“How many times?” I said. “Give me a ballpark figure. A hundred times? Two hundred?”
He looked back at me, scratching his beard.
“Where does it happen, Rose? In the showers? How many times have you been raped in the showers?”
“You’re a fool.” His voice had a sudden edge to it.
“They’ve got an expression for that, don’t they? Being afraid of the alligators? That’s when you’re afraid to take a shower because you know you’re gonna get raped again, right?”
“You’re all fools.”
“Tell me about Raymond Julius,” I said.
“I don’t know this name.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve been talking to him. Or writing letters to him.”
“It’s an interesting name. I like it.”
“Which was it? Did you talk to him or write letters?”
“The name has a good sound to it.”
“Did he visit you?”
“Many people visit me.”
“Yeah, I bet they line up at the gates every morning.”
“I have many friends. They come to see me and ask my advice.”
“Advice on what? How to be a crazy fucking headcase?”
“They come from all over the world.”
“Two daughters, Rose. Two little girls. You killed their father.”
“I killed both of them,” he said.
“Both of whom?”
“I shot both of them,” he said. “And they both died.”
“Who died?”
“The policemen. They both died. I removed them.”
“Hey guess what, Rose.” I leaned in closer to the glass. “Look at me. I didn’t die.”
“I removed both of them.”
“I didn’t die, Rose. You didn’t remove me.”
“They died. I removed them.”
“I was at the trial, remember? I helped put you away.”
“I’m enjoying this,” he said. “I really am. You should come back more often.”
“Look, I don’t care if you think you-” I stopped. Wait a minute, I thought. Something is not right here. The man is saying he killed me. He thinks I’m dead. There’s no way he would have told Julius all this shit about me being the chosen one if he didn’t even think I was alive.
Unless he was just trying to fool me now. Unless he was playing a game with me.
“I’m going to ask you this one more time,” I said. “Has a man named Raymond Julius been in contact with you or not?”
“Why do you need to know this?”
“Never mind why,” I said. “Just tell me.”
“You really do look like that policeman,” he said. “The resemblance is remarkable.”
I lunged at the glass. “Just tell me, Goddamn it!”
Rose went backward in his chair, tipping it over. The phone jumped out of his hand. The sound he made was an inhuman shriek, the look on his face was sudden, complete terror. The guard on the other side had to put him in an armlock and usher him away. I could hear him screaming as he was dragged out of the cell. The door closed with a metallic thud and then there was silence.
I sat there for a long time. I had never seen such fear in a man. For a tenth of a second, I almost felt sorry for him. Then I thought about Franklin and his family and got over it.
Browning was waiting for me when I left the room. “You certainly pushed his hot button,” he said. “They’re going to have to sedate him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“So I’m going to ask you a question now.”
“No harm asking.”
“Has Rose had any contact with a man named Raymond Julius in the last six months? Letters or visits?”
He exhaled heavily and looked up the hallway. “Walk this way,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“To the exit.”
“Fine,” I said. “I give up.”
He walked me back through the waiting room and out the door. I was expecting a handshake and a good-bye, but he gave me a little bit more. “You didn’t hear this from me,” he said. “Rose has had no outside contact for the past five years.”
“None at all? Are you sure?”
“None. No letters. No lawyer calls. No visits since a mental health follow-up five years ago. Even then, the file says he just sat there, wouldn’t say a word. So that’s it. I hope that tells you what you need to know. Have a safe trip back.” He shook my hand and then he was gone.
I got in the truck, drove through the gate, watched the prison recede in my rearview mirror. When I made the highway I turned the radio on for a minute and then turned it back off. I wasn’t ready for noise yet. I needed to think.
Okay, so Julius never really talked to Rose. So what? Maybe it was all in his head. He read the clippings and then he imagined that Rose was talking to him in the shower or in his sleep or wherever the hell else.
So how did he know about the microwaves and the chosen one and all that? Because he was nuts. Because Rose is nuts and Julius is nuts and that’s how they think. Paranoia, fear of technology, delusions about a messiah, it all comes with the territory, right? They were both tuned to the same station.
And the rest of it you’re just imagining, Alex. If you keep it up, you’re going to end up just as crazy as they are. So just find a way to put it behind you. Rose is in prison forever, Julius is in the ground. It’s over. O-V-E-R.
I turned the radio back on and settled in for a long drive back. I was in no rush this time. I figured I’d just keep driving until I got hungry or tired. Pull over, have some dinner, maybe get a room for a night. Probably do me some good, a night away from everything.
By the time I reached Lansing, the sun was beginning to go down. I started to relax a little bit. Just a little.
By the time I reached Alma, I started to see a few flakes in the air again. Winter would come quickly, as it always did. Soon the cabins would be buried in two feet of snow. There wasn’t much hunting in the winter, just some rabbit and coyote. There’d be mostly snowmobilers renting the cabins, maybe some ice fisherman. The locks would close, the bay and the river would freeze over, so hard you’d be able to walk across it, all the way to Canada if you wanted to.
I stopped for dinner in Houghton Lake, found a little place that served fresh walleye. I thought about Sylvia, what might happen to the two of us. She said she didn’t know if we could start over. I wondered if we really could, or if the guilt and the pain would come back to ruin everything. But then as I went back to the truck and breathed the cold night air, I got a little boost from somewhere. A second wind, whatever you want to call it. Back when I was playing ball we’d have a lot of doubleheaders late in the summer. You usually try to split your catchers, but there were a couple times when I had to work both games. A whole day behind the plate, setting up for the pitch, standing up to throw the ball back, setting up again, a good three hundred times. Trying to keep the pitcher’s head together, holding runners on base, taking foul balls off the mask. By the middle of the second game, I’d be so drained they’d have to help me off the bench so I could strap the shinpads back on.
But on a good day, I’d find something extra in the last couple innings, some reserve of strength that I didn’t know about. That one day in Columbus, my best day as a ballplayer, I drove in the go-ahead run in the eighth inning, and then in the ninth I had to block the plate on their big first baseman. He was coming down that line like a house on wheels. I caught the ball just before he hit me. When I came to, I checked to see if I still had the ball and then I checked to see if my head was still attached. The umpire called him out and we won the game.
It felt good to think about those days again, to think about anything else for a change.
And then around Gaylord, it started to come to me. I thought about Julius again. And about everything that had happened. Everything I had seen, everything that had been said. I couldn’t keep it out of my mind any longer. For the first time, I had stopped thinking about it, and now that I looked at it again, I was starting to see some things I had missed.
By the time I got to Mackinac, I had it all worked out. I could see how it all fit together, from beginning to end. And what I saw made me mad.