“The word weird doesn’t even scratch the surface of a guy like him.”
“I would say not. Because then he apparently wades into the water and starts cutting himself. Why would he do that?”
“You’re asking me to explain irrational actions.”
“I’m asking you to speculate.”
“He’s a sadist and a masochist. He was seriously insane.”
Bowen scowled and shook his head. “So you arrive on scene. You check on Huston. See it’s too late for him. And you order Inman out of the water.”
“At which point he comes at me with that long mofo of a knife.”
“End of story.”
“End of his anyway.”
“He falls back into the water; you wade in and drag the body out.”
“And that water was cold.”
“But wait, now it’s time for a miracle. Suddenly your cell phone works!”
“I went back to the clearing, plugged in the charger in my car, and made the call. I guess I forgot to put that part in my report.”
“Still groggy?” Bowen said.
“Nope. Right now I feel as clear as this beautiful autumn day. A little tired though. Hungry and tired.”
“Let’s talk about the crime scene for just a minute. Apparently there’s some evidence of rope burns around Inman’s wrists and ankles. But you didn’t find any rope?”
“At the campsite? Nothing but rocks.”
“Any idea then where those rope burns might have come from?”
“Maybe he and Bonnie had a little rough sex before coming to my place.”
“Culminating, apparently, in the slitting of her throat.”
“Let me refresh your memory, Kyle. Carl Inman? Insane.”
Bowen blew out another heavy breath. “And while you waited for the units to arrive, you built yourself a nice big fire. Kind of a signal fire, was that your intent?”
“My intent was to keep my cold, frozen balls from falling off.”
“You know, you’ve always been a bit of a loose cannon, but this time… There are a hell of a lot of holes in your story this time.”
“So I’m not a natural storyteller. Just another one of the many deficits I’m learning to live with.”
“There are no suspicions whatsoever on your part that maybe, being so groggy and all, you got a few things wrong?”
“For instance?” DeMarco said.
“Like maybe it was Huston doing the cutting on Inman? That would explain the rope burns at least.”
“Seems quite a stretch to me,” DeMarco said.
“You’re not even willing to consider the possibility?”
“That scenario would require that Huston somehow overpowered Inman, tied him up…with rope he found where? There was no rope in my car, I can tell you that. He then somehow was able to convince Inman to stand chest deep in freezing water so that Huston could slice away at him? And then what? Knowing that Inman would freeze and or bleed to death before he could get back to civilization, he then handed him an unregistered weapon, loaded with birdshot, for fuck’s sake, then sat on the shore and said, ‘Okay, your turn, shoot me.’ You think that’s the more plausible story?”
“What I think is that it’s not outside the realm of possibility that you might be hoping to rewrite a bit of history. For Huston’s sake.”
DeMarco said nothing. After a few seconds, he turned in his chair and gazed out the window again. The bareness of the trees made his chest ache. The sky was heartbreakingly blue.
Finally he faced Bowen again. “Are you asking me if it’s possible that a good, decent, and compassionate man could resort to torture?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“You tell me,” DeMarco said. “You have a wife and a little girl who mean the world to you. Let’s say you come home one night and find them butchered. What would you do to the man responsible? What would you consider a suitable punishment?”
Bowen stared down at DeMarco’s report. He sat very still for half a minute. Then he pulled open a drawer, removed a manila folder, slipped the report inside the folder, and closed the cover. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Take your frozen balls and get out of here.”
DeMarco stood. “Oh, they’re both nicely thawed by now. You wanna check?”
Sixty-Four
Before returning home in the afternoon, DeMarco drove to the village of Oniontown. From the O’Patchens’ driveway, he could see Rosemary in her backyard. On her hands and knees, she was moving down the rows of withered tomato plants in her garden, pulling them up by the roots and stuffing them into a plastic bucket. As DeMarco approached, she looked up at him. Her eyes were red and swollen, cheeks slick with tears and streaked with the dirt from her hands.
“Where’s Ed?” DeMarco asked.
“Sitting by the TV,” she said. “I think he’s hoping the news will change somehow. But it’s not going to. ‘Last member of Huston family brutally slain before killer is brought down by state police.’”
She yanked a tomato plant from the ground and shook the dirt from its roots. “At least you got the son of a bitch,” she said. “At least you got him.”
DeMarco knelt beside her. He picked up the bucket and held it while she stuffed the dead plant inside. “How are you at keeping secrets?” he said.
Sixty-Five