"And the phrase Blue Rose is related to his gardening?"
Ransom shrugged. "It's a funny choice of words—it's his way of identifying himself. And I think gardening would suit this guy very well—he could work out some of his tensions, he could indulge his compulsion for order, and he can do it alone."
"So if we go down to the near south side and find a healthy-looking but boring sixty-year-old man who has a neat flower garden in back of his house, we'll have our man."
Ransom smiled. "That'll be him. Handle with care."
"After being Blue Rose for a couple of months forty years ago, he managed to control himself until this year, when he snapped again."
Ransom leaned forward again, excited to have reached the core of all his theorizing. "Maybe he wasn't in Millhaven during those years. Maybe he had some job that took him here and there—maybe he sold ladies' stockings or shoelaces or men's shirts." Ransom straightened up, and his eyes burned into me. "But I think he was in the military. I think he joined up to escape the possibility of arrest and spent all the time between then and now in army bases all over the country and in Europe. He would have been in Korea, he might even have been in Vietnam. He probably spent some time in Germany. He undoubtedly lived on a lot of those bases set outside small towns all over the South and the Midwest. And every now and then, I bet he went out and killed somebody. I don't think he ever stopped. I think he was a serial killer before we even knew such things existed. Nobody ever connected his crimes, nobody ever matched the data—Tim, they only began to think about doing that five or six years ago. The FBI has never heard of this guy because nothing he ever did was reported to them. He'd get off the base, persuade some civilian to follow him into an alley or a hotel—he's a very persuasive guy—and then he'd kill them."
6
As I listened to John Ransom, my eyes kept returning to the painting I thought was a Vuillard. A middle-class family that seemed to consist entirely of women, children, and servants moved through a luxuriant back garden and sat beneath the spreading branches of an enormous tree. Brilliant molten lemon yellow light streamed down through the intense electric green of the thick leaves.
Ransom took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. "You seem fascinated by this room, especially the paintings." He was smiling again. "April would be pleased. She picked most of them out. She pretended that I helped her, but she did all the work."
"I am fascinated," I said. "Isn't that a Vuillard? It's a beautiful painting." The other paintings and little sculptures in the room seemed related to the Vuillard in some fashion, though they were clearly by several different artists. Some were landscapes with figures, some had religious themes, others were almost abstract. Most of them had a flat, delicate, decorative quality that had been influenced, like Van Gogh and Gauguin, but after them, by Japanese prints. Then I recognized that a small painting of the descent from the Cross was by Maurice Denis, and then I understood what April Ransom had done and was struck by its sheer intelligence.
She had collected the work of the group called the Nabis, the "prophets"—she had found paintings by Serusier, K.-X. Roussel, and Paul Ranson, as well as Denis and Vuillard. Everything she had bought was good, and all of it was related: it had a significant place in art history, and because most of these artists were not well known in America, their work would not have cost a great deal. As a collection, it had a greater value than the pieces would have had individually, and the pieces themselves would already be worth a good deal more than the Ransoms had paid for them. And they were pleasing paintings—they aestheticized pain and joy, grief and wonder, and made them graceful.
"There must be more Nabis paintings in this room than anywhere else in the country," I said. "How did you find them all?"
"April was good at things like that," Ransom said, suddenly looking very tired again. "She went to a lot of the families, and most of them were willing to part with a couple of pieces. It's nice that you like the Vuillard—that was our favorite, too."
It was the centerpiece of their collection: the most important painting they owned, and also the most profound, the most mysterious and radiant. It was an outright celebration of sunlight on leaves, of the interaction of people in families and of people with the natural world.
"Does it have a name?" I stood up to get a closer look.
"I think it's called The Juniper Tree."
I looked at him over my shoulder, but he gave no indication of knowing that there was a famous Brothers Grimm story with that name, nor that the name might have meant anything to me. He nodded, confirming that I had heard him right. The coincidence of the painting's name affected me as I went toward the canvas. The people beneath the great tree seemed lonely and isolated, trapped in their private thoughts and passions; the occasion that had brought them together was a sham, no more than a formal exercise. They paid no attention to the radiant light and the vibrant leaves, nor to the shimmer of color which surrounded them, of which they themselves were a part.
"I can see April when I look at that," Ransom said behind me.
"It's a wonderful painting," I said. It was full of heartbreak and anger, and these feelings magically increased its radiance— because the painting itself was a consolation for them.
He stood up and came toward me, his eyes on the painting. "There's so much happiness in that canvas."
He was thinking of his wife. I nodded.
"You can help me, can't you?" Ransom asked. "We might be able to help the police put a name to this man. By looking into the old murders, I mean."
"That's why I'm here."
Ransom clamped his fist around my arm. "But I have to tell you, if I find out who attacked my wife, I'll try to kill him—if I get anywhere near him, I'll give him what he gave April."
"I can understand how you'd feel that way," I said.
"No, you can't." He dropped his hand and stepped closer to the painting, gave it a quick, cursory glance, and began wandering back to his chair. He put his hand on the stack of Vietnam novels. "Because you never had the chance to know April. I'll take you to the hospital with me tomorrow, but you won't really—you know, the person lying there in that bed isn't—"
Ransom raised a hand to cover his eyes. "Excuse me. I'll get you some more coffee."
He took my cup back to the table, and I took in the room again. The marble fireplace matched the pinks and grays in the paintings on the long walls, and one vivid slash of red was the same shade as the sky in the Maurice Denis painting of the descent from the Cross. A pale, enormous Paul Ranson painting of a kneeling woman holding up her hands in what looked like prayer or supplication hung above the fireplace. Then I noticed something else, the flat edge of a bronze plaque laid flat on the marble.
I walked around the furniture to take a look at it, and John Ransom came toward me with the mug as soon as I stood the plaque upright. "Oh, you found that."
I read the raised letters on the surface of the bronze. "The Association Award of the Financial Professionals of the City of Millhaven is hereby given to April Ransom on the Occasion of the Annual Dinner, 1991."
John Ransom sat down and held out his hand for the plaque. I exchanged it for the coffee, and he stared at it for a second before sliding it back onto the mantel. "The plaque is just a sort of token—the real award is having your name engraved on a big cup in a glass case in the Founder's Club."