A younger blond male head, as square as Jimbo's but attached to a sweating neck and a torso wrapped in a tan safari jacket, buried the speaker's words under the announcement that the Reverend Clement Moore, a longtime community spokesman and civil rights activist, had called for a full-scale investigation of the Millhaven Police Department and was demanding reparations for the families of Walter Dragonette's victims. Reverend Moore had announced that his "protest prayer meetings" would continue until the resignations of Chief Vass, Commissioner Novotny, and Mayor Waterford. In a matter of days, the Reverend Moore expected that the protest prayer meetings would be joined by his fellow reverend, Al Sharpton, of New York City.
Back to you in the studio, Jimbo.
Jimbo tilted his massive blond head forward and intoned: "And now for our daily commentary from Joe Ruddier. What do you make of all this, Joe?"
I perked up as another gigantic and familiar face crowded the screen. Joe Ruddier, another longtime member of the All-Action News Team, had been instantly celebrated for his absolute self-certainty and his passionate advocacy of the local teams. His face, always verging toward bright red and now a sizzling purple, had swollen to twice its earlier size. Ruddier had evidently been promoted to political commentary.
"What do I make of all this? I'll tell you what I make of this! I think it's a disgrace! What happened to the Millhaven where a guy could go out for a beer an' a bratwurst without stumbling over a severed head? And as for outside agitators—"
I used the remote to mute this tirade when the telephone rang.
As before, I picked it up to keep the ringing from waking John Ransom, and as before, it was necessary to establish my identity as an old friend from out of town before the caller would reveal his own identity. But this time, I thought I knew the caller's name as soon as a hesitant voice asked, "Mr. Ransom? Could I speak to Mr. Ransom?" A name I had heard on the answering machine came immediately into my mind.
I said that John was sleeping and explained why a stranger was answering his telephone.
"Oh, okay," the caller said. "You're staying with them for a while? You're a friend of the Ransoms?"
I explained that, too.
Long pause. "Well, could you answer a question for me? You know what's happening with Mrs. Ransom and everything, and I don't want to keep disturbing Mr. Ransom. He never—I don't know if—…"
I waited for him to begin again.
"I wonder if you could just sort of fill me in, and everything."
"Is your name Byron Dorian?"
He gasped. "You've heard about me?"
"I recognize your style," I said. "You left a message on John's machine this morning."
"Oh! Hah!" He gave a weak chuckle, as if he had caught me trying to amuse him. "So, what's happening with April, with Mrs. Ransom? I'd really like to hear that she's getting better."
"Would you mind telling me your connection to the Ransoms?"
"My connection?"
"Do you work at Barnett?"
There came another uneasy laugh. "Why, is something wrong?"
"Since I'm acting for the family," I said, "I just want to know who I'm talking to."
"Well, sure. I'm a painter, and Mrs. Ransom came to my studio when she found out what sort of work I was doing, and she liked what she saw, so she commissioned me to do two paintings for their bedroom."
"The nudes," I said.
"You've seen them? Mrs. Ransom liked them a lot, and that was really flattering to me, you've probably seen the rest of their collection, all that great work, you know, it was like having a patron, well, a patron who was a friend…"
His voice trailed off. Through one of the glass panels beside the front door I watched the reporters tossing crumpled candy bar wrappers toward the hedge. Five or six elderly people had taken up places on the steps and sidewalk across the street and settled in to enjoy the show.
"Well," I said, "I'm afraid I have bad news for you."
"Oh, no," said Dorian. .
"Mrs. Ransom died this morning."
"Oh, no. Did she ever recover consciousness?"
"No, she didn't. Byron, Mrs. Ransom did not die of her injuries. Walter Dragonette managed to find out that she was in Shady Mount and that her condition was improving, and he got past the guard this morning and killed her."
"On the day he got arrested?"
I agreed that it seemed almost unbelievable.
"Well, what—what kind of world is this? What is going on? Did he know anything about her?"
"He barely knew her," I said.
"Because she was, this was the most amazing woman, I mean there was so much to her, she was incredibly kind and generous and sympathetic…" For a time I listened to him breathing hard. "I'll let you go back to what you were doing. I just never thought—"
"No, of course not," I said.
"It's too much."
The reporters were gathering for another siege of the door, but I could not hang up on Byron Dorian while his grief pummeled him, and I peered out the slit of window while listening to his stifled moans and gasps.
When his voice was under control again, he said, "You must think I'm really strange, carrying on like this, but you never knew April Ransom."
"Why don't you tell me about her sometime?" I asked. "I'd like to come to your studio and just have a talk."
"That would probably help me, too," he said, and gave me his phone number and an address on Varney Street, in the sad part of town, once a Ukrainian settlement, that surrounded the stadium.
I checked on the reporters, who had settled down to enjoy their third or fourth meal of the day under the appreciative eyes of a growing number of neighbors. Every now and then, some resident of Ely Place tottered through the litter to speak to Geoffrey Bough and his colleagues. I watched a bent old woman with a laden silver tray make her way down the steps of the house across the street, mount Ransom's lawn, and present the various lounging men with cups of coffee.
From my post by the door I saw Jimbo too retrace his steps, reminding his viewers of the extent and nature of Walter Dragonette's crimes, the public outcry, Mayor Waterford's assurances that all would continue to be done to ensure the safety of the citizens. At some point I did not quite mark as I kept watch on Bough and the others, April Ransom's murder passed into the public domain—so John too missed the appearance on the television screen of the Ledger photograph, minus himself, of his wife cradling a gigantic trophy. I know approximately when this happened, four o'clock, because at that time the gathering across the street suddenly doubled in size.
All afternoon, I alternated between watching television, poking through the gnostic gospels, and peering out at the crowd and the waiting reporters. The faces of Walter Dragonette's victims paraded across the screen, from cowboy-suited little Wesley Drum on a rocking horse to huge leering Alfonzo Dakins gripping a beer glass. Twenty-two victims had been identified, sixteen of them black males. Hindsight gave their photographs a uniformly doomed quality. The unknown man found in Dead Man's Tunnel was represented by a question mark. April Ransom's Ledger photograph had been cropped down to her brilliant face. For the few seconds in which she filled the screen, I found that I was looking at the same person whose picture I had seen earlier, but that my ideas about her had begun to change: John's wife seemed smart and vibrant, not hard and acquisitive, and so beautiful that her murder was another degree more heartless than the others. Something had happened since the first time I had seen the photograph: I had become, like John, Dick Mueller, and Byron Dorian, one of her survivors.