“What are you trying to give us? You knew she was dead. How could you kill her without knowing it?”
While she looked at him I waved the others in. They crowded close around her and took up the chorus of the sergeant’s song. She was barked, roared, and snarled at plenty in the next few minutes.
The instant she stopped trying to talk back to them I cut in again.
“Wait,” I said, very earnestly. “Maybe she didn’t kill her.”
“The hell she didn’t,” O’Gar stormed, holding the center of the stage so the others could move away from the girl without their retreat seeming too artificial. “Do you mean to tell me this baby—”
“I didn’t say she didn’t,” I remonstrated. “I said maybe she didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
I passed the question to the girl: “Who did?”
“Babe,” she said immediately.
O’Gar snorted to make her think he didn’t believe her.
I asked, as if I were honestly perplexed:
“How do you know that if you didn’t know she was dead?”
“It stands to reason he did,” she said. “Anybody can see that. He found out she was going away with Joe, so he killed her and then came to Joe’s and killed him. That’s just exactly what Babe would do when he found it out.”
“Yeah? How long have you known they were going away together?”
“Since they decided to. Joe told me a month or two ago.”