Her movements, like her speech, were soabrupt that they suggested the jitters. The jitters under firm, perhapslifelong, control. She motioned me into a canvas glider and sat on a reed chairfacing me, her back to the street. Three Mexican boys on one battered bicyclerode by precariously like high-wire artists.

"I don't know just what you want fromme, Mr. Archer. My niece appears to be in very serious trouble. I talked to afriend in the courthouse this morning—"

"The Sheriff?"

"Yes. He seems to think that Dolly is hiding fromhim."

"Did you tell Sheriff Crane where she was?"

"Yes. Shouldn't I have?"

"He trotted right over to the nursing home toquestion her. Dr. Godwin wouldn't let him."

"Dr. Godwin is a great one for takingmatters into his own hands. I don't believe myself that people in troubleshould be coddled and swaddled in cotton wool, and what I believe for the restof the world holds true for my own family. We've always been a law-abidingfamily, and if Dolly is holding something back, she ought to come out with it. Isay let the truth be told, and the chips fall where they may."

It was quite a speech. She seemed to berenewing her old disagreement with Godwin about Dolly's testimony at the trial.

"Those chips can fall pretty hard,sometimes, when they fall on people you love."

She watched me, her sensitive mouth heldtight, as if I had accused her of a weakness. "People I love?"

I had only an hour, and no sure intuitionof how to reach her. "I'm assuming you love Dolly."

"I haven't seen her lately—she seemsto have turned against me—but I'll always be fond of her. That doesn'tmean"—and the deep lines reasserted themselves at the corners of hermouth—"that I'll condone any wrongdoing on her part. I have a publicposition—"

"Just what is your position?"

"I'm senior county welfare worker forthis area," she announced. Then she looked anxiously behind her at theempty street, as if a posse might be on its way to relieve her of her post.

"Welfare begins at home."

"Are you instructing me in theconduct of my private life?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Let metell you, you don't have to. Who do you think took the child in when mysister's marriage broke up? I did, of course. I gave them both a home, andafter my sister was killed I brought my niece up as if she was my own daughter.I gave her the best of food and clothes, the best of education. When she wantedher own independence, I gave her that, too. I gave her the money to go andstudy in Los Angeles. What more could I do for her?"

"You can give her the benefit of thedoubt right now. I don't know what the Sheriff said to you, but I'm pretty surehe was talking through his little pointed hat."

Her face hardened. "Sheriff Cranedoes not make mistakes."

I had the sense of doubleness again, oftalking on two levels. On the surface we were talking about Dolly's connectionwith the Haggerty killing but underneath this, though McGee had not beenmentioned, we were arguing the question of McGee's guilt.

"All policemen make mistakes," Isaid. "All human beings make mistakes. It's even possible that you andSheriff Crane and the judge and the twelve jurors and everybody else weremistaken about Thomas McGee, and convicted an innocent man."

She laughed in my face, not riotously."That's ridiculous, you didn't know Tom McGee. He was capable of anything.Ask anybody in this town. He used to get drunk and come home and beat her. Morethan once I had to stand him off with a gun, with the child holding onto mylegs. More than once, after Constance left him, he came to this house andbattered on the door and said he would drag her out of here by the hair. But Iwouldn't let him." She shook her head vehemently, and a strand ofiron-gray hair fell like twisted wire across her cheek.

"What did he want from her?"

"He wanted domination. He wanted herunder his thumb. But he had no right to her. We Jenks are the oldest family intown. The McGees across the river are the scum of the earth, most of them areon welfare to this day. He was one of the worst of them but my sister couldn'tsee it when he came courting her in his white sailor suit. He married heragainst Father's bitter objections. He gave her a dozen years of hell on earthand then he finally killed her. Don't tell me he was innocent. You don't knowhim."

A scrub jay in the pepper tree heard herharsh obsessive voice and raised his own voice in counter-complaint. I saidunder his noise:

"Why did he kill your sister?"

"Out of sheer diabolical devilmentWhat he couldn't have he chose to destroy. It was as simple as that. It wasn'ttrue that there was another man. She was faithful to him to the day she died.Even though they were living in separate houses, my sister kept herselfpure."

"Who said there was anotherman?"

She looked at me. The hot blood left herface. She seemed to lose the confidence that her righteous anger had given her.

"There were rumors," she saidweakly. "Foul, dirty rumors. There always are when there's bad bloodbetween a husband and wife. Tom McGee may have started them himself. I know hislawyer kept hammering away at the idea of another man. It was all I could do tosit there and listen to him, trying to destroy my sister's reputation afterthat murdering client of his had already destroyed her life. But Judge Gahaganmade it clear in his instructions to the jury that it was just a story heinvented, with no basis in fact."

"Who was McGee's lawyer?"

"An old fox named Gil Stevens. People

© Alexander Sviyash, 2009