Nell told herself to stop but at the same time she went into their bedroom, opened the closet and checked his guns, locked in the rack: a Smith & Wesson revolver and a rifle. Nell found the caliber, stamped on the stock, the number she didn’t want to see: .30–06. She sniffed at the muzzle, smelled nothing. How long would gunpowder smell linger? She didn’t know. But what about all this dust on the barrel? Didn’t it prove that the rifle hadn’t been touched in months, maybe years?
Nell wandered around the house, agitated again, as agitated as
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she’d been before the swim, or more. That oppressive feeling came down on her, as though she were in some alien place. Another swim?
A crazy thought, but she came close to getting back in her bathing suit. Instead she got in her car, a minivan she’d had for years, and went for a long drive, headed nowhere particular. She ended up downtown, in the parking lot of the Ambassador Suites.
“Mr. DuPree?”
“Yeah?”
“This is”— somebody or other, name not quite catching in Pirate’s head—“at Southern State Bank and Trust. Your account has been credited with a deposit of four hundred thirty-two thousand seventy-one dollars and sixty-three cents.”
“Oh.”
“Minus a fifteen-dollar fee for wire transaction.”
“What’s that?”
The woman explained. Pirate stopped listening.
“Anything else I can do for you today?” she said.
“What’s it like out?” said Pirate.
“I’m sorry?”
“You know, the weather.”
“I think it’s nice.”
Pirate hung up. He opened the curtains. Nice? Way too bright to be nice; for some reason he felt the brightness only in his non-eye.
He opened a pack of Twizzlers and watched a minivan drive into the parking lot, down below.
The phone rang a minute or two later.
“Someone to see you, sir.”
“Norah and Joe Don?” said Pirate. “Send ’em up.”
“Um, no, sir, it’s just the one person.”
“Who?”
“One moment.”
Muffle muffle.
“She says her name is Nell.”
“Don’t know any—” Hey! But he did! “Yeah, send her on up.”
Muffle muffle.
“Actually, sir, the lady says could you come down.”
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“Nope.”
More muffle. “She’s on her way.”
Pirate hung up, looked around. Should he tidy up? Not much to tidy: that was the cool thing about maid service. He got one of those Kahlúa bottles from the minibar, took a sip or two, thought for the first time in a while of the tiny weapon—maybe reminded by the tininess of the Kahlúa bottle. Funny, how the mind worked. Pirate went into the bedroom, raised the mattress. Yes, the tiny weapon, safe and sound. The tiny weapon wanted him to pick it up, but who was master? A very rich master! He let go of the mattress—
thump
—and moved to the desk, where his Bible lay. As he opened it to read that last part—Job’s final reward—he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, saw he wasn’t wearing the patch. Was that any way to receive a lady? Pirate was going back and forth on that question, fingering the gold tassel, when he heard a knock on the door. Just an ordinary knock, but it sounded in his head like a starter’s pistol.
Starter’s pistol—like for the beginning of a race. He remembered that from his sophomore—and last—year of high school, when he and his buddies, now forgotten, had smoked weed under the stands by the cinder track. Funny, how the mind worked. He reached for the patch.
Pirate opened the door. Yes, her: the tanned, in-shape one, older than Susannah but just as pretty in a softer way, and close up like this—she wore a skirt that came to the knees and a short-sleeved shirt buttoned up high—no doubt about her being strong-looking, for a woman.
“Hi, there,” said Pirate.
“Hello, Mr. DuPree,” she said. Her gaze went to his patch, then quickly away. Pirate got a kick out of that. “Thanks for agreeing to
. . . thanks for seeing me.” She seemed nervous. Pirate got a kick out of that, too.
“Seeing is believing,” he said. A joke: one of his very best, and so quick.
She blinked. Her mouth—nice and soft—opened slightly, but she couldn’t come up with anything to say.
“Nell, right?”
“Yes.”
“Come on in, Nell,” Pirate said, stepping aside and making a broad gesture with his hand. “It’s a suite.”
She entered, glanced around. Bedroom to the left, sitting room to the right. She turned right.
“Take a seat,” Pirate said, indicating the sofa.
“I won’t stay,” she said.
“Take a seat anyway,” said Pirate.
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“Thank you.”
She seemed polite, a nice and polite lady who’d fingered him for a crime he didn’t do. Only a test: yes! This visit, this being so close to her, was only a test of how at peace he really was. At that moment, Pirate was sure of something, had never been so sure of anything in all his life: he was going to pass with flying colors.
“Care for a drink?” he said.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I only came to—”
Pirate interrupted, talked over her—not in a rude way, but didn’t he have a right to—what was the expression? Set the tone? Yeah. He had a right to set the tone. “There’s Coke, OJ, Sprite and Kahlúa,”
he said, opening the minibar, “plus liquor, beer and wine. Personally, I’m having Kahlúa.”
“Nothing for me, thanks,” she said, sitting at one end of the sofa.
“Too bad,” said Pirate. “I was going to propose a toast.” A toast: what a great idea, and coming to him out of the blue. His mind was in overdrive, cranking out shit like it hadn’t in . . . in years, twenty of them to be precise. It was starting to feel like the old days. He glanced over at the Bible, lying on the coffee table, and overcame a sudden urge to fondle the gold tassel.
“In that case,” she said, looking embarrassed.
“I’ll pour two,” said Pirate.
“Not much for me.”
“Just a dainty splash.”
He handed her a glass. Their fingers touched. Her skin—the skin of the finger that had fingered him—felt hot. Was there a message in that? Pirate, not knowing, filed the fact away for some future use.
And then came the perfect toast.
“Peace,” he said, towering over her. They clinked glasses. She took a sip, her eyes shifting for a moment, as though she’d had some thought, or maybe didn’t like the taste. Pirate sat in a chair angled toward her, four or five feet away.
She put down her glass, faced him. “I realize there’s nothing I can say to make up for what you’ve been through,” she said.
“Say or do,” said Pirate.
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She flinched. That was nice. “You’re right,” she said. “Nothing I could say or do. But for my own sake, then, I want you to know how sorry I am and that I never meant to do you any harm.”
Pirate took a slug of Kahlúa, settled things down inside. “Sorry I get,” he said. “Run that no-harm part by me one more time.”
She nodded. A woman from another world, a finer one: Pirate could see that. And guess what. Norah had the same quality, Norah the daughter. This was getting interesting. What did Momma know?
Probably nothing; in fact, unless Nell said something about Norah in the next minute or two, a sure thing. That made Norah one of those eight-hundred-pound gorillas in the room. Pirate tried to stop himself from rubbing his hands together, and almost did.
“I meant harm for the real killer, of course,” Nell was saying. “But I made my identification in good faith.”
“Faith?” Wasn’t he the expert in that area? Also, except for that fineness, he couldn’t see much resemblance between mother and daughter. Were they trying to pull something? Pirate was ready for that, ready for anything. He smiled a friendly, misleading smile.
“Meaning,” she said, “I really thought the killer looked like you. I know now I made a terrible mistake.”
“Looked like me how?” said Pirate.
“Do those details matter now?” Nell said. “I’ve already admitted I was wrong.”
“Looked like me how?”
She flinched again, not as much this time, less fun for him. He began to decide he didn’t like her. Hey! How funny was that? Because of course he hated her guts. Correction: would have hated her guts, if he hadn’t come to peace with life.
“It was the shape of the face,” Nell said. “And mostly the eyes.”
“The eyes?” He turned his head so just the patch was visible from where she sat.
Her voice fell, real quiet now. “They were pale blue,” she said.
“Like yours.”
“Like mine?” Pirate said. He raised the patch, gave her a real good look.
Silence.
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And then came a voice, an angry, heavenly voice that spoke through him. “My power lives in this secret place.” The voice of God, no question. Pirate felt like a giant.
He lowered the patch, turned so he could see her. She was crying—silent crying, but with tears rolling right down her face in two silvery tracks. He watched. For a few moments he felt pretty good, but then it wore off. He rose, got the Kahlúa bottle, topped her up, offered the glass.
“Enough of that,” he said. “Drink up.”
She took the drink, this time knocking back a real grown-up snout-ful. What else could he get her to do? But that was a nasty thought, not him at all. He clinked her glass again, again said, “Peace.”
She nodded, found some tissue in her pocket, wiped her face. “I’m sorry,” she said, squaring her shoulders, pulling herself together.
“This is unforgivable.”
Sending an innocent man up to Central State for twenty years? Is that what she meant by unforgivable? Or something else? All at once Pirate was tempted by three magic words:
I forgive you.
Wow. The power of words; maybe they were wasted most of the time, but now this, a chance to wield them like . . . like God. The catbird seat! Pirate came close to saying the magic words, if for no other reason than to feel like God. Then, at the last second, he remembered from Job what God was really like, not the kind of guy for making nice right from the get-go, more the kind of guy for drawing things out. For example, if God knew about the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, would He be spilling the beans, tidying up everybody’s lives? No way.
So Pirate kept the magic words to himself, just sat back and watched her get herself all groomed and composed, the way she’d been before this visit. She came pretty close, but still looked a little different.
Would it be cool if she never got all the way back? This—thinking like God—was giving him a nice rush. He refilled his glass.
“Funny about the hurricane,” he said.
She sat with her hands in her lap, folded around the tissue. “What do you mean?”
“You know.” Another God-like line: he was getting good.
“The way it did so much damage but also helped you?” she said.
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“Couldn’t have put it better myself.” Although actually he could have:
The great rain of his strength.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” she said.
“Yeah?” Pirate was surprised.
She met his gaze. For a moment, he was sure that the waterworks were starting up again, but they did not. “The way something good managed to come out of the storm,” she said.
“Something good?” he said. “Me getting out?”
She nodded, and as she did, seemed to notice his feet. Pirate realized he was still in bare feet; he had really big ones. And he’d picked up a case of nail fungus, thick and yellow, like all the lifers.
She squared her shoulders again.
“Yes, you getting out. That was good. You’re innocent.”
Was there just a trace of question mark at the end of that sentence?
If so, he let it hang there. Did he need to prove anything to anybody?
Four hundred and thirty-two grand did all the talking necessary.
She rose, walked over to the window, looked out. It was nice watching her move. “What I’m trying to do now,” she said, “is figure out how it happened.”
Pirate knew the answer to that, had it on good authority, straight from the mouth of that potbellied cop: frame job. But more fun to let her work it out for herself. Unless . . . unless she already knew, was in fact in on the frame job, a key player, and all this chitchat was part of some game. Pirate thought of the tiny weapon. “And?” he said.
“What you got figured out so far?”
“Not much.” She turned to him. “Were all of these people strangers to you before the murder?”
“What people?”
“The ones involved—Bobby Rice, Johnny Blanton, my husband.”
“Which one doesn’t belong?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Murder victim’s on your list,” Pirate said. “Asking me if I knew him makes me wonder where you’re going with that.”
“I’m just trying to see how the investigation went wrong.”
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“Like maybe they thought I had some grudge?” Pirate said. “A motive?”
“Exactly.”
Pirate took another drink. “Blind alley,” he said. “Complete strangers, all three of them. Next question?”
“But you had a—you’d had legal problems before,” she said.
“So?”
“Maybe those legal problems brought you into contact with my
. . . with the detectives.”
“Nope,” he said. “How about you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah you. Any chance of you being acquainted with a detective or two, back in the day?”
“What are you saying?”
“Motive works both ways.” He was cookin’, simply on fire. In case she’d missed anything, he hammered it home. “What goes around comes around.”
“Are you suggesting it wasn’t a mistake?” she said, her voice rising in a way that grated on him. “That I did it deliberately?”
“In cahoots,” said Pirate. In the beginning was the word, right? So God always had the right ones at the hand.