Small Vices Part 39

"They had everything, money, position, each other. The girl was lovely and successful, wasn't she?"

"So they tell me."

"The boy was handsome and accomplished."

"And he didn't mean to kill her," I said. "Just a little exotic s.e.x."

"And it destroys his whole family, the father, the son-the mother must be devastated..."

"To save a career criminal who'll be back in jail in no time," I said.

"And a professional killer goes free to accomplish it."

"Yeah."

"You don't even need his testimony, now," Susan said. "The Stapletons confessed."

"Yep."

"But he goes free anyway."

"A deal's a deal," I said. "We needed the threat of his testimony to get the confessions."

"And the Stapletons go to jail while two career criminals go free."

"Couldn't have said it better myself."

"They are both guilty of things," Susan said. "But the people going free are probably guilty of more things."

"Almost certainly."

"And the father was trying to save his son."

"Yep."

"Doesn't seem right, does it."

"No."

"On the other hand, you can't make it seem righter by letting the Stapletons go."

"Probably not," I said.

"Do you think the boy confessed to get his father?" Susan said.

"Yes," I said. "There was something ugly there. I don't know what it was, but it had to do with race."

"Sometimes interracial adoptions are very painful. The parents get caught up in a racism they didn't know they had. Fearful that the child will be black, which is to say had they work too hard to make him be good, which is to say white."

"Pygmalion," I said.

"Something like that. It fosters dreadful resentments within a family."

"Something did that here," I said. "On the other hand, they are very rich. They are appealing the convictions..."

I shrugged.

"I'm not criticizing you, in all of this," Susan said.

"I know you're not," I said. "The confusion of guilt and innocence just looks a little starker in this case and it interests you."

She smiled. Pearl got sick of looking at the river, or sick of standing on her hind legs, or both, or neither, and dropped down to all fours and looked up at us questioningly. I scratched her ear.

"How do you feel about all this?"

"As little as possible," I said. "The Stapletons are not without resources. They'll get the best justice money can buy. The kid especially. A good lawyer may convince a jury that Melissa Henderson was complicit in her own death, that Clint was doing what she wanted. But I know a couple of things. I know that Melissa Henderson shouldn't be dead. I know that no one should have framed Ellis Alves."

"Or hired someone to kill you," Susan said.

"I might do that to save my son," I said.

Susan looked up at me in the now thickening darkness.

"No," she said, "you wouldn't. You might kill someone to save your son, but you wouldn't hire someone to do it."

I put my arm around her and she leaned her head against my shoulder.

"But since we don't have a son, and won't, I guess the question is moot."

"We have Paul," she said softly.

"True."

"You'd kill someone to save him."

"Yes," I said.

"And we have Pearl."

"A son and a daughter," I said. "No need to adopt at all."

Susan laughed softly. Pearl looked up at the sound and wagged her tail. And we stood together like that as night fell and the river ran.