his head off. He was left for dead, but he managed to stop the bleeding and call for help. The man who had tried to kill him had written blue rose on his bedroom wall, and everyone assumed that Laing was the fourth victim.'
'But what about William Damrosch? He had been Laing's lover. That butcher, Stenmitz, had abused him. And the case ended when he killed himself.'
'If the case ended, why are you sitting here listening to ancient history?'
'But how could your grandfather know about some detective's private life?'
'He had a close friend in the police department. A sort of a protege—they did each other a lot of good, over the years. This character made sure he knew everything that might be useful to him, and he shared whatever he found out with my grandfather. That was one of his functions.'
'So this cop—'
'Told my grandfather about Damrosch's history. My grandfather, good old Glendenning Upshaw, saw how he could wrap everything up into one neat little package.'
'He killed Damrosch, too?'
'I think he followed him home one night, waited three or four hours or however long he thought it would take Damrosch to get too drunk to fight back, and then just knocked on his door. Damrosch let him in, and my grandfather got his gun away from him and shot him in the head. Then he printed blue rose on a piece of paper and let himself out. Case closed.'
Tom leaned back in the chair.
'And after that, the murders stopped.'
'They stopped with the murder of Heinz Stenmitz.'
Ransom considered this. 'Why do you think Blue Rose stopped killing people for forty years? Or do you even think it's the same person who attacked my wife?'
'That's a possibility.'
'Have you noticed that the new attacks took place on the same sites as the old ones?'
Tom nodded.
'So he's repeating himself, isn't he?'
'If it's the same man,' Tom said.
'Why do you say that? What are you thinking?'
Tom Pasmore looked as if he were thinking about nothing but getting us out of his house. His head lolled against the back of the chair. I thought he wanted us to leave so that he could get to work. His day was just beginning. He surprised me by answering Ransom's question. 'Well, I always thought it might have something to do with place.'
'It has something to do with place, all right,' Ransom said. He set down his empty glass. There was a band of red across his cheekbones. 'It's his neighborhood. He kills where he lives.'
'No one knows the identity of the man on Livermore Avenue, is that right?'
'Some homeless guy who thought he was going to get a handful of change.'
Tom nodded in acknowledgment rather than agreement. 'That's a possibility, too.'
'Well, sure,' John Ransom said.
Tom nodded absentmindedly.
'I mean, who goes unidentified these days? Everybody carries credit cards, cards for automatic teller machines, driver's licenses…'
'Yes, it makes sense, it makes sense,' Tom said. He was still staring at some indeterminate point in the middle of the room.
Ransom shifted forward on the couch. He rocked his empty glass back and forth on the table for a moment. He raised his eyes to the paintings Lamont von Heilitz had bought in Paris sixty years ago. 'You're not really retired, are you, Tom? Don't you still do a little work here and there, without telling anybody about it?'
Tom smiled—slowly, almost luxuriantly.
'You do,' Ransom said, though that was not what I thought the strange inward smile meant.
'I don't know if you would call it work,' Tom said. 'Sometimes something catches my attention. I hear a little music.'
'Don't you hear it now?'
Tom focused on him. 'What are you asking me?'
'We've known each other a long time. When my wife is beaten and stabbed by a man who committed Millhaven's most notable unsolved murders, I would think you couldn't help but be interested.'
'I was interested enough to invite you here.'
'I'm asking you to work for me.'
'I don't take clients,' Tom said. 'Sorry.'
'I need your help.' John Ransom leaned toward Tom with his hands out, separated by a distance roughly the length of a football. 'You have a wonderful gift, and I want that gift working for me.' Tom seemed hardly to be listening. 'On top of everything else, I'm giving you the chance to learn the name of the Blue Rose murderer.'
Tom slumped down in his chair so that his knees jutted out and his chin rested on his chest. He brought his joined hands beneath his lower lip and regarded Ransom with a steady speculation. He seemed more comfortable, more actually present than at any other time during the evening.
'Were you considering offering me some payment for this assistance?'
'Absolutely,' John Ransom said. 'If that's what you want.'
'What sort of payment?'
Ransom looked flustered. He glanced at me as if asking for help and raised his hands. 'Well, that's difficult to answer. Ten thousand dollars?'
'Ten thousand. For identifying the man who attacked your wife. For getting the man you call Blue Rose behind bars.'
'It could be twenty thousand,' John said. 'It could even be thirty.'
'I see.' Tom pushed himself back into an upright position, placed his hands on the arms of his chair, and pushed himself up. 'Well, I hope that what I told you will be of some help to you. It's been good to see you again, John.'
I stood up, too. John Ransom stayed seated on the couch, looking back and forth between Tom and me. 'That's it? Tom, we were talking about an offer. Please tell me you'll consider it.'
'I'm afraid I'm not for hire,' Tom said. 'Not even for the splendid sum of thirty thousand dollars.'
Ransom looked completely baffled. Reluctantly, he pushed himself up from the couch. 'If thirty thousand isn't enough, tell me how much you want. I want you on my team.'
'I'll do what I can,' Tom said. He moved toward the maze of files and the front door.
Ransom stood his ground. 'What does that mean?'
'I'll check in from time to time,' Tom said.
Ransom shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. He and I went around opposite sides of the glass table toward Tom. For the first time I looked down at the stacks of books beside the bottles and the ice bucket and was surprised to see that, like the books on John Ransom's table, nearly all of them were about Vietnam. But they were not novels—most of the books on the table seemed to be military histories, written by retired officers.
'I wanted you to know how I felt,' Ransom was saying. 'I had to give it a try.'
'It was very flattering,' Tom said. They were both working their way toward the door.
I caught up with them just as Ransom looked back over his shoulder to see the paintings on the long back wall. 'And if you're ever interested in selling some of your art, I hope you'll speak to me first.'
'Well,' Tom said. He opened the door to scorching heat and the end of daylight. Above the roofs of the lakefront houses, the moon had already risen into a darkening sky in which a few shadowy clouds drifted in a wind too far up to do us any good.
'Thanks for your help,' said John Ransom, holding out his hand. Tom took it, and Ransom raised one shoulder and grimaced, squeezing hard to show his gratitude.
'By the way,' Tom said, and Ransom relaxed his grip. Tom pulled back his hand. 'I wonder if you've been
