Lawrence Block - Sins of the Fathers

I stood up and planted my feet in front of his chair. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think you’re a son of a bitch. You knew Richie would be home from work in another couple of hours. You knew he’d discover the body. You didn’t necessarily know he’d go nuts, but you knew the cops would grab him and lean on him hard. You set him up for it.”

“No!”

“No?”

“I was going to… to call the police. I was going to report the crime anonymously. They would have found the body while he was still at work. They would have known he had nothing to do with it, they would have blamed it on some anonymous sex partner of hers. They never would have thought—”

“Why didn’t you follow through?”

He fought to catch his breath. He said, “I left the apartment. My head was reeling, I was… badly shaken by what I had done. And then I saw Richie on his way home. He didn’t see me. I saw him mount the stairs, and I knew… I knew it was too late. He was already on the scene.”

“So you let him go upstairs.”

“Yes.”

“And when you went to see him in jail?”

“I wanted to tell him. I wanted to… to say something to him. I… I couldn’t.”

He leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

I let him sit like that for a while. He didn’t sob, didn’t make a sound, just sat there looking somewhere into the black parts of his soul. Finally I got up and took a half-pint flask of bourbon from my pocket. I uncapped it and offered it to him.

He wasn’t having any. “I don’t use spirits, Mr. Scudder.”

“Think of it as a special occasion.”

“I don’t use spirits. I don’t allow them in my house.”

I thought about that and decided he wasn’t in a position to set rules. I took a long drink.

He said, “You can’t prove any of this.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Some conjecture on your part. A great deal of it, as a matter of fact.”

“So far you haven’t refuted any of it.”

“No, if anything I’ve confirmed it, haven’t I? But I’ll deny having said any such thing to you. You haven’t the slightest bit of truth.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“Then I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

“I can’t prove anything. The cops will be able to, though, when I go to them. They never had any reason to dig before. But they’ll start digging, and they’ll turn something up. They’ll start by asking you to account for your movements on the day of the murder. You won’t be able to. That’s nothing in and of itself, but it’s enough to encourage them to keep looking. They’ve still got that apartment sealed off. They never had a reason to dust it for prints. They’ll have a reason now, and they’ll find your prints somewhere. I’m sure you didn’t run around wiping surfaces.

“They’ll ask to see your razor. If you bought a new one since then, they’ll wonder why. They’ll go through all your wardrobe, looking for bloodstains. I guess you had your clothes off when you killed her, but you’ll have gotten traces of blood on something or other and it won’t all wash out.

“They’ll put a case together a piece at a time, and they won’t even need a full case because you’ll crack under questioning in no time at all. You’ll crack wide open.”

“I may be stronger than you seem to think, Mr. Scudder.”

“You’re not strong so much as you’re rigid. You’ll break. I couldn’t tell you how many suspects I’ve questioned. It gives you a pretty good idea of who’s going to crack easy. You’d be a cinch.”

He looked at me, then averted his eyes.

“But it doesn’t matter whether you crack or not, and it doesn’t matter whether they put a solid case together or not, because all they have to do is start looking and you’ve had it. Take a look at your life, Reverend Vanderpoel. Once they start, you’re finished. You won’t be up there on the pulpit Sunday mornings reading the Law to your congregation. You’ll be disgraced.”

He sat for a few minutes in silence. I took out my flask and had another drink. Drinking was against his religion. Well, murder was against mine.

“What do you want, Mr. Scudder? I have to tell you that I’m not a rich man.”

“Pardon me?”

“I suppose I could arrange regular payments. I couldn’t afford very much, but I could—”

“I don’t want money.”

“You’re not trying to blackmail me?”

“No.”

He frowned at me, puzzled. “Then I don’t understand.”

I let him think about it.

“You haven’t gone to the police?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to go to them?”

“I hope I won’t have to.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

I took another little drink. I capped the flask and put it back in my pocket. From another pocket I took a small vial of pills.

I said, “I found these in the medicine cabinet at the Bethune Street apartment. They were Richie’s. He had them prescribed fifteen months ago. They’re Seconal, sleeping pills.

“I don’t know if Richie had trouble sleeping or not, but he evidently didn’t take any of these. The bottle’s still full. There are thirty pills. I think he bought them with the intention of committing suicide. A lot of people make false starts like that. Sometimes they throw the pills away when they change their minds. Other times they keep them around in order to simplify things if they decide to kill themselves at a later date. And there are people who find some security in having the means of suicide close at hand. They say thoughts of self-destruction get people through a great many bad nights.”

I walked over to him and placed the vial on the little table beside his chair.

“There are enough there,” I said. “If a person were to take them all and go to bed, he wouldn’t wake up.”

He looked at me. “You have everything all worked out.”

“Yes. I haven’t been able to think of much else.”

“You expect me to end my life.”

“Your life is over, sir. It’s just a question of how it finishes up.”

“And if I take these pills?”

“You leave a note. You’re despondent over the death of your son, and you can’t find it within yourself to go on living. It won’t be that far from the truth, will it?”

“And if I refuse?”

“I go to the police Tuesday morning.”

He breathed deeply several times. Then he said, “Do you honestly think it would be so bad to let me go on living my life, Mr. Scudder? I perform a valuable function, you know. I’m a good minister.”

“Perhaps you are.”

“I honestly think I do some good in this world. Not a great deal, but some. Is it illogical for me to want to go on doing good?”

“No.”

“And I am not a criminal, you know. I did kill… that girl.”

“Wendy Hanniford.”

“I killed her. Oh, you’re so quick to see it as a calculated, cold-blooded act, aren’t you? Do you know how many times I swore not to see her again? Do you know how many nights I lay awake, wrestling with demons? Do you even know how many times I went to her apartment with my razor in my pocket, torn between the desire to slay her and the fear of committing such a monstrous sin? Do you know any of that?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I killed her. Whatever happens, I will never kill anyone again. Can you honestly say I constitute a danger to society?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“It’s bad for society when murders remain unpunished.”

“But if I do as you suggest, no one will know I’ve taken my life for that reason. No one will know I was punished for murder.”

“I’ll know.”

“You’d be judge and jury, then. Is that right?”