Mystery

He turned to the next page of the scrapbook. MYSTERY RESOLVED IN TRAGEDY read the banner across the top of the Eagle Lake Gazette. Two single-column articles on either side were headed GUIDE TRUEHART RELEASED TO SOBBING WIFE, CHILDREN and SHADOW STRIKES AGAIN! In the middle of the page was a two-column picture of a strikingly handsome man with wide-set clear eyes and a dark little gigolo’s mustache above the caption Killer Anton Goetz Confessed to Private Sleuth Minutes Before Grisly Suicide. Beside this was another, smaller photograph, of a slim young man in a Norfolk jacket and a plaid shirt with an open collar. The young man looked as if he wished the photographer would point his camera at some more willing object. The caption beneath this photograph was Twenty-jive-Year-Old Amateur Detective von Heilitz, Known as “The Shadow,” Seeks to Avoid Publicity. Tom stared at the picture of the young man his neighbor had been, once again struck by the dreamlike familiarity of the page. MYSTERY. RESOLVED. TRAGEDY. Connected to these words, as to so much of his childhood, was the image of his mother locked into her encompassing misery.

The young Lamont von Heilitz had worn his hair shorter, though not as short as was the fashion at Brooks-Lowood School at the end of the 1950s, but the high cheekbones and intelligent, thin hawk’s face was the same. What was different was the sense of taut nerves and tension that came from the young man’s face and posture: he looked like a human seismograph, a person whose extreme sensitivity made much of ordinary daily life a nearly intolerable affair.

Tom looked up into the older face, affectionately regarding him from the other side of the big journal, and felt as if he had been given some enigmatic clue about his own life—some insight he had just failed to catch.

“I’ll let you borrow that, if you like,” von Heilitz said. “We’ve spent a lot of time together, and too much of it was spent with your being polite while I indulged myself with old memories. Next time, it’s your turn to talk.”

He slammed the old journal shut, picked it up with both hands and offered it to Tom, who took it gladly.

They moved toward the door through the aisles of the crowded room. Tom had one more question, which he asked as von Heilitz opened his front door.

Before him was the familiar world of Eastern Shore Road, almost a surprise: Tom had been so engrossed in the story of Jeanine Thielman and Anton Goetz that, without knowing it, he had half-expected to find a starry woods of Norway spruce and tall oak trees beyond the door, a wide blue lake and paths between big lodges with porches and balconies. “You know,” Tom said, realizing that he was not after all asking a question, “I don’t think ‘The Shadow’ was on the radio in 1925. I bet they named that program after you.”

Lamont von Heilitz smiled and closed the door. Tom looked at his watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock. He walked back across the street in the darkness.

Without quite knowing that a new era of his life had begun, Tom lay on his bed until one o’clock, flipping through the thick leather-bound journal. Columns of newsprint from different newspapers covered each page. There were headlines from New Orleans, from California, from Chicago and Seattle. Sometimes the articles concerned the murders of prominent people, sometimes those of prostitutes, gamblers, homeless wanderers. Interspersed with the articles were telegrams sent to Lamont von Heilitz of Eastern Shore Road, Mill Walk.

WISH TO ENGAGE YOUR SERVICES ON MATTER OF GREAT DELICACY AND IMPORTANCE STOP

MY HUSBAND HAS UNJUSTLY BEEN PLACED UNDER SUSPICION STOP I PLEAD WITH YOU TO GIVE YOUR HELP STOP YOU ARE MY LAST RESORT STOP

IF YOU ARE AS GOOD AS PEOPLE SAY WE NEED YOU FAST STOP

Tom looked at pictures of his neighbor in clippings from newspapers in Louisiana, Texas, and Maine—in the latter, his left arm was encased in plaster and canvas, and his haggard face looked as white as the sling, completely out of key with the triumphant caption. Famous Sleuth Unmasks, Kills Red Barn Murderer.