental, and maybe it only existed because of what had transpired between us in that cemetery. Or maybe I was simply blinded by an obsessive relationship, like half the people in this world.
“How should we get in touch?” I said.
“Why don’t you come back down here in a week and we’ll compare notes. We could call each other, I suppose, but then there’d be a record.”
“I’ll come down,” I said. “One week.”
Chapter 21
Richard
After murdering Richie Whalen and Pam O’Neil, Richard’s euphoria was short-lived. Not because of guilt, or worry that he’d be found out, but because going back to the hardware store, to taking orders from George, his boss, or Marie, the store manager, was almost unbearable. They had no idea who he was, what he was capable of, what he’d done. He’d changed since the killing, just as he was always changing, and they, people who never changed at all, had no idea. They just needed him to unpack the new shipment from Craftsman, or to help Mrs. Conroy find the Gorilla Glue.
They didn’t know that one day everyone would know the name Richard Seddon.
They didn’t know that they’d be asked to give interviews, where they’d say things like, I had absolutely no idea. He was a good worker. He was quiet, but I never even thought he was all that smart. I mean, if I’d only ever known what was going on in his head.
And every time the bell above the front door rang, he’d look to see if it was Joan coming to see him. He knew she wouldn’t. It would be foolish of her after their plan had gone so well, but, still, he kept thinking she might come into the store, pick up some batteries, look at him, and leave.
Then he’d meet her at the library. Maybe she would just want to know what it had been like, how Richie had acted when Pam had been shot, when the end of his own life was imminent. Had he fought back? Had he mentioned Joan? Had he begged?
Richard would tell her the truth, like he always did to Joan. He’d tell her how he placed the gun in her husband’s hand, closed his own fingers over his, and made him pull the trigger that ended his life, that Richie had been putty in his hands, as docile as a trusting child. Yes, he’d love to be able to tell Joan all this, but he knew it was better that she never knew. They really had committed a perfect crime together, not for the first time but for the third, and the less she knew about the details, the better.
He’d been thinking a lot about the Windward Resort since Joan came back into his life. Thinking about what they had done to Duane out on that jetty, but also about meeting in the library that one last time before they parted ways. He’d been waiting for her, anxious she’d maybe fallen apart during questioning, even though she’d seemed fine immediately after Duane had gone into the ocean.
That next day in Kennewick had been thrilling and terrifying at the same time. His aunt and uncle had been frantic all night, then, when Duane’s body had been found early in the morning, they had been almost disbelieving. Duane’s mother had turned hysterical, and Richard wondered if it was genuine grief or if she was just shocked that something bad had happened in her life. According to Richard’s mother, his aunt Evelyn, the baby of that dysfunctional family, had always been a spoiled brat, wanting someone else to take care of everything, wanting everything brought to her on a silver platter. She’d found the perfect man with Pat Wozniak, a fat bully, but one who revered his wife, and who had inherited his father’s successful contracting business. He bought Evelyn everything she wanted, and together they’d created a son with all of their worst traits. Laziness, arrogance, cruelty. On the day after their son was found washed up on Kennewick beach, Evelyn Wozniak had been given sedatives and gone back to bed in her room at the resort, while Pat had spent the day raging at either the investigating officers or the resort staff, unable to believe that there wasn’t someone he could blame, and maybe even sue, for his son’s drowning.
Richard spent most of that day in his room, assuming they’d leave the resort that afternoon, or that one of his parents would come and pick him up, but also hoping they’d stay long enough for him to go to the library at night. He could wait there and see if Joan came to see him. He wanted to relive the previous night with her, but he also wanted to find out how she was doing, if she was holding up to the pressure of being questioned by the police. He thought she would be but wasn’t a hundred percent sure.
Later in the day Richard’s uncle pulled him aside to tell him that they’d all be leaving the following morning, that he wanted to get the hell out of this cut-rate hotel but Evelyn was not up for traveling yet. He also asked Richard what he knew about that girl Joan who’d been hanging around Duane, and Richard told him he knew nothing.
After dinner Richard went to the library, found a book to reread, and waited. He’d grabbed an old beat-up copy of The Sword in the Stone, a book he’d loved a few years ago. His eyes went over the words, but he kept thinking of Joan, beginning to worry more and more that she might tell someone everything they had done together. At one point someone came into the library, someone older who grunted a little with every step and breathed heavily. Whoever it was left five minutes later and turned off the lights. Richard stayed where he was, in the dark, still waiting.