فصل 04 - بخش 04

4

Shortly after three AM (around the time Fred Peterson was trudging out into his backyard with a footstool from the living room in his left hand and his hangrope over his right shoulder), Jeanette Anderson awoke, needing to pee. The other side of the bed was empty. After doing her little bit of business, she went downstairs and found Ralph sitting in his Papa Bear easy chair, staring at the blank screen of the TV set. She observed him with a wifely eye and noted that he had dropped weight since the discovery of Frank Peterson’s body.

She put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t look around. ‘Bill Samuels said something that’s nagging at me.’

‘What?’

‘That’s just it, I don’t know. It’s like having a word on the tip of your tongue.’

‘Was it about the boy who stole the van?’

Ralph had told her about his conversation with Samuels while the two of them were lying in bed prior to turning out the light, passing it on not because any of it was substantive but because a twelve-year-old boy making it all the way from mid-state New York to El Paso in a series of stolen vehicles was sort of amazing. Maybe not Fate magazine amazing, but still pretty wild. He must really hate his stepdad, Jeannie had said before turning out the light.

‘I think it was something about the kid,’ Ralph said now. ‘And there was a scrap of paper in that van. I meant to check back on that, and it kind of got lost in the shuffle. I don’t think I mentioned it to you.’

She smiled and ruffled his hair, which – like the body under the pajamas – seemed thinner than it had in the spring. ‘You did, actually. You said it might be part of a take-out menu.’

‘I’m pretty sure it’s in evidence.’

‘You told me that, too, hon.’

‘I might go down to the station tomorrow and take a peek. Maybe it will help me put a finger on whatever it was Bill said.’

‘I think that’s a good idea. Time to do something besides brood. You know, I went back and re-read that Poe story. The narrator says that when he was at school, he kind of ruled the roost. But then this other boy arrived who had the same name.’

Ralph took her hand and gave it an absent kiss. ‘Believable enough so far. William Wilson’s not as common a name as Joe Smith, maybe, but it’s not exactly Zbigniew Brzezinski, either.’

‘Yes, but then the narrator discovers that they have the same birth date, and they’re going around in similar clothes. Worst of all, they look something alike. People get them mixed up. Sound familiar?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, William Wilson Number One keeps meeting William Wilson Number Two later in life, and these meetings always end badly for Number One, who turns to a life of crime and blames Number Two. Are you following this?’

‘Considering it’s quarter past three in the morning, I think I’m doing a fine job.’

‘Well, in the end, William Wilson Number One stabs William Wilson Number Two with a sword, only when he looks into a mirror, he sees he’s stabbed himself.’

‘Because there never was any second William Wilson, I take it.’

‘But there was. Lots of other people saw the second one. In the end, though, William Wilson Number One had a hallucination and committed suicide. Because he couldn’t stand the doubleness, I guess.’

She expected him to scoff, but he nodded instead. ‘Okay, that actually makes sense. Pretty damn good psychology, in fact. Especially for … what? The middle of the nineteenth century?’

‘Something like that, yes. I took a class in college called American Gothic, and we read a lot of Poe’s stories, including that one. The professor said people had the mistaken idea that Poe wrote fantastic stories about the supernatural, when in fact he wrote realistic stories about abnormal psychology.’

‘But before fingerprints and DNA,’ Ralph said, smiling. ‘Let’s go to bed. I think I can sleep now.’

But she held him back. ‘I’m going to ask you something now, husband of mine. Probably because it’s late and it’s just the two of us. There’s no one to hear you if you laugh at me, but please don’t, because that would make me sad.’

‘I won’t laugh.’

‘You might.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You told me Bill’s story about the footprints that just stopped, and you told me your story about the maggots that somehow got into the cantaloupe, but both of you were speaking in metaphors. Just as the Poe story is a metaphor for the divided self … or so my college prof said. But if you strip the metaphors away, what do you have?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘The inexplicable,’ she said. ‘So my question to you is pretty simple. What if the only answer to the riddle of the two Terrys is supernatural?’

He didn’t laugh. He had no urge to laugh. It was too late at night for laughter. Or too early in the morning. Too something, anyway. ‘I don’t believe in the supernatural. Not ghosts, not angels, not the divinity of Jesus Christ. I go to church, sure, but only because it’s a peaceful place where I can sometimes listen to myself. Also because it’s the expected thing. I had an idea that’s why you went, too. Or because of Derek.’

‘I would like to believe in God,’ she said, ‘because I don’t want to believe we just end, even though it balances the equation – since we came from blackness, it seems logical to assume that it’s to blackness we return. But I believe in the stars, and the infinity of the universe. That’s the great Out There. Down here, I believe there are more universes in every fistful of sand, because infinity is a two-way street. I believe there’s another dozen thoughts in my head lined up behind each one I’m aware of. I believe in my consciousness and my unconscious, even though I don’t know what those things are. And I believe in A. Conan Doyle, who had Sherlock Holmes say, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”’

‘Wasn’t he the guy who believed in fairies?’ Ralph asked.

She sighed. ‘Come upstairs and let’s get funky. Then maybe we’ll both sleep.’

Ralph went willingly enough, but even while they were making love (except at the moment of climax, when all thought was obliterated), he found himself remembering Doyle’s dictum. It was smart. Logical. But could you amend it to Once you eliminate the natural, whatever remains must be supernatural? No. He could not believe in any explanation that transgressed the rules of the natural world, not just as a police detective but as a man. A real person had killed Frank Peterson, not a spook from a comic book. So what remained, no matter how improbable? Only one thing. Frank Peterson’s killer had been Terry Maitlan