The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,381

for this sort of man as early as her undergraduate years. Graham told his secretary that Rowan wouldn’t even speak to a guy with a college degree. That she only went out with “hairy-chested galoots,” and one of these days she was going to discover that these non-compos-mentis apes were dangerous.

Ellie also expressed her concern to her friends. “She says they’re all cops and firemen and that those kind of men only save lives. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing. But as long as she doesn’t marry one of those men I suppose it’s all right. You should see the one she brought home last night. I got a glimpse of him on the side deck. Beautiful red hair and freckles. Just the cutest Irish cop you ever saw.”

As things stand now, I have put a halt to this investigation. I feel we had no grounds to pursue this aspect of Rowan’s life further. And indeed, the bars in which Rowan picks up her cops and firemen are so few that asking questions about Rowan truly violates her privacy by drawing attention to her; and in some instances our questions have encouraged rather degrading talk on the part of crude men, who actually knew nothing about Rowan, but claimed to have heard this or that vulgar detail from someone else.

I do not think that this aspect of Rowan’s life is any concern of ours, except to note that her taste seemed similar to that of Mary Beth Mayfair, and that such a pattern of random and limited contacts reinforces the idea that Rowan is a loner, and a mystery to everyone who knows her. That she does not talk about herself to these bed partners is obvious. Perhaps she cannot talk about herself to anyone, and this may be one key to understanding her compulsions and her ambitions.

ROWAN’S TELEKINETIC POWER

The other aspect of Rowan’s life, only lately discovered, is far more significant, and represents one of the most disturbing chapters in the entire history of the Mayfair family. We have only begun to document this second secret aspect of Rowan, and we feel compelled to continue our investigations, and to consider the possibility of contact with Rowan in the very near future, though we are deeply troubled about disturbing her ignorance regarding her family background, and we cannot in conscience make contact without disturbing her ignorance. The responsibilities involved are immense.

In 1988, when Graham Franklin died of a cerebral hemorrhage, our investigator in the area wrote us a brief description of the event, adding only a few details, namely that the man had died in Rowan’s arms.

As we knew of the deep division between Graham Franklin and his dying wife, Ellie, we read this report with some care. Could Rowan have somehow caused Graham’s death? We were curious to know.

As our investigators sought more information about Graham’s plan to divorce his wife, they came in contact with Graham’s mistress, Karen Garfield, and reported in due time that Karen had suffered several severe heart attacks. Then they reported her death, two months following that of Graham.

Attaching no significance to it whatsoever, they had also reported a meeting between Rowan and Karen the day that Karen was rushed to the hospital with her first major attack. Karen had spoken to our investigator—“You’re a cute guy, I like you”—only hours after seeing Rowan. She was, in fact, talking to the man when she broke off because she wasn’t feeling well.

The investigations did not make the connection, but we did. Karen Garfield was only twenty-seven. Her autopsy records, which we obtained fairly easily, indicated that she had had an apparent congenital weakness of the heart muscle, and a congenital weakness of the artery wall. She sustained a hemorrhage in the artery and then major heart failure, and after the initial damage to the heart muscle, she simply could not recover. The subsequent bouts of heart failure weakened her progressively until she finally died.

Only a heart transplant could have saved her, and as she had a very rare blood type, that was out of the question. And besides, there wasn’t time.

The case struck us as very unusual, especially since Karen’s condition had never given her any trouble before. When we studied Graham’s autopsy we discovered that he too had died of an aneurysm, or weakness of the artery wall. A massive hemorrhage had killed him almost instantly.

We ordered our investigators to go back through Rowan’s life as best they could, and look for