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ò ò . as much as the person who shot me is my enemy."
254 ANN RULE
"Have you been totally truthful and candid with us thus
far?" Welch asked her bluntly.
"Yes . . . yes, yes."
"There's nothing you have knowingly omitted?"
"The only thing that I knowingly omitted from you was telling
you that the man used my name."
It had come to her in a dream, she said, but by that time, the
police had begun to persecute her, and so she had not told them.
"We're talking about a murder investigation, and we can't
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play little games like we've been playing," Wuest reminded her.
"This is a big game," Diane corrected. "It's not a little
game. My daughter's dead--there's nothing more serious than
that . . . You should have come to me straight away," she lectured
them, "and said, 'There's a discrepancy. We think you did it
and this is why.' You shouldn't play games."
They waited.
"You don't lie to me--but you don't lie to me for one thing. Don't ever lie to
me, 'cause I hate lying more than anything in the
whole world."
Her voice was playful, but the veneer of hostility was there.
Kurt Wuest reminded her that she was free to leave anytime.
She nodded. "I know. As soon as this tape's over, I will be
too . . . I'm sorry if I don't trust you. I think that if I did trust
you, things would be a lot different."
"Do you think that you'd be able to come up with this suppressed
information--if you trusted us?" Welch asked.
She didn't know. She laughed. "You are starting to look like
a pouting child, Kurt. You're sitting there with a whole bunch of
questions and you're just not going to play ball if I don't let you
bat."
Diane's war with men had not slackened; she was good at
male-female repartee, skilled at keeping men off balance by
being alternately seductive and ingenuous, soft and caustically
witty. On this July night as the interview strung itself out longer
and longer, Diane clearly considered the detectives only men. She
might have been rapping with the guys back at the post office. If
she even remembered that Kurt and Doug were policemen, one
cannot hear it on the tapes.
+The interrogation turned a corner; Diane never realized it.
"You want to play hardball?" Welch asked flatly.
"Yeah--I want to find this guy ... At first--like I said--it
SMALL SACRIFICES 255
didn't matter whether you caught him or not. But now it seems
that the only way for my life to get back to normal is to catch
him."
"It's very important to us."
"I guess so," Diane agreed. "It's like the forbidden door . . .
there's something behind that door that really happened that
night--something bad.''
"More horrible than watching Christie bleed?" Wuest asked
softly. It was a point he would not let go. He had only been
waiting.
"Watching Christie get--yeah . . . there was something there
... I want to know--but at the same time, my mind knows better
than my conscious mind. That it's bad and you're not supposed to
look."
Wuest continued to question Diane quietly. "There's an emotion
that--the only thing I can think of that--that's more horrible
than watching a little girl get shot and bleed, and blank your mind
out--is if/had some involvement doing it." /
"I agree," Diane said pertly.
"That would be--"
"That would be horrible," she finished.
H'That would probably be more horrible than watching the
little girl--"
"You're right," she said. "That would be terrible." Diane
caught herself up sharply. "I know for a fact that I didn't do it."
Doug Welch played the smart-ass, demanding more explanation,
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throwing out impertinent questions that annoyed Diane. But
only a little. She could deal with him.
"Why?" he asked now. Why did she know she hadn't done
it? , ,.ä
"Because--" ";
"You can't remember," Wuest said.
"I know that I didn't do it."
"You don't remember," Welch said. "You're telling us that
you don't remember."
"I remember seeing Christie get shot. I remember the man
reaching in the car and shooting her."
"Diane," Kurt Wuest said, "I'm being flat-out straight with
you. You say there's a void there, that something's missing and--
you're saying whatever it is, it's more horrible than seeing Christie
bleed and I say that the only thing I can think of that would be
more horrible is if I had the gun in my hand and I saw that."
256 ANN RULE
Diane didn't flinch. "I agree with you. That would be
devastating."
"Right, and that would create ... a void."
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