On an earlier page, in irate black capitals: I HATE ART.
And on an earlier still:
Then I turned to the last words he had written.
Behind me, Mullan asked, 'Did you show him a picture of Howard Dunstan?'
I closed the journal. 'What are you going to do with this?'
'That's an excellent question. While the officers you saw posted at the door were looking through the front room, I came in here, opened that book, and read a couple of paragraphs. I ordered the officers outside and skimmed through the rest. Cordwainer Hatch thought he came from a race of alien monsters who put him here to set up their takeover. He claimed he could transport himself through space, enter locked rooms, and make himself invisible. What happens if that goes public? A thousand reporters start digging into these murders. The whole town turns into the
'Won't you need this as evidence?'
'That cardboard box has all the evidence I'll ever need.' He looked down at a glistening garbage- undulation four feet away. A well-fed rat had poked half of its body through the surface and was staring back at him. 'Get away from me,' Mullan said.
Sleek, prosperous, and unafraid, the rat twitched its nose and emerged from the garbage. Mullan stamped on the floor. The rat inched forward, its black eyes fixed on him.
He unbuttoned his jacket and reached for his revolver. 'Sometimes self-respect makes you do things you know you shouldn't.' Mullan cocked the revolver and aimed it at the rat.
Baring its teeth, the animal elongated over the floor. Mullan jumped back and fired. A second before it reached Mullan's feet, the rat turned into a bloody lump of hair and an open pink mouth. My ears rang. A tinny echo of Mullan's voice said, 'At least I can claim I fired in self-defense.' He kicked the corpse into the garbage and reholstered the pistol.
'Good shot.' I sounded as though I were speaking through a towel.
“I must be losing my mind.' His mouth moved, but all I could hear was the tinny echo. “I think this guy could do everything he says. I don't know any other way to explain how Prentiss and Frenchy were killed.'
My muffled voice said, 'Good point.'
'Do you have a twin brother, Mr. Dunstan?
“I have a brother. He isn't really a human being.' Mullan was looking at me, hard, as though seeing more than he wanted to. “I didn't know he existed until he showed himself in that lane.'
'That's as far as I want to go, Mr. Dunstan.' I thought he wished he had an excuse to plug another ambitious rat. 'The position of the Edgerton Police Department is that your father, Cordwainer Hatch, committed his crimes out of rage at his family's rejection. Prints from this hovel are going to match those taken at the time of Cordwainer's first arrest. The FBI will have Rinehart's prints on file, and the body buried at Greenhaven will be an administrative error. Frenchy La Chapelle and Clyde Prentiss were suicides. The murders of Toby Kraft and Cassandra Little have been linked to organized crime. A witness currently under police protection has established to our satisfaction that Cordwainer Hatch, alias Edward Rinehart, alias Earl Sawyer, died in the course of a struggle and that his body can never be recovered.'
'Unless you plan to hang me out to dry, I'll have to be a lot more precise about the body.' Both of our voices might as well have come from the realm of my father's Cruel Gods.
'Shut up and listen,' Mullan said. 'Remember what I say, because you'll have to repeat it about a hundred times.'
•127
•I will never know, but I'd give three-to-one odds that Captain Mullan was one of those people gifted with the capacity to dream in long, coherent narrative structures. Maybe years of detective work, or of homicide investigations especially, develop the ability to create fiction, in the way working out at a gym develops other muscles.
What I do know is that Mullan reached into his imagination and instantly, without hesitation, unfurled the story that rescued us both. Here and there, I gave him some help. He prompted me to get some details clear in my mind. This is what he told me:
• After my mother had given me Edward Rinehart's name, I learned of his arrest in 1958 and death in the Greenhaven riot. Suki Teeter told me more. Still curious, I asked Hugh Coventry to check the Buxton Place property records and noticed that they had been purchased in the names of characters from the works of Rinehart's favorite author. I visited the properties and encountered Earl Sawyer, who admitted me inside them. Sawyer learned that I was staying at the Brazen Head, remarked that he lived nearby, and gave me his address. The following night, an anonymous man called me from the lobby of the Brazen Head and said that he was in possession of certain missing Dunstan family photographs. He refused to say how he had obtained the photographs, but wondered what they were worth to me. We settled on one hundred dollars. I came downstairs, glimpsed a man going outside, and followed him into Veal Yard.
•“What did he look like?' I asked.
•In the darkness, he had appeared to be a Caucasian male of five-ten or five-eleven and approximately 160 pounds. He had been wearing a dark blue or black zippered jacket, dark trousers, and gloves. I brought the photographs to my room and noticed the resemblance between Howard Dunstan and myself. After my mother's funeral, Rachel Milton advised me to look at some photographs in the care of Hugh Coventry, not the Dunstan photographs I had already obtained. I went to the library and found that the Hatch file had been discovered missing shortly after Mrs. Hatch had accompanied my aunts to the archive.
It occurred to me that my aunts may have taken the Hatch file to hold in ransom for their own, and I later discovered it concealed in my Aunt Nettie's house. The resemblance of a young man I assumed was Cordwainer Hatch to both Howard Dunstan and myself suggested that I had learned Edward Rinehart's true identity.
I visited Mrs. Hatch; I tangled with drunken Stewart. When I returned to the hotel, I thought about calling Earl Sawyer to ask if he would be willing to examine some old photographs. Earl might let slip some small detail that could lead me to his employer. He was not listed in the telephone directory, so I spent half an hour wandering through the lanes in search of his address, then found myself before a derelict building. I realized that I'd had nothing to drink since midafternoon and was extremely thirsty. Yet, there I was, in front of Sawyer's residence. I knocked. Sawyer recoiled at the sight of me, but after I explained why I had come, readily let me in.
I pretended not to notice the condition of his rooms. Sawyer said he knew his place was a mess, but if he could live that way full-time, I could stand it for a couple of minutes.
•'Got that?' Mullan said. ' 'If I can live this way full-time, you can stand it for a couple of minutes.' '
'Why is that important?' I asked.
'Because it's specific enough to sound real.'
I repeated the phrase, and Mullan went on with my story.
• Sawyer took me into the squalor of the front room. My presence evoked an odd, amused courtliness that seemed edged with hysteria. He asked to see the photographs. I gave him the Dunstan folder, and told him to look at the image of the young Howard Dunstan. He did so without any apparent recognition.
I put the Hatch folder in his hands. Sawyer stared at certain individual photographs with unmistakable
