We stared at each other, and a moment of raw understanding passed between us.
“What does Ruth think?” came Roger’s contribution, in his dumb gargled voice. He had to tilt his head back to see through the heavying hoods of his eyelids, and his cigarette had burned down to a precarious line of ash. Gingerly, I removed it from between his fingers and stubbed it out in the ashtray. His fingers stayed stuck in a V-shape.
“Hey, man,” Tina said, patting the bed, “you wanna lay down?”
Roger’s head bobbed around on his neck, a nod in the affirmative, it appeared, but he did not get up. Tina shot me a look—what’s his deal?—before continuing on.
“Then it was like… it all stopped. Or it seemed like it did. We know now that he moved to Utah to attend law school, a good one that he had to scam his way into. Despite hundreds of hours of preparation, his Law School Aptitude Test results were mediocre and his performance on the grammar part of the exam below high school level. So he forged his recommendation letters and moved to Utah, and that was when women in the Salt Lake City area began to disappear. One after another, until an eighteen-year-old named Anne Biers managed to escape and identify him. He was arrested, sentenced to fifteen years for kidnapping, and then they found in his compounded car a strand of Caryn Campbell’s hair. He was extradited to Colorado to stand trial for her murder, and that was when law enforcement shit the bed.”
Roger’s chin touched his chest and his head snapped up. “I didn’t do it,” he insisted.
Tina ignored him. “In Colorado, he filed a pro se motion to represent himself, arguing that it was a violation of his constitutional right to a fair trial to be restrained while using the law library at the Aspen courthouse.” Tina’s upper lip curled to indicate what she thought about The Defendant’s rights. “The judge agreed, with the condition that he must be supervised at all times. Only, the guards took one look at the guy and decided he didn’t pose a real threat, and it wasn’t long before they were leaving him to do his research in the library while they popped out for a smoke break. One of those times, he opened the window, jumped two stories, and took off. A week later, he was apprehended in the mountains. The public was understandably outraged, and so the sheriff moved him to a higher-security prison, about an hour outside of Aspen, and put him on a twenty-four-hour watch. Within six months, he escaped a second time. What the hell kind of incompetence happened there, God only knows. In any case, that was December. Exactly one month before you saw him at your front door.”
Roger’s head landed on his forearm with a final-sounding whump. I poked him, to be sure he was really out, before whispering, “Can you call the police? I think he was trying to hurt me.”
Tina went over to him, shoving her hand down the waistband of his jeans. It was only then I noticed that fresh blood was streaking his upper thighs. When had he started bleeding?
Tina extracted what appeared to be a small Swiss Army knife, partially unlatched.
I gaped at the blade. “How did he not feel that?”
“I’m a licensed therapist,” Tina said. “Everything in my toiletry kit is legal.”
I glanced at the open bathroom door, the leather kit on the sink, where Tina had stood a few minutes ago, washing out the glass she gave Roger.
Tina went over to the nightstand and lifted the phone from the receiver, dialing the police. “Please don’t tell the sheriff that part,” she said to me. “He already thinks I’m some kind of black widow.” Her laugh was gravelly, like it wasn’t all that ludicrous a thing to think.
I waited while she explained our situation to the operator. “It’s the Days Inn on West Tennessee Road. Room two-oh-three.”
“Why did the sheriff tell me not to spend any time alone with you?” I asked when she hung up.
Tina groaned—this again? “I was married to a rich old dinosaur who died of natural causes, and I got almost everything even though he had five adult children who are all nearly twice my age.”
“So he thinks you had something to do with his death?”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“Even if I did,” came Tina’s non-answer, “I have no reason to want to hurt you.”
“My family has money,” I said. “Maybe you’re somehow after that.”
Tina smirked. “I’m scraping by, all right.” She started tidying the room—fluffing the pillow she’d held in her lap and propping it against the headboard. “Come to Colorado with me,” she said, moving on to make the other bed. I got up to help her. It mattered to me too that when the police arrived they found a tidy room. “I’ve been in touch with The Defendant’s old cellmate. He’s agreed to put me on his visitors’ list.” In unison, we drew up the top sheet and gave it a half-foot fold.