53

Walt found the wheelchair an embarrassment, never mind a necessity. The orthopedist told him that despite the lack of any fractures, he wouldn’t walk for a week. He spent as much time as possible behind his desk, because it hid his disability, his condition forcing him to reassess what formed his self-identity.

Nancy came in to wheel him. “I can do it myself,” he barked.

“You’re going to be a delight in your old age, you know that?”

“Maybe I won’t get there.”

“Not if you work without backup.”

“That was supposed to be my fault?”

“Was there somebody else out there in the woods with you? Did I miss something?” She grabbed the wheelchair’s handles and Walt didn’t object. She rolled her eyes behind his back.

“Yeah… well…” he said, lacking any decent retort. He hated her sometimes.

“You sure you’re up for this?”

“I’m fine.” He loved her at other times.

“It can wait.”

“No, it can’t. I can’t. He can’t. It has to happen now.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Shut up.”

“Yes, boss.”

She delivered him to Interview 1, as charmless and bland as Interview 2, but one door closer to reception.

He thought it some aspect of Intelligent Design that he should be the one conducting the interview and she the one behind the video camera. All they lacked was Beatrice, currently bandaged and on the floor of his office asleep. She’d taken a piece of cheat grass in the pad of her front paw, had run on it, leaped on it, and driven it in so far that Mark Aker had to remove it surgically.

The accused, in the jail’s blue jumpsuit, won the Charles Manson look-alike contest. Curly black, tangled hair. Unshaven. Basset-hound brown eyes. Peter Arian had wisely ducked this one, letting a wet-behind-the-ears public defender by the name of Crawford sit in the attorney’s chair. Crawford worked to lose his neophyte’s startled look, making him appear to be the one accused of homicide.

“Sheriff,” Crawford began, “my client objects to any alleged victim of his-”

“You! Shut the fuck up,” said the accused. Handcuffed, he couldn’t add the punctuation he would have clearly liked.

Walt appreciated the reprimand. Crawford was now officially a spectator. The attorney glanced in the direction of the video camera and Fiona, but then thought better of making any further protest.

“I don’t care who you are,” the accused stated dryly. “Why should I? It’s not like I killed you.” He smiled. He might have had decent teeth once. He looked directly at Fiona, and therefore directly into the camera lens. “I wasn’t going to let him push you around. Him knocking you down like that.”

Walt had some housekeeping to take care of: name, age, current residence; but he let it go for now. Fiona had been warned not to engage with the man.

“Is it running?” Walt asked her.

She nodded.

“You can leave the room.”

She slipped from behind the tripod and past the wheelchair. She leaned down and whispered, “I wasn’t pushed.” Walt nodded. She closed the door gently. Her presence had accomplished what he’d hoped; he wasn’t going to put her through anything more.

Walt said, “You shot one of my deputies. We have your prints off the chair you threw through the window, and they’re going to match your prints at booking, and that’s going to buy you a long, long time in maximum. The State of Idaho doesn’t take kindly to people shooting its peace officers. So you might as well tell me everything.”

To Walt’s surprise, Randy Dowling then confessed to the two murders and Brandon’s shooting. He’d killed Gale in a fit of rage at him pushing Fiona and hurting her-the way it had looked from his vantage point behind a living room window. “My own wife walked out on me. You probably know that much, am I right? Me being the loser I am? That’s what you’re thinking, am I right? Takes the kids with her. All because of money. Because I lose my stinking job. I’m a CPA. I’ll bet you know that. A guy like you knows everything, right? You bet you do. But you don’t know me. I’m not the guy you think I am. College of Central Utah. Top twenty-five of my class. You know all this, I’m not telling you anything new. I’m putting it down on tape. I was this guy,” he said, pointing his two cuffed hands at Crawford, who recoiled. “Even looked like him. You’d a bought insurance from me, the way I looked. But a guy that big pushing a fine-looking woman like that one. Gave him the old Louisville Slugger up top of the head. Beaned him. Thought it was lights out till the prick got up and came at me like Frankenstein. Jesus. Like trying to chainsaw a sequoia. Guy takes these steps toward me, and me, I’m backing up lockstep. I couldn’t believe he’d gotten back up. His eyes are staring straight ahead-I swear he doesn’t see me-and right as I think he’s about to do me, he drops to his knees and then face-plants into the garden. Down for the count. Like a zombie. Night of the Living Dead. I couldn’t believe it.”

Walt had witnessed other confessions where the guilty party proved himself eager to purge, but honestly hadn’t expected it of this one. He’d initially appraised the man’s wild looks, deciding he had an ignorant lunatic on his hands. When Nancy had brought what little they could find on him, Walt had ordered it double-checked. But now the man was confirming what they’d learned about him. Somewhere down the line he’d be deemed a victim of the economy by a sympathetic press or a politician seeking additional funding. A poster boy for all that can go wrong.

“You cooked meth,” Walt said, seeing it as a conversation starter.

Crawford leaned forward but not for long, his participation shortened by a woeful look from Dowling.

“And damn near every penny went into an envelope I slipped under the door of my wife’s mother’s place. I can take care of my family. We sure as hell aren’t food stamp people.”

“The tree house.”

“I got tired of running around, you know? Your people-people like you, like that other one-scouring the woods looking for me. You know how that feels? You get treated like an animal, you start acting like one. You drove me to that place. You, and people like you. Couldn’t leave well enough alone. You know how many people are out in these woods, Sheriff? More than you think. And come to find out these other people have tree houses nicer than a lot of people’s homes. Including mine. What’s with that? You think I liked it out there? Shitting in a hole? Getting sick from the water? What kind of country is this when you can’t even drink the creek water? How’d we let something like that happen?”

“So you killed him?”

“Mostly I slept days and moved around the woods at night. Safer that way. Fewer of your kind. Except for that one. A drinker, that one. I’d had my eye on him before. No real threat to me. Not until he pokes his head up in that tree house like it’s Groundhog’s Day. Scared the shit out of me! Wanted to take my tree house away, I’m thinking. So I kicked him-kicked him in the throat, turns out. Grabbed him by the hair. Hauled him up. Musta broken a bone or something in his throat. Voice box, maybe. Guy went purple on me. Didn’t mean for it to happen that way. I’m not a killer.”

“There are two men dead.”

“Yeah, but that just kind of… happened.”

“What happened to those men?” Walt asked.

“I just told you.”

“You killed them. Martel Gale and Guillermo Menquez.”

“If you say so.”

“It’s you saying so, Mr. Dowling, not me. Are you saying you killed them?”

“I killed them. I dragged Gale up the hill and dumped him. I’m not proud of it, you understand. I’m not like some sicko or something, you know. I’m not one of them. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t like that. It just… happened. You think about it: it was bound to happen. A person like me. You and everyone like you did this. You’re the ones made it happen.”