The Throat (27 page)

PF
: You say
it.

WD
: The
places—they were the same places. You knew that, didn't you?

PF
: Those
Blue Rose murders were a long time ago.

WD
: There's
no excuse for ignorance like that. You didn't notice because you never
knew in the first place. I think that's really second-rate.

PF
: I agree
with you.

WD
: Well, you
should. It's shoddy.

PF:
You went
to a lot of trouble to recreate the Blue Rose murders, and nobody
noticed. Noticed the details, I mean.

WD:
People
never notice anything. It's disgusting. They never even noticed that
all those people were missing. Now I suppose nobody'll even notice that
I got arrested, or all the things I did.

PF
: You don't
have to worry about that, Walter. You are becoming very well known.
You're already notorious.

WD
: Well,
that's all wrong, too. There isn't anything special about me.

PF
: Tell me
about killing the man on Livermore Street.

WD
: The man
on Livermore Street? He was just a guy. I was waiting in that little
alley or whatever you call it, in back of that hotel. A man came along.
It was, let's see, about midnight. I asked him some question, who
knows, like if he could help me carry something into the hotel through
the back door. He stopped walking. I think I said I'd give him five
bucks. Then he stepped toward me, and I stabbed him. I kept on stabbing
him until he fell down. Then I wrote BLUE ROSE on the brick wall. I had
this marker I brought along, and it worked fine.

PF
: Can you
describe the man? His age, his appearance, maybe his clothes?

WD
: Real,
real ordinary guy. I didn't even pay much attention to him. He might
have been about thirty, but I'm not even too sure of that. It was dark.

PF:
What
about the woman?

WD
: Oh, Mrs.
Ransom? That was different. Her, I knew.

PF
: How did
you know her?

WD
: Well, I
didn't actually know her to speak to, or anything like that. But I knew
who she was. My mother left some money when she died, about twenty
thousand dollars, and I wanted to take care of it. So I used to go down
to Barnett and Company to see Mr. Richard Mueller, he invested the
money for me? And I'd see him maybe once a month. For a while I did,
anyhow, before things got kind of hectic around here. Mrs. Ransom was
in the office next to Mr. Mueller's, and so I'd see her most times I
went there. She was a really pretty woman. I liked her. And then her
picture was in the paper that time she won the big award. So I decided
to use her for the second Blue Rose person, the one in the St. Alwyn,
room 218. It had to be the right room.

PF
: How did
you get her to the hotel?

WD
: I called
her at the office and said that I had to tell her something about Mr.
Mueller. I made it sound like it was really bad. I insisted that she
meet me at the hotel, and I said that I lived there. So I met her in
the bar, and I said that I had to show her these papers that were in my
room because I was afraid to take them anywhere. I knew room 218 was
empty because I looked at it just before dinner, when I snuck in the
back door. The locks are no good in the St. Alwyn, and there are never
any people in the halls. She said she'd come up to see the papers, and
when we got into the room I stabbed her.

PF
: Is that
all you did?

WD
: No. I hit
her, too. That was even in the newspapers.

PF
: How many
times did you stab Mrs. Ransom?

WD
: Maybe
seven, eight times. About that many times.

PF
: And where
did you stab her?

WD
: In the
stomach and chest area. I don't really remember this.

PF
: You
didn't take pictures.

WD
: I only
took pictures at home.

PF
: Did you
get to the room by going through the lobby?

WD
: We walked
straight through the lobby and went up in the elevator.

PF
: The clerk
on duty claims he never saw Mrs. Ransom that night.

WD
: He
didn't. We didn't see him, either. It's the St. Alwyn, not the
Pforzheimer. Those guys don't stay behind the desk.

PF
: How did
you leave?

WD:
I walked
down the stairs and went out the back door. I don't think anybody saw
me.

PF
: You
thought you had killed her.

WD:
Killing
her was the whole idea.

PF
: Tell me
about what you did this morning.

WD
: All of it?

PF
: Let's
leave out Alfonzo Dakins for now, and just concentrate on Mrs. Ransom.

WD
: Okay. Let
me think about it for a second. All right. This morning, I was worried.
I knew Mrs. Ransom was getting better, and—

PF
: How did
you know that?

WD
: First, I
found out what hospital she was at by calling Shady Mount and saying I
was Mrs. Ransom's husband, and could they put me through to her room?
See, I was going to keep calling hospitals until I got to the right
one. I just started with Shady Mount because that's the one I knew
best. On account of my mom. She worked there, did you know that?

PF
: Yes,

WD
: Good. So
I called up and asked if they could put me through, and the switchboard
lady said no, Mrs. Ransom didn't have a phone, and if I was her husband
I'd know that. Well, that was really dumb. If you wanted everybody to
guess where she was right away, you put her in the right place.
Everybody
like Mrs. Ransom
goes to Shady Mount. My mom told me that
when I was just a little boy, and it's still true. So I'm sorry to
criticize you and everything, but you didn't even try to hide her.
That's really sloppy, if you want my opinion.

PF
: So you
knew she was at Shady Mount, but how did you find out about her
condition? And how did you learn her room number?

WD
: Oh, those
things were real easy. You know how I said that my mom used to work at
Shady Mount? Well, sometimes, of course, she used to take me there with
her, and I knew a lot of the people who worked in the office. They were
my mom's friends—Cleota Williams, Margie Meister, Budge Dewdrop, Mary
Graebel. They were a whole crowd. Went out for coffee and everything.
When my mom died, I used to think that maybe I should kill Budge or
Mary so that she'd have company. Because dead people are just like you
and me, they still want things. They look at us all the time, and they
miss being alive. We have taste and color and smells and feelings, and
they don't have any of those things. They stare at us, they don't miss
anything
. They really see
what's going on, and we hardly ever really
see that. We're too busy thinking about things and getting everything
wrong, so we miss ninety percent of what's happening.

PF
: I still
don't know how you found out that—

WD
: Oh, my
goodness, of course you don't. Please forgive me! I'm really sorry. I
was talking about my mom's friends, wasn't I? Really, my mouth should
have a zipper on it, sometimes. Anyhow. Anyhow, as I was saying, Cleota
died and Margie Meister retired and went to Florida, but Budge Dewdrop
and Mary Graebel still work in the office at Shady Mount. Now Budge
decided for some reason that I was a horrible person about the time my
mother died, and she won't even talk to me anymore. So I think I should
have killed her. After all, I saved her life! And she just turns her
back on me!

PF
: But your
mother's other friend, Mary Graebel—

WD
: She still
remembers that I used to come in there when I was a little boy and
everything, and of course I like to stop by the Shady Mount office
every now and then and just chew the fat. So the whole thing was just
as easy as pie. I stopped in on my lunch hour yesterday, and Mary and I
had a nice long gabfest. And she told me all about their celebrity
patient, and how she had a police guard and a private nurse, and how
she was suddenly getting better up there on the third floor, and
everything. And I could see fat old Budge Dewdrop fuming and fretting
away all by herself over by the file cabinets, but Budge is too scared
of me, I think, to do anything really overt. So she just gave us these
looks, you know, these big looks. And I found out what I had to do.

PF
: And this
Mary Graebel told you that the private duty nurse took breaks every
hour?

WD
: No, I got
lucky there. She was leaving the room just when I turned into the
hallway. So I got in there fast. And I did it. Then I got out, fast.

PF
: Tell me
about the officer in the room.

WD
: Well, I
had to kill him, too, of course.

PF
: Did you?

WD
: What do
you mean? Do you mean, did I really have to kill him, or did I really
kill him?

PF
: I'm not
really sure I follow that.

WD
: I'm
just—forget it. Maybe I don't remember the officer who was in the room
very well. It's a little blurry. Everything had to happen very fast,
and I was nervous. But I
know
I heard you tell someone that the officer
from the hospital was dead. You were walking past the cells, and I
overheard what you said. You said, "He's dead."

PF
: I was
exaggerating.

WD
: Okay, so
I was exaggerating too. When I said that I killed him.

PF
: How did
you
try
to kill the officer?

WD
: I don't
remember. It isn't clear. My mind was all excited.

PF
: What
happened to the hammer? You didn't have it when you came back to your
house.

WD
: I threw
it away. I threw it into the river on my way back from the hospital.

PF
: You threw
it into the Millhaven River?

WD
: From that
bridge, the bridge right next to the Green Woman. You know, where they
found that dead woman. The prostitute.

PF
: What dead
woman are we talking about now, Walter? Is this someone else you killed?

WD
: God. You
people don't remember
anything
.
Of course she wasn't someone I killed,
I'm talking about something that happened a long time ago. The woman
was the mother of William Damrosch, the cop. He was down there, too—he
was a baby, and they found him on the riverbank, almost dead. Don't you
ever
read
? This is all in
The Divided Man
.

PF
: I'm not
sure I know why you want to bring this up.

WD
: Because
it's what I was thinking about! When I was driving across the bridge. I
saw the Green Woman Taproom, and I remembered what happened on the
riverbank, the woman, the prostitute, and her poor little baby, who
grew up to be William Damrosch. He was called Esterhaz in the book. I
was driving across the bridge. I thought about the woman and the baby—I
always
think about them, when
I drive over the river there, alongside
the Green Woman Taproom. Because all that is connected into the Blue
Rose murders. And they never caught that man, did they? He just got
clean away. Unless you're dumb enough to think it was Damrosch, which I
guess you are.

PF
: Actually,
I'm a lot more interested in you.

WD
: Well,
anyhow, I tossed the hammer right through the car window into the
river. And then I drove right on home and met you. And I decided that
it was time to tell the truth about everything. Time for everything to
come out into the open.

PF
: Well,
we're grateful for your cooperation, Walter. I want to ask you about
one detail before we break. You say that your mother's friend, her name
was, let's see, her name was Budge Dewdrop, stopped talking to you
after your mother's death. Do you have any idea why she did that?

WD
: No.

PF
: None? No
idea at all?

WD
: I told
you. I don't have any idea.

PF
: How did
your mother die, Walter?

WD
: She just
died. In her sleep. It was very peaceful, the way she would have wanted
it.

PF
: Your
mother would have been very unhappy if she had discovered some of your
activities, wouldn't she, Walter?

WD
: Well. I
suppose you could say that. She never liked it about the animals.

PF
: Did she
ever tell her friends about the animals?

WD
: Oh, no.
Well, maybe Budge.

PF
: And she
never knew that you had killed people, did she?

WD
: No. Of
course she didn't.

PF
: Was she
ever curious about anything that made you uneasy? Did she ever suspect
anything?

WD
: I don't
want to talk about this.