“Yeah, the cops there thought it was done to cover up the murder.”
“They may’ve told the press that, but I’ll bet there were some cops down there who didn’t believe it.”
“What’re you thinking?” she asked again.
“Might’ve been somebody burning a book. He left it burning and the fire spread and burned the house.”
Bowman had come out of the restaurant, standing off to one side to grab a smoke. I looked at Trish and the question that had nagged at me all morning bubbled up and out.
“Why would he leave the blind woman alive?”
“You tell me.”
“Because of her blindness. That’s the one thing all the others had in common that made her different. They could see.”
“He knew she couldn’t see him. Couldn’t identify him.”
“That’s the logical answer. But this bird wasn’t thinking logically. And I can think of another possibility.”
She shook her head. “I must be dense.”
“There was something in the book. Something they could see and she couldn’t. Something that had been put in or bound in by mistake. Something so awful in the killer’s mind that it had to be retrieved, and anybody who had seen it killed.”
“I don’t know, Janeway.”
“I don’t know either. I’m just doing what cops always do in murder cases, I’m playing it through in my head. Maybe he never intended to kill anybody. But he went to St. Louis to get his book back, and Hockman wouldn’t play. Now we get into the collector’s mentality. Hockman suddenly knew he had something unique. He wasn’t about to give it up, not for Jesus Christ, not for Daryl Grayson himself. The only way to get it from him was to kill him.”
“Keep going,” she said, but her voice was still laced with doubt.
“The killer was single-minded, you figured that out yourself. He flew from A to B , and so on. He had one thing on his mind, getting that book. There was a desperate urgency to it, the cause transcended geography, transcended everything: he couldn’t think about anything else. So he gets to St. Louis and Hockman won’t give it to him. He whacks Hockman, maybe in a fit of rage. Now he’s a killer.”
I let that thought settle on her for a few seconds.
“Let me tell you something about killers, Trish…something you might know but never thought about. There are people who never kill till they’re forty, fifty, then they kill a dozen times. That first one pushes them over the edge, sets them on a dark path they never intended to travel. The first one’s the catalyst: there’s no question after that. He goes to Phoenix and this time he doesn’t even ask. He wades in, kills the people, takes the book. And so it goes.”
“Until he gets to Baltimore…”
“And he walks into the room and there’s this woman, obviously blind, with a dog and all, maybe a cane leaning against a table. She’s blind, she didn’t see anything, she’s not part of this. He leaves her alive.”
“But who’d go to such a length? Who’d do something like that?”
“Only one guy I can think of. The guy who made it.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Jesus, Janeway, what’re you thinking?” she asked for the third time, her voice now an urgent whisper.
“Did you ever talk to the coroner who did the Graysons?”
“No,” she said in a tiny voice. “There was never a reason.”
“There was never any doubt that it was really Darryl and Richard Grayson who died in that fire?”
She never got to answer because Bowman came back and got in beside us. We sat in the car, still as death, thinking about it.
All this time we’ve had the wrong motive, I was thinking. We’ve been thinking money, but that was never it. All the specter of money had done was cloud it. Only after Scofield had begun to collect Grayson and the books had become so avidly sought and eagerly paid for did money become a credible possibility. But this case had begun long before that.
The clock pushed ten: the breakfast rush was over. Scofield and Kenney had been inside more than two hours.
“They must be getting discouraged by now,” I said.
It was on that weary note that Pruitt arrived.
45
He was the invisible man, leaving footprints in the snow. Watch out for old ladies , Slater had said, but you still couldn’t see him except that he was carrying Scofield’s suitcase. The suitcase was like the snow in that old horror film: it lit him up, made his tracks visible so you could pop him as he ran across the yard. It danced of its own volition, as if the arm clutching it against the gingham dress had vanished. He had tried to cover it with a shawl, which was too small. I sat up straight in the seat, so suddenly that Trish jumped up with a jerk of her own. “What’s going on?” she said, but I was already out of the truck, splashing after the hooded squaw who moved between cars and headed across the muddy yard twenty yards to our right. He looked like old Mother Bates in Psycho , walking with the sure and deadly gait of a man. I fell in behind him and we headed out toward the row of cars parked by the road. The wind whipped at his shawl and clutched the corners of his hood. I got a glimpse of cheek as he half-turned and tried to look back. But he didn’t turn far enough: he was caught in the Satchel Paige syndrome, afraid to look, afraid to see how much trouble followed him. If he could make it to his car without having to look upon his enemy, he’d be home free.
He didn’t make it.
“Pruitt,” I said, and he spun on his heel and locked in my eyes from a distance of six feet.
His free hand slipped down into the folds of his dress. I danced in close and grabbed him. With the other hand I ripped away the suitcase and made him fumble it. It popped open on the ground and the wind sucked up the money, a fluttery gale of greenbacks that blew back across the yard toward the cafe. He cried out and tried to dive down and save it. I met him coming down with a knee to the jaw, flopping him back on his ass in the mud.
It was all fast motion and unreal after that. I stood over him and said, “Take out that gun and I’ll kick your head off,” but I knew that wouldn’t stop him. He cleared the dress with a handful of iron and I drove my shoe under his armpit. He grabbed at the sky, fired a round in the air, and I nailed him hard with the other foot. He withered, twisting in agony like a deflating balloon, rolling under the wheels with a gaffing, hissing sound. I kicked his gun and it spun off into a puddle. I knew I had hurt him, maybe busted his ribs, but he wasn’t finished yet. He still had the knife, and as I dragged him out, he rolled into me with the blade leading the way. I caught his wrist with a wet smack. For a few seconds we strained against each other while the point of the knife quivered like a seismograph that couldn’t tell if an earthquake was coming. Then I knew I had him. I saw it first in his eyes, that chink in the hard shell that comes to all bullyboys when they play one hand too many. He didn’t look mean anymore. He looked small and tired and astonished.
“Now you are going to tell me where the girl is.” I said this with the knife at my throat but the tide turning fast. His arm collapsed and he let the knife fall away as if surrender could save him. I hit him hard with my fist so he’d know better, and I hit him again, then again, then I lost track as I battered his face back and forth. I could hear my voice pounding at him as well, “Where is she…where is she,” with every punch, and after a while he stopped saying he didn’t know. I felt Trish on my back, heard her screaming at me to for Christ’s sake stop it, but for that long minute stopping was just not possible. I had slipped over the edge and become every bad cop who ever took up a rubber hose or swung a billy club in anger.
Trish grabbed me around the neck. I shrugged her off and went at Pruitt again.