A/N: So...this chapter is one of the more horrible things I've written for this site over the years. I've edited it for content as much as the spirit of such a tale allows and upped the rating just to be safe. There's worse out there, I'm sure. Most of you guys will probably be rolling your eyes about this word of warning by the end. I'd prefer that be the case. But the warning will be made regardless: Please proceed with caution as to your individual tolerances of violence.

Beckett wakes to find herself still sitting at the table with her forehead pillowed upon her arms. There's no memory of having sought rest. In the initial disorientation, and with her last cogent thought on Dante, a bizarre thought arises of having perished while staring at the picture of Castle. In a twisted mockery of Narcissus at the waters edge, she must have gazed, horrified, until she wasted away. Then, summarily doomed by a wrathful St. Peter for such a slothful manner of an exit, she'd been allotted a special abode in Hell where every awakening from now would deliver her unto this room to repeat this string of tormenting conversations.

Her eyes discern the glowing tips on the hands of her father's watch: 8:44 PM.

The touch at her left shoulder which roused her comes again and brings the detective's head up from the gloom of her pooled hair and crossed limbs. John's face greets her. There's no anger or lingering resentment present. All she sees is the subtle occupancy of compassion. I must look about as good as I feel then. Mild stiffness of the skin suggests dried tracks of tear-streaked mascara upon her cheeks. As she moves, numbness in her blood-deprived limbs gives way to tingling pins and needles in her legs and feet. Kate watches in the grip of a mild lassitude as her companion reaches out tentatively and slides the photograph of a bloody boy carefully free of her fingers where it had remained even while she'd slumbered.

"That," John sympathizes quietly, "was one hell of a place to start digging, Kate."

It's lain aside facing down, but the image has been indelibly seared into her brain.

Remember what Rick said. This isn't him. It was, but it's not now. It's just a part of the whole.

She has a sense now of what's led the families and other people involved to bury this case as much as they could. Name a dollar amount, or the favor necessary—almost anything would be doable if Kate could close her eyes for one more moment and open them to discover herself back at Rick's place. Let her wake up to find both of them still settled peacefully on his back deck under the light of the gibbous moon with distant waves rolling in.

Where did all of that need to know vanish to? Within her mind the question comes in her own voice in a tone of biting sarcasm, even disdain. It's well-placed. There simply isn't enough room to manage any shame for herself.

That picture is too big. It's filled her up. All else has been washed out of her by its mammoth displacement.

"You were only out for fifteen minutes," the Sergeant informs her. A fresh mug of coffee wafting steam is set in front of her before he reclaims the chair across the table. The scent of the offering is sharply nauseating, but, mercifully, only briefly. Even when the roiling passes she doesn't touch it, but watches silently as John reaches to his left for an inch-thick stack of documents and draws them into place before himself. He's been busy.

Last chance to run, Katie.

She doesn't even twitch.

The other notices her observing and looks away to the side at the replaced boxes and filing cabinets on which they rest. "It seems unlikely, doesn't it? That so much misery can be reduced to this small pile." He doesn't seem to expect a reply when he pauses, and continues moments later. "It's more for my purposes on certain points. As for that, I was still gathering my thoughts when you awoke. Why don't you step out and get cleaned up while I finish?"

"Thanks," she says, more rasps, and gingerly clears her throat. "But I'll clean up later. I need this done."

A short delay passes, but she doesn't lift her gaze from the table in order to meet his assessment. Finally, her companion selects a glossy page from the top of the stack before him, another photograph. He handles it with an odd minimalism, two fingers grasping only what is required at one corner. It drops to lie between them and John shakes his hand afterward with the discard someone might apply to having handled something dead and rotting.

It's a black-and-white five-by-seven of a man in his middle twenties.

There is the moment of seeing and comprehending, and in its wake follows another in which the coffee, Sergeant, and cabinets all phase out of immediate awareness. A strange pressure exerts itself upon the air that robs it of both scent and sound. Every peripheral detail seems to deliquesce even while the figure in the photograph grows more corporeal and clear. Kate's breath comes at the same cadence, but shallower.

The last thing she expects to happen now is to experience the same moment she yearns for at the twelfth when she's perched upon a desk and leaning unconsciously towards the murder board, waiting for it to whisper to her. The penultimate moment comes regardless of expectation, and with it a familiar sense of detachment from self. A mental withdrawal carries her backwards and upwards until the picture, table, and the room itself are seen as a whole.

Fevers grip people in such a manner, but Kate doesn't feel warm. Indeed, it feels as though she grows as cold as the reptile from whence Castle gleaned her nickname. She's the alligator upon a river bank poised in flawless patience, as motionless as the mud, stiller than the reeds stirring listlessly in a humid breeze. Emotion gradually wanes even as mental acuity sharpens to a lethal edge. The drumming of her heart is slow, now slower. It winds on down as sure as hands of her father's watch that tick, tick, tick in lengthening intervals until each measure is as distinct and protracted as the mournful tolling of a grandfather clock: solemn, thrumming, metallic.

Slowly, almost cautiously, Beckett reaches out with both hands and slides the image closer.

You're the one, aren't you? The architect of all of this pain.

It's obvious at first glance that the shot was professionally done. Someone with real talent and all the right equipment did the job. The subject, wearing a white shirt open at the neck and a leather jacket, was captured from the waist up, posed within a white wooden door frame with his arms folded across his chest. His aristocratic features are undeniably handsome, bolstered by piercing eyes, a firm set to his mouth, and thick dark hair combed back from the forehead.

The photo was clearly intended to be glamorous, but that's fitting. A natural mystique exudes from the figure that the artist didn't need to create artificially. As for that, it's a dramatic, exacting composition of shadow and light with a definite lean on the former. An oddness to their shapes and prevalence implies the use of obstructions not visible in frame. It's starkly effective. Darkness adores the man. An equally undeniable arrogance is present and that's apparent in both posture and expression. It harkens to a deigned superiority that Kate's seen staring back at her during a thousand interrogations. That too is decidedly fitting in this instance. As a lion must walk the plains of the dark continent with its head high and regal to be seen as a lion, so would such a man as this need to carry himself in order to be seen for what he presumes to be among other men. Better. Vaunted. Above the reach of mortal laws.

"That's him," John begins, and she startles inwardly at the sound of his voice. "Llewellyn Matthews." Beckett looks up to accept the connection of the others' gaze, but doesn't reply. "This ended here with the victims who came to be collectively known as the Montauk Five." By his tone it's clear that such a designation is held with more than mere disdain; caged hostility rattles the bars of that tenor. "But it began across Block Island Sound almost a decade earlier in the city of New London."

"He hunted across state lines," the detective comments while sliding the picture away. "Smart."

"Matthews had a few clever ideas that kept him off suspect lists, a fairly sophisticated hunting behavior for the time, but like many serial killers he wasn't exceptionally bright. In that respect he was average. New London was where he was born and raised; it was his comfort zone. Montauk was too, but his victim type was fairly specific and easier access to it was only a half-hour boat ride from our local marina." Her fellow pauses again and she starts to inject a question, but stops when he looks down and away again. "He was, uh, an exceptionally brutal killer, Kate."

A different question emerges instead. "A sadist?"

"I believe so, yes. Others claim he isn't. Rather, that he's not in the classical definition of the term. Matthews believes pain holds the key to some kind of metamorphosis. He suffered his share of it, you see. There are crackpots who claim he was driven by feelings of intense isolation—that he tortured women because he was looking for someone who, like him, would emerge from the process transformed and prove worthy of his love."

"Jesus..."

"It's bullshit. No one survived his process. No one could've. Those same crack-pots claim that's just another part of the psychosis. While he wanted a companion, part of him knew that no one could fill his inner void. So by killing his victims he ensured no one would disappoint him or disprove his demented process of selection. It's that kind of lame, cyclical reasoning that got him institutionalized rather than locked up in a Supermax where he belongs."

"That's where he wound up then? A hospital?"

"Yes. He was admitted shortly after his arrest and diagnosed as a potently violent Schizophrenic. It was almost seven years before the doctors were satisfied that he was mentally competent enough to face back-to-back trials in Connecticut and New York. Didn't matter though. He was not-guilty by reason of insanity both times and sent right back to the hospital. Hell, they're probably right if I'm being honest. I don't like to think so, but the insanity defense is so sparingly used and even more rarely conceded at trial. You have to figure there's something legitimate to the notion when that happens."

"The actual scenario must've been different then. He wouldn't have gotten off as some twisted Casanova. That's messed up, but it doesn't preclude an awareness of right and wrong when he committed the crimes."

"Schizophrenia is the diagnosis, but the actual delusions driving him were different than what the crack-pots claim, yeah. Matthews' doesn't see his victims as people." Beckett's head ticks backward upon her neck in bemusement. She lingers in silence. "They were objects. What we see as their suffering was, to him, and these are his words, 'a cleansing of chemical imperfections to render workable materials'. That's how he sees us: chemical stews of base action and reaction. Pain, being a universal function across all animal kingdoms, was deemed the purest mechanism by which he might drain the impurities of humanity. He kept most of his victims alive for quite some time. Afterwards...he posed the bodies together in a tableau in a large natural cavern that was discovered beneath the barn on his property. The offering: that's what he called it, and that was his true obsession. As to whom the sacrifices were made, or to what end, he's never said."

It takes a moment to digest that heaping spoonful of cold horror. Finally, Kate says, "Tell me about the victimology."

"Invariably female, but the ages varied. The youngest was in her late twenties, the eldest in her fifties. As far as physical traits or race, he wasn't choosy. Another reason he was so difficult to find."

"I thought the youngest was..." She can't bring herself to finish it.

"Laura, yeah. But the Montauk victims were different from the rest. Matthews' acknowledged as much."

"Different how?"

"That's skipping ahead a ways."

Part of her is glad to let the matter wait. Dodging won't work much longer, Katie. She knows, but still allows the deviation. "You said beforehand that his preferences were specific, but that's a lot of wiggle room compared to some serials."

"Yes, well, the women varied some, but all of them were homeless and each was determined to be a long-time alcohol abuser. Even the youngest victim had been drinking for over ten years."

Beckett frowns. "Okay... Well, hunting the homeless makes a sick kind of sense. High risk peoples can vanish without so much as a missing person report. The communities they form don't have the best relationships with the law."

"As I said, it was one more detail that made this investigation the cock-up it was. There was no case, not for years. There might never have been, except there was a priest who became involved, Father Daniel Kirkland. He slowly caught on to the women disappearing. Matthews' cooling off period was like clockwork. He hunted every four months for eight years. While the span between them was significant, it wasn't long enough to go without notice to someone who was paying attention."

"Holy shit," Beckett says softly. "Llewellyn killed twenty-four women?"

"That's not including the victims in Montauk. Even when it finally was noticed in late '72, Father Kirkland waged a long uphill battle getting anyone to do anything about it. This occurred while deinstitutionalization was the grand new social agenda. Politicians had made a big fuss about emptying mental hospitals in the name of compassion and social responsibility. We know now how well that worked out, about as well as anything does when science and government converge on some notion of a greater good. The murders, excuse me, the multiple missing person cases as they were thought to be at the time, came to light not long before the second major wave of releases. No one wanted to acknowledge a situation that painted their great movement with unnecessary bad press."

"Imagine that."

"Mm. The irony is none of the victims were releases from any of the state hospitals. Being homeless was close enough apparently. Anyway, being a priest, Kirkland had access to an audience every Sunday who were more concerned with their immortal souls than securing a popular vote. Word slowly spread. In early '74 they organized a march. Over six hundred homeless took part in it. I don't imagine that was easy for anyone to ignore," John adds with a subtle wrinkling of his nose, but no real humor is apparent. "It had the desired effect, that's for sure."

Beckett digests the information for a time, then asks, "Why did he want alcoholics?"

John swallows and turns his coffee mug slowly within his hands, three complete revolutions. Shit. This isn't gonna be good. "Remember," he finally begins, "in Matthews' sick mind the ultimate purifier was pain."

The detective doesn't remember shooting to her feet. She only realizes it happening when her chair smacks hard against the floor behind her. "No, damn," she issues and paces away to far wall, resting a hand against its cool surface. Her father swims to the surface of her mind, unbidden. "He cut them off. Induced DT's."

John sighs behind and beyond her. "Delirium tremens are no joke, as you seem to be aware. Even today people sometimes die from the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, and that's with aggressive clinical treatment. Without it? The physiological and psychological side-effects are, in a word, devastating. That coupled with prolonged torture..."

Beckett squeezes her eyes shut around the conjured images. She feels about an inch tall. What does she know of Hell compared to something like that? Don't compare pain, Katie. Comprehend theirs, mourn it with them, respect it. And always, if possible, help conquer it. That was what her mother used to offer by way of wisdom on the subject.

But there's no one left to mourn or heal with this time, just the ghosts locked away in this small room.

Now you are being foolish. Of course there is.

"Castle."

John hears the name even at a whisper. He clears his throat roughly, asks, "Are you ready for that part?"

She's not, but Rick wasn't either when this nightmare happened upon him. Beckett goes back to the table, righting her chair. She eases down into it, runs a thumb under both eyes even though she's already a mess, and focuses on her guide.

John dallies briefly with a sip of coffee. She's not the only sorely reluctant party.

That reminds Kate of something she's been meaning to say. "You know, when Castle told me I was coming here with you, I wasn't thrilled. I knew this was going to be difficult to hear, and the only one I wanted to share it with was him. He told me that the case was, you know, personal for you. Painful. He didn't explain how true that is, only enough to get the point across." John is staring unblinkingly at her, frowning, his jaw set. "Even with that hint, I kept thinking about how your being here would effect me." Realization creeps into the upturned formation of his eyebrows and a slight part of his lips. She continues on determinedly, because later she might not think to say this, and it matters to her. "I'm sorry, John. And...thanks for being here, doing this. You, uh, you're a great friend."

Oh god, he's teetering badly by then, emotions strained like a cable trembling past its load bearing capacity.

"Don't you dare," Beckett croaks with her eyes welling dangerously in pure sympathy. John sucks in a fast, shaky breath and expels a humorless breath of a laugh. Somehow, some-goddamned-how, the man holds all the jagged pieces of himself together and slowly cements the seams of his grief with hard-fought neutrality. His eyes clear and he nods a couple times in the only response he seems able to give. Minutes pass before she manages the same.

"I assume by now you've heard Richard play?"

She looks to the side at the overturned picture of Castle, and then back to target. "Play...?"

"No," her companion confirms to himself and nods. "That's not surprising. He's a pianist. Was. "

"Seriously?"

"Very. We're not talking about the next Beethoven or anything. The gifts he possesses have their limits just like with anyone else. Um, he doesn't qualify as having absolute pitch, but he's placeable upon that gradient in that he can recreate a piece by ear, identify specific tones in songs with multiple instruments, and identify the pitch of everyday sounds."

"Did he study it seriously?"

"He had a teacher here in Montauk, some German guy who I can't recall now. Martha wasn't very strict about it though. When he sent Richard home in tears one day, she canceled the lessons and took over the tutelage. She's not half bad herself, you know. Still, I think she thought it was more of a quirky proficiency than anything serious."

"You believed it was more?"

"At the time I didn't know shit. Like his imagination and empathy though, it is more. Wherever Richard truly applies himself to a creative endeavor it is going to broadcast a potential for greatness. It all emerges from the same deep wellspring after all. But...he only started playing when he was five. His babysitter turned him onto the instrument that year. As you're already aware, he didn't have long before this case overtook him. I'm not bringing it up now to draw more attention to how the aftermath effected him. I mention it because, in this case, its sadly relevant to why he was...chosen."

"Llewellyn went after him because of his music?"

"Such as it was at the time, yes."

"His...budding talent for it then."

"Either way is fine, Kate, really. I've heard him play, so to me it's more than mere proficiency."

"How did Llewellyn know about it? And why was it so important?"

"Once again we've run up against something I don't know how to make sense of for you. In this case, however, we have Matthews himself to explain it for us." John thumbs through the stack before him for less than a minute before producing a few pages stapled together. He turns to the second page and begins reading aloud from it. "I heard it happening down on the first floor. It was more white noise at first, and I was not concerned. Later, when I came back by through the food court, there was a small herd gathered around a nearby dais where the piano sat." Herd? God almighty... "By then it was producing music, and I was struck by the quality of its playing."

"It," she quotes angrily, aloud this time. "Is he referring to Castle?"

"Yes. Like the other victims, he didn't see Richard as a person."

Beckett seethes quietly and gestures for him to keep going.

John's attention lingers on her though. "He goes on to describe the fact that Richard wasn't playing sheet music, but rather putting sounds to the manner in which passing people or those standing and watching nearby inspired. He got a feeling for them and just played for a while. That's corroborated, more or less, by people who were at the mall that day. Once he realized what was happening, Matthews' curiosity got the better of him and he joined the other observers. While he was watching, Richard saw him as well and...reacted."

The Sergeant's focus lowers to the page again, scanning through it before he starts reading again. "The sounds that began to emerge from the instrument were only clear to me. I heard the underlying melody, a message of hope from my great benefactor reaching out to me at long last, and was moved by it. The herd, stupefied and unknowing, frowned at each other while the discordant cacophony they could only perceive the notes as unfurled. They began to drift away, first one-by-one and then as a group. But it kept playing, staring back at me with wide unknowing eyes and its face locked in a rictus mask of distress. It was as helpless to cease as any messenger from a divine source would be. Even when the small litter with it became restless and eager to abandon the pursuit, it played on." The Sergeant pauses to look up at her. "He was talking about me and the girls. We'd gone together that day with the twins' mother, Anita. I don't recall this myself, and in this case Genie doesn't either. That was three weeks before...the end."

Beckett moistens her lips and tentatively begins, "John, no kids could be expected to—

"I know," he interjects softly. "Thanks for saying so. Knowing better doesn't make it okay." He clears his throat and lets the pages settle on the table beside the larger stack. "By that time New London's finest had active on the case for over a year. It may have taken unnecessary means to make that happen, but once they were rolling the city was after their suspect with a will. They even managed to procure some FBI assistance in the form of an agent from their fledgling behavioral science unit, a rising star named...uh, I forget actually. He was part of that tragedy up in Boston in early '05, with the bomber. Anyway, none of the presumed missing persons had turned up, so he suspected homicides. He found the connection between the victims, so they knew their suspect was targeting alcoholics, though not why, and they knew their killer was taking homeless from the neighborhood around the church where Kirkland lived and worked."

"Did Llewellyn know they were closing in?"

"Closing in isn't the term I would use. They were too late. I'm hard-pressed to justify holding the failure against them. I do though, in the face of reason. As for Matthews' reaction to them, it's unclear. He gleaned a 'message of hope' from Richard's music, and it's tempting to associate that to the growing adversity he was up against with law enforcement. But he never confirmed as much. On the contrary, Matthews has never expressed any interest in how he was caught or what any of us think of him. After eight long years of killing it's possible he was growing despondent or frustrated with his...work. If the doctor's are right about him being insane, maybe his illness was deepening or diverging into something else. There's just no way of knowing for certain. All we have in the wake of it all is the behavior. That is, what he decided to do next."

"The killings in Montauk. Castle."

John turned the mug in his hands again, idling while his dark eyes travel the room searchingly. "There are parts of this I'm going to explain for you, but before that happens, let me warn you: there are holes in the narrative. One in particular."

"Castle mentioned that too—that there are parts even he doesn't recall."

"Yeah." John lifts his mug, but its empty. With a moistening of his lips he sets the item aside with an exaggerated care which speaks plainly of renewed tension within. "It gets somewhat complicated from here on in."

Complicated. That's how Castle described it on the ride out here.

"Hasn't it been?" Beckett returns mildly.

"It's been disgusting, disturbing. But from point A to B the case has comparable symmetry with other killers."

She frowns deeply, not understanding and definitely not liking this.

John intrudes on her thoughts by continuing, "Matthews got it in his head that Richard, while no more of a person than any other victim, was unique in at least one way. He saw the music as a, uh, conduit of sorts by which to convey his Offering, his dark prayer, or...whatever the fuck it was...to whomever he was trying to reach. Do you see? He thought Richard had a direct line to his so-called benefactor. And he wanted to answer back." Beckett doesn't shiver, but not from a lack of frost crystallizing at her core. "That's why he took him from his house on the night of July 18th, 1975."

Silence settles in like a shed autumn mantle. John gives her a minute. Or maybe he's the one who needs it.

"A missing kid raises quite a clamor. Mind you, what was happening across the sound had been kept so quiet no one knew to attribute one act to the other. Even if it had been front-page news I don't know that it would've changed things. The torture for us now is not knowing. It might have. Right up until we finally found Richard, we all thought it was something normal. He'd fallen down while playing somewhere, or gotten lost in a patch of woods—there's plenty of it out here. Benign or not, he and Martha were more than just summer fixtures in Montauk. Word spread like wildfire. He and I were as good as brothers, and my father responded to the situation the same way I imagine he would if I had been the one missing. Obviously, family isn't the textbook choice to spearhead situations like that. Small town rules though."

"Maybe they aren't," Beckett issues quietly, firmly, "but we do what we must for family."

"Exactly, yes." John pauses briefly, considering privately. "That's what was happening in town. But Matthews' farm was four miles away from all of that, tucked out in the woods past the airport on the east edge of Big Reed pond. The three week delay between the mall and the kidnapping was how long it took for Matthews to secure the delivery of a grand piano out there and get it moved down into the cave where he kept his cursed tableau."

"Oh fuck," Kate expels in a rush, but immediately waves for John to keep going.

He gets it. Thank God he gets it. They can't stop or divert again. Not at this point. "Yeah, it was center stage down there, and it's where he kept Richard throughout the duration of all of this. As you can imagine, no boy in those circumstances could have quelled his fear enough to play music. That's what brought the killer back into town. He grabbed the first woman that could be quietly isolated and overpowered: Melinda Crane, a twenty-eight year-old schoolteacher. He took her back to the cavern. One of the many strange details about Matthews is the lack of fundamental comprehension of interpersonal relationships. He literally can't perceive families or couples or the like. Even when he's shown images of them hugging, playing, kissing...it just doesn't compute. But he does grasp that we have such relationships, and that many of us value them above almost everything else."

"I see where this is going. He thought he could force Richard to play because he expected there to be attachment between him and some random woman. She was goddamn leverage. So, what, when it didn't work he kept going out and grabbing others until it did?"

"It's...not quite so simple."

Shit. It's worse. That's what you mean.

"He didn't understand that a little boy could simply be too afraid."

When John pauses she shakes her head once in lingering confusion.

The other sighs mutely. "He thought Richard...wasn't inspired."

"Oh fuck," Kate blurts again, rising from the table. "Jesus fucking Christ almighty. Don't tell me he—

"He did the same work he'd always done. Though without the benefit of delirium tremens he was obliged to apply some previously unnecessary creativity in arousing pain." Oh shit. Shit, shit shit! "LSD and various barbiturates were used to induce hallucinations in place of alcohol withdrawal." Kate lowers into a crouch as if the words and the imagery they bore were chains being lashed across her form and pulled taut to drag her down. "It kept...not working, so he went out for another one again, and again, and again."

"S-stop. Just stop a second."

"The estimation is that they were all alive in there together over the following thirty-six hours."

Tears scald her eyes, blurring the sight of the world. "John, please..."

"He pinned our beautiful girls into the tableau while they were still breathing, alongside twenty-four rotten corpses. He arranged them just so by driving slender spikes of rebar through their legs and down into the floor. He threaded steel wire through muscle and fat, arms and torsos, and tied it off to beams in the ceilings and walls. Like they were praying—that's how they looked. Like so many torn petitioners. I can't even imagine the sound of them all reverberating off the stone."

Beckett whirls on him, screaming, "Shut your fucking mouth!"

The Sergeant's eyes are so wide and wet, gaping and glassy. He might as well be looking at her from a completely different world. "He'd seen Laura at the mall with Richard, and she'd taken her bike around the block to help look for her friend. Not far. Is it dumb luck he showed up there? Nobody knows. Nobody knows," he repeats like a broken record, almost a whisper. "I think...maybe Richard called out for her, for the one he needed most, you know? He couldn't have known the danger. He must've been delirious by then, right? Catatonic maybe."

Beckett might have drawn her weapon to shut him up, but a series of hard spasms rock her shoulders as she gags.

He was too aware for his age. He understood what was happening.

"What happened from there...we don't know. There's a transcript. In it, Richard describes killing Matthews. He says he had to do it to save them. He describes cutting their captor's throat with three deep slashes with a piece of shale."

Beckett stills. She lifts her head with an effort to look back at John.

"But Matthews lived. He lived. That's how Laura died."

Out it comes now in a horrid expulsion, dinner, lunch, or whatever combination between. Kate almost chokes amidst the violence of the sudden purge. She can't see, can't breathe, and the dry heaves won't stop.

"We don't know...who did it. We believe in Richard, always will, but we don't know. Nobody knows, not even him."

The silence that falls is broken only by her own wretched sounds of misery. The story, for John's part at least, is over.