Although she had been briefed on what to expect, Professor Whitlaw started to protest. Kate stopped her with a hand on her arm, but it was doubtful that either Sawyer or Hawkin noticed.
“Tell me, David,” Hawkin pleaded, nearly whispering. “You know who did it, you know why,- you even know where he is—you were headed for Texas when they picked you up in Barstow, weren’t you? You know everything and I don’t even know what the dead man’s name is. David, you have to suspend this vow of yours. Just long enough to give me the information I need. Please, David, for God’s sake. For Beatrice’s sake, if nothing else.”
Kate saw David Sawyer’s surrender. With a jolt made of triumph and sorrow and revulsion at Al Hawkins superb skills, she could see the old man succumb, saw the moment when he buckled off the only thing that had held him together through ten hard years. His mouth opened as he searched for words, his own words, a foreign language spoken long ago.
“I…” he said, then stopped. “My name… is David Sawyer.
Eve Whitlaw stood up and went to him, taking up a position behind his chair, her hands resting on his shoulders. He raised his right hand across his chest to take her left hand and, fingers intertwined, he appeared to gather a degree of strength, then continued.
“You know… who… I am. You know… about Kyle Roberts. I… do not need to say anything about… that. You need to know about the man who died. The man… you know as John… was sick. Mentally. His mind and his… spirit had become twisted. He… enjoyed… power over others. He was rich.” Sawyer stopped and with a visible effort pulled himself together. His tongue, so easy and fluent with the complex thoughts of others, seemed unable to produce a sentence more complicated than a four-year-old’s. When he resumed, his words were more sophisticated, but each phrase, occasionally each word, was set apart by a brief pause.
“John was actually a very wealthy man, and he… left his home and his business to… wander. There are others like him on the streets. Not many, but always a few who choose the nomadic way of life for… various reasons, rather than falling into it. He did not change, though. He was—he had been a cutthroat businessman, in land speculation and development. He was proud of his… shady dealings. When he came onto the streets, he remained… sly and manipulative. In many ways, I believe he derived more pleasure from controlling the… destitute and the downtrodden than he had from breaking his business rivals.
“When I came to San Francisco in August, a year and a… half ago, I…” He seemed suddenly to run dry of words. It took a moment with his eyes closed, while he searched for the source, before they began to flow again. “I met John. He had only been here a few months himself. I knew immediately that there was something… wrong with him, and as I watched him move among his friends—and they were friends, real friends—I… felt he was like a jackal, watching for weakness in the herd. I… avoided him as best I could, and we went our separate ways. Until November, All Saint’s Day, when one of his victims tried to commit suicide.
“The man recovered, but something had to be done. So, I offered myself to John. I allowed him to think I possessed a great and awful secret that would… devastate me were it to become known. There was such a secret, of course, but I greatly exaggerated the effects of public knowledge to make it more… appealing to John. I… dropped hints to encourage him to concentrate on me. I did not stop his… activities entirely, but I… became his main focus.”
“How much did he find out?” Hawkin asked quietly.
“I do not think he knew the entire story. He would make guesses, and I would react, you see? He knew there had been deaths, in an academic setting. He knew I felt responsible for those deaths. I believe he hired an investigator, a man was asking questions about me, about eight months ago. But no, I think he would have let me know in… clear ways had he known the full truth.
“It succeeded, in distracting him from others. The most… unpleasant part of the affair was his increasing sense of intimacy with me. Not physically, of course, but emotionally. He took to confiding in me, as I said, recounting the details of his past business coups. He thought it amusing to take something from another, even if he did not actually desire it. He told me a long story once, how he had stolen away the wife of a rival, saw them divorced, and then refused to marry her. He preferred to destroy a thing rather than see it in the hands of another. A very twisted man.”
He stopped again, allowing his head to fall back against Eve Whitlaw’s shoulder.
“Can I get you anything?” Kate asked. “Coffee? A glass of water?” He smiled at her with his eyes and shook his head minutely before looking back at Hawkin.
“I hope you are recording this,” he said. “I’m not going to tell it twice.”
“We’re recording it.”
“Good. So. That was John. You needed to know.”
“What was his real name?”
“John was his middle name. Alexander John Darcy, of Fort Worth, Texas. I thought of him as John Chrysostom, who was called ‘Golden-Mouthed.” Now I will tell you what I know about his death.
“John had a brother who lived near Fort Worth. The two men had been business partners until John left. His leaving created many difficulties for the brother, whose name is Thomas Darcy. John was greatly amused at the problems. Deals were suspended and money was lost because his signature was unavailable.”
As the fluency returned to David Sawyer’s tongue, Kate was aware of other changes, as well. His posture in the chair had become an awkward slump. His right hand remained intertwined with the professor’s, but his left hand wandered up and down, feeling his shirt front, plucking at his trouser legs. And his face—she was briefly reminded of the Dorian Grey story, for as Sawyer’s features relaxed from the attentive and thoughtful pose she had always known there, they aged, becoming almost grim with the sense of burden borne. With a shock, Kate realized that the man in the chair across from her was no longer Brother Erasmus.
“A few months ago, John found out two things. First, a piece of land that had been left him and his brother jointly— worthless scrub,” he called it—was now surrounded by town and a freeway and had become very valuable. Then he discovered that sometime before, Thomas had begun the legal process of declaring his missing brother dead. John was almost dancing with pleasure at the thought of confounding his brother’s plan.“
“He told you these things?”
“Everything. I was safe, you see. I had to listen, and he knew I would not tell the others that, for example, he had money and an apartment he used sometimes. He knew I disapproved of everything he did. Perhaps you could even say I detested it. He felt my reaction, and it gave him wicked pleasure. Yes, wicked is, I think, the word for the man. Not evil, simply wicked.”
“What did he do about his brother?”
“He played games with the telephone at first. He called Thomas, hinting at who he was. Finally he came out in the open. They hadn’t been in touch for five years or more. Thomas was at first shocked, and then he became angry and said he thought it was a hoax. John told him where he was. Thomas flew out here in—I don’t know. September? October? He also drove out once, a month or so later. John kept him dangling for weeks, offering to sign the deed papers, then withdrawing.”
“Did you meet him?”