Copycat Killing

32

Sam acted like Roma hadn’t even spoken. All of his attention was concentrated on Pearl.

“Just leave this all be, and trust me,” he said. “You didn’t kill Tom. You couldn’t.” His body language didn’t give anything away but I could hear an edge of desperation in his voice.

“You helped Anna, didn’t you, Sam?” I asked.

His gaze flicked in my direction.

“I don’t know why,” I went on. “Maybe your father hurt your mother. Maybe you stumbled onto what Anna and the other women were doing and it made you feel good to help. Really it doesn’t matter why you were helping. You were doing it.”

“So what if I was?” Sam said. He made a dismissive gesture like he was shooing away a fly. “Pearl didn’t kill Tom.”

“No, she didn’t,” I said.

Pearl was shaking her head. “I just wanted to get Roma away from him.” She reached for her daughter, putting a protective arm around her shoulders. It made my chest hurt, thinking about a young Pearl, all those years ago, desperate to keep her child safe.

“I know,” I said. I kept the emotion out of my voice as much as I could and I didn’t take my eyes off of Sam, who met my gaze with no problem.

Roma was still staring at Sam. “I remember the car,” she said. “It was parked over there, by the carriage house. I remember you.”

Sam’s eyes flicked over to her. “I know you do. It just wasn’t that night,” he said, gently.

“Tom talked with his fists, didn’t he?” I said.

“That he did,” Sam agreed. He stood with his arms loosely at his sides. He was a big man, strong. More than forty years ago he would have been more than a match for Tom Karlsson.

My throat was dry and I swallowed a couple of times. “I’m guessing you drove by that little house a lot.”

“We had work in the area. I drove by a few times.”

“But not that night.”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That night, by some accident of timing—good or bad—you saw Tom come back. Idris Blackthorne wouldn’t sell to him, but someone else in town did. And you could see Pearl walking up the side of the road. You knew what would happen when Tom found her.”

“I was delivering a load of railroad ties at Wisteria Hill.”

“No,” I said. “You did that earlier. You were in your car, the one with the turquoise bucket seats, on your way to check on Pearl. You’d probably heard they were going to be evicted. Maybe you knew Tom was drinking. Or you guessed he would be. You knew there’d be trouble.”

“I don’t remember seeing the one-ton that night,” Pearl said, slowly. “I remember that pile of railroad ties, but not the truck.”

I kept looking at Sam thinking, say the words, but he didn’t. And I knew I was going to have to.

Except Pearl beat me to it.

“You didn’t have to kill him, Sammy,” she said.

I looked at Roma and Pearl. Then I looked back at Sam. He gave his head a little shake.

“I couldn’t figure out how you did it,” I said, “because your foot was injured, and I didn’t see how you could get around, but you didn’t go see Tom after Pearl showed up out here, you were there before she got here.

“You saw Tom before you put that spike through your foot,” I continued. “In fact, I think that’s where you did it. Not here.”

His jaw tightened, but that was the only visible reaction.

“I can’t blame you, Sam. I don’t know what I would have done in your place.”

Pearl’s face was still drained of color. Her back was straight and she held tight to Roma. She was strong enough to get through this. And so was Roma.

“I didn’t tell anyone that I walked out and left supper on the table,” Pearl said. “You were there at the house, after we were gone. That’s the only way you could have known the dishes were still there.”

Sam and I continued to lock eyes. “Has there ever been a time that you didn’t love Pearl?” I asked gently.

Sam smiled then, giving me a glimpse of the young man who’d carried a torch for a pretty girl who thought of him only as a friend.

“No,” he said. “There hasn’t.” He looked at Pearl. “He didn’t deserve you or Roma. I know, I know you were leaving him, but do you really think he would have ever let you go, let you be?”

He held out his hand to her and she took it, giving it a squeeze. “He’d banged your head so hard against the wall you probably had a concussion. And the marks of his fingers were on Roma’s little arm.”

He looked at me. “The nail through my foot did happen out here. I came the long way around. Got here just before they did. I wasn’t looking where I was walking. I dumped the load earlier. That’s what I was doing on the road that night, coming back here to stack it all up.” He turned to Roma. “You were in my car that night, ‘driving’ it while Anna took a look at your mother’s head.”

I shifted from one foot to the other, wishing I’d wrapped my ankle this morning. “You told Ellen what happened, didn’t you?” I said to Sam.

He didn’t answer.

“She bandaged your foot and she helped you make it look like Tom had just walked away from Pearl and Roma. I’m guessing it was her idea.”

Sam’s mouth moved but he still didn’t say anything. Pearl never took her eyes off of him.

“There’s no way you could have driven Tom’s car out to the highway. You couldn’t have managed the clutch with your foot bandaged. Ellen drove and she helped you clean up and bury the body…here. I’m guessing sometime in the middle of the night. So you both knew where it was. So you could both make sure no one found it. The women couldn’t have carried Tom. But you could. Ellen knew this whole area. You probably brought the body in through the woods some way. I know there was a road back there.”

“Why, Sam?” Pearl asked. “Why did you kill Tom?”

He looked at her and all the years fell away. All I could see was a young man looking at his first love. Maybe his only love really.

He smiled. “So you’d be safe. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I’m sorry you had to find out at all. But I can’t be sorry Tom’s dead.”