"Yes."
"Okay. I'll have to put a guard on the door. This man is under arrest.
But look. Just let him look in the door at Ruth. Maybe he earned that
much. I don't know."
They let me look. She was in a private room. Her father sat near the
bed. He didn't look toward the doorway. He watched her face. She was
no one I would have ever recognized. She was puffy, discolored. She
breathed heavily through her open mouth. There was an odor of sickness
in the room. I looked at her and I thought of the movie heroines. They
go through terror and capture and violence, yet four minutes after
rescue they melt, with glossy hair and limpid eyes and gown by Dior,
into the arms of Lancaster, or Gable, or Brando. This was reality. The
pain and ugliness and sickness of reality.
They took me away.
* * * * *
The formalities were complicated. I had to appear and be questioned
at the joint inquest. I told all I knew of the deaths of Antoinette
Christina Rasi and Earl David Fitzmartin. I signed six copies of my
detailed statement. The final verdict was justifiable homicide. I had
killed in defense of my life.
Both the money found in Fitzmartin's car and the money in the cave
became a part of George Warden's estate. A second cousin and his wife
flew in from Houston to protect their claim to the money and whatever
else there was. They arrived on Sunday.
George and Eloise Warden were buried in the Warden family plot. Fulton,
identified through his dental work, was sent to Chicago for his third
burial. No relative of Fitzmartin could be found. The county buried
him. Grassman's body was found. His brother flew down from Chicago and
took the body back on the train.
I had told them about Antoinette's clothes and jewelry and the money,
the precise amount, that Fitzmartin had taken. The court appointed an
executor for Antoinette Rasi's estate, and directed that the clothing
and furs and jewels be sold, and made an informal suggestion to the
executor that the funds be used for the Doyle children.
When something is dropped and broken, the pieces have to be picked up.
The mess has to be cleaned up.
They were through with me on Tuesday. Captain Marion walked down the
steps of the courthouse with me. We stood on the sidewalk in the
sunshine.
"You're through here, Howard. We're through with you. There are some
charges we could have made stick. But we didn't. You can be damn glad.
We don't want you here. We don't want to see you back here."
"I'm not leaving."