After Midnight

6
DISCOVERIES

My guess was right.
When I finally recovered enough to move, I stepped away from him, put my saber down on the grass, then crouched beside him and searched the pockets of his jeans.
He had a comb and handkerchief in his left front pocket. A wallet in the left back pocket. In the right front, a leather key case and some coins. In the right back, a pistol.
A pistol!
Had he come here planning to stand guard and protect me?
Or to use the gun against me?
I put his things into the pockets of my robe, but the gun was too heavy. It felt like a hand tugging down on my pocket. Afraid it might ruin the robe, I took it out and carried it.
Back inside the house, I shut the door. I sat down on the cool marble floor of the foyer and inspected my findings.
The white handkerchief looked clean. I didn’t study the comb very closely; combs can be gross. He had eighty-five cents in change. Six keys in his leather case. Thirty-eight dollars in the bill compartment of his wallet.
The wallet was full of stuff, but I won’t bore you with a list. I’ll cut to the chase, as they say. It contained two foilwrapped condoms—meant for me?—and a driver’s license that identified him as Anthony Joseph Romano.
His date of birth was two years earlier than mine, which made him twenty-eight. The photo must’ve been taken a few years ago, because he hardly looked old enough to be out of high school. He had short blond hair, freckles across his nose, and a friendly smile.
It made me feel bad, looking at him.
Knowing I’d killed him.
He’d probably driven over here to protect me. Nothing more sinister than that.
He thought he was being a good guy.
Like they say, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
I felt rotten about killing him, but not particularly guilty. It wasn’t my fault he paid me a surprise visit and got his head chopped open for the trouble. I hadn’t invited him over.
He should’ve minded his own business.
Not only had he gotten himself killed, but he’d put me into a horrible situation.
What was I supposed to do now?
I stopped looking at his photo, and checked the address on his driver’s license. 4468 Washington Avenue, Apt. 212. (Sounds like a real address, doesn’t it? I made it up.) I knew the general area. It wasn’t far from here. Less than ten minutes. After hanging up the phone, he must’ve grabbed his pistol and hurried right out to his car…
No.
He probably hadn’t come here from the Washington Avenue address. He’d moved to a new place because of all the memories. That’s one of the reasons he’d tried to phone Judy—to let her know his new phone number.
Unless he’d made the move a couple of months ago, the address on his driver’s license almost had to be wrong.
I gave the wallet another search. Sure enough, tucked into the bill compartment was a folded slip of paper with an address scribbled on it in pencil: 645 Little Oak Lane, Apt. 12. (But not really.) This was probably his new address.
I put the paper back where I’d found it, set the wallet aside, and picked up the pistol.
It was a small, stainless steel .22 automatic with a black plastic handle. The fine print in the steel told me that it was a Smith & Wesson.
The safety wasn’t on.
I dropped the loaded magazine into my hand, then pulled back the slide. Tony didn’t have a bullet in the chamber. I shoved the magazine back up the handle until it clicked into place, then worked the slide, watching through the port to make sure it fed in a round. Then I thumbed the safety on.
After that, I just kept sitting there.
I didn’t have the energy to get up.
Besides, get up and do what?
Deal is, I didn’t know what to do next. So I just sat there, staring.
I’ve gotta do something, I kept telling myself.
What’s the best course of action if you’ve just butchered an innocent man?
The answer probably seems obvious to you: call the cops and tell them the whole truth about everything.
Or fudge a little, maybe. Claim that he was holding the pistol when I opened the door. To make that version work, I would only have to take the gun outside and put it into his hand.
Which hand? That always trips up the criminals on TV. They stick the gun into the right hand of a lefty.
I’m a tad smarter than that.
Tony’d been carrying the weapon in his right rear pocket. Also, he’d reached for me with his right hand.
Reached for me? Maybe he’d been reaching for the doorbell button.
In either case, the evidence seemed to prove him a righty.
Not that it mattered. I had no intention of planting the pistol on him.
I had no intention of calling the cops, either.
Right now, you’re probably thinking, Oh, you stupid idiot! A guy you’ve never seen before in your life showed up in the middle of the night with a gun! It’s a clear case of self-defense! Call the cops right now! Fess up! They probably won’t even charge you with anything!
Wrong.
Calling the police might be smart for you to do, but you’re probably one of those people who’s never gotten in trouble. A good, upstanding citizen.
If I were you, I probably would call the cops and admit everything. And I’m sure it’d turn out hunky-dory.
But I’m not you.
I’m me, alias Alice.
I could’ve gotten away with calling about the prowler. I might have actually done it, too, if the phone had been handy. It would’ve been safe. My troubles were several years earlier and in a different state. Cops coming over to save me from a prowler wouldn’t even know about me or what I’d done.
But if they came to investigate Tony’s death, they’d investigate me.
They’d run my prints.
Find out who I am.
After that, I wouldn’t stand a chance.
So Tony had to go.
Tony and his car, if he’d driven one here.
Obviously, I had a long night ahead of me. But I stayed sitting on the marble floor for a while longer, wondering what to do first, where to start.
Finally, I decided to start by changing my clothes.
No matter what I might end up doing, I didn’t want to do it wearing Charlie’s robe. I liked the robe too much. It was bound to get bloody if I kept it on.
Whatever got bloody would have to be destroyed.
For that reason, I couldn’t wear clothes belonging to Serena or Charlie. I wasn’t eager to sacrifice any of my own clothes, either, but figured it had to be done.
Which meant a trip to my place above the garage.
Now that my mind was made up, I stuffed Tony’s hanky and comb and everything else into the pockets of my robe. Everything except the pistol. I held on to that.
Then I went out the front door again.
I didn’t plan to go back inside the house until everything was taken care of, so I locked the door and shut it after me.
Just for the hell of it, I went over to the porch light, reached up and gave the bulb a twist.
It turned easily.
The light came on, almost blinded me.
“Very interesting,” I muttered.
Had Tony loosened it? Had someone else? Or had the bulb simply worked its way loose all on its own, with nobody’s help? (Light bulbs do that, you know. Almost as if they’re living creatures unscrewing themselves for sport or for reasons we’ll never guess.)
I left it screwed in.
All the better to see by.
Here’s the deal: I wasn’t worried about anyone noticing Tony’s body on the lawn. That could only happen if a person came down the driveway.
Not likely to happen at this hour of the night—or morning.
His body couldn’t be seen from the street because a thick, tall hedge stood in the way. Hedges also ran along both sides of the lawn.
In addition to that, we had no neighbors.
None close enough to worry about, anyway.
There were vacant lots to the right and left, and a string of vacant lots across the road. The nearest house, a couple of lots to the left, was empty and up for sale. The nearest occupied house stood about a quarter of a mile to the right, and on the other side of the road.
We were pretty much alone out here.
It couldn’t hurt to leave the light on. But then I thought, why take the risk? I wouldn’t have any use for the porch light until I came back from the garage.
As I reached up for the bulb, though, my eyes strayed over to Tony.
I hadn’t really seen him before. Not in halfway good light, anyway.
From the chin up, he was a horrible wreck.
You wouldn’t recognize him as the guy in his driver’s license photo.
He looked like a nightmare.
Considering the gory ruin of his head, I was surprised to notice how clean his clothes seemed to be.
With the light still on, I went over to him and checked more carefully. His shirt had a few spots of blood on it, but nothing obvious. His jeans seemed fine.
Why not?
First, I took the purse off my shoulder and removed my robe. I left them on the dry concrete of the front stoop.
Then I crouched over Tony and stripped him. It wasn’t easy, especially because the night was so hot. Even though I’m in pretty good shape, I ended up out of breath and sweaty.
When I was done, I slipped into his loafers. They were a little too big for me, but I could walk in them okay. I carried his jeans and shirt over to the stoop and dropped them.
Then I stretched out naked on my back for a rest.
The concrete felt cool and nice.
Too nice. I could hardly force myself to get moving again.
Finally, though, I stood up to put his clothes on. I started with the shirt. It was very large, and hung halfway down my thighs. But it would do just fine. Next, I slipped his shoes off and climbed into the blue jeans.
They were way too big. When I had them all the way up around my waist, my feet were still inside the denim legs. Also, I had a huge amount of spare room inside the waistband. Looking down the gap, I could see all the way to my knees. I fastened the belt, anyway. It had enough holes to let me cinch it tight and keep the jeans from falling. With that taken care of, I bent over and rolled up the legs. The cuffs reached almost to my knees. I looked like I was wearing waders.
The jeans felt too hot and too heavy.
I needed them, though. I wanted the pockets; otherwise, I could’ve gotten rid of the jeans and just worn the shirt like a dress.
What I finally did was use the saber to cut the legs off. I took the legs off very high, then slit the sides almost up to the belt.
After that, the jeans felt light and airy.
What was left of them.
I returned all of Tony’s belongings to the pockets where I’d found them. I also slipped my own key case into a pocket.
Then I unlocked the front door and went back inside the house, but only long enough to put my purse and Charlie’s robe in the living room.
I left again.
Reaching up, I unscrewed the porch bulb. It was pretty hot by then, and made my fingertips smart.