“Who shot him?”
“We don’t know,” Miller said. “The three of us were hunting together. We spotted what we thought was a fox, and we all fired simultaneously. The fox turned out to be Kettering. We heard him scream. He was dead when we got to him. We didn’t know whose bullet had hit him.”
“It wasn’t mine,” Murphy said flatly.
“You don’t know that, John,” Ruther said.
“I do know it. I was shooting a.300 Savage, and you were both using twenty-twos. If my shot had hit him, it would have torn a-”
“I
“Why didn’t you say so at the time?”
“I couldn’t think straight. You know that. None of us could.”
“What happened?” Hawes asked.
“We were in the middle of the woods with a dead man,” Miller said. His upper lip was beaded with perspiration now. Caught in the grip of total recall, his words came haltingly, with difficulty. “The woods were still; there wasn’t a sound. We were hardly breathing. Do you remember, Frank? Do you remember how quiet the woods went after Kettering’s scream?”
“Yes,” Ruther said. “Yes.”
“We stood around the body, the three of us, in those silent woods.”
And all at once, Hawes was there with them, standing over a man one of them had shot, standing over a dead man, with the woods gone suddenly still, as still as the man at their feet. And he realized, too, that the men were back there in the Adirondacks, playing out a scene they had lived, playing it with fresh emotion, as if it were happening to them for the first time.
“We didn’t know what to do,” Miller said.
“I wanted to report it to the authorities,” Murphy said.
“But how could we do that?” Ruther asked. “He was dead! Goddamnit, you knew he was dead.”
“But it was an accident.”
“What difference does that make? How many men get hanged because of accidents?”
“We should have reported it.”
“We couldn’t!” Miller said. “Suppose they didn’t believe us? Suppose they thought we shot him purposely?”
“They’d have believed us.”
“And even if they did,” Ruther said, “what would a scandal have done to my business?”
“And my job,” Miller said.
“Our pictures would have been in every tabloid. And there’d always be the doubt, and the knowledge that one of us had killed a man. How could we have lived with that?”
“We should have reported it,” Murphy insisted.
“We did the right thing,” Miller said. “No one had seen us. There was no one to know.”
“It wasn’t murder. We should have-”
“He was dead, damnit, dead! Did you want policemen and reporters barging in on your life? Did you want a living hell? Did you want everything you’d worked for ruined because of a goddamn senseless accident? If the man was dead, how were we harming him further? We knew he was single, we knew his only family was a sister he didn’t get along with. What else was there to do? Ruin our own lives because of a dead man? Take a chance that the law would be lenient? We did the right thing. We did the only thing. It was the only way.”
“I suppose,” Murphy said, and perhaps the argument in the woods had ended the same way, ended with the same false logic, the logic of three panic-stricken men faced with a problem that seemed to have but one solution.
“We buried him,” Miller said. “And then we released the brake on his car, locked the doors, and rolled it into the lake. We didn’t think anyone had seen us. We were sure we were alone in the woods.”
“You should have reported it,” Hawes said. “At worst, it was second-degree manslaughter, punishable by not more than fifteen years or a fine of one thousand dollars, or both. At best, it was excusable homicide. An accidental shooting. You might have got off scot-free.”
“There wasn’t time to consult a lawyer, Mr. Hawes,” Rather said. “There was only time for action, and we acted the way we thought best. I don’t know what you would have done.”
“I’d have reported it,” Hawes said.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. It’s easy for you to coldly say you would have reported it. You were not standing there with the rifle in your hand, and the dead man at your feet-the way we were. Decisions are always easy to make from armchairs. We had a decision to make, and we had to make it fast. Have you ever killed a man, Mr. Hawes?”
“No,” Hawes said.
“Then don’t make statements about what you’d have done or not done. We did what seemed like the only thing to do at the time.”
“We thought it was murder, don’t you understand?” Miller said.
“I told you we should report it,” Murphy said. “I told you. No! You both insisted. Cowards! I shouldn’t have listened to cowards! I shouldn’t have listened to frightened men!”
“You’re in this, so shut up!” Miller snapped. “How could we have known we were being watched?”
“Kramer,” Hawes said.
“Yes,” Ruther answered. “Kramer, the bastard.”
“When did you get his ‘I SAW YOU!’ note?”
“The day we got back home.”
“What then?”
