“That’s because I kept the ledger that implicates you. I intend to show it to the police.”
She started screaming. “I wish I’d killed you Tuesday night. Paul wrenched the wheel out of my hand at the last second. The bastard saved you. Now all he cares about is saving his precious career.” She snorted. “Poor innocent Paul. Wise old Becky had to fill him in on the way the world really works.” She lowered her voice to almost normal. “He broke up with me tonight. It’s your fault.” She drew a deep breath. “I bet even with that ledger they won’t do anything to me. Fuck you. You’re bluffing.”
“Are you really that stupid?” I asked.
Scott stood up. His deep voice rumbled. “Leave before I throw you through the basketball hoop from here.”
She hesitated a second, recognized the genuine menace in his voice, and retreated. We got a few more choice obscenities shouted at us before she blasted out the doors.
I remained seated. Scott sat back down. Later, a few custodians swept the floor and still I sat. Scott put a hand on my shoulder. “You did your best,” he said. “Let’s go home and forget it. The danger to us is over. My arm’s starting to hurt, and you must still be stiff and sore from the other night.”
“I want to stay a little longer,” I said.
He let me alone, didn’t ask questions. The custodians finished. They looked up at where we sat. I gave a brief wave to one whom I recognized, but didn’t speak to him. They doused the lights, leaving only red exit signs lit. That and light from the hallway flowing through the glass in the doors seeped in. The heat dissipated slowly. I looked through the squares of window twenty feet above. Light from a half-moon streamed in, forming soft patches of brightness near us. Still I sat. The locker-room noises faded. No sound came from the hallway.
We heard the handle of a door click.
11
A figure emerged from the boys’ locker room. He carried a gym bag and moved slowly. We were out of the moonlight, in deepest shadows. The figure trudged across the darkened gym floor. He passed through a square of brightness, but I couldn’t make out who it was.
He stopped directly below where we sat. He looked up, then began to ascend. Slow measured steps, each one seeming to take minutes, brought him to where we sat. Up the tiers he came, stopping three rows below us. He sat in a patch of moon-light, straddling the bleacher seat. He placed his gym bag on the seat between his knees.
He looked up. It was Paul Conlan. He wore faded blue jeans, white socks, gym shoes, and a white sweater. He placed his winter coat on his gym bag.
He sighed. He fiddled with the straps on the gym bag.
At last, he said, “I saw you guys up here at the end of the game.”
“Becky told us about you breaking up with her,” I said.
“She’s a fucking bitch.” For a moment, he seemed to inflate with anger, then almost as quickly shrank back within himself. When he spoke, more teenage pathos filled his voice than I could imagine possible. “She laughed at me when she told me about how she ran everything. How she had people beaten up. She laughed at Roger being dead. She said I was so naïve. I know nobody else liked her, but I loved her. We’d been going together since grade school. I knew she did stupid stuff, and I knew what I did was wrong, but I didn’t know how rotten she was.” He pushed his gym bag a few feet down the bench. He made a fist, then rapped his knuckles softly on the polished wood.
“I’m sorry about Becky,” I said. And I found it was true. I felt sorry for the kid and her screwed-up life.
Minutes dragged by in silence. Finally, I said, “Tough game. Hard one to lose.”
“Thanks. We should have won.” Again silence ticked by.
“Everybody else gone?” I asked.
“Yeah. I was the last one out of the locker room.” He stared at the moonlight that streamed through the windows far and high above. “Mr. Mason?”
“Yeah?”
“I killed her.”
Perhaps my heart stopped. Certainly the world and time paused for me.
“I did have sex with her, but I lied. I didn’t use protection. She came back Sunday night. Everybody was gone. She was hurt from her fight with Jeff. She told me she was pregnant, that I was the father. Something snapped in me.
“Becky constantly pressured me for more sex, to be more involved in drugs. Susan was free, easy, no hassle. With her, I felt calm. But the pressure was too much! My mom and dad constantly pushed me in sports. They wanted a sports hero for a son. Since I was eleven, it was always more, more, win, hurt the other guys. I hate them! I hate the pressure.
“Coach Montini made it worse. I was his ticket out of here. I don’t know how many times he told me that. I was his first real pro prospect. Job opportunities would open up. He hated being a high school coach.”
He shoved his gym bag farther away. His voice stayed low, almost clinical. “So when Susan told me she was pregnant, I couldn’t take it. I could never marry her. She cried and whimpered. I held her while I seethed and my hatred grew. We did some coke and we began having sex. I was rough with her. “She …” He paused. “She liked it. She begged for more. I don’t know what came over me. I lost control. I killed her.”
He stopped and drew a deep breath. He didn’t burst into tears. Moonlight shone on his damp blond hair. He continued in his soft voice. I could barely hear him.
“Poor Jeff. I’m sorry I got him in trouble. I wish I could have been the friend he wanted.” He paused a minute, then continued. “I always thought of myself as a normal guy. A good athlete. I like kids looking up to me, liking me. But then I always had to be that for everybody: kids, teachers, coaches, parents. It felt like the whole world was watching me every minute. I wanted to be a pro athlete, a star. But each new pressure was like another noose around my neck.”
“I understand,” Scott said.
Paul glanced at him. “Yeah, you would, Mr. Carpenter. I wished I’d met you sooner to talk about it. Anyway, I couldn’t handle it. And now …” He sighed deepest of all. “Now it’s all useless.”
Two nights later, we lay side by side next to Scott’s Christmas tree. Christmas Eve at my younger brother’s had been beautiful. Scott had sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fireplace, all the little kids in their pajamas surrounding him, the littlest one sheltered in his lap. He had read story after story until they all fell asleep.
My family’s that morning and afternoon had been a wonderful chaotic Christmas: yelling kids and parents, warm closeness. At five, the doorbell had rung.
Scott’s sister had tracked us down. She and Scott had retired to my parents’ bedroom and talked for two hours. They came out misty-eyed and arm in arm.
Yesterday morning, I’d talked with Frank Murphy. He said they’d gotten the whole story from Paul. He almost felt sorry for the kid. They’d arrested Becky and Eric. He told me I was right about Becky. She’d been more trouble than any three people with whom he’d ever dealt. Mysteriously, another ledger had turned up. He said, “You know, Tom, some of the people we talked to claim you threatened them with a ledger.”
“I lied,” I said. “There was an extra blank ledger in the stack. While we waited in the gas station, I made up names and figures and wrote them in. I mixed in some real stuff from the ledgers to make it look real. They bought my bluff.” We’d left the ledger book in the police station mailbox and called in an anonymous tip. I’d wiped my fingerprints off carefully. Frank had sounded unconvinced by my explanation, but he let it go.
With one finger, I slowly traced the outline of Scott’s muscles on his chest and shoulders. We had only the tree lights on. Judy Collins sang “Who Knows Where the Time Goes.” I felt the same goose bumps I had when I first heard her sing that song.
“I’m glad my sister came,” Scott said. “She thinks Mom and Dad will come around.”
“That’s great,” I said.
I rested my hand on his chest. It rose and fell with his breathing. The song ended. Silence filled the penthouse. I sm
elled the pine needles from the tree and the apple wood in the fireplace. Outdoors, the temperature, after a brief rise the day before, was on its way down to another record low. I watched snow swirl outside the windows. “We could be trapped here until the end of the next ice age,” I said.
“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend the time with,” he said.
A few minutes before, we’d exchanged Christmas presents. For me, he’d gotten a signed first-edition set of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I’d spent nearly a year talking to his junior high and high school coaches and getting as many videos of his games put together as I could. Meg had proved invaluable in helping to get tapes from his parents. I’d had copies made and sent the originals back. Some were nearly twenty-five years old. He nearly cried when he stuck it in the VCR and realized what it was.
I leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. I said, “I love you.”
Also by Mark Richard Zubro:
A Simple Suburban Murder
Why Isn’t Becky Twitchell Dead?
The Only Good Priest
Stonewall Inn Mysteries Keith Kahla, General Editor
Death Takes the Stage by Donald Ward
Sherlock Holmes & the Mysterious Friend of Oscar Wilde by Russell A. Brown
A Simple Suburban Murder by Mark Richard Zubro
A Body to Dye For by Grant Michaels
Why Isn’t Becky Twitchell Dead? by Mark Richard Zubro
The Only Good Priest by Mark Richard Zubro
Sorry Now? by Mark Richard Zubro
Love You to Death by Grant Michaels
Third Man Out by Richard Stevenson
The Night G.A.A. Died by Jack Ricardo
Switching the Odds by Phyllis Knight
Principal Cause of Death by Mark Richard Zubro
Breach of Immunity by Molly Hite
Political Poison by Mark Richard Zubro
Brotherly Love by Randye Lordon
Dead on Your Feet by Grant Michaels
On the Other Hand, Death by Richard Stevenson
Shattered Rhythms by Phyllis Knight
Eclipse of the Heart by Ronald Tierney
WHY ISN’T BECKY TWITCHELL DEAD? Copyright @ 1990 by Mark Richard Zubro. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zubro, Mark Richard.
Why isn’t Becky Twitchell dead? / Mark Richard Zubro.
p. cm.—(Stonewall Inn editions)
ISBN 0-312-05996-5 (pbk.)
I. Title. II. Series.
[PS3576.U225W4 1991 ]
813’.54—dc20
90-28374
CIP
eISBN 9781466802827
First eBook Edition : October 2011
Why Isn't Becky Twitchell Dead? Page 19