The front door closed.
Del Scott’s neighbors saw nothing, heard nothing. “Well,” one of them said several days later to the detectives doing a follow up investigation, “sure, there was some screaming, but there was always some yelling and screaming coming from that house. I can’t tell you how quiet it’s been around here for the past couple of weeks.”
One of the detectives wanted to know if the citizen had ever reported to the police any of the screaming episodes. The neighbor shrugged and shook his head. “It wasn’t any of my business.”
There were nothing but dead ends, the detectives concluded. Nothing really sat well, but there seemed little to do but regard Del Scott’s death as a suicide, although what could possibly possess someone to attempt suicide by sticking his head into an electric oven? The medical examiner had concluded that it must have taken Del Scott close to an hour to die.
As the detectives got into their car, they took a call to investigate a suspicious death six blocks away in an alley walkway just off Claremont. There they found neighborhood bully, wife beater, child molester, and drug dealer, Perry Wease flat on his back, his bulging brown eyes staring blankly at the crease of blue between the tenements that was the sky.
The death seemed on its face to be an accident. There was a pool of motor oil on the ground, a smear where young Wease slipped in it, the feet go up, the head goes down, and Perry Wease busts his crown. There were some unanswered questions. The oil was fresh, not used, and there were no oil cans in the alley’s rubbish. The alley was too narrow for a truck or car, so what would anyone be doing with oil in that alley?
Well, someone could have been working on a motorcycle. After adding the oil, the biker brought the can with him for, perhaps, environmental reasons. The concrete was smooth beneath the deceased’s head, and there was a wooden splinter in the back of his shaved head. Spruce, it later turned out. There were no pieces of lumber in the alley, either. Troublesome. The detectives finished up their notes, established that no one in the area had either seen or heard anything, and headed back to their car.
They took off their coats, looked at the trees lining Claremont, and laughed as they got into their car. Del Scott and Perry Wease both dead within two weeks of each other. It was spring, the sun warm, the sky clear, and the birds were singing.
The Dreyfuss Affair
10:08 PM, 14 April 1865
The war was almost done. As the news of General Lee’s surrender five days before continued to displace the gray numbness of four bloody years of death and destruction, the streets of Washington sank further and further into an orgy of celebration. It was true that General Joseph Johnston, commanding the last complete rebel army in the field, had yet to surrender, but the rumor had it that General Joe was in old Jeff Davis’s office that very night preparing to send up the white flag. The President had been waiting all day for the news. It was just a matter of time.
Sergeant Dye, sitting guard outside Ford’s Theater that night, contrasted in his mind the merrymakers on Tenth Street against how old Abe Lincoln had looked the previous hour as the president and his party had climbed down from the carriage and passed through the crowd. The tall man looked bent, his homely face had been filled with an incredible sadness. He looked less like the victor and more like the vanquished.
The sergeant shrugged his shoulders against the damp chill and the pungent odor of wood smoke and let his attention wander next door to the happy sounds coming from Taltavul’s. He had seen the famous actor John Wilkes Booth enter the saloon a short time before. The soldier passed his tongue over his lips and contemplated how a hot rum would go down at that moment. There was nothing going on right then and it wouldn’t take but a minute. Just then, however, the actor emerged from the front of Taltavul’s and stood talking with a man whose face Dye knew, the theater’s costumer, Lewis Carland. A man the sergeant didn’t recognize lit a pipe and joined the conversation. They were talking theater, and the sergeant felt a touch of contempt. The stage, he thought, is a silly place filled with silly people.
A fourth man came down from F Street and asked the trio the time. The man with the pipe looked into the lobby of the theater and said “After ten.” The questioner continued down the street and Sergeant Dye recognized him as a singer at Ford’s named Hess.
Drunken singing came from across Tenth Street and the distant sounds of fireworks and band music threatened to tease Dye from his post. The sergeant was impatient for the end of the play when he could go off duty and join the celebrants.
The performer named Hess returned and again asked the time. He explained that he was to go on just before the final scene and join two other singers in performing the new song by Professor Withers, “All Honor to Our Soldiers.” Booth laughed uproariously at this comment, and Sergeant Dye concluded that the actor was quite a bit in his cups. There was no shame in that. The entire city was drunk.
From the direction of F Street came another man. He stopped and joined the conversation, concentrating his attentions on the actor. Dye recognized Captain Williams of the Washington Cavalry Police. “Mr. Booth,” said the Captain, gesturing toward Taltavul’s, “would you do me the honor of allowing me to buy you a drink?”
Booth pulled out his pocket watch, checked the time, and shook his head. “Keene will be onstage in a minute and I promised to take a look for her.”
Another admirer approached from the direction of E Street and he stopped next to Captain Williams and seemed to study Booth for a moment. The man was clad in riding boots, as was Booth, however he wore dress more suited to the west than to the streets of the District. He was a tall lanky man, young and well built, with a clear face carrying few years. Beneath the brim of his western hat he had dark hair and eyes that seemed to glitter. “Wilkes Booth?” the man inquired.
The actor and his friends seemed highly amused at the admirer’s question. It was obviously from one who had never seen the younger Booth on the boards. “I am,” answered the actor, looking up at the stranger.
The tall admirer in the western outfit slowly shook his head and said, “I’ll be damned. You really do look like Richard Dreyfuss.” Then he pulled a Colt pistol from beneath his jacket, aimed it between Booth’s eyes, and pulled the trigger. Sergeant Dye frowned as he quickly studied the faces in the gathering crowd. He searched again and again. Before the great actor had hit the ground, his tall slayer had apparently vanished. Since he didn’t want to be accused of drinking on his post, the sergeant rethought what he had seen and decided the stranger, tall as he was, had managed to slip away in the confusion. “Thank God,” he muttered beneath his breath. “Thank God the fiend wasn’t after the president.”
2:06 PM, 17 June 2080
Roger Alfred leaned forward in the water chair and looked expectantly at his therapist. “Did you watch it? Did you watch the movie?”
Isa Childs returned Roger’s glance with an expression that hovered somewhere between amusement and pity. “There you go again, Roger. Look how you’re lying to yourself. You called it a movie. No one’s used that word for a vid in over sixty years.”
Roger’s eyebrows went up as his face reddened. “That’s not what I asked. Did you watch it?Close Encounters of the Third Kind ; did you watch it?”
The therapist shrugged and cocked his head to one side. “Yes I did. Last night, in fact. It was on my viddex and, since you made such a point of the old film, I called it up and watched it. Very amusing period piece, if a little over long.” He leaned back in his chair, tented his fingertips, and looked over them at Roger. “That’s one of the reasons why I’ve called you in for this extra session.”