Wilde West Part 14

Oscar sat back in his uncomfortable chair. "Come now. It would mean that one of us is not only a madman, but a madman capable of masking his madness so well as to make it undetectable."

"But perhaps," said von Hesse, running a hand along his scalp, over the furze of closely cropped white hair, "perhaps he masks it so well that even he cannot detect it."

Oscar frowned. "Which means what, exactly?"

Von Hesse took a sip from his coffee cup. "May I tell you a story from my life?"

Oscar shifted slightly in his chair; other people's accounts of their lives often seemed to last as long as the lives themselves. "Yes, certainly."

"Once," said von Hesse, "when I was in the army, it came to my attention that graves in the nearby area were being desecrated. Not far from Coblenz, this was, in a small town. The mayor came to me and asked me for my help. The graves were always those of women. Their coffins had been disinterred and broken open, and the condition of the corpses indicated that they had been a.s.saulted."

"a.s.saulted?"

"s.e.xually a.s.saulted."

"Good Lord."

Von Hesse nodded. "It was horrible, yes."

"The women had died recently? They were young?"

Von Hesse c.o.c.ked his head slightly. "This would make a difference?"

Oscar frowned. "Well, if they had been young, and beautiful, then perhaps understanding the man's motives might not require such a leap of the imagination."

"It requires, always, a leap of the imagination to understand the motives of another. This is what compa.s.sion is, no?"

"Ah, well. I should say, rather, that compa.s.sion is the recognition that another is as important an ent.i.ty as we are ourselves." Oscar smiled. "As important, perhaps, but not more so. Sympathizing with the pain of another is one thing. Sympathizing with his success is something quite different."

"But this recognition," von Hesse said, "this is the leap, I believe. It is a leap inward, into ourselves. We contain within ourselves, all of us, heaven and h.e.l.l, angels and devils. In order to understand the devils of another, we must perceive them in ourselves. For this, imagination is required."

"Yes, well," said Oscar, who felt that they were going rather far afield, "these women. They were young?"

"There had been three violations, which had all occurred within a week or so of burial. One of the women was young. The others were not."

"Which would lead one to believe," Oscar said, "that the attacks had less to do with the women themselves than with the fact that they were dead." Would've made a better tale otherwise, however. Reality proving itself, once again, an inept storyteller.

Von Hesse nodded. "In any event, as the mayor explained to me, the townspeople were very concerned. Very frightened, yes? They are in this part of Germany a superst.i.tious folk, and already there was much talk of demons and evil spirits. I agreed to help. I agreed that, should another woman die, I would secretly a.s.sign a squad of men to guard the cemetery."

"Why secretly?" Oscar sipped at his coffee. The stuff was so thick that, after one blew on it, ripples remained for a time on its surface.

"I recognized the possibility that the person responsible could have been one of the men under my command. It was, in fact, more than a possibility-it was a likelihood. We had been stationed near the town for only ten months, you see, and the attacks had begun some three months after our arrival."

Von Hesse sipped at his coffee. "For a month nothing happened."

Oscar removed the cigarette case and the box of matches from his coat pocket. No one nearby pulled out a revolver and pointed it at his head.

"And then," von Hesse said, "a young girl died. A fall from the family barn. It was a particularly tragic accident, because so easily avoidable, and the reports of her death quickly circulated among the troops and within the town. She was said, this girl, to be very beautiful. She was fifteen years old."

Oscar tapped a cigarette against the case, placed it in his mouth.

"She was buried, I remember, on a Sunday evening. I a.s.signed a squad of men to watch the cemetery that night. No one approached the grave."

Oscar lighted the cigarette, exhaled.

"The next night, I a.s.signed a second squad, rotating them, yes? The same thing happened. Nothing. On the third night, when the first squad returned, there came a storm. The rain fell very hard, so thickly that one could not see one's own hand before one's face. The men in the cemetery were gathered together behind a large oak tree. You must picture it, Mr. Wilde. This was autumn, and the tree was empty of its leaves. Its bare branches disappeared above them in the darkness and the torrent. They sat beneath their greatcoats, soaked to the skin and of course very cold. No doubt, among themselves, they cursed me for keeping them there. For it was inconceivable that anyone would go out on a night such as this."

Oscar nodded, exhaling. "But you're about to tell me, if I divine aright, that someone did." He looked around for an ashtray, discovered (as usual) that none had been provided, and flicked his ash to the floor.

"Yes," said von Hesse. "Someone did. By midnight, the men were no longer even attempting to watch the cemetery. They were concerned only with keeping warm. And then, just as midnight pa.s.sed, they heard an awful scream, a truly terrifying scream. Unheimlich, yes? Unearthly. Like the scream of a demon. I believe that lesser men, having heard that scream, would have deserted their post. But these were brave men, true soldiers. They ran quickly toward the source of the scream. They found an opened grave, and the corpse lying inside the shattered coffin, which was filling up with mud and rainwater. The corpse's shroud had been torn away, and, lying atop the body, unconscious, they found the man who had been committing these horrible attacks."

"Unconscious?"

"Yes. He had fainted, apparently, at the moment of his ghastly triumph. At the moment of his scream."

"And was he one of your soldiers?"

"Yes. A young corporal. One of my most promising young men. Very brave, very conscientious."

"How did he explain himself?"

"That is the point, Mr. Wilde. He did not. He could not. When he regained consciousness, he had no recollection whatever of attacking the girl. Or of attacking the others."

"Or so he maintained."

"Mr. Wilde, you fail to understand. This corporal, he was the leader of the second squad I had a.s.signed to the cemetery. You perceive the logical consequences of this? In his conscious mind, he knew that the cemetery was guarded. Consciously, he would never have attempted to commit such an act."

"The night was dark. You said yourself that the rain was heavy. Perhaps he persuaded himself that he might escape detection."

"And was it to escape detection that he screamed? No, Mr. Wilde. I am convinced that he genuinely could not recall any of the attacks. It was as though his mind had somehow become split, and the hidden part of it had developed a subterranean life of its own. And it was this, this separate and unsuspected semi-being, who committed the attacks. I suspect, too, that such a phenomenon has presented itself throughout history. Perhaps it is to this we might look for an explanation of the stories about demon possession, and the many tales of werewolves."

"Werewolves," said Oscar.

"You know the legends? They are mythical creatures, half man and half wolf. Outwardly they appear normal. Indeed, for most of their lives, they are normal, completely. And then, during the nights of the full moon, they change. They become filled with bloodl.u.s.t, with an overriding desire to kill and destroy."

"Yes. We have them in England. We call them critics."

Von Hesse smiled faintly, sadly. "Ach, Mr. Wilde. You are not serious."

Precisely what the critics had said about Oscar's poetry. "Well, let's a.s.sume for a moment that your theory is correct. That the corporal was honestly unaware of this 'other being' within him. But wouldn't the other being be aware of the corporal? Wouldn't it-or he, if you like-know everything the corporal knew? And if so, if it knew that the cemetery was being guarded, why would it jeopardize its existence, and the corporal's, which amounts to the same thing, by committing the attack?"

"Ah," said von Hesse, smiling slightly, "you have seized upon, I see, the most interesting question. To this I believe there are only three possible answers."

Oscar, who had believed his question so devastating that it might end the conversation, now realized that he was destined to hear all three of these. He disguised a small sigh behind an exhaled cloud of tobacco smoke.

"First," said von Hesse, "perhaps the being, this subterranean aspect of the corporal, perhaps it was not aware of the corporal's existence, any more than the corporal was aware of its existence."

Like a pair of lodgers in the same apartment building, Oscar thought. Different floors, different hours. Different interests, as well: one of them produced cadavers, the other swived them.

"Second," said von Hesse, "perhaps it was aware, but perhaps the urge to commit the attack was so powerful, so all-consuming, that nothing else mattered. The fact that the attack was committed in a terrible downpour might incline us toward this explanation."

It might indeed. Mud, rain, cold. Why not wheel the lady off to a nice warm room, light a cosy fire, open a bottle of amontillado? Romance, alas, was dead.

"And the third possibility?" he asked. Romance was dead: Really, under the circ.u.mstances, that was quite good.

"Guilt, Mr. Wilde."

"Guilt?"

"Yes. Perhaps at some level this being wanted to be discovered, wanted to be punished. Perhaps it knew that what it did was wrong, and it wanted to be stopped. And perhaps this is why it attacked that night."

"Why wouldn't it simply stop, then, on its own?"

"Perhaps it could not. Perhaps, as I said before, the attacks came out of a kind of compulsion."

"So," Oscar said. "On the one hand, you maintain, it wanted to commit these attacks. On the other, it wanted to stop committing them. Sounds a fairly muddled sort of being, doesn't it?"

"But Mr. Wilde, we are speaking here in metaphors. There was in actuality no creature, no being. There was finally only the mind, the soul, of the corporal. It was divided, yes? Bifurcated. Very muddled, in fact."

Von Hesse sipped at his coffee. "The human mind is a great mystery, yes? As mysterious finally as the universe with all its stars and its planets. Perhaps in the distant future, perhaps in a hundred years, we will better understand how it operates, its twists and its turns and its hidden secrets. But I believe this: I believe that at bottom, we are all good. We are all tiny pieces of the infinite, and so we are all connected, each of us, to all the others, and to everything in creation. I believe that deep within us, below the masks we have acquired in our individual lives, we all somehow know this. And I believe that we know that we cannot do violence to another without doing violence to ourselves. The other is ourself. And it is from this knowledge, I believe, that the corporal's guilt arose."

"All right, look," said Oscar, "even supposing that you're right, you can't be suggesting we just ignore the man who's been killing the prost.i.tutes, in the hope that somehow he'll discover a sense of guilt?"

Von Hesse shook his head. "No, no, Mr. Wilde, I suggest no such thing. I merely explain why I thought it possible that one of us could be the killer, without himself being aware of it. It was this you asked me, yes?"

"And you really believe that one of us could secretly be a madman?"

Von Hesse frowned, puzzled. "Did I not just say so?"

Oscar dropped the cigarette to the floor, stepped on it. "You can accept the idea that one of us, someone you thought you knew, has been killing prost.i.tutes? Without even being aware of it?"

"Accept, yes, of course. What choice have I? It seems to me at least possible."

"It seems to me distasteful."

"Murder is always distasteful, Mr. Wilde. Would you find it any less so, if one of us were committing the murders deliberately? Consciously? This might also be possible, of course."

"Well, at least in that case the murderer might be prevailed upon to stop."

"How would one do so? He has already killed four times. Do you believe that you might make him stop simply by asking him? Even if you knew whom to ask?"

"But we still can't say with any certainty that the murderer is one of us."

"Can you produce a more persuasive explanation than Mr. Grigsby's?"

"Grigsby." Oscar frowned, irritated. "He's not going to give way on this. He'll be underfoot forever, interfering with the tour." Playing Javert to Oscar's Jean Valjean. Making it impossible to arrange future trysts with Elizabeth McCourt Doe.

"But it is his job to determine guilt."

"I suspect that he'd be happy merely to a.s.sign it. To me, for example."

"You feel that he is biased against you?"

"I feel that we got along less than swimmingly."

Von Hesse frowned thoughtfully. After a moment he said, "You are familiar with Frederick the Great?"

Oscar looked at him, smiled. "Not intimately, I confess."

"A great tactician and strategist. Somewhere in his Military Instruction he says, 'It is an axiom of war to secure your own flanks and rear, and endeavor to turn those of the enemy.'"

"Grigsby being the enemy?"

"No, Mr. Wilde. Your enemy is this killer. It is his flanks you must endeavor to turn."

"By which you mean ...?"

"I mean that perhaps you should attempt to discover, yourself, who he is."

"OH YEAH?" SAID O'CONNER. "What kind of a deal?"

"The first part," Grigsby said, "is you forget you're a reporter until I nab this sonovab.i.t.c.h."

O'Conner grinned. "I guess," he said, "you being stuck out here in the sticks, you don't know much about real reporters, Marshal. We've got printer's ink in our blood. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't stop doing what we do."

Printer's ink wasn't the only thing in O'Conner's blood. During the twenty minutes that Grigsby had been in the small, spare room, the reporter had downed two or three ounces of bourbon. The sleeves of his pale yellow shirt folded back, his spine slumped against the headboard, he drank the liquor, straight, from the water gla.s.s he held atop his small round belly. While Grigsby sat hunched in the hard wooden chair, O'Conner lazed with his legs comfortably crossed, like a potentate's, along the bedspread. His feet were naked, bony ankles poking out below the bottoms of his brown trousers. The soles of his feet were gray.

Grigsby didn't have any reason at all to like the man-and didn't expect to find one, even if O'Conner bothered to offer Grigsby a drink. Something that, so far, he hadn't done.

"The second part," said Grigsby, "is that later, after I get the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you get the story exclusive. All the facts, straight from the horse's mouth."

O'Conner shrugged. "That's if you get the guy." He didn't seem too taken by the possibility. "And meanwhile, the public's being deprived of its right to know. You haven't read the United States Const.i.tution, I guess. A free press, it says. And as long as the public's got the money to pay for it"-he grinned and took another sip of bourbon-"they get themselves a free press."

Grigsby thought (not for the first time) that one of the good things about an a.s.shole-probably the only good thing about an a.s.shole-was that usually he identified himself as an a.s.shole pretty quick.

"You write about these killings now," Grigsby said, "and this tour of Wilde's is gonna get canceled. The sonovab.i.t.c.h who killed those hookers is gonna take off. And then you and the public don't get any story at all."

O'Conner shrugged again. "Maybe. But before that happens, I'll sell a s.h.i.tload of newspapers. Look, Marshal, this is a h.e.l.l of a story. s.e.x, murder, mutilation-Jesus, the b.o.o.bs'll eat that up with a spoon. 'Cross-Country Trail of Carnage'..." Fingers spread wide, he moved his hand in a broad swath through the air. He grinned at Grigsby. "How's that for a headline?"

"The third part," said Grigsby, "is that you get to keep lyin' around your hotel room all day, drinkin' whiskey and makin' up headlines."

O'Conner blinked, frowned. "Yeah? As opposed to what?"

"As opposed to lyin' in a cell at the federal lockup. We don't serve no liquor there. Just broth and hardtack. On Sundays, you get chicken stew. Some of the boys, after a while, they take a real fancy to the chicken stew."

O'Conner laughed-a laugh that sounded to Grigsby a bit hollow. "You're crazy, Marshal. You can't arrest me. For what?"

"Suspicion of murder."