Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

guess”—pause—“I was afraid to.”
    “Afraid of what, Miranda?”
    She looked down again. “I don’t know.”
    “Were you afraid of Les?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is that why you sleep with a knife under your mattress?” I expected Liz to pop up with objections, but she sat as tensely as anyone else in the room. She probably guessed I was floundering and was letting me hang myself. Her silence unnerved me even more than my own audacity. I was starting to sweat.
    I knew Miranda well enough to recognize her panicked look, and it flickered ever so briefly before she turned sullen. She said, “Honey, I live in the Tenderloin. Doors don’t lock and people come through ’em.” Her voice had turned tough, which scared me even more. She was probably turning the jury against her, if they didn’t already hate her for being a drunk and a bum and a prostitute. Still, I couldn’t stop myself.
    “Several months ago I placed an ad in the
Chronicle
, seeking information about your whereabouts or Les’s. Did you see that ad?”
    “I saw it.” Her face was stone.
    “And as a result of seeing it, did you follow me from my office to North Beach?”
    “I don’t have to talk about that.”
    “Your Honor,” I said, “bear with me.” Amazingly, the judge nodded.
    “Did you tell me this morning that you not only followed me but intended to kill me?”
    “I was drunk.”
    “You were drunk this morning?”
    “No. I was drunk when I followed you.”
    “Why did you want to kill me?”
    “I don’t know why—I was drunk, that’s all.” She was shrieking.
    “You didn’t want anyone looking for Les, did you? And that’s why you didn’t go to the police.”
    She spoke loudly and bitterly: “What would I care about Les? He was a killer.”
    All of a sudden Liz returned, as if from the dead. “Objection!”
    “Sustained. Miss Schwartz, I think you’d better tell us what you’re getting at.”
    “I’m trying,” I said, “to establish why Ms. Waring has suddenly changed her mind and decided to testify.”
    “Very well. Ask your question.”
    I turned back to Miranda and saw that her face was on the verge of crumpling. I said very gently, “You didn’t go to the police before. Why are you testifying today?”
    What was left of her composure fell away like cellophane wrapping. “Because I can’t get drunk enough anymore,” she sobbed. “Every night I dream it’s me up on that cross and every day I have to fight to keep from jumping off the bridge. I could have stopped him. I could have stopped him killing all those people!”
    “You knew he was the Trapper, didn’t you? He threatened to kill you if you went to the police.”
    “No! Not then—not after Easter. I thought it was him, but I wasn’t sure. If I’d gone to the police they would have caught him.”
    “He told you later?”
    “He found me last summer—at the place where I moved to.” Her voice was quiet now, still sobby, but she wasn’t shouting. “He busted in and said he missed me and wanted me back. He started grabbing at me and kissing me and saying he wanted me.” She burst into full sobs. “So I went to bed with him. I mean, what could I do?” She looked up at me, pleading, and I wanted to pat her and say it would be all right. My heart went out to her, but at the same time there was a little piece of it that hoped the jurors were having the same reaction.
    “We made love and were just lying there in bed, and he asked me if I’d ever heard of the Trapper. I said no, I hadn’t, I didn’t even know what he was talking about. But Les knew me; he knew I read the paper every day, even the ads, and he said, ‘You know it’s me, don’t you?’”.
    The tension in the room was like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm—you could practically smell ozone and see heat lightning.
    “We were just lying there on our pillows.” She dabbed at her eyes, but her voice was steady. “And he said, ‘Remember the last night you saw me? I killed the first one that night.’ He said he wrote to this reporter—Mr. Burns—and then he poisoned some people in a restaurant and wrecked a cable car. I knew he did all that. But then he told me he made the elevator crash at the Bonanza Inn, just a few weeks before. I didn’t know he did that, because I didn’t see anything in the paper about a note or phone call or anything. He said he’d already wreaked vengeance on his enemy—those were the words he used, ‘wreaked vengeance on my