Somebody Else's Music(142)

“Oh, yes,” Gregor said. “The only time he was there was when Michael Houseman died, and then he was the one who committed the murder. She only stood by and watched. Or maybe that’s too passive. From what Liz Toliver has told us about what she heard that night, it’s possibly more apt to say that Peggy Smith Kennedy was a cheerleader off the field as well as on.”

“Stu Kennedy murdered Michael Houseman,” Kyle said. “This is insane. I thought you said that the same person who murdered Chris murdered Michael.”

“No,” Gregor said, “I said the two murders were connected. And they are connected. All of this is connected. None of this would have happened if Michael Houseman hadn’t been, what did you call him, a Dudley Dooright?”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “He was a Dudley Dooright. Why did Stu Kennedy want to kill him?”

“Because Stu Kennedy was most certainly taking drugs that summer,” Gregor said, “and he might have been selling them. Do you remember that crime record my friend in Philadelphia got for me? You were impressed with the other murders that might have been done by razor or knife around the same time.”

“I remember that,” Kyle said. “There were a couple of them.”

“Yes, there were, but there was also one of possession with intent to sell narcotics. Everyone kept saying—you kept saying—that drugs were pretty much undergroud in Hollman in 1969. I didn’t believe it. There were drugs everywhere in 1969. But I thought it was a good idea to see if there was any trace of evidence about the existence of drugs in the area at the time, and there was that. My guess is that there’s a lot more if you look for it in the local records, maybe even in the local records here in Hollman. I wouldn’t be surprised if your Mr. Kennedy hadn’t been picked up once or twice for possession, or for intoxication, and just let go. That was before the drug war, when we treated casual users like casual users instead of the twenty-first-century personification of the Antichrist.”

“Druggies are scum,” one of the state troopers said virtuously.

Gregor rubbed his temples. “Anyway, that’s what happened, that night in the park. I can’t prove it. You’re never going to try Stu Kennedy for murder, but I’d bet my life on it. Stu Kennedy was doing drugs and possibly selling them, and Michael Houseman threatened to turn him in. My guess is that they had a confrontation in that park, on that night. If Michael Houseman had known earlier, he probably would just have told. They had a confrontation, and Stu had the linoleum cutter—”

“But why?” Kyle said.

“If he’d started selling, for protection,” Gregor said. “And my guess is that he had started selling. That was what all this was about. Somebody we interviewed—I’d have to go back and check on who—mentioned the fact that you could get stuff to get high with during your senior year in high school and the summer after. I think if we nailed that person down, we’d find that she’d gotten it from Stu—”

“Why she?” one of the state troopers said.

“Because everybody important to this case is she,” Kyle Borden said. “It’s been ladies’ night all the way. So okay. Stu was selling a little dope in his free time, Michael Houseman caught him at it, Stu took what he had on him for protection and killed Michael Houseman. What was Peggy doing during all of this? What were the rest of them doing? Just standing there?”

“The rest of them weren’t there when the murder took place,” Gregor said. “They were all very protective of each other, but none of them would have cared a damn what happened to Stu Kennedy. If they’d all been together, not one of them would have been in danger of being charged as an accessory, because they could all back each other up about not being a party to what happened, about only being witnesses. Only Peggy was with Stu when Stu killed Michael Houseman, and the problem—for all of them—was that Peggy was an accessory. That’s what they all heard that night in the rain. That’s what Liz Toliver heard that she’s dreamed about ever since, except that she’s been misinterpreting it. As far as I know, she’s misinterpreting it even now. But the rest of them never did misinterpret it. They knew exactly what they heard.”

“And what did they all hear?” Kyle asked.

“They heard Peggy Smith screaming, over and over again, ‘slit his throat slit his throat slit his throat.’ I haven’t talked to the rest of them yet about this, but you’ll have to. Liz told me the voice sounded like a woman’s in the midst of sex. Having an orgasm, she meant. And that’s what it was. Sex and death. The erotic possibilities of murder. It’s too bad that Liz Toliver didn’t realize at the time whose voice she was listening to.”