“My job is to look past all the variations and see the similarities. That’s the real gift and what I put in my pictures. It’s what I put in my first pictures of this guy. Look.”

From the side pocket of his chair he takes a small folder and hands it to her. Inside are half a dozen pieces of thin drawing paper going brittle with age. There’s a different version of Charles “Chet” Ondowsky on each one. They are not as detailed as his rogue’s gallery in the front hall, but they are still extraordinary. In the first three she’s looking at Paul Freeman, Dave Van Pelt, and Jim Avery.

“Did you draw these from memory?” she asks.

“Yes,” Dan says. Again not boasting, just stating a fact. “Those first three were drawn soon after I saw Avery. Summer of ’67. I’ve made copies, but those are the originals.”

Brad says, “Remember the time-frame, Holly. Grampa saw these men on TV before VCRs, DVRs, or the Internet. For ordinary viewers, you saw what you saw and then it was gone. He had to rely on memory.”

“And these others?” She’s spread out the other three like a fan of cards. Faces with different hairlines, different eyes and mouths, different lines, different ages. All different models from the same template. All Ondowsky. She can see it because she’s seen the elephant. That Dan Bell saw it back in the day is amazing. Genius, really.

He points to the drawings she’s holding, one after another. “That one’s Reginald Holder. He reported from Westfield, New Jersey, after John List killed his whole family. Interviewed sobbing friends and neighbors. The next one is Harry Vail, reporting from Cal State Fullerton after a janitor named Edward Allaway shot and killed six people. Vail was on the scene before the blood was dry, interviewing survivors. The last one, his name escapes me—”

“Fred Liebermanenbach,” Brad says. “Correspondent for WKS, Chicago. He covered the Tylenol poisonings in 1982. Seven people died. Talked to grieving relatives. I have all these video clips, if you want to see them.”

“He’s got plenty of clips, we’ve uncovered seventeen different versions of your Chet Ondowsky,” Dan says.

“Seventeen?” Holly is flabbergasted.

“Those are just the ones we know of. No need to look at all of them. Slide those first three drawings together and hold them up to the TV, Holly. It’s not a lightbox, but it should do.”

She holds them in front of the bluescreen, knowing what she’ll see. It’s one face.

Ondowsky’s face.

An outsider.

12

When they go downstairs, Dan Bell isn’t exactly sitting in the stair-chair; it’s more like lolling. No longer just tired, exhausted. Holly really doesn’t want to trouble him further, but will have to.

Dan Bell also knows they’re not done. He asks Brad to bring him a knock of whiskey.

“Grampa, the doctor said—”

“Fuck the doctor and the horse he rode in on,” Dan says. “It’ll brighten me up. We’ll finish, you show Holly that last… thing… and then I’ll lie down. I slept through last night, and I bet I will again tonight. This is such a weight off my shoulders.”

But now it’s on mine, Holly thinks. I wish Ralph was here. I wish for Bill even more.

Brad brings his gramps a Flintstone jelly glass with barely enough whiskey in it to cover the bottom. Dan gives it a sour look but accepts it without comment. From the side pocket of his wheelchair he takes a bottle of pills with a geriatric-friendly screw-off cap. He shakes out a pill and half a dozen others spill onto the floor.

“Balls,” says the old man. “Pick those up, Brad.”

“I’ll get them,” Holly says, and does. Dan, meanwhile, puts the pill in his mouth and swallows it with the whiskey.

“Now I know that’s not a good idea, Grampa,” Brad says, sounding prissy.

“At my funeral, no one will say I died young and handsome,” Dan replies. Some color has come into his cheeks, and he’s sitting up straight in his chair again. “Holly, I have perhaps twenty minutes before that almost useless dram of whiskey wears off. Half an hour at most. I know you have more questions, and we have one more thing for you to look at, but let’s try to be brief.”

“Joel Lieberman,” she says. “The psychiatrist you saw in Boston starting in 2018.”

“What about him?”

“You didn’t go to him because you thought you were crazy, did you?”

“Of course not. I went for the same reasons I imagine you went to see Carl Morton, with his books and lectures about people with weird neuroses. I went to tell everything I knew to someone who was paid to listen. And to find someone else who had reasons to believe the unbelievable. I was looking for you, Holly. Just as you were looking for me.”

Yes. It’s true. Still, she thinks, it’s a miracle we got together. Or fate. Or God.

“Although Morton changed all the names and locations for his article, it was easy for Brad to track you down. The thing calling itself Ondowsky wasn’t there reporting from the Texas cave, by the way. Brad and I looked at all the news footage.”

Holly says, “My outsider didn’t show up on tape or film. There was footage where he should have been part of a crowd, but he wasn’t there.” She taps the drawings of Ondowsky in his various guises. “This perp is on TV all the time.”

“Then he’s different,” the old man says, and shrugs. “The way housecats and bobcats are different but similar—same template, different models. As for you, Holly, you were barely mentioned in the news reports, and never by name. Only as a private citizen who helped with the investigation.”

“I asked to be kept out of it,” Holly mutters.

“By then I’d read about Carolyn H. in Dr. Morton’s articles. I tried to reach out to you with Dr. Lieberman—made a trip to Boston to see him, which wasn’t easy. I knew that even if you hadn’t recognized Ondowsky for what he was, you would have good reason to believe my story if you heard it. Lieberman called your guy Morton and here you are.”

One thing troubles Holly, and very much. She says, “Why now? You’ve known about this thing for years, you’ve been hunting it—”

“Not hunting,” Dan says. “Keeping track would be a more accurate way to put it. Since 2005 or so, Brad has been monitoring the Internet. In every tragedy, in every mass shooting, we look for him. Don’t we, Brad?”

“Yes,” Brad says. “He’s not always there, he wasn’t at Sandy Hook or in Las Vegas when Stephen Paddock killed all those concert-goers, but he was working at WFTV in Orlando in 2016. He interviewed survivors from the Pulse nightclub shooting the next day. He always picks the ones who are most upset, the ones who were inside or lost friends who were.”

Of course he does, Holly thinks. Of course. Their grief is tasty.

“But we didn’t know he was at the nightclub until after the school bombing last week,” Brad says. “Did we, Grampa?”

“No,” Dan agrees. “Even though we checked all the Pulse news footage as a matter of course during the aftermath.”

“How did you miss him?” Holly asks. “Pulse was over four years ago! You said you never forget a face, and by then you knew Ondowsky’s, even with the changes it’s always the same, a pig face.”