5
Tom was sitting in front of his computer when I got back to his house, scratching his head and looking back and forth from the screen to a messy pile of newspaper clippings on his desk. Across the room, the copy machine ejected sheet after sheet into five different trays. There was already a foot-high stack of paper in each of the trays. He looked up at me as I leaned into the room. "So you saw John." It wasn't a question.
He nodded—he knew all about John Ransom. He had known the first time John came into his house. "The papers will all be copied in another couple of hours. Will you give me a hand writing the note and wrapping the parcels?"
"Sure," I said. "What are you doing now?"
"Messing around with a little murder in Westport, Connecticut."
"Play on," I said. "I have to get some sleep."
Two hours later, I yawned myself back downstairs and usedthe office telephone to book my return flight to New York while the last of the sheets pumped out of the copy machine.
Tom swiveled his chair toward me. "What should we say in the letter that goes along with the papers?"
"As little as possible."
"Right," Tom said, and clicked to a fresh screen.
I thought you should see this copy of the bundle of papers I found in the garbage can behind my store yesterday evening. Four other people are also getting copies. The originals are destroyed, as they smelted bad. The man who wrote these pages claims to have killed lots of people. Even worse, he makes it clear that he is a police officer here in town. I hope you can put him away for good. Under the circumstances, I choose to remain anonymous.
"A little fancy," I said.
"I never claimed to be a writer." Tom set the machine to print out five copies and then went down to his kitchen and returned with big sheets of butcher's paper and a ball of string. We tied up each of the stacks of copied papers, wrapped them in two sheets of the thick brown paper, and tied them up again. We printed the names and working addresses of Isobel Archer, Chief Harold Green, and Geoffrey Bough on three packages. On the fourth, Tom printed BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE UNIT, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, QUANTICO, VIRGINIA.
"What about the fifth one?" I asked.
"That's for you, if you want it. I'd like to keep the originals."
I printed my own name and address on the final parcel.
Millhaven's central post office looks like an old railroad station, with a fifty-foot ceiling and marble floors and twenty windows in a row like the ticket booths at Grand Central. I took two of the fat parcels up to one of them, and Tom carried two shopping bags with the others to the window beside mine. The man behind the counter asked if I was really sure I wanted to mail these monsters. I wanted to mail them. What were they, anyhow? Documents. Did I want the printed matter rate? "Send them first class," I said. He hoisted them one by one onto his scale and told me my total was fifty-six dollars and twenty-seven cents. And I was a damn fool, his manner said. When Tom and I left, the clerks were passing long spools of stamps across the wet pads on their counters.
We went back out into the heat. The Jaguar sat at a meter down a long length of marble steps. I asked Tom if he would mind taking me somewhere to see an old friend.
"As long as you introduce me to him," Tom said.
6
At five o'clock, we were sitting downstairs in the enormous room in front of a television set Tom had wheeled out of the apparent chaos of file cabinets and office furniture. I was holding a glass of cold Ginseng-Up, three bottles of which I had discovered in Tom's refrigerator. I liked Ginseng-Up. You don't often find a drink that tastes like fried dust.
Alan Brookner had gained back nearly all of his weight, he was clean-shaven and dressed in a houndstooth jacket with a rakish ascot, his gold cufflinks were in place, and he'd had a haircut. I introduced him to Tom Pasmore, and he introduced us to Sylvia, Alice, and Flora. Sylvia, Alice, and Flora were widows in their late seventies or early eighties, and they looked as if they'd spent the past forty of those years shuttling between the hairdressing salon, yoga classes, and the spa where they had facials and herbal wraps. Because none of them wanted to leave either of the others alone with Alan, they left together.
"I have to hand it to John," Alan had said. "He found a place where I have to work to be lonely." His voice carried across Golden Manor's vast, carpeted lounge, but none of the white-haired people having tea and cucumber sandwiches in the other chairs turned their heads. They were already used to him.
"It's a beautiful place," I said.
"Are you kidding? It's gorgeous," Alan boomed. "If I'd known about this setup, I would have moved in years ago. I even got Eliza Morgan an administrative job on the staff here—those girls are all jealous of her." He lowered his voice. "Eliza and I have lunch together every day."
"Do you see much of John?"
"He came twice. That's all right. I make him uncomfortable. And he didn't appreciate what I did after I came to my senses, or whatever is still left of my senses. So he doesn't waste time on me, and that's fine. I mean it, it's hunky-dory. John is a little childish sometimes, and he has the rest of his life to think about."
Tom asked him what he had done.
"Well, after I got acclimated here, I put my finances back in the hands of my lawyer. You have to be a man my age to understand my needs—you might not know this, but John has a tendency to get a little wild; to take risks, and all I want is a good income on my money. So I replaced him as my trustee, and I think he resented that."
"I think you did the right thing," I said, and Alan's dark, icy eyes met mine.
Tom excused himself to go to the bathroom.
"I think about John from time to time," Alan said, lowering his voice again. "I wonder if he and April would have stayed married. I wonder about who he really is."
I nodded.
"Alan, there will probably be something on the news tonight that relates to April's death. That's all I can say. But it's likely to wind up being a big story."
"About time," Alan said.
I sipped my Ginseng-Up. Jimbo took off his glasses and looked out through the screen like Daddy bringing home news about a layoff at the plant. He informed us that a distinguished homicide detective had been found dead this morning in circumstances suggesting that the recent upheavals in the Millhaven police department may not be over. Suicide could not be ruled out. Now to Isobel Archer, with the rest of the story.
Isobel stood up in front of the cordoned-off Beldame Oriental and told us that an anonymous tip about a gunshot had brought her here, to an abandoned theater near the site of the murders of April Ransom and Grant Hoffman, where she had persuaded the Reverend Clarence Edwards, the clergyman who rented the theater for Sunday services of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, to look inside. In the basement she had discovered the body of Detective Sergeant Michael Hogan, dead of what appeared to be a single gunshot wound to the head. Beside Sergeant Hogan's body had been written the words BLUE ROSE.
What she said next made me want to stand up and cheer.
"This matter is now under intensive investigation by the Millhaven Police Department, but older residents of the city will note the chilling similarities between this scene and the 1950 death of Detective William Damrosch, recently exonerated in the Blue Rose murders of that year. Perhaps this time, forty years will not have to pass before the truth is known."