I was barely conscious of a shuffling of feet behind me.
"Excuse me, Lily," Claude said abruptly. "I'll be in the bathroom."
I didn't respond. I was too shocked.
Now the camera showed the man lying limp. He was probably meant to be dead.
"While their victim lay on his own living-room floor, breathing his last, Sherry Crumpler and David Messinger systematically looted his house. They didn't leave until they had it all: money, jewelry, and car. They even took Harvey Jenkins's rare-coin collection."
Show the mug shots again.
As John Walsh went on to detail the couple's string of similar crimes, and urged viewers to bring these two murderers to justice, their heads filled the screen once more.
I peered at the face of the woman. I paused the picture. I put my hands on either side of her face. In my imagination I painted all the colors in brightly.
"I thought I heard someone up here," Becca Whitley said from the doorway.
I hit the OFF button immediately. "Yeah, Lacey asked me to work up here some more. I shouldn't have been watching television," I said, trying to smile.
"Watching television? You? On the job? I don't believe it for a second," Becca said blithely. "I'll bet you found another tape."
She turned and spoke into the hall behind her. "Honey, she knows."
Her brother came in. He was the other mug shot. He was much more recognizable.
"Where is the real Becca Whitley?" I asked, glad they couldn't hear how loudly my heart was pounding. My knees bent slightly, and I shifted my feet for better balance. "And the real Anthony Whitley?"
"Anthony got into a little trouble in Mexico," David Messinger said. "Becca is a pile of bones in some gulch in Texas hill country."
"Why did you do this?" I asked. I waved my hand to indicate the apartment building. "This isn't riches."
"It just dropped from heaven," the woman I still though of as Becca said. "David had been romancing Becca for months when he had to leave the country for a month or two. Things were getting too hot for us to stay together. David talked Anthony into going with him. Becca was a real straight arrow, but Anthony was a bad boy. You ever wonder why the apartment building was left to just Becca? Because Anthony was in jail. In fact, that's where Dave and Anthony met. While they were down in Me-hee-co, the guys went boating together, and when the boat came back in, why, there was only one man on it. And that man had all Anthony's papers." Becca smiled at me, her hard, bright smile that I'd grown nearly fond of. "I'd remade myself, as you can see. The best wig I could buy, and a lot of makeup. While I was hanging around with Becca in Dallas, being her best friend since I was gonna be her sister-in-law, she thought, her uncle died here in Shakespeare. She'd told me about him, about his apartment building and his little pile of cash. And she told me about the great-grandfather, too. I needed a place to be, a quiet place where no one would bother me. So after she'd quit her job and given up her apartment to move here, Becca and I took a little drive together."
Her smile was genuine and bright.
Sherry Crumpler and David Messinger were between me and the only door, and as I watched, David shut the door behind him. He was really big. She was really good at combat.
They were wary.
"What about the keys, did you take the keys?" How long would Claude's stomach be upset?
"I knew I'd have to give mine up to the sheriff, at least temporarily, and I couldn't be sure Deedra hadn't left some kind of message. So I stole the whole purse, and I took her extra key from the umbrella in the car stall. I came up here right when I got back from the woods, and took the TV Guide, because it was marked. But people started coming back from the weekend then, and I had to stay in my apartment. After that, I had a chance to come up here twice trying to find any trace she'd left about us, but I decided she hadn't left anything. Until I saw you carry out all the tapes. Then I realized she'd probably taped the show. I was watching AMW that night. You can imagine how I felt. But I was sure no one would recognize me. Then I saw Deedra on the stairs the next morning when she left for church. I was shocked when I could tell she knew who I was."
"It's incredible how much difference the makeup makes," I said, as they split up and began to approach me from both sides.
"You know, I hate the stuff," Sherry said frankly. "And I hate this damn wig. At least I could take it off to sleep, but during the day I have to wear it every minute. That time you dropped in and I was in the shower - if I hadn't trained myself to put it on perfectly the second I could, I would've strolled out of the bathroom in my bare head. But I've got discipline, and I had my hair on and my makeup in place."
She'd gradually been easing into a fighting position, her side turned toward me, her knees bent, her fists held ready. Now she struck.
But I wasn't there.
I'd stepped to the side and kicked her right knee.
She made a gagging noise, but she recovered and regained her stance. David decided to slip up behind me and circle me with his arms from behind, and I threw my head back and caught him on the nose. He staggered back and Sherry attacked again. This time her strike hit me in the ribs, and through the pain I grabbed her fist and twisted.
I was just prolonging the inevitable, but I had my pride.
I lost it when David clouted me upside my head.
"Claude!" I yelled through the ringing in my ears. "Claude!"
Becca - Sherry - was in the act of starting her kick when Claude came out of the hall bathroom with his gun drawn. She had her back to him, but David saw him, and I was at least vaguely aware Claude was there as I shook my head to clear it. Claude managed to knock Sherry off target by shoving her shoulder, and she sprawled onto Deedra's couch while Claude kept the gun steady on David. I scrambled, minus any dignity, from between Claude and the man and woman, taking care to keep low so Claude could shoot them if he wanted to.
He spoke into his shoulder radio, got back a lot of surprise, and repeated his orders in the calm, steady, Claude way that kept him in office.
"I can't even leave the room, much less the town, you get in trouble," he said to me when he figured I'd gotten my breath back. "You want to tell me what this is all about?"
"She killed Deedra," I said. I opened the door David Messinger had closed, so the cops could come in. I could hear sirens coming nearer.
"Becca killed Deedra? Why?"
"She's not Becca. Deedra found that out."
The woman didn't say anything. She just glared and clutched her knee. I hoped I'd put it out on her. I hoped she was in tremendous pain. David had blood streaming from his nose, but Claude wouldn't let him reach for a handkerchief. David wasn't talking, either. Far too experienced a criminal for that.
"Well, while we chat with them about Deedra, we can book them for assault on you," Claude said thoughtfully.
"You need to watch this video." I gestured toward the VCR. "After your backup arrives," I added hastily, because I wanted Claude to stay focused on the moment.
He smiled in a grim, unamused kind of way. "Ain't a nasty video, is it?" he asked, his gaze never leaving David.
And Becca, Sherry, whatever-her-name-was launched herself from the couch. She would've flown right over the spot close to the door where I crouched if I hadn't caught desperate hold of her calf. My hands weren't large enough to get a good grip, but I slowed her down and managed to get a better one on her left ankle, the ankle of her uninjured leg. She went down half on top of me and I gathered myself and rolled. I put my forearm across her throat and she began gagging, her hands clawing at my shoulders and head. I kept my eyes shut and my head tucked, as much as was possible, and I pinned her legs with my own. I knew I had to do this myself; Claude couldn't take the gun off the bigger man.
"I'll kill you!" she said weakly.
I didn't believe she would. I believed she wanted to.
But she had tricks left. She concentrated her strength: Instead of fighting like a windmill, she fought like a trained fighter. She gripped my ears and twisted, trying to force me to roll over. I was wearing out, and wasn't as desperate as this woman, and I was going to go over any second. But I summoned the last bit of resolve I had and fisted my left hand, struggling to draw it back as far as possible. She was so intent on getting on top that she never saw what I meant to do.
I hit her in the head as hard as I could.
She made a funny noise, her grip relaxed, and her eyes went blank.
Then two men lifted me off.
It took a minute or two for things to straighten out about who the bad woman was and who the good woman was. Once Jump Farraclough and Tiny Dalton realized I was on the side of law and order (though it took some telling to convince them) they abandoned their intention of handcuffing me and instead cuffed the groggy Becca. Sherry. Whoever. Her wig had gone askew in the struggle, even as securely pinned as she'd had it. Underneath, her hair (dyed the same blond in case it happened to show, I assumed) was about an inch long. I wondered if her outstanding chest was her own, and what she would look like when the makeup was cleaned from her face; all the outlining, highlights, shadowing, and bright colors had recon-toured her features until only an expert in makeup could tell what she really looked like. An expert like Deedra Dean. Deedra had seen beyond the blue contacts, the push-up bra, the paint, the wig.
"Why didn't Deedra tell someone?" Claude asked me later that day. We were sitting in his office at the police department.
"Maybe she just couldn't believe the evidence of her own eyes. She must have been still unsure about what she'd seen; maybe she wanted to look at Sherry Crumpler again, real carefully, to make absolutely sure that what she suspected was true."
"Sherry is real clever, and she doesn't seem to have any problem with killing people if half of what she told you pans out," Claude said. "I guess she figured she better kill Deedra before her partner came into town, because David is much more like he looked on TV than Sherry is. Seeing David would have clenched all Deedra's suspicions."
"Maybe they'll tell on each other," I said, my voice as tired as the rest of me was.
"Oh, they already are. They each got a lawyer from the phone book, both of whom want to make a name for themselves so they can be in the update on television. I expect to hear from America's Most Wanted tomorrow at the latest."
"Can you tell me what they're saying?" I wanted to be as far away from the jail and the police station and Claude as it was possible to get when the media showed up.
"David's saying they would've been out of here a week ago if Joe C had died when he was supposed to. She set the fire, of course - Sherry did. She wanted to get that $70,000 inheritance. Then she figured if David showed up claiming to be her brother, instead of her boyfriend, he'd get another share of the money. Once she'd killed Deedra, she knew she better accelerate their plan to get the money and then she better get out of town. She'd planned, he says, to sell the apartment building once they were safely away, hire someone to handle the legal work. Just send her the paper for her signature. Then she could vanish. No one would think much of it."
I examined this idea for holes, finding only a few. "She could forge the real Becca's signature?"
"Just beautiful, apparently."
"And since no one from here, including family, had seen Becca or Anthony since they were little, no one ever imagined that she wasn't Becca? It never crossed anyone's mind to question her?"
"Seems to me," Claude rumbled, "that the real Becca must have been a lonely sort of girl. I guess Sherry, in disguise, matched a superficial description of the real Becca; blond, athletic, blue-eyed. But David says the original Becca had some emotional problems, had real trouble making friends. I guess she thought David was a godsend, and when his 'sister' was willing to pal around with her, and David was already buddies with Becca's bad-ass brother, she thought her lonely days were over."
"Why did David pick a fictional job as a prison counselor?"
"Well, he'd know all about it, wouldn't he? If you'd been able to concentrate on the AMW story, you would've heard that David's been in and out of prison all his life. For that matter, Sherry too."
"She sure had a lot of nerve, living here as Becca for so long."
"It took nerve, but it was great cover. And if she could wait it out until David felt it was safe to join her, they stood to make a bunch of money - a combined $140,000 from the sale of Joe C's lot, plus what they got eventually from the sale of the apartment building. Until the story on television, which broke only days before David was due to arrive. He says she should've gotten in touch with him and made him stay away; she says she tried but he wasn't at the prearranged phone spot. So he came. On the whole, I think they felt pretty safe, pretty anonymous. Sherry's attempt to burn Joe C's house was only partly successful, but he ended up dying, and they thought it'd look funny if they left town before the funeral. But then you interfered."
"I just wanted to know what had happened to Deedra."
"According to David ... do you really want to hear this, Lily? It's strictly what David says Sherry told him."
I nodded. I looked down at my hands so I wouldn't have to watch his face.
"Sherry drew a gun on Deedra that Sunday afternoon, a couple of hours after Deedra came home from church and encountered her on the stairs. Sherry'd done a lot of planning in those two hours, when she saw Deedra wasn't going to call the police right away. The apartment building was empty, and though she couldn't be sure someone wouldn't show up any moment, it was a risk she had to take. She had to get Deedra away from the building; if Deedra died in her apartment, the investigation might focus more on the only person around that afternoon - the landlady. Sherry got Deedra to drive out to the trail off Farm Hill Road, which Sherry knew would put them right out of the city limits, so Marta Schuster would be heading the investigation. That would complicate things real nice, since Marlon had been hanging around Deedra so much lately. Once down the track in the woods, Sherry made her stop the car and get out and strip."