Doe smiled at him. “Yes, it’s lovely this time of day, and this time of year. Sometimes I think it should be covered with ashes, all the buildings burned, so I could sit on it scraping myself with a potsherd. But,” he added after another sigh, “I expect God has spared me for some purpose. I keep listening.” There seemed nothing to say to that and so they sat for a while watching the shadows play. Then Doe got to his feet and said, “Well, would you like to take a look around? Show you the place, and where it happened and all?”
“That would be real kind of you, sir,” said Barlow, and they followed him, first down to the dock and the boathouse, and they saw that the little apartment above it was fitted up as a studio, and learned that DeWitt Moore had used it as a study.
“You don’t have a boat now?” Paz asked.
“No,” said Doe curtly, and said something else in an undertone.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” said Doe. “Let’s get up to the house. I guess you’re not much interested in gardens and the like.”
Nor was there much of interest, in a forensic sense, in the house. The library was a library, the living room a living room, the furnishings were what one would expect of a wealthy family with traditional tastes, who had absolutely no need to impress anyone. There were more religious pictures than might be the case in other stately homes, and one crucifix that was probably not just for decoration, Paz thought. He was surprised at the general shabbiness of things, quite different from the equipage of the Vargas family. The upstairs bedroom in which Mary Doe had died was stripped, the bare floor and oyster walls reflecting the afternoon light.
They left by a side exit and went into the old barn. When Doe switched the lights on, Paz could not keep back a gasp. The cars were lined up in two rows, gleaming in heraldic colors and mirroring chrome, 1922 and 1948 Cadillacs, a 1927 Hupmobile, several Packards from various eras, a Cord, a classic Mustang, the 1956 Chevy Bel Aire ragtop? Detroit iron in all its glory.
Paz had a thought. “Did you take one of these cars the day of the murder?”
“Why, yes, we did. That one.” Doe pointed to the 1948 Cadillac, a black convertible. “Why do you ask?”
“This may sound strange, but I wonder if you’d indulge me. Could you take it out? Let the three of us go for a drive. Just up to the road and back. The reason is, it might jog something, in your memory, some observation about that day. It might be helpful.” Barlow gave his partner a sharp look, but Paz ignored it.
“Sure,” said Doe, “I don’t see why not. I have to run them all up once a month or so anyway.”
“Who was sitting where?” Paz asked. “I mean on the day?”
“Witt was in the back, Dieter up front with me.”
Paz climbed into the backseat and settled into the soft plush. Barlow got in the shotgun seat and Doe started the car and drove it out into the sun. Paz leaned forward. “Okay, Mr. Doe, say it’s that day now, what’s everyone doing? What’s going on?”
Doe thought for a moment. “Well, let’s see: Dieter was fiddling with his camera, screwing a sun hood on his Hasselblad. It was a bright day. There’s an old darkroom in the house, hadn’t been used since my dad was a kid, and we were talking about setting it up again, so he could make prints while he was here. Things like that. And then … we started talking about Berlin, he’d just been there, about all the building they were doing, and how he’d like to take some pictures of the new construction. His family’s from around there. We talked about the baby, too, and when it would be old enough to travel and show it off to his family. And then we talked about family.”
They had reached the end of the drive. “This far enough?” Doe’s voice sounded tired for the first time.
Barlow said, “That’s fine, Mr. Doe. Sorry to trouble you.”
Doe turned the car around and they drove back. Paz said, “Okay, now you’re coming back. What’s going on, now?”
“We’re talking about the car show … no, that was before. Now we’re talking about, hm, American football, I think. It was football season and we were going to catch the second half of the Pitt-Navy game. I was explaining the rules to Dieter. We talked about the differences between that and soccer and what it said about the American and European characters.”
“Did Witt have anything to add to the conversation?”
A long pause. “I’d have to say no. Why do you ask?”
“Do you recall anything he did during the trip, anything he said, any conversation you were in with him?”
Doe did not respond immediately but steered the car to its slot in the barn and shut off the engine. They all got out. “Now that you mention it, I guess I can’t. He must have been quiet that day. But he often sank into quiet moods. He was a writer, and I guess they’re like that. We used to kid him about it, as a matter of fact. Are you trying to suggest that somehow he wasn’t in the car with us? Because if you are, that’s just nonsense. I’d take my oath on it, he was there all the time.”
“But he didn’t do or say anything you remember, even though you remember a lot of what your other son-in-law did and said?”
A darkness had appeared on Doe’s cheekbones. “Detective, I’m bereaved, but I’m not crazy!”
Barlow said, “Nobody’s saying that, Mr. Doe. We’re just trying to get things straight.”
Paz walked out of the barn. He heard Barlow talking to Doe quietly, settling him, being the good cop. This went on for a lot longer than Paz thought it should. He leaned against the Taurus, lit a cigar, checked his watch. The place was starting to get on his nerves. Paz was not normally an envious man. He thought himself as good as or better than most of the people with whom he came in daily contact; he did not lust after money or fame; he had (until recently) sufficient success with women. Now, however, as he looked around the estate, he felt himself unbearably oppressed by the deep roots it implied. Generations had called this home, portraits of ancestors still lined the stairway walls and hung over the numerous hearths, all portraits (and didn’t it show in their faces!) of securely racinated folk. God’s in His heaven, and the Does are in Sionnet, world without end. Not like Paz the mongrel bastard. Since envy is the one deadly sin that no American can ever admit to, he felt it instead as resentment and personal animus against Jack Doe. Doe was lying to protect his good name, lying to protect his daughter, assuming he was above the law, and what the hell was that goddamn cracker doing in there?
In the Taurus, Paz ruffled through his briefcase for something to read, and remembered the envelope he had picked up as he left the PD. It was from Maria Salazar, he found, a manuscript in a binder, clipped to a note in beautiful looping handwriting, black on cream-colored heavy paper with an engraved address on top. No yellow Post-its for Dr. Salazar. The note said: “Dear Detective Paz: You will recall that we discussed a certain paper that referenced Tour de Montaille and various African cult practices and that this might be relevant to your investigations. With the death of yet another woman, I felt some urgency in bringing the attached to your attention. Unfortunately, as I understand it, the author is deceased, but if I can be of any assistance whatever, do not hesitate to call upon me.”
He turned to the paper. His viscera contracted. It was entitled “Psychotropic Drug Use Among the Olo Sorcerers of Mali,” and its author was J. C. Doe. He read on. Although it was a scholarly paper, Dr. Doe used little jargon and eschewed the academic passive voice. It was pure observation, told from both the inside and the outside. She had herself taken a number of the substances the Olo sorcerers used, and described their effects in some detail. The most remarkable section was one in which she recounted how an Olo sorcerer made himself invisible to her in broad daylight.