Bloody River Blues

the gun and I went over to my mother’s and got it. I’ve been practicing since then. That brought back so many memories. The two of us looking through the desk. As little girls. Looking for toys, for paper clips, for—” The tears were strong now. “My sister and me . . .”
    “Your sister,” Pellam said, and finally he understood. “She was the woman with Vincent Gaudia, the one who was killed that night.”
    Nina said, “All the papers talked about was the cop who was shot and about Gaudia. Nobody said anything about Sally Ann. Nobody cared about her. The day after she was killed I stayed up all night tryingto figure out how to find the man who’d done it. I thought I’d wait until the police caught him and then at the trial I’d shoot him. But that might take months and maybe by then I wouldn’t have the courage to do it. So I decided to meet Donnie. I saw his wedding picture in the paper and it said he was in Maddox General. I planned to get to know him and see if he could tell me the killer’s name.”
    “And you met me instead. Your mother wasn’t really in the hospital?”
    “No. My sister was my only family. She was the relative who died I told you about in the camper, the funeral—when we were looking for that field. Not my aunt. That’s why I started to cry.”
    “You overheard Donnie arguing with me. You heard him say I knew who the killer was.”
    She nodded. “I’m sorry, Pellam.” There was sadness in her voice. But contrition? None at all.
    “Why the job with the film company?”
    “I knew he’d be looking for you. I thought sooner or later he’d find you.”
    “You had that gun with you all the while?”
    “Some of the time.”
    That was why she had been so upset when she was attacked at the factory, she explained. She hadn’t had the gun with her then; she regretted missing the chance.
    The chance to shoot an FBI agent. Pellam didn’t tell her this. “But her name wasn’t the same as yours. Your sister’s, I mean.”
    “No. Sally Ann’s name was Moore. It’s her married name. She was divorced a few years ago. John, was I wrong? I mean, think about it—the policeman wasdoing his job and he got hurt. And Gaudia was a terrible man and he got killed but all my sister did was go to dinner with him. She was innocent.”
    Pellam doubted whether going out with Vince Gaudia qualified you as a totally innocent human being. But he didn’t think Nina was wrong at all to do what she’d done. Why, he himself had been wandering the barren streets of Maddox with a gun for the same reason—to get revenge for Stile’s death.
    “ I wanted to kill him,” she said. “I didn’t want him to just go to jail. I had to do it myself.”
    Pellam said nothing.
    He leaned forward and put his arm around her. He smelled the sour cordite in her hair from the gunsmoke. He rocked his head against hers. But this gesture was halfhearted. Pellam’s thoughts were elsewhere.
    They drove up the street for a short ways until they found a pay phone. Pellam stopped, climbed out of the car.
    “Are you going to tell the police about me?”
    He looked at her for a long moment but said nothing. Her reaction was to pull down the car’s visor, flip it open, and begin to brush her wispy blond hair.
    PELLAM CONSULTED A card in his wallet then dialed a number.
    In a slightly accented voice a man said, “Hello?”
    “Mr. Crimmins, this is the friend that spoke to you last night.” Pellam had called the man to tell him not to panic when he heard Peterson announce an impending arrest. It was all a setup to flush the real killer.
    “Ah, well, yes. How are you?”
    “Fine. You?”
    Crimmins chuckled at the etiquette. “I’m great. I assume things’ve worked out.”
    “There’s been a slight complication.”
    “Serious?”
    “No, not really.”
    “That’s good.”
    “But I wonder if your associate Mr. Stettle’s free to help me for about an hour.”
    “I think that could be arranged.”
    “Tell him to meet me at the corner of Main and Fifteenth in downtown Maddox in half an hour.”
    “Is this a possibly risky situation?”
    “I don’t think so. But could you ask him if he’d bring some garbage bags?”
    “Garbage bags?”
    “He’ll understand.”
    THEY WENT TO the lounge and meeting her there, rather than in his room, replaced the evening with Nina as the best thing that had happened to Donnie Buffett for a year.
    “You shouldn’t smoke,” he told Wendy Weiser as she lit her