Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [79]
In the dream, he was holding their second child in his hands. Marilyn was four months pregnant, but in the dream their little girl had been born and he held her swaddled, staring into her face. He was kneeling on the beach of their house, the one on Lake Erie; this was back in the days before he’d fled to New York, a lifetime ago, when he lived in Ohio. Marilyn stood in the water and watched them, the waves lapping her feet. In their child’s face, he could make out aspects of both of them, Marilyn’s high cheekbones and hazel eyes and his own thick lips recombined into something so beautiful and new he could neither have imagined it nor been able to describe it if asked. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, and this reaction, either in imitation of his own moon features or in response to his joy, irradiated his heart with love. And then he heard his wife scream his name.
He rolled off the daybed and took the first three steps to their bedroom in a single bound. He thought Marilyn might be convulsing—she’d suffered uterine spasms during her first pregnancy—and ran through medical procedures while pulling himself up along the banister. Their room was at the top of the stairs. He felt the breeze blowing in off the lake through the open windows, his eyes adjusting to the darkness, his momentum carrying him through the doorway. He saw a form …
He felt a blow at the back of his neck. His knees gave out, his eyes filling with black water. And one last time before he lost consciousness, he heard Marilyn cry his name.
Mobius—for that was the only name he gave—refused to talk to Hastroll. It was Sheppard he wanted—Sheppard only. Hastroll could torture him, he said, inject him with truth serum or strip him naked and spank him until he was black and blue, but he demanded to speak with the doctor alone.
“You mean the detective,” Hastroll said.
“I mean bring him now.”
Hastroll, peering at Mobius through the cell’s bars, shook his head. “I don’t make deals.”
“Fine,” Mobius said. “Then I’m going to kill myself.”
Hastroll stared impassively at the wee man and, in a rare moment of levity, grabbed his sides and laughed.
In response Mobius pinched his nose with his right hand and covered his mouth with his left, which was bandaged. He swung his little legs freely while sitting—his knees were bandaged also—and Hastroll watched, mesmerized, while his legs slowed with each passing second, until finally his face turned blue.
“Hmm,” Hastroll grunted.
Then Mobius fell over unconscious.
Sheppard came to see him the next day.
When he stepped into view, the man beamed. “Dr. Sam Sheppard, it’s a pleasure.”
Sheppard lit his pipe, took two puffs. “I’m not a doctor anymore,” he said.
“True,” Mobius said, “but you’ll always be Dr. Sam to me!”
The guard brought Sheppard a chair, and he sat down across the bars from the midget.
“That’s better,” Mobius said. “Let me get a look at you. Why, you haven’t aged a bit. Still fit as a fiddle. Still a handsome dog. Do you know that for years I’ve been obsessed with your case?”
Sheppard looked at his watch, then put his pipe back in his mouth and puffed, Mobius appearing for a moment to live in a world of thick, white smoke.
“You know,” he said, “you may be the only man in America to be both guilty and not guilty of killing his wife. Convicted and exonerated. Did he, didn’t he? He didn’t, he did! They still don’t know. And the fascination with your story … it never ends. They made The Fugitive television series about you and then they made that into a movie. There’ve been books written about you. You even wrote a book! Yes, of course I read Endure and Conquer. It was terrible! The description