"Well . . . Mayzie just gave me a hard time, you know? She made me understand how bad I was making her feel . . . when all the time I was only worried about me, and the way I felt. Maybe we ought to be thinking about our perpetrator, and what it was about the Maitlands that annoyed him enough to murder them."
"Come on, they were two ordinary, harmless people." "That's the way we see them. But maybe the perpetrator saw them different."
He went back into the hallway, still looking around. A large oil-painted landscape in a heavy gilt frame was hanging by the front door. He lifted it away from the wall so that he could check behind it.
"Already did that," Hicks said.
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Decker mounted the stairs. Over a dozen paintings were arranged on the wall—views of Richmond and Mechanicsville and Newport News, as well as portraits of smiling children and dogs. There were some photographs, too: sepia pictures of houses and gardens, and group portraits of the Maitland family in the nineteenth century, all in their frock coats and stovepipe hats and crinolines.
Decker reached a group portrait on the turn of the stairs. He examined it very closely, and then he unhooked it and took it down from the wall. "Look at this," he told Hicks. "First Army Corps at Richard's Shop on Catharpin Road, May fifth, 1864, Major General M.L. Maitland commanding."
He took the picture up to the landing and switched on the light so that he could see it more clearly. It showed about twenty-five Confederate officers and men, stiffly posed on a plank road, with a wooden store in the background and overhanging trees. Two of the officers were holding horses, one of which had moved while the photograph was being taken, so that it appeared blurred and ghostly. One of the officers had moved, too: a tall man who was standing a little apart from the others on the right-hand side, at the back of the group. Unlike the others, who were dressed in tunics, he wore a greatcoat. He also wore a slouch hat, which appeared to have a black and ragged cloth knotted around it. Decker could see that he was heavily bearded, but because he had turned his head away during the exposure, it looked as if his face had melted.
"Jerry Maitland told me that Sandra's drawing of the So-Scary Man reminded him of somebody, but he couldn't think who. But look at this guy . . . what do you think?"
Hicks frowned at the photograph with his hand still clamped over his nose and his mouth. "I see what you mean. But this picture was taken over 140 years ago."
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"Of course it was. I'm not suggesting that any of these people are still alive. But something lives on, doesn't it? The spirit of the Old South."
"I don't follow."
"Maybe the So-Scary Man has been dressing up as an officer in the First Army Corps and killing people who were connected with the Civil War in some way."
"Why would he do that?"
"How the hell should I know? But it's possible that he's deluded himself into believing that he is an officer in the First Army Corps. Some of these Civil War nuts—well, they're nuts. Look at Billy Joe Bennett. I was talking to him once and he was getting all worked up about different sorts of frogs."
"Frogs?"
"No, I didn't know either. Frogs are those loops they use to hang their bayonets from their belts. I mean, we're talking about obsession here. These people dress up in uniform and they stage mock battles, with carbines and everything. They trade cap badges and medals and cooking pots and all kinds of junk. We're only talking about one step away from full-blown lunacy."
"Well.. I guess you could have something there. After all, George Drewry was an army man. He might have had ancestors in the Civil War, too. But what about Alison Maitland?"
"Let's see if we can check her family tree, too. Meanwhile, let's get this photograph back to the lab. I want it blown up and enhanced. And let's put a couple of guys on the Internet . . . let's see if they can log on to any Civil War Web sites and chat rooms. Maybe they can come up with some kind of pattern of behavior, or even some names."
They searched the rest of the house, but after an hour
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Decker concluded that they weren't going to find anything else of any interest. He stood in the Maitlands' bedroom while the last light of the day gradually faded, and thought that there was nothing so sad as a once-happy house where people had been violently killed. Even Alison Maitland's pink satin nightdress was still there, neatly folded on her pillow.
"Come on, Hicks," he said. "Only ghosts here now."
They went out and closed the front door behind them. Hicks stood on the porch, held onto the railings, and took in three deep breaths. "That smell . . . I don't think I'll ever get used to it."
Decker slapped him on the back. "The day you get used to it is the day you're ready to quit."
On the way home, Decker called in to see Eunice and Sandra Plummer. They lived downtown on Twenty-seventh Street, at the top of a shabby old brown-brick apartment block that was scheduled for redevelopment. Inside the lobby the building smelled strongly of wax polish and dead flowers. The elevator clanked and rattled like a medieval instrument of torture.
Eunice let him in. "Thank you for stopping by, Lieutenant," she said, tightly, although it was clear that she wasn't very pleased to see him. "Sandra's having her supper right now."
She led him through to the living room, which was crowded with antique furniture. The mustard-colored wallpaper was fading, and the rugs were worn through to the strings, but the apartment had high ceilings and original cast-iron fireplaces and there was a view over the neighboring rooftops toward the sparkling lights along the waterfront. The window was ajar so that Decker could hear the traffic and the chugging of a tugboat.
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Sandra was in the kitchen in a pink robe and slippers, eating cereal. Decker gave her a finger wave through the open door and she waved back at him and flushed in embarrassment.
"How is she?" Decker asked Eunice.
"She's fine. She didn't see anything, thank God, and she didn't realize that poor man was killed."
"I came to apologize for involving her, and you too. Believe me, if I'd had any idea what was going to happen—"
"Well, fortunately no harm was done. But don't expect us to help you again. Sandra is far too precious to me."
"There's no question of it," Decker reassured her. "I've arranged to have your close protection reinstated. I just hope it won't be necessary for very much longer."
"Do you think you're going to be able to catch this man?" "I don't know. I hope so. This is the first time I've ever gone looking for somebody I couldn't see."
"He does have a physical presence, though, doesn't he?"
"Oh, you bet. He threw Gerald Maitland out of the window, and I felt him myself when he pushed me over. And if he has physical presence, that means we can restrain him. Theoretically, anyhow."
"It's a trick, isn't it? Like conjurors do."
"Yes, I think it is. All we have to do now is find out what kind of a trick."
Sandra called out from the kitchen and Eunice said, "Excuse me, Lieutenant," and went to see what she wanted. Decker looked around the room, picking up a silver-framed photograph of Sandra when she was a baby, and another photograph of a brown-haired man with a rather baffled-looking George W. Bush–type squint. Sandra's father, maybe.
Seven or eight of Sandra's sketches and watercolors were arranged on either side of the fireplace. Decker found her work unexpectedly moving—every drawing done with
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such atmosphere, and such attention to detail—and what a sadness it was that she probably wouldn't live beyond her twenties. Her most striking picture was a fine colored-crayon drawing of Main Street Station, with its Beaux Arts balconies, its orange roof tiles and its fairy-tale dormer windows.