Murder in the Wings

by Ed Gorman

  I went out through the house to the screened-in back porch. I could smell rain and fresh earth and chill night. I had no idea what I was going to do.

  "Please, Dwyer, don't come any further."

  The voice jarred me. Not because it was so menacing, but because it wasn't menacing at all. It belonged not to David Ashton but to Evelyn.

  He sat in a white porch swing, huddled into the corner of it, and he was a mess. He'd been shot in the stomach. He was crying and trying to vomit.

  She sat across from him, on a metal coaster that squeaked.

  She looked up at me. "He grabbed the gun and tried to shoot himself. I tried to knock it out of the way. He got shot in the stomach."

  She was in shock. It was then that I noticed the shotgun sitting next to her.

  Just then he moaned and you could see on the floor where some of his innards had dropped to form a slick, hot little pile.

  "Help me," he said, "for God's sake, Evelyn, please pick up the gun and help me."

  She looked at me and then she lifted the Browning. "It's all so fucked up," she said. She raised her head and looked at me. "He's not my father. Did you know that?"

  "I know."

  "But I love him anyway." She was hysterical. "And now he's in such pain."

  Right before it was all over, he said, "Please, let her do it, Dwyer. Please let her do it. I can't take the pain much longer."

  I started for her, but she was way too fast. She did it, and there wasn't any way I could stop it and I wasn't even sure I wanted to.

  When she finished she went out into the rain under the elm branches dripping cold silver, and vomited.

  I went in and called the sheriff's department.

  Chapter 22

  A week later we were walking down a long, sunny white corridor, following a nurse who wore squeaking white shoes. We walked past a big blue statue of the Virgin to an even sunnier room where a man who resembled Stephen Wade sat on the edge of a bed holding in his right hand a cigarette smoked down to the filter and in his left a paperback book by the monk Thomas Merton.

  In a week he'd lost ten pounds. He looked a little younger and a lot more scared. He put the book down and stubbed the cigarette out and then held up both hands, the fingers of his right counting five, the fingers of his left counting two. "Seven days."

  "Congratulations."

  "You know, I haven't gone seven days without a drink since I was a teenager." He hacked out a cigarette cough. I could see that Donna wanted to give him her standard lacerating antismoking sermon, but right then obviously wasn't the right time.

  She leaned over and kissed him and then he took her in his arms and held her tight and long. Then he let her go and, weary and sad, said, "I don't know what to do."

  "Go see her."

  "They say the whole drying-out process takes about a month up here."

  "Then go see her in a month."

  He had another cigarette. "Sylvia any better?"

  I shook my head.

  "She may never pull out of this one," he said, referring to her total retreat into her illness. He took a big drag. The smoke was blue in the sunlight. "What's going to happen to Evelyn?"

  "We're not sure. But her lawyer thinks he can make things reasonably easy for her, given the circumstances. A verdict of temporary insanity would play pretty well here."

  He looked at us and frowned. "You know, I never had a clue about her being my daughter. Sylvia and I only slept with each other a couple of times, when David was away on a four-month road trip once."

  Donna said, "That's how Dwyer figured it out. He kept staring at the playbill of David in that road company. Then when Dr. Kern mentioned it being Evelyn's birthday, he realized that she couldn't possibly be David's daughter because David hadn't been around."

  "I never had a clue," Stephen Wade said again. He had some more of his cigarette, or it had some more of him, depending on your point of view, and then he sat back against his pillow, looking as if he were about to drop off to sleep. "I should probably spend some time with her now, huh?" he said.

  "She's your daughter," I said.

  "You know how goddamn funny that sounds?" he said. "I'm fifty-three and I just learned I've got a twenty-four-year-old daughter."

  "It won't be easy, Stephen," Donna said, "but I sure bet it'll be worth it."

  An hour later, in the parking lot, she leaned over and kissed me and said, "Boy, Dwyer, feel the sun. Isn't it great?"

  We stood there in the warm golden light, just stood for maybe two whole minutes. I sure as hell wasn't going to disagree with her.