“I never forgot this, it’s that funny. This guy simply walks up and asks if they’d mind if he watched the game. My friend don’t want him there, but what’s he going to say? So, he says okay, and then this is funny” — the man turned to the others at the bar and grinned before looking back at Alan —” crazy but funny, but he just quietly takes over for the kid and beats my friend in like two moves. And my friend is quite a chess player.”
Alan said, “Your friend didn’t know him?”
“Not at all.”
“So why do you think it might be Bruster?”
“Well, he introduced himself. Now it’s been a long time but I’m sure my friend said something like Bruster. The reason I remember that,” and he grinned and looked over at the bartender, “was that it sounded like brewery.”
“Did he say anything about where he lives?”
“I don’t think so, but the guy was walking, so it’s probably somewhere around here.”
Alan went back to his car and stared at the house again. Everything looked the same but he decided to try once more. He rang the bell, twice, and then noticed a stirring of the blinds. The door opened narrowly, just enough for him to see an elderly man’s face behind the chain.
“What d’you want?”
“Is this the Brusters? Does a Roy Bruster live here?”
“No.” Then, “Are you the one that rang before?”
“Yes, I —”
“I was in the tub,” he said angrily. “This is no time to come ringing people’s doors.” He started to close the door.
“Wait, wait! He said he lived here, he —”
“Look, fellow, no one by that name lives here.”
“Well, do you know anyone by that name?”
“No.” And the door closed.
Alan stood for a few moments, just staring at the door. He was sure at first that the guy was lying. But then he was not so sure. Possibly Bruster, asked at the gym to give his address, had simply reached out for one close to his own. But where in this darkened neighborhood did he live?
He felt himself growing more desperate. He walked back to the sidewalk. He didn’t want to leave, but soon the feeling grew that the man was staring at him from one of the windows, that he might even call the police. Alan got in his car, started it reluctantly, and then began driving away slowly.
Soon, though, he was aware that he was driving fast, much faster than the speed limit. He immediately slowed down but his heart was still racing. He’d been fantasizing about confronting Bruster, and Bruster taunting him, and his anger and fear and frustration rising.
And then as he got out of his car in the driveway, he saw me walking back to my car.
I think we saw each other at the same time. He stood near his car as though frozen, staring at me. He looked a little disheveled; his hair, always so neatly combed, was mussed, and his windbreaker hung open.
I felt stupid, wasn’t sure what to say. I only hoped my nervousness wouldn’t show. He spoke first.
“What is it? Is something wrong?”
“I just want to talk to you.”
“Why? What is it?”
“I didn’t like the way you sounded on the phone, that’s all.”
“Why, how did I sound?”
“I don’t know. Just something. But it worried me.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.” He sounded angry. “There’s nothing wrong.”
“Well, I’m glad.”
“Everything’s fine,” he insisted.
“Well, can I at least come in for a while?”
He looked at me for a long moment, as though deciding what to say. Then he began walking to the door, and I accompanied him.
In his apartment he said, “I don’t know what you thought you heard.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s nothing.”
“I just called to tell you I called the police, that’s all. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Of course I did. What did they say?”
“I told you,” he said, annoyed. “They’ll let me know if anything.”
I sat down on the sofa. He looked at me as if trying to decide if he should too. He sat down without taking off his windbreaker. It was as though he was telling me not to get too comfortable. I could feel myself growing more nervous.
I said, “How’s Anna?”
“She’s fine. Just fine.”
I was running out of superficial things to ask. “And your work? How’s it going?”
“Good. Everything’s fine.”
I don’t know how I seemed to him, but my face felt hot and I wondered if it was red. I took a deep breath and said, “Alan, is there anything you want to tell me?”
He looked at me narrowly. “What do you mean?”
“Just that.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. What are you trying to say?”
I looked at him. “Alan, you’re acting worried, I know you’re worried. And I want to be on your side.”
He kept staring at me. “I don’t know what the hell you’re saying. What do you mean you want to be on my side? I’ve got no side. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I was growing fully afraid of him but I’d gone too far to stop.
“Alan, I saw the sketch. Talk to me.”
“Talk to you.” That’s all he said. But he said it as if I were crazy.
“I remember you and your mother and father stopping at our place on Sea Belle that summer. And your father mentioning you’d be going to Cape Cod.”
He said nothing but now there was a frantic look in his eyes.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but you’re crazy.”
I took another deep breath. Maybe more than one.
“You know,” he said, “you’re talking out of the top of your head.”
“Really?” I kept staring at him. And then it burst out of me: “The girl, Alan. The girl!”
“What girl? What girl? You’re crazy, you know?”
“Alan, I do know. Do you hear me, I know!”
“You’re.”
He stopped and we both stood staring at each other. And then what happened next was so fast that I couldn’t react to it. His right hand darted under his windbreaker and came up with a gun. Two hands held it pointed at my face. They were trembling.
His face over the gun was furious. I wanted to close my eyes but couldn’t. I thought: I’ll grab it, I’ll die fighting for it.
“Oh God.”
The words came from him, like a soft cry. And now the gun came down, slowly. He kept looking at me for a few moments more, his face anguished. Then he turned and ran to the door.
It wasn’t until he was in the car and was hurrying to start the motor that he became fully aware that he was still holding the gun. He put it on the seat next to him, horrified that he’d actually drawn it on me. It was only then that he realized that it wasn’t loaded. But that didn’t matter: He’d pulled it on me.
He put the gun on his lap. He knew what he had to do, and though his heart was beating hard he wasn’t afraid.
He pulled away fast, not knowing where he was going, only that he had to find a place. He didn’t want to do it on a public street, where people would gape at daybreak, or anywhere kids played or people shopped or drove by on their way to work. He thought of the woods and the creek where he and Will Jansen had played as kids; that seemed an ideal place to call it quits. But suddenly he couldn’t clear his head enough to remember how to get there.
He drove on, still without knowing the way. Soon he had no idea what street he was on or what neighborhood he was in. He pulled to the curb to try to clear his thinking. He leaned back against the headrest, exhausted. The image of him aiming the gun at me was so loathsome, so ugly, that he could hardly bear it. He tried to calm down, tried to concentrate on his breathing. It was so heavy he had to breathe through his mouth. He was only partly aware that he was looking at the sky. The moon, a half
moon, was out, which came as a surprise: He could have been wrong but he felt as if he’d been driving through a moonless night.
He looked at it, thinking: No more. Never again.
He closed his eyes but couldn’t keep them closed. What was starting to come into his head now terrified him. It was a terror far different from anything he’d felt before. And yet it seemed right to him. He felt his head clearing, began to have some idea of where he was. He started driving again, through streets he recognized now. And drove deep into the night.
For a long while he tried not to let a clear thought into his head. And then when thoughts started to break through they were jumbled. They were about Anna and him and how much he loved her. They were about his mother and his relief that she’d never know, at least on this earth. They were about his father and did he somehow know and could he help him, perhaps with God. They were a little bit about Bruster too, but with a touch of pity this time for all that he was suffering.
And hovering over everything, as if she were a solid presence in the car, were so many thoughts of Susheela.
Dawn was breaking, and he stopped once for gas and then stopped again, later, to ask something of two people he saw walking. And not long afterward he was parked in front of a house he’d been directed to. He stared at it from the car, scared again — the fear had receded for a long while as he drove. Fighting for calm, he got out and walked up the few steps and rang the bell.
He had to ring twice before someone came to the door.
He said, “Mr. McKinney?”
“Yes.”
He said, “Mr. McKinney? My name is Alan Benning. I’m Alan Benning, and you’ve been looking for me.”
Chapter Forty-One
McKinney looked puzzled.
“I don’t understand. Who are you? What do you want?”
“Let me talk to you. I killed someone. I killed Susheela Kapasi.”
Only a slight lifting of his heavy eyebrows revealed anything of what McKinney felt. He stepped back, and after Alan walked in and he’d closed the door, he gestured him to a chair, as if Alan were any guest in his home. Alan was still nearly frozen with fear but he felt it easing a little. The man looked almost gentle, dressed in rumpled trousers, a sweater and slippers. The living room had things of the sea on the walls, a fisherman’s net, a large glossy fish, a painting of two geese flying over water.
On one of the lamp tables was a portrait of his daughter.
McKinney asked him his name again, where he lived, what was his work, did he have a lawyer.
“No, and I don’t want one. I just want to plead guilty.”
“You still have to have a lawyer.”
“Then I’ll get one.”
“By the way, are you hungry, thirsty?”
“I could use a drink of water. Thank you.”
McKinney left, and soon afterward his wife came into the room, in a bathrobe, and nodded at Alan. It was a few minutes before he was back, with a glass of water. After Alan finished it, he noticed that she was gone.
“So tell me more about yourself,” McKinney was saying. “Are you married?”
“No, I’m not.”
It continued like this, as if it were any conversation between friends, until the doorbell rang. McKinney stood up and went over to open the door. And the whole room seemed to change as South Minton’s captain of detectives and two uniformed officers strode in.
A minute later Alan’s hands were behind his back in handcuffs. And now hard fingers were gripping his forearm, leading him down the front steps and over to a police car.
And already alerted and waiting outside the police station was the first of what was to be an endless horde of TV cameramen and reporters. A reporter, a young man, walked along near him, calling, “Did you kill her? Did you kill her?”
The captain, a husky man with a buzz haircut, seemed a little startled. He had read Alan his Miranda rights and Alan had answered, “It doesn’t matter, I don’t want a lawyer, I just want to tell it.”
The officer said, “I don’t have to say this, but are you sure?”
He nodded. They were in a small room in the police station, Alan and the captain seated at a table, a uniformed officer standing by the wall. Alan’s heart was racing. Gone was the near calm he had begun to feel at McKinney’s. In fact he’d half expected him to be here too, though he knew McKinney wasn’t on the police force.
The captain, whose name was Johnson, said, “We’d like to tape record this, okay?”
“All right.” His voice sounded hollow to him, as if his ears were stuffed.
“All right, now tell me.”
All at once Alan was confused about where to begin. He put his fingers in his hair as if he could feel coherent thoughts. “I was on this path at the beach and I saw her and she’d lost her kite.”
The captain looked at him as his voice trailed off. He said, “Why don’t you tell me what you were doing there in the first place?”
Alan had to go back in his mind, and finally he began to tell him about his mother and father and the motor home, and then his going to the beach with them and then jogging by himself in the woods. And after he told him that he’d touched her on the outside of her bathing suit, the captain said, “You’re not telling me everything. You touched her underneath her suit too, didn’t you?”
Alan rubbed his forehead, surprised he knew, and then nodded. It was as though touching her there was the thing he was most ashamed to talk about.
“Are you saying you did?”
“Yes.”
After Alan told him everything he could remember, the captain said, “Why didn’t you give yourself up long before this?”
“I really kidded myself into thinking maybe I hadn’t killed her.” Alan was looking at him earnestly.
“How could you think that? Her neck was almost broken.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“Did you want to rape her?”
“No! No! I don’t know what happened, I just wanted to touch her.”
“You didn’t stop because you heard her father calling her?”
“No. I never heard him.”
“Come on, the truth.” It was the first time the officer’s voice became stern.
“It is the truth. I swear.”
“And you killed her so she couldn’t talk?”
“I just couldn’t stand everyone knowing.”
“You could have just run away. You say you were parked a half-mile away. Your parents wouldn’t have known.”
“I know. I didn’t think. I keep telling myself that over and over again.”
“Why did you give yourself up now?”
“It was either that or kill myself. I didn’t want to die.”
The officer looked at him quizzically. Alan could almost read his thinking: But you were able to kill her, weren’t you? Instead he said, “Let me ask you this. Why did you go to McKinney?”
For a few moments he couldn’t think why this would matter. Then he remembered the newspaper story denying there was any friction between the two men.
He said, “I don’t know.” But actually he didn’t want to tell the truth. It would have sounded phony, and anyway he wasn’t sure how to say it. That it had something to do with the old officer having lost his daughter, that it was as though he owed him something.
In any event, Alan was never to talk with McKinney again.
In a cell for the first time, he had to struggle against the feeling that not enough air was coming through the bars. He sat on the edge of the hard cot, trying to calm himself and to concentrate only on breathing. It was the police station lockup, and no one was in the two other cells. In the silence he was thinking of how news of his arrest must be spreading; he even began picturing a mob gathered on the sidewalk outside. But never for a second did he regret confessing or not waiting until he had a lawyer.
I was the first person from his old life to see him. He looked at me dazedly when he was brought into the room whe
re they let me meet him. He turned his head away quickly, and I said, “Alan, don’t,” and he looked back, tears in his eyes. I couldn’t help it, but though I was still in shock and dismay at what he’d done, I began to cry too, not much but enough that I had to bring my wrist to my eyes to wipe away tears.
The first thing he said to me was he was sorry about pulling a gun on me.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said. “I don’t.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“I said don’t think about it. I mean it. I understand. I came on so strong.”
“Tell me how my mother is.”
“She’s okay. My mother went to see her. She’s the same.”
“She can’t know, can she?”
“No, not at all. Don’t worry about that. Look, I hear you don’t have a lawyer.”
“No, and I don’t want one.”
“Alan, you’ve got to have one.”
“I really don’t want one.”
He never asked me about anyone other than his mother, or if I’d talked with Anna, which I hadn’t, or if I had been in touch with anyone else he knew. It was as if that life was already over for him. I’d been told we couldn’t touch each other, so I don’t know if he would have let me embrace him. I know he didn’t try to embrace me.
Walking out of the room, my legs were shaky. I would have gladly leaned against a wall in the corridor, but I didn’t, just kept going till I was outside.
He never changed his mind about not wanting a lawyer, but I spoke with a member of his old law firm and he got one on the Cape to represent him. She was young, bright and tough — especially with Alan, when he told her he just wanted to plead guilty, didn’t even want her to try for bail. But since that meant life without parole for first-degree murder, she hoped to convince him to go to trial.
Much was made in the news about his being a vice president of the Foundation, that he had saved a life, that he’d given himself up. I was interviewed several times by reporters, and I spoke of his character, of growing up with him, everything I knew of the person within him. There were also interviews with Elsa Tomlinson, who spoke kindly of him, and with Gregg Osterly and a few other friends, who had only good things to say. The reporters heard of Anna, but they couldn’t reach her: She had left her job, and her family claimed not to know where she was.
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