Guilty Parties
Page 26
“It was so easy to get the gun. After that day in the park, when I left Harry sitting on the bank, I went to see Jack, I wanted to talk to him, tell him what Harry had said to me, the terrible things he’d said, and Jack wasn’t there and you know how he is with doors. I just went in to wait for him, sat there crying, and through the tears I saw the shotgun in the corner and while I sat there the whole thing formed in my mind and I took the gun away in one of Jack’s big Glad trash bags. It all made such perfect sense to me …
“That day in the park I showed Harry the picture of my daughter. I told him I wanted to go away with Peter, and Harry acted like I was crazy, he said I was just as dumb as ever, as dumb as I’d always been. He said that Peter had come back to New York for you, Belinda, not me. He said I should ask Jack if I didn’t believe him, he said Peter had told both of them that he wanted you and was going to take you. Well, I couldn’t believe a story like that, could I? I was afraid to believe him … I couldn’t be so wrong, not after what Peter had said to me. But Harry said Peter was just telling me anything so I’d sleep with him. So I went to Jack but he wasn’t there and I found the gun. … I sat there in Jack’s apartment, seeing all those pictures of you on the wall and it was so hot and I was crying and I kept thinking about Harry, how he was always screwing some girl, how he never wanted children, how he married me for my money, and then I saw the shotgun … and all I wanted was to stop Harry from telling me the terrible things, how he was in love with another woman and how Peter didn’t care about me. … After that it was so easy, I was so sure Harry had come home alone, and I’d seen Peter go off with Hacker and Mike … but I was wrong, Harry had gotten home and gone to bed and Peter was home too … but there was the man in the doorway … and the gun was going off and everything spraying all over and the body going back into the light and I saw I’d killed the wrong man. …
“I’ve been thinking about things, too, Belinda. I went to the cabin and tried to sort it out. You came to see me and I watched you and listened to you and I thought how you’ve never changed, you’re always at the center of things, you’re always the one they’re after and you didn’t give a damn, not ever, you just went from one to another … Harry first, then Jack, and now it’ll be Hacker … and maybe Peter really had come back for you, you’d told me about the pass he made and I had thought you were exaggerating or he was drunk and amorous and it wasn’t important, but what if Harry was right? What if I wasn’t going to get Peter after all, after I’d told everything to Harry? You know what Harry was saying to me in this picture of yours? He was laughing and telling me Peter wanted you, and he laughed some more and told me I should be used to it by now, hell, he said, he wanted you himself. …”
I tried to scream or rush at her, anything to make her stop, but I couldn’t move. I felt like a child, too stricken to run away, too disoriented to stand and fight. Her voice came so calmly, so matter-of-factly. She’d thought it all through and she’d figured it out. It was the voice of madness.
“You don’t have to worry about Harry,” she said from the dim corner where the wheel-of-fortune loomed like an old friend, something to lean on. “He came to the cabin today, just like he told you he would. Yes, he’d done something terrible—he’d realized that I was the killer and he hadn’t told anyone, he was letting Jack take the blame.
Jack. A Ruffian. And he came to the cabin to tell me he knew the truth, that he couldn’t keep it secret anymore, not with Jack in jail. He said he was going to tell the truth and he told me I was crazy, that I’d never be convicted, that I’d go to a hospital. He wanted to know where the shotgun was. … He told me he was going to divorce me because he loved you, he told me he was going to marry you, that he was your first love and he could convince you to love him again once this was over—”
“No,” I cried, “no, that’s not true!”
“Be quiet, Belinda,” she said. “Let me finish. You don’t have to worry about Harry. I let him look for the gun, he thought I’d taken it to the cabin, he was looking in the closet, and I took one of the big kitchen knives and I killed him. He won’t be marrying you.” She laughed distantly. “He deserved to die, he really did. Don’t you think so? I think he did. So I killed him. I just stabbed him once and he went down on the floor of the closet and didn’t move and I watched the blood spreading across the back of his shirt.”
A sob, a scream, something stuck in my throat.
“It’s you, Belinda. You’re the one, it’s always been you, you’re the one who made everything go so wrong.” She was moving and I managed to stand up. I couldn’t see what she was doing. For an instant I thought she’d fainted, and I stepped across to the table to look.
She had bent down and opened the little door on the back of the stand that held the wheel-of-fortune. Where the midget or the child had once controlled the future—I remembered her theory. She pulled the door open and it creaked on its hinge.
When she straightened up she was holding the shotgun.
“Oh, I brought it down here the day after the … the day after Peter died. Harry was out, the police were gone, I was alone in the house, I called you and you were out. I didn’t care if I did get caught, you see—it really didn’t matter. But I didn’t want to get caught … and I couldn’t leave the damn thing under my mattress, in my bedroom. God, it was all so simple. And if you’d been home, well, what difference did it really make? I don’t know what I’d have done … I guess I’d have left it up to you. Maybe I’d have shot myself with it. …”
She came toward me holding the gun level before her. The record was ending, the piano was cascading and the clarinet was making a racket and I heard something, I didn’t know what, and she was pointing the gun at me. The two barrels, black and almost inviting, swinging toward me, two bottomless wells of sorrow and hatred and vengeance and pity …
“Sal …”
“I’m not Sal, not anymore … and you’re not Belinda, not my Belinda … we’re other people, you’re not even a person, not anymore, Belinda … you’re just a target.”
The other little noise I’d heard was the elevator.
It came up and the door was still propped open and Sally saw something moving, something coming into the room, and I ran, ran backward, trying to get out of the way, and I fell over one of the low wicker chairs, fell backward and saw the flash of the gun and felt the explosion of the lamp beside the chair, felt the base shattering and saw her turning toward the doorway and there was Harry, followed by Hacker, Harry, who wasn’t dead, who came into the room with his arms outspread, no color in his face and speckles of blood on his hands and on his shirt, streaks of blood where he must have wiped his hands after somehow bandaging his wound, Harry alive, arms out, coming toward her, calling her name, and there was another deafening roar and Harry spun around, his left shoulder shredded and bloody, the blood spraying across Hacker’s face. He sank slowly against Hacker, who caught him, knelt with Harry in his arms. …
The shotgun clattered loudly to the floor.
We were all watching Sally.
She moved slowly, someone in a dream. Far beyond my reach.
She reached the wheel-of-fortune, slowly spun it, stood staring into the blur. She might have been watching the old times, the happy times.
Hacker turned to me. He didn’t move.
I felt a tear or two on my cheek, but I wasn’t crying.
Hacker didn’t move, just looked into my eyes.
I think Sally had begun to sob, but all I heard was the pounding of my heart and the steady night rain and a siren far away in the night.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1985 by Dana Clarins
cover design by Michael Vrana
978-1-4532-6613-7
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