“Mr. Jones,” Halloran rumbled.
“Yes, your honor?”
“Did you bludgeon Chapman Lorraine to death?”
“No, your honor.”
“No?”
John did not answer this question, because he had already done so. He could feel the guilt rising up and out of his body like morning mist under an unrelenting summer sun.
“Mr. Lars,” Halloran said.
“Your honor.”
“Do you intend to pursue the state’s case against this man?”
“Not at this time.”
“You’re dropping the charges?”
“We are.”
“Mr. Jones.”
“Sir,” John said to the judge.
“There’s something wrong here. Something stinks.”
“Is that a question, sir?”
“Don’t you get smug with me, young man. This is my courtroom.”
John thought that the halls of justice belonged to everyone but he did not voice this opinion.
“I’m going to launch an inquiry into this sudden confession,” the judge vowed. “I will see you in my court soon again.”
“France Bickman,” Nina said to John in a small café around the corner from the courthouse.
“What about him?”
“He confessed to the murder of Chapman Lorraine.”
“He just said it was him and they believed it?”
“He had physical knowledge of the murder scene and a motive.”
“What motive?”
“He’d been embezzling money from the ticket and the concession stands for many years. When Lorraine confronted him he killed him and hid the body to keep from going to prison.”
“But I ran away,” John argued. “Isn’t that some kind of proof?”
“You left New York years after Lorraine disappeared. That makes a good argument you had no knowledge of the crime.”
John was thinking about his early morning conversation with the man calling himself Service Tellman. Somehow the Platinum Path had rejiggered the facts in his murder trial.
“Are they going to prosecute France?” John asked Nina.
“No. He’s too old and feeble to be removed from the nursing home.”
“What about the mattress?”
“The one in the wall?”
“Yes.”
“Water damage erased any traces of DNA; also Bickman told the police that you visited him. He said that you told him about the crime being reported over the Internet and he confessed to you. He thought you told the police you committed the murder to protect an old man, the good friend of your father.”
“How did the police even know about France?”
“He called Lieutenant Van Dyne.”
“And so I’m free?”
“Any defense attorney could get this case overturned under these circumstances. With his knowledge, motive and confession Bickman is a perfectly sensible alternative explanation of the crime. There will always be reasonable doubt.”
John called the young law student, Hong Li, but got her answering service.
“Hey,” he said into the cell phone. “This is the confessed man-slaughterer you met on the train this morning. I guess we’ll never find out what I would think of prison because the judge and the prosecutor proved to themselves that I might not have done it. And who am I to argue with law?”
They were waiting for him in his mother’s apartment when he returned later that afternoon. He’d been walking for hours trying to understand how the study of historical deconstruction had come to rule his life. From Herman Jones to Service Tellman he had been reinterpreted until there was no truth possible.
“Hi, honey,” Lucia said to her son. She was sitting in her favorite chair looking out the window.
The man sitting next to her stood up and held out a hand.
“Congratulations,” Willie Pepperdine said.
“What are you doing here?”
Lucia stood up and said, “This is Filo Manetti, honey — my husband. I told you — we got married six years ago.”
There was no more room for shock or surprise in John Woman’s heart. Everything made sense and nothing did.
“When did this all start?” John asked Filo/Willie.
“All what?” Lucia asked.
“Why don’t we have a seat in this magnificent window?” Willie suggested.
“I’ll go make us some tea,” Lucia said. “You boys get to know each other.”
When his mother was gone John, CC, returned to the chair where he used to sit for hours entranced by her beauty and words.
“We aren’t inhuman,” Willie said. “When I met and fell in love with your mother I was mobbed up. I decided to break away because of her. I mean the government was after me but that was par for the course. Pretty soon after we went out west I was approached by Service Tellman. He told me that I’d been on their radar for years. They liked the way I worked with my people and their families. You know I’ve always been more businessman than thug, so when I broke with my crew the Path offered me a position. Just like they’re doing with you now.”
“But that’s because of you, right?”
“Partially. Your mother asked me to try to find you after your father died and you didn’t return home. I was able to trace your father’s credit cards. You were Anthony Summers by then, about to enter Yale. I didn’t tell your mother, because it seemed like you wanted a new life and we were all safer if that life remained a secret.
“It wasn’t until a few years later that I told Service about you. He read the papers you wrote and was very impressed with your knowledge and sophistication. That’s when the Path started monitoring you.
“I had convinced your mother that you’d faded into New York somewhere. When you were in your second year at NUSW I told her about the cable TV show and said that we’d figure out how to get you guys together.”
“So it was you that had NUSW approach me,” John postulated.
“Actually it was Service himself. He was already dead, and this gave him more time to develop high-level membership. He shepherded you along from the time you were first offered the chance to apply for the position.”
“Like I was some kind of lab rat or something.”
Willie Pepperdine/Filo Manetti shrugged and gave a half smile.
“The Path is serious business, CC. Our goal is to actually change the course of human events so that people everywhere are on a road to salvation not destruction.
“Every year thousands of geniuses are born but almost all of them fall into poverty, mental illness, criminality, early death and other categories that waste their potential. We take in as many of these advanced beings as possible, giving them a chance to guide their myopic brothers and sisters.”
“So you and I are geniuses?”
“You are. If Service has his way you will be one of a triumvirate that will guide us after he’s gone.”
“He’s already gone.”
Ignoring these last words Willie said, “We approached France Bickman when our plans for you started, assured him that Oregon would never extradite a man in his nineties residing in a state-certified nursing home. I went to him myself. He truly loved your father. He told me that he owed him his life. I would like to have met the man.”
“He was a great man,” John said with pleasure. “He would put this whole conspiracy into perspective.”
“A conspiracy of freedom,” Willie Pepperdine declared.
“I made rose hip tea with scones and clotted cream I got from Dean and Deluca,” Lucia said, coming in from the kitchen.
“Freedom,” John mused. “The last man to offer me that was my father. Then he died and took all hope with him.”
Part Four
The Last Class