Chapter 23 Chapter 23 The Circus

Owen Fitzstephan never spoke to me again.He refused to see me, and as long as he was a prisoner, he kept his mouth shut.He hated me so much all of a sudden—yes, I think—because he thought I thought he was crazy.He wanted the rest of the world (at least the twelve jurors representing the world) to think he was insane, and he did, but he didn't want me to think so.As a normal person, by pretending to be crazy and getting away with it at will, he has made a joke to the whole world-if it is a joke.But if he's crazy, but he doesn't know he's abnormal and thinks he's faking it, then the joke—if that's what it's called—is on him.I joked about it on him, which of course can't be tolerated by someone as self-centered as he is, although he's unlikely to admit that he's genuinely (or potentially) abnormal.Whatever he thought, he hadn't spoken to me since that visit when I said he was legally exonerated.

When he was healthy enough to show up in court a few months later, the trial was exactly what he had promised, a good circus, and the papers were indeed in high spirits.He was tried in the county court in Mrs. Corden's death, and this time there were two more witnesses: they saw him walking away from the back of Corden's house that morning; —or at least most of the latter part of the night—his car was parked four blocks away.Both city and county district attorneys agreed that the evidence in Corden's case was the worst against him. Fitzstephan argued that he was "mentally insane and not criminally responsible," which is the legal term for that kind of thing anyway.Mrs. Corden was his last victim, so his legal team could bring up all the crimes he committed in the past as proof of his insanity.So they did it with great fanfare and magnificence, and carried forward his original ideas to the fullest—and the best way to prove his insanity was to point out that he had committed more crimes than anyone else could have.Well, that obviously couldn't be more clear.

He had known Alice Dunn when she lived in New York with Gabrielle, then a child.This was only Fitzstephan's one-sided statement, and Gabriel could not corroborate it, but it might be true.He said they kept their relationship secret because they didn't want the girl's father -- whom Alice was looking for at the time -- to know about her connection to a haunted past.Fitzstephan said Alice was his mistress while living in New York.It's not impossible, but it doesn't make sense either. After Alice and Gabrielle left New York for San Francisco, Fitzstephan and Alice occasionally corresponded, though with no specific purpose.Later Fitzstephan met the Haltons.It was his idea to promote esoteric religion: he funded the structure and introduced the sect to San Francisco.However, he did not disclose his role to the outside world, because everyone who knows him knows that he is a skeptic, and his participation is tantamount to proclaiming that the teachings of the world are false.He confessed that, for him, esoteric religion was his toy and cash cow.He likes to influence people—especially in subtle ways, and his books don't seem to be selling well.

Elona Halton was his mistress, Joseph was just a puppet—whether in his own home or in the temple. While in San Francisco, Fitzstephan hooked up with Alice and put him in touch with her husband and Gabrielle through friends in the Leggetts.Gabrielle had grown into a woman by then.The peculiarities of her form—which he read, as she did, as demonic—fascinated him; and he attempted courtship, but in vain.It made him want her all the more—he was that kind of person.Alice is in league with him.She knew what he was, and she hated the girl, so she wanted him to have Gabrielle too.Alice told Fitzstephan their family history.The girl's father didn't know at the time that she had been taught that he was the murderer of her mother.He knew that girls hated him extremely, but he didn't understand why.He had thought that prison and his experience had made him impersonal enough to alienate a young woman.What's more, although they are related by blood, they actually don't have a deep relationship.

When Fitzstephan tried again—according to Fitzstephan—to make Gabriel understand, Leggett was taken aback, cornered by the villainous couple, and a row began. Know what kind of woman he married.Fitzstephan was no longer Leggett's guest, but he kept in touch with Alice, waiting for an opportunity. Upton came to blackmail is his turning point.Alice turns to Fitzstephan for help.He's very helpful - with malicious intent.He urged her to deal with Upton herself, without letting Leggett know what he was up to.The most important thing to do, he told her, was to keep hiding from Leggett what he knew about his experiences in Central America and Mexico—useful leverage, given that he was now suspicious of Alice because of his daughter's indoctrine. There is hatred.It was Fitzstephan's idea to give the diamond to Upton and then lie about the theft.Poor Alice was worth nothing to him: he didn't care what happened to Alice as long as it ruined Leggett and possessed Gabrielle.

He achieved the first goal: Alice, under his instigation, completely destroyed the Leggett family, until finally, when he handed her the pistol in the laboratory and chased her out, She all thought he knew how to get out of them, and they meant her and Fitzstephan, of course--her husband was as worthless to her as she was to Fitzstephan.Of course, Fitzstephan had to kill her, because he needed to keep her quiet when she finally found out that his trick was actually her trap. Fitzstephan said he killed Leggett himself.After witnessing Rupert's murder, Gabrielle ran away from home, leaving a note saying she would never come back.Leggett was heartbroken.He told Alice he had had enough, that he was leaving, and voluntarily left a statement accepting all responsibility for her.Fitzstephan tries to convince Alice to kill Leggett, but she won't, so he does it himself.He wanted Gabrielle, and as long as Leggett lived—even if he was a fugitive suspect—he couldn't get it.

Fitzstephan's success in finishing Leggett and killing Alice to escape interrogation gave him a boost of confidence.Excitedly, he planned to deal with Gabrielle.The Haltons had befriended the Leggetts a few months earlier and had already hooked up with the girl.She had lived with them before when she ran away from home, and this time they simply persuaded her to go to the temple again.The Haltons had no idea what Fitzstephan was up to, or what he had done to the Leggetts; they thought the girl was just another sheep being sent to their mouths.However, on the day I arrived at the temple, when Dr. Reese went to look for Joseph in the temple, he opened a door that should have been locked, and came across the secret conversation between Fitzstephan and the Haltons.

This is very bad.It was impossible for Reese to keep quiet, and once Fitzstephan's connection to the temple was exposed, his connection to the Leggett tragedy would certainly not be hidden from anyone.He has two tools that are easy to handle: Joseph and Minnie.He ordered Rhys to be killed, but it was only then that Elona saw his true intentions for Gabriel.Elona, ​​jealous, told him to either give up or destroy the girl.She just walks the talk.Fitzstephan convinces Joseph that as long as Elona lives, neither of them will get away with it.When I saved Elona's life by killing her husband, I also temporarily helped Fitzstephan—Elona and Fink would have to keep quiet about Reese's death if they wanted to escape punishment.

Fitzsteph officially shot at this time.He now regarded Gabrielle as his property, bought in exchange for the few lives he had ruined.Each one increased her worth, her value in his heart.When Eric took Gabrielle away and married her, Fitzstephan didn't hesitate: Eric must die. About a year ago, Fitzstephan wanted to find a quiet place to finish a novel.Mrs. Fink—the one who looked a lot like a country blacksmith to me—recommended the Quesada.She was born and raised there, and her son from a previous marriage, Harvey Whedon, also lives there.Fitzstephan had been in Quesada for a few months and got to know Whedon well.Now that one more person had to be killed, Fitzstephan naturally thought that Whedon could come in handy—if there was a price.

Upon hearing that Collinson wanted a quiet place to recuperate with his wife before Halton's trial, Fitzstephan suggested Quesada.Well, it's really quiet here, maybe the most secluded place in California.After that, Fitzstephan went to Whedon and offered Eric's life a thousand dollars.Whedon refused at first, but he wasn't smart enough, and Fitzstephan was provocative enough, that the deal was done. Whedon tried on Thursday night, screwed up, and scared Collinson into telegraphing me.Whedon saw the telegram at the telegraph office and thought he must fight to the death to save himself, so on Friday night he bolstered himself with whiskey, followed Collinson, and pushed him off the cliff.Then he drank more and went to San Francisco, and this time he considered himself a desperado.He called his employer and said, "Hey, I cleaned him up in two clicks, now pay me."

Fitzstephan's calls were answered by the building switchboard.He didn't know who was going to hear Whedon, so he decided to play it safe, pretending he didn't know who was calling and what was being said.Whedon thought that Fitzstephan was playing him, but he knew what the novelist wanted, so he decided to kidnap the girl, and the price of extortion was not the original one thousand, but ten thousand.He had drunk enough to be wise enough to write to Fitzstephan knowingly to cover his handwriting, not to sign it, and to tell Fitzstephan not to reveal his identity to the police—or else he would have to explain how he knew Who sent it from. Fitzstephan was not idle.When he received Whedon's note, he decided to give it a go and try his luck so far.He told me about the phone call and showed me the letter.Now he had good reason to show up at Quesada.But he left early the night before meeting me.He went to the sheriff's house and asked Mrs. Corden--her connection to Whedon was well known to him--where he could find Whedon.That's where Whedon hides from the law enforcement officers. Whedon's mind was dull, while Fitzstephan had a brilliant tongue.Fitzstephan explained that Whedon had been so reckless in calling him that he had to pretend he didn't understand.At this time, Fitzstephan had already figured out a clever plan to make Whedon earn 10,000 yuan in bills-in short, he made Whedon believe so. Whedon returns to his hiding place while Fitzstephan remains with Mrs. Corden.The poor woman now knows too much, and doesn't like what she knows, and that condemns her to death.Killing people is the preferred method of silence. It is safe and secure. All of Fitzstephan's recent experiences have proved this point.His experience with Leggett taught him that if he could get her to leave a statement giving a satisfactory -- half-true -- account of some dubious point, he would be in a much better position. For improvement.She suspected his intentions and didn't want to help him.Later, she still wrote down the statement according to his dictation, but it was delayed until noon.He related how he had brought her into submission, which was not very pleasant; but at any rate he succeeded, and then strangled her--her husband had been out all night hunting for her lover, and when Fitzstephan came home Just finished. Fitzstephan escaped through the back door—witnesses who saw him leave the house only remembered it after seeing his picture in the newspaper—and ran to meet me and Vernon at the hotel.He went with us to Whedon's hideout under the Obtuse Angle.He knew Whedon well enough to know how the idiot might react to his second betrayal; he also knew that both Corden and Finney would have no qualms about killing Whedon.Fitzstephan is adamant that he can trust his luck, and what gamblers call situational odds.If this wishful thinking didn't work out, he could still fall off the boat on purpose and kill Whedon with a pistol fire-he remembered how neatly he dealt with Mrs. Leggett.It is possible he could be blamed and even suspected, but a conviction is unlikely. The god of luck favored him again.When Whedon saw Fitzstephan with us, he was so angry that he drew his gun and wanted to kill him, and we killed Whedon. This is the story of this lunatic: he thought he was normal and wanted to prove his insanity to the outside world, and finally got his wish.The rest of his charges were dropped and he was sent to a state insane asylum in Napa.He was released after a year, and I don't think the asylum officials thought he was cured.They felt that his "limbs" were broken and he should not cause trouble again. As far as I know, Elona Halton took him to a small island in Puget Sound. She had appeared as a witness at his trial, but not herself.Both her husband and Fitzstephan had attempted to kill her for their own benefit, allowing her to escape justice. We never found Mrs. Fink. Tom Fink was serving five to fifteen years at San Quentin for what he had done to Fitzstephan.Neither of them seemed to blame the other now, and they both had good things to say for each other on the witness stand.Fink said his motive for planting the bomb was to avenge his stepson, but no one believed it.He wanted to get rid of Fitzstephan before he could tell the whole truth. After Fink was released from prison, he was found following him.He felt panicked, but thankful he could get away with it.That night he slipped out the back door without Mitch noticing, bought the materials for the bomb on the sly, then slipped back in and spent the night building the bomb.He said he had news for me, but he was actually just looking for an excuse to go to Quesada.It was a small bomb—the case was an aluminum soap box wrapped in white paper—and he smuggled it out as he shook hands with Fitzstephan, easily out of my sight.Fitzstephan thought it was something Elona wanted him to hand over—important enough to risk handing it over.His refusal would make me suspicious and would reveal his relationship with Fink. He secretly hid the paper package and opened it after we left—waking up in the hospital.Tom Fink thought he was safe, because Mitch had testified that he had been on Fink since he got out of prison, and I could explain his behavior at the scene of the bombing. Fitzstephan said he thought Alice Leggett's account of her sister Lily's murder was a fiction, said he thought she - Alice - was the culprit and made up a lie to hurt Gabrielle you.It was taken for granted that he was right—everyone, including Gabrielle—even though he had no supporting evidence and was pure conjecture.I had intended to ask the agents of our Paris bureau to see what else we could find on this early case, but decided to let it go.This matter has nothing to do with anyone but Gabrielle, and she seems satisfied enough with the facts that have been unearthed so far. She is currently in the care of the Collinson family.When the newspaper first published the extras, accusing Fitzstephan of killing Eric, they went to Quesada to find her.There was no need for the Collinsons to admit outright that they ever suspected her of anything.After Andrew handed over the will documents and another executor, Walter Fielding, took over, the Collinson family took her back from Andrew as a matter of course as her closest relative. After two months in the mountains, her treatment was a complete success.Back in town, she looked completely reborn, new from the outside and the inside. "It's hard to believe that those things really happened to me," she said to me one afternoon, as she and Lawrence Collinson and I were having lunch between the morning and afternoon interrogations that day, "You said it was because Is there too much going on, making me numb?” "No. Remember when you used to be on drugs almost all the time? It was your luck to keep you from suffering. As long as you don't touch morphine, it will always be like a cloud. What?" If you want to open your eyes and savor it carefully, you just need to take a big sip.” "I won't, never will," she said, "and I wouldn't do it if I could give you another chance to cheer me up. He had Coke in it then," she said, turning to Laurence Collinson. He cursed at me, made fun of me, threatened me with all kinds of cruel things, until I thought he was trying to seduce me. If I seem to be very uneducated sometimes now, Lawrence, you have to blame him: he didn't What a good influence it has had on people." It seems that she has recovered a little too much. Laurence Collinson laughed along with us, but stopped abruptly when it reached his chin.I think he probably thinks that I really can't be a teacher.