A few safety lights were on here and there throughout the vast space of the basement. Everywhere in the basement were large, bulky objects, crates and counters and stands from the Exhibition Hall, he guessed, and scenery flats from amateur productions in Public Auditorium. Facing him was the tranquil scene of an English garden.
“… my husband and I listen to you, have known your problems …”
Fletch moved forward toward the center of the basement, around the English garden scene.
“Betsy …?”
Doris Wheeler’s amplified voice was coming through the ceiling like so many nails. “We know what you have paid into your schools, your farms, your stores, your families, your lives.” Each phrase came through the ceiling hard, bright, penetrating, scratchy.
In the basement there was a flubbery cry.
“Betsy!” Fletch bellowed.
Again there was the sound of feet scuffling on cement.
Fletch’s eyes finally were adjusting to the dim light.
And then there was what sounded like a hard punch.
There was an explosion of air from lungs, a gasp, a shrill, hysterical scream.
“Walsh!” Fletch yelled.
He threw his weight against a huge packing crate, which must have been empty. Lightly it skidded across the floor.
Fletch fell. He rolled over on the floor and looked up.
His back to Fletch, a man had a woman pinned into a corner of the basement.
Sitting on the floor, quietly Fletch said, “Walsh.”
Walsh twisted his neck around to look at Fletch. Walsh’s face was wild.
He had one hand behind Betsy’s head. The other was over her mouth.
Her fingers were against his biceps. She was trying to push him away. Her eyes were bulging.
“Hey, Walsh,” Fletch said. “You’re out of your mind. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“… you will have a friend in the White House, a man who …”
Walsh looked up at the ceiling of the basement. The low safety lights lit the whites of his eyes.
Fletch stood up. “I’m here, Walsh. There’s nothing more you can do.”
After a moment of applause, Doris Wheeler’s voice again penetrated the ceiling. “Someone in the White House …”
Walsh’s left hand pushed Betsy’s head forward from the wall. He looked her in the face. He raised his left hand from behind her head.
Walsh’s right fist slammed into Betsy’s face.
Her head banged into the corner of the walls and bounced out. Her eyes became entirely white.
“Walsh! Let go!”
Standing behind Walsh, Fletch raised his own arms as high as they would go, and brought the sides of his hands down full strength onto the muscles between Walsh’s neck and shoulders.
Walsh dropped his arms.
Betsy’s knees jerked forward. Bleeding from her nose, chin on her chest, Betsy slumped forward.
Fletch tried to catch her.
Walsh staggered into him.
Betsy fell into the corner on the floor.
Walsh backed along the wall. His head was lowered. He was trying to raise his hands.
“Take it easy, Walsh. Just stay still.”
Walsh turned. He stumbled along the wall.
Fletch grabbed him by a shoulder. Spun him around. Hit him hard, once, in the face. Once in the stomach.
Walsh fell. He could not raise his arms to protect himself as he fell. He landed flat.
He gasped for air. He brought one hand, slowly, to his bleeding face.
“Stay there, Walsh,” Fletch said.
Betsy was unconscious. Her nose was broken and pouring blood. Her left cheekbone was bruised blue. There was a bleeding gash at the back of her head.
Gently, Fletch pulled her out of the corner. He put her on her side on the floor, against the wall. He put his suit jacket under her head. Some blood ran out of her mouth.
Walsh had rolled over and was lying on his back.
Fletch stood over him. “It’s over now, Walsh.”
Walsh was breathing hard. His face was bloody, too.
“… Caxton Wheeler, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue …”
“Can you walk, Walsh? Betsy’s hurt. We’ve got to get an ambulance for her.”
Walsh’s glazed eyes were staring at the ceiling.
Through the ceiling Doris Wheeler’s voice came, insistent, demanding: “… the White House … the White House … the White House …”
Walsh said: “God, damn Mother.”
35
“It’s open,” said Governor Caxton Wheeler. “Come in.”
Fletch had knocked softly on the ajar door to the governor’s suite. He had not known if the governor might be asleep. He doubted it. On the other hand he did not know the full magic in Dr. Thom’s little black bag. He had not even known if the governor was still in town.
“ ’Mornin’,” Fletch mumbled.
The electric lamps in the living room of the suite were still on. Their lights were fading fast in the dawn light coming through the windows.
Dressed as they had been onstage at Public Auditorium the night before, Doris and Caxton Wheeler were sitting on a divan. On the cushion between them they were holding hands. Two out-sized people, ridiculously dressed for that hour of the morning; two world-famous faces now wearing new expressions of utter dejection; two human beings devastated by tragedy.
“Is Walsh all right?” Caxton asked.
“Broken collarbone. Cut on his face,” Fletch answered. “Dazed. Deep in shock, I guess.”
“And the woman? Ms Ginsberg?”
“Severe concussion. No skull fracture. Cut on the back of her head. Broken nose. Some loss of blood. She’s in shock, too, of course.”
“I’m in shock,” said Doris Wheeler. Numbly, she was staring at the floor. “Do you believe Walsh killed all those women?”
“Yes,” Fletch said. “I believe he did.”
Fletch had to sit down. His legs ached with exhaustion.
“What in God’s name did we do wrong?” Doris Wheeler asked. “How could he do these things?”
Silently, Fletch waited for the governor’s reaction. Caxton Wheeler looked sympathetically at his wife.
Doubtlessly the two of them had been asking themselves those questions all night.
Finally, Fletch said: “We all thought Walsh was seamless. There is no such thing as a seamless human being. All the pressures of the campaign were coming down on him. Too much. Too long. He had to play Mister Competent, Mister Cool, take all the punches, roll with them, understand and forgive everybody else, but never forgive himself. He had no outlets himself, no way of blowing off steam. He was the one guy who couldn’t yell at anybody,” he said, looking at Doris Wheeler. Then he looked at the governor. “He wasn’t even getting any sleep. Everybody kept packing it into him. He had to blow off. Everybody has to, sooner or later, one way or another.”
“How did you know Walsh was doing these things?” the governor asked. “How did you know enough to find him last night in the basement, stop him?”
“I didn’t know, until just before. He had given me a stack of newspaper clippings to go through, to acquaint myself with the Wisconsin reporters. Out of the stack fell five articles, pinned together, reporting the deaths, the murders, of the five women.”
“Five …” Doris Wheeler said.
“Five. There was a woman in Cleveland, apparently, and a woman in Wichita, we didn’t know about.”
The governor said, “My God.”
“Up to that point, Walsh had been pretending to know nothing about these murders, the three he was questioned about. He said he didn’t know anything about them, didn’t care. He was aloof from all that. When I found his private collection of clippings, I realized he knew more than he was saying, more than we did. That he had a very real anxiety about them.”
“He knew he was committing these murders?” the governor asked.