“You know, the usual claptrap about who am I, what am I, where did I originate from, where am I going to after this life, all of it. Went from one belief system to the next, trying to tie it all together, but nothing ever really satisfied him.”
“What did the family think of the name change?” asked Parry.
“Not much, but then they didn't give Maurice much thought anyway. They didn't approve of his lifestyle.”
“Then his family name was-”
“Harris. Maurice's real name was Patrick William Harris-Pattie, I grew up calling him-but that was too… too standard issue for him.”
“For his soul, you mean?” Kim interjected.
“That's right, for his friggin' too sensitive soul! I loved him for it, his sensitivity, but I also hated him for it-for the depth of it, for the obsessiveness of it, and now for this.”
“For getting himself killed over it?” asked Jessica.
“For doing this, for hurting me and our parents. I know it has to do with his personality. He was a victim waiting to happen.”
Jessica offered her a shoulder to cry on. She took it, and after some long moments of sobbing, the young woman sat back again, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief Parry had provided earlier. “I hate him for what he's done.”
“Did he think he was born at the wrong time and place?” Kim asked. “I mean, judging from his paintings and furnishings…”
'Try wrong dimension,” she countered. “Maurice was a misfit in this life; always had been.”
“Can you explain that further?” pressed Jessica.
Linda Sue looked into Jessica's eyes. “Pattie, he once told me he thought he'd been born with the heart and soul of a butterfly, that he'd somehow gotten his wires crossed and ought to be in life as a butterfly, said his life as a human would be as short as a butterfly's life as a result. Said he was born in the wrong time and place and with the wrong name, so he dreamed up Maurice Deneau. Been going by it since he turned old enough to vote.”
“And how old is… was Maurice?”
“All of twenty-four going on thirteen. Never wanted to grow up. Damn you, Pattie,” she finished with a fist to the sky, as if cursing his spirit.
Parry knelt beside her now and said, 'Tell me, was Maurice… Pat… was he-”
“Gay! Spit it out, and what's that got to do with anything? Damn people, damn people for condemning my brother. Yes, his sexual orientation was gay, but he wasn't loose. He didn't sleep around, and I doubt he'd give you a second look, mister.” Jessica stifled a laugh at this.
The girl continued: “He remained true to anyone who was man enough to remain faithful to him. That was Maurice, and for the time being that jerk Tom Ainsworth was it, but they were having problems, you can bet, but Maurice and Tom've been together for the past three years, you know?”
“Sounds like your brother was a caring person,” offered Jessica.
“Caring as we humans get, but what did it get him but killed? He took people in, people who were in need. Tom got tired of it. Maurice lent them money and gave them things, and as a result he had people coming and going through his life all the time, and secretly, I think he liked it that way, regardless of what he told himself in that diary, or what he told me.” She dropped her head, sobbed further. “The Good Samaritan, that was Maurice, and Jesus but he liked the role he played.”
Jessica gently urged Linda Sue to go on.
“He believed in a pure and saving-grace kinda love that he had been searching for since his birth, but Ainsworth wasn't it, and he looked for it in all the wrong places. Said he'd recognize it when… whenever it came along. He was a fucking romantic; absolutely addicted to it.”
“Why do you think Thomas Ainsworth got him killed?”
“That idiot kept hurting Pattie. Ainsworth slept around. He… Pattie knew that Ainsworth had just been using him these past months. It sent Pattie into a grave… grave depression. Sent him out nights looking.”
She wrung her hands and dabbed at her eyes. “ 'Course, it wasn't all Tom's fault that it ended in failure. Nobody could measure up to Maurice's standards. The perfect partner would have to be from another era, like one of those freaks in the paintings all over his place. Crazy bastard.” She burst into tears once more. Sturtevante now held up the parchment with the poem they suspected to have been written by Maurice, and she asked point-blank, “Ever see anything like this before around your brother's place?”
The girl stared. “The Poet Killer. I saw it on the news. My brother was killed by the Poet?” News people had not been told that the killer left his poems emblazoned on the backs of his victims.
“Do you know this handwriting? Ever see it before?”
“Never.”
“Then it's not your brother's?”
“No… no… well, I mean, isn't it the killer's handwriting?”
Jessica took Linda Sue's hands in her own. “We need you to be clear on this, Linda. We have reason to believe that this particular poem may have been written by your brother.”
“He didn't, you know, kill himself, did he?” she asked.
Jessica shook her head emphatically. “No, of that much we are certain.”
The sister stared at the poem, reading its every line. “Sounds like Pattie's prattle. Yeah, looks like his handwriting.”
Sturtevante said, “I'd like you to come back to the station house with me, Miss Harris.”
“What for?”
“Routine questions. Get a fix on your brother's acquaintances, his routine, that sort of thing. Any bit of information, you know, could lead to something else, which in turn could uncover something new in the case, you see.”
“Until the trail leads to his killer, you mean? You have no idea the times I told him the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” She sniffed back sobs. “I won't let you all treat this as a typical death, do you understand me?” Sturtevante put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Of course.”
Jessica reassured her. “There's nothing typical about what's happened here.”
“No, dear,” added Kim, “there's nothing typical at all about this case. You're not to worry on that score.”
NINE
You shall see them on a beautiful quarto page, where a neat rivulet of text shall meander through a meadow of margin.
Philadelphia Police Department, three days later
It had been two days since Jessica's skilled hands and scalpel autopsied the remains of Maurice Deneau, but the procedure on the young man netted them nothing new save for the added DNA sample taken from the tearstains believed to have come from his killer. Thomas Ainsworth agreed to having a sample of his DNA taken so as to be ruled out as a suspect; he'd claimed not to have touched the body beyond attempting to shake Maurice awake. He claimed that when he found this impossible, he immediately called the police, and at no time did he shed tears directly over the body. In fact, he found touching the body repulsive.
All internal organs proved absolutely healthy and disease-free. They had simply ceased to function, along with the brain and the heart. Jessica could simply find no cause of death beyond the unknown toxins in the poisoned ink. Still, they knew the delivery system must be the ink, as they saw no internal destruction to lips, gums, throat, or stomach lining, and there were no exterior marks on the body save the poem. Some poison delivered through pen and ink, but what?
Maurice's autopsy had shown only what they suspected: a young man in good health who had suffered a
