We Were Killers Once

by Becky Masterman

  I could tell that was the moment I lost my poker face, and he knew it because his face finally mirrored mine. There was nothing he could say, and he had the grace to realize this and move on to our original topic. There was nothing else to do. You can’t apologize for a feeling.

  Instead he said, “Vic was the one who had mentored me from the time I was an altar boy. He encouraged me to do part of my pastoral training at the prison. And he counseled me through the whole process of discovering whether my destiny lay with the priesthood.”

  I allowed him the truce for now. “Did he try to get you to stay in the church?”

  “Not at all. He told me to follow my gut rather than my intellect. And I did. That sketch became a symbol of how much he honored my decision.”

  The mention of the sketch swung my attention back to Hickock’s letter and its promise of more. “Is this all he gave you?”

  “I’m not sure. I have so much garbage that I’ve never thrown out, and here you’ve just found the letter I never knew I had. So many years had gone by, with no one from Hickock’s family contacting him, Santangelo probably forgot it was even there.”

  “You’re telling me Santangelo didn’t get the full import of what he had? Truman Capote made Hickock and Smith famous.”

  “Now we can say that. You take a parish priest from Kansas in the late fifties and there was a good chance he never heard of Truman Capote.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “You come on. The country didn’t use to be as small as it is now. Vic would likely have known about In Cold Blood at some point, and that might have been what made him think the sketch had some value, but that could be as far as it went. I didn’t even think it was a big deal until now. Not all of us are true-crime aficionados like you are. And new confession or not, I think you’ll agree it’s a moot point that Hickock and Smith killed the Clutters.”

  I thought of all the stuff crammed into the closet in Carlo’s library. “Are you absolutely sure you don’t have the confession?”

  “I don’t. Or at least I don’t think I have it.”

  Conflict forgotten for the moment, we both stood up at the same time and went to the library closet. He pulled out four large plastic tubs, spread them on the floor, and we sat down to go through them. I was glad I had shoved the photo of Jane way down on the side of the top bin, and hoped it wouldn’t emerge. Though driven by wanting to see if Carlo had Hickock’s confession, I didn’t think I could bear to see Jane just now. Out of sight, out of mind, Mom would have said.

  We pulled out stack after stack of articles typed on manual typewriters, and Xeroxes of sections of books he had been reading for one project or another, and syllabi of courses he had taught over the years …

  “Oh, look,” he said. “Here’s one of my early sermons on the Transfiguration.”

  “Focus,” I said. But then I remembered going through the papers just like this after the burglary And that made me remember Jeremiah Beaufort again.

  I didn’t altogether stop sorting through the papers, but at the same time I told Carlo everything I had found out about the man who had identified himself to us as Jerry Nolan. Everything. What he was in prison for. How his sentence was commuted. All his slipups. All my suspicions. Then there was one of those little leaps that made the nerve in my neck spark. Some might call it genius. Some might call it my continued failure to make the connection between Beaufort and Carlo.

  “Perfesser. Could Jerry have seen the sketch the night he came for dinner?”

  Carlo described that moment when they were both in the library and he had shown Jerry the sketch. How Jerry had appeared impressed by it, and said he remembered the case although he was a boy at the time.

  Just a boy. I thought:

  Beaufort had been the only person other than Carlo to know about the sketch.

  Beaufort might know how valuable such a thing could be.

  If our home had been the only break-in, and the sketch was stolen, Beaufort would be suspected.

  Our house, and the sketch, may have been the true target.

  “He’s a criminal, and he’s made some pretty stupid mistakes,” I said after I’d spoken my thoughts aloud.

  Carlo’s eyes got that vacant expression they get when he thinks of something that, most of the time, has nothing to do with his current circumstances or whereabouts. “Bonhoeffer,” he said.

  “Bon-who-fer?”

  Without getting up from the floor, like a boy he scooted on his butt back into the bookshelves and scanned one toward the bottom.

  “How do you find anything in—”

  He interrupted my question by pulling out a worn tome from the right side of the second-to-the-bottommost shelf, waved it at me like a victory flag, and flipped it open to the back, where he scanned the index, then to a different page. “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of good than malice,” he read, and kept going. “One may protest against evil; it can be exposed, and, if need be, prevented by use of force.” Here he looked up and nodded at me as if I represented said use of force. Then he looked down at the book again. “Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.” Carlo looked up at me and finished the quote by heart. “For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than a malicious one.”

  “What if the person is both stupid and malicious?” I asked.

  “Then I believe you’re screwed,” Carlo said mildly.

  I genuinely grinned, happy to feel as if we were back to how we always were. “Well, that was helpful. But the question is, what am I going to do?”

  “Do?” he asked, his eyes still a little glazed with the thought of what he had been reading.

  I kicked his foot with my own. “Hey, Perfesser. Snap out of it. Let’s get back on the original topic, the possibility of Hickock’s confession. What do you know about Victor Santangelo? Is he still alive by any chance?”

  “If he is, he’s over ninety. We kept in touch over the years. The last I heard he’s living at St. Dominic’s Abbey, near Tampa. I should call him sometime.”

  “Yes, you should. You should call him soon. Like right now? Now is a good time.”

  Carlo nodded. He’s not the kind of person who goes instantly from thought to action. At the moment he looked like this was one of the things he would think about for some weeks, and then possibly forget as he thought about something more captivating. Also, in typical guy fashion, he wasn’t one to stay in touch with friends. I could be the same way. If I had friends.

  I snapped my fingers to get his attention again. “Is that a coincidence, Beaufort operating around the Gulf Coast before he went to prison?”

  “Not so big a coincidence. It’s not like there are Dominican monasteries all over the country.”

  “Still, all of this seems to be pointing to a single general location in Florida, that area between Tampa and Sarasota. Remember the Walker family lived outside of Sarasota. I could take a little field trip over there and find out more about this Jeremiah Beaufort and the circumstances of his arrest in Florida, and maybe how that connects to me. Also check out any links to Father Victor Santangelo at the same time.”

  I helped Carlo put all the papers back in the bins, and then he went out into the backyard to pull weeds from the gravel coating the ground. I knew him well enough to know that pulling weeds was what he did when he wanted to think.

  For my part, I retreated into my office, my thoughts shifting back and forth between Jeremiah Beaufort and Jane in the smooth way that thoughts can. It was that thing where someone pops you in the jaw with their fist and for a brief time after the initial shock you’re numb until the serious pain kicks in.

  I was single for the first sixty years of my life, but I’m not totally unromantic. Like all single people I would sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a mate, to be in love forever with the same person, to be in sync. The
n I knew too much about the world. Now I knew too much about Jane. I think overall I would have preferred not to have known how much he loved her. How funny that I had felt this way a couple of years ago, and over an incident much more critical to Carlo’s and my relationship. I thought I’d gotten past that insecurity. Brigid Quinn, vulnerable. Did it ever stop? Do you ever just relax in a relationship? Why did things have to bubble up from time to time like ancient tectonic plates crashing against each other, sending little shock waves that weaken the land we think we live in? Was it Carlo’s fault? Or was it Jane’s? Or a combination of everything. Everyone. Me. Not being Jane.

  The self-pity overwhelmed me once more, spreading through my chest like a balloon pressing the air out of my lungs. I felt so low I got down on the floor where my spirits were. But that was no good. The pugs, who had followed me into the room, took it as play rather than an expression of despair, which took most of the drama out. They threw themselves at my head until I laughed at myself.

  Oh, grow the hell up, Quinn. You’re sixty-five years old, for Pete’s sake, and at some point you have to stop thinking like a teenager. Romance, my ass. Look at that poor Gloria Bentham.

  When does your average insecurity become pathology?

  There but for the grace—no. No, I don’t need anyone else, not God, not nobody. I can manage on my own just fine. I made the decision in a flash, deciding I wouldn’t love Carlo quite as much as I had to this point, because that much loving hurt too much. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

  I rubbed my cheek against the Berber carpet to get rid of any remaining Jane thoughts, got up off the floor, and called the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office. I didn’t have any trouble getting through to Detective Ian Meadows when I told the receptionist I might have some information about the Walker case.

  Then I called St. Dominic’s Abbey and asked to speak to Victor Santangelo. Dead, cancer, someone called Abbot Franklin said. When I asked how long ago he had died, Franklin gave me a date about a month before. I told Carlo what I had discovered, and thought I could detect an almost physical shift in him as the past returned to grieve him. So many events happening simultaneously, I thought.

  Thirty–seven

  Gloria started to be something of a problem, moping around.

  Beaufort had replaced the television the very next day after he’d broken it. And using some superglue he had been able to repair the figurine that had broken off the base of her favorite sculpture. It wasn’t as damaged as he had thought.

  Or maybe Gloria’s moping had something to do with the Quinn woman’s visit to their house. Maybe Gloria hadn’t told him everything. Damn that Quinn woman. Whatever the reason, dinner was a little strained the night after their row, and the next one, too. So was the sex that Jerry attempted. Gloria was like a limp dishrag and it was her fault if Beaufort was, too. Without comment, without even saying good night, they gave up and rolled to their opposite sides of the bed.

  Beaufort fell asleep quickly as he always did, but woke up to find the moonlight coming through the blinds. His cell in prison had been totally dark, and he hadn’t gotten accustomed to the light that came into Gloria’s bedroom. Tossing a couple of times, when he didn’t hear light snoring, he realized that Gloria wasn’t in bed. Gloria, who always slept like a rock.

  He lifted his head slowly from the pillow and looked toward the bathroom, which was darker than the bedroom. Then outside the bedroom door he saw the bright pinpoint light of a small flashlight. It held steady like she was standing in one place in the living room.

  Beaufort turned rather than pushed back the covers so they wouldn’t make so much as a swishing sound, and slowly drew out his feet and put them on the floor. He didn’t bother to put anything on but walked naked one step at a time into the living room, hugging the doorjamb and then the walls where the light of the flashlight didn’t go.

  Gloria must have been holding the flashlight between her teeth, because when he put his hands on her bare shoulders she screamed and the light dropped. Beaufort gripped her strongly enough so she couldn’t bend down, and they stood there in the dark with what light there was spilling uselessly across the carpet.

  “What are you doing up?” he said, pretending that she was just startled by his sudden presence.

  “Just. Up,” she said, having no excuse prepared.

  He put his arms around her from behind, ran his hands down her arms and felt that she was holding something. His wallet, open, in one hand, a piece of paper in the other.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked, taking both from her unresisting hands. Though it was dark with only the thin beam of the flashlight across the carpet, he knew the paper was the receipt with the DiForenzas’ phone number written on the back.

  When he put it back in the wallet and bent to retrieve the flashlight, Gloria ran. She stubbed her toe against something in the dark. He could tell that by the way she stumbled and yelped. It slowed her down but she was still able to get into the bedroom and lock the door before he could reach her. That was stupid, trapping herself that way. Beaufort remembered other women in their bedrooms. No way out.

  In another decade he might have pulled the phone line out of the wall. Unfortunately, there were now cell phones, and Gloria kept hers on her bedside table. Beaufort hoped she wasn’t doing anything stupid in there.

  “Honey, let me in. I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “Oh, no problem, I’m okay.”

  “You locked the door. Open it up so we can talk.”

  “Okay, sorry. I’m coming.”

  But of course she didn’t come unlock the door. He considered trying to break down the door, but flimsy as those things were he didn’t think it would be so easy. He remembered how they usually put those tiny wrenches at the top of the doorjamb in case you have to get in and the door is locked from the inside. He was just tall enough to run his fingers along the top of the door until he felt the thin piece of metal shaped like an L. The wrench had likely been there when they built the place, and it was still there.

  He wasted no energy being silent about it, but jammed the wrench into the lock, felt the internal lever give, and opened the door.

  She was being stupid in there. Gloria held her phone, which in the dark room illuminated the fear on her face. Her thumb, shaking, hovered above it, ready to summon help.

  “You said you didn’t go to her house for dinner!” Gloria yelled. Good golly, could she yell when she wanted to.

  Beaufort raised his hands palms out as he would to a skittish colt if he actually knew that much about horses. “Gloria. Babe. I didn’t.”

  “I never said she said you did!”

  “Did what?”

  “Go to her house for dinner!”

  Beaufort forced himself to walk smoothly and without apparent haste to the other side of the bed where she stood. He took the phone from her hand, and looked at it. The display read NEW LIFE. She wasn’t about to call the cops, but her therapist, life coach, what have you. He put his arms around her as if to comfort her. Her body was slick with her sweat and she slipped his grasp but didn’t run again.

  Beaufort turned on the bedside lamp and sat on the edge of the bed, smiling now that the crisis was past, no real damage done, and they were having this argument in the nude. He pulled the sheet over his groin. “Honey, sit down a second.”

  Gloria took the housecoat she always left at the end of the bed and put it on. Then she sat as far away from him as she could without it looking like she was doing so.

  “I’m sorry I was upset,” he started. “I was upset that you were going through my wallet in the middle of the night. You would be upset, too. Why did you do that?”

  Gloria thought about it. “I was … thinking about how that woman came over and you said that she was lying about you going over there for dinner. But she never told me you were there for dinner. And I couldn’t stop thinking about that. I wanted to see if you had her telephone number or something in your wallet. I, I love you.”

&n
bsp; He didn’t say I love you back this time, it was too pathetic, and too late. “Well, that was a real spunky thing to do, going into my wallet. But I have to say, somebody who loves somebody doesn’t do that. And doesn’t feel like they need to call their shrink in the middle of the night,” he said.

  “I—” She had started to say she hadn’t done that, and then gave up. “I was s-scared.”

  “Now why would you be scared of me? I told you I would never hurt you. And I never will.”

  Gloria didn’t have an answer for that.

  Beaufort said, “Why were you looking in my wallet? Was there anything interesting in there?”

  “I didn’t see anything.”

  “You didn’t see what was on that piece of paper?”

  She looked at him as if trying to gauge whether admitting it would get her into more trouble. Then she shook her head, cautiously. “No. You grabbed me before I could look at it.”

  She was a lousy liar. She was lying and he knew it. She knew that what was written on the piece of paper was a telephone number, and if she called it she’d know that at least one of the people living there was that Quinn woman. But chances are, even if she had seen it, she wouldn’t have been able to memorize it.

  “Well, you can believe it wasn’t that woman’s phone number. I did go over there, but they’re really boring people and the husband had been pressuring me to look through his telescope. I got it over with and came home. I didn’t tell you because I figured you’d be jealous. And look at you.”

  Gloria smiled her best, most trusting smile.

  Beaufort looked at the time. Three A.M. He knew how to tell whether Gloria was still his woman, or whether he had to make other plans. He went to the dresser drawer that had been allotted to him, pulled out a T-shirt and shorts and put them on. Leaving the drawer open, he went to the closet for his suitcase and put it open on the bed. He packed his clothes slowly and neatly to give her time to think.