Ralph sat down and tried to take Jeannie’s hand. She pulled it away.
‘I understand how you feel,’ Holly said. ‘I get it, believe me, I do. But I’ve seen things, Detective Anderson, that allow me to believe in this. Oh, not the movie, not even the legend behind the movie, exactly. But in every legend there’s a grain of truth. Leave it for now. I would like to show you a timeline I drew up before I left Dayton. May I do that? It won’t take long.’
‘You have the floor,’ Howie said. He sounded bemused.
Holly opened a file and projected it on the wall. Her printing was small but clear. Ralph thought what she had drawn up would pass muster in any courtroom. That much he had to give her.
‘Thursday, April 19th. Merlin Cassidy leaves the van in a Dayton parking lot. I believe it was stolen the same day. We won’t call the thief El Cuco, we’ll just call him the outsider. Detective Anderson will feel more comfortable with that.’
Ralph kept silent, and this time when he tried for Jeannie’s hand, she let him take it, although she did not fold her fingers over his.
‘Where did he stash it?’ Alec asked. ‘Any idea?’
‘We’ll get to that, but for now, may I stick with the Dayton chronology?’
Alec lifted a hand for her to go on.
‘Saturday, April 21st. The Maitlands fly to Dayton and check into their hotel. Heath Holmes – the real one – is in Regis, staying with his mother.
‘Monday, April 23rd. Amber and Jolene Howard are killed. The outsider eats of their flesh and drinks of their blood.’ She looked at Ralph. ‘No, I don’t know it. Not for sure. But reading between the lines of the newspaper stories, I’m sure that body parts were missing, and the bodies were bled mostly white. Is that similar to what happened to the Peterson boy?’
Bill Samuels spoke up. ‘Since the Maitland case is closed and we’re having an informal discussion here, I have no problem telling you that it is. Flesh was missing from Frank Peterson’s neck, right shoulder, right buttock, and left thigh.’
Marcy made a strangled sound. When Jeannie started to go to her, Marcy waved her off. ‘I’m all right. I mean … no, I’m not, but I’m not going to throw up or faint or anything.’
Observing her ashy skin, Ralph was not so sure.
Holly said, ‘The outsider dumps the panel truck he used to abduct the girls near the Holmes home—’ She smiled at that. ‘—where he can be sure it will be found, and become another part of the evidence against his chosen scapegoat. He leaves the girls’ underwear in the Holmes basement – another brick in the wall.
‘Wednesday, April 25th. The bodies of the Howard girls are found in Trotwood, between Dayton and Regis.
‘Thursday, April 26th. While Heath Holmes is in Regis, helping his mother around the house and running errands, the outsider shows up at the Heisman Memory Unit. Was he looking for Mr Maitland specifically, or could it have been anyone? I don’t know for sure, but I think he had Terry Maitland in his sights, because he knew the Maitlands were visiting from another state, far away. The outsider, whether you call him natural or unnatural or supernatural, is like many serial killers in one way. He likes to move around. Mrs Maitland, could Heath Holmes have known that your husband was planning to visit his father?’
‘I guess so,’ Marcy said. ‘The Heisman likes to know in advance when relatives are coming from other parts of the country. They make a special effort in those cases, get the residents haircuts or perms, and arrange off-unit visits, when possible. That wasn’t, in the case of Terry’s dad. His mental problems were too far advanced.’ She leaned forward, eyes fixed on Holly. ‘But if this outsider wasn’t Holmes, even if he looked like Holmes, how could he know?’
‘Oh, that’s easy if you accept the basic premise,’ Ralph said. ‘If the guy is replicating Holmes, so to speak, he’d probably have access to all of Holmes’s memories. Have I got it right, Ms Gibney? Is that how the story goes?’
‘Let’s say it is, at least to a degree, but let’s not get hung up on it. I’m sure we’re all tired, and Mrs Maitland would probably like to get home to her children.’
Hopefully before she passes out, Ralph thought.
Holly went on. ‘The outsider knows he’ll be seen and noticed at the Heisman Memory Unit. It’s what he wants. And he’s sure to leave more evidence that will incriminate the real Mr Holmes: hair from one of the murdered girls. But I believe his most important reason for going there on April 26th was to spill Terry Maitland’s blood, exactly as he later spilled blood from Mr Claude Bolton. It’s always the same pattern. First come the murders. Then he marks his next victim. His next self, you could say. After that, he goes into hiding. Except it’s really a kind of hibernation. Like a bear, he may move around from time to time, but mostly he stays in a pre-selected den for a certain length of time, resting, while the change takes place.’
‘In the legends, the transformation takes years,’ Yune said. ‘Whole generations, maybe. But that’s legend. You don’t think it takes that long, do you, Ms Gibney?’
‘I think only weeks, months at the very most. For awhile during the transformative process from Terry Maitland to Claude Bolton, his face might look like it was made out of Play-Doh.’ She turned to look at Ralph directly. She found this difficult, but sometimes it was necessary. ‘Or as if he had been badly burned.’
‘Don’t buy it,’ Ralph said. ‘And that’s an understatement.’
‘Then why wasn’t the burned man in any of the footage?’ Jeannie asked.
Ralph sighed. ‘I don’t know.’
Holly said, ‘Most legends hold a grain of truth, but they’re not the truth, if you see what I mean. In the stories, El Cuco lives on blood and flesh, like a vampire, but I think this creature also feeds on bad feelings. Psychic blood, you could say.’ She turned to Marcy. ‘He told your daughter he was glad she was unhappy and sad. I believe that was the truth. I believe he was eating her sadness.’
‘And mine,’ Marcy said. ‘And Sarah’s.’
Howie spoke up. ‘Not saying any of this is true, not saying that at all, but the Peterson family fits the scenario, doesn’t it? All of them wiped out except for the father, and he’s in a persistent vegetative state. A creature who lives on unhappiness – a grief-eater instead of a sin-eater – would have loved the Petersons.’
‘And how about that shit-show at the courthouse?’ Yune put in. ‘If there really was a monster that eats negative emotions, that would have been Thanksgiving dinner for it.’
‘Do you people hear yourselves?’ Ralph asked. ‘I mean, do you?’
‘Wake up,’ Yune said harshly, and Ralph blinked as if he had been slapped. ‘I know how far out it is, we all do, you don’t need to keep telling us, like you’re the only sane man in the lunatic asylum. But there is something here that’s way out of our experience. The man at the courthouse, the one who wasn’t in any of the news footage, is only part of it.’
Ralph felt his face growing warm, but kept silent and took his scolding.
‘You need to stop fighting this every step of the way, ese. I know you don’t like the puzzle, I don’t like it, either, but at least admit that the pieces fit. There’s a chain here. It leads from Heath Holmes to Terry Maitland to Claude Bolton.’
‘We know where Claude Bolton is,’ Alec said. ‘I think a trip down to Texas to interview him would be the logical next move.’
‘Why, in God’s name?’ Jeannie asked. ‘I saw the man who looks like him here, just this morning!’
‘We should discuss that,’ Holly said, ‘but I want to ask Mrs Maitland a question first. Where was your husband buried?’
Marcy looked startled. ‘Where …? Why, here. In town. Memorial Park Cemetery. We hadn’t … you know … made plans for that, or anything. Why would we? Terry wouldn’t have turned forty until December … we thought we had years … that we deserved years, like anyone leading good lives …’