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.We were friends.""Weren't there before me, Chief?""No.""Had no idea she was dead before the two of us went inside?""No.""Then how'd you know she was killed with a glass paperweight?"I stared at him without answering."It was half under her body and covered with blood," he said."I couldn't tell what it was and I looked closer than you did.You stood off fifteen or twenty feet and called it a glass paperweight.""I don't remember saying that.""Accused me of seeing red, picking up a glass paperweight and hitting her with it."I shook my head."Your word against mine? Except I'm not the only one you said it to.When you radioed in you used the same words to whoever you talked to—""Me," Verne said."I was on the other end.""You remember him saying it? Skull crushed with a glass paperweight?""I remember.""All right," I said, "then I did say it.She kept it on an end table next to the couch.I must've seen it wasn't there—""And assumed it was what killed her? Hell of an assumption, Chief, for a man as upset as you were.Besides, the paperweight wasn't the only slip you made over the radio.Two blows, you said.Two." He asked Verne, "Remember that?""Yeah.""How'd you know it was two, Chief, not one or three or six or a dozen? Her skull was caved in, blood everywhere, you're not a doctor and you didn't go near the body.No way you could know she was hit twice unless you did it yourself."Verne's eyes were on me; everyone's eyes were on me.The combined intensity of their stares was like surgical lasers—cutting, probing, hurting."Answer him, Novak." Thayer's voice this time, hard and cold."How'd you know?"I told myself to stand up, get off my knees and stand up like a man.When I did that, Faith stood, too, in the same slow movements, so that we continued to face each other at eye level.Thayer: "Answer the question."Verne: "Say something, for God's sake."Kent was the last straw, all right.It has to stop, right here and now.I looked away from Faith for the first time.Didn't look at Verne or Thayer as I turned around, or at anyone else.I stared out beyond the light into the dark, above all, the laser eyes and all the faceless, buzzing bodies.Easier that way.It wasn't much different from addressing a roomful of strangers."Faith is right," I said, "everything he said is right.I did it.I killed her."EpilogueLeo ThayerFOUR OF US were present in the interrogation room when Novak taped his confession.Me, Ben Seeley, Joe Proctor, and Verne Erickson because the mayor and city council made him acting Chief.We didn't have to prod Novak any, or even ask him more than half a dozen questions to clarify minor details.He just rolled it all off the top of his head in a flat, used-up voice—the tone most felons have when they know their ride's over and done with.I read the transcript three times.The main part made me feel like puking every time.She called me Thursday night, late.It was the first I'd heard from her since we broke off the affair six months ago.She practically begged me to come to her house.She was a little drunk but not that drunk.She said she needed me, really needed me.I didn't want to go because I was afraid of what might happen.I don't mean violence, I mean getting involved again.The affair hadn't been good for either of us, me particularly.She was the kind of woman who got under your skin like a tick and just kept burrowing.I spent six months trying to dig her out and I thought I had but I hadn't.I tried to say no to her that night and I couldn't.I went to her just like she asked me to.We made love three times in three hours.For me, anyway, it was making love.But not a good kind, even then.I knew it but I wouldn't let myself accept the truth.She led me to believe.no, that's not right.I led myself to believe she felt the same way, that there was a bond or connection between us and we could rebuild what we'd had before.Except we hadn't had anything before, just sex, that's all.I don't know how I could have deluded myself like that.Ripe for it, I guess.Lonely, mixed up inside my head—midlife crisis or maybe just plain crisis.I don't know.I needed to believe, so I believed.Friday night I drove back to her house, uninvited this time.Nine-thirty, quarter of ten, I don't remember the exact time I got there.She let me in, but she wasn't the same as the night before.In a strange mood even for her.No pretense of softness or sexiness.Bitchy, cutting, like she was spoiling for a fight.More than a fight.as though there was something in her that was pushing me to do to her what I ended up doing.I'm not trying to blame her when I say that.I'm through blaming anybody but myself.I'm only telling you the way it was.She started yelling, provoking me right away.Saying I had a lot of nerve showing up unannounced and she was through with me, she didn't want me coming around bothering her anymore.I told her I loved her.She laughed at me.She said I was pathetic, a sorry excuse for a man in and out of bed
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