Ecstasy (41 page)

The nasty thoughts I’d been entertaining in the backseat of the squad car went shooting across my brain.

It wasn’t Dorrie whom those boys raped.

It was Trish.

And who’s the most likely person on the goddamn planet to want to punish them for it?

I heard Stilwell’s footsteps coming down the hall.

Play dumb,
I thought.
If he knows you’re on to him, you’re screwed.

As it turned out, I was screwed anyway.

W
HEN STILWELL CAME BACK
, he was carrying a stack of grayish white linen. He handed them to me, which doesn’t sound particularly threatening. But
when I went to put them on the bed, he said this:

“Make a noose.”

I’m serious. That’s what he said—but at first I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.

“Make a what?”

“A noose.”

“Like…”

“Like what a person hangs himself with. A noose. Got it?”

I stared at him. “Are you kidding?”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding?”

I stared at him some more. Then I said, “No.”

“Then do it.”

“Uh…no way.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. Then he pulled the gun out of its holster, pointed it at me, and said, “Don’t make me do this
the hard way.”

It was such a cliché I would’ve laughed—if the gun weren’t so big and shiny and aimed right at my gut.

I decided stalling was in order.

“I don’t understand,” I said. I hoped the expression on my face was as stupid as I’d actually been over the past few weeks.

“Take the sheet,” he said, jerking his gun in the direction of the bed before aiming it right back at me. “Rip it into strips.
Braid them up to make a rope, then tie it into a slipknot. It’s called a noose. Then you’re going to tilt the bed frame against
the wall and tie it on.”

“I…Why?”

“I think you know why.”

“No, I—”

“You’re not stupid, Alex, and neither am I.”

“But—”

“I’m sorry it’s come to this. I can’t even tell you how sorry. But at this point”—he shook his head—“right now, it’s either
you or me. I’d gladly go to prison for what I did, but…Trish needs me. After all she’s been through, I’m not going to leave
her without a father. I hope you can understand that.”

“What are you talking about?”

He sighed and sat in a folding chair a few feet from the bars, the gun never wavering a damn millimeter. But though his hand
was steady, the rest of his body radiated exhaustion. His eyes were bloodshot, the skin around them saggy and loose, and his
Parris Island shoulders were somehow both slumped and tense at the same time. If someone had told me this wasn’t really Chief
Stilwell—that it was, in fact, his clinically depressed older brother—I would’ve half believed him.

When Stilwell finally spoke, the misery in his voice made the whole package seem even more pathetic.

“I tried to get you off this,” he said. “I thought once you got busted with all that coke, once I made Sturdivant testify
against you, you’d get the message—or even if you didn’t, you’d have enough to worry about that it’d keep you from digging
into it. So why did you have to keep going?” I thought it was a rhetorical question; it wasn’t.
“Answer me.”

If there was a point in trying to keep up the pretense, I couldn’t see it.

“I… guess I had to know why those boys were murdered.”

“What difference could that possibly make to you?”

“I was there. I
met
them.”

“So?”

“They were just so…young.”

“Not that young. Not so young that they couldn’t”—something dark flickered across his face—“do what they did.”

“I know, but…why not just have them arrested? Why go through this whole convoluted plan to poison them?”

He seemed to be debating whether to answer. “Just make the noose,” he said.

“No.”

“Do it.”

I lost my temper, probably not the best survival tactic. “What are you gonna do, shoot me?” I said. “How are you going to
explain killing an unarmed woman locked in a goddamn jail cell?”

“You wouldn’t be found,” he said. He sounded detached, but also, weirdly… kind of sad. It didn’t stop my mouth from going
dry. “Now do it.”

Since stalling remained the only promising strategy I could think of, I did as I was told. I took the worn top sheet and ripped
a six-inch strip down one side. It seemed to placate him.

“You know,” I said, “nobody would ever believe I’d kill myself.”

“Are you so sure? A woman facing drug charges serious enough to put her away for thirty years gets caught jumping bail, then
hangs herself in her cell?”

“Nobody who knows me would ever buy that.”

“They’re not going to be able to prove otherwise. It’s my word against”—he thought about it for a second—“no one’s.”

I decided to try a different tack. “Come on,” I said, “this is completely pointless. You know there are other people out there
who know what happened to Trish. Eventually, someone’s going to put two and two together, and…”

“And?”

“And people may not even blame you for it. Anyone can understand how you’d want to get back at those boys for what they did
to your daughter. They could even see why you got rid of Axel—”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“What?”

“I said, I’m not responsible for that little creep’s death. I’m not sorry about it, but I didn’t do it.”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “and I surely don’t care.”

“How did you get him to sell the drugs for you?”

He gave the gun an ominous jerk. “You need to be working right now.”

“Not unless you tell me how it happened.”

“You’re not exactly in a position to make demands.”

“If you’re gonna kill me anyway, what difference does it make?”

He almost cracked a smile. “That’s original.”

“It’s also true.”

He thought about it, then said, “I busted him.”

“What?”

“Robinette. I’d busted him before, when he was a juvenile, so I knew what a weak-willed scumbag he was. And I needed someone
to sell the drugs, so I tracked him until I caught him with some coke, more than enough to be sale weight. He knew he was
up a creek under the Rockefeller laws, so—”

“So you told him to do you this one favor and you’d let him off the hook.”

His jaw tightened. “That’s right.”

“Is he the one who made the LSD?”

Stilwell shook his head. “I had some chemical experience in the service.”

I cast about for another topic to keep him occupied long enough for…What? The truth was, I had no idea—but talking was a hell
of a lot better than hanging.

“There’s something I really don’t understand,” I said. “Why did you admit that you’d been told not to enforce the drug laws
at Melting Rock?”

He looked, of all things, confused.

“Because,” he said, “it was the right thing to do.”

“But I don’t—”

“Like I told you in my office, when a person does something wrong, he ought to take responsibility. And I know what you’re
going to say next, so don’t bother. If I could admit what I’ve done without dragging my daughter into it, I would. I’d be
proud
to. But I can’t. And she’s… she’s the only thing I care about. She’s the only thing that matters.”

Lacking anything in the way of an informed response, I dug in my brain for another question.

“But why put so much ergotamine in the tabs of LSD?” I asked. “Why make it so obvious that it wasn’t an accident?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be.” Stilwell shook his head again. “I didn’t mean for it to be obvious. But I had to make sure.”

“Make sure of what?”

He looked me straight in the eye. “That they got what they deserved.”

“But why do it in the first place? Why not just arrest them for what they did to Trish? Why go through this whole—”

Another definitive head shake. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Then make me.”

“What difference does it make?”

An idea popped into my head; it was simple, but something told me it had to be the truth.

“She wouldn’t testify against them, would she?”

“Just make the noose.”

“She wouldn’t, would she? It’s like Dorrie said. …After it happened, Trish tried to convince her it’d all been some big misunderstanding.
She said it was all her fault, that—”

“Trish is a very confused young lady.” His voice was low, but there was plenty of menace in it all of a sudden.

“Did she approve of what you did for her? Did she thank you for it?”

“Trish has no idea, and she never will,” he said. “Now
work.”

I ripped another strip of cloth, but I kept talking.

“So if Trish wouldn’t testify,” I said, “that left it up to you to punish them. Is that right? To be judge, jury, and executioner?”

He’d kept his cool up until then; now he lost it.

“You have no idea,” he said, springing to his feet so fast he knocked the chair over. “You can’t even imagine what it’s like
to have…to have your little girl come to you so…so
destroyed.”

Tears filled Stilwell’s eyes, a wildly incongruous sight on a big man with a very big gun.

“It was like she wasn’t even there,” he said, “like she was
gone.
You think I shouldn’t have killed them? Well, they practically killed
her.
For all intents and purposes, they
did
kill her. A big part of her died that night—the part that could trust people and think the world isn’t full of monsters.
And then to have her beg you, to
plead
with you never to tell anyone. To have those bastards just walking the streets, going to school every day, still acting like
they’re her
friends,
like there’s no hard feelings.…”

He swiped at his eyes, then looked at me like he actually cared what I thought, that for some reason it was important that
I understand where he was coming from.

“Do you know that after it happened, Trish didn’t eat for a week? A
week.”
He stepped closer to the bars. “Finally, she fainted, and I had to take her to the emergency room, and…Look at her now. Just
look
at her. She looks like the walking dead. I know she does. But she can’t even see herself anymore.

“And just when I thought that it couldn’t get any worse, she started”—he took a few steps away, as though he couldn’t bear
to talk about it and look me in the eye—“to bleed, and I had to take her to the hospital again, and it turned out she’d had
a miscarriage. One of those sons of bitches got her pregnant and she didn’t even know it until it was over.”

He strode back to my cell and stuck the gun through the bars. Now it was wavering, which didn’t seem like much of an improvement.
“So now are you going to tell me they didn’t get what they deserved? Well,
are
you?”

I had absolutely no damn idea how to respond. Luckily, Stilwell wasn’t done ranting.

“I’m her father,” he said. “I’m supposed to protect her. I tried. I had to be a father
and
a mother to her, but I didn’t do a good enough job. I never told her …I should’ve warned her about boys, about what they
can be capable of. I should’ve taught her not to trust them. So, you see, this is really all my fault. I failed her, and then
I had to make it right.”

He stood there staring at me, like he expected me to say something—to agree with him probably. But although I’m rarely tongue-tied,
I couldn’t think of a single thing that might get me sprung.

The silence filled the concrete hall, until it was interrupted by a single word.

“Daddy?”

T
rish Stilwell came down the hall, stopping ten feet from her father. She looked at him, then at the gun, then at me.

“Daddy,” she said, “what’s going on?”

The expression on his face was goddamn heartbreaking: a combination of fury at the boys, tears at the memory of what his daughter
had gone through, and tenderness at the sight of her.

“You can’t be here, Trish,” he said. “You have to go home now.”

She took a step closer. “Daddy, please…” Her eyes were wide and watery. “Please… stop.”

“Trishie, what are you doing here?”

“Dorrie came over. She was upset. She said Alex got her to tell about what happened to me. So I…I needed to find you.”

“Sweetheart, please leave. This doesn’t concern you.”

“Doesn’t
concern
me? How can you say that? This is all
about me.”

“Trish, do what I tell you.” He was obviously trying to sound all tough and commanding with her, but he couldn’t quite pull
it off. “Please,” he said, voice cracking. “Please just turn around and go home. I’ll be there soon.”

She shook her head, a gesture so faint I almost missed it. “Daddy,
please.
Please let her go. You have to let her go.”

“I can’t, sweetie,” he said. “She… did something bad.”

“So did you,” Trish said, hollow-voiced. “So did I.”

His face crumpled. “No,” he said. “No, honey. You didn’t do anything wrong. It was them.
They’re
the bad ones, not you.”

“No, I…I did. I—”

“Trish, please. You have to go home. Just go home and wait for me, and everything will be all right. I promise. Just—”

“I killed Axel.”

Stilwell stared at her. So did I. Then he shook his head and said, “No, honey. Maybe you think you’re responsible somehow,
but you’re not.”

“He came to me. He told me he needed money so he could go to California.” She sounded disconnected, zombified, and for a second
I thought she was on something. Then a worse thought occurred to me, which was that she wasn’t. “He said he did you a big
favor, but when he asked you for money, you…you threatened him. And when I asked him what the favor was, he said you made
him sell the acid to the guys. He said he didn’t know what was in it when he sold it, but after they died, he knew. And if…
if he didn’t get some money so he could leave, he’d have to sell his story to the newspaper.”