to go down, but no, Wilde didn’t need her. In a moment, he and Ronald came up the stairs, Wilde’s hand flat against Pomfrey’s back.
Pippa and Wilde sat across from mother and son. “I will tell you again, Ronald had nothing to do with anything. It was me, only me, not Ronald.”
Pippa studied them for a moment. “Mr. Pomfrey, did you hit me on the head, tie me up, and steal my phone and gun, my ID?”
He swallowed, nodded.
Pippa said, “Thank you for not lying. Just so you know, you left your thumbprint on one of the shelves at the abandoned grocery store. Now, we know you were in your final year at MICA when you met Marsia Gay.”
He shot a look toward his mother, started to shake his head.
Wilde said quietly, “We heard your conversation with your mother. It’s time for the truth.”
“All right, Ron, tell them,” Mrs. Trumbo said.
Ronald looked beaten down. He slowly nodded. “Marsia and I met at MICA. How do you know about Marsia?”
“Chief Wilde and I have done a bit of research,” Pippa said. “Now I want both of you to tell us what happened at that cabin in the Poconos the night Major Trumbo died.”
Ronald’s eyes blazed. He clenched his hands. “It was my fault, not my mom’s.”
“What was your fault, exactly?”
He licked his dry lips, looked down at his clasped hands. “Mom?”
“Go ahead, Ron,” Mrs. Trumbo said, and took his hand in hers. “We’ve lived with this nightmare for too long, and you can’t run away anymore. It needs to be over.”
Ronald raised his head and studied his mother’s face. He finally nodded. “Mom and Major Trumbo—he demanded everyone call him Major—sometimes visited my cabin in the Poconos, near a little town, Cold Bluff. Marsia and I had stayed at the cabin a number of times. She was with me on that visit as well. Saturday evening, Marsia and I drove into Cold Bluff to get some groceries for Mom to make her stew. We came back earlier than expected. I heard Major Trumbo yelling curses at my mother, calling her filthy names. He sounded like a snake, hissing out his insults. I heard my mother scream. I saw Major Trumbo through the window, hitting her with his fists. Mom was fighting him, but she was losing. She got one good shot—her knee in his groin—but it didn’t slow him. The front door was locked. I didn’t have the key, so I broke a window and crawled in. He was bigger than me, lots bigger, and stronger, even though he was old. He started yelling at me, I was a pansy with my silly little girl looms. I was a disgrace. A beautiful woman like Marsia deserved better than a little candy cane like me, he said, maybe he should be the one to have her. I jumped him, but he threw me off and hit me, kept hitting me. Mom tried to get him off me, but he knocked her away. He left me dazed on the floor and went after Mom again. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and came flying back in. I stabbed him in the back while he was straddling her, his big hands around her neck, choking her.”
58
“Where was Marsia during the fight?”
Ronald was looking down at his hands, rubbing them against each other. “She was standing in the middle of the room, in shock, I thought at the time. She hadn’t tried to help me, to help my mother. She hadn’t said a word, but again, I blamed it on shock. All of us were in shock. I remember standing over him, rubbing my neck and wondering why there wasn’t all that much blood. I’d thought there’d be fountains of blood when you killed someone. And he was dead. Good and dead.
“Everything stopped, like we were in a bubble, no world outside, all the horror inside, right in front of us. We all stood there staring down at Major Trumbo. I remember I hurt everywhere and wondered if he’d ruptured one of my kidneys. I looked at Mom. She was rubbing her throat where he’d choked her.” He slumped forward, hugging himself, as if he’d simply run out of words.
He raised his face, pale, drawn. “It was Marsia’s idea to bury him and throw in the knife. She said me and Mom would go to prison otherwise, with that stab wound in his back, so we