Mr. X

    Mullan said, 'Give it a try.'

    “I had a strong feeling that she was having serious health problems, and that I had to get here in a hurry.'

    'Although your mother was not a resident of Edgerton.'

    “I knew she'd come home if she thought she was dying.'

    'You were driving across Ohio with Bob Mims. You got the strong feeling that your mother had come home because she thought she was dying.'

    “It sounds funny, but that's what happened.'

    'Then what?'

    'Mims went off his route to drop me in front of the Motel Comfort, where I met Ashleigh Ashton, and she agreed to give me a ride here the next morning.'

    'When you reached Edgerton the following morning, you requested Assistant District Attorney Ashton to drop you at St. Ann's Community. Not on Cherry Street. You must have had another strong feeling.'

    'You could put it that way. Captain Mullan, why are we talking about this?'

    'For a couple of reasons. Okay. You go to the ICU. You learn that your mother hada stroke. Her heart's in bad shape. Deep down, you know she's dying, but at least you got there in time to see her, talk to her. Communication isn't easy. Every word costs her tremendous effort, and you have to strain to make them out. All these factors make everything she says extremely significant. Am I right?'

    Mullan was still gazing across the room with his legs out before him and his hands laced behind his head.

    “It sounds like you were there.'

    “I have been there,' Mullan said. He took another step toward his mysterious destination. 'Under these conditions, your mother does something unexpected. She grabs your hand and says, 'Edward Rinehart.' And she manages to give you some information about this unknown gentleman.'

    Captain Mullan had fed me precisely enough to let me off the hook. Anything affirmative I said would be right. Mullan wanted to see if I knew that Rinehart was my father.He knew, and at a mere agreement that Star had indeed given me information about the unknown gentleman, he would tell me in a way that implied I had known, too. Mullan wasleading me through a maze. He had pulled the rug from under my feet, but even more, I thought, he had yanked it from beneath Robert's. For reasons of his own, he wanted to find out how deeply into the maze I had already penetrated.

    'She said Rinehart was my lather.'

    'You must have wanted to see what you could learn about the man. You thought Toby Kraft might be able to help you.'

    'Toby was the first person I asked,' I said.

    'Did he help you? Indirectly, I mean? For example, did you and Mrs. Hatch go to the V.A. Hospital in Mount Vernon on Toby's recommendation?'

    Mullan had been doing his homework. 'He suggested I talk to a man named Max Edison, and Mrs. Hatch offered to take me there.'

    Mullan turned his head to me without altering his posture in any other way. “I don't suppose you know about Edison. It never made the papers.'

    I could already see the corpse lying across the bloody bed, the severed throat.

    “It was a lot like Toby Kraft, except there was a knife next to him. Same night. Suicide, is the general opinion. Which is fine with me. The guy has maybe three, four months to live, and he decides to get out while he can still make decisions for himself. But here's an interesting thing. A clerk out there says a private detective named Leroy Pratchett turned up to see Edison the day before. A scrawny guy in a black leather jacket. He had a goatee.'

    'Frenchy,' I said.

    'You have a suspicious mind,' Mullan said. 'How did you connect Rinehart with Earl Sawyer?'

    I told him about Buxton Place and Hugh Coventry's recognizing the owners' names. I described meeting Earl Sawyer, being let into the cottages, seeing the books by Rinehart and Lovecraft and finding Sawyer's name in 'The Dunwich Horror.'

    Mullan tugged his chair closer to the table and did his best to look as though he believed what I was saying. 'Did you pay a second visit to Buxton Place at a time when Sawyer was not present?'

    I shook my head.

     'You were not responsible for the destruction of those books?'

    I realized what he was telling me. 'You went to Buxton Place.'

    'Mr. Dunstan, I have spent the evening going wherever I thought I might find Earl Sawyer.' He stretched his arms and yawned. 'Excuse me. I'm too old for this crap. Fairly soon, or so I hope, Edward Rinehart's coffin at Greenhaven penitentiary will he disinterred. Maybe we'll find out who is buried in the damn thing. It sure as hell isn't Rinehart.'

    “I don't suppose it can be,' I said.

    'What do you call that, understatement?' Mullan asked me. 'On your feet, Mr. Dunstan. You and I are going for a walk.'

 •125

 •Mullan gestured to the far end of the reception desk and the steps down to the back door. 'This way.' The clerk came through the office door and spun around to inspect the junk mail on a shelf behind him.

    I followed Mullan down the stairs and over the concrete floor to the exit. Moving faster than I had expected, the captain banged the door open and marched out. I caught the door on the backswing and went into a narrow brick trench that had to be Horsehair. The gray blur of Mullan's suit and a smudge of white hair were vanishing into the obscurity to my left.

    I thought I recognized Lavender's double doors and listing buildings as we rushed across into the continuation of Horsehair. Mullan stopped moving, and the pale blur of his Irish face revolved toward me. 'Let's talk about your suspicious mind. This so-called Pratchett turns up at the V.A. Hospital. Suppose he was Frenchy. What does that mean? Prentiss, he's already dead. The next night, bang, like ducks, all in a row, Edison, Toby Kraft, Cassandra Little, and La Chapelle. Between you and me, is it possible that you have some hypothetical sort of explanation?'

    'Speaking hypothetically, I guess I do,' I said. 'Helen Janette told me Frenchy grew up in these lanes. Maybe Rinehart—Earl Sawyer— had scared him, one way or another, since he was a kid.' I told him Sawyer's story about 'Charles Ward' having a boy named Nolly Wheadle deliver his weekly salary and Nolly's account of a figure he called Black Death.

    'Maybe Rinehart, Sawyer, whatever you want to call him, sent Frenchy to the V.A. Hospital to find out if I had been there asking questions. Some of the staff told him that two people had been talking to Max Edison, and maybe Edison said those two people got his name from Toby.'

    “In all our many conversations, Mr. Dunstan, you never said a word about Edison or Edward Rinehart.'

    'Captain, as entertaining as our get-togethers were, they didn't seem to have anything to do with my father.'

    'Was Edison the person who told you about Clothhead Spelvin?'

    'Yes,' I said. “I liked Max Edison. He deserved better than being slaughtered in his bed.' I remembered that we were supposed to be speaking hypothetically. “If that's what happened.'

    “If that's what happened, tell me the rest.'

    'Sawyer took care of Max and Toby, and after that he had to get rid of Frenchy. He thought Frenchy probably said more than he should have to his girlfriend, so he killed her, too. Clyde Prentiss, I don't know.' I remembered seeing Frenchy and Cassie Little in the ICU. 'You know, maybe it was a kind of down payment. Prentiss could have saved himself some jail time by naming Frenchy.'

    Mullan bristled. 'Earl Sawyer killed four people because he didn't want you to know he was your father, is