Strangled - Brian McGrory [51]
“I was hoping to talk with your husband,” I said.
This finally got a rise out of her.
“My husband,” she said dramatically, slurring even more the louder she spoke. She squinted at me and added, “You want to speak to my husband?”
Sometimes, in journalism, you have to play along, so I nodded and said without an ounce of disrespect, “Yes, Mrs. Walters, I was hoping to have a word with your husband.”
She took a long gulp of vodka and refilled her glass, never offering me any, not that I would have accepted. She was looking down at the table for so long that I was starting to think I had lost her. Then she cast a glance at me and said, “About what?”
“The Boston Strangler.”
I mean, why lie? Why wander down all sorts of hazy dead-end avenues with a woman too drunk to guide me on a clear path to the place I needed to go? At least the truth would set me forth in the right direction.
Well, maybe not. She coughed loud and hard, reflexively grabbing at her chest in that melodramatic way some people have of showing their distress. When she collected herself, she walked over to the kitchen sink and poured water from the tap into a glass. When she got back to the table, she put the glass down, untouched, and took another sip of booze.
Finally, she said, “You want to speak to my husband about the Boston Strangler?”
Her face was contorting as she spoke, her words slurring more now than the few minutes before when I arrived. This was not going as planned, but should be just a small obstacle, provided I didn’t lose patience.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “That’s why I came out here from Boston.”
“What about the Strangler?” she asked. Her words were so wobbly, they almost fell out of her slanted mouth and smashed on the floor.
I fidgeted now, growing uneasy, thinking for the first time that Mrs. Walters might prove to be a bigger obstacle than I had anticipated. I said, “Lots of things, ma’am. I’d rather just ask your husband.”
In one shockingly smooth motion, she picked up her lowball glass and flung it across the kitchen. I whirled around to see it explode against her wooden cabinets, the force sending a spray of booze and shards in all directions.
She screamed, “Damn my husband. Damn the Boston Strangler. And damn you for asking about them.”
All right, so this wasn’t precisely the reaction I had expected to get. I had expected to be greeted at the door by a diminutive elderly woman who would show me into a television room where her husband, a retired Boston Police detective, would pull out his scrapbooks and relive the case with me as his wife readied us some raisin scones in the kitchen.
I wanted to get the hell out of this house, and, for that matter, get the hell out of Vegas, but I sure as hell wasn’t in a position to do that now. I said, “Mrs. Walters, I’m sorry for upsetting you. But what is it? What about the Strangler upsets you so much? That was forty years ago.”
As I was asking this, it occurred to me there might be an obvious answer: He killed people. He violated the civility and livability of a city. He defeated her husband. Maybe she meant all that, but here’s what she said: “He ruined my life.” And after she said it, she looked down at the top of her wooden table and began to sob — one of those tearful, shoulder-shaking sobs that can’t be comforted.
A moment later, she looked back up at me with glistening eyes and said, “He ruined my whole damned life. He took my husband from me. He took my marriage from me. He left me with nothing to look forward to but my next glass of booze.”
“How, ma’am?”
She raged, “Fuck you. Fuck you for coming into my life and questioning what I have to say.” Then she sobbed again.
I asked, “Ma’am, is your husband here?”
“Fuck him, too. Go tell him you want to talk about his Boston Strangler. Go tell him that. And tell him that they ruined my life, both of them.”
“Where, ma’am? Where can I find him?”
When she looked at me, there was fury in her eyes. I feared that she might throw her water glass, or even the half-filled bottle of vodka.
“He’s upstairs. Go tell him that they ruined my