Regina's Song

by David Eddings

“Are you in trouble with the law, Mark?” Trish asked me.

  “Not that I know of,” I assured her. Then I told them all about the twins, and about Regina’s rape and murder, much as I had told James. “Assuming they ever do catch the guy,” I asked, “would they have to prove the identity of the victim before they could get a conviction?”

  “Haven’t they ever heard of DNA?” Sylvia asked.

  “No good,” Erika told her. “Identical twins have the same DNA. I gather that the baby footprints are missing?”

  I nodded. “I guess somebody at Everett General Hospital misfiled them. Well, Trish, what’s the word? Can they convict if they can’t identify the victim?”

  “I’m sure they can.” She didn’t really sound all that positive, though. “I’ll bounce it off one of my professors just to make sure.”

  “Did the surviving girl ever recover?” Sylvia asked. “I’d sure like to meet her.”

  “I could probably arrange that—she lives just few blocks away. But I don’t want you to start crowding her.”

  “My,” Trish said, “aren’t we possessive?”

  “Our families were close, so I was sort of a big brother to the twins. I told James, if the cops get lucky and turn up the sumbitch who killed Regina, I almost hope he does get off. I can come up with some very interesting things to do to him—things that go way past the tepid sort of stuff allowed by the criminal justice system. Fire and white-hot steel hooks—that kind of thing.”

  “Whoo!” Erika said. “This one’s a real savage, isn’t he?”

  “Who was the surviving twin’s psychiatrist?” Sylvia asked me then.

  “Fallon. He runs that private sanitarium where she was staying.”

  “I’ve heard of him. He’s supposed to be very good.”

  “Maybe so, but could we talk about something else?”

  “Of course, Mark,” Trish said quickly, and she adroitly changed the subject to resurfacing the kitchen floor instead.

  After breakfast, I drove down to the campus; I’d encountered something I wanted to examine. It appeared that there’d been some fairly extensive contacts between Walt Whitman and an English group known as the pre-Raphaelites.

  We tend to get compartmentalized in our thinking. It’s almost as if British literature and American literature evolved on two different planets. The mail did get through, though, and we do speak approximately the same language the Brits speak. The possibility of transoceanic influence could be of genuine academic interest, so I headed to the library to pursue it a bit further.

  I stopped by Mary’s place on my way home.

  “Where have you been?” Renata’s aunt demanded when she opened the door. “I tried to call you, but nobody answered.”

  “I was facedown in the library,” I explained. “I guess the rest of the gang at the boardinghouse had things to attend to on campus as well. Is something wrong?”

  “Renata had a bad night. She was still awake when I got home from work.”

  “Did she tell you what was bothering her?”

  “It was some kind of nightmare, and whatever it was, it must have been pretty awful. Evidently she was flailing around while she was dreaming, because she’s got a lot of bruises on her arms.”

  “Maybe I’d better stay here tonight,” I suggested.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she told me. “I’ve got tonight off, so I’ll be here to keep an eye on her.” Then she gave me a speculative look. “Can you keep something to yourself, Mark?” she asked me bluntly.

  “If you want me to, yes.”

  “I gave her a sleeping pill, and I’d rather that her psychiatrist didn’t find out about it.”

  “Over-the-counter stuff?”

  “No, a little heavier than that. Just about everybody who works graveyard shift has an open-ended prescription for sleeping pills. I won’t make a regular practice of it, but anytime Ren starts getting all wired-up, I can put her down. Sometimes we have to bend a few rules.”

  “I don’t have any problem with that. I’ll give you a buzz later on this evening to find out how she’s doing.”

  “If she wakes up. If she was as wrung-out as she seemed to be, she might sleep all the way through until tomorrow morning.”

  “It would probably be good for her. I’ve got a hunch that this back-to-school business might have her wound a little tight. We were hoping that auditing classes instead of taking them for credit might keep the pressure off her, but maybe we’re still rushing things a bit.”

  “I’ll watch her. If it gets to be too much for her, she can either drop the classes for a few weeks—or let it all slide until next quarter.”

  “I don’t know about that, Mary,” I said dubiously. “If the boss gets wind of anything like that, he might insist that she come back home.”

  “Then we’ll just have to make sure that he doesn’t find out, won’t we?”

  “We can try.” I glanced at my watch. “I’d better get moving. If last night was any indication, the ladies get all torqued out when I’m late for meals.”

  When I got back to the boardinghouse, Charlie had his door open, and he was going at his walls with a paint roller. I stared into his room. “Boy, are you going to get yelled at!” I told him.

  “Trish said I could paint the room any color I wanted,” he said defensively.

  “I don’t think she’s going to like it much,” I predicted. “You don’t come across very many rooms painted black.”

  “It’s a neutral color. Nobody flips out when he sees a room painted white—or gray.”

  “Black’s different. What made you decide on black?”

  “It’s sort of outer-spacey, don’t you think?”

  “It’s definitely spacey. Are you thinking about adding stars later?”

  He squinted at the dull black ceiling. “I don’t think so. I think I’d like to keep the infinity effect. The ceiling’s as close or as far away as I want it to be, and it moves kind of in and out when I look at it. The whole idea is to make it indefinite. I’ll be working with some equations later on that won’t have spatial limitations, and I’ll need to be able to visualize them. I think those black walls and ceiling are going to help.”

  “I still think it’ll make Trish flip out.”

  “She’ll get over it. Did you happen to catch the news today?”

  I shook my head. “I was down in the bowels of the main library. Is something going on I should know about?”

  “We might have to start wearing flak jackets to class,” he replied. “Some guy got knifed on campus—down by the crew dorm.”

  “Crew?”

  “The rowing team—the guys who row those long, skinny boats in races. Their dorm’s down by the edge of Lake Washington. The last word I picked up on TV was that the cops thought it was a gang-related killing.”

  “Whoopee,” I said flatly. “As far as the cops are concerned, jaywalking’s gang-related.”

  “They do sort of lean on it now and then, don’t they?”

  “They might be pushing this one a little. Gangs normally use guns, not knives.” I shrugged. “I doubt that we’ll get too much in the way of details from TV. The cops clam up when they’re investigating something.”

  “Hello, up there,” Trish called from downstairs. “We’re home. Is everybody decent?”

  “We’re dressed, if that’s what you mean,” I told her.

  “I’m coming up.”

  “Feel free.” I called, then looked at Charlie. “You might want to close your door,” I suggested.

  “She’ll see the paint job sooner or later, anyway,” he replied. “Let’s get the yelling and screaming over with.”

  Trish surprised the both of us, though. When she reached the top of the stairs, she glanced through Charlie’s doorway and shrugged. “Interesting notion,” she observed.

  “You’re taking the fun out of this, Trish,” Charlie complained.

  “It’s your room, Charlie,” she replied. “You have to live with it. H
ave you gentlemen heard anything about that murder on campus last night?”

  “Just what came over the idiot box,” Charlie told her. “Is the campus coming down with nervous?”

  “The girls in the dormitories are a little worked up, and Erika and I do spend quite a few evenings in on-campus libraries. If some screwball’s running around on campus, we might have to start taking a few precautions.”

  “From what I hear, the cops think it was one of those gang things,” Charlie told her. “Those aren’t usually dangerous for innocent bystanders—particularly when the guy who’s doing the killing uses a knife. It’s when they start shooting at each other that you have to take cover. City kids are rotten shots. What’s for dinner tonight, babe? I skipped lunch today, and I’m starving.”

  The ladies fixed pork chops that evening, and they were way out in front of anything you’d get in any local restaurant. James arrived a little late for supper, and the girls scolded him at some length. I mentally confirmed “don’t be late for supper” under my list of house rules.

  “Are you guys up for a jaunt over to the Green Lantern Tavern this evening?” Charlie asked James and me.

  “Here we go again.” Erika sighed, rolling her eyes upward.

  “We’re not going to get all bent out of shape, toots,” Charlie promised. “I want to have a talk with my older brother about that guy who got killed on campus last night. My brother’s a cop, and he’ll know a lot more details than we got from the news reports. He hits the Green Lantern just about every night on his way home from work. I can probably wheedle the story out of him. Then we’ll know whether it’s something we need to worry about.”

  James shrugged. “I don’t really have anything better to do,” he replied. “I’ll come along. I can count the number of beers you drink and rat you off to Trish when we get home.”

  “You wouldn’t!” Charlie said.

  “Only kidding, Charlie. Relax. I never fink on a buddy.”

  “Male bonding in action,” Sylvia said sardonically.

  “And Budweiser’s the glue in most cases,” Erika added. “Take ten guys and a keg of beer, mix well, and they’re stuck together for life.”

  “It’s one of those guy things, Erika,” I told her. “It crops up during hunting season—or just before the Super Bowl. I don’t watch football on TV, so I’m sort of an outcast. Well, gentlemen, shall we tiptoe off to the Green Lantern and abuse our livers?”

  Sgt. Robert West was a plainclothes detective with the Seattle Police Department, and he and his younger brother seemed to be fairly close, despite a pretty good number of differences between them. Charlie had bounced from job to job for a number of years, but Bob had taken aim at the Seattle Police Department when he’d been about fourteen, and he’d never even considered an alternate profession. He was a solid citizen with a wife, two kids, and a mortgage. He lived in the Wallingford district, and he customarily stopped by the Green Lantern after work for two beers—three on Friday, I learned later—then went on home. Charlie’d told James and me that you could set your watch by his brother. They looked quite a bit alike, but I doubt that Charlie even knew how to tie a necktie, while Bob wore one to work every day.

  After Charlie had introduced James and me to his brother, he got down to cases. “I don’t want you to bend any rules, big brother,” he said, “but we’d like to know if we ought to start wearing bulletproof vests to class. If the gangs are moving onto the campus, it could turn into a war zone. What’s the scoop on the guy who got knifed last night?”

  Bob looked at James and me. “This won’t go any further, right?” he asked us in a low voice.

  “It stops right here,” James assured him.

  “All right, then. The victim was a fairly high-ranking member of a Chicano gang, and somebody obviously wanted to pass a message on to his pals. What happened down by the lakeshore last night wasn’t your average, run-of-the-mill stab in the back. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make it very messy.”

  “Who was the dead guy?” Charlie asked.

  “His name was Julio Muñoz, and his gang’s recently moved out this way to try to attract customers from the student body for various feel-good products. U.W. students have been doing dope for years, but they usually had to go to other neighborhoods to buy it. Julio and his buddies decided to set up a branch office in the university district. Evidently, another gang had the same idea, and they weren’t too happy about the notion of a price war.”

  “Any ideas about which gang decided to carve up Julio?”

  “Nothing very specific. Lieutenant Burpee thinks it might have been Cheetah, but Burpee’s sort of obsessed with Cheetah. He’s been trying to nail that one for about the last three years.”

  “Burpee?” James asked mildly.

  Bob smiled faintly. “We don’t call him that to his face. His real name’s Belcher.”

  “It does kind of fit, I guess,” James agreed.

  “Who’s this Cheetah?” I asked.

  “A downtown drug lord. He’s a mixed breed psychotic—part black, part Mexican, part oriental, part rabid bird dog. That’s one guy we’d really like to get off the streets. He swings big-time drug deals and amuses himself with random murders. We haven’t been able to pin him down because he hasn’t got a fixed address. He never sleeps in the same bed twice, and he’s got two or three hundred aliases. Muñoz had a rap sheet as long as your arm, but Cheetah’s never been busted, so we don’t even know what his real name is. We’ve got a rough description of him, and that’s about all. I sort of hate to admit it, but old Burpee might be right this time. Cheetah tends to be exotic, and the cutting last night was at least exotic. I’ve seen a few guys that were fairly well cut up, but whoever went after Julio scattered pieces of him all over the grass down by the lake. There’s no way an undertaker’s going to be able to put him back together again, so we’re probably looking at one of those closed casket funerals.”

  “You saw the body, then?” Charlie asked his brother.

  “I sure did. I got to the scene right after the uniforms did. That one’s going to give the coroner a real headache. Whoever took Muñoz out didn’t stab him the way most knife killers do. It was a carving, not a stabbing, and I’d guess that it took Muñoz a long time to die. It wasn’t for money, that’s certain. His wallet was still in his back pocket, and it was loaded.”

  “It was strictly a drug business thing, then?” James asked.

  “That’s our current thinking. Most of Julio’s arrests were drug-related. He’s been busted for that a half dozen times. He’s been a suspect in several shootings and a couple of rapes, but we could never pin him to the mat on those. We haven’t nailed him on a dope deal for over a year now, though. Evidently, he graduated from street dealing and moved up to being a supplier. There’s more money in that, I guess, but last night it looks like he came up against one of the occupational hazards of going big-time.”

  “The rubout?” Charlie guessed.

  “The slice-out in this case. I don’t think there was much rubbing involved. Whoever took him out might have had some experience as a meat cutter, since it sort of looked like he was trying to bone out the carcass even after Muñoz died.”

  “Homicidal maniac stuff?” Charlie asked.

  “Pretty much. It looked to me as if the cutter was pretty well worked up. We’ll probably have to wait for the autopsy to find out what kind of knife was involved. There didn’t seem to be any stab wounds. It was all slices. What’s surprising about it is that nobody in the vicinity heard anything. I’m sure it took Muñoz a long time to die, and nobody I’ve talked to heard any screaming. The only thing anybody heard was a dog howling.”

  “Then you don’t think anybody on campus had any kind of connection with the killing?” Charlie asked him.

  “Probably not. It’s more likely that Muñoz was doing a drug deal down by the lake, and the opposition—whoever it was—caught up with him there. I don’t think you’re going to need a police escort to take yo
u to and from class, Charlie, if that’s what’s got you so worried.”

  “Up yours,” Charlie told him.

  “Always nice talking with you, little brother,” Bob said with a faint smile. Then he glanced at his watch. “Oops,” he said. “Running late.” He stood up.

  “Say hi to Eleanor and the kids for me,” Charlie said.

  “Right. Stop by once in a while, huh?”

  “I’ll make a point of it,” Charlie promised.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I volunteered to drive Twink to Lake Stevens on Friday of that week, since I was free. All my scurrying around to get settled in for fall quarter might have been too efficient. Everything was in place, and I didn’t really have anything important left up in the air.

  Oddly enough, Friday was all bright and sunny, and I didn’t even have to turn on my windshield wipers as Twink and I went north on Interstate 5.

  Dr. Fallon spent the customary hour with Twink, and he seemed to be fairly satisfied with her progress. At least he didn’t put her in a padded cell.

  After the session, Twink and I went back to Everett for dinner with Les and Inga. It seemed to me that those weekly visits might not be a bad idea, and since Twink had to go north every Friday anyway, it fit together smoothly.

  The following week really dragged on. I was ready to start classes, but the university wasn’t quite up to it yet. I did a lot of puttering around with my bookshelf project and hit the library several times, but I didn’t accomplish much.

  The fall quarter began on Monday, September 29th, and I finally had to come face-to-face with John Milton. You don’t walk into the Ph.D. exams in English unless you’ve got graduate seminars in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton under your belt. Shakespeare and I get along fairly well, and Chaucer’s a good buddy, but Milton seems a little silly to me. “How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth, stol’n away my three and twentieth year,” seems ridiculous coming from a guy who didn’t shave regularly yet. Besides, Milton was wall-to-wall puritan, and puritans set my teeth on edge.

  The Milton seminar was one of those early-morning things—seven-thirty to nine-thirty—and the first session was largely taken up with bookkeeping. Full professors generally prefer to ease themselves into harness. After class I drove back to Wallingford to have a word with Twink.