‘Now that you know I saw you, I think I’m entitled to an explanation, don’t you?’
Jordan had understood. He leaned out, gave her a thumbs-up sign, then moved his hand in a circular gesture, indicating that she should keep Roscoe talking.
The doctor had not noticed a thing, but by chance he now moved to the side, in such a way as to keep both Maureen and the door into the lab within his field of vision. That made it completely impossible for Jordan to try to sneak in and take him from behind.
Roscoe looked condescendingly at Maureen. ‘I think that’s only fair,’ he concluded. ‘A little while ago you asked me to begin at the beginning. Well, that is where I have to start, if you’re going to understand.’
He paused for a moment, as if he had to prepare himself mentally before confronting yet again the wreckage of his life.
‘Many years ago, at a seminar I gave in a hospital in Boston, I met a nurse. She was black and her name was Thelma Ross. It was love at first sight, as if we had been put on earth solely for that purpose. It was the most beautiful, the purest thing I had ever felt in my life. Do you know what it means to meet somebody and realize that from that moment on, nobody else will ever matter as much to you as they do?’
Maureen felt her eyes grow moist.
Yes, you bastard, of course I know.
Roscoe seemed to read her mind. ‘Yes, I see you do know. You understand what I’m talking about.’
He continued in a different tone of voice, as if that knowledge had created a kind of complicity between them.
‘At the time I was at a delicate stage in my career. I was the pupil and chief assistant of Professor Joel Thornton, who was then the world’s greatest expert in my field. Everyone, including him, regarded me as his rightful heir, the rising star of ocular microsurgery and ophthalmological research. In addition to which, he was also my father-in-law, because I’d just married his elder daughter, Greta. Thelma knew all about my situation and she had no intention of doing anything that might endanger my career. She told me that if I was forced to choose her, over time I would come to resent her. The fact was, Thornton could easily have ruined me. Having someone like that against me would have meant the end of my career.’
Roscoe allowed himself a little excursion into sarcasm.
‘America isn’t quite the democratic country we try to export as a model. A white man leaving the WASP daughter of a famous surgeon for a coloured girl . . .’
He did not finish the sentence, leaving Maureen to draw her own conclusions.
‘Thelma and I continued meeting in secret. Then she fell pregnant. We agreed to keep the child, and that’s how Lewis came into the world. I’d found Thelma a job as Chief Surgical Nurse at Samaritan Hospital in Troy, a town not far from Albany. It was the perfect place. Close enough to allow me to see her and the child when I could, and far enough not to be too exposed. In any case, we were very discreet, so much so that none of her friends ever saw me or even knew of my existence. To everyone, Thelma was a young divorcée, survivor of an unpleasant marriage she didn’t like to talk about. To Lewis, I was a kind of uncle who loved both of them and always showed up with lots of toys. I’d found an isolated house for them and when I went to see them we stayed there. There was no risk of Thelma and me being seen together. Five years passed. Thornton died and things between Greta and myself deteriorated to the point that she asked for a divorce. I agreed to it with violins playing in my head, and that same day, that cursed day, I went up to Troy to tell Thelma that I’d be free soon and we’d be able to live together.’
From his rapt expression, Maureen could see that Roscoe was reliving in his mind the images evoked by his story.
‘Lewis was playing in the garden and Thelma and I were in the house. As I was telling her what was going to happen, I heard Lewis scream and then he came running into the house, crying and holding his arm out to me. I could see he had been stung several times, and from the size of the punctures I guessed they were hornet stings. I knew that simultaneous stings from a number of insects of that kind can cause serious anaphylactic shock. I told Thelma to get out the car and take him straight to the Emergency Room at Samaritan. She’d just gone back inside, when we heard the doorbell ring. Thelma opened the door and there they were.’
Maureen saw Roscoe’s jaws contract and hate – pure hate – distort his features.
‘Four people in sweatshirts and dark pants – three men and a woman, wearing masks of various characters from Peanuts. Linus, Lucy, Snoopy and Pig Pen, to be precise. One of them, I don’t know who, pushed Thelma violently back inside. She fell to the floor and they came in with guns aimed at us. They gathered all three of us in the same room and ordered us not to move. We guessed what was going to happen, because not long after that, a police car stopped in front of the house and two officers came and rang the doorbell. The one who seemed to be the leader – the one with the Pig Pen mask – aimed a gun at Lewis’s head and ordered Thelma to go to the door and get rid of the police.’
Roscoe looked up at the white ceiling and took a deep breath, as if that was the only way he could continue.
‘I don’t know how Thelma managed to be convincing in that situation, but somehow the officers were persuaded that nothing unusual was going on. They went back to their car and drove away. In the meantime Lewis was getting worse. He was finding it hard to breathe. I knew what was happening. The hornets’ stings had provoked a laryngeal spasm that was gradually blocking his respiratory tract. I begged them to let us go, saying I was a doctor. I explained what was happening to Lewis, and that he needed help. I swore with tears in my eyes that I wouldn’t go to the police – I even kneeled in front of the one with the Pig Pen mask. It was no use. I still remember the indifference in his voice as he said, “You’re a doctor, you deal with it.” He left me free in my movements, but to avoid my doing anything to try and escape or fight back he ordered Lucy and Snoopy to take Thelma into another room while I took care of my son. By this point, Lewis had fainted and couldn’t breathe. To avoid asphyxia, with two guns pointing at me, I took a scalpel from my bag and there, without anaesthetic, without instruments, like a butcher, I was forced to perform an emergency tracheotomy on my son and try to give him air by inserting the holder of a ballpoint pen in his throat.’
Tears of rage and grief fell from Roscoe’s eyes. Maureen knew from personal experience how difficult it was to tell which burned the more.
‘It was pointless. I couldn’t save him. When I heard that his heart had stopped beating, I raised my arms and started screaming. I could feel my son’s blood running down from my hands.’
Maureen suddenly connected those grainy images in her visions.
It was him I saw with his back to me, not Julius. What I took for a knife was actually a scalpel.
‘Then someone, I don’t know who, hit me on the head and knocked me unconscious. When I came to, they’d gone. They’d taken our car and escaped, leaving behind them the body of my son lying like an animal on the table and Thelma tied to a chair in the other room. When I untied her and she saw what had happened, she rushed to the table and hugged the body of Lewis so hard, it seemed as if she wanted to absorb him into her own body and give him back his life. It’s a sight I’ve never forgotten, one that’s sustained me like a drug all these years: the tears of my woman mixed with the blood of our son.’
‘Why did you never go to the police?’
‘That was Thelma’s decision. She was the one who persuaded me to leave. She didn’t want me to be found there. After the grief, she’d suddenly become as cold as ice. She told me what she wanted me to do. Even if those four were caught, she said, they’d do a bit of time in prison, and then they’d be free to do more harm. She made me swear I would find them and kill them with my own hands. If that meant never seeing each other again, that was a price she would gladly pay. That was why we decided she’d say she had performed the tracheotomy herself.’
Out of nervousness, Roscoe continued rhythmical
ly opening and closing the hand that was not holding the gun, as if trying to rid himself of a cramp.
‘I lived with revenge as my one purpose in life, while I watched Thelma gradually lose her mind and sink into the limbo where her mind had taken refuge from suffering. She’s in a psychiatric hospital now. I haven’t seen her in years . . .’
His voice had dropped in volume. For a moment, Maureen felt compassion for this man who had sacrificed his present and future to a revenge that could never wipe out the past.
‘After almost ten years of effort, time and money, I’d still not managed to track them down. The bastards seemed to have vanished into thin air, as if they’d never existed. Then, one day, chance smiled on me. Chandelle Stuart, on the advice of her family doctor, came to me asking for a laser operation to cure myopia. It’s an almost routine operation but, being the kind of person she was, she said it had to be done by the best there was. During the check-up, she made a mistake . . .’
He paused, staring into space.
‘What mistake?’ Maureen asked.
Roscoe turned his head abruptly towards her, as if Maureen’s voice had woken him from a trance.
‘She asked me if I knew a good plastic surgeon who could remove a tattoo on her groin. She told me it was a memento of a person who had meant a lot to her but who she now wanted to wipe out of her life. She unzipped her pants and when I saw the tattoo I was struck dumb. The day Lewis died, in a moment of nervousness, Pig Pen had rolled up the sleeve of the black sweatshirt he was wearing. It had only been for a moment, but long enough for me to see that he had a big tattoo on his forearm – a demon with butterfly wings. What Chandelle Stuart was showing me was exactly the same tattoo. She couldn’t know I had seen it, because at that moment she was in the other room with Snoopy and Thelma. And without noticing what was going through my head, thinking because of the expression on my face that I was turned on by her, that whore Chandelle Stuart, standing in front of me with her pants down, had the nerve to take my hand and rub her crotch with it.’
Roscoe’s jaws were tight, his face ashen with scorn. His hand was a clenched fist, the knuckles white with the tension.
‘From that day on, my life changed. I lived in a frenzied state, as if hundreds of voices were talking in my ears simultaneously. I had a lead, so small as to be almost nonexistent, but still it was something. All my free time was devoted to my investigations, all the money I made was spent on it. I hired private detectives, paying them exorbitant sums. I went back to the time of the events and discovered that at that time Chandelle was studying at Vassar. One by one I identified Gerald Marsalis and Alex Campbell. Julius Wong, who was the worst of them all, was more difficult, because he hadn’t attended the college, but I somehow managed to give him a face and a name too.’
Roscoe was smiling now. Perhaps he was reliving the thrilling moment that every researcher lives for – when he finally makes his breakthrough.
‘When I found out that Julius Wong was Pig Pen, I wanted to go straight to him, ring his doorbell and put a bullet in that depraved face. But then I calmed down and forced myself to think. Eventually I made my mind up. I was going to kill them, one by one, but in such a way that blame fell on Julius Wong. Chandelle Stuart, Gerald Marsalis and Alex Campbell would be allowed to die, but not him. He had to pay more than all the others, he had to spend the rest of his days on Death Row, knowing that every day that passed was bringing him closer to the moment when someone would administer the fatal injection.’
Maureen decided to act, insofar as it was in her power. Taking advantage of the fact that Roscoe was distracted by the emotion of his story, she put her feet on the ground and started cautiously to move the swivel chair to which she was tied, in such a way as to force him, if he wanted to look her in the face, to turn his back to the door behind which Jordan was hidden.
‘I started to get organized. The luck that had for so long turned its back on me now seemed to be working in my favour. Julius Wong had undergone surgery on his cartilage and ligaments, and for a while went around on crutches. When he gave them up, he still limped a bit. It wouldn’t last long, but that short time was enough for me.’
An inch.
Another.
Then another.
‘I had noticed that Julius and I had pretty much the same build. So I first killed Linus – in other words, Gerald Marsalis. When I got to his place, he recognized me immediately. I forced him to sit on a chair, then I put adhesive tape around his wrists and calves and strangled him, making sure he suffered as much as possible. And as he was dying I asked him if he now understood what my son had felt as the air stopped getting to his lungs. Once he was dead, I glued him to the wall with a blanket against his ear, just as Schulz draws Linus in the strips, and wrote that stupid message on the wall. I knew the police would decipher it immediately, but I needed it to give the impression that the murder was the work of a psychopath. I intended to be seen leaving with a limp, but as I was hiding on the stairs, a girl came out of Gerald’s apartment and left the door ajar. From the landing I’d heard him phoning someone and asking them to come there. That meant I had less time than I’d anticipated, but it was a great opportunity to leave a clue. When the person arrived and rang the bell downstairs, I took the elevator and passed him at the entrance. I bumped into him in such a way that he’d notice me but wouldn’t see my face.’
‘But didn’t it occur to you that the others, once they knew how Gerald had been killed, would become suspicious?’
Roscoe shrugged. ‘Gerald was the Mayor’s son, and that meant it was very likely the details would be kept under wraps – which was, in fact, the case. I had decided to use Peanuts because I knew that sooner or later they’d trace it all back to the robbery all those years ago. It might have provided a motive – Julius wanting to take revenge for a slight he’d suffered, or something like that.’
Another inch, taking advantage of the fact that Roscoe was looking down for a moment.
When he looked up again, Maureen caught a sharp, self-satisfied expression on his face.
‘Then it was Chandelle’s turn. And I’m not ashamed to say that killing that useless creature was a real pleasure. I crossed the lobby of the Stuart Building wearing the same tracksuit and walking with the same limp as before. I tried to be as furtive as possible, and always be hidden by someone else, but in reality I was making sure I was caught by the cameras. I knew that would be the first thing the police checked. I told Chandelle I had some news about her operation and she let me come up. How surprised that whore was when she saw me in front of her with a gun in my hand! With Linus I’d had to be quick, but with Chandelle I had much more time at my disposal. I forced her to talk, making her think I would spare her if she did. I discovered a whole lot of things. She confessed to me that she’d had an affair with that sex maniac Julius, and also how he’d gradually involved the other two in the robbery – Gerald because he was crazy, and Alex Campbell because he was weak and psychologically dependent on Julius. Finally she revealed the reason all this had happened. The bastards had committed the robbery for kicks, just to do something different, feel something different. Do you understand what I’m saying? My son had died because these people, out of boredom, had decided to “try something different”. And what’s more, that bitch told me she had recognized me as soon as she entered my office the first time. She had enjoyed the sick sensation of knowing what I didn’t know, maybe actually becoming aroused at the thought of what she had done to me. When I went to her and put my hands around her neck and she begged me not to kill her I whispered in her ears, echoing Julius, “I’m a doctor, I know what I’m doing.” Then I glued her to the piano, to make her look like Lucy, wrote the note pointing to the next victim, and left.’
At last, Roscoe changed position. With an almost distracted movement, he turned and rested against the bench, as if he was tired of standing and needed a support. The gun, though, was still in his hand, and the barrel was still aimed at Maureen’s head. r />
‘First, though, I left a new clue, the crucial one. I made it seem as though the killer had raped Chandelle after killing her. And just think, to do that, I used a dildo I found in one of her drawers. I put it in a condom filled with Julius Wong’s semen. I chose the kind that slows down the man’s pleasure and stimulates the woman’s, firstly because it leaves a more obvious chemical residue and secondly because using a condom on a corpse was perfectly in line with the psychological profile of a psychopath. I made a hole in it so that it would leave a small residue of sperm, and it would look as though the condom was faulty.’
‘And how did you get hold of it?’
‘That was the hardest part. Julius Wong had been interested in sex and violence since he was young, but had become very choosy. Straight sex with women didn’t interest him any more, he needed something stronger, more extreme. The alcohol, the drugs and his sick brain had made him . . . how shall I put it? . . . a man of refined tastes. I remembered someone I had met some time ago.’
Jordan came out into the open and started to creep down the short staircase. Maureen saw that his right arm was hanging at his side in a strange way, as if it was broken.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Maureen was following Jordan’s descent and Roscoe’s story with the same bated breath.
‘Every now and again I would tour the county giving seminars. In a hospital near Syracuse I met a nurse. She was an extremely beautiful woman, maybe one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. There was something distinctive about her, she had a sensuality you could almost touch. Her name was Lysa and she had one fairly unusual characteristic, which was that she was actually a man. We became friends and she started to confide in me. She was a gentle, melancholy, reserved person. And above all honest – nothing like those mercenary transsexuals you find on the internet. We stayed in touch, even when she stopped working at the hospital. It struck me that a pervert like Julius Wong wouldn’t be able to resist the excitement of having relations with a sexual curiosity like that. I played on Lysa’s weakness, her weariness at fighting a battle she considered lost from the start. I contacted her anonymously and offered her a hundred thousand dollars to have sex with Julius Wong and hand over a condom filled with his sperm.’