Mike Gilroy’s face was a swarm of tics and spastic expressions, the corners of his mouth tightening and relaxing. His tongue tasted the night air like a lizard’s and his eyelids blinked furiously, the eyes themselves in nonstop motion: fixing themselves on McGuire, swerving to Stevenson, then flicking away to the blackness of the woods at the rear of the garden. He held the rifle in two hands at waist level, like a garden implement.
McGuire noted the weapon was a bolt-action twenty-two. “What are you going to do?” he said, concealing his shock and surprise.
“Do?” Gilroy’s voice was strained and when he spoke his words tumbled over each other. “Do whatever I gotta do. Like you have to. You’ll do what I tell you. Get the hell over there, near Stevenson.” Gilroy grinned and the small boy handsomeness flashed for a moment and was gone.
“Use your head, Gilroy,” McGuire said. He took a sideways step toward Stevenson, his eyes on Gilroy. “You’ll get one shot away, that’s all. There are two of us and—”
“Just took one to stop fat-ass here, didn’t it?” Gilroy sneered.
McGuire moved directly in front of Stevenson and saw the shiny dark stain on Blake’s trousers just at the belt line, the blood seeping through his trousers and pooling on the seat of the chair. It was not Ellie’s blood McGuire had seen on Blake’s hands but Blake’s own.
“Little twenty-two, low in the gut,” Gilroy said. He raised one hand, quickly wiping the back of his mouth. “Took more than that to stop Ellie. Didn’t it, Blake?”
A shudder swept over Stevenson, who raised a hand from the arm of the chair like a man gesturing to the bartender to stop pouring a drink, the glass was full enough and he wished to have no more. Then the hand lowered again.
“You know what . . . what she was doing, his wife, that bitch Ellie? You know what she was doing?” Gilroy glanced at McGuire, holding him within range of the rifle, but his words and his scorn were directed at Blake Stevenson. “She was . . . she knew a welder. Guy named Sam, lives near Falmouth. She knew him and . . . and Bun . . . Bunny knew, Bunny used to . . . Ellie would arrange their dates for Christ’s sake. The dates with this fucking welder so he could . . .” Gilroy drew the back of a hand across his mouth and the gesture seemed to call forth the other Mike, the quiet, controlled, friendly insurance man.
“So the two of them, my wife and the welder, could meet in motels in the afternoon.” Speaking sadly now, as though mourning a lost friend. “So there would be no record of telephone calls between my wife and her lover. That’s what Ellie did. That’s what his wife did.” Gilroy bit his lip like a small boy being punished and raised his head as tears flooded his eyes. Then the small boy vanished and the demented cuckolded husband returned.
“That’s the kind of bitch his wife was,” Gilroy snarled, and he stepped toward Blake Stevenson. “That’s the kind of bitch she was!” he screamed in fury.
Blake Stevenson lowered his eyelids and tears appeared.
“You shot me,” McGuire said calmly to Gilroy. “Through the window of Cora’s house.”
Gilroy’s fury turned on McGuire. “I was in the house!” he shouted. “When you came back. From filling your gut here, at his expense,” and he waved a hand at Stevenson before returning it to the rifle. “Some detective you are.” The small boy grin appeared again on Gilroy’s face. “Some fucking detective you are. I’m in the kitchen, come in one of the windows near the pantry, looking for . . . for something and when I don’t find anything I figure it’s in Terry’s room but the goddamned door’s locked and I tell myself, no sweat, McGuire’ll be an hour anyway, talking to fat-ass here. Then you come in and I duck in the parlour, watch you help yourself to some juice, me standing there in the dark. Would’ve blown your head off from there, if I’d had the rifle with me. Then you go upstairs and I hear you unlock Terry’s room and I think, he’s getting whatever it is that old bitch has, he’s getting it up in Terry’s room, and I run through the woods and I get the rifle and I come back and, shit, there you are in the open window, see you right through the window, and I say, the hell, I’ll do it from outside. Don’t have to worry about getting out of the house if somebody hears the shot.”
“You burned down the house,” McGuire said.
“You were covered,” Gilroy sneered. “Covered good against fire. Old Cora, she had more insurance than she needed. Funny thing is, your cheque’s back at my office. I listed the arson as vandalism, got it approved right away. Shit, McGuire. You’re practically a rich man.” Gilroy laughed aloud.
“Cora trusted you.”
“Cora thought I was a sweetie. For a while. Cora told me I could drop in anytime. Didn’t want lard-ass here around though. Never liked that fat prick.”
Wait for Morton, McGuire told himself. Wait for him.
“Why did you shoot Blake?” McGuire asked. He moved a step away, watching Gilroy swing the muzzle of the rifle spasmodically to follow him.
“Son of a bitch couldn’t stand it.” Gilroy was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, burning up excess adrenalin. “First Cora starts talking, couple of months ago, saying there’s something she knows, or thinks she knows, that she wants to tell people about, you and maybe Morton. Then tonight Ellie comes back from the church and Blake and I are here, he’s panicking, thinks you and Morton are figuring out what went on, he’s ready to plea bargain and I’m trying to keep him from shooting off his mouth. His bitch of a wife comes in, she’s worked it out, who was there that night, what happened. She’s been bugging Blake about it since Cora’s funeral and now she’s ready to tell everything to Morton. Thirty years later, she’s ready to ruin my life. His too, her husband’s. She’d have taken everything Stevenson had, his business, the house, all of it. She’d get it when he went to jail, taking me with him. Then she . . . then she tells me what she . . . she and Bunny’ve been up to for a year, she’s laughing at me, laughing at me, McGuire! She’s ruining my life and she’s laughing at me, says . . . says when Blake and me are in jail, Bunny . . . Bunny’d be free to screw welders from here to Boston. Blake here, he’s crying and begging her not to. Well, I wouldn’t beg the bitch. She’s bragging in the kitchen, saying all she knows, and he’s crying like a fucking baby, pleading with her, and I go to the car, get this peashooter out of the trunk, come in through the back door and she sees me and turns and runs down the hall. I miss with the first shot, get one up her ass and she’s still running and screaming, another in her back and she drops, screeching like an owl in heat, crawling for the door. Took one in the back of the head to shut her up. For good. I come back out in the kitchen and fat-ass Stevenson here is doing his Carl Lewis imitation running out the back door, except it’s like watching an elephant with diarrhea dancing in front of a pay toilet, his legs’re moving but he’s still in one place. I catch up with him, pass him, turn around and do it. One shot at the belt and I’m out of bullets. And he sits down, right there in the chair, like he’s waiting to tee off at the club while I go . . .” Gilroy faltered again. “While I go get some ammunition, look for . . .” Gilroy’s face shattered, but his hands kept their grip on the rifle.
“Looking for your wife?” McGuire asked.
“She was . . .” Gilroy shook his head.
Morton, McGuire shouted in silence. Where the hell are you, Morton?
“It was you, not Blake, who went into Cynthia Sanders’s house that night,” McGuire said. “What happened? Did Terry go to bed with her first while you guys waited outside?”
“In the car,” Gilroy said. “He left us, Blake and me, in the car with a barrel of stinking clams. Terry brings two glasses and a bottle of Southern Comfort out to us, stole it from her bar. Then goes back inside. Half an hour later Terry comes out and he says ‘Next,’ like he’s selling movie tickets or something. The three of us, we go upstairs, Terry’s all ready to watch. Drunk as I am, I’m ready, take the booze into the bedroom with me, she’s as drunk as I am but when she sees the three of us she starts screaming, telling us to get out. What, Terry’s good enough for her but I’m not? I grab her, Christ, what a body, and she goes for the telephone. Terry and I, we try to calm her down. Terry hits her and she really starts screaming so I . . .” He shrugged. “Fuck it,” he said. “Fuck it all anyway.”
“You blamed it on Sonny Tate.”
“Could’ve been him. Should’ve been him. Fuckin’ short-ass loser. Terry and Blake go back to his house, Terry’s. Me, I still wanta get laid so I show up at the party. Had the clams, what the hell. Next day I call in a tip, anon . . . anonymous. I say Sonny Tate did it. Still don’t know where he was that night, why Hindmarsh didn’t nail him.”
“Now what?” McGuire asked. “You killed Ellie, you shot Blake. Now what the hell do you do?”
“What?” Gilroy was almost dancing now, the energy, the fear driving him like an engine, talking in rapid-fire patter.
McGuire watched Gilroy, saw the effect like amphetamine on a man tottering between sanity and dementia, between wanting to live and pleading to die.
“What?” Gilroy repeated. “You think I’m afraid? You think I give a shit, McGuire? About you? About lard-ass here? I’ll show you what I think, how worried I am.” Still holding the rifle at waist level he swung it toward Stevenson and fired, shattering the wood next to Blake’s head. Stevenson whimpered, tried to rise from the chair, whimpered again and stared down into his lap.
“I’m the guy always in control,” Gilroy said. “All my life, the cool guy, the insurance man, nothing riles me. Always planning ahead, looking down the road, that’s what I’ve done all my life. Staying cool, staying close to this prick and his bitchy wife because of what he knew. Sucking up to Cora because she knew. She knew about Terry and she knew about Blake but she didn’t know who else was there. Who did it. Didn’t know about me. Terry and fat-ass here tried to convince her it was Tate. But Cora wouldn’t buy it. Hell, no. She was always afraid. . . .” A sudden shift in weight, the back of his hand across his mouth again. “She was afraid her precious fucking Terry did it. When Terry died a hero she wanted to preserve his good memory. All that shit.” He spat on the ground. “Then she gets sick and starts asking more questions about it. Asking questions all the goddamn time. Still didn’t know I was there. Knew about Blake, not about me. But she was getting close. I should’ve done her years ago, McGuire. Couple of times I thought about it. Push her down the stairs. Old lady takes a tumble, happens every day.”
“Think about something, Gilroy.” McGuire raised his hands to his hips, a casual stance. Moving them closer to his gun.
“Think about what?”
“About living. About staying alive. You put the gun down, you stay alive.”
“You don’t know shit, do you, McGuire?” Gilroy sneered. “You think I plan to stick around and see the sun come up? The hell I do. I finish what I started here, go clean up the mess of . . .” Another falter, another near-crumbling of his face, before Gilroy continued. “Go do what I gotta do and to hell with it all.” He raised the rifle, sighting down it at Blake Stevenson whose head was still lowered, his eyes still closed. “Hell with it all,” he repeated calmly.
“Think about it, Gilroy!” McGuire shouted.
The rifle cracked again and the crown of Blake’s skull shattered. His mouth opened to release a torrent of blood and his body rose as though to stand before falling back into the chair, every limb quivering before he fell to one side.
At the rifle shot McGuire jerked the revolver from the small of his back. For a heartbeat or two, Mike Gilroy remained staring at his friend’s body, unaware that McGuire was crouching, the gun in both hands. When Gilroy swung the rifle toward McGuire to find the Smith & Wesson aimed at his chest he looked first puzzled, then amused. The boyish smile, the adolescent face, shone through the menacing expression.
“Don’t,” McGuire said aloud but Gilroy sighted down the barrel at him and McGuire’s instincts spoke louder than his caution and he fired once, twice. He watched the other man stumble backwards with each shot, like a toddler in a harness being jerked out of harm’s way until, his hands still clenching the rifle, he dropped to his knees in a prayerful posture and looked back at McGuire, his eyes unblinking, before releasing the weapon and falling forward.
McGuire slipped the revolver into his jacket pocket and ran to Gilroy. He knelt beside the dying man and rolled him on his back, exposing two sucking chest wounds. Gilroy stared back at him as though the two were strangers, each wondering how they had arrived at this place, in this time, together.
The darkness was suddenly painted in stripes of red and blue, the colours sweeping the trees from left to right, and McGuire heard the police vehicles arrive, their tires crunching on the gravel surface.
“Hang in there,” McGuire said gruffly. “You might just make it. Hang on.”
More flashing red lights, the slamming of doors and shouts of “Freeze!” from behind him.
“Too soon,” Gilroy whispered. “Too soon.” He closed his eyes and there was only the sound of the chest wounds pulling in air and expelling blood, the sound oddly sexual and obscene.
McGuire stood up.
“I said freeze!” the voice shouted behind him.
The sucking noises from Gilroy’s chest ceased abruptly and McGuire glanced sadly down at the open eyes and their thousand-mile stare before turning slowly around until the lights from the house caught his face and revealed it to the police officers and ambulance attendants.
“Damn it, Morton,” he said in a tired voice. “Don’t ever yell ‘Freeze!’ like that again. Reminds me of movies.” He rested his hands on his hips and walked past Gilroy’s body and the bloodied remains of Blake Stevenson to a rotting tree stump, where he sat down, his energy spent, his emotions dissolved.
He lowered his face into his hands, his elbows on his knees. “And what took you so goddamn long anyway?”
“I’m having dinner with my wife, trying not to second-guess myself about giving you the gun,” Morton was saying.
They were in the Stevensons’ living room, McGuire slouched on a French Provincial sofa covered in a tapestry floral print, Morton pacing back and forth in front of an oak trestle table, touching the wood surface with his fingertips each time he passed. In the hall, two state police forensic officers were examining Ellie’s body, taking photographs and measurements, making small talk. The Smith & Wesson Police Special Morton had loaned to McGuire was tagged and in a plastic bag, property of the state attorney-general’s office.
“And I get a call,” Morton continued, “somebody’s out on Main Street with a rifle, ducking in and out of bars, then tear-assing his car down Mill Pond Road, screaming like a madman.”
“You know who it was?” McGuire rubbed his eyes.
“They said it was Mike Gilroy but I thought, hell, that’s a joke. Quiet little Mike? Must be somebody looks like him.”
“When’d you clue in?”
“I’m out by Crow’s Pond, because that’s where his car was last seen, and I’m thinking, geez, it sounds like Gilroy’s car, gold Volvo station wagon, but they’re common as sea gulls out here. Could be anybody. Then Smitty calls from the office. One, he says Bunny Gilroy’s there, hysterical because her husband’s looking for her, wants to kill her. Two, he says you called and there’s a homicide out here on Oyster Pond Road. I think, what is this? Is this quiet little Compton or am I in some TV show, waiting for a break so they can run a tampon commercial?”
Morton stopped at the trestle table and leaned against it, facing McGuire. “Do you have any goddamn idea,” he asked slowly, “just what in hell this was all about?”
McGuire nodded. “Nothing new,” he said. “The same old crap in a different location. Different names, different faces.”