Charlie Carpenter and Lily Sheehan had turned away from me, they were grinding their teeth and wailing.
I sat down on a bench in the sun. I was sweating. I was not sure if I had been going east toward Fifth Avenue, or west, deeper into the park. I slowly inhaled and exhaled, trying to control the sudden panic. It was just a bad one. It was just a little worse than normal. It was nothing too serious. I grabbed one of the books I had bought and opened it at random. It was The Gospel According to Thomas, and here is what I read:
The Kingdom of Heaven
Is like a woman carrying a jug
Full of meal on a long journey.
When the handle broke,
The meal streamed out behind her, so that
She never noticed anything was wrong, until
Arriving home, she set the jug down
And found that it was empty.
The Kingdom of Heaven
Is like a man who wished to assassinate a noble.
He drew his sword at home, and struck it against the wall,
To test whether his hand were strong enough.
Then he went out, and killed the noble.
I thought of my father drinking in the alley behind the St. Alwyn Hotel. Hard Millhaven sunlight bounced and dazzled from the red bricks and the oil-stained concrete. Drenched in dazzling light, my father raised his pint and drank.
I stood up and found that my legs were still shaking. I sat down again before anyone could notice. Two young women on the next bench laughed at something, and I glanced over at them.
One of them said, "You are sworn to secrecy. Let us begin at the beginning."
Back on Grand Street I typed my notes into the computer and printed them out. I saw that I had mapped out the next few days' work. I thought of going downstairs for lunch so I could show Maggie Lah those enigmatic, barbaric verses from the gnostic gospel, but remembered it was Friday, one of the days she worked on her philosophy M.A. at NYU. I went into my own kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Fastened to the door is a photograph I cut out of the New York Times the day after Ted Bundy was executed. It shows his mother holding a telephone receiver to her ear while she plugs her other ear with an index finger. She has bangs and big glasses and concentration has pulled her thick eyebrows together. The caption is Louise Bundy, of Tacoma, Wash., saying goodbye by telephone to her son, Theodore Bundy, the serial killer who was executed for murder yesterday morning in Florida.
Whenever I see this terrible photograph, I think about taking it down. I try to remember why I cut it out in the first place. Then I open the refrigerator door.
The telephone rang as soon as I pulled the handle, and I closed the door and went into the loft's main room to answer it.
I said, "Hello," and the voice on the other end said the same thing and then paused. "Am I speaking to Timothy Underhill? Timothy Underhill, the writer?"
When I admitted to my identity, my caller said, "Well, it's been a long time since we've met. Tim, this is John Ransom."
And then I felt an of course: as if I had known he would call, that predetermined events were about to unfold, and that I had been waiting for this for days.
"I was just thinking about you," I said, because in Central Park I had remembered the last time I had seen him—he had been nothing like the friendly, self-justifying captain I had met on the edge of Camp White Star, parroting slogans about stopping communism. He had reminded me of Scoot. Around his neck had been a necklace of dried blackened little things I'd taken for ears before I saw that they were tongues. I had not seen him since, but I never forgot certain things he had said on that day.
"Well, I've been thinking about you, too," he said. Now he sounded a long way from the man who had worn the necklace of tongues. "I've been reading The Divided Man."
"Thanks," I said, and wondered if that was what he was calling about. He sounded tired and slow.
"That's not what I mean. I thought you'd like to know something. Maybe you'll even want to come out here."
"Out where?"
"Millhaven," he said. Then he laughed, and I thought that he might be drunk. "I guess you don't know I came back here. I'm a professor here, at Arkham College."
That was a surprise. Arkham, a group of redbrick buildings around a trampled little common, was a gloomy institution just west of Millhaven's downtown. The bricks had long ago turned sooty and brown, and the windows never looked clean. It had never been a particularly good school, and I knew of no reason why it should have improved.
"I teach religion," he said. "We have a small department."
"It's nice to hear from you again," I said, beginning to disengage myself from the conversation and him.
"No, listen. You might be interested in something that happened. I want, I'd like to talk to you about it."
"What happened?" I asked.
"Someone attacked two people and wrote blue rose near their bodies. The first person died, but the second one is in a coma. She's still alive."
"Oh." I couldn't say any more. "Is that really true?"
"The second one was April," he said.
My blood stopped moving.
"My wife, April. She's still in a coma."
"My God," I said. "I'm sorry, John. What happened?"
He gave me a sketchy version of the attack on his wife. "I just wanted to ask you a question. If you have an answer, that's great. And if you can't answer, that's okay too."
I asked him what the question was, but I thought I already knew what he was going to ask.
"Do you still think that detective, Damrosch, the one you called Esterhaz in the book, killed those people?"
"No," I said—almost sighed, because I half suspected what a truthful answer to that question would mean. "I learned some things since I wrote that book."
"About the Blue Rose murderer?"
"You don't think it's the same person, do you?" I asked.
"Well, I do, yes." John Ransom hesitated. "After all, if Damrosch wasn't the murderer, then nobody ever caught the guy. He just walked away."
"This must be very hard on you."
He hesitated. "I just wanted to talk to you about it. I'm— I'm—I'm not in great shape, I guess, but I don't want to intrude on you anymore. You told me more than enough already. I'm not even sure what I'm asking."
"Yes, you are," I said.
"I guess I was wondering if you might want to come out to talk about it. I guess I was thinking I could use some help."
You are sworn to secrecy.
Let us begin at the beginning.
PART TWO
FRANKLIN BACHELOR
1
My second encounter with John Ransom in Vietnam took place while I was trying to readjust myself after an odd and unsettling four-day patrol. I did not understand what had happened—I didn't understand something I'd seen. Actually, two inexplicable things had happened on the last day of the patrol, and when I came across John Ransom, he explained both of them to me.