"But surely not all of your customers spend as much as Mr. Frye did."
"Oh, of course not. There are only two or three others like him, with his resources. But I've got a few dozen clients who budget approximately ten thousand dollars a year for their purchases."
"That's incredible," Joshua said.
"Not really," Hawthorne said. "These people feel that they are teetering on the edge of a great discovery, on the brink of learning some monumental secret, the riddle of life. Some of them are in pursuit of immortality. And some are searching for spells and rituals that will bring them tremendous wealth or unlimited power over others. Those are persuasive motivations. If they truly believe that just a little more forbidden knowledge will get them what they want, then they will pay virtually any price to obtain it."
Joshua swung around in his swivel chair and looked out the window. Low gray clouds were scudding in from the west, over the tops of the autumn-somber Mayacamas Mountains, bearing down on the valley.
"Exactly what aspect of the occult interested Mr. Frye?" Joshua asked.
"He collected two kinds of books loosely linked to the same general subject," Hawthorne said. "He was fascinated by the possibility of communicating with the dead. Séances, table knockings, spirit voices, ectoplasmic apparitions, amplification of ether recordings, automatic writing, that sort of thing. But his greatest interest, by far, lay in literature about the living dead."
"Vampires?" Joshua asked, thinking about the strange letter in the safe-deposit box.
"Yes," Hawthorne said. "Vampires, zombies, creatures of that sort. He couldn't get enough books on the subject. Of course, I don't mean that he was interested in horror novels and cheap sensationalism. He collected only serious nonfiction studies--and certain select esoterica."
"Such as?"
"Well, for instance ... in the esoterica category ... he paid six thousand dollars for the hand-written journal of Christian Marsden."
"Who is Christian Marsden?" Joshua asked.
"Fourteen years ago, Marsden was arrested for the murders of nine people in and around San Francisco. The press called him the Golden Gate Vampire because he always drank his victim's blood."
"Oh, Yes," Joshua said.
"And he also dismembered his victims."
"Yes."
"Cut off their arms and legs and heads."
"Unfortunately, I remember him now. A gruesome case," Joshua said.
The dirty gray clouds were still rolling across the western mountains, moving steadily toward St. Helena.
"Marsden kept a journal during his year-long killing spree," Hawthorne said. "It's a curious piece of work. He believed that a dead man named Adrian Trench was trying to take over his body and come back to life through him. Marsden genuinely felt that he was in a constant, desperate struggle for control of his own flesh."
"So that when he killed, it wasn't really him killing, but this Adrian Trench."
"That's what he wrote in his journal," Hawthorne said. "For some reason he never explained, Marsden believed that the evil spirit of Adrian Trench required other people's blood to keep control of Marsden's body."
"A sufficiently screwy story to present to a court in a sanity hearing," Joshua said cynically.
"Marsden was sent to an asylum," Hawthorne said. "Six years later, he died there. But he wasn't faking insanity to escape a prison sentence. He actually believed that the spirit of Adrian Trench was trying to cast him out of his own body."
"Schizophrenic."
"Probably," Hawthorne agreed. "But I don't think we should rule out the possibility that Marsden was sane and that he was merely reporting a genuine paranormal phenomenon."
"Say again?"
"I'm suggesting that Christian Marsden might really have been possessed in some way or other."
"You don't mean that," Joshua said.
"To paraphrase Shakespeare--there are a great many things in heaven and earth that we do not and cannot understand."
Beyond the large office window, as the slate-colored bank of clouds continued to press into the valley, the sun sank westward, beyond the Mayacamas, and the autumn dusk came prematurely to St. Helena.
As he watched the light bleed slowly out of day, Joshua said, "Why did Mr. Frye want the Marsden journal so badly?"
"He believed he was living through an experience similar to Marsden's," Hawthorne said.
"You mean, Bruno thought some dead person was trying to take over his body?"
"No," Hawthorne said. "He didn't identify with Marsden, but with Marsden's victims. Mr. Frye believed that his mother--I think her name was Katherine--had come back from the dead in someone else's body and was plotting to kill him. He hoped that the Marsden journal would give him a clue about how to deal with her."
Joshua felt as if a large dose of ice-cold water had been injected into his veins. "Bruno never mentioned such a thing to me."
"Oh, he was quite secretive about it," Hawthorne said. "I'm probably the only person he ever revealed it to. He trusted me because I was sympathetic toward his interest in the occult. Even so, he only mentioned it once. He was quite passionate in his belief that she had returned from the dead, quite terrified of falling prey to her. But later, he was sorry that he had told me."
Joshua sat up straight in his chair, amazed, chilled. "Mr. Hawthorne, last week Mr. Frye attempted to kill a woman in Los Angeles."
"Yes, I know."
"He wanted to kill her because he thought that she was actually his mother hiding in a new body."
"Really? How interesting."
"Good God, sir! You knew what was going on in his mind. Why didn't you do something?"
Hawthorne remained cool and serene. "What would you have had me do?"
"You could have told the police! They could have questioned him, looked into the possibility that he needed medical attention."
"Mr. Frye hadn't committed a crime," Hawthorne said. "And beyond that, you're presuming he was crazy, and I make no such presumption."
"You're joking," Joshua said incredulously.
"Not at all. Perhaps Frye's mother did come back from the grave to get him. Maybe she even succeeded."
"For God's sake, that woman in Los Angeles was not his mother!"
"Maybe," Hawthorne said. "Maybe not."
Although Joshua was still sitting in his big office chair, and although the chair was still resting squarely on a solid floor, he felt curiously off balance. He had pictured Hawthorne as a rather cultured, mild-mannered, bookish fellow who had gotten into his unusual line of business largely because of the profits it offered. Now Joshua began to wonder if that image was altogether wrong. Maybe Latham Hawthorne was as strange as the merchandise he sold.
"Mr. Hawthorne, you're obviously a very efficient and successful businessman. You sound as if you're well-educated. You're far more articulate than most people I meet these days. Considering all of that, I find it difficult to believe that you put much credence in such things as séances and mysticism and the living dead."
"I scoff at nothing," Hawthorne said. "And in fact I think my willingness to believe is less surprising than your stubborn refusal to do so. I don't see how an intelligent man can not realize that there are many worlds beyond our own, realities beyond that in which we live."
"Oh, I believe the world is filled with mysteries and that we only partially perceive the nature of reality," Joshua said. "You'll get no argument from me on that. But I also think, in time, our perceptions will be sharpened and the mysteries all explained by scientists, by rational men working in their laboratories--not by superstitious cultists burning incense and chanting nonsense."