Westermann walked through deserted streets in the night heat, people holed up inside from pure fatigue. He was exhausted, feeling it in his legs and in the way he had to concentrate to keep his mind from wandering. He was closing in, just missing details.
Big Rolf.
Deyna.
Jimmy Symmes leaving with Koss.
The twins singing at the Holiness Church.
Focus.
He was certain that the disease that afflicted Mavis Talley and Lenore and the two other girls was the same disease that Symmes and Van Oot had picked up in Africa and that Koss apparently carried. This cemented the connection between Prosper Maddox’s church, Dr. Vesterhue, and the sick prostitutes. They must have contracted the disease from Koss. Was he sleeping with these prostitutes with Vesterhue trying to treat them once it became apparent Koss was infecting them? That didn’t really explain Lenore’s drowning death—or the other two, for that matter—or why it had happened down at the river. And where was Vesterhue?
Photos with Washington.
Lenore rotating slowly as she drifts downriver.
Are you good with the Lord?
He was pulled from his thoughts by a sense that he was being followed or watched. He turned around, but the street was empty save for a couple of winos sitting against a storefront, too tired even to talk. He kept moving, distracted now and trying to figure out if he was really being followed or just spooked by what Grip had told him about the night he was tailed.
He began to worry that it might be Morphy, wondered what Morphy intended to do. Kill him? Would Morphy do that?
A block from his building he felt the grip of panic, his proximity to safety cutting his breath short. He turned again. Still no one. He broke into a half trot, feeling stupid for running like this, but at the same time desperate to reach the safety of his building. Half a block away, he saw that someone was sitting on the steps, mostly in the shadows. He slowed down to a fast walk and pulled his gun.
The figure stood up, putting his hands in the air, one holding a lit cigarette. “Don’t shoot, sir,” the man said, gently mocking.
Jesus Christ.