Mr. Peanut Read Online Free PDF Page B

today?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?” Sheppard could tell the man was relaxing, that something had shifted. He was swiveling back and forth in his chair confidently, riding a gentle current of truth. If earlier in the interrogation Sheppard thought he’d had the upper hand, he’d lost it now.
    “Because I realized she was right.”
    “What changed your mind?”
    “I don’t have to tell you that,” Pepin said.
    “You might want to if we charge you with murder.”
    “I might,” he said, “but I think I’ll wait until you do.”
    Sheppard sat back and rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “What did you do after you bought these tickets?”
    “I drove to Alice’s school to see her.”
    “What time did you get there?”
    “Around a quarter to nine.”
    “Anyone see you? People Alice worked with, can they put you there?”
    “Sure.”
    “So what happened?”
    “I found her in her classroom and told her about the trip, that we had to leave immediately.”
    “What was her reaction?”
    “She said no.”
    “She give you a reason?”
    “She didn’t believe I really wanted to go, that I was doing it out of pity for her. Maybe, I don’t know, because I’d missed my chance.”
    “So?”
    “We fought about it.”
    “You were angry with her.”
    “No, but I was desperate.”
    “And why was that?”
    “Because we were in danger,” Pepin said.
    “Of what?”
    “Ending
. We’d been … going through a bad time. Alice had been very depressed and losing a lot of weight. It affected her behavior.”
    “How?”
    “It made her short-tempered. Delusional. She was … impossible to live with.”
    “Had you talked about separation? Divorce?”
    Pepin shook his head. “But I was at my wit’s end.”
    “But you couldn’t convince her to run off.”
    “No.”
    “So what did you do?”
    “She was leaving with her class for a field trip to the Museum of Natural History, so I waited in the car for her … ”
    “And?”
    Pepin took a deep breath.
    It was amazing, listening to him walk the plank of his own story. To someone untrained, it might seem like pure fabrication because it was so suspicious, so odd, yet he could’ve said anything, that he had an appointment on Pluto, and Sheppard would have believed him, because every fiber of his being sensed that Pepin was telling the truth.
    “I followed her.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I didn’t want to lose sight of her.”
    “But you knew where she was going.”
    “It’s strange, I know, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
    “You tailed her all the way to the museum?”
    “Not quite.” Pepin began to pump his leg. “I got into a wreck.”
    “Where?”
    “On the West Side Highway.”
    Once again, Sheppard’s gut tingled. “Go on.”
    Pepin indicated direction with his left hand. “I was in the center lane following the bus, moving into the left, when someone came up behind me in my blind spot.” He shrugged. “And I hit him.”
    “Where was this,
exactly?”
    “Just above Ninety-sixth Street.”
    “Were any other cars involved?”
    “Not directly, no.”
    “What was his name?”
    “Who?”
    “The other driver.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You didn’t get a name? A number or insurance?”
    “He didn’t stop.”
    “Then how do you know it was a man?”
    Pepin blinked several times.
    Sheppard felt the small fillips in his belly. “Answer the question.”
    “Because I … saw him.”
    “When?”
    Raising his voice, Pepin said, “When I hit him, all right? I hit him, I saw him through the window, and then he kept driving. Maybe
he
didn’t have insurance, maybe he was a fucking criminal. Who knows? It happens every day.”
    “Nothing you’ve described happens every day,” Sheppard said.
    “I’m telling the truth.”
    “Keep going, then.”
    “The car was in bad shape, so I got off at Ninety-sixth and parked at a garage between West End and Riverside. Empire Parking, I