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“I did. I didn’t know this girl was real.”
“She is. He’s captured her perfectly.”
“So you think this drawing is true? You think she killed Pete Michaels?”
After a long drag from her cigarette, her second since I’d sat town, she said, “Yes, I think that’s what the drawing says.”
I went back to studying the drawing. In addition to the images showing Sammy murder Pete, there was the word HURT. Why that word? He knew that Sammy killed Pete, but he probably didn’t know why. She wouldn’t have told him she was eliminating her competition. Andy might not have gotten her a gun.
She must have flirted with Andy, enticed him, to get the gun. Then, at this point she might have told Andy that Pete was hurting her. Then Andy would have felt like a hero just for getting her the gun.
It wasn’t good that he didn’t date this. I really needed to establish when this was drawn. I looked at Mrs. Showalter, and said, “May I?”
She nodded.
I carefully flipped back through some of the pages she’d skipped. I reached one that had a lot of imagery that seemed at first patriotic, but then on closer inspection, disturbing. An American flag with skulls instead of stars, a fife and drum corps made up of zombies, fireworks that were really bombs.
“Do you think this was July 4th? The bicentennial?”
“I think that’s probably right,” she said.
I began flipping back, passing the murder page and going two, three more, and I was at Halloween. It wasn’t as disturbing as the Fourth of July, probably because Halloween is supposed to have skulls and zombies. I asked Mrs. Showalter, “The page with the murder on it, that was drawn sometime between Fourth of July and Halloween?”
“Yes.”
“How long do you think it took your son to draw one of these pages?”
“I have no idea. I don’t think he worked on them every day.”
I decided to try to guess myself. I counted the pages between the Fourth and the murder. There were eight pages. Then I counted between the murder and Halloween. There were two pages. I wasn’t sure that fit—there were ten weeks between the Fourth and the murder, and six between the murder and Halloween. That wasn’t right proportionally—
But… no. The page that showed the murder would have been drawn after the murder, not on the day of the murder and not before the murder. It took more than a week to complete each page. Proportionally, it wasn’t far off then. The page showing Sammy murdering Pete was drawn a week or two after the murder.
“Can I take this?”
“To copy it. You can take it to copy it. I’d like it back as soon as you’re done with it.”
“I can do that.”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was lying. I had no idea how you copied something this big.
****
I slept most of Sunday, which was normal. You stay up until three in the morning and you sleep until at least noon. Around one, I went downstairs to make myself some breakfast. In the kitchen, I looked through the cupboard for some cereal and found some raisin bran. Box in hand, I walked over to the refrigerator. On the way, I glanced through the door into the dining room and saw Ronnie sitting there. Just sitting.
I changed course and walked into the dining room saying, “What’s going—” I stopped when I noticed the rest of my money, my gun and Nick Nowak’s ID sitting on the table next to him.
“Two things. Number one, did you really think I wouldn’t stop in at The Hawk last night to see if you were working? And, number two, did you really think I wouldn’t look around to see if there was any more money you were hiding?”
There was nothing I could say to that. I hadn’t even thought about it. There had been too many other things on my mind to think of Ronnie. And that was wrong.
“I guess I was kind of stupid.”
“No shit Sherlock. Why do you have this?” he asked.
“In case I need to leave in a hurry.”
“In case you need to leave me. In case you need to leave me in a hurry. Why would you have to leave me?”
