The actor who played Poe was an obvious choice-too obvious. If his Poe connection were that apparent, would he have given us the Poe-derived clues, the quotations, the literary death methods? I had seen this guy on television once or twice since the Poe connection was leaked, being interviewed as a local expert on “the Dark Bard of Baltimore.” No, he was way too high-profile. I didn’t buy it.
And then there were three. Damon William Cantrell. Jeffrey Henry DeMouy. Ernest Lee Abbott.
“What do you think, Darcy?”
Darcy stared at the pictures. His brain was in motion, I could tell that. But this wasn’t what he did best, was it? When he met them, he might notice the telltale smell of perfume or the stain of a certain kind of ash found only in Sumatra or whatever. But what could he do with a photo?
“I don’t think I like this one,” Darcy said. He pointed to the file photo of Cantrell, but I noticed he wasn’t actually looking at it. “His hair is like John Wayne Gacy’s hair.”
“Anything else?”
“Did you know that John Wayne Gacy is considered the most successful American serial killer? He made even more deaths than Ted Bundy.”
“Anything else?”
He tapped another picture, the one of Abbott. “I think that maybe I have seen him before.”
“Really? Where? In the hotel?”
His face twisted up. “I don’t remember,” he said-words I never expected to hear coming out of that mouth. But such was the irony of being autistic. He could remember chapter and verse about anything he read. But he was useless with faces. Some researchers thought autistic people didn’t really even see faces, their expressions and distinctions. Just a pink blur. Which would explain why they were so poor at picking up on visual clues, facial expressions, and body language.
Darcy was not going to pick the lucky winner.
“Where is Patrick, anyway?” I said. I wanted to get his opinion on this, before Bloomfeld arrived with the suspects. “He should be back by now.”
“I’ll go look,” Darcy said. He probably realized he wasn’t much help here. So he would be of use another way.
And I continued to stare at the pictures. Will the real Edgar please stand up?
I have to find Patrick Susan wants me to find Patrick and she’s so worried and scared about her niece Rachel who seems nice but I hope she doesn’t like Rachel more than me or she can like us both and is Rachel like her baby because I want her to have real babies and maybe she won’t maybe she won’t if something happens to Rachel like Mommy never had any more babies after me and Dad tells people that they couldn’t but they could I know they could Mommy told me they could but they weren’t going to because I was a difficult boy and they didn’t want any more difficult boys. We have to stop the Bad Man because he hurt those girls and he hurt Susan and he might try to hurt more people and it’s not right to hurt people. I would never hurt anyone. Hurting is bad.
I can’t find Patrick there are so many people in this gambling room and so much smoke I hate smoke I don’t know why people smoke it’s bad for you and it’s disgusting and it should be illegal it makes my eyes hurt so I went into the ballroom with all the weird decorations. I couldn’t see Patrick but I saw this guard guy and he was in a big hurry and I don’t know why I even looked at him except he was carrying an axe and that seemed weird and then I looked at him some more and I wasn’t sure if I knew him I never know if I know people but he smelled like someone I knew his smell was familiar and then he said something and I heard his voice and I remembered the guy on the street and all that talk about how tall he wasn’t except then he had a mustache and a different color hair and glasses and he looked different but he said something again and I knew it was him.
He must be the Bad Man.
He recognized me too and I made a joke about did he have any more good puzzles I could solve and he didn’t and I could see he was going to hit me just like the kids at school used to hit me and I should’ve done something about it. I should’ve stopped him but then I would have to hit him and it isn’t right to hit people it isn’t right and I don’t want to hurt anyone and I didn’t do anything and then he took the other end of the axe and he hit me and I fell down and then there was nothing.
“Please,” Rachel gasped. “I can’t stand it anymore. It hurts.”
“Only for a little while, my dear. Soon it will all be over.”
She’d been hanging upside down for far too long. Blood rushed to her head, making it throb so intensely she could barely think. “Where’s Tiffany? And the others. Where did they go?”
“They’re such dear girls, so eager to please. Nothing I ask is too much.”
“Because you’ve tortured and brainwashed them.”
“Rachel!” He tightened the ropes around her wrists and ankles, making sure she was secure. “Don’t speak like that. I’ve told you what is at stake. I’ve explained to you about the Ascension, about Dream-Land. About my sweet Virginia. The whole majestic plan.”
“I don’t want any part of your plan!”
He took her chin-upside down before him-and held it in his palm. “Would you prefer to be like the other heathens, those who remain on this plane and melt into nothingness? Or would you be translated into a Golden Age?”
“I would rather be at home in clean clothes.”
“Don’t be petty. Why can’t you see what I can see?”
“Because I’m not insane.”
He clamped the chloroform-soaked cloth over her nose and mouth, his hands shaking with rage. She was unworthy, but that spirit would soon be gone, replaced with that of his lost Virginia, and once he and she were reunited, nothing else would matter.
I was practically out of my mind when I finally heard the doorknob click. It was barely half an hour before midnight. Did they not understand? Midnight was the dreamtime, according to Poe. Later would be too late. Especially for Rachel.
Bloomfeld had two men trailing behind him whom I immediately recognized from their file photos. Two suspects. Two Edgar possibles.
But only two.
“Apologies,” Bloomfeld said. He could be quite polite, once you put the fear of death into him. “Couldn’t find the third officer.”
“We need him,” I said.
“We’ll find him in time, I’m sure. He’s supposed to be working in the ballroom, but no one could locate him. It’s already packed in there-hundreds of Halloween revelers. Ran into your partner, though, that FBI man. Sent him into the crowd to find the guy while I brought you these two.”
I stared at the photo of the missing security guard, Ernest Lee Abbott. I mentally added a mustache, changed the hair, put dark glasses on him.
“He’s normally very reliable. That’s why we asked him to help with the crowd control. Everyone is doing the work of three.”
I could imagine the man’s lips moving, his face. His eyes taking that somewhat menacing, somewhat sorrowful expression that told so much about him.
“If you want, I’ll go back to the ballroom and look some more. He’s probably behind the cathedral, helping with some last-minute crisis. Whose idea was it to do the Hunchback, anyway? I always thought it was too literary. Kids today, they don’t know anything about French literature. They probably think-”
“Hunchback?” I closed my eyes and let my mind wander again, but this time, it went straight to the source. The key clue. The one that hadn’t fallen into place before.
I haven’t been this scared since the day we rented a video just after my parents- That was what Rachel had said, during that brief phone call. Everyone thought she was terrified, babbling, me included. But we were wrong. Rachel is a tough girl, a smart one.
She was trying to give me a clue.
What was the movie? What was the damn movie?
Of course.
We’d rented The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Disney version. The first day I brought her home. After her parents were killed.