11

The following is a record of the conversation that followed.

WD: Okay. I have one thing I want to say right away, because it's important that you know about this. I was sexually abused when I was just a little boy, seven years old. The man who did it was a neighbor down the street, and his name was Mr. Lancer. I don't know his first name. He moved away the year after that. But he used to invite me into his house, and then he'd, you know, he'd do things to me. I hated it. Anyhow, I've been thinking about things, about why I'm here and all, and I think that's the whole explanation for everything, right there, Mr. Lancer.

PF: Did you ever tell anyone about Mr. Lancer? Did you ever tell your mother?

WD: How could I? I hardly even know how to describe it to myself! And besides that, I didn't think my mother would believe me. Because she liked Mr. Lancer. He helped keep up the tone of the neighborhood. Do you know what he was? He was a photographer, and he took baby pictures, and pictures of children. You bet he did. He took pictures of me without my clothes on.

PF: Is that all he did?

WD: Oh, no. Didn't I say he abused me? Well, that's what he did. Sexually. That's the really important part. He made me play with him. With his, you know, his thing. I had to put it in my mouth and everything, and he took pictures. I wonder if those pictures are in magazines. He had magazines with pictures of little boys.

PF: You took pictures, didn't you, Walter?

WD: Did you see them? The ones in the envelope?

PF: Yes.

WD: Well, now you know why I took them.

PF: Was that the only reason you took pictures?

WD: I don't know. I sort of had to do that. It's important to remember things, it's very important. And then there was one other reason.

PF: What was it?

WD: Well, I could use them to decide what I was going to eat. When I got home from work. That's why I sometimes called the pictures, the envelope of pictures, the "menu." Because it was like a list of what I had. I was always going to get the pictures organized into a nice scrapbook, with the names and everything, but you got me before I got around to it. That's okay, though. I'm not mad or anything. It was really just having the pictures, really, not putting them in a book.

PF: And help you pick out what you were going to eat.

WD: It was the menu. Like those restaurants that have pictures of the food. And besides, you can wander down Memory Lane, and have those experiences again. But even after you sort of used up the picture, it's still a trophy—like an animal head you put on a wall. Because a long time ago, I figured out that that's what I was, a hunter. A predator. Believe me, I wouldn't have chosen it, there's a lot of work involved, and you have to have incredible secrecy, but it chose me and there it was. You can't go back, you know.

PF: Tell me about when you figured out that you were a predator. And I want to hear about how you got interested in the old Blue Rose murders.

WD: Oh. Well, the first thing was, I read this book called The Divided Man, and it was about this screwed-up cop who found out that he killed people and then he killed himself. The book was about Millhaven! I knew all the streets! That was really interesting to me, especially after my mother told me that the whole thing was real. So I learned from her that there used to be this man who killed people and wrote blue rose on the wall, or whatever, near the bodies. Only it wasn't the policeman.

PF: It wasn't?

WD: Couldn't be, never ever. No way. No. Way. That detective in the book, he wasn't a predator at all. I knew that—I just didn't know what you called it, yet. But whoever it really was, he was like my real dad. He was like me, but before me. He hunted them down, and he killed them. Back then, the only things I killed were animals, just for practice, so I could see what it was like. Cats and dogs, a lot of cats and dogs. You could use a knife, and it was pretty easy. The hard part was getting the skeletons clean. Nobody really knows how much work that is. You really have to scrub, and the smell can get pretty bad.

PF: You thought that the Blue Rose murderer was your father?

WD: No, I thought he was my real dad. No matter whether he was my actual father or not. My mother never told me much about my dad, so he could have been anybody. But after I read that book and found out how real it was, I knew I was like that man's real son, because I was like following in his footsteps.

PF: And so, a couple of weeks ago, you decided to copy what he had done?

WD: You noticed? I wasn't sure anyone would notice.

PF: Notice what?

WD: You know. You almost said it.

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.

PF: What do you think she said to her friend Budge?

WD: She never told me, but she must have said something.

PF: Because Budge acted like she was afraid of you.

WD: She should have been afraid of me.

PF: Walter, did your mother ever find one of your trophies?

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

PF: But you said it was time for everything to come out into the open. Tell me what happened.

WD: What?

PF: You told me about the mother who was dead on the riverbank. Now tell me about your mother.

WD: (Inaudible.)

PF: I know this is hard to do, but I also know that you want to do it. You want me to know everything, even this. Walter, what did your mother find?

WD: It was a kind of a diary. I used to hide it in a jacket in my closet—in the inside pocket. She wasn't snooping or anything, she just wanted to take the jacket to the cleaners. And she found the diary. It was kind of a notebook. I had some things in there, and she asked me about them.

PF: What kind of things?

WD: Like initials. And some words like tattoo or scar. Stuff like red hair. One of them said bloody towel. She must have talked to Budge Dewdrop about it. She shouldn't have!

PF: Did she ask you about the diary?

WD: Sure, of course. But I never thought she believed me.

PF: So she was suspicious before that.

WD: I don't know. I just don't know.

PF: Tell me how your mother died, Walter

WD: It doesn't really matter anymore, does it? With all these other people, I mean.

PF: It matters to you, and it matters to me. Tell me about it, Walter.

WD: Well, this is what happened. It was the day after she found my diary. When she came home from work, she acted a little funny. I knew right away what it meant. She'd been talking to somebody, and she was guilty about that. I don't even know what she said, really, but I knew it had to do with the diary. I made dinner, like I always did, and she went to bed early instead of staying up and watching television with me. I was very distressed, but I don't think I showed it. I stayed up late, though I hardly understood what was going on in the movie, and I had two glasses of Harvey's Bristol Cream, which is something I never did. Finally the movie was over, even though I couldn't remember what happened in it. I only watched it for Ida Lupino, really—I always liked Ida Lupino. I washed my glass and turned off the lights and went upstairs. I was just going to look in my mother's room before I went to bed. So I opened the door and went inside her room. And it was so dark in there I had to go up next to the bed to see her. I went right up next to her. And I said to myself, if she wakes up, I'll just say good night and go to bed. And I stood there next to her for a long time. I thought about everything. I even thought about Mr. Lancer. If I hadn't had those two glasses of Harvey's Bristol Cream, I don't think any of this would have happened.

PF: Go on, Walter. Do you have a handkerchief?

WD: Of course I have a handkerchief. I have a dozen handkerchiefs. It's okay, I mean, I'm okay. Anyhow, I was standing next to my, ah, my mother. She was really asleep. I didn't intend to do anything at all. And it didn't feel like I was doing anything. It was like nothing at all was happening. I leaned over and pulled the extra pillow over her face. And she didn't wake up, see? She didn't move at all. So nothing at all was happening. And then I just pushed down on the pillow. And I closed my eyes and I held the pillow down. And after a while I took it off and went to bed. In my own bedroom. The next morning, I made us both breakfast, but she wouldn't come when I said it was ready, so I went to her room and found her in her bed, and I knew right away that she was dead. Well, there it was. I called the police right from the bedroom. And then I went into the kitchen and threw away the food and waited until they came.

PF: And when the police came, what did you tell them about your mother's death?

WD: I told them she died in her sleep. And that was true.

PF: But not the whole truth, was it, Walter?

WD: No. But I hardly knew what the whole truth was.

PF: I can see that. Walter, we're going to take a break now, and I'm going to give you a couple of minutes to be by yourself. Will you be all right?

WD: Just let me be by myself for a while, okay?