The images were hammer blows. He used her, manhandled her, and her eyes, when I saw them, glowed like an animal’s. There was no office, no world; it was gone, obliterated, and I could not feel the floor that rushed up to meet my knees. My stomach clenched, and my mouth may have filled with bile, but if it did, I never tasted it. Every sense was overwhelmed by the one that I could forever do without. Sights no man should see swelled and burst like rotten fruit. My wife, on her back, then on her hands and knees. My father, hairy as any farm animal, grunting over her as if she, too, were mindless flesh, and not the wife of his only son.
How long? The thought found me. How long had this gone on? And then, quick on its heels: How could I have missed it?
And just when I could take no more, the screen went dead. I sagged into myself and waited for a collapse that never came. I was numb, staggered by what I’d seen and by what the sight implied. Her voice, when she spoke-it shocked the hell out of me.
“You nailed the boards down.”
I turned and saw her. She stood by Ezra’s desk. I hadn’t heard her come up the stairs and so had no idea how long she’d been there. She lowered the remote control to the desk. I climbed to my feet. She looked calm, but her eyes were glazed and her lips were damp.
“Do you know how many times I’ve tried to open that damn safe?” She sat on the edge of the desk and looked at me; her face remained pale, and her voice was equally colorless. “Late at night, usually, while you slept. It was the best thing about being married to a drunk. You were always a heavy sleeper. I knew about the tapes, of course. I shouldn’t have let him do that, but he insisted. I didn’t know he kept them in the safe until it was too late.”
Her eyes were lightless, and when she blinked, her body seemed to tilt. She looked drugged, and may well have been. I didn’t know her. I never had.
“Too late for what?” I asked, but she ignored me. She pulled at her ear with one hand and kept the other hand behind her back. I knew then that I’d been wrong about a great many things.
“It was you that night,” I said. “You pushed the chair down the stairs.”
I looked around the office. There was only one way out.
“Yes,” Barbara said. “I’m sorry about that. But I guess it was bound to happen, sooner or later. I’ve been up here so many times.” She shrugged, and the gun appeared. It was in her left hand, and she acted as if it weren’t there. I froze at the sight of it. It was small and silver, an automatic of some kind. She used the barrel to scratch at her cheek.
“What’s the gun for, Barbara?” I tried to make my voice as nonthreatening as possible. She shrugged again and looked at the gun. She tilted it this way and that, as if fascinated by the play of light along its glittering edge. Her face was slack. She was clearly not herself, and I thought she had to be stoned or mentally adrift.
“Something I’ve had for awhile,” she said. “This town is getting so dangerous these days, especially for a woman alone at night.”
I knew that I was in danger, but I didn’t care.
“Why did you kill him, Barbara?”
Suddenly, she was on her feet, jabbing the gun in my direction, and the vacuous calm of her eyes disappeared, replaced by something entirely different. I flinched, expecting the bullet.
“I did that for you!” she screamed. “For you! How dare you question me? I did it all for you, you ungrateful bastard.”
I held up my hands. “I’m sorry. Try to calm down.”
“You calm down!” She took three uneven steps toward me, holding the gun as if she meant to use it. When she stopped, she didn’t lower the gun. “That son of a bitch was going to change the will. I fucked him for six months before he agreed to do it right in the first place.” She laughed, the sound like fingers on a chalkboard. “That’s what it took, but I did it, and I did it for us. I made that happen. But he was going to undo all of that, put it back the way it was. I couldn’t allow that. So don’t you pretend that I never did anything for you.”
“That’s why you slept with my father? For money?”
“Not for money. Money is a thousand dollars or ten thousand. He’d never trust you with fifteen million dollars. He was going to leave you three.” She laughed bitterly. “Just three. Can you believe it? Rich as he was. But I convinced him. He changed it to fifteen. I did that for you.”
“You didn’t do it for me, Barbara.”
The gun began to shake in her hand, and I saw her fingers whiten where she gripped it. “You don’t know me. Don’t pretend that you know me. Or what I’ve been through. Knowing that the tapes were here. Knowing what it would mean if somebody else found them.”
“Can you put the gun down, Barbara? It’s not necessary.”
She didn’t respond, but the barrel drifted lower, until it pointed at the floor. Barbara’s eyes followed it and she seemed to slump. For an instant, I dared to breathe, but when her face came up, her eyes sparkled.
“But then you started seeing that country whore again.”
“Vanessa didn’t have anything to do with us,” I said.
The gun came up, and Barbara screamed, “That bitch was trying to steal my money!”
I had a horrible revelation. “What did you do to her?”
“You were going to leave me. You said so yourself.”
“But that had nothing to do with her, Barbara. That was about us.”
“She was the problem with us.”
“Where is she, Barbara?”
“She’s gone. That’s all that matters.”
Inside, I felt something tear. Vanessa was the only reason I had left for living. So I said what was on my mind.
“I’ve slept with you enough times to know when you’re faking.” This time, I stepped toward her. My life was over. I had nothing. This woman had taken everything and I let my anger build. I gestured at the blank screen, but in my mind I still saw her, and the way she screamed. “You loved it. You loved fucking him. Was he that good? Or did you just like the idea of hurting me?”
Barbara laughed, and the gun came up. “Oh. Now you’re a man. Now you’re a tough guy. Well, let me tell you. Yes, I loved it. Ezra knew what he wanted and knew how to get it. He had power. I don’t mean strength. I mean power. Fucking him was the biggest rush I ever had.” Her top lip curled. “Coming home to you was a joke.”
I saw something in her face, and had another revelation. “He dumped you,” I said. “He liked having sex with you because of the power he held. He controlled you, manipulated you; but then he realized that you liked it, and once that happened, he got bored. So he dumped you. That’s why you shot him.”
I was right. I knew that I was. I saw it in her eyes, and in the way her lips twitched. For a moment, I felt a fierce joy, but it didn’t last.
I saw her pull the trigger.