“Peggy puts the fuck up with what I tell her to put the fuck up with,” Stu said. “Now will you tell me what the fuck you want and get the fuck out of my house?”
Kyle sighed. Gregor sat down on the couch. “Mr. Kennedy,” Gregor said, “what we really want to do is to ask you something about the night on which a boy named Michael Houseman died. According to Mr. Borden here—”
“Who the fuck cares about Michael Houseman and how he died?” Stu said. “That was years ago. You couldn’t arrest anybody for that. You couldn’t prove anything about who did it. That’s not the fuck what you want. You want to know if I murdered that tight-twatted cunt. Well, I didn’t. I wouldn’t bother. Why would I bother? You think just because—just because …” Stu seemed to lose his train of thought. He went over to the little fireplace and got something off the mantel. Gregor finally figured out that it was a pack of cigarettes. “I can still smoke in my own fucking house,” he said. “You can’t stop me. It’s still legal. Fucking nanny state.”
Gregor cleared his throat. “Let me assure you,” he said, “you’re not in any way under suspicion for the death of Chris Inglerod Barr, at least not from me. I’ll stipulate, if you like, that I’m quite certain you did not commit that murder or even aid in its commission in any way.”
“You talk like a fucking textbook,” Stu said.
“He’s an educated man, Stu,” Kyle said. “That’s more than I can say for you or me. He’s got master’s degrees. Do you have to sound like some backwoods yahoo on a bad day?”
“I’m no fucking backwoods yahoo,” Stu said, almost pleasantly, “and as for Michael Houseman, who the fuck cares? The guy was a Boy Scout. And a snitch. Anybody breathed wrong, he went running right to the fucking faculty. Everybody hated him.”
“I didn’t hate him,” Kyle said.
“Yeah, well, you were a Boy Scout yourself back in high school. That sure fucking changed, didn’t it? You get some pussy off the girls you put in the tank for being high? If you don’t, you’re a fucking fool. Everybody else does. Christ, I can’t believe the crap we swallowed when we were kids. Friendly Mr. Policeman. Be just like Dudley Dooright. And all the time the fucking faculty was screwing around, the fucking police were screwing around, everybody was screwing around except Michael fucking Houseman and he was trying to get himself made some kind of fucking saint.”
“Yes,” Demarkian said, “well. What I wanted to know was this, did you see Mr. Houseman on the night he was murdered?”
“I saw him on the day he was murdered,” Stu said. “Everybody did. He was sitting in that fucking lifeguard’s chair out at the lake most of the day. The great god Michael on his throne.”
“Did you see him at any other time?”
“I saw him out by the outhouse, if that’s what you mean.” Stu’s eyes had gone dead flat, but it was impossible to tell if that was emotion or the drugs. “Even Kyle here was out by the outhouse, Betsy Wetsy screaming her head off inside. It was hysterical. Doesn’t that motherfucking cunt think she’s hot stuff these days?”
“I don’t know who you think you saw,” Kyle said stiffly, “but I wasn’t out at the outhouse that night. I wasn’t anywhere near it. I mean, for Christ’s sake, if I had been, don’t you think I’d have let her out?”
“Nah,” Stu said. “Nobody was going to let her out until the cops got there and you know it. I mean, who the hell cared? And they were all scared to shit about the cunts,” Stu said to Gregor. “You’ve got no idea. That bunch of bitches got together, and everybody in school shook like they were in an earthquake.”
“Was Michael Houseman out near the outhouse?” Gregor asked.
“No, Michael Houseman wasn’t near the outhouse,” Stu said. “If he had been, he would have let her out. He was a fucking Boy Scout. I told you that. He was up near the river, in that clearing where everybody got laid in those days only you pretended you weren’t doing it. Christ only knows what he was doing there. He didn’t get laid. Maybe he was going to search through the underbrush for fucking couples and turn them in to the state police.”
“In the rain?” Kyle said.
“I don’t know fucking anything about the rain,” Stu said.
Gregor cleared his throat and looked around again. There were no pictures in this room. He’d gotten so used to pictures in Hollman, the lack of them felt significant. Stu was leaning against the wall and flicking the ashes from his cigarette indiscriminately on the floor.