Scott Turow - Identical

“I’m sure,” Tim answered. Beside Georgia on the sofa, Evon had relegated herself to the role of taking notes. Most of the city homicide dicks she knew weren’t much on interviewing technique. They’d come in and ask a few questions with their faces turned to one side, waiting for the moment when they could say, ‘Don’t bullshit me, if you don’t tell the truth you’re going to jail.’ But Tim was earnest and kind. It was like talking to somebody’s grandfather who was in a rocking chair on his front porch.

“I’ll tell you something else I remember,” she said. “You may not care to hear it, but when I saw that commercial, saying Paul lied to the police, it pretty much came back to me. That was exactly what Paul told me that night. That he was going to meet Cass at Overlook? I can’t tell you if he did or he didn’t, but I remember his plans.”

Evon felt jolted.

“Any reason that stands out in your memory?” she asked.

Georgia turned to her, plainly feeling challenged. “Yeah, because I was really surprised. It was a Sunday night, and my dad always went off with the men’s club and that meant we had the run of the house. Guys being the way they are, Paul always liked to take advantage of that.” She nodded decisively, like she’d put Evon in her place, which she had.

Behind Georgia, leaning forward in an easy chair, Tim let his fair eyes rise to Evon. He didn’t want her breaking his rhythm, and eased back in.

“Did Paul say why he wanted to go out there?”

“I could guess. He needed to talk to Cass about Dita, I think. The two of them had an argument about her once a week. He was afraid Cass was going to marry her and tear his family apart.”

Evon rolled over the details. It wasn’t as bad as she’d first feared. Maybe Paul had met Cass at Overlook and hatched some kind of plan. But one of them, perhaps both, had left there soon and killed Dita.

“I don’t want you to think I’m taking Paul’s side,” Georgia said. “I’m not. He was a louse to me. You know, women say, ‘He took the best years of my life’? He really did. I was the girl from the neighborhood he was too good for as soon as he finished law school. And I could have had a ton of boys in those days. The way I looked? It still aggravates me. But I’ll tell you the truth. I vote for him. I probably will this time, too.” Georgia looked at her plump hands for a second, trying to discern the meaning of what she had just revealed.

People could get stuck in love, Evon realized, and then never recover. The best love of Evon’s life had come almost a decade ago, with Doreen. They’d had six good months before Doreen was diagnosed, and another year and a half with Evon helping her die. She’d been devastated afterward, in part because the normal times hadn’t lasted long enough to find out what the relationship might have been. She wondered now, if, like Georgia, she had never found her way back from mourning that lost possibility. People didn’t generally think that love could ruin a life. But perhaps. Evon felt her entire body pressed down by the sheer unhappy magnitude of the idea.

“So let’s go back to the day of that picnic,” Tim said to Georgia. “Anything stand out in your memory about Paul that day?”

She snorted. “Well, I remember he bumped into Sofia Michalis. I could just see by the way he was talking to her something was going on. When he broke up with me, he blamed it on this whole thing with Cass being a suspect. He said he was too mixed up with all that happening. But he was married to Sofia within six months. He wasn’t so confused then.”

“Do you recall anything about him and Dita?” Tim asked.

She shook her full face. It wasn’t clear, though, if that was a lack of memory or if she was distracted by the thought of Paul and Sofia.

“One of the officers who talked to you,” Tim told her, “he said that you recalled that Paul seemed to have had words with Dita.”

“Did I?”

Tim reached into his tweed jacket and pulled out the report casually, as if it were just another piece of paper an old fellow would have in his pockets, like a grocery list, or a note about calling his daughter. Georgia spidered her hands on her forehead as she read the highlighted part. Eventually, she started to nod.

“I just saw them talking. Dita went stalking off and I remember the look on his face. But that was nothing new. Paul hated Dita.”

“Is that what he said that day? That he hated her?”

“I don’t remember what he said. Did I tell that to the cop?” She took the report back from Tim’s hand without asking and swung her head laterally as she read. “I really don’t recall even talking about her with Paul that day. Except maybe when he said he was going to the Overlook, and I’m not clear on that.”

“But you say he hated her?”

“There was a lot not to like. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead”-she made the sign of the cross over her chest with impressive speed-“but I have to tell you the truth. Dita was just a very spoiled girl with a very sharp tongue. She was like, ‘My dad is one of those guys, emperor of the universe, so I can say damn well what I please.’ She was gorgeous, so there were always boys after her, the whole damned cavalry, but except for Cass, she managed to drive every one of them away after a while.”

“Is that what Paul didn’t like about her? Her attitude?”

“You know. He said she was wild, leading his brother astray, said his mom hated her, too, and Dita knew it and just liked egging all of them on. I don’t know. You ask me?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Tim said.

“I think he was jealous. That’s a hard row to hoe. With twins? Identical twins? He loved his brother. There isn’t even a word for it really. Lidia always told the same stories about when they were little, how they couldn’t stand being different. She sewed their names into their clothes and they tore off the tags. They ate off each other’s plates. At night they ended up in the same bed, sleeping in each other’s arms. The neighbors’ collie bit Cass, and everybody swore Paul cried first, before either of them knew the dog had drawn blood. It was like they were joined at the heart. And that never quite stopped. I mean, Paul wouldn’t really accept that Cass was guilty.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, even after Cass pled, Paul was saying he was innocent.”

“Did he?” said Tim, who allowed none of the surprise Evon felt rippling through her thorax to reach his expression. He maintained a purely conversational tone. “When was that?”

“That day. The day Cass was in court pleading guilty. I was there actually. Paul and I had been broken up for months by then, but I don’t know, I wanted to support the family or something. I don’t know,” she repeated. “Probably I was looking for an excuse to see Paul.” She winced, pained by the memory and the futility of her longing. With her eyes closed, Tim noticed that her face was turning blotchy with age. “Anyway, he thanked me for coming. We went over to Bishop’s, and had a beer, and he was just blown away. I mean, you can imagine, somebody’s been like another part of your body all your life and they’re about to lock him up for twenty-five years. He was really blue and he just said to me, ‘He’s innocent, you know.’”

Evon intervened. “And did you ask how he knew that?” She tried to evoke Tim’s mild tone, but again, Georgia’s response to her was sharp.

“Well, he was his twin brother for God’s sake,” she answered. Evon had Georgia’s number by now. She was one of those women who didn’t really like other females, while the men she’d loved-Paul who’d thrown her over, and Jimmy Cleon with his drugs, and her dad who’d kept her from college-had all done her wrong. Life had put her in quite a bind. “I suppose I figured Cass told him that. But I was trying to console him, not play detective. Paul was miserable and I was listening to him. I thought we could be friends. Does that ever work?” She kept touching the front of her short stiff hairdo to keep it in place, after every shake of her head. “And of course, right before I got up to leave, he told me he was going to marry Sofia in a couple of weeks, so Cass could be his best man before he went inside.”