Noelle was frowning, her mouth working. She was thinking real hard. “Well, yes, but she said that she’d heard the shot and come running. She said she had picked the gun up. She said she was here to get money from me and leave.”
Quinlan pulled a folded piece of paper out of his breast pocket. He unfolded it and scanned it. “This is your statement to the cops, Noelle. No mention of Sally. Too bad a neighbor reported seeing her running from the house. But you tried, Noelle, you tried.
“Were you really with Scott that night? Did you really run in here with him to see Sally over your husband’s body?”
Scott threw his pipe at the fireplace. It fell with a loud crack against the marble hearth. “Damn you! Of course I was with her! I was with her all evening.”
Scott was still rubbing his belly, and that made Quinlan feel good. That damned bloody little worm. He turned back to Noelle.
“I’m pleased you tried to protect Sally. But I did wonder if you weren’t in it along with these other sterling characters.”
“I don’t blame you,” Noelle said. “I’d think I was a jerk too. But I’m not. I’m just plain stupid.”
Sally smiled at her mother. “I’m stupid too. I married Scott, didn’t I? Just take a good look at him.”
Quinlan said, “Listen, Noelle. Only a real bad person would turn on her daughter after what she tried to do for you since she was sixteen. She was just a girl, and yet she tried to protect you. I want you to tell me this isn’t true. Tell me you didn’t kill your husband. Tell me you didn’t kill that monster who’d been abusing you.”
“I didn’t kill him, I didn’t. Oh, God, you believe me, don’t you, Sally? You don’t believe I killed your father, do you?”
There was no hesitation. Sally took her mother in her arms. “I believe you.”
“But there’s so much more, Sally,” Quinlan said, his voice soft and smooth, the promise of truth in that voice. “It’s time now to get it all out. I want you to think back now. Look at Noelle and think back to that night.”
Sally drew back, her eyes on her mother. Then, slowly, she turned to Quinlan. “I now have a clear picture of my father, lying right over there, blood all over his chest. I’m sorry, James, but I don’t remember anything else.”
“Your mother said you had a gun. You don’t remember taking the gun with you, Sally?”
She started to shake her head, then she stared down at her brown boots.
Quinlan said, “It was an antique Roth-Steyr pistol your father probably bought off an old English soldier from World War I. It has a ten-round clip, ugly devil, about nine inches long.”
“Yes,” Sally said slowly, moving away from him, walking toward the spot on the floor where she’d found her father’s body, right in front of his huge mahogany desk. “Yes, I remember that pistol. He was very proud of it. The English ambassador gave it to him back in the 1970’s. He’d done him a big favor.
“Yes, now I can see it clearly. I remember picking it up now, holding it. I remember thinking it was heavy, that it weighed my hand down. I remember that it felt hot, like it had just been used.”
“It is heavy. The sucker weighs a bit more than three pounds. Are you looking at it, Sally?”
She was standing there, apart from him, apart from all of them, and he knew she was remembering now, fitting those jagged memory pieces together, slowly, but he’d known she could do it.
“It’s hot, Sally,” he said. “It’s burning your hand. What are you going to do with it?”
“I remember that I was glad he was dead. He was wicked. He’d hurt Noelle all those years and he’d never paid for it. He’d always done exactly what he’d wanted to do. He’d gotten me. There’d never been any justice, until then.
“Yes, I can remember that’s what I was thinking. ‘You’re dead, you miserable bastard, and I’m glad. Everyone is free from you now. You’re dead.”’
“Do you remember Noelle coming in? Do you remember her screaming?”
She was looking down at her hands, flexing her fingers. “The gun is so hot. I don’t know what to do with it. I can see you now, Noelle, and yes, there’s Scott behind you. But you have your coats on. You weren’t here at the house, you’d been out. Just Father is here, no one else.
“You started screaming, Noelle. Scott, you didn’t do a blessed thing. You looked at me like I was some sort of wild dog, like you wanted to put me down.”