We Were Killers Once

by Becky Masterman

  Common sense told him he didn’t need to worry, he only had to follow the clues and he would find the confession.

  He told himself this. So why in the middle of the night would he wake with the fear coiling up from his guts like it was a living thing inside of him, under its own control? As if the fear wanted out, like a monstrous parasite, coming to stand outside himself, beside himself? He didn’t think he could take it much longer.

  As he drove the rest of the way on I-10 Beaufort had too much time to think about how he was on the same road that he had traveled with Hickock and Smith so many years ago. His grandfather dying somewhere along this road, he couldn’t remember where. If he’d never met up with Hickcock and Smith, who would he be? What if he hadn’t done what he’d done … he could hardly remember why he did it … to prove to them and himself that he was bad?

  And the nightmares. He probably wouldn’t have the nightmares if it weren’t for Hickock and Smith.

  The next night Beaufort was in El Paso, where he handed off the money to his contact.

  Thirteen

  Here’s something I held on to, something we had in common: Carlo and I both liked to read. Granted, we read very different books. Carlo read a lot of philosophy, theology, and science, and sometimes books that combined all three. And more recently, books with titles like Peterson’s Guide to Stars and Planets.

  Me, I gravitated toward Ken Bruen, who sets his tough crime dramas in Galway. They’re raw, but not in the sense that some use the word, as in smutty. Raw like the wounds of Jesus. Reading about the tortured alcoholic detective Jack Taylor pumping bullets into the face of some bollix made me, by contrast, feel girlish.

  I stopped at the line “She noticed me staring at her neck. Nuns, like cops, see everything.” Did that go for priests, too? And how much like a nun was Jane? Was she submissive and plain?

  “If she couldn’t be a priest, did Jane ever consider entering the convent?” I said aloud. Having once said her name, it had become easier to say it again.

  I thought I noticed Carlo shift his butt in his recliner.

  “She did, I think. But decided she loved the world too much.”

  The whole world? Or just your spot in it?

  I glanced at the cover of the book he had just opened.

  “Trollope,” I said.

  “Strumpet,” he replied, smiling but without looking up.

  “Very funny. The book,” I said, squinting so I could read the title. “The Way We Live Now. Is that a novel?”

  “It is,” he said, and kept reading.

  “I’ve never seen you reading a novel before.”

  That didn’t seem to require a response.

  If Carlo had been more forthcoming I wouldn’t have nosed into the book that evening when I begged fatigue and he went to walk the pugs by himself. Inscribed on the blank page when I opened the cover was “To my dearest Lady Carbury, with undying devotion from your obnt srvnt, Mr. Broune.” And the date, more than two decades ago. The handwriting was Carlo’s.

  They had playful pet names for each other, like ours. Only theirs were esoteric literary allusions. And a date that showed how the young unlined Jane would always live in his memories, while I had brought more of a sixtyish body into our relationship.

  Had he chosen this novel to read because I’d awakened his memories of Jane with my questions?

  I closed the book and went into Carlo’s library, just to see if there were any more of Anthony Trollope’s novels. They were easy to find because there were so many of them. Like almost two dozen lined up on a shelf at eye level. I pulled just one out and found a message from Lady Carbury to Mr. Broune.

  That wasn’t all. Next to the Trollope novels was a book called Wiping the Slate Clean: Reducing Recidivism Through Prison Literacy Programs. By Jane DiForenza.

  She was not only a better person than I was.

  She was more intellectual, on Carlo’s level. They didn’t just read together, they wrote together.

  She didn’t just bake things and have poor taste in decorating.

  She was probably strong.

  And Carlo never told me any of this, why? Because he didn’t want me to compare myself to Jane and feel that I was lacking?

  Things you think have been put to rest, resolved, snuck back into your mind when you least expected, catching you off guard. You have to do battle with these obsessions again and again, even if you’re one tough broad who doesn’t take shit from anyone.

  Self-worth: my right to occupy a spot in the universe no taller than five foot three inches.

  How tall was Jane? Such a trivial thing, but those are the things that break us. The camel’s straw. The nail in the tire. The wicked mustard seed that grows inside our mind, and encroaches on our delicate mental balance. Is this what happens to everyone three years past the initial infatuation, or just to me?

  The security screen door is heavy and banged shut when Carlo returned with the pugs. I moved quickly away from the books (I did not run) and out of the room because how often and with what reason did I ever go in there? Luckily the computer in my office was still on, and I sat there with my hands poised over the keyboard, heart beating hard enough to notice.

  “I’m in here, honey! Just doing something I forgot!” With both exclamation points at full throttle.

  He replied, something in a softer tone that I couldn’t hear, one of those things that’s not necessary to hear. I thought of how easy it becomes to lie.

  Fourteen

  When he first arrived in the Tucson area, Beaufort had checked into a motel in Catalina, this one just about a mile away from his target. His goal was to find someone he could live with for free rather than pay for a room. She needed to be old enough so she wouldn’t laugh in his face, but young enough and good-looking enough that she could still believe she was worth it. No hookers. Tits would be nice but not essential. Sometimes women with big tits thought too much of themselves and got picky because they thought if you had those you could snag a guy with them any time you wanted.

  He had gotten some new clothes, khaki trousers and a navy blue jacket at a local thrift shop called the Golden Goose, good-looking but not flashy enough to draw the wrong kind of attention.

  It didn’t take long. He found her about seven miles away at one A.M. on a Thursday, an hour before the bar closed, when the good girls had gone home and the bad ones hadn’t given up hope.

  Except for having some Mexican name like most bars in the area, this bar at the corner of Oracle and Houghton didn’t pretend to be upscale by having a theme, like the maritime theme at Pelican Pub. The theme here was Bar, pure and simple. A couple of men were left, looking so low they’d have to reach up just to tie their shoes. Losers. There were four women, two sitting across from each other in a booth, one jabbering loudly to the other that she shouldn’t go home to that creep, any guy who’d hit a woman blah blah blah she deserved better than that.

  Another woman who looked like prime property sat alone in another booth. Her clothes were tight but not slutty, clearly giving it away rather than selling it. A little grim faced, staring into her whisky on the rocks like it was a crystal ball and the fortune was bad. He arced his way leisurely toward her booth, and ran his fingertips over the edge of the table, to send a message. She didn’t look up when she said, “Get lost.”

  Women had changed since the seventies, Beaufort thought. Better know that now than waste his time with a bitch. He turned his attention to the only other woman. She was sitting at the bar, and that was a good thing. Being alone at a bar at one A.M. signified a lot of things.

  This time he played it more cool, sitting two stools down the way Meadows had at Pelican Pub in Sarasota. The woman didn’t look up, same as the one in the booth, but her chest rose and fell a little more rapidly to show that she knew he was there. It felt like she was a patient fisherman and he was the fish, the bait being an odd top with the shoulders cut out and jeans tight down to her ankles, what kids would wear. She was no kid.
She’d had enough alcohol so her hand was steady when she reached for her purse, hanging by its strap over the back of the barstool, and took out a packet of cigarettes.

  Beaufort took his lighter out of his jacket pocket and laughed shyly at his awkwardness leaning all that way over to light her cigarette. She smiled at him laughing at himself, and it seemed to relax her. Her face looked younger, and more appealing, as she cupped her small fingers around his.

  In the light of the flame he could see she wasn’t bad-looking, just too sad to encourage strangers much. Her hair was a dry red wine with a little gray growing out around her temples. Her lipstick matched her hair, or had earlier in the evening. Now most of what had been on her lips was on the rim of her glass. This wasn’t the kind of woman who made him nervous. He could handle this kind easy. She offered him a cigarette after she took a puff of hers.

  “No, thanks,” Beaufort said. “I’m trying to quit.”

  That started the conversation. “Me, too,” she said, and winked. “Though I’d suppose that if I was really trying to quit,” she said, and paused as if there would be a punch line, “I wouldn’t carry a lighter.” Her chin dipped and her eyebrows rose as she said it.

  Beaufort took that as a cue to chuckle. “My dad taught me that a man should always carry a lighter to light a lady’s cigarette.”

  He knew he had her on that one, but just to seal the deal he added, “Also it’s a habit. My wife smoked.”

  Her eyes flickered, going over his probable story in her head, calculating whether she should stay or go. She stayed. “Is your wife … gone?” she asked, choosing the word cautiously.

  “Six months ago. This is my first time sitting alone at a bar since she died,” he said. “It took me all evening to put on a jacket and walk in here. Am I too late?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  Beaufort had learned quickly that while he was gone the world had gotten nicer, and he knew not to start out with a moron joke. Instead he asked her about herself.

  Her name was Gloria Bentham and she said she had a place in walking distance off Houghton where she didn’t have to drive in case she’d had a little too much to drink. Tonight she had had a little too much to drink, so she was a little less distrustful than she might have been. You could see her, as they talked, him about his wife and kids he didn’t get along with, and his career with race horses, disappointingly a little too tall to be a jockey, but training paid well, her flippant about two divorces just to show she hadn’t been left on the shelf her whole life, and her job as a doctor’s receptionist, trying to figure out if he was the real thing, and worth it. You could almost see the oh-what-the-hell change come over her face when she said it was time to go. Who would lie about being a horse trainer?

  She was cautious enough to ask where he lived, making her sound like a real estate agent qualifying a potential buyer. But just because she was careful didn’t make her a women’s libber.

  “Hotels right now.” Cheap motel, actually, but hotels sounded more like he had money. “I sold my place in Weston. Know where that is?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Southeast Florida, but not on the coast. More land there. I had a couple horses of my own, but sold them with the house. Now I’m traveling around, looking for the next part of my life.”

  She said she liked the way he said that. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” she said, nodding a little too vigorously.

  He didn’t comment because he was busy paying for their drinks. When she got off her stool he saw he had guessed right, she was just petite enough that she wasn’t taller than him. He walked her home, humming softly and now and then popping his lips.

  “What’s that tune?” Gloria asked. “I know it.”

  “My mom used to sing it to me when I was a little guy. It’s called ‘Humoresque.’”

  “You’re different,” she said.

  Beaufort darted a glance at her. What am I doing wrong now? “How so?” he asked.

  Seemed she could tell that bothered him and quickly replied, “Wearing a jacket anywhere in Tucson, but especially to that dive bar. Liking classical music.” She paused and then said with a flip of her hair that was probably meant to make her look girlish, “I like it.”

  “Well, I like you,” Beaufort said. As he said it, he realized he meant it, too.

  If she had had feathers she would have preened them then. But take it slow, he thought, man who just lost his wife was the kind who encouraged trust. He wouldn’t jump this gal’s bones right off the bat. He did walk her home and go inside of her small prefab house when she opened the door to him. It wasn’t ritzy, she had a lot of plaques on the walls about loving yourself. Newish furniture in the Southwest style. A chrome-and-glass shelving unit filled with ceramic statues she called Yahdros. He said they were great, and she pointed out her pride and joy on the matching glass coffee table, a whole scene on a porcelain base with shepherds and sheep.

  Yes, this would do. He got close to her, and when she looked up expectantly, he played shy again and gave her a chaste peck on the cheek. She jumped at the chance of seeing him again. Who was the fish and who the fisherman?

  He let it take a couple of weeks to move in with her, not liking to spend all that money on a motel room, but knowing how you have to play it with a woman who had a nice place and a respectable job. Smart, too, with more than one book lying around. Beaufort picked them up when she wasn’t looking and read the descriptions. Sometimes he would feel almost dizzy at the amount he didn’t know about the world that other people did, as if he had been on another planet for thirty years. Looked like a kid’s book. Should he know an author by the name of J. K. Rowling? Was he famous? Beaufort had to be careful about what he should know, and it made him tense and sometimes a little testy with Gloria. But except for worrying about where he might need to catch up to her, he thought she was perfect. An old-fashioned broad, not too smart for her own good. But overall he bided his time, didn’t rush things even in bed.

  With Gloria’s approval, Beaufort had subsequently adopted a dog from the local shelter. There were lots of pit bull mixes that no one wanted, but he chose a three-legged dog with scruffy fur and big eyebrows. The assistant at the shelter told him it was a mix between a poodle and a schnauzer—a shnoodle named Achilles. They were so glad someone wanted that dog they treated Beaufort like a saint. No one suspects a man walking a small dog, especially if the dog’s name is Achilles, especially if the dog has only three legs. Beaufort had never had a dog before, but when he brought it home Gloria looked at him like he was a saint, too. He didn’t realize what points the thing would score. When all this was over he wouldn’t just dump the dog somewhere, he’d take it back to the pound. Or if they really got along, then he’d take Achilles with him when he left.

  He had gone to the little library annex in a strip mall next to the motel where he had stayed. There on the computer he brought up Google Earth and located the satellite image of the house. Sweet. Neighbors on both sides, nothing in the back but a hill that sloped down to the Cañada del Oro wash with scrub cactus threaded by smaller washes that were bone dry this time of year. A path had been worn along the top of the arroyos that made for easy walking and had no cactus to lodge itself in either man or beast. Good place to walk a dog.

  He felt nervous, now that he was getting closer, and the nerves caused that acid in his gut that made him chew handfuls of Tums without much effect. But he told himself over and over and over that, even if this guy knew what had actually happened, it didn’t mean he would recognize Beaufort. Nobody would. And if the guy had in his possession what Beaufort thought he had—it made sense, didn’t it, that he had it?—the guy wouldn’t know what he had. If he did, he would have sold it, and Santangelo would have found out. Everyone would know.

  Know what? What did Hickock say? The thoughts tumbled over themselves, gravel in a concrete mixer. His mind wandering, his feet didn’t pay attention. Beaufort slid down the steep slope
of a small arroyo off the path, and crashed to his knees while the dog, still attached to the leash, had managed to stay up on the edge and was now looking at him with some curiosity, possibly thinking the human would be better off with a third leg. Beaufort stood, found that he hadn’t damaged anything, and lifted the dog across the arroyo to the other side before scrambling up there himself.

  The fall actually helped to dislodge his momentary panic. When he had walked past the fence in the backyard, maintaining a decent distance so as not to appear to be snooping, he saw everything working his way. DiForenza was on the back porch fiddling with what looked like an oversized telescope. Beaufort had walked up to the fence and called out.

  Fifteen

  The temperature was in the midsixties, chilly for early December in Arizona but balmy for the rest of the country, which was having recurrent blizzard conditions. The windows were open to let the place air out, so I heard the voices in the backyard. When I went to the door I saw Carlo standing at the back fence, talking to someone on the other side. The man was short in stature, though his head came nearly to the top of the metal railing on the fence. He was elderly by most standards. Another head barely cleared the concrete block base at the fence. Dog with floppy ears and big white eyebrows.

  Bored with the skip trace I’d been working on, and lured by the fine day, I went out back to join them.

  “This is Brigid,” Carlo started.

  “Jerry,” the man said with a creamy southern accent.

  He doffed his baseball cap. “And this here is Achilles,” the man continued in his good-old-boy voice.

  “Ha, that’s a good one,” Carlo said.

  The man looked at him as if he expected more without knowing why. Carlo read the look.

  “You know, Achilles … Homer…”

  The man stared some more.

  “The Iliad … Achilles was killed with an arrow to his heel…” Nothing. “… and there’s your dog without a hind leg…” Carlo trailed off, giving up any further attempt at classical allusions.