Homicide My Own by Anne Argula Page B

had time to kill, we’re visiting and talking and trying to come up with a profile of the kind of man who could shotgun two kids. The Coyotes didn’t say much but they listened and after a while they came to understand that we were actually trying to figure out who did this thing. That’s when they said to us, ‘Everybody knows who did it.’ Well, I was shocked. Weren ‘t you shocked, Odd? A little? I mean, we spent all that time there and conjectured right and left and at the end of it, they say, everybody knows who killed their son. Karl Gutshall did it.”
    “They always did believe that,” said Karl.
    I was disappointed. I’d hoped to unhinge him a little.
    “Why would they believe that?”
    “It made sense to them, then, and they never let go of it. Not even when I was cleared by the police, who did their best to scare something out of me, and I was a scared kid, believe me, but you can’t scare something out of a kid if it’s not in him to begin with. I could never do anything like that, not then, not now, not ever.”
    “That’s what they all say.”
    “I don’t get it. Why are you here, two cops from Spokane?”
    “You were Jeannie’s boyfriend. She dumped you for James. You had a shotgun, recently fired. You had no alibi.”
    “So they did say, the Coyotes.”
    “They said that much.”
    “Okay, I don’t know who you are, and it bothers me that after all these years I could be pulled away from my work to go through another third degree, and, mister, you, I don’t like the way you’re boring a hole through me,” he said, turning to Odd, “but let me bring you up to speed and then you can get the hell away from me.”
    “Take it easy, don’t get all worked up.”
    “I didn’t have an alibi because nobody who sleeps alone in his own bed had an alibi that night. It was the middle of the night. Everybody was home, asleep. That’s my alibi. My mother, my father, my brother, we were all asleep. Sure, I had a shotgun, still do, most people on the island had a shotgun and most of them had been recently fired, because we had a rabbit problem you can’t imagine. The more of ‘em you shot, the more there were the next day. I don’t ever want to eat rabbit again as long as I live. And, yes, Jeannie dumped me, but it wasn’t for James.”
    Angry, he pulled his cap back out of his pocket, slammed it on his head, and rubbed it in. But he didn’t go back to the Suburban he had up on the lift. I couldn’t tell if he were steamed because of our intrusion or all over again because of what had happened to him back in high school. I couldn’t tell if Odd were filled with lover’s regret or simple pity.
    “I’m sorry,” Odd said.
    “It was a long time ago.”
    “Not that long, though.”
    “Sometimes. Sometimes, not long enough by half. I loved that girl.”
    I waited for Odd to return the sentiment, but he held silent.
    Karl went on, “If I knew who did that to Jeannie, I’d kill him with my bare hands.”
    Minus two fingers. I asked him, “If she didn’t dump you for James, who then?”
    “You guys want a Coke?”
    We said we did. With the sun out it was getting a little warm for late May, sixty-one, two, degrees.
    He took off his cap again and stuffed it back into his pocket. It seemed to be his emotional abacus. He opened up the Coke machine with a key and pulled out three cold ones. We took them to a log bench down by the main road, put there I supposed for customers to sit and watch the traffic go by as they waited for their own rides to be serviced. Odd and I took the bench, Karl sat on a large painted white rock, his back to the southeastern flow of traffic, of which there was precious little, and not a bit more in the opposite direction, but what little there was slowed down to have a better look at us.
    “Jeannie was, how do I put this…?” he said. “She matured earlier than a lot of us, earlier than me, for sure. We were crazy in love, from the end of our junior year,