And so he was having a basic problem: comprehension.
For what did it mean Zoe Kruller is dead, has died, has been killed.
Yet more baffling Zoe Kruller is gone, you will never see her again.
It was fucking him up having to think of Zoe Kruller dead who’d been so alive in her life, and in his arms. No more thrumming-warm livingness than Zoe Kruller. It wasn’t just his kitchen she’d be haunting but his very bed upstairs. His bed he’d had to sleep in, or try to, with his wife. Shut his eyes and he’d see the woman’s hungry damp mouth, the bared gums when she smiled her happy wide smile, a sight he’d sometimes look away from it seemed too intimate, exposed. The warm freckled arms around his neck, snaky arms pulling him down to her, laughing, tongue-kissing, her hot little belly pressed against his belly, groin against his groin, he could not bear it. Did you miss fucking me? Did you? How much did you miss fucking me? Show me.
Or pushing him from her sulky and pouty and he’d had a moment’s panic not knowing if she was sincere or teasing Well say! You don’t love me go back to your smug fat wife you bastard.
He was on the phone, talking with the roofing supplier. Clumsily lighting a cigarette—had to be his second, there was a butt already smoldering in the black plastic ash tray with the red letters SPARTA CONSTRUCTION, INC. To his horror like a man in a film when the music comes up jagged and percussive he broke off the conversation seeing through his window two vehicles turn into the cinder-lot: a Sparta PD cruiser and a heavy new-model Olds the color of steel filings, had to be an unmarked police car.
Quickly then kicking the desk drawer closed. He’d had only a small swallow of the whiskey, nothing they could detect.
His hands trembling. Sick-gut sensation. Frankly he didn’t know, could not in that instant have claimed, that he had not been the one to strangle the woman. Him, or the other guy—the husband Delray. Could not have said.
Don’t tempt me Zoe! Just don’t go too far.
In the outer office the receptionist Myrtle who’d only just arrived breathless and carrying a cardboard container bearing two large Styrofoam cups of coffee—one for her, one for Eddy Diehl—would be the first to greet the police officers. No time to alert Eddy, damn cops opened the door to his office and walked right in.
Four men: two youngish uniformed officers, two plainclothed detectives. In that instant it came to him They expect me to resist. They expect to kill me. They’d sent four of them!
“Edward Diehl? We need to speak with you.”
Need. He caught that, not want. And not asking.
Sitting at his desk, staring at them. How would an innocent man behave?—unsmiling, taken by surprise? Polite but—unyielding? He’d hung up the phone, his hands were flat on the desktop before him. No sudden moves, he knew better. He was feeling some relief, the cops they’d sent were not men he knew. In the Sparta PD and in the Herkimer County sheriff’s department there were men he knew, and it would have been embarrassing if one of them had come for him. But these men were strangers.
“Yes? Why?”
In a flash it came to him, maybe Delray hadn’t confessed. Maybe that was just a rumor. On the 6 A.M. local news there’d been no mention of the husband confessing.
“No idea why, Mr. Diehl?” The older of the detectives spoke casually, with a little fishhook of a smile.
“It’s maybe—about—”
His voice faltered, he fell silent. In his face was a heat-flush from the whiskey, he was sure the detectives could see.
And the whiskey felt, in his gut, like a plug of searing-hot phlegm, indigestible, horrible. He could not think why he’d done something so impulsive at 7 A.M. of a Monday morning.
The senior detective introduced himself and his partner—“Martineau”—“Brescia”—but not the younger uniformed officers. He was saying how it “might be a good idea” for Mr. Diehl to accompany them to police headquarters, downtown; they had a few questions for him in their investigation into the homicide of Zoe Kruller early Sunday morning. This, Eddy heard through a roaring in his ears like an earthmover in the near-distance. Martineau assured him that the interview wouldn’t take long and in his desperation Eddy clung to these words won’t take long as if this were a promise made to a frightened child won’t take long, won’t take long! the most blatant and transparent of falsehoods yet Eddy Diehl would cling to the words won’t take long Mr. Diehl as shakily he arose from the swivel chair behind his desk, fumbled for his heavy down sheepskin jacket he’d tossed onto a nearby table, his leather gloves. He could not help but see in even his agitated state how the two younger police officers were poised to rush at him, to overpower him, if he “resisted” if he made a sudden unwise movement yanking open a desk drawer to grab a weapon, or shoving his hand into a pocket of the down jacket. He’d been a soldier at one time: he’d been an excitable young man in uniform, armed, trained and poised for action. Especially, poised for action when he believed himself in the presence of danger. It was sobering to think how within seconds these young men would have grabbed his arms, yanked them behind his back and forced him onto the floor, on his face, all the while shouting at him loudly, furiously. On the floor! On the floor! Face down, on the floor!
Afterward he would recall how, when Martineau had introduced himself and the other detective, neither had made any offer to shake Eddy Diehl’s hand. This hurt! This was insulting! He’d always been a man whom other men liked, on sight; a man whom others trusted. And now in these strangers’ coolly assessing eyes he was made to know how they distrusted him, and they disliked him; they were more than willing to believe that he’d murdered a woman, in her bed; he was not a man whose hand they would wish to shake.
My punishment is beginning he thought. A strange pained smile distorted his face, his lower jaw that was stinging from—what?—a shaving cut of hours ago, when he’d scraped his skin in the downstairs bathroom shaving with a drunk’s shaky hand.
This too—the sullen clot of blood beneath his lower lip, the fine-trembling fingers—he believed the detectives saw, and filed away as the symptoms of a guilty man.
In the outer office, Myrtle stared. She was fifty years old, divorced, and her ex-husband had died so she thought of herself as a widow, afflicted and aggrieved and for eight years in love with Eddy Diehl; dyed-black hair and white-bread skin, orangy-red lips never lacking a smile for good-looking Eddy Diehl except now, this Monday morning, Myrtle wasn’t smiling but staring, abashed and astonished as unmistakably Eddy was being led away by Sparta police officers, without explanation. And outside in the brisk cold air of a gray-wet February morning, there was blunt-baldheaded Paul Cassano, Eddy’s boss, just climbing out of his Scout pickup, staring and blinking at Eddy Diehl as if he’d never seen him before, and Eddy lifted his hand in a wan greeting: “Paul, something has come up. I’ll be back in maybe an hour.”
Men loading lumber onto a truck paused to watch in silence as Eddy Diehl was led to the unmarked Olds the color of steel filings, made to climb humbly, humiliated, into the backseat, behind a plastic partition.
Like an inmate in a holding cell, except he wasn’t handcuffed.
These were men who’d known Ed Diehl for years. Some of them had worked with him when he’d been a carpenter, one of the work-crew. Now he’d been promoted to an office job he was still one of them, his natural sympathies were with them and not with their boss Cassano. And these men liked Ed Diehl a hell of a lot better than they liked Paul Cassano who paid their wages.
They knew of Eddy’s “relationship” with Delray Kruller’s wife—maybe. Some of them knew. It was not a secret, exactly.
Eddy Diehl, Jesus!—he’s arrested?
He killed that woman Zoe? Him?
One hour! How mistaken he’d been.
They would keep Edward Diehl—“a person of interest”—for seven hours and forty minutes. That first day at Sparta police headquarters.
Like a man in a trance—neither fully awake, nor unconscious—he’d allowed himself to be le
d with uncharacteristic docility into a windowless fluorescent-lit room on the second floor of the shabby-brick building on South Main Street at Iroquois, adjacent to the Herkimer County Courthouse and the Herkimer County House of Detention. This part of Sparta was part municipal buildings and high-rise parking structures and conspicuously open “public spaces” and part inner-city slum: in the interstices of county buildings were pawnshops, bail bondsmen’s shops, liquor stores with iron grillwork over their windows like grimaces. There were stores with signs in their windows—CHECKS CASHED. There were store-front establishments—HERKIMER COUNTY CHRISTIAN FAMILY COUNSELING. On Iroquois were discount outlets, hairdressers’ salons, a Rite Aid pharmacy, small restaurants and pizzerias with scummy front windows, taverns. Of these Eddy Diehl knew only the Iroquois Bar & Grill where off-duty cops and courthouse workers hung out and where the bartender was a guy he’d gone to high school with: a loser back from Vietnam with a steel plate in his head whose greeting Hey there Diehl how’s it going was welcoming to Eddy Diehl like the greeting of some sick sad left-behind brother.
“No need for a lawyer, Mr. Diehl. Not yet.”
Liking it that Martineau continued to call him “Mr. Diehl.” Not many people called Eddy “Mr. Diehl”—the last he recalled, one of his son’s teachers he’d run into on the street.
He didn’t want a lawyer of course. God damn no. All of the Diehls distrusted lawyers, had only disparaging things to say about lawyers, and calling one now, in the wake of Zoe’s murder, would be the action of a guilty man.
Repeatedly during the seven-hour-and-forty-minute siege that followed, Eddy was assured that he had not been arrested, he was only just being “interviewed.” This was a “conversation”—not an “interrogation”—though for accuracy’s sake it would be taped. Eddy saw how this was an advantage of course. He was an innocent man—though he would not utter the word innocent—shying away from the word innocent—a ridiculous word, innocent!—for he would tell these police officers everything he knew, all that he knew, he would hold nothing back—he swore, he would hold nothing back—willing to cooperate in any way he could, to help them in their investigation into the homicide of Zoe Kruller.
This woman, Mrs. Delray Kruller, with whom Eddy Diehl had been “acquainted,” wasn’t that so?
Yes. That was so.
Licking his lips, frowning. He’d been scratching at his chin and his fingers came away with faint blood smears—the shaving cut. Wondering what he could say that the detectives might not already know. It was their strategy to ask questions and never to answer questions. It was their strategy to ask questions repeatedly, from slightly different perspectives. He began to hear his voice over-loud and hoarse in the windowless room, the voice of a guilty man, a very confused man. Strange to think—as an insect caught in the sticky tendrils of a spider’s web might think—the more he struggled to free himself, in the exertions and agitations of the guileless, the more he was caught.
Yet it was true: he didn’t know who might have hurt Zoe Kruller, really. There were those who believed—so Eddy explained, as if the detectives might not know this fact though it had been aired publicly for more than twenty-four hours—that Zoe’s husband Delray was the most likely person to have “hurt” her—there was even a rumor—“Don’t know if it’s true”—that Delray had confessed to hurting her but of course Eddy Diehl had no idea if this was so, no firsthand knowledge of his own.
They asked him how he knew the Krullers and he told them: Kruller Auto Repair. Kruller Cycle Shop. In certain quarters in Sparta, Delray Kruller was well known. If you needed a good auto mechanic, Kruller was your man. If you liked specialty cars, Kruller was your man. Eddy spoke with admiration of how Delray had rebuilt a Pontiac GTO for him some years back—“Y’know, a ‘Goat’? Nineteen seventy-five model.” He’d taken a 1980 Stingray for Delray to customize for him, plus a Mustang, a ’Cuda, and the Willys Jeep he was still driving. So hot! As he spoke he was conscious of not-saying something that should be said, not-saying the name Zoe Kruller which was what the detectives were waiting patiently to hear. So hot! It was like a joke—it was a joke—he’d have wanted to wink at them, to acknowledge the joke—his enemies were making him sweat: sweating it out of him.
Except: there was nothing to sweat out.
There was nothing he could tell them, that would lead them to Zoe Kruller’s murderer.
(Or—murderers? How’d anyone know for certain, there weren’t more than one?)
(If Zoe had been involved with drugs as everyone knew she’d been, it might’ve been more than one. But Eddy didn’t want to tell the detectives this, to insult Zoe.)
He’d taken off his corduroy sport coat, that was worn at the elbows, his favorite coat he’d been wearing for years, with his long-sleeved white-cotton shirts for the office. Damn his forehead was beaded with sweat, his skin felt flushed, his head lowered between his shoulders and in his face the look of a goaded bull.
Fuckers can’t make me say the wrong thing. Incriminate myself.
How can I? I can’t, I am innocent.
Finally as the questions continued he acknowledged yes, he’d known Zoe also. Delray was his friend and his wife Zoe—well, Zoe was Delray’s wife—that was how Eddy knew her. Yes he’d heard that the Krullers were “estranged”—that wasn’t a word people used exactly, you’d have said the Krullers were “living apart”—“separated”—“having trouble”—but Eddy Diehl didn’t know particulars, he wasn’t the type. Except he’d heard from friends that Zoe had left Delray and was living on her own, Zoe was seeing other men, Zoe was frustrated with living just in Sparta and her career—her “singing career”—not getting anywhere; guys who were Del’s friends were likely to be harsh about Zoe saying she’d left Delray with their son, left her own household, the shit Del had to take from that woman you wouldn’t blame him, he lost control.
Covering his face with his hands, rubbing his knuckles against his eyes. So hot! He understood that he should leave, he should tell the detectives that he’d had enough, he had said all that he knew, and yet the wish had lodged deep inside him I will make them like me, trust me. These are men no different from me.
Strange how, like a man on a river, in some sort of small rudderless boat on a turbulent river, he’d ceased thinking of where he might be, if he wasn’t where he was: he’d ceased thinking of his office at Sparta Construction, and of the work crews he’d be instructing, at this moment; he’d ceased thinking of his house, his home on the Huron Pike Road where by this time only his wife Lucille was likely to be, the kids were at school, he was grateful none of them knew where he was, the shame would have been unbearable. Daddy questioned by police? Daddy in the police station, like a man on TV? Questioned by police—why?
Martineau was asking, Brescia was asking, calmly asking the most intimate of questions, words you could not ever imagine being uttered in your face except when they are uttered, and with such astonishing calm, even a kind of logic, bemused, patient, seeing the angry flush in his face and meaning to diffuse it, rephrasing the question—had he had “intimate relations”—“sexual relations”—with Zoe Kruller—rephrasing it had he ever “had a relationship” with Zoe Kruller that was “more than just friends” and Eddy Diehl heard himself say God damn no, he had not.
Calmly then they asked him again. Asked him again, and again. Calmly if edgily, the look in Brescia’s eyes behind tinted glasses, the look in Martineau’s eyes, they knew he was lying did they, if they knew he was lying why the fuck did they ask him. But they asked, and again he said No cleared his throat to say more forcibly No! God damn I told you.
These words were pebbles in his mouth, barely he could speak with pebbles in his mouth in danger of swallowing, choking. Barely he could speak. Rivulets of sweat ran down his heated face. His heart was a fist banging slowly against his ribs. His gut, where the hot phlegm-plug of undigested Jim Beam whiskey was defined solid as a pebble. They were daring to ask him if he’d been “involved” with Zoe Krulle
r—“having sexual relations” with Zoe Kruller—for a long time, or just the past year; was that why Zoe had moved out of her husband’s house, or had Zoe moved out first; did Delray Kruller know about him, Eddy Diehl, “having sex with” his wife; and Eddy was shaking his head No! None of this is true.
With their calm bemused eyes they regarded him. As hunters keep a little distance regarding the shot bison, the shot bear, a thrashing wounded creature dangerous at such times so you let him bleed out in the grass, you are the victor and time is on your side.
Repeatedly asking was he sure? Was Mr. Diehl sure? Was this Eddy Diehl’s statement, he was sure he wanted to sign?
He told them yes. This was his statement, he wanted to sign.
And had he visited Zoe Kruller at the West Ferry address he was asked and blindly, quickly said No. And asked if he’d seen her there, on Saturday of the previous week, just two nights ago had he seen her, had he driven there, parked on the street, gone in and seen her, and when had this been, and how long had he been there, and had he had sexual relations with her then, and had he been angry with her then, and had he struck her, strangled her, killed her and left her body in her bed, had this happened, Mr. Diehl?—was this what had happened?—and he was coughing now, sweating and miserable and unable to think except wanting to get out of this room, out of these fluorescent lights, away somewhere he could be alone, get a drink to steady his nerves, sink into sleep for he was so very tired.
No he said no I did not. Not ever.
GOD DAMN WHY SHOULD I hire a lawyer. Spend money on a God-damned lawyer you can’t trust. I’m not the one, I didn’t hurt Zoe. Never hurt Zoe oh Christ. Why’d I hurt Zoe. I did not touch Zoe not ever to harm her. I was the one who’d told her she’s got to go into rehab. In December I told her. Before Christmas I told her. Driving me crazy the way she was living so careless of herself saying Go to hell Eddy, you don’t love me you can go to hell then there’s others who will love me if not you. Sick-worried about Zoe but fuck her she wants to kill herself, track marks on her arms and inside her thighs she’d tried to say were from a cat’s claws but the fact is she was shooting heroin, I’d all but caught her that one time. Shooting death into her veins, why’d she do it? Zoe’s beautiful arms, freckled and soft. Zoe’s beautiful legs not fleshy like a woman’s legs can be but slender, muscled. Jesus she’d been shooting that shit into a vein at her ankle. Saying it’s just so good, just try it Eddy c’mon just once, it won’t kill you. Except she’d had some bad scares. Shooting up with a guy she’d been seeing, or maybe more than one guy, who supplied her all the drugs she needed, this guy from Port Oriskany and nobody known to me, nobody I wanted to know, saying she’d passed out for forty minutes and he’s shouting at her and slapping her face trying to revive her, running cold water into the tub, carries her to the tub and drops her into the water, wouldn’t call an ambulance he’d have let her die, a guy like that avoids cops at all costs, one look at him and a cop knows, a cop can see, ex-con, junkie-dealer a cop can identify, I told her Zoe for Christ’s sake that’s crazy, living like that’s crazy, so close to the edge, a beautiful woman like you what is wrong with you, and Zoe says Yes you’re right Eddy, I know you’re right Eddy, say know what, Eddy—I love you!—leaning over to kiss me, Zoe’s warm wet mouth on my mouth, tongue like a snake darting, Kiss-kiss Eddy, c’mon Eddy kiss-kiss c’mon fuck me Eddy if you love me fuck me and make me forget other things and Zoe’s arms around my neck bearing me down, and Zoe’s tight-muscled legs around my waist, ankles crossed behind my buttocks, I’m trying to keep my head clear but can’t, trying to believe her but I can’t, if the woman would not lie to me if she would not disrespect me as she’d been disrespecting her husband Delray, she starts to laugh, she’s laughing and there’s a sob catching in her throat, Eddy I promise, oh Eddy I promise, no more damn needles if you love me, not ever.