True Believers(162)

“I know who it is. I got a TV set just like anybody else. I don’t got cable, but I got a TV set. And I don’t got any extra in the liquor cabinet, either. I’m not entertaining guests. So you can just pack up and get on out and leave me alone.”

“Maybe if we could come in for a minute, Mrs. Kelly,” Garry said. “There are just one or two things we need to ask. We won’t take up much of your time.”

Mrs. Kelly looked from one to the other of them, then stepped back from the door. She didn’t go very far. There wasn’t very much room. Gregor went in first, and as soon as he did he was overwhelmed with the smell. Walking between the trailers outside, he had been afraid that their walls were too thin to keep the cold out. The walls of Mrs. Kelly’s trailer not only kept the cold out, but the heat in. It was as hot as a greenhouse, and the atmosphere was thick and moist and acrid, the smell of stale vomit, left where it was to rot. Gregor blinked. Lou Emiliani flinched.

“I don’t have time to pick up around here the way I’d like,” Mrs. Kelly said. “And I don’t give a shit anyway. You knew that, didn’t you. I never thought I’d say it, but I miss Bernie the Saint. Did you know Bernie was a saint? Fucking sanctimonious asshole, but a saint.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. Garry and Lou had left the trailer’s door open, and he didn’t blame them. To breathe the smell of this place with no air coming in from the outside would be lethal. He looked around and saw that the kitchen was right behind him. The sink was full of dishes that seemed to have been left where they were for days. They all had food encrusted on them. To his left there was a living room, but he couldn’t imagine himself going in there to sit down.

“It’s about the day your daughter-in-law Bernadette died,” Gregor said.

Mrs. Kelly shook her head. “Nobody knows what day she died. The police said that. It’s a mystery.”

“Let’s talk about the day your son died, then,” Gregor said.

“That was six o’clock in the morning,” Mrs. Kelly said. “I wasn’t even awake. I don’t get up early in the morning. There’s no point to it.”

“What about the twenty-four hours right before that,” Gregor said. “Do you remember anything about them?”

“I might.”

“Well, good.” Gregor rubbed his face. Thank heaven for small favors. “What I want to know is, was Bernadette here during that time? That day before Marty died.”

“She might have been,” Mrs. Kelly said. “But she might have been dead, too. How am I supposed to know?”

“She quit work, didn’t she,” Gregor persisted. “She wasn’t going to work anymore because of the diabetes—”

“That’s right.” Mrs. Kelly looked triumphant. “Fucking sanctimonious saint. Didn’t do her any good, did it, all that praying? The diabetes would have killed her quick enough even if nobody else did. I’m not surprised somebody did. I wanted to, a million times. There’s people can’t keep their noses out of other people’s business.”

“Yes, fine.” Gregor nodded encouragingly. Lou Emiliani had gone into the tiny living room and was standing over the couch, watching in fascination as a couple of roaches moved around on a square couch pillow that seemed to be encrusted with mud. Gregor turned away, to make it possible for him to concentrate.

“Now,” he said. “She wasn’t going to work anymore, and she hadn’t been, for a while. So if she was alive, then she must have been at home.”

“Or at the doctor’s,” Mrs. Kelly said. “She went to the doctor’s a lot, and not to the cheap charity clinic at the hospital, either. She had health insurance. From her job. Isn’t that a fucking hoot?”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “But the police talked to her doctors, and she’d had no appointments for two weeks before Marty brought her body to St. Anselm’s. Did she do the shopping?”

“Not after she got sick. Marty did that.”

“Fine. Do you remember anything at all about the last time you saw Bernadette? What she was doing? How she seemed, if she was sick, if she was tired—”

“She was sick. Of course she was fucking sick. What the fuck did you expect? She was talking to that priest from the church she went to. He came out to visit her.”

“Father Healy?”

“I don’t know. A priest. In a collar. They were standing right out there in the road talking to each other, and I watched them, too. You know what priests are like. They stick it in any port they can find, they’re so desperate for it. I thought they’d go into Bernie’s trailer and then I’d give it a minute and go over and catch them at it, the fucking sanctimonious saint, but they stayed outside.”