While Merrick was working in Egypt that year after our trip to the jungles, Aaron wrote me a strange missive which I'll never forget.
He told me that the license plates of the car found in the swamp had led the authorities to the used car salesman who had murdered his young customers Cold Sandra and Honey. Indeed, the man was a drifter with a long criminal record, and it had not been difficult to trace him at all. Belligerent and somewhat cruel by nature, the miscreant had gone back several times over the years to work at the very car lot where he'd met his victims, and his identity was well known to any number of people who could connect him to the car found in the swamps.
A confession to the crimes was not long in coming, though the man was judged to be insane.
"The authorities have advised me that the fellow is terrified," wrote Aaron. "He insists that he is being hounded by a spirit, and that he would do anything to expiate his guilt. He begs for drugs to render him unconscious. I do believe he will be placed in a mental hospital, in spite of the clear viciousness of the crimes. "
Naturally, Merrick was advised of the whole affair. Aaron sent her a pack of newspaper clippings, as well as what court records he could obtain.
But much to my great relief, Merrick did not wish to go back to Louisiana at that time.
"There is no need for me to confront this person," she wrote to me. "I'm sure, from all that Aaron's told me, that justice has been done. "
Less than two weeks later, Aaron advised me by letter that the mur derer of Cold Sandra and Honey had died by his own hand.
I called Aaron at once:
"Have you told Merrick?" I asked.
After a long pause, Aaron said, quite calmly:
"I suspect that Merrick knows. "
"Why on earth do you say that?" I asked immediately. I was always too impatient with Aaron's reticence. However, this time he was not to keep me in the dark.
"The spirit who haunted this fellow," said Aaron, "was a tall woman with brown hair and green eyes. Now that does not square with our pictures of Cold Sandra or Honey in the Sunshine, does it?"
I answered no, that it did not.
"Well, he's dead now, poor fool," said Aaron. "And maybe Merrick can continue her work in peace. "
That is exactly what Merrick did: continue her work in peace.
And now:
Now, after all these years, I have come back to her, asking her to raise the soul of the Dead Child Claudia for Louis, and for me.
I have asked her in so many words to use her magic, which might surely mean using the mask, which I know to be in her possession at Oak Haven, as it had always been, the mask which could let her see spirits between life and death.
I have done that, I who know what she has suffered, and what a good and happy person she could be, and is.
Chapter 16
16
IT WAS AN HOUR before dawn when I finished the story.
Louis had listened all of this time in silence, never bringing a question, never making a distraction, but merely absorbing my words.
Out of respect for me, he remained silent, but I could see a flood of emotion in his face. His dark green eyes made me think of Merrick's, and for one moment I felt such a desire for her, such a horror of what I'd done, that I couldn't speak.
Finally Louis explained the very perceptions and sensations that were overwhelming me as I thought about all I'd said.
"I never realized how much you loved this woman," he said. "I never realized how very different you are from me. "
"I love her, yes, and perhaps I myself didn't realize how much until I told you the history. I made myself see it. I made myself remember. I made myself experience my union with her again. But when you speak of you and me being different, you must tell me what you mean. "
"You're wise," he said, "Wise in ways that only an elderly human being can be. You experienced old age in a way that none of the rest of us has ever known. Not even the great mother, Maharet, knew infirmity before she was made a vampire centuries ago. Certainly, Lestat has never grasped it, in spite of all his injuries. And I? I've been too young for too long. "