Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [15]
“I know,” I said. “And I know you were involved.”
He snorted. “Involved all right.”
“What does that mean? What happened?”
He glared at me. “You a reporter? Cop? Lawyer?”
I had been leaning toward him, but now sat back in surprise. “No, of course not. I fix bikes.”
He shook his head, a slight sneer on his lips. “Women shouldn’t do that sort of thing. Can’t fix anything worth a damn.”
I felt the old defensiveness rise in my throat. Steady, he’s old. Steady. “How were you involved in her death?”
Was he falling asleep? His eyes were closed, and his head seemed to nod forward.
I raised my voice: “How did she die? What happened?”
His head was still down, and now he seemed to be wheezing. Unreal. I wanted to poke him with something, but the room was bare. “Hey, you!” I spoke as loudly as I could, to try to wake him. “What do you mean, involved? What does involved mean?” I was shouting by the end of the sentence, I knew. I could feel my muscles tighten up all over.
His head snapped up. “I killed her, you fool. You stupid woman, I killed her.”
When I tried to speak, my throat was so dry the words got stuck. I tried again. “You did kill her? You did it?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
“But—the note? And the photo, under the wallpaper?” I heard the wail in my own voice. “I found them. The truth, you said. You both knew the truth.”
Henry Lewis chuckled, a wheezy sound, reedy and almost boyish. “That was just my little joke,” he said. “Julia and I were the only ones who knew. Everyone else thought they knew—but they never knew why, or how. And they never knew what I knew: she deserved it. She knew it too, knew I was gonna do it and knew she deserved it.”
He shifted, settled back into his chair.
“I’d been seeing this little yellow-haired gal on the side.
Sally or Sara or something. Anyway, she’d been good to me, real good. Better’n Julia ever was. Me and Julia were high school sweethearts, got married, I went to work. Dumb kids. We didn’t know nothing. After we got married, well, Julia just about froze up. In bed she was nothing, just laid there, and she kept a terrible house. She hated it here, y’see. She hated the rain in the winter, hated the dampness. I told her we’d leave, but after we got married I started working for the railroad, and the money was too good to give up. I told her we were staying put. She didn’t like that, and she just froze up on me then. When she wasn’t froze, she was crying. When she wasn’t crying, she was screaming. Man has a right to his house, to some peace and quiet. And Sally moved in a few doors down, and she was three years younger than Julia, still in high school. Pretty, sweet. Sally liked a man with some spending money. Julia found out. I told her I had a right to a girl who wanted me. She said she’d divorce me, take all my money, get me fired. All this crap.”
He paused. I couldn’t say anything. There was no sound from outside, either.
A cough, and he began again. “One day I came home from work and killed her. Hit her on the head with a frying pan.” That wheezy dry chuckle. “She went down in a heap. I remember the blood came from her head here”—he pointed to a spot above his left ear—“like it was a drinking fountain. I wiped off my fingerprints and dropped the frying pan and ran outta there to pick up Sally for a movie. When I came home, I called the police and said I’d just found her like that, and that I hadn’t been home at all that day cause I’d been out with my girlfriend. Sally backed me up—pretty girl, but dumb as dumb—and they could never prove a thing.”
“So the truth was that …?”
“The truth was that I killed her. She knew I was gonna do it, right up until I did it. And then she was dead and by God she really knew it. She wouldn’t ever cross me no more.” The chuckle again, and now its thinness sounded like wires rubbing against each other, scraping and raw. “Some people thought it was me, sure enough, but couldn’t no one ever prove it. And no one ever knew how much that bitch needed killing.”
I could feel the tears begin in me,