Light shone from the ground floor windows of the Stevenson house and spilled through the front door, which was open to the cool night air. The glow spread across the terraced rock gardens separating the house from the lane where the annuals, killed by frost, stood dry and twisted. Their shadows moved ghostlike in the beams of McGuire’s headlights as he approached the house. He parked in front of the garage and stepped into the chill of the evening.
A familiar odour set the hairs on the back of his neck dancing and he drew the gun, drawing courage from its weight in his hand.
He circled the front door to avoid being silhouetted in the light shining from the hall, the gun held loosely at his side. The aroma that greeted him when he emerged from the car was stronger now, and he recognized it as cordite smoke. He knelt at the open door and peered around the edge, leading with the gun, controlling his breathing.
She was staring back at him from the floor where she had fallen, and the lights of the crystal chandelier directly above her reflected in the massive pool of fresh blood framing her body. She was stretched on her side with one knee pulled up as though in a running position. The blood had soaked through her flowered print blouse and the pool extended from her body across the width of the hall to a baseboard splashed with crimson, the flecks tracing a random pattern up the wall.
“Blake!” McGuire shouted down the hall. “Blake Stevenson. It’s McGuire. Come out and let’s deal with it.”
There was no reply.
McGuire entered the house crouching low in a duck walk to reach Ellie’s body. He groped for her wrist with his free hand, his eyes and his gun sweeping the hallway ahead of him. He felt warmth but no pulse. A trail of blood led down the hall toward the kitchen, a drizzle of fading life that followed Ellie as she fled death until the final bullet struck her in the neck and severed an artery and she tumbled forward. Still running. Still clenching her fists in fear.
McGuire shouted Blake Stevenson’s name again and continued moving down the hall in a crouch, tracing Ellie’s blood past the stairs to the second floor, past the darkened dining room on the right and the brightly lit living room on the left, its furniture upholstered in bland flowery prints.
In the kitchen an upset chair lay with its back on the floor, an inanimate object feigning death. On the table sat a heavy glass tumbler half full of whiskey, a newspaper opened at the business section, a dinner plate with a partially eaten serving of canned spaghetti, the tines of a fork buried in the red spaghetti sauce, and a cheap crystal bowl filled with grated parmesan cheese.
The rear door of the house leading from the kitchen was ajar. McGuire switched off the light, stared into the garden until his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and breathed deeply.
He reached for the telephone, dialed the operator, asked for the Compton police station, spoke a few words tersely into the receiver and hung up, all the while looking out the window at the shadow that sat among shadows. Then, the gun still in his hand, he stepped through the open door.
“I just made a telephone call,” he shouted to the oversized figure sitting silently in the lawn chair, its back to the house. “We’ve got a few minutes if you want to talk. Or if you don’t, that’s okay too.”
McGuire descended the short flight of stairs and approached Blake Stevenson. His back was to McGuire and his eyes were fixed on a stand of pine trees at the rear of the property, staring into blackness, away from light and life.
Stevenson wore a white shirt open at the collar and dark slacks. Both hands rested on the arms of the wooden chair. His feet were clad in loafers and his entire body trembled. When he turned his head to look at McGuire his coarse features were drawn in fear and he opened his mouth as if to speak but no sound emerged.
McGuire leaned against a tree trunk several feet to the right and behind Stevenson. He lowered the revolver but kept it visible, letting Stevenson know he was armed. “Where’s the weapon?” McGuire asked.
Stevenson looked away, back at the pines again, and shook his massive head slowly from side to side. Again he opened his mouth without speaking.
“What, you got rid of it?”
Another wave shook his body and Stevenson closed his eyes.
McGuire had seen it before. A murderous rage, the bloody act, delayed shock, remorse. Husbands against wives, lovers against lovers.
“Ellie found a copy of the sermon Cora wrote, didn’t she?” he said. He folded his arms across his chest, the gun still in his hand. “The one Cora wrote to tell me about Cynthia Sanders. That her son Terry was involved. That you were involved. That you probably killed her. Pulling the telephone cord around her neck until she started to throw up and choke. Then you panicked, right? Just took off and left her there. That’s why Cora hated you so much. That’s why she would have nothing to do with you.”
Stevenson opened his eyes. His bottom lip quivered.
McGuire leaned from the waist, controlling his anger. “You know how Ellie got into Willoughby’s office?” he hissed. “You want to know how your wife got a key to the door? She blackmailed Harper. She found out he’s been hiding something in his past. That he likes to fondle little boys. Maybe he tried it with one of her students, maybe she found out about it when the kid told her. So she threatened Harper, made him give her the key to Willoughby’s office where she could look for his copy of Cora’s sermon. That’s the kind of woman your wife was, Stevenson. Made it a little easier to kill her maybe. Or maybe it was all your idea in the first place, blackmailing a pervert to save your ass.”
Headlights swept the darkness as a car entered the lane and pulled around the front of the house. McGuire heard the crunch of the tires on gravel, the opening and slamming shut of a car door. Morton had enough sense not to use his siren and flashers. Good for him.
“Just tell me one thing,” McGuire asked. He was tired, he was spent and later, back at the Town House tavern, he planned to be drunk. “How much did Terry Godwin have to do with it?”
The other man’s head moved from side to side sadly, resigned.
“But she did take Terry to bed, didn’t she? It was his semen they found in her, wasn’t it?”
McGuire heard footsteps echo through the house. When they stopped at the open kitchen door he called over his shoulder, “We’re down here.”
Blake Stevenson’s head ceased its sideways motion and he turned again to look back at McGuire, raising his sad eyes, saying nothing.
“I’ll bet it was Terry’s idea, wasn’t it?” McGuire continued. “He heard about Sonny Tate, the kid from the wrong side of the tracks, banging a rich widow and driving her flashy convertible, and Terry couldn’t stand it, could he? Couldn’t stand being left out. So you and him, couple of good buddies, went to see her that night, right? What happened? She turn you down? She spread her legs for Terry, the good-looking stud, but she wouldn’t do it for you? That’s what pissed you off, right? Is that when you got rough with her?”
McGuire pushed himself away from the tree and replaced the gun in his trouser waistband at the small of his back. “What I’m really curious about is, how much did Cora know?” McGuire asked, taking a step toward the other man, prepared to help Morton secure his wrists with handcuffs. “Did she know all the details or just the general stuff?”
Stevenson was wetting his lips with his tongue. Footsteps were approaching from the direction of the house, a steady swish-swish through the uncut grass.
McGuire stepped closer to Stevenson and for the first time noticed the dried blood on the other man’s hands and brown speckles, like flakes of rust, on his white shirt sleeves.
“Just the general stuff,” said a voice behind him, and McGuire turned to look back at Mike Gilroy, a rifle in his hands, total rage in his eyes.