a second, then got up and started walking down the middle of Main Street very slowly. I went over. It was a little Mexican girl-couldn’t have been older than fifteen, and she spoke no English. Her face was all puffy from crying and her hair and clothes were messed and torn. I tried to talk to her but she just shook her head, burst into tears, and ran away. The street ended a block later and she disappeared in the fields.”
“Whose fields?” I said.
Her eyes narrowed, then closed. “Let me think about that…. North. That would have been Scott’s alfalfa field.”
“So no consequences for Cliff and Derrick?”
“None.”
“How did they get along with their stepmother?”
“Are you asking if they slept with her?” she said.
“Actually, my imagination hadn’t carried me that far.”
“Why not? Don’t you watch talk shows?”
“You’re saying Sybil-”
“No,” she said. “I’m not saying anything of the sort. Merely musing. Because she was a slut and they were healthy big boys. To be fair-something I generally detest-I never picked up an inkling of anything quite so repellent, but… How’d they get along? Who loves a stepmother? And Sybil wasn’t exactly the maternal type.”
“But she managed to get them involved in her theatrical production.”
“Only one of them-the one who drew.”
“Derrick,” I said. “She wrote about it in the Intelligencer. Still, spoiled adolescents don’t do things they hate.”
She turned quiet. “Yes… I suppose he must have enjoyed it. Why all these questions about the Crimmins clan?”
“Derrick Crimmins’s name came up in newspaper accounts of the murders. Commenting about Peake’s oddness. Other than Haas, he was the only person to speak on the record, so I thought I’d track him down.”
“If you find him, don’t send regards. Of course he’d jump at the chance to ridicule
Peake. He and his brother delighted in tormenting Peake-another bit of their delinquency.”
“Tormenting how?” I said.
“What you’d expect from rotten kids-teasing, poking. More than once I saw the two of them and a gang of others they ran with collecting in the alley that ran behind our office. Peake used to hang around there, too. Inspecting garbage cans, looking for paint cans and God knows what. The Crimmins brats and their friends must have been bored, gone after some sport. They circled him, laughed, cuffed him around a bit, stuck a cigarette in his mouth but refused to light it. The last time, I’d had enough, so I stepped out into the alley using some blue language and they dispersed.
Not that Peake was grateful. Didn’t even look at me, just turned his back and walked away from me. I never bothered again.”
“How’d Peake react to the ridicule?” I said.
“Just stood there like this.” Her facial muscles slackened and her eyes went blank.
“The boy was never all there.”
“No anger?”
“Nope. Like a zombie.”
“Were you surprised when he exploded into violence?”
“I suppose,” she said. “It wouldn’t surprise me, today, though. What do they always say-‘It’s the quiet ones’? Can you ever tell about anyone?”
“Any theories about why he killed the Ardullos?”
“He was crazy. You’re the psychologist, why do crazy people act crazy?”
I started to thank her and moved to stand but she waved me still. “You want a theory? How about bad luck, wrong time, wrong place. Like walking off a curb, getting hit by a bus.”
Her lips worked. She looked ready to cry. “It’s not easy- surviving. I keep waiting for something to happen to me, but my luck keeps running in the black. Sometimes it’s infuriating- yet another day, the same old routine.” Another wave. “All right then, be off. Abandon me. I haven’t helped you, anyway.”
“You’ve been very helpful-”
“Oh, please, none of that” But she reached over and took my hand. Her skin was cold, dry, so smooth it seemed inorganic. “Bear that in mind, Doctor: Longevity can be hell, too. Knowing things will inevitably go bad, but not knowing when.”
24.
WHEN I LEFT, just after eight P.M., Wilshire was a pretty stream of headlights under a black-pearl sky. My head hurt- stuffed with history and hints. More hatred and intrigue in Treadway than I’d counted on. But still no connection to Claire Argent.