Т Паркер - Pacific Beat

Raymond looked toward his gun. Jim kicked it to a corner. A hopeless low groan came from Cantrell’s throat. Jim moved to the instrument panel, killed the autopilot, and pulled the throttle back to idle. Raymond slumped back against the wall and watched him the whole while, his face white and his mouth clenched. His eyes moved from Jim to the window to the floor as if looking for somewhere to hide.

“How long did you know about them, Ray?”

“I knew everything about her. She was my damned wife. For better or for worse — all that crap.”

“You broke into Cantrell’s house twice — once to take the tie tack and a pair of his shoes, and write the letter to yourself on his equipment. Once later, to plant Ann’s things.”

Raymond looked to Cantrell, then back to Jim. “Three times, really. The first time, I just wanted to see the bed she’d been in.”

It took Weir a long while to ask his next question. In the quiet, all he could hear was Cantrell’s shallow breathing, and the slosh of water on the big yacht’s hull. “You practiced, didn’t you? You practiced using a knife with your right hand.”

Raymond looked away. “That’s right. I practiced a lot. There was a heavy bag in my garage. I took it to the dump when it got too many holes.”

Jim followed Raymond’s stare out the window to the somber spring clouds. “She believed in you, Ray. And you fucking snuffed her out like a dog. I’d blow your sorry brains out if it would do any good.”

Raymond looked at him with a vacant expression. “Go ahead. I’m ready.”

But Weir couldn’t do it; he couldn’t even come close. This was too vast a thing to end now. There was so much of it he couldn’t understand. “Why, Ray? It was Annie. Why?”

“I explained it all in that letter to myself. I wrote it to ID Cantrell’s printer, but I also wrote to try to... clarify.”

The twisted sentiments of Mr. Night came back to Jim, this time in Raymond’s voice. Then I saw it on her face, finally, the surrender, the helplessness, and absolute dependence on me she never had before. If only for a moment!

“Surrender? Dependence? What shit is that? She was your woman. You had a life.”

An expression of genuine bewilderment came to Raymond’s face. “It’s like something laid an egg in my head, and it grew, Jim. I wanted to tell you so bad. I wanted you to take me out, once and for all. I wanted to keep on going when we were underwater — just never come back. You knew I wanted to end it, but you didn’t know why.”

Raymond turned Cantrell’s chin with a finger. “Still ticking, isn’t he?”

“Take off your shirt and plug him up.”

“Let him die.”

“Do it, Ray.”

Raymond worked off his bloody shirt, tore off some pieces, and jammed them into Cantrell’s wounds. Cantrell bellowed, arched, then fainted.

“This guy ruined my life,” said Ray. “Now I’m trying to save his. I knew from the beginning about them. Ann’s looks. Later, the clothes coming back from the cleaners that she hadn’t worn for me. The little come-ons when she tried to make me look like the father I knew I wasn’t. That stupid little boat and journal of hers. I tapped my own phone to get their pattern down, then took off the bug and chucked it in the bay the day I killed her. I kept wondering if a dead fish would wash up with it wrapped around its head.” Raymond looked straight at Jim for a second, then away. “Ann always thought just because she hid things from herself that she hid them from me, too. For all her cheating and sneaking, she really wasn’t careful. That first night — it was March twenty-third — I could smell him on her when I got home. She’d showered but it didn’t matter. I could always tell because she’d be showered and still have that smell. The baby was the last straw, Jim. It wasn’t mine — it was his. You know how bad that made me feel?”

“Made you feel?”

Ray beheld him for a long moment. There was a dullness coming into his eyes now, as if clarity and purpose were draining out as fast as Cantrell’s blood. “Yes. Me. I just couldn’t believe she’d do that to me.”

“So you killed her. Damn Ray — it was Ann!”

Raymond shook his head slowly. He looked out the window, then toward Jim, but Weir could see that his gaze traveled far past himself, all the way to some destination that Jim could neither identify nor imagine.

“There are certain things a man can’t put up with in this life,” Ray said. “You can’t borrow his wife, use her, then hand her back with your kid inside. I tried to take it, but I couldn’t. The more it ate at me, the more I needed to see some justice done. You won’t understand this, but to me, Ann was proof that I was good. When I had her, I believed that. She was my badge, my... validation. When she betrayed me, I fell apart.”

Jim could hardly keep a rein on his charging thoughts. “You were always good enough, Ray. You were the only one who didn’t think so.”

“I don’t know. It’s something you either have inside or you don’t.”

“I stood up for you when you married my only sister. I stuck up for you anytime you needed it. You never had to prove anything to me. You’re right — I don’t understand.”

Raymond looked again at Cantrell, then he worked himself up to his hands and knees. He stood slowly, eyes fastened on Jim. “You don’t understand because you’ve never let yourself go. You always wash around in the middle. Ask Becky. We’ve had enough talks about the way you drift. You’re a good, strong, decent guy — but you’re afraid to go all the way. I was never like that. One thing you can say about me, Jim, is I’ve always been willing to go all the way. Want to hear something strange? When I found out she was carrying this asshole’s child, was going to try to fool me, I felt like everything I’d believed in was a lie. I sat there with her journal in my hands, crying like a baby. And Hell, I was furious. I didn’t believe in Ann anymore; I didn’t believe in the God I’d been praying to for thirty years. I didn’t believe in me or my job, or the law, or anything at all. I realized I was still living my life according to all the things that had failed me. I felt like a fool. Then, after I killed her, they all came rushing back. That’s why I stabbed her so many times — I could feel the old beliefs coming back. So I just flailed away, trying to make them disappear again. But it didn’t do any good. After she was dead, everything was back in place. Just like before. I missed her and I hated myself. I believed in God again and knew he was going to waste me. It took killing Ann to get my faith back — not that I really care about my soul anymore. I came that close to telling you, Jim, that night we went down the wall. I’m sorry. But I’m not sentimental enough to think I can change anything by saying so. I’m prepared to carry this through. I always have been.”

Ray looked down at Cantrell once again. “Pull that trigger if you want, but I’m going out on deck so I can breathe.”

He walked past Jim and out to the bridge deck. Jim followed him three steps back, the gun still in his hand. They were five or six miles offshore, ten miles south of Newport, Jim guessed. The swell was still high. Sea Urchin bobbed a quarter mile out. He could see the speck of Becky on the bridge.

Raymond looked back toward shore, then turned to Jim. “Ann got knocked up by Cantrell when she was fifteen. I didn’t know that until I read her journal. That trip to France? She never went to France. She went to upstate New York and had a dead baby. Told me later the scar was an appendectomy, and I believed her. Here we are twenty-four years later and she gets pregnant by him again. You wouldn’t believe how bad we wanted that for ourselves. What am I supposed to think? I’ll tell you what I came up with. I think God is a sour old bastard who plays tricks on us for his own entertainment.”