Too Many Murders by Colleen McCullough

Unfortunately he’d had scant experience confabulating, which indicated a life spent out of real trouble; his lies to date had been simple ones, his parents trusting fools who believed him. Only, what was he hiding? What could he possibly have to hide that required a properly constructed fairy tale?
    “Crap!” said Carmine, barking it. “You didn’t go back to bed and you didn’t go back to sleep. What did you do? The truth!”
    All color leached out of the boy’s healthy skin; he gave a gulp, histhroat working convulsively. “I am telling the truth! Honest! I went to bed and I went to sleep.”
    “No, you didn’t. What did you really do, Grant?”
    It came out in a despairing rush; people didn’t usually set themselves against him, and he couldn’t—he
couldn’t
—dream up a story that convinced even himself. “I went to Mom’s bedroom to tell her I’d been sick on my bathroom floor.”
    Ah! “What happened then?”
    “The light was on—not a night light, the lamp on her table. Jimmy’d never settle down with a night light. The place stank of shit—I mean, it stank, really stank!”
    Carmine waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “You can’t stop now, Grant. I want it all.”
    “Jimmy was standing in his crib, yelling his head off. I saw Mom asleep in bed, so I went to wake her. But I couldn’t, sir! I shook her and yelled in her ear, but she went right on sleeping. Then I saw the glass on her table, and I knew she’d knocked herself out. She often did. Great, just great! Jimmy was screeching fit to bust, these real animal noises. I yelled at him to shut up, but the little creep didn’t even notice.
Gross!
He must have dumped tons of shit in his diaper, the stink was so bad.”
    Carmine’s eyes encountered Gina’s; she looked a query, but was answered by a tiny shake of the head. A cold and nauseating presentiment had taken hold of Carmine, who drew in a long breath and forced himself to remain detached. “Go on, Grant, you may as well tell me the rest—I’ll find it out anyway. It will be better if it comes from you.”
    The brown eyes turned back to him at last, resigned, full of tears. Grant lifted his shoulders as if to shed a burden. “I went to the crib and let down the side. I figured that if Jimmy was loaded with shit, it would maybe teach Mom a lesson not to knock herself out if she woke up in the same bed as shitty Jimmy. But the little creep hollered even louder. Then he swung a punch at me! Spat in my face! I punched him back. He fell over in the crib, and I don’t know whathappened next. Honest, sir, I don’t! All I remember are the screeches and howls, the spits—I mean, he spit on me! I put the pillow over his face to shut him up, but it didn’t. Even through it the noise hurt, but he couldn’t spit on me. I kept pushing the pillow against his face until he did stop yelling. Then I kept it there to make sure. Man, it felt good! The little creep spit on me!”
    Oh, sweet Jesus! “Tell me the rest, Grant.”
    The boy looked better, relieved of a frightful burden. Did his siblings know? Probably not, or Selma at least wouldn’t have left him. Carmine thought she had an inkling but hadn’t had time to follow up. Just as well. The death of Jimmy Cartwright would otherwise have masked the death of his mother.
    “I switched on the central light,” said Grant, “and I saw that Jimmy was blue. Blue all over. No matter how I pinched him, he wouldn’t move. Then I realized he was dead. At first I was real glad, then I figured out that if I told, I’d go to jail—I will go to jail, won’t I?”
    “Just keep on telling it the way it happened, Grant, and things will go better for you. Jail is for grown-ups,” said Carmine. “What did you do then?”
    “I wrapped him in a sheet off his crib and took him down the stairs,” said Grant more easily. “I went out the back door and carried him down to the Pequot, then pushed him in. He sank right away, so I walked back