I felt as if my mouth, too, was hanging open. I had always been secretly convinced that Blue Rose was my sister's murderer, but until this moment I had never thought about the sequence of the dates.
'That's why you're in Millhaven,' he said. Then he stared blindly at the table and said it to himself: 'That's why he's in Millhaven.' He turned almost wonderingly to me again. 'You didn't come back here for John's sake, you wanted to find out who killed your sister.'
'I came back to do both,' I said.
'And you saw him,' Tom said. 'By God, you actually saw Blue Rose.'
'For about a second. I never saw his face—just a shape.'
'You devil. You dog. You—you're a deep one.' He was shaking his head. 'I'm going to have to keep my eye on you. You've been sitting on this information since you were seven years old, and you don't come up with it until now.' He put a hand on top of his head, as if it might otherwise fly off. 'All this time, there was another Blue Rose murder that no one knew about. He didn't get to write his slogan, because you came along and got run over. So he waited five days and did it all over again.' He was looking at me with undiminished wonder. 'And afterward no one would ever connect your sister with Blue Rose because she didn't tie in with Damrosch in any way. You didn't even put it in your book.'
He took his hand off the top of his head and examined me. 'What else have you got locked up there inside yourself?'
'I think that's it,' I said.
'What was your sister's name?'
'April,' I said.
He was staring at me again. 'No wonder you had to come. No wonder you won't leave.'
'I'll leave when I learn who he was.'
'It must be like—like all the rest of your childhood was haunted by some kind of monster. For you, there was a real bogeyman.'
'The Minotaur,' I said.
'Yes.' Tom's eyes were glowing with intelligence, sympathy, and some other quantity, something like appreciation. Then the computer made a clicking sound, and both of us looked at the screen. Lines of information were appearing on the gray background. We stood up and went to the desk.
BELINSKI, ANDREW THEODORE 146 TURNER ST VALLEY HILL BIRTH: 6/1/1940 DEATH: 6/8/1940.
CONCLUSION BELINSKI SEARCH.
CASEMENT, LEON CONCLUSION CASEMENT SEARCH.
'We must have been talking when the Belinski information came through. This Andrew Belinski was never an officer of Elvee Holding, though—he was a week old when he died, which is the only reason his death date got into the computer. When they're that close, they usually punch them in. And there's nothing on the computer for Leon Casement. We should be getting Writzmann through in about ten minutes.'
We turned away from the machine. I went back to the chair and poured Poland water from a bottle on the coffee table into a glass and added ice from the bucket. Tom was walking backward and forward in front of the table with his hands in his pockets, sneaking little looks at me now and then.
Finally he stopped pacing. 'Your father probably knew him.'
That was right, I realized—my father had probably known the Minotaur.
'Ralph Ransom couldn't think of anyone else he fired around that time? I think we ought to start with that angle, until we come up with something else. He or one of his managers fired this guy—the Minotaur. And in revenge, the Minotaur set out to ruin the hotel. If you start asking about that, and there was some other motive, it will probably come up.'
'You're asking people to remember a long way back.'
'I know.' He went to the second workstation and sat on the chair in front of the computer. 'What was that day manager's name again?'
'Bandolier,' I said. 'Bob Bandolier.'
'Let's see if he's still in the book.' Tom called up the directory on the other machine and scrolled down the list of names beginning with B. 'No Bandolier. Maybe he's in a nursing home, or maybe he moved out of town. Just for the fun of it, let's look for good old Glenroy.'
The blur of names rolled endlessly up the screen for a minute. 'This takes too long. I'll access it directly.' He made the screen go blank except for the directory code and punched in
BREAKSTONE, GLENROY and ENTER.
The machine ticked, and the name, address, and telephone number appeared on the screen, BREAKSTONE, GLENROY 670 LIVERMORE AVE 542-5500.
He winked at me. 'Actually, I knew he was still living at the St. Alwyn. I just wanted to show off. Didn't John's father say that Breakstone knew everybody at the hotel? Maybe you can get him to talk to you.' He wrote down the saxophone player's telephone number on a piece of paper, and I walked over to get it from him.
'Hold on, let's find out where this wonderful manager was living when the murders were committed.'
I stood behind him while he ordered up the Millhaven directory for 1950 and then jumped to the B listings. He found the address in five seconds.
BANDOLIER, ROBERT 17 S SEVENTH ST LIV
'Old Bob had a short commute, didn't he? He lived about a block away from the hotel.'
'He lived right behind us,' I said.
'Maybe we can work out how long he was there.' Tom called up the directory for 1960. Bandolier, Robert was still living on South Seventh Street. 'Good stable guy.' He called up the 1970 directory and found him still there, same address but with a new telephone number. In 1971, still there, but with yet another new telephone number. 'Something funny happened here,' Tom said. 'Why do you change your phone number? Crank calls? Avoiding someone?'
By 1975, he was out of the book. Tom worked backward through 1974, and 1973, and found him again in 1972. 'So he moved out of town or into a nursing home or, if our luck just left us, died sometime in 1972.' He wrote the address down on the same slip of paper and handed it to me. 'Maybe you could go to the house and talk to whoever lives there now. It might be worth asking some of his old neighbors, too. Somebody'll know what happened to him.'
He stood up and took a look at the other computers, which were still searching. Then he went to the table and picked up his drink. 'Here's to research.' I raised my glass of water.
The computer clicked, and information began appearing on the two monitors.
'Well, what do you know?' Tom went back to his desk. 'Births and Deaths is talking to us.' He leaned forward and began writing something on his pad.
I got up and looked over his shoulder.
WRITZMANN, WILLIAM LEON 346 N 34TH STREET MILLHAVEN birth: 4/16/48.
'We just found a real person,' Tom said. 'If this is the mystery man following John in the Elvee company car, I'd be surprised if he doesn't turn up again.'
'He already has,' I said, and told him what I had seen when I had driven John Ransom and Alan Brookner to the morgue that afternoon.
'And you didn't tell me until now?' Tom looked indignant. 'You saw him at the Green Woman, doing something really fishy, and then you keep it to yourself? You just flunked Famous Detective School.'
He immediately sat down at the computer and began moving through another series of complicated commands. The modem clucked to itself. It looked to me as though he was calling up the city's registry of deeds.
'Well, for one thing I wasn't sure it was him,' I said. 'And I forgot about it once you started breaking into every office in the state.'
'The Green Woman closed down a long time ago,' Tom said, still punching in codes.
I asked him what he was doing.
